Double Tears
Chapter 116
“I had thought Chicago was inevitable, like diarrhea.”
—John Varley, The Persistence of Vision
18 AUGUST 2020
I think Cindy has become a part of our regular lunch table. It’s natural enough, I suppose. She traveled with us this summer and became part of our performance troupe. Everyone in the pod likes her and she gets along with everyone. Plus, we’re in orchestra together and that means we break for lunch at the same time and just naturally walk to the cafeteria together. It’s almost like she’s one of our pod.
Her mother will kill me.
Every once in a while, I catch myself about to do or say something to one of my girlfriends that is wholly inappropriate for our young friend to hear. The girls, on the other hand, have no filters. I guess if she didn’t want hear things that make her blush, Cindy could go join one of the other tables with music geeks.
On the other hand, it’s giving us time to work out some details in our performance business. We need to get the rest of the system set up so we can release our first video the 29th.
So much to be done, and I’ll need to go to her house this week to get things finished.
“It’s going to start off looking homemade,” Rachel said. “That’s not all bad. We’ll actually hype up the ‘just getting started’ aspect and play on people to support us with that. The important thing is getting the basic structure down and making sure you have a private viewing area for your patrons as well as a storefront to sell your merchandise.”
“What merchandise?” Cindy asked. I was wondering, too.
“Starting with this,” Desi jumped in. She opened a bag and pulled out a T-shirt.
“Wow! When did we do that?” I shouted. People in the cafeteria turned to look at us and Desi quickly pushed the shirt under the table.
“Shh! Not yet!” she hissed. “We took the photo the weekend John was with us in Kentucky, remember?” It was a posed photo of Cindy, Desi, Brittany, Sophie, and me in our costumes from the video we’d shot. It was a great photo and just came to life on the black T-shirt. Beneath it in script was written ‘Marvel & Hopkins 2020.’ It was really beautiful. “I worked with Mom and Dad last weekend to get a prototype ordered. We’ll get a stock we can sell directly when you play a concert, but mostly it’s a direct fill from the T-shirt company. It has plusses and minuses long-term, but as a starting point, it keeps us out of having to handle money and sales tax and all that crap. You get twenty percent of sales paid to you by the company and they handle all the transaction details.”
“We’re going to get totally overwhelmed, aren’t we?” I sighed. I looked over at Cindy. She hadn’t said a word and her mouth was hanging open a little. I reached over and put a hand on her shoulder. She straightened up and looked at me. The shock seemed to dissolve from her face.
“You would be if you didn’t have a pod,” Beca said. “That’s why Rachel’s been working on getting a site stub up and Desi’s been working on merchandise. As soon as you guys review it, I’ll have your Patreon site ready to launch and we all have email lists to send invitations to. We’ll lead with the recital you did last winter. It’s on YouTube and establishes your channel. Subscribers at Patreon will get first access to the new video and short special content you’ll produce exclusively for patrons. We’re all working on this in one way or another.”
“But how do we pay you?” Cindy asked in a very small voice.
“First we figure out if it’s worth anything. If you gave us fifty percent and had no revenue, that would be the same as us doing it for nothing. So, we figure we’re just volunteers as far as getting things launched. Jacob already put together a preliminary business plan last year. We’ll work with that as a basis and refine it before we formalize,” Livy said. “I’m taking that class this semester and it’s really good.”
I had the music in my head and I ran. The guys on the team were beginning to figure out the pace. They couldn’t all keep it up, but fewer were falling off after the first mile. Jock never criticized them for not keeping up. He had them work on other things that would help their running.
For me it was time to be free—time to fly. I loved the feeling of the wind in my hair and in my lungs. I was ready for anything.
I didn’t go six miles Wednesday. We ran the five and my closest teammates knew we’d come in together in the five-mile race on Saturday.
I went to Cindy’s house after practice Thursday afternoon. It was time to lay the whole plan out for Mrs. Marvel.
“The site looks very well thought-out, but we should get a professional designer in on it. You shouldn’t look so amateurish,” she said.
“We want to capitalize on the homemade look during the first couple of weeks and then let the site look like our support is growing steadily—whether it is or not. It needs to have the appearance of bootstrapping success,” I said.
“I see that. Will this Patreon subscription platform work? It seems awfully risky.”
“That’s partly where you come in,” I said. “We’ve all developed email lists of our friends and relatives. Brittany and Sophie are culling the lists for duplicates and creating personalized emails to be sent on Monday. We need to have the email picked up and forwarded. We need to have a campaign where you forward the email to your contacts and they forward to theirs. We thought you could especially contact some of the influential people in the music community here in Fort Wayne and see if they’d do an endorsement for Cindy.”
“Yes, I can do that. What is the content?”
“We’re starting with the recital from last winter. We have the video we shot at school, but I’ve also converted all the sound tracks to music files that can be downloaded to smartphones and music players. People who become patrons will get all those tracks free. We’ll be selling the tracks through our store on the website.”
Betty sat back away from my laptop where I’d been showing the pieces and looked at Cindy and me. She closed her eyes and shook her head. She opened her eyes and nodded. Her brow was creased and I could see how deeply she was debating with herself. Finally, she sat up and appeared to come to a decision.
“I want to see your video,” she said firmly. “You’ve kept this whole first performance you plan to launch with a secret. Before I approve this website and Patreon, I want to know what you are producing.” I was afraid of that. We’d been going for a fait accompli and knew there was a huge risk in showing our musical advisors what we’d created. John had given me the stick with the file on it in class this morning. I hadn’t had a chance to look at it yet.
I plugged the thumb drive into my laptop and launched it. Cindy and I huddled over her mother’s shoulders as it came to life.
At lunch on Tuesday, Cindy and I had gone to the media lab and John recorded a promotional tag for the end. We had two versions of the file, one with and one without the tag. The one without was for those who were already our patrons and getting the piece in advance. The one with would be uploaded to our YouTube channel a week later. It invited those viewing to become patrons.
“It’s not what I’d have chosen,” Betty said into the silence that descended upon us. “But I’m not blind. I see where you are going with this. Unlike the website itself, the video is professionally produced and impeccable. Of course, I knew you were doing these performances at the fair, but I thought you were just having fun and I wouldn’t interfere with you finding your sound. I had no idea this was going to be your sound.”
“We plan to do more traditional pieces as well,” I said. “John has already talked to us about how to stage the Suite Buenos Aires. It won’t have quite the same drama as this and will only be Cindy and me, without the supporting cast. But you told me you want Cindy to become a household name. To be popular. Sticking with orchestras and ensembles won’t do that. We have to up the entertainment game.”
“Yes. And with the Cantos Desiertos up front and the Suite Buenos Aires following, people will know and understand the depth of your musical talent and not assume it is just hidden by showmanship,” Betty said. “I think we should not show this to Leonard until after it’s released.”
The team was on the bus at seven-thirty Saturday morning and at Huntington by eight o’clock to get registered for the invitational. There were sixteen teams and even though only thirty-five of us would run, all seventy-five on the team rode the buses. It’s one of the criteria for getting physical education credit for participating in an interscholastic sport. You have to go to the competitions even if you don’t get to play. I knew for a fact there were varsity football players who would never see a minute of play during the season unless a catastrophe befell another player. But they still practiced and they still dressed for games.
The Huntington College cross country track is beautiful. I think I’ve mentioned that before. And it’s equipped for big races, even though we wouldn’t be using transmitters for timing. Judges would write our times on a paper and shove it into our hands as we entered the chute at the end of the race. I didn’t envy the 5k guys and gals as they lined up for their races. There were 112 runners in each race and getting to the trail fast was a key element in being positioned to win. The races started half an hour apart with the five-mile last. That meant I had to wander around staying loose and ready for two hours.
While I was wandering around, I saw Donna among the fans near the finish chute.
“Hey, Donna, I didn’t expect to see you out for the race this morning,” I said. I nearly reached for her when she spun to look at me.
“Shh! Jacob, we’re at a school event. Please!” she hissed.
Oh, shit! No, Donna wasn’t a teacher at my school—she wasn’t my teacher—but she was a teacher at a school event. I didn’t think anyone had heard my greeting, but any familiarity with a student could start people talking.
“Sorry, Ms. Levy. I was so surprised to see you here I misspoke,” I said.
“I understand. I teach here at North Huntington now. I had to come out to show my support for our team,” she said. Then she lowered her voice so only I could hear. “I’m supposed to cheer for them, but of course, I’ll be hoping you and Olivia win your races.”
“Thank you,” I said. “You’ve always been a big supporter. I hope you have a great year here.” I left and hustled back to my team.
Livy ran a solid 18:35 which was good enough for fourth in her race. But the training our coaches had been putting us through brought enough of our runners in high places that we placed second for the meet. That was repeated in all four 5ks. We had a runner in the top five each time but enough runners in high places that the team still placed second in all four races.
When we lined up for the five-mile, there were more runners than Jock had projected. It seemed that all the schools decided to run whoever they had left over so there were around eighty. We got a lucky draw for the center lane at the start. I turned to talk to my running mates as soon as the judge inspected our uniforms and determined we were all legal.
“Guys, we’re going straight down the middle,” I said. “Anyone who wants ahead of us will have to run faster. There will probably be some rabbits out there who have never run this distance. Ignore them. Stick with me and pass me in the last half mile if you can.” We gave a team shout and lined up.
The gun went off and I was at our six-minute pace in half a dozen strides. Like I’d promised, there were several runners who sprinted for the chute onto the trail, but we held a solid line down the middle. Anyone who didn’t sprint for the trail had to fall in behind us.
One of the problems with a cross country race is that you have to know your pace and your race. I knew I’d start losing my companions by about the three-mile mark. They weren’t at the level of endurance I was. A couple of them would stick with me into the last mile. I’d run six miles in a perfect thirty-six earlier in the week so I had no doubts I could finish the five mile in thirty minutes. I wondered if I could cut it in the last half mile.
Runners on teams who had been taught to go slow at first and then speed up for the second half of the race started to string out behind us. Three or four sprinted around us as soon as the trail was clear. And there were eight or ten who had made the chute before us and were now trying to settle into a better pace. I settled in for the run and let the music carry my feet.
Not only did I start to lose a couple of my guys at three miles, we started passing front runners who had begun to flag. Even our guys who were falling off the pace were passing some of the early leaders who weren’t used to races longer than 5k. I just kept beating out the time, listening to the sound of the footfalls behind me as I pulled into second place at the four-mile post. I assumed I was in second. I could see only one runner ahead of me, but the trail twists through the trees.
The lead runner resisted being passed for a few seconds but couldn’t pick up his pace enough to hold us off. Us. I still had two of my runners pacing me and a couple of the runners who had started slow and picked up their pace were tracking right with us now. I wondered if they had a kick or if they’d already used it to catch us.
At four and a half miles, I touched my watch and felt the pace pick up minutely. A quarter-mile before the finish, I abandoned the beat of the watch and just opened my stride to give it all I had. I entered the chute alone.
We finished the race in first, third, and fifth with a kid from Carroll and a kid from Huntington North between us. While our other guys were down in the twenties, we scored high enough to take the team victory with 56 points. There were faster runners but they were divided among fifteen other schools. The next highest team had over 90 points.
That’s the other thing about races like this. Our teams had come in second in every 5k race, but once the five races were tallied together, we won. And I had a new personal best 29:52.
Beca was waiting for me at school when I’d showered. I knew she was eager to hit the road but I needed food first. It was a little out of the way but we went up to Firehouse Subs and I got a large Italian. Beca ordered a half turkey. I pulled through Starbucks and had my travel mug filled. Beca got a Frappuccino. It was still only about fifteen minutes later that we were headed west.
And like any of my girlfriends, Beca had chosen to put the center armrest up and sit in the middle. I wound through the country a few miles and finally hit US 30 West. I hadn’t had a chance to tell Beca about Betty’s reaction to the video. Only Cindy and I had seen it with her mother. I had it tucked in my bag, though, so I could show Joan and Beca. What a treat that would be. I hadn’t seen her in three months.
We followed her directions for parking and Joan met us at the door to the building to lead us to her father’s condo. With the amount of kissing and hugging and dancing around we did in the lobby, it was a wonder we made it to the twentieth-floor condo at all. Joan added an off-the-wall sexiness and carefree attitude to our pod and in many ways, it had been missed all summer. I was falling in love with her all over again within a few minutes of seeing her.
“I’ve missed you so much,” she said, kissing me again. I had barely time to squeeze her soft boobs into my chest when she pulled away to kiss Beca again. “So much. So much.” She waved toward her father and stepmother as she dragged us to her room.
“Two hours,” her dad called after us. “We have reservations.”
“For some reason, my father thinks we need food instead of just love,” Joan giggled. “I need love. I need you both.”
And love we gave her. I thought perhaps we might all be a little bashful after being separated so long, but falling into Joan’s arms and into her pussy was as immediate and welcome as it had been with Emily. As I sawed in and out of her pussy and thumbed her sensitive nipples, Beca rode her face and kissed me, thanking me over and over for bringing her to Chicago. I was pretty thankful myself as I emptied myself into Joan.
Then it was my turn to kiss and lick our lover as Beca dove between her legs and brought her to another crashing orgasm.
“I have so much to tell you that I’ve learned about the Service,” Joan whispered as we rode the elevator to the restaurant Mr. Long had chosen. “What you have to remember is the Orwell quote: ‘All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.’ This is what they don’t teach us in Constitutional Government class.”
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