I knew as much about Mantronix as Drea knew about Morrissey.
“Who?”
“House music pioneers, that’s who,” she answered.
Drea was really into house music—electronic bass-heavy beats that weren’t so popular on the radio but played in all the hottest dance clubs in New York City. According to Drea, all the Jersey Shore DJs were “trash.”
“Do you go clubbing in the city a lot?” I asked.
“Not as much as I want to.” Drea shrugged. “And Crystal was the one on all the VIP lists. Now that she’s on the outs, I’ll have a tougher time getting past the bouncers.”
Right at that moment, a zitty boy in a Bart Simpson T-shirt walked into a potted palm tree because he was too preoccupied by Drea’s cleavage to watch where he was going.
“I find it hard to believe you’d have trouble getting in anywhere,” I said.
“Well, shit,” she deadpanned. “I knew I should’ve applied to the Ivy League.”
By the time I’d decided it was okay to laugh, the joke had hung in the air between us for too long. It was already too late.
Awkward jokes aside, I was grateful for Drea’s company. She’d be a good person to have by my side if we did run into Troy and Helen. I imagined her removing her door-knocker earrings and getting ready to throw down with a stiletto in each fist.
I slowed down as we approached the record store. The brightly lit shop had a wide-open entrance and glass window displays, so I could stop to check if Sam Goody was working the floor before going in. I breathed a sigh of relief when I didn’t see him, and headed straight to S for Streisand. I didn’t want to spend any more time in there than I had to. If he weren’t so annoying, I might have actually worried about Sam Goody’s inevitable hearing loss. The sound system blasted a bouncy adult contemporary hit at an assaultive volume.
“Looooooove is a wonderful thing…”
Fuck you, Michael Bolton. Seriously.
“What’s up with you?” Drea asked just loud enough to be heard above the music.
“Nothing,” I lied. “Why?”
“You’re acting sneaky,” she says. “Like, conspicuously so.”
“I am not!”
“Okay, whatever.” She rolled her eyes. “You better work on your stealth skills if you’re going to be any help to me on the treasure hunt.”
I ran my finger along the rows of cassettes, searching for Streisand.
“Lustig Zeit,” Drea said. “How is anyone supposed to know what that means?”
“It probably doesn’t mean anything,” I replied. “Lustig Zeit sounds like nonsense to me.”
“Why would Tommy go to all the trouble of making a map if Lustig Zeit didn’t mean anything?”
“Cocaine,” I answered.
Drea arched an eyebrow. “Touché.”
“Looooooove is a wonderful, wonderful thing…”
“Aha!” I called out.
“You figured out what Lustig Zeit means?”
“No,” I replied, showing off The Broadway Album. “I found what I was looking for.”
Drea scowled, equally bothered by my purchase as my lack of treasure-hunting purpose. I took two steps toward the register when none other than my pompous pompadoured nemesis emerged from behind a larger-than-life-size cardboard cutout of Paula Abdul.
“Lustig Zeit is German,” said Sam Goody matter-of-factly.
Drea didn’t waste a second. “What does it mean?”
“Lustig Zeit.” He took in Drea for a moment before returning his attention to me. “Means ‘Fun Time.’”
“Fun Time!” Drea whooped. “Fun Tyme Arcade! I told you it meant something!”
Without a moment’s hesitation, she gave Sam Goody a wet kiss on the cheek.
“Thanks, Elvis!”
Like I said, Drea knew nothing about Morrissey. She had no way of knowing he idolized Elvis or that The Smiths had used one of the King’s earliest promo photos on the cover for the single “Shoplifters of the World Unite.” Drea had a talent for knowing the perfectly disarming thing to say to the opposite sex, and Sam Goody was no exception. He blushed at the compliment—and the kiss—in a way that might have been endearing if I weren’t still pissed at him. He didn’t deserve my thanks. He deserved to be mocked as he had mocked me.
“Of course you’d learn a useless language like German,” I said. “Someone so deep, so dark needs to read The Sorrows of Young Werther in its original melodramatic, melancholic tongue, right?”
Then I turned on my heel to make what would’ve been the perfect exit if I had made it to the register. But I hadn’t paid for the cassette, so the antitheft tag set off a security alarm that was somehow even louder and more obnoxious than Michael Bolton.
“Go! Go! Go!” Drea shouted.
In a panic, I hurled The Broadway Album at Sam Goody’s head and got the hell out of there before I got arrested for shoplifting.
Drea and I ran up an escalator, all the way through Upper Level Concourses F and A, zigzagging past packs of stroller pushers, power walkers, and unaccompanied preteens. If sprinting in stilettos were an Olympic sport, Drea Bellarosa would win all the gold medals that she could later turn into earrings and a matching statement necklace. We didn’t stop until we reached a satellite kiosk for Orange Julius, far away from the food court. The two of us, bent over, hands on our knees, breathless. Me, with exertion. Drea, with laughter.
“OHMYGAWHAWHAWHAWHAWWWWWWWNK.”
Orange Julius was manned—or more accurately, boyed—by a freckle-faced kid who was barely tall enough to see over the industrial blender he was working with.
“That was hilarious!”
“What part of almost getting arrested was hilarious?”
“All of it! You should’ve seen the look on your face when the alarm went off!”
Without being asked, the boy behind the counter of Orange Julius offered Drea a large Styrofoam cup that she very graciously accepted.
“Thanks, Dom.”
“You’re welcome, D-d-d-drea.”
The boy could barely say her name, as if he were unfit to speak it.
Drea walked away without paying and took a few satisfied sips of her recovery drink before launching into the next phase of the treasure hunt.
“Fun Tyme!”
She slipped map #2 out of her bra, where it had been nestled between her glistening breasts. If Dom had been around to witness this maneuver, I’m pretty sure he would have died and gone to masturbation heaven.
“I should’ve figured it out.” Drea poked a nail at the X marking the spot on the map. “I know exactly where this is! It’s the prize cases behind Skee-Ball!”
As I said, the map was very poorly designed. Tommy was not a master cartographer. There was no way I, Drea, or anyone else could determine the location from the drawing alone. But once we knew where to look, the map made enough sense to Drea to fulfill its purpose.
“Here’s the plan.” She sucked on the straw. “We wait until the arcade clears out at closing. You distract Sonny Sexton while I get the next clue.”
While Sonny Sexton’s habit of waking and baking would certainly put him on the most distractible end of the attention spectrum, I doubted very much that I was the right girl for this task.