Ralph heard the song in the car. Clouds were skating across the blue sky and he was switching between stations, search, search, and as he went into a left turn — this. “You the fucking best. You the fucking best. You the fucking best. You the fucking best.” His foot eased off the gas. He thought of Lucy in a summer dress. Lucy was twirling under a willow-tree in a blue & white summer dress. “You the fucking best. You the fucking best. You the fucking best. You the fucking best.” He listened to the sunsoaked beat and he began to nod his head with it, tap his steering wheel. He thought about how he had thought of Lucy, thought of Lucy immediately; as soon as those lyrics had come crooning - he had thought of Lucy. He smiled at the irrefutability, the unassailability of this. Of how much he was in love!
He had thought of Lucy!
As he breezed down Constance Boulevard, the song sounded like glints, like glints on locks, a hundred different locks, a heart strung with a thousand different glinting locks, ten thousand gleaming certainties. He said “Woo,” gently, into the air. He shook his head and nodded his head and drew a few little circles with the tip of his finger. He accelerated and braked and changed gears as he made his way to Lucy, to where she was standing on the corner of the street, purse slung over her shoulder.
That night after dinner, Ralph called Lucy into the living-room, asked her to sit down beside him on the couch. He had found the song on YouTube. He loaded it up. “Listen to this,” he said. At the beginning it didn’t sound as he remembered - but then the rhythm started, the beat, the hook, that sunsoaked sound. Ralph remembered the blue sky and the straight streets and the way he had thought of Lucy. He thought of Lucy again. Her face was scrunched up as she listened to the laptop speakers. He loved her. “I love you,” he said to her.
“What is this?” Lucy asked.
“A song I heard,” said Ralph.
She listened some more. “It’s filthy,” she said.
“No no,” he said. “It’s in love. You’re the fucking best, you’re the f—”
“I get it,” she said.
“As soon as I heard it, I thought of you,” Ralph said. “As soon as. Immediately.” He tried to communicate the irrefutability, the unassailability. “Without trying,” he said.
“‘I can make your pussy whistle / like the Andy Griffith theme-song?’” she said.
“That doesn’t matter,” he said. “I thought of you.”
— saidthegramophone.com
(scout)
