“And how about record stores specializing in opera?”
“I’ve spent half the morning going through those already,” Holly said, pleased to have anticipated him. “Most record stores carry opera, and the specialty stores don’t get much narrower than classical, which includes opera.”
“There’s a shop I visited once with a girl, years ago,” Lance said. “I can’t think of the name, but it’s something related to opera. It’s in the West Forties, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues, as I recall. Small place, but it had everything, even some quite obscure recordings. You might try that.”
“You can’t remember the name?” Holly asked.
“Do I have to think of everything?” Lance disappeared down the hall.
Holly went back to the laptop and had Google search for “opera record stores.” “Dammit,” she said, “I can’t get the search narrowed enough. It keeps giving me all kinds of record stores.”
Tyler opened Holly’s bottom desk drawer and took out the New York City Yellow Pages. “Let’s try the old-fashioned way,” he said.
“You do that. I’ll try Yahoo,” Holly said.
Tyler opened the Yellow Pages and flipped through a few pages. “How about this?” he said, pointing.
Holly followed his finger and saw a small ad:
ARIA
Opera, opera and more opera
LPs, CDs and DVDs
“It’s on West Forty-third Street, between Fifth and Sixth.”
“That took about a second,” Holly said, disgusted. “So much for computers.”
“We can’t go to Lincoln Center until tonight,” Tyler said. “Why don’t we go check out Aria?”
“Why not,” Holly said, grabbing her coat.
They took a cab to the corner of Fifth and 43rd, and got out and started down the block.
“Where are you from, Tyler?” Holly asked.
“Call me Ty.”
“Is that what folks back home call you?”
“No, nobody has ever called me anything but Tyler, and I’m sick of it.”
“Where are you from?” she asked again.
“Little town in Georgia, Delano, forty-five hundred people.”
“And they wouldn’t call you Ty?”
“Never. Just Tyler.”
“How old are you, Ty?”
“Thirty-one.”
“You look like twenty-one and dress like fifty-one.”
“You’re not the first to point that out.”