High Fidelity by Nick Hornby Read Free Book Online

isn’t unusual. Both Dick and Barry were employed to work part-time, three days each, but shortly after I’d taken them on they both started turning up every day, including Saturdays. I didn’t know what to do about it—if they really had nowhere else to go and nothing else to do, I didn’t want to, you know, draw attention to it, in case it prompted some sort of spiritual crisis—so I upped their money a bit and left it at that. Barry interpreted the pay rise as a signal to cut his hours back, so I haven’t given him one since. That was four years ago, and he’s never said anything about it.
    He comes into the shop humming a Clash riff. Actually, “humming” is the wrong word: he’s making that guitar noise that all little boys make, the one where you stick your lips out, clench your teeth and go “DA-DA!” Barry is thirty-three years old.
    â€œAwlright boys? Hey, Dick, what’s this music, man? It stinks.” He makes a face and holds his nose. “Phwooar.”
    Barry intimidates Dick, to the extent that Dick rarely says a word when Barry is in the shop. I only get involved when Barry is being really offensive, so I just watch Dick reach for the hi-fi on the shelf above the counter and turn the cassette off.
    â€œThank fuck for that. You’re like a child, Dick. You need watching all the time. I don’t know why I should have to do it all, though. Rob, didn’t you notice what he was putting on? What are you playing at, man?”
    He talks relentlessly, and more or less everything he says is gibberish. He talks a lot about music, but also a lot about books (Terry Pratchett and anything else which features monsters, planets, and so on), and films, and women. Pop, girls, etc., as the Liquorice Comfits said. But his conversation is simply enumeration: if he has seen a good film, he will not describe the plot, or how it made him feel, but where it ranks in his best-of-year list, his best-of-all-time list, his best-of-decade list—he thinks and talks in tens and fives, and as a consequence, Dick and I do too. And he makes us write lists as well, all the time: “OK, guys. Top five Dustin Hoffman films.” Or guitar solos, or records made by blind musicians, or Gerry and Sylvia Anderson shows (“I don’t believe you’ve got Captain Scarlet at number one, Dick. The guy was immortal! What’s fun about that?”), or sweets that come in jars (“If either of you have got Rhubarb and Custard in the top five, I’m resigning now.”).
    Barry puts his hand into his leather jacket pocket, produces a tape, puts it in the machine, and jacks up the volume. Within seconds the shop is shaking to the bass line of “Walking on Sunshine,” by Katrina and the Waves. It’s February. It’s cold. It’s wet. Laura has gone. I don’t want to hear “Walking on Sunshine.” Somehow it doesn’t fit my mood.
    â€œTurn it off, Barry.” I have to shout, like a lifeboat captain in a gale.
    â€œIt won’t go up any more.”
    â€œI didn’t say ‘up,’ you fuckwit. I said ‘off.’”
    He laughs, and walks through into the stockroom, shouting out the horn parts: “Da DA! da da da da da-da da-da-da-da.” I turn it off myself, and Barry comes back into the shop.
    â€œWhat are you doing?”
    â€œI don’t want to hear ‘Walking on Sunshine’!”
    â€œThat’s my new tape. My Monday morning tape. I made it last night, specially.”
    â€œYeah, well, it’s fucking Monday afternoon. You should get out of bed earlier.”
    â€œAnd you’d have let me play it this morning, would you?”
    â€œNo. But at least this way I’ve got an excuse.”
    â€œDon’t you want something to cheer you up? Bring a bit of warmth to your miserable middle-aged bones?”
    â€œNope.”
    â€œWhat do you want to hear when you’re