Day Five

 Tammany (continued):

"I'm thinking maybe tonight, though."

"That's cool," he said, a little awkwardly. Then, turning back to his sister, he repeated, "Here? Really?"

"Yes, really," she said, with sisterly affection and exasperation clear in her face. "They were hiring. I got hired."

"And saved me a ton of work," I added. "All I'd gotten around to was putting the little sign up in the window."

"Lazy," Cale said, swinging his legs up into the spot I had just vacated. "Honestly, woman. You'd think that you'd be more proactive by now."

I rolled my eyes. "Says the man who hasn't been known to do an ounce of unnecessary work, ever."

"That's efficiency," he said. "It's positive, not negative."

"Idiot," I said affectionately. He really was so like a big brother, honestly. Then, turning to the customer - to Andrew - I said, "So what'll you have?"

"The roast beef was pretty good," he said. "I'll have that again."

"No adventure?" I asked. "I make a mean hummus sandwich."

Cale kicked me and Grace threw a hand towel at me. We'd argued about various spreads for a good two hours, yesterday. Andrew just looked confused and guarded. I felt a little sorry for him. "One roast beef it is, then," I said, cheerily, trying to draw him in. He was looking at his sister with something like jealousy in his face. I suspected he might be a little lonely.

As I made the sandwich, Grace and Cale were bullshitting in the background. I'd missed whatever weird insult Cale had probably thrown at her, but now Grace had started on a yo mamma joke kick. "The only way yo mamma is attractive is through gravitational pull," she said.

"Yo mamma is so ugly that she froze Medusa when she looked at her," Cale replied.

"Yo mamma is so dumb that when she tried to apply for college, they sent her back to first grade."

"Yo mamma is so ugly, the mirror spit on her," Andrew said, causing Grace and I to 'oooooh.'

Cale said responded smoothly, "Yo mamma is so fat, the Titanic sunk when it ran into her."

Andrew nodded once, with approval.

____________

The rest of the day went relatively quickly, even with the tourists and business and stuff. Andrew hung around even after he'd finished his sandwich, and I invited him back behind the counter so we could all better insult each other's parentage and discuss the various movies that were displayed on the posters throughout the cafe. He finally left after he realized it was nearly four. "Sorry," he said, "it's just I'm working on this project outside work, and I'm not going to have a ton of time to do anything with it after this weekend. Apparently my boss is sending me some kid to be my apprentice and I'm going to have to teach the dude everything."

"What's the project?" Cale asked. He and Andrew had gone off on a musical tangent for well over half an hour, while he made drinks and Grace and I made sandwiches as fast as our hands could move. He now considered Andrew to be his best friend, hero, and possible love interest, unless I was reading him entirely wrong. That didn't happen often now, not after knowing him for fifteen years.

"Just doing some music for a concept album, nothing big," Andrew said. He seemed embarrassed.

Grace was off in the corner, rolling her eyes so hard I was a little paranoid they'd fall out. "Nothing much," she said. "Brother, this album is your baby. And it's good, too," she said, confidentially. "He's played me some of the simpler piano pieces. It's going to be amazing, if he can find people to be in it."

I could practically sense Cale salivating at this, but to my surprise, he didn't say anything about joining. Just, "Oh, cool," and left it at that.

After Andrew left, his cheeks pink, the two of us mutually pulled off into the alcove that held spare chairs, the big freezer and refrigerator and other random crap, letting Grace deal with making a PB and J for a whining four year old with harried parents. "So," he said, being quicker on the draw, "what do you think?"

"Of what?" I asked, not entirely sure where he was going with this.

"Of Mr. Farthing, of course," Cale said, shaking his head. "I saw the way you were looking at him. You were considering, at the very least.

"Maybe I was," I said. "That doesn't mean anything's going to come of it."

"Ah, but maybe something will," he said. "You going to make a move?"

I started laughing. "Honestly, you're like either a mother hen or a matchmaker. Maybe both."

"Just helping my darlingest little dear," he said, pulling a horrendous Yiddish accent.

"Anyway," I said, hoping to direct him away from that particular subject, "Why didn't you mention anything about playing piano?"

"Because he's a legit recording person," Cale said, a troubled expression crossing his face. "I'm not ready for that, just yet."

I shook my head, exasperated. "You do stuff at bars regularly. Whenever you find a half-way decent vocalist, you start to get somewhere for like a month and a half, and then you just quit. It's like you're scared."

"I am not!" he protested, just a little too quickly. "I just don't want to deal with incompetence."

"What if you found someone good?" I asked. "Someone amazing, someone you couldn't deny was absolutely perfect for your kind of music. What then?"

"Then I'd do something with it," he said, uncomfortably. "Of course."

"Prove it," I said, crossing my arms.

"Find me a good singer," he said, crossing his own belligerently.

"I will," I said firmly. I honestly didn't know how I would do that, just now, but I'd figure out.

"Fine," he said, turned away towards the smoothie machine, fiddling with some obscure part that I didn't understand. A clear sign that he was ignoring me now.

Feeling guilty, but not entirely knowing why, I turned and started fiddling with the wrapper papers. We spent the next, extremely awkward half an hour not talking or really looking at each other. Then one of us forgot, and said something silly to the other about a particularly irritating patron, and all was well. Sometimes short attention spans can be a good thing.

Andrew:

I got a lot done that first day of the weekend. I finished composing the irritating little guitar descant that had been bugging me for a while, and I finished an entire  piano ballad in one long two-hour binge session. I could plunk it out pretty well, but it sounded worlds better in my head. I just needed to find a pianist and a soloist who meshed well, and I'd be golden. A guitar player would be nice, too. And maybe a drummer. I really just needed a band, to be completely honest. The email I'd gotten from Scary Lady - whose name was Morgan, apparently, and she really was the CFO - told me that I'd be getting a lot more autonomy than my tour guide had said. I was perfectly fine with that. Autonomy meant a lot of time to work on what I wanted. And maybe I'd find a group that could do this album the way it should be done.

That's what I told myself I was focusing on, at least - making sure that the album was ready, was perfect, just in case I heard someone I liked. In reality, I was doing my absolute level best to not go back down to the cafe, because I sensed bad things would happen on an emotional level if I let myself get to know Tammy too quickly. She was exactly the kind of person I tended to get on with, and that meant I would be emotionally kneecapped when it came to dealing with her and her relationship with Cale. I couldn't hold anything against the dude, though. He was awesome, and knew almost as much about obscure music as I did. He'd have been perfect for my imaginary band, if only he played an instrument. Anyway.

I did end up having to leave the sanctum sanctorum that my room was already becoming, though, because Grace threatened to change the internet password if I didn't come with her to the local open mic night down at some place called something silly, like the Onion [note: find out what it really is]. She had a thing about how I should take every chance to explore new bands as possible, on the off chance someone might be good. I had yet to get it through her head that good bands are the exception, not the rule. Of course, her tone-deafness and weak spot for auto-tuned pop songs meant that our definition of 'good' varied on quite a few points, so maybe it was more the definition we disagreed on. In any case, I tended to object to these excursions, because there are many, many things I could better spend my time doing. Like working on my album. Or shoving nails into my eardrums. Fun stuff like that.

Tonight was evidently even more important than usual, because she made me change out of sweatpants and into what she deemed to be 'good jeans'. I fought back the urge to say, 'But /Mo-ooom!/' more than once.

When we finally did get out the door, she was practically bubbling with excitement. This is never a good sign. "Grace, are you planning something?" I asked. "Have you set me up with a blind date? Because I will murder you and the police will never find the body if you have."

"Of course not," she said, apparently truly affronted. "Why would I do that?"

"No reason, I'm just paranoid because you're strangely happy," I said. "Is one of my bands doing a gig? Is Thomas going to be there?" Thomas, Grace's life-long crush and the lead singer of my most successful group [what name did I already mention?], also happened to be my best friend. It would not be out of character for her to be freaking out like this should he have been there.

"He'd probably have told you first if he'd been in town, stupid," Grace said, rolling her eyes and grabbing my arm to drag me into going faster. "I'm just excited. Supposedly the guy playing tonight is really good."

"You said that about the goat band," I reminded her. "The goat ate my wallet."

"It just nibbled on it a bit," she said. "And they were pushing the boundaries of music into knew dimensions."

"The goat was also an instrument," I said. "Some boundaries are not meant to be pushed via farm animal. The western frontier with cattle, yes, but not music with goats."

"And you say you're experimental," she said, huffing.

"I am experimental," I said. "They were just mental."

We were outside the club by now and there was a legitimate line to get in the door. Instead of the typical clubbers, though, it was hipsters and indies and the slightly odd and even a couple people  who looked like they might just be there for the music. I looked at Grace and said, "Okay, perhaps the dude's not awful." She radiated smugness. "But how are we going to get in, oh bright one?"

"Leave that to me," she said. Pulling me behind her, she walked up to a genuine scary bouncer man and said, "Tammany says to let us in."

The man checked his clipboard as I had a mini-stroke. "I thought you said you hadn't set me up," I hissed at Grace.

"I didn't," she said, surprised. "Why?"

"No reason," I said, feeling stupid and unfortunately like a hormonal teenager - actually, those two sensations are really close, in my experience. "Carry on."

"You're in," the guard said, with a nod. "Say hi to Tams for me."

"Does your employer have some sort of hidden dark side that I should be aware of?" I asked, as we  walked past a line of glaring would-be patrons.

"This is acoustic night," Grace told me, talking over the growing din. "No worries. She's no more a metalhead than you are."

Then the place grew too filled with other conversations and tinned background music to make our own conversation practical. I just followed Grace, a little helplessly, as she boldly pushed through the crowd to a little table where Tammy sat, waving to us.

I felt the bottom drop out of my stomach, and realized that yes, I was completely and utterly screwed.