Three people work at the store, and all three of us are in the strip. Everybody else is a customer.

I'm 29 and I've been behind the counter since the summer of 1992, which is most of my grown-up life if I think about it, so I try not to. I was a customer for years before that. I'm the tall one with the glasses and the flannel. In the strip I'm usually holding the price gun, because in real life I'm usually holding the price gun. Once I found it in my coat pocket at home. I price the used records, file the new ones, and hum back.

I draw myself a little more tired than I am. Not much.

Usually found: in the used bins.
Records at home: more than a one-bedroom apartment should hold.

Daniel owns the store. He's 51 and he's a vinyl man to the bone. He sells CDs because people want them, but he handles a record like a baby bird, by the edges, and he'll hold a good one up to the light just to look at it. Gray ponytail, gray beard, half-moon glasses, a cardigan in every kind of weather. He pays fair for a box of records, sometimes more than fair, and he will tell you why a record costs what it costs for as long as you'll stand there.

He doesn't own a computer and has never seen this page. He's seen the strips, though, because I print them out for him. About strip #3, he says he has no idea what I'm talking about.

Usually found: behind the counter, holding something up to the light.
Records at home: nobody knows. Elisabeth thinks his whole house is shelves.

Elisabeth works the register. She's 24 and has heard every question a customer can ask, most of them twice and a few of them from me. Short spiky hair, dyed, and the only hair in the strip that gets the red marker. A nose ring, a black hooded sweatshirt, and the same flat look for everybody. Don't let it fool you. She knows where every record in the store is, including the ones in the wrong sleeves.

She agreed to be in the strip on one condition: I never draw her smiling. So far that's been easy.

Usually found: at the register, chin on her hand.
Records at home: she won't say.

Everybody else in SIDE B is a customer, and customers don't get names. Some of them have come in every week for years and I still don't know their names. I know what they buy. The man with two boxes, the boy who hummed, the listening station kid: if you think you might be one of them, you're probably right, and thank you for coming in.