Things That Happened Before the Earthquake by Chiara Barzini

Author:Chiara Barzini
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2017-08-15T04:00:00+00:00

14

“What the fuck are you wearing?” Henry sneered at me, turning on his swivel chair, plastic wheels screeching against the floor.

“It’s a fairy-princess dress,” I replied, defensively.

“A fairy what?”

“Fairy-princess dress.”

“More like a grandma’s baby doll.”

“It’s Deva’s.”

“Who is that?”

He rolled the chair over to Street Fighter. He had carved out a pathway between the cash register and the video game so he would never have to get up from the chair.

I knocked him off his seat.

“Put double player on.”

T. Hawk, the exiled Indian warrior, versus E. Honda, the sumo wrestler.

“So, who’s this girl?” he asked again.

“Oh my God, Henry. She’s amazing. You would love her. She’s, like, the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen.”

“Oh yeah? Does she like handicapped men?”

“Shut up.”

“What? Some women are kinky like that.”

“You are not handicapped!”

“Dude, I’m missing an ear.”

“Could be worse. You could be missing a leg.”

“Not like I use these much. I’m always in this shitty store. Oh, you fucking cunt!” he screamed at the screen while my wrestler unleashed his hundred violent sumo hands move.

“I kicked your ass. And I haven’t even played in two days! It’s not like I practice constantly like you.”

—

Since I’d been back from Italy I’d started to spend my afternoons at Henry’s store playing Street Fighter on an arcade video game he had stolen from a doughnut store, smoking pot, and redecorating the shop. I was obsessed with Bargain Barn, a warehouse in Anaheim where furniture and clothes were sold by the pound. Bel Air sold rich people’s leftovers while Anaheim collected the dreams of society’s dropouts: desks from offices of failed businesses, corporate couches, synthetic orange armchairs from the seventies, and, since Disneyland was in the neighborhood, plenty of dated cartoon memorabilia. Once in a while a gem popped up: a Louis Vuitton handbag, a Chanel purse, or a velvet Valentino jacket.

I fixed up a set of glass cases for Henry’s store. I baptized them with the switchblade knife from Nekromantik that Robert had given me on our first and last date. I also got a set of matching rust-colored velvet chairs and an antique two-tier paper cutter. I spent close to nothing to refurbish the store. It happened naturally. I started off bringing him pieces I thought might look good, then I began to stick around in the afternoons, unpacking boxes of vintage clothes, dividing garments into different categories and labeling them by color and style. “We have customers,” Henry cheered one day after I sold a stack of moldy DeFranco Family records. And since that day they kept coming back. I reorganized stashes of old portfolio pictures that Henry had never even leafed through and pulled out the ones of actresses who had made it. The real prizes were the portfolio images of stars before they were famous. We called them PFCs—pre-fame celebrities—and sold them for twenty dollars apiece. Familiar faces: Julia Roberts at seventeen, Meg Ryan at twenty, an awkward post-teen image of Diane Keaton—my favorite. She presided over the store, hanging above the counter like an Italian patron saint.

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