if a body catch a body

The rain was really coming down now. Big drops too, just ready to drown something, anything. The already gray sky was fading further and further away into nothing. I watched as the water-colored people around me did the same. The dull taupe trench coats, the brightly colored scarves would transform slowly into rainbows of monochromatic color, like when the tube goes out on the TV, only without those annoying lines that sometimes show up. My feet, soggy inside my canvas shoes, squished as I walked. The rain was loud, but my feet were louder. It’s always like that when your feet are squishing or something. The room could be filled with all kinds of racket, but as soon as you start walking away it’s like everything stops or everyone dies and all eyes, even the dead ones, are on you, and all you can think is Where the hell can a guy find a rug in this place? And no matter how hard you look you can’t find one anywhere. Like they were all taken up to be cleaned or something. Anyway, that’s the way it was.
By this point, I was pretty cold and knew that I would start shivering soon. I do that a lot. Shivering, that is. It’s not that I’m dying of cold or anything. Really I’m not. I just start in looking epileptic and everything. I don’t much care for it. It’s embarrassing. So I slipped into this used book store for a minute to warm up and call an old friend, Jacob Leer. I went to the back of the store so that the gray mustached man at the counter wouldn’t listen in. Not that what I had to say was Top Secret or anything. It’s just that the people in places like that are always listening in on what you have to say. I was standing next to a dusty stack of old records when I pulled out my phone. Dead. I should have guessed. I’m the world’s worst procrastinator when it comes to things like this. That battery had been giving me trouble for weeks. It would be dead in just a matter of hours after a full charge. I needed to use the man’s phone, but I’d feel too crummy to go up and ask him without buying anything. It’s hard enough keeping a small place like this open, especially in a town like this, without everyone and their mom jacking up the phone bill at the same time.
So what I did was, I started in looking at all those records that were stacked up so nice. I remembered my Pop had an old record player in the garage that he never used. I asked him about it last year and he said that it just needed a needle. I guess that’s where I get all that procrastination from. But I was thinking, if I bought a needle for it, he would let me have it, or at least loan it to me. None of the names on the records sounded too familiar, except for one by an old colored lady called Odetta Sings Dylan. Or maybe it didn’t. I don’t know. But still, I had to buy something.
“That’s a fine recerd you picked there son. You best take good care o’it. Odetta had more soul, more talent than any other broad I ever seen. It’s a shame -- we lost ‘er just a few weeks here back” the mustached man said as he rang me up. “Comes out to, eh . . .” He hesitated while he waited for the total to show up on the beat up blue cash machine. “’Leven dollas and a quoter.”
Being this close to him, I couldn’t help but notice that his glasses sat crooked on his face, but it wasn’t because one ear was lower than the other or anything. It was because he had this mole on his cheek that stood out, right where the glasses sat on his face, that made the lens higher on the right side. Stuff like that gets me -- when people have big moles right on their face.