Chapter Two

I wanted to write about what happened because it's way too complicated for whistles, sign language, or whiteboards. Mostly this is for my mom and dad and Laura Napoli but anybody else might be interested too, so if they are, then here it is. It's not going to be some kind of "I was born" chronology, but at the same time I want to tell it in some kind of order that makes some sense out of it. I could put in a whole lot of things that aren't the least bit relevant. Maybe I will. I don't know. I haven't actually done this kind of thing before.

It's probably important to tell about who and where and when and what and how. My mom and dad already know a lot of that, but Laura doesn't, so I am going to be thinking about her as I go along and what she knows and what she doesn't, and since she is also a part of the story I have to tell about her too in the way I saw it, so you'll have to excuse me, Laura, for being repetitious when I get to that part, and mom and dad you'll have to excuse me too for all the stuff you already know. Okay, enough about that.

Yokimura Music is a pretty large place when you compare it to the rest of the stores in our little strip mall here on Venezia Boulevard in the south side of Spring Hill Lake. It's about one-third of all the retail space, but only one of seven stores. There is The Pet Food Stop next door which is also pretty big. Joy's nail salon is next door to that, and then there's Mary's Donut Hole, which is quite a tiny place as the name indicates. Next to Mary's is Chiquito Burrito, also a pretty small storefront. Next to that is Gone Postal, a sort of shipping place, and on the corner is Murray's Cigars and Liquor. That's about it. Each of the stores has its own set of parking spaces with the store name painted on the green twenty minute parking curb, but nobody really cares who parks in which spot or how long they stay. As far as I know, the Curly's Towing threat posted on the lot has never been enforced. I even have a feeling that Curly himself doesn't even exist.

The parking lot gets pretty full a lot of the time, mostly for Murray's and my dad's. We also get a kind of cross-business from over there. By that I mean the drunks and punks that come around and drink and smoke outside our door, the guys I have to go outside to every hour or so and blow my whistle at to make them go away. They all know me, being regulars, like Rodney the Fish King, and Howie the Manic. Those are my names I gave them. They actually have different names and don't know about these. It's easy for me to keep a lot to myself. All I have to do is not write it down. People sometimes tell me they think that I'm mysterious, just because I cannot talk. It's not so. I'm just quieter.

Whenever I think about the strip mall, which is officially called 'Venezia SouthWest Corners', I think of it as being hot. Sure, it's warm for half the year, and especially hot in July and August, but the rest of the time it's cool and often wet but I never think of it that way. I always see in my mind the steam rising from the sidewalk, and feel the heat of the pavement under my feet. We have air conditioning inside the store and it's usually too cold for my tastes in there, so maybe that's why I think of the outside as always being hot. Whenever I go outside it's always warmer than it was inside.

There's not much else going on nearby. On this part of Venezia there's a lot of little "office parks", which means small clusters of mostly abandoned odd-looking one-story buildings with nicely kept lawns and empty parking lots. It seems to me there are more leafblower guys than office workers most days around here. There's some residential apartments and condos on the side streets, and down the ways at the next big light there's a Pay'n'Save and a SuperMart. Further than that Venezia turns into Highway 63 toward Wetford and the motel chains and fast food franchises start popping up around down there. We're kind of out of the way, and at the same time in the way. A lot of traffic heading in and out of downtown has to go by us, which is pretty much why we've been able to stay in business for almost forty years now, since way before I was born.

My dad came here from Washington state, where his parents had stayed after coming from Japan. My mom is from right around here originally, Wetford proper to be exact. They met in college, where my mom was getting her sociology degree and my dad was getting his master's in music marketing. It served him pretty well, I think. He started up this store right after he got his degree and has been here ever since, six days a week, morning til night most days. He made it exactly what he always wanted it to be. It's nice to see that. If you have a dream and work it out into the real world. I never had anything like that. Not really. Well, I always wanted to make a living playing music, but not in front of people. I'd like to do it privately if I could. Really I'd like to be paid a lot of money just to play alone in my room with a lot of fancy equipment!

I do have a lot of equipment, most of it used (we sell used instruments) and most of that only borrowed (I usually get bored and return them eventually). Today I have two keyboards (one a weighted piano, the other a vintage synth), three guitars (two acoustic, one electric), a drum pad set and a drum machine, and of course my stand up bass and electric bass. I also have a computer and some decent programs but not the really fancy ones that cost way more than you would think. I can do some recording and it comes out okay enough, at least for me. I have to admit, though, it's nothing that anyone is ever going to pay me a lot of money for! Maybe I'll think of something else someday, come up with some kind of dream like my dad, but maybe not. That's who he is and he's lucky to be that way. I don't think most people get that lucky.

My mom does what she wants to also, which is trying to help people, people who are out of work, who need some help. She works for the city and spends a lot of time out on the road, going all around town, visiting her clients, checking up on them, doing whatever she can. She's got a lot to do, and some of those people need a lot more help than others. Sometimes I think she doesn't know her limitations. I mean, she doesn't believe there are any. She's always the optimist, thinking that for every problem there are multiple solutions. I'm not like her much either. I don't have that helping urge, but sometimes I will open up a little, especially if she asks me to. That's really how I got into this mess in the first place. I'm sorry, mom, but it's true. It's not that I'm blaming you. It's just the truth.