Double Tears
Chapter 135
“The artist lives to have stories to tell and to learn to tell them well.”
—Criss Jami, Killosophy
“I KNOW IT’S SHORT NOTICE,” John said. Yeah, if it had been any shorter, he’d have caught us all naked. Fortunately, he called before interrupting our party. I still wasn’t sure how secure anyone’s clothing was. He’d arrived ten minutes after the call. “I’ve been filming through the whole start of semester. I’ve got tape of the posters in the hall on time-lapse. The school is going to remove them all next week. There has to be something you can play while I record you in the school hall that shows the conflict as it arose and settled.”
“Wow! I wish we’d had this idea the first of the year. We could have practiced something. I don’t even know where to start looking for an appropriate piece of music,” I said. Cindy and I had been working on Concierto de Aranjuez by Joaquín Rodrigo, trying for something with a sound that would express what we’d been feeling since New Year’s Day but I didn’t think it was the right thing to work with in the halls of the school. And neither Cindy nor I had been happy with it when we stopped working on it this morning.
“We could try it but it isn’t ready,” Cindy agreed. “I’d like to do something like this but I don’t want to put something out that looks rushed and amateurish. It’s more than the message. This is like our image and future.”
“Which is one of the reasons we should look at it seriously,” Donna said. “It has to do with your relevance. If you put out a standard show in February that looks like it was put together before the whole crisis, people will wonder where you’ve been. I’m not saying you have to do this but we should explore all the options.”
We sat in the sunroom trying to figure out if there was anything in our repertoire we could adapt to this kind of theme. We’d done a conflict and resolution theme for our first video and it was still being downloaded more frequently than anything but our holiday concert. It showed that people really liked it when we created a story and played to it.
“We need a storyline,” I finally said. “We can work on music to go with it, but what is the story we’re telling?”
“Mexican Standoff,” Nanette said. “Literally, this time. Two sides have come face to face and neither can move without being injured. Like if I let go of your hand to punch you, you’ll be clear to stab me. Then a third party comes in and breaks up the fight.”
“There should have been a way to resolve it without the deus ex machina,” Brittany said. Donna looked at her proudly. “What do we do next time if the principal isn’t there to step in and stop things?”
“What happens when two people are in love but there is a conflict between them?” Rachel asked. “Neither really wants to be fighting with the other but something keeps driving them until…”
“Until one says ‘I’m sorry.’ Otherwise it keeps escalating and escalating until there’s no hope for reconciliation,” Livy concluded.
Desi whistled and all had an instant of recognition. Three men standing with their hands near their guns, ready to draw. No one able to make the next move for fear they would choose the wrong target and be shot by the third. She whistled again. I opened my guitar case and started tapping on the body. By then, Cindy had her flute assembled and took over the whistle. Echoing over the next chord, Desi sang ‘wah wah wah.’
“Do you know this, Cindy?” I asked as I picked the notes.
“Yes. Mr. LeBlanc had us do it as a novelty piece in last year’s fall concert.”
“It was a piece Vinnie had me do as an exercise to learn picking. Way back. Before. But my fingers remember.”
“Is it too… disrespectful? Not serious enough?” Beca asked.
“I think it’s just what the subject needs,” Rachel said. “It would be great if you could cut in some overlays of scenes from the wall, John. It captures the absurdity of the situation. Becomes a satire.”
“I have access to all kinds of footage from the wall,” Joan said. “It’s public property, like photos from space by NASA.”
“Desi has to sing, though,” Livy said. “I can’t even imagine how you get that sound or tone.”
“Dance,” Brittany said. I wasn’t sure if it was a suggestion or a command. She was looking straight at her aunt. Sophie nodded.
“How long can we delay the school from scraping the walls?” Donna asked. “These guys need to rehearse.”
“I’m not sure, but I can get you all in to rehearse and work on staging tomorrow if you’re in,” John said. I looked at Cindy. She grinned.
“We’re in,” I said.
With John’s visit, the shape of Beca’s birthday party changed. Cindy and I had to find out how much of the music we could remember. We ended up having to make a run to our homes to find the music. Cindy picked up half a dozen different flutes as well. She wanted to find the right sound. For the heck of it, I picked up my lute guitar, too.
When we got back, we set up in the office to practice with Desi. Donna was at her computer and smiled at us.
“License,” she said. There was a reason we normally played only classical music. Performing a current piece, even one as old as the 1960s, required a performance and recording license. I was glad Donna was on it. We just assumed she’d work her magic and focused on practicing.
“Can we do it with just the three instruments?” I asked. “I mean flute, guitar, and voice? Some of the vids I’ve seen covering this are pretty flat.”
“You do a good job with the drumbeats on the guitar,” Cindy said. “I can switch between flutes to get the different sounds. Including the whistle. Listen.” She pulled an Irish penny whistle out of her bag and played the tones. It was completely different than when she played it on her flute. Then she pulled out a Native American flute and there was a completely different sound.
“We’ll need to see if John can attach a pick up to each of them, I guess,” I said.
“I don’t think so,” Desi said. “I don’t think you’ll need pickups for this at all. School halls have their own acoustics. We sometimes sing in the hall when we’re rehearsing a play or choral piece just to hear what it does to our voices.”
There were heaps of issues to be resolved and we worked until after midnight before we all collapsed. The rest of our pod had been busy as well. Sophie had worked out choreography that they could all do down the hall and I was amused to find elements of the line dance Donna, Rachel, and Livy had been practicing in it. That amused me no end as I thought of them dancing naked down the hall. I supposed we’d need to think about costumes tomorrow. I slid between Livy and Rachel and my two lovers quickly put me to sleep.
We were at school at nine o’clock Sunday morning. We hadn’t even prepared breakfast but drove through Starbuck’s instead. John had scouted several locations. It’s amazing how many miles of hallway there are in a high school the size of ours. We had to balance out what we liked or didn’t like about the posters in the hall as well as the acoustics. Sophie had ideas regarding whether there should be stairs and how long the hall needed to be. There was a difference between halls with bulletin boards and trophy cases as opposed to lockers.
We didn’t get our first run-through of the music until after eleven.
Of course, John wanted everything recorded. He listened to our conversations and experimented with camera angles. After we took a short break to eat, we were ready to start seriously blocking and staging the six-minute performance. Three other kids from my advanced photography/video class showed up to work with John.
We played, we blocked, we choreographed. We brainstormed. Something didn’t work, we talked about what would work. Even the video kids got into the action by suggesting things they could see through the lens. Riko and Riley showed up to analyze what we were doing and consider costumes. Two guys I recognized showed up and just watched from down the hall. They were our principal and head custodian. Weird. I’d never actually met the principal and had only seen him when he was presenting to the school in assemblies. The custodian was the kind of laid-back guy it takes to deal with three thousand teenagers and their garbage every day. I sometimes wondered if he was always high.
Eventually, the principal nodded at John and the three went off to talk for ten or fifteen minutes.
“They’ll give us through Wednesday night,” John said as we all packed our gear to leave for the day. “They want the halls cleaned and clear before the weekend. We’re hosting the winter tourney here and they want the school sparkling for all the visitors.”
I looked at my pod. We’d already poured so much into this that we were committed. But two nights of rehearsal and one to video. We couldn’t even rehearse right after school because of other people still using the building. Oh, Cindy, Desi, and I could practice the music but we couldn’t put everything together until rehearsals at seven in the evening when the building was clear. It was going to be a hell of a week, again.
“Let’s all get some sleep,” I said. “We aren’t going to get much for the next few days.”
There were a lot of I love yous and kisses and then we all shuffled off to our homes and beds.
28 January 2021
We’re all exhausted. I’ve fallen asleep in class twice. LeBlanc dismissed Cindy and me from orchestra to go get some rest yesterday. Today won’t be better. We recorded until two this morning before we all agreed it was a wrap.
But it’s good. Whether we get any message across with it or not remains to be seen and will probably be based more on John’s editing and footage he cuts in than on our playing. But our rendition of ‘The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly’ is something to be proud of. Riko got us all western outfits with no particular color or style differences. And she managed to get us all flat western hats like Clint Eastwood wore in the movie.
Sophie choreographed all the girls into a dance that was just unbelievable. And she showed exactly why she was a principal dancer in the ballet. The girls all wore jeans but Sophie was unable to do the leaps she wanted in the tight denim. Riko to the rescue. She painted a leotard and tights to match the jeans and western shirts of the rest of us. Sophie gave a whole new definition to the idea of skintight jeans. Wow!
The girls all came out of classroom doorways and danced their way into a fight that was never really between them. They just flung their heads and fell against the lockers until all of them ended up with hands on the lockers and feet spread. It looked more like a police raid than a fist fight.
I think it will be good. I don’t know if anyone will get the point that the whole thing was senseless and we are all one people. I know that sounds kind of Mary Sue when I say it like that, but it’s going to take us years to recover from the idiocy of the past five. And we’re caught in another bind. More people want to repeal 28, but without the teen laborers conscripted for the fields, we’d starve. Or we look back to our southern neighbors for laborers who are both willing and able to do hard manual labor. I don’t think there are any nations we can conveniently raid for slaves these days.
Enslaving our own. Em told Pey and me about the concept when she was home. We are going to spend two years in slavery and the people who crack the whip are just going to be higher ranking slaves. We need to get a handle on this or my present reality will end up no better than the one the old man left behind.
“What about the Valentine’s Day Dance?” Beca asked at lunch on Friday. “Who’s going with whom?”
“I’m out,” Livy said. “We’re going all the way this year. The sectional tournament starts Thursday here at Mad Anthony. The next weekend is afternoon and evening games at Kokomo. Semi-state will be a night game at Crown Point. And state championship will be at 8:00 p.m. the 27th in Indy. My calendar for February is booked.”
“Pretty confident, aren’t you, Honey?” Rachel laughed. “Is the whole team with you on this?”
“We’ve had an undefeated season and we’re taking it all the way. You know how I feel about going all the way, Lover.” We all had a laugh at that.
“We have to figure out the schedule for our video release and start promoting it. Sooner the better for relevance but I don’t think we’ll be ready in a week. Two weeks is Valentine’s weekend,” I said.
“I’m for going to watch the game instead of the dance,” Brittany said.
“But the dance is on Friday night,” Cindy said. “The game is Saturday.”
“I’m thinking we should just blow off the dance and do our own Sunday afternoon at the farm dance,” Desi said.
“Oh,” Cindy said softly.
“Cindy? Is something wrong?” I asked.
“I guess not. It’s just, I’ve never been to one and…”
“Cindy, it seems I don’t have a date for the Valentine’s Dance,” Beca said. “Would you like to go with me? Please?”
“With you?” Cindy said.
“Yes. We could have a nice romantic evening. I know your mom doesn’t usually let you date, but maybe she’d make an exception for me.”
Cindy’s eyes lit up with her smile.
“Can I wear a dress?”
“Absolutely. I think I will, too,” Beca said.
“I’d love to!”
“Now, we need to figure out transportation. Jacob, would you drive your two girlfriends on their date to the Valentine’s Dance?” Beca asked sweetly.
“Just drive you?” I asked.
“Maybe there’s another girl who’d like to join you. Or you could take your chances that Cindy and me might dance with you. Sometimes.”
I think I’d just been hoodwinked. I just nodded at my two girlfriends. Yeah. I had to admit Cindy was a girlfriend.
“That still doesn’t resolve the release,” Livy said. “Do you think you could do a Sunday afternoon release? Say in honor of Valentine’s Day, which is actually on Sunday?”
“That might work. We should check with Donna and see if it would be okay. Do you think we can market it effectively? It’s not much of a Valentine’s theme,” I said.
“Your Christmas concert wasn’t Christmas music, either,” Rachel said. “From a marketing perspective, we need to check with Joan, too. And check our stock. The CDs of the Christmas concert are ready and waiting for us to release them. We’ve just been holding for the release of the next video.”
“Sounds like a plan,” I said.
Livy’s prediction got a strong start toward fulfillment at sectionals. They steamrolled their opponents in three straight games to become sectional champions. And then we took it easy for the next week. Things had been so tense for so long, we needed to unwind. We didn’t get quite as wild Sunday afternoon as we had started to on Beca’s birthday, but we made it a no-stress day. I bought two big buckets of KFC with all the fixings so Donna wouldn’t feel like she had to cook. Of course, she still had a big salad to put in the middle of the table.
Rachel and I slipped away to kiss and love on Livy for an hour or two, but we took it easy on her ass and didn’t do anything that would make her break her stride. But damn, that girl is sexy. I don’t know what it is about a tall lean athlete that just charges up my libido. Whatever it is, Livy has it in spades.
Of course, we also had to discuss what Cindy and I were going to produce for our next video. Neither Cindy nor I was happy with our progress on Concierto de Aranjuez. It was like we just had a block on it. I was ready to call in our musical consultants. Planning performances out for however long we are together is a major chore. Then there’s learning the music. And planning the staging. Sophie and Donna said they’d received a request for a special Easter performance from the church I go to. That would be the day spring break ended on April 4. The only problem with it I saw was that I planned to visit Emily that week. But it would be a live stream event and might be worthwhile considering.
All of my girlfriends turned down my request for a date to the Valentine’s Dance. Sneaky girls. I could tell they had something planned, but that meant I’d play chauffeur for Beca and Cindy on their date. I decided to do it up right and went to Louie’s to see if I could rent a chauffeur’s uniform. Of course. Complete with little cap. Then I asked Mom if I could borrow the Impala that night so the girls didn’t have to climb up into my truck.
Friday after school, I took the car to the carwash and made sure everything was sparkling clean. I freshened the inside and equipped the back seat with an ice bucket and a bouquet of flowers, a bottle of sparkling catawba, and a box of chocolates. I had it arranged so I could open the driver’s side back door and prepare their drinks to give to them so they didn’t spill. I downloaded a bunch of soft sappy music and connected my iPhone to Mom’s car stereo. Up front, I had a bunch of essentials, including tissues, hand sanitizer, lotion, and even condoms and feminine products as a joke. I asked Rachel to go over my list and she added a bottle of clear nail polish, a lint roller, and breath mints.
I put on my uniform and was ready to go.
I picked up Rebeca first and she giggled at my uniform. She was really impressed, though, when I held the back passenger door open for her and she saw the setup. When we got to Cindy’s house, I ran around to the door and held it for her as she went to collect her date. I just stayed by the car. It took a few minutes. Of course, Cindy’s parents wanted pictures of the two girls ready for their big date. Then they came out to the car so they could get a picture of the chauffeur with them. They were impressed enough that they wanted pictures of the backseat setup as well and snapped their shots of me pouring the girls their drinks and giving them chocolates from the other side of the car.
When we left Cindy’s house, I took the girls on a long scenic drive beside the river as they enjoyed their drinks and listened to the music. When we got to the school, I pulled up as if the Impala was a limousine and ran around to open the door and hand the girls out. Beca stopped to pin a white rose on my lapel.
“I love that you are our chauffeur,” she said. “But now you have to switch roles and come inside with us. We’ll wait by the door for you before we go in.”
“What’s my role now?” I asked, thinking the girls were doing this as a way to have a date with me.
“Bodyguard,” Beca whispered. I parked the car and joined the girls for the dance.
I wouldn’t say a bodyguard was strictly needed, but maybe it wasn’t a bad idea. I fetched their drinks and snacks for them and watched while they danced. If a guy seemed to want to spend too much time convincing them to dance with him, I stepped up and they just took my arms and I escorted them on the dance floor. The guys eventually got the message that they weren’t interested in any overtures and left them alone.
It was a beautiful evening and I was thankful Beca had taken the initiative to take our youngest girlfriend on her first date. And when I caught them kissing in the rearview mirror, I smiled and kept it to myself.
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