Heaven

It was just three stops to Heaven.

Three stops to Heaven was what got Mitzy through the long day of classes-- her incompetent lab partners, her classmates and their stupid problems, the petty professor who wouldn't admit that he was wrong and had never actually assigned the chapter he thought he had--

All of it would be washed away as soon as she stepped out of the building.

Of course, her idea of Heaven might have been a bit different from most people's.

Prince Street, Canal Street. She pressed herself to the oblong window in the old tin can, staring into the subway tunnel, lights speeding through the darkness like stars from a spaceship.

City Hall.

With practiced efficiency she sidestepped the inevitable breakdancer and his ring of gawking onlookers, the guy airbrushing eagles crying World Trade Centers for tourists, the skateboarders who acted like they owned the plaza, the mayor's stern entourage of anti-terror goons.

None of them mattered. Not on a Tuesday, the most important day of the week.

Tuesdays were record release days.

She crossed the street, and there was her heaven: J&R, the immigrant family-owned row of shops that sold everything from computers to audio equipment to DVDs to, the important part, music. It was an improbable and defiant bastion of independence in a time of huge corporate conglomerates, and to Mitzy, it was her second home.

She slipped in to the glass double doors with a familiar nod to the security guard by the door and pulled out her notebook, trying to decide where to start today.

The back half of Mitzy's notebook-- not one she used for school, but the one she reserved for her own private observations and neighborhood "detective work"-- was a detailed list of albums she wanted to buy, curated over the course of years. She'd rank them with stars and cross them off when one got liberated from its blue-lined prison and became a physical reality.

The store itself was nothing remarkable, sort of dingy and utilitarian parallel racks of CDs spreading off into the distance, but it had a sameness that felt full of possibility, like a fertile field sown with mystery seeds: she knew, looking down any aisle, that there were hidden gems tucked away, and the thrill was to uncover them.

Sometimes literally: she wasn't the only regular who would hide the one rare import copy of an album she wanted behind some obscure jazz records until she had the money.

Mitzy usually couldn't afford anything, or maybe one record at a time. Not on her scholarship, but she loved being among all the thousands of albums anyway. It felt like where she belonged, even if that wasn't something she could explain in words that would make sense to anyone else. There was so much soul pressed into these plastic silver slabs, magic talismans with immense power just waiting to be unlocked by their rightful owners. Thousands of musicians had lived and died and bled and cried and all of their life's work was around her in one unassuming room with tan carpeting and a drop ceiling.

She studied the poster board album covers hanging on the right-hand wall, all of this week's new releases spread out like the starting lineup of a baseball game. Who would be the star of the day?

It was always an impossible choice.

Arcade Fire had a new album. She ducked down the center aisle to try it out on the display of headphones and let the roar of bass wash her away.