“I’m glad you moved in.”
I looked at the ceiling. “Me too.”
Chapter 21
NOVA
The tingle startedbefore I knew why.
I had been at WaxCon for forty minutes, working my way through the jazz tables at the back of the hall the way I always worked them, methodically, sleeve by sleeve, when something pulled me left instead of right. Not a sound. Not a sight line. Just the thing deep down in my chest that had never once been wrong about anything, pointing me toward the table in the far corner like it had somewhere to be.
Deion was at the tables on the outer perimeter. I could feel him across the floor the way I had always been able to feel him across a floor, one frequency slightly separate from the rest of the room, and he was not following me. He was holding something up to the light with the focused attention of a man who was absolutelynotwatching me walk toward the corner table.
He was definitely watching me walk toward the corner table.
I kept going.
The man behind the corner table was someone I had been buying from since forever. The Coltrane Man. Sixty-something, reading glasses on a chain, a cardigan washed so many times it had achieved a second, better life. He had his faded poster behind him that I had spent years studying. He had the best jazz in the building and he knew it.
He looked up when I arrived. And then he smiled in a way I had not seen before, something particular in it, like he knew something.
“Nova James,” he said.
“Mr. Ellis,” I said.
“I was wondering when you’d get here.” He took his glasses off and let them hang. “I’ve been holding something.”
I looked at the table. Nothing unusual visible. “For me?”
“For the right buyer.” He tilted his head. “Though I will say, when I got my hands on it, I thought to myself, I know exactly one person in Philadelphia whose tingle is going to go off like a smoke alarm the second she walks past this table.”
I stared at him. “My what?”
He smiled. “The tingle.” He said it with complete authority. “I’ve been watching you work record fairs for years, young lady. I know about the tingle.” He paused. “I also know a young man who confirmed it when he came to see me last month.”
I turned around very slowly.
Deion was still a couple of tables away. Still holding something up to the light. The absolute picture of a man with no involvement in anything happening in this corner of the building.
“Hecame to see you?” I said.
“Very politely,” Mr. Ellis said. “Knew exactly what he was looking for. Knew exactly who it was for.” He reached under the table. “He also told me you call me Coltrane Man.”
I opened my mouth.
Mr. Ellis set a flat archival box on the table between us. Acid-free, clamshell style, a box that meant what was inside it was being taken seriously. “Now. I want you to put these on first.”
He produced a pair of white cotton handling gloves and set them beside the box.
I looked at the gloves. I looked at the box. Something in my chest was doing something I did not have a name for yet, the tingle but underneath it something else, something that was not about the record.
I put the gloves on.
Mr. Ellis opened the clamshell box with the care of someone who had been handling things that mattered for a long time. Inside, nested in archival tissue, was an acetate pressing. I could feel the weight difference before I touched it. Heavier than vinyl. The density of something that was not supposed to be at a record fair on a Saturday morning in October.
“Mr. Ellis?” I said.
“Go ahead.”
