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<strong>High</strong> <strong>Fidelity</strong><br />
http://www.fictionbook.ru/author/hornby_nick/high_fidelity/hornby_high_fidelity.html<br />
Page 29 of 112<br />
6/20/2006<br />
“Yeah, I know. That’s why I’m trying to find a compromise. What about fifteen hundred They’re<br />
probably worth four times that.”<br />
“Sixty.”<br />
“Thirteen.”<br />
“Seventy-five.”<br />
“Eleven. That’s my lowest offer.”<br />
“And I won’t take a penny more than ninety.” We’re both smiling now. It’s hard to imagine another<br />
set of circumstances that could result in this kind of negotiation.<br />
“He could afford to come home then, you see, and that’s the last thing I want.”<br />
“I’m sorry, but I think you’d better talk to someone else.” When I get back to the shop I’m going to<br />
burst into tears and cry like a baby for a month, but I can’t bring myself to do it to this guy.<br />
“Fine.”<br />
I stand up to go, and then get back on my knees: I just want one last, lingering look.<br />
“Can I buy this Otis Redding single off you”<br />
“Sure. Ten pee.”<br />
“Oh, come on. Let me give you a tenner for this, and you can give the rest away for all I care.”<br />
“OK. Because you took the trouble to come up here. And because you’ve got principles. But that’s it.<br />
I’m not selling them to you one by one.”<br />
So I go to Wood Green and I come back with a mint-condition ‘You Left the Water Running,’ which I<br />
pick up for a tenner. That’s not a bad morning’s work. Barry and Dick will be impressed. But if they<br />
ever find out about Elvis and James Brown and Jerry Lee Lewis and the Pistols and the Beatles and the<br />
rest, they will suffer immediate and possibly dangerous traumatic shock, and I will have to counsel<br />
them, and …<br />
How come I ended up siding with the bad guy, the man who’s left his wife and taken himself off to<br />
Spain with some nymphette Why can’t I bring myself to feel whatever it is his wife is feeling Maybe I<br />
should go home and flog Laura’s sculpture to someone who wants to smash it to pieces and use it for<br />
scrap; maybe that would do me some good. But I know I won’t. All I can see is that guy’s face when he<br />
gets his pathetic check through the mail, and I can’t help but feel desperately, painfully sorry for him.<br />
It would be nice to report that life is full of exotic incidents like this, but it isn’t. Dick tapes me the<br />
first Liquorice Comfits album, as promised; Jimmy and Jackie Corkhill stop arguing, temporarily;<br />
Laura’s mum doesn’t ring, but my mum does. She thinks Laura might be more interested in me if I did<br />
some evening classes. We agree to differ or, at any rate, I hang up on her. And Dick, Barry, and I go by<br />
minicab to the White Lion to see Marie, and our names are indeed on the guest list. The ride costs<br />
exactly fifteen quid, but that doesn’t include the tip, and bitter is two pounds a pint. The White Lion is<br />
smaller than the Harry Lauder, so it’s half full rather than two-thirds empty, and it’s much nicer, too, and<br />
there’s even a support act, some terrible local singer-songwriter for whom the world ended just after<br />
‘Tea for the Tillerman’ by Cat Stevens, not with a bang but a wimp.<br />
The good news: 1) I don’t cry during ‘Baby, I Love Your Way,’ although I do feel slightly sick. 2) We<br />
get a mention: “Is that Barry and Dick and Rob I see down there Nice to see you, fellas.” And then she<br />
says to the audience, “Have you ever been to their shop Championship Vinyl in north London You<br />
really should.” And people turn round to look at us, and we look at each other sheepishly, and Barry is<br />
on the verge of giggling with excitement, the idiot. 3) I still want to be on an album cover somewhere,<br />
despite the fact that I was violently sick when I got to work this morning because I’d been up half the<br />
night smoking roll-ups made with dog-ends and drinking banana liqueur and missing Laura. (Is that<br />
good news Maybe it’s bad news, definite, final proof that I’m mad, but it’s good news in that I still<br />
have an ambition of sorts, and that Melody Radio is not my only vision of the future.)<br />
The bad news: 1) Marie brings someone out to sing with her for her encore. A bloke. Someone who<br />
shares her microphone with her with an intimacy I don’t like, and sings harmony on ‘Love Hurts,’ and<br />
looks at her while he’s doing so in a way that suggests that he’s ahead of me in the queue for the album<br />
shoot. Marie still looks like Susan Dey, and this guy, she introduces him as ‘T-Bone Taylor, the best-