"Why, do you need them right now?"
Mister Croce winced and put his hands up. "I"m just curious, that"s all. No rush, just wanted to know. I was up here and decided to stop by."
"I"d appreciate it if I could do my job in total silence. I don"t like the distractions." Jim realized that he was talking to his superior so he attempted a smile and failed. "I just do my best work alone, you understand. Sending up new a.s.sociates gets me off track."
Mister Croce was already backing away. "I completely understand. It won"t happen again. Just drop off your work at the end of your shift as usual. Have a great day."
The work wasn"t going to do itself, so Jim dove back in and quickened his pace. Too many distractions today.
At exactly noon Jim stopped working and pulled out a brown paper bag from his desk. He always felt uneasy eating at his work station but thought it was better than going downstairs to the ground floor and the cafeteria. There he would usually elicit stares and whispers from his coworkers. It was easier to stay in this room and dive right back into work at precisely twelve-thirty.
Once his ham and cheese sandwichon white breadwas eaten and washed down with a bottle of tap water it was time for his Walkman. He leaned back in his chair, closed his eyes and pressed play on the ancient device. The familiar opening techno drum fills of Kimmi Klub and her single "Love Is For Us" began as it always did to get him through the rest of his shift. Jim would listen to the song three times before getting back to work. He had recorded the song six times on the A side of the ca.s.sette, with an obscure cover version of the song by some horrible Heavy Metal band from overseas called Totyl Evyl. He hated their version but when the mood struck him in the car on the ride home he might let it play, at least to the chorus, before rewinding side A and playing it again.
Jim was so startled by the hand on his shoulder that he jumped in his chair and toppled, depositing him on the floor and tossing his Walkman on the floor next to him.
Cullen was laughing, standing over him. "Dude, I am so sorry for that. I didn"t mean to scare you."
"You don"t sneak up on someone like that," was all Jim could muster. His heart was racing. He was distressed to see that the ca.s.sette had fallen out of the Walkman.
"Hey, if that"s broken I"ll buy you a new one."
Jim popped the ca.s.sette back in and sighed in relief when "Love Is For Us" began playing. "You can"t buy me a new one."
"I guess not. That Walkman is a cla.s.sic, probably twenty years old. And I can"t imagine where I"d be able to replace the Kimmi Klub. Maybe eBay has the single."
Jim turned off the music. "What do you know about Kimmi Klub?"
Cullen smiled and waited until Jim was seated again. "I know enough about her to know that a grown man listening to some obscure eighties one hit wonder has problems." Cullen pointed at the picture on the desk. "I won"t even touch that foolishness. I"m guessing you cut it from some teen magazine you had as a ten year old?"
"I will be talking to Mrs. Stanwich as soon as my shift is over." Jim turned and faced the piles on his desk but he couldn"t think straight. This was absolutely ridiculous that his works.p.a.ce was being upset by this newcomer. He was sure that H.R. would not take kindly to this intrusion.
"For what? Engaging my fellow coworker in a chat about his hobbies? Actually, hobby." Cullen stood next to Jim and leaned forward. "What"s the obsession with someone who released one lousy single in 1982 and then disappeared?"
"It"s not lousy." Jim was getting frustrated. "It"s not lousy, you"re lousy."
"That"s your big comeback? No wonder you listen to a horrible singer, who isn"t even that pretty, in my opinion."
"n.o.body asked you!" Jim roared, coming up out of his seat and slamming into Cullen. Cullen toppled over and hit the floor hard. When he picked himself off of the ground his nose was bleeding.
Jim sat back down in his chair. He"d struck an a.s.sociate. A physical confrontation was an immediate termination. Everything he"d worked for in sixteen years had been thrown away thanks to his anger once again.
Cullen was wiping his nose with a tissue. "That hurts, gotta be honest."
Jim stared at the floor and fought back tears.
"Hey, don"t look so sad. It was an accident."
"It doesn"t matter. When Mrs. Stanwich gets this in front of her I"ll be fired."
"Then good thing nothing happened."
"But I hit you and broke your nose."
"Broke my nose?" Cullen laughed. "Don"t be so dramatic. It bleeds if you tap it just right. I"ll go and clean this up. No harm, no foul."
Jim wasn"t listening. "I"ll clean out my desk. Let them know that I"ll be gone by the time security gets here. Sixteen years."
"I saw your smile from across the hall..." Cullen sang.
Jim closed his eyes and grinned. "...true love had found me..."
"...my cold heart had taken a fall..." Cullen added.
"...now I believe in destiny..." Jim sang, his voice shaking with the emotion.
They both sang the chorus: "Love is for us, love is for our love, love is for us, love is for true love."
They both laughed, and Jim sat up in his chair. "I"ve never met anyone who knew Kimmi Klub."
"Neither have I. Truth be told, I"m not really a fan. I grew up in the Chicago area and when I was young my older sister used to have the 45 single."
"I grew up near Chicago as well."
"I"m guessing your older sister was into Kimmi."
"Uh, no. I was. It was the first song I ever remember, I was about six. My mom found it in the thrift store she worked at and gave it to me. I used to play it all the time."
"That seems odd. You"ve been listening to this one song for, what, thirty years?"
"A bit longer," Jim said sheepishly. "It was the only thing that got me through my childhood."
"Do you want to talk about it?" Cullen said and sat down on the floor next to the desk. His nose had stopped bleeding.
"Not really. I have work to do."
"You know that can wait. What"s going to happen, is Mister Croce is going to come in and ask you for another file or report again? Doesn"t it seem like every day blurs into the next? How many times can that guy come in here and demand something from you? If I were him I"d be kissing your a.s.s. With all the work you do around here, I"m amazed that he has the nerve, the gall, to bother you. Am I right?"
"I suppose so." Jim had always gotten his work turned in on time, yet it seemed like every day Mister Croce would be sneaking up here and bothering him about something.
"Did he beat you?" Cullen asked.
"Mister Croce?"
"Your father. Did you see him beat your mother?"
"I don"t want to talk about it."
"Sometimes you have to. It"s the only way you"ll ever get past the hurt and the pain. I"m your friend, Jim. You can tell me anything."
"I don"t even know you."
"Of course you do. Tell me what he did to you."
"No." Jim grabbed a bunch of the papers on his desk and crumpled them. "No."
"It"s okay, buddy, it"s alright. Maybe we can talk about something else? Something positive?"
"I have work to do. Mrs. Stanwich will be notified if you keep bothering me and taking me away from the tasks at hand."
"Does that include the task of breaking my nose?"
"You said it wasn"t broken."
Cullen poked at his face. "It might be, you never know. I"m having trouble breathing. Maybe a shard of cartilage has punctured my brain and right now I have internal bleeding and could pa.s.s out any moment. Are you a doctor?"
"No."
"Is Mrs. Stanwich?"
Jim put the papers back down. "What do you want?"
"Just the stories."
"What stories?"
"There are two trains of thought here, Jim. One is positive and one is negative, although you might be mixing up which is which. I want to hear both stories and then I will leave you alone forever. Does that sound like too much to ask?"
"I don"t understand what you want."
"Of course you do. The stories are intertwined, they stem from the same incident or incidents, but they veer off in two different branches of action."
"I have to get back to work," Jim said lamely. He knew that Cullen wouldn"t go away until he told him something. Maybe he could lie and tell him some story to get rid of him.
"Let"s start with the easy one. Why Kimmi Klub?"
Jim relaxed. "I just love the song."
"As if it were that easy to dismiss your obsession with her."
"It"s not an obsession."
"No? Listening to one song for the last thirty years exclusively is obsessive in my book. Tell me another song that you listen to."
"I don"t have to."
"Can you name another song by another artist?"
"Leave me alone."
Cullen stretched his legs on the floor. "Not until you tell me all about it."
"It"s just a good song."
"She didn"t write it, you know."
"J. Smith and V. Cruise wrote it. It says so on the 45."
"It was the one and only song she ever recorded. Heck, they didn"t even bother to record another song or even an alternate version of it for the B-side. They just put it on both. Why do you think that is?"
"I don"t know." Jim had tried to know; he"d tried to learn everything he could about Kimmi but there wasn"t much information about her. She had no internet website, no fan club, and no entry on wikipedia, and a search on google would bring up hardly anything about her. Jim knew everything that was out there.
"I guess you already know that she grew up here in Jacksonville."
"Yes, of course."
"I guess that"s the reason you"re living and working here. Florida is a long way from Chicago."
"Coincidence," Jim said. He knew that Cullen knew he was lying.
"So you base your entire life around a song from 1982 that only you and a handful of people might remember?"
"You remembered it."
"I looked it up. I"d never heard of her or the song until this morning. Not much info online about your girlfriend." Cullen smiled. "You got flush when I said your girlfriend. That"s so cute. Did you fantasize about her growing up? Make pretend she was your girl and she was singing to you?"
"Shut up."
"It"s cool. Every teenage boy did that. I had such a crush on Madonna, rolling around like a virgin. Of course, she sold a ton of alb.u.ms, had videos and she"s still relevant."
"I only listened to Kimmi Klub."
"Of course you did. One song. I imagine that you"ve heard the song a few thousand times, am I right? I"m guessing that you don"t have the original 45 your mother got you."
"I found a record store in Chicago that had three copies when I was sixteen. I overpaid for them but it was worth it. Over the years I"ve searched and found nine copies, even the alternate j.a.pan pressing with the pink sleeve. That cost me three hundred dollars."
"Any difference?"
Jim shrugged. "Same song, same version, just a different coloring on the sleeve. Instead of the yellow it has pink."
"Well worth paying a hundred times the price for you, right?"
"It"s the only other version of the single I know of."
"Have you ever tried to find her?"
"What do you mean?" Jim said. He knew exactly what Cullen meant. He had come to Jacksonville in order to find her, to see if she still lived here. He didn"t know much about her except what her biography in a teen magazine had said about her years ago: she was born in Jacksonville; her father was a Navy officer and her mother a dance instructor. She"d won a local talent show on the Navy base and a scout for a record company had been in attendance. Kimmi was only sixteen years old at the time. Eighteen frantic months later the "Love Is For Us" single was released. It didn"t sell well and was relegated to the cutout bins in the discount sections of record stores. After that Kimmi Klub disappeared. Her real name was never used in the few interviews and articles about her and Jim could never find anything noteworthy on the internet.
"I"m guessing you know her last name, right?"