“Do you have any plans for Saturday?” Emmy asked at lunch the following Thursday.

“No, why?”

“I have heard about an amazing record store in Hollywood, in Los Angeles, and I want to go. Would you go with me?”

“Sure, I guess,” I said, unsure why a record store would be worth driving a hundred miles each way for.

“Courtney? Allie? Would you two be able to go with us?” Emmy asked.

“Saturday?” Courtney pondered. “Sure- why not. I haven’t been to Hollywood since I was a kid. It should be interesting.”

Allie was more enthusiastic. “Well, I’ve never been to Hollywood. It’d be cool, but I have to ask my parents.”

On Saturday morning, Emmy showed up at my house bright and early. “Could you please drive today, Leah?” she asked, handing me the keys with a hopeful expression on her inky face.

“You know I love driving your car, Emmy. Sure, I’ll drive.”

We stopped at Allie’s house and Courtney was already there, so we hit the road right away. Emmy had already programmed the record store’s address in the GPS so all I had to worry about was the actual driving and not the navigation, which was good because honestly I had no idea where Hollywood was in L.A. at all. There were hills, that’s all I knew. Well, that and a big-ass sign.

A couple of stressful hours later I was looking for parking on Hollywood Boulevard. Emmy pointed to a pay lot, but I objected. “That’s five bucks an hour! That’s crazy!”

Emmy had no problems with it, though. “Just go ahead and park in there. I have enough money to pay for it.”

Realizing that she was right, I parked and we walked the half block to the amazingly large and very busy record store. There was a band signing CDs, but I didn’t know who they were so I wasn’t interested. I lost myself in the book section- I had no idea there were biographies of so many musicians and bands. I found a book about the Rolling Stones that I thought my mom would like, and over in the memorabilia section I found a concert T shirt for the Clash tour she’d told me she saw in high school, so I grabbed that, too. Her birthday was coming up, and Christmas wasn’t too far away…

Allie found me looking for something for Tiff. “Have you seen the other two?” she asked. She had a handful of CDs, I noticed. She saw me eyeing them, and explained “I’m going to be able to find music for everybody on my Christmas list.”

“No, I haven’t seen Courtney or Emmy in a while,” I responded to her earlier question. “It shouldn’t be hard to spot Emmy,” I said, and Allie agreed.

“Yeah, she does kinda stand out.”

We wandered downstairs to the main music area, and sure enough, Emmy was easy to see. Courtney was with her, looking more irritated than usual.

“Why didn’t you just tell him to fuck off?” she demanded, and Emmy shrugged.

“I did not wish to be rude,” was her reply.

“What?” I asked.

“Some skeezy dude was trying to talk Emmy into posing for him. Said he was a photographer.”

“I think he was probably a pornographer,” agreed Emmy. “He asked me how old I was. He seemed very interested in knowing when I was going to turn eighteen.”

“Yuck!” exclaimed Allie, and I had to agree.

“Is the guy still here?” I asked, curious to know what kind of pervert hits on teenaged girls in record stores.

“Yes,” Emmy said. “He is over there.” She pointed out a middle-aged, slightly heavyset guy that I would have walked past a hundred times and never guessed was a porno photographer. He glanced in our direction, saw the four of us looking at him, and smiled and gave a little wave.

“Ugh!” Courtney said, with feeling. Turning to Emmy, she said “I can’t even believe you took his card. I didn’t want to get anywhere near the guy.”

“You took his business card?” Allie asked, amazement in her voice. “Can I see it? What does it say?”

Emmy handed it over, and I looked at it over Allie’s shoulder. It looked like an ordinary business card, with the guy’s name and the name of his photography studio. A phone number and email address completed the front. Allie flipped it over, and I saw a web address on the back.

“I can’t believe the guy calls his porno studio ‘The Cathedral’,” she said in amazement. “That is just so wrong.”

Emmy held her hand out for the card, then when Allie handed it back to her, she tucked it away in her back pocket.

“I still can’t believe you aren’t just throwing that away,” Courtney said in disgust.

“It would not be polite to do so while he is still watching,” Emmy replied.

Changing the subject, I looked at the grocery-store type basket that Emmy had overflowing with CDs. “You’re buying all those?” I asked. There had to be dozens of discs in that basket.

“She already took a load up to the counter,” Courtney said, rolling her eyes. “She’s like a fat kid in a candy store.”

“Brent suggested I listen to some blues, and also to rockabilly. He thinks that my musical understanding could benefit from more knowledge of rock history,” Emmy explained with a grin.

“So you’re buying, like, hundreds of dollars worth of CDs just because he said you should broaden your horizons?” Allie asked, as amazed as I was.

“Yes,” Emmy agreed, and that seemed to be that.

“So are you guys done? Because I still haven’t found everything I was looking for,” I said.

“I could be done,” Courtney said, “but I don’t mind staying if you guys are still shopping. As long as we stay far away from that guy,” she added, pointing below the level of the CD racks at the pervert.

“I, for one, am perfectly happy not getting near him,” Allie agreed.

“I still have some more shopping to do,” Emmy announced, “but first I have to take these to the counter.”

Courtney and Allie went over to where the band was wrapping up their autograph session, and I walked with Emmy to the counter. They had a cardboard box half full of CDs, and as they took them out of Emmy’s basket and rang them up they stacked them carefully in the box. Seeing my curious expression, Emmy explained “They will ship them to my house.”

I noticed that after ringing up that batch of music the cashier didn’t finish the transaction, but left the register with the ticket open. I followed Emmy back to the racks where she grabbed more and more CDs, adding them to the basket as if they were produce at the grocery store. All told, she spent almost two thousand dollars on music alone by the time she was done and never batted an eye at the cost. On the other hand, I spent seventy-five bucks and it hurt my wallet to do so. Once again, the enormous wealth difference between us was driven home.

After Emmy treated us all to lunch at a nice restaurant at a strange Egyptian-themed mall right there on Hollywood Boulevard we piled back in the car for the long drive back home. Emmy was having all her purchases shipped so she didn’t have a single new CD to play in the car. Since Allie and I had bought stuff as gifts, Courtney was the only one who had anything we could actually listen to so we were subjected to two hours of Katy Perry and Lady Gaga. I mean, I guess it was O.K., just not really my favorites.

When we got back to my house, Emmy gave me a hug along with her little cheek-kiss goodbye.

“Thank you for driving today. That was very nice of you,” she said.

“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “You know I’ll use any excuse to drive your Mini.”

“Still, it was a big favor. Thank you,” then another quick cheek-kiss and she was gone.

It’s funny, I thought as I stashed the presents I’d gotten in my closet. The first time Emmy gave me one of those little cheek-kisses I was shocked and uncomfortable. Now I find myself leaning in for them. Maybe Ms. Takei’s ‘cultural understanding’ is working in both directions.