Days 9 through 12 (sorry!)

Okay, in my own defense, my computer has been spazzing out for a while. Getting it to work long enough to get this posted was an epic battle.

Tammany (continued):

There was an uncomfortable silence until we got back with everyone's drinks, at which point Cale started talking with Grace as if nothing had happened. I found myself getting well and truly pissed with this Morgan person. Whatever she'd done that made Cale this edgy and uncomfortable so long after it happened must have been awful. I slipped over to her once we'd distributed beverages. She smiled at me, the awkward smile that says, 'you're in the same group of concert-goers as I am, but I honestly wouldn't know you from Eve, so I'm just going to smile and hope you go away.' And she made it seem elegant. Bitch.

I smiled back to her, and said, sweetly as I could, "I don't know what you did to Cale, but if I ever find out, and if you ever do it again, or hurt him in any way, I will murder you and turn you into sandwich fillings. Okay?"

She stared at me, the irritatingly sunny expression gone from her face, replaced by a frown. But before she could respond, I said, "No," and walked back around to join Andrew and Cale. I felt better.

The band was due to come on at any minute. They were an as-yet unsigned group, hence why Andrew had brought Nathan along. I'd seen them once or twice, and they were good, but only in parts. The kayboardist and drummer were merely mediocre, but the lead singer and guitarist, Rhiannon Shay, was possibly my favorite of all the musicians to frequent the Oyster. She could sing down the moon, if so she wanted. She was absolutely amazing. I intended to point her out to Andrew at the first available moment. Of course, it turned out that I didn't have to,  because as the band filtered onto the stage, he leaned over to me and asked, "Who's that chick?" I told him. "I like her," he said, decisively. "She's the only one who seems to have a clue what she's doing."

And she was - she was helping with the last minute adjustments with the other two, as well as getting her guitar ready. Then she turned to the audience, and we all fell under her spell. Her stage presence was magical. Twenty songs later, she released us all by announcing the set break, and I turned to look at Andrew. He was still staring at the stage. Grace, who was on his other side, leaned around him and stage-whispered to me, "He's in a music coma. We should probably shake him."

"No, I'm good," he said, shaking himself awake. Then he mentally disappeared again for a moment, before returning to announce, "I need her." He grabbed Nathan and marched off.

"Does he have a plan to get backstage without getting in absolutely huge amounts of trouble?' I asked his sister.

"Oh, he usually manages," she said, with a wave of her hand. "I've only known him to get thrown out of a place once, and that was because we were in Portland over the summer and he chose the wrong room to march into. It was the employee break room, not the backstage area."

"That must have been embarrassing," Cale said, (sort of) interacting with me for the first time in an hour.

"Well, he still signed the person he wanted to sign, so it wasn't a complete loss," Grace said, smiling at him. Then she turned away and started talking with Jim, who'd been her companion all night.

That's when Cale grabbed my hand and pulled me out of the crowd, the performance hall, and even the building. "God, Cale, wait, do we have our ticket stubs?" I asked, leaning back against his tug.

"Yeah, yeah, I got them," he said, continuing forward. "Look, you're the one who wanted to find out what happened with Morgan, alright?"

I followed without complaint.

When we were out on the street, leaning against the cool brick wall in the smoky night air, I looked at him expectantly. He took a deep breath, and said, "You remember your senior year of college, when I was a new graduate trying to figure out how to not become an accountant when my degree was in business and math?"

"Yeah," I said, nodding. "Bright idea, that major, by the way."

He rolled his eyes. "Anyway, you remember how intense I was about music back then. Way more than I am now. I was doing auditions, sending out tapes, all that crap, just trying to get a response, seeing if I could make it that way rather than doing the books for places and working fast food."

"You complained all the freaking time," I said, shaking my head at the memory. "No sympathy for my senior project."

"Hey, real life is hard," he said, turning his face up towards the streetlight overhead. "You didn't get that yet. But the thing was, with all those tapes going out and stuff, I was getting responses. People were interested. Even our very own local Music Inc. asked me to come in a do a demo."

I stared at him accusingly. "You never told me that!"

"I didn't want to get both our hopes up," he said, apologetically. "If I got turned down, you'd have gone mama bear and torn someone a new one and I'd have been embarrassed. But I did the audition - and I met Morgan. She was just a secretary there, with a brand spanking new degree in the exact same stuff I had a degree in, unsatisfied with her job, looking for something or someone to keep her mind off the fact that she was basically a data entry clerk and coffee-getter. I ended up becoming that someone."

"Was this when I was on that trip to Chile for a quarter?" I asked. "Because if you'd gotten yourself a girl that looked like that, and I was around, I would never have heard the end of it. Ever."

Day Three and Four

Nathan (continued)

Several minutes later, Morgan arrived. "What is it?' I asked. "Is there a crisis? Or do I need to sign something?"

"You, sir, are going to do something for once," she told me fiercely. "You are going down in the trenches. You will actually do work. And if you argue, I will make you take a mandatory sick leave and go to Guatemala or something and fight your way through the jungle until you no longer are trying to sabotage yourself and the company just to have something to do. Got it?"

"Got it," I said, meekly. Morgan in a bad mood was not someone to mess with. "And what will I be doing?"

"You will be developing a band from the ground up," she said. "Finding people to play in it, helping with their songs, dealing with their issues, and getting it recorded and mixed. Everything. It should be enough of a challenge that you stop freaking out every two weeks or so."

"But I'm not a scout, or an agent, or anything," I protested. "I'll screw it up. I run companies, I don't actually do music."

"Then you'll have to learn," Morgan said, firmly. "Suck it up and deal, because I phoned Uncle Fred and he completely agrees that this is good for you."

I felt myself go cold. "Calling in my father is completely unfair, and might count as a violation of the Geneva Convention," I said. "Bitch."

"That's why I'm successful. And you a bastard, which is why you are successful. Again, suck it up and do it."

"Fine," I said, standing up and slamming my hand against the desk. "Do I get any assistance with this? Any aid or succor?"

"You're working with the newly acquired Farthing of Farthing Records, who's no longer missing, and is in fact currently down in the recording room," she said. Morgan seemed a little too satisfied with herself at this.

"Oh, lord, what did you do?" I asked her.

"Nothing, yet. But he will think you're a trainee given to him to guide." She smiled like a shark, all sharp, white, evil teeth.

I opened my mouth, momentarily, then shut it again. Then I opened it again, and said, "Fine. Okay. I'll do it. Should I go there right now? Or should I wait until next week, so I can be dressed in suitably ratty clothes?"

"Next week should be good," Morgan said, smiling even wider. "By then I'll have told him about it, too.

"We're both getting screwed here, aren't we?" I asked. "You decided we both needed to learn some sort of lesson, and this is your way of doing it - throwing us together and to the wolves at the same time."

"Maybe. Or maybe I just like playing God with the lives of those around me," she said.

"That's honestly scarier."

"Of course it is."


Andrew:

So after I'd spent a good couple hours getting acquainted with my absolutely amazing new equipment, I finally realized that it was now seven o'clock, that normal people had gone home by now, and I was really, really, really hungry by now. I'd sort of forgotten that during the whole tour and meeting-the-love-of-my-musical-life bit. So, reluctantly, I parted from her, and went off to prowl the unfamiliar night for something that I could eat without getting food poisoning.

Apparently that's a little difficult in this town. On my way to the subway, I passed two Chinese places that a) were definitely cheap rip-offs and had nothing to do with actual Chinese food, and b) probably served both 'chicken' and the much more expensive 'real chicken'. There was also a McDonald's that didn't look like it had been renovated since 1972, and smelled that way, too, and a Starbucks that had no little pastry thing in it. So I was hungry on the subway, my stomach growling audibly enough that people started giving me weird looks. Just a little embarrassing.

On the other end of the ride, there were more restaurants, but these were a bit more high class. Greek places with the menus out front - no prices, which meant you Don't Want To Know,; French places with honest-to-god Maitre-d's, the occasional Italian place with a wandering violinist - not anywhere where I would go alone.

But finally, just as I was giving up hope and about to just look up the nearest Domino's when I got back to the apartment, it appeared - like an oasis in the desert, a place of succcor and sustenance, a tiny little cafe called Care for a Cuppa, not two blocks from my place. It was still open, so I went in without a second thought.

The interior was plastered - absolutely covered, floor to ceiling - with posters. Movie posters, music posters, tv posters, everything. The chairs and tables scattered around were all uniquely painted, each a different color or pattern. The floor was that black and white checker pattern that is ubiquitous in the movies but you never actually see in real life. And the lighting was a warm yellow glow, coming from lights hung from the ceiling, wrapped in paper-machee newspaper lampshades. It was amazing.

I noticed the woman at the counter only after I'd spent a good couple minutes looking around. She was reading a thick paperback book, and I wasn't entirely sure if she was actually aware I was there. However, when I moved towards the counter, she asked, "And what will you have?"
"Ah, roast beef with tomato, cheddar, and mayonnaise?" I asked. "And a Fanta orange, if you have it."

"We've got generic orange," she said, finally looking up from her book. Her eyes were very green, I noticed. "Sorry."

"That's fine," I said, smiling. "I just don't want cola." She put down her book, spread-eagle on the counter to keep her page, and I glanced at the title. Then I nearly freaked out. It was a Neal Stephenson novel, one I'd read last year. I'd never actually met someone who'd made it all the way through one of his doorstoppers. "So you like historical fiction?" I asked.

"Hmm?" she asked, looking up absent-mindedly from my food. Then her eyes fell upon the book and she said, "Oh, yeah, I do. I've been working on this thing for ages, but I never can quite find the time to sit down for seven hours and finish it."

"It's a monster," I confirmed. "But don't give up just because of that. There's a holiday weekend tomorrow, finish it then."

She looked at me with mock-horror in her eyes. "I'm open all weekend," she said. "There will be no time to sleep or breathe, much less finish that thing."

I was about to say something suave, I'm sure - something about me coming in to see her tomorrow, or maybe about we should talk about the book when she did finish it - when a very, very tall man with very, very ginger hair stood up from nowhere behind the counter. It was sort of like watching a stepladder assemble itself upright, only with less finesse. He yawned and stretched, his knuckles brushing the ceiling. It was impressive and cowed me completely.

So instead I simply said something bland and normal, like, "That sounds awful," or "It can't be that bad," and then Mister Really Really Tall said, "Hey, aren't you closing the place up soon, Tammy?"

"Yeah, this guy's probably our last customer," she said, smiling up at him. A mild pang of jealousy went through my chest. I ignored it. It wasn't like I wasn't used to finding out pretty girls were attached.

She finished up my sandwich and handed it and the soda to me, and I paid and left. I ate as I walked home, and debated the merits of going back there again. Pros: it was a cool place with an attractive and intelligent woman running the counter, and very good sandwiches. Cons: said attractive and intelligent girl  appeared to be taken, and I would give myself all kinds of grief if I went back. Pros: she might not, in fact be taken. Cons: I was already gettin my hopes up again, which meant I was going to have a hell of a long way to fall later.

Pros won out, of course. I've never been the smartest about stuff like this. I decided I'd get lunch there tomorrow. But I would bring a book and not pay attention to the counter at all.

The mental battle that this decision had taken lasted the walk to the apartment. After fumbling with my keys and my trash and finally getting the door open, I stood, a little awestruck. All the boxes had been unpacked. All of them. The place looked like a legitimate living place now. Grace was sprawled gracelessly - pardon the pun - across the futon, a pillow half covering her face and a strip of duck tape stuck to her jeans. She looked like she'd just, well, completely filled an apartment with four years of stuff. I went to her bedroom (which I discovered was the good one, apparently. I was stuck with a view onto an alley and a tiny closet) and grabbed her comforter off the mattress, then went back out and gently covered her in it. She shifted, then curled around and fell thoroughly back asleep. I went back to my own room, quietly as I could, closed the door, and pulled out my laptop to do some mixing on my own time, with headphones in.


Tammany -

The first day of the weekend was insane, like I'd expected. Just full-on nasty. Rude vacationers with crying little kids, asking why I didn't carry novelty ice cream bars or more than ten flavors. It just was not fun. Grace was a life-saver, though. She came in (early, even!) and just was amazingly competent. I wanted to kiss her by about eleven am, honestly. Even Cale was impressed, which didn't happen easily. The fact that she already knew how to make a perfect iced caramel latte might have had something to do with it, of course. I thought he might hug her when she handed that cup to him.

The three of us were running around like chickens with our heads cut off from nine until one, but finally a lull arrived. We all sank down into the couch, half-listening for the bells on the door or a customer clearing their throat, and Cale and I started badgering Grace for her life story. She acted embarrassed, of course, but she finally gave in after I offered her a free waffle cone.

"It's nothing much, honestly," she said, laughing. "I'm a very boring person."

"You're wearing a shirt that says, 'I can read minds. Yes,' and a pin which says, 'My shirt lies,'" Cale said between licks of his own ice cream. "You cannot tell me that you are boring."

"But I am!" Grace said. "I graduated from Michigan State about half an hour from my childhood home. I got a double major in philosophy and English, because I had a full ride and don't know what to do with my life."

"Oh my god," Cale said, "You were the pretentious barista with the poetry book under one arm, weren't you? That's why the latte was awesome!"

"Lattes are never the same without vague intetntions of great future novels or movements," Grace said solemnly.

I was shaking my head. "So why did you move? Just a change of scene or what?"

"Well, the thing is, my brother and I have always been super close. We're only like a year apart in age, so we were each other's best friends growing up. He graduated about three years ago, with an awesome degree in music stuff, and started his own honest-to-god studio. Just on moxie and a couple garage bands he recruited and turned into something awesome. Have you heard of Dresden and the Dreams, maybe?"

"Didn't they do a gig down at the Oyster a month or so back?" I asked Cale.

He nodded, and pointed at the far wall. "Yeah, the poster's over there."

"That's one of Andrew's first," Grace told us. "And they're going to become something big. I can tell."

"They were really good," Cale confirmed. "Better than the crap musicians in this town."

"You are completely biased," I said to him. Then, twisting to look back at Grace, I said, "Cale here wants a band. He's just looking for other members at the moment."

"Then maybe you should talk to my brother," Grace said. Then the door jingled, and Grace stood up to greet the customer. What she said, though, was, "Well, speak of the devil."

"Grace?" came the voice of last night's bibliophile. "What are you doing here?"

"I work here now, brother mine," she said. "Going to pay my way, don't you know."

"Here?" he asked. I stood up, because he'd been nice, interesting, and not too hard on the eyes last night, and what the hell, he wasn't my employee, it was completely legal. He looked a little shocked. "Um, hi," he said. "Had a chance to keep reading yet?"

"Not yet," I said, smiling.