Double Twist
Chapter 153
“Life is funny that way. Sometimes the dumbest thing you do turns out to be the smartest.”
—Robyn Mundell, Brainwalker
18 JULY 2021
Should I tell Cindy the audition has already begun? I’ve been trying to figure out how that information affected me. It didn’t seem to affect me when it came to making love with Donna last night. Cindy chose to sleep in the other bed, next to Em and Sophie. I don’t know if that helped preserve her chastity, but I was thankful for it. I respect her stage of development. I know she’s not ready for sex, even though she’s becoming more fascinated by it and wants to ‘try out her equipment’ as Em says. I won’t cross that line with her until I know she is damn good and ready to have it crossed. But JFC! Having that sweet innocent sixteen-year-old body cuddled naked in my hands is almost too much to bear! I held her bare tits, stroked her nipples, and just wanted to do a faceplant in her chest. I want to put both hands on her butt and lift her onto my cock. I’ve reached the point where I want to fuck that girl.
None of that has anything to do with whether I should tell her. It just overwhelms me sometimes. On the plus side, she deserves to know we’re being watched for more than our playing. On the other, I can better support her by guiding her if she doesn’t know. I’m getting refocused on why I’m here. I think that’s what Donahue was really telling me. I’m here to get Cindy into the National School of the Arts. It’s me the message was really for. I need to make sure I’m showing her in her best light at all times. Otherwise, Donahue wouldn’t have waited for the one time during the evening that Cindy was answering the call of nature to talk to me.
I’ll just be casual about the whole thing. But I think I’ll clue Donna in so she knows there will be people observing us all day. Even Remas. She’s not just a student here. She’s a National Service recruiter like the one Rachel and I met with in Fort Wayne when we retested. Donna will direct Laura and Leon. God knows, this could affect their service, too.
Crap! Everything I do affects everyone.
We all hustled ourselves together and skipped breakfast until after church. Yeah, we all decided we would attend the Sunday service at the National Cathedral. Geez! It seemed like everything in this city is the National something. I wondered what was different with this rendition of the cathedral from what I remembered of V1. I had to make a conscious effort to pull V1 memories into my consciousness now but I remembered that it was high church—Episcopalian or something—and was a magnificent edifice. But that was in an era in which the church was only nominally separate from the state. In truth, it was subsidized by the state through tax exemptions.
I did some reading about the cathedral on my cellphone and discovered that it was actually a government services building and that the non-denominational ‘church’ that leased its space was charged with operating a wide variety of social services that kept our nation’s capital clean and livable. Those services included everything from childcare to homeless shelters to food banks to psychological counseling. In return for providing those services, the congregation could also worship in the vast nave.
We got there just before the service started and settled into a pew. Like the Kennedy Center, it seemed that the cathedral catered mostly to transients who were in town for a visit and wanted the experience of going to America’s cathedral. I looked in the nicely printed program they handed out and discovered the service we were attending was ‘Christian.’ During the course of the week, and even today, there were Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist, and Hindu services. There were also less generic Christian services like Baptist, Catholic, Lutheran, and Methodist. The National Cathedral catered to the religions of the nation.
The main reason we wanted to attend the service, though, was the music. Remas had clued us in yesterday that there was a string quintet playing during the service that was worth getting up for. Having in mind what Dr. Donahue said, I encouraged everyone to attend. Remas was in our lobby to meet us when we left for church.
The string quintet was worth any loss of sleep we might have suffered. It was a string quartet—two violins, viola, cello—with a guitar. As I read the program notes, I discovered the composer, Luigi Boccherini, had composed a dozen guitar quintets in Italy back in the late 1700s. I made a mental note to get some of that music and see if we could add a flute and use it for our sextet in the fall. We’d have to replace our first violin and bass as they both graduated, but I was hoping we’d get to reprise the sextet.
“You could add a flute to that easily,” Remas whispered to me. Reading my mind? She’d managed to get between Donna and me when we filed into the pew. I was guessing she suggested this outing specifically to plant that idea and see if I would take it. I nodded and whispered back to her.
“We could replace the first violin part with the flute and only need minor transposing,” I whispered back. Remas nodded enthusiastically. I turned to whisper the same to Cindy and she gripped my hand enthusiastically.
We were starving after the service, having skipped breakfast. Remas led us on a quick walk from the cathedral to a restaurant just opening for its second brunch and we got right in. It was a good meal and we talked about the performance and what we could do with the quintet when we got back home.
Carrying our instruments and equipment from the hotel to the recital hall was too much to deal with and Emily went to get our bus for the fairly short trek. Remas directed her to a loading dock and put a sticker in the window so we wouldn’t get towed. We unloaded our equipment and went in to look at the hall. It was small and understated, a truly intimate setting for a recital. There were about fifty seats and a small stage. The piano was pushed back against the wall and we had plenty of room to set up our little performance area. The seats in the audience were comfortable and had fold-out armrest desks.
“Halls like this one are used for classes,” Remas said. “There’s a lot of music theory and history taught here. It doubles as an intimate performance area.”
“It’s cool,” I affirmed.
“It reminds me of the tape we did at the chapel,” Cindy said. “That was one of my favorites.”
“Oh, yes! Is that where you did the Buenos Aires? The sound and intimate audience for that one were superb,” Remas said. I wondered if she’d seen all our performances, and if perhaps she was even a patron. “What do you like best about your performances, Cindy?”
“The way Jacob’s guitar supports the music. Um… I should clarify that. I think my flute is a beautiful instrument and I get lost in playing it. But when I listen back, there are really very few pieces that feel complete with just the flute. It has enough body and volume to play with an entire orchestra backing it, but that takes away the intimacy. Jacob’s guitar and the viol both fill and complete the sound of my flute. When I play with him, it’s like my music floats on a raft on a river of sound.”
“That’s lovely,” Remas said. I’d seldom heard Cindy talk about her music like that. She was obviously becoming comfortable with Remas. “I’m here to support you. If you want lights adjusted or if you need an extension cord or whatever, let me know. Otherwise, I’ll try to keep out of your way.”
“Any time you have a suggestion, feel free to chime in,” I said. “We’d especially like to know if there are expectations our jury will have and maybe even role-play it a couple of times.”
“You got it.”
Our rehearsal went well. And as Donahue had warned me, I saw several people during the afternoon who stopped in to observe for anything from a minute to an hour. They didn’t introduce themselves and we didn’t ask. We focused on making sure we had good position, played the music appropriately, and that our cameras had good angles and some direction. Remas told us the jury members would be scattered in the room and not at a single table like America’s Got Talent or something. She asked a couple of questions, including looking at our repertoire and suggesting a number she’d like to hear us play.
We rehearsed for about three hours, letting the time slip away from us. Then Sophie suggested we rehearse the piece we’d be doing tomorrow evening at the Jefferson Memorial. We needed that practice. Sophie would be dancing to our music and we wanted the interpretation to be obvious enough that we would get the message across without seeming to club people with a book.
We were going to tie this piece directly with the videos of Em’s discharge and Sophie would conclude the piece with a scroll that unrolled stating ‘I’ve read the manual.’ We wanted our own identity stamped onto the meme. We’d looked at the sightlines at the memorial the day before and her position would be such that when she revealed the meme, the camera would pan across the inscription around the dome and return to the meme. ‘I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.’ That’s really where our manifesto began.
When we finished our third run-through, Remas applauded as did a half-dozen other spectators. We talked a little about how the dance worked with the music and where camera angles would be best as we put away our instruments. It had been a long rehearsal but we hardly felt the time pass.
We were still plenty nervous when we walked into the recital hall Monday morning. As we got our instruments out and prepared ourselves, people started filtering in and taking seats. I wondered how big the jury would be. Cindy was shaking and I caught her in my arms and hugged her. She laid her head against my chest and I talked her through deep breathing so we could both calm our nerves.
“It’s just like any other performance,” I whispered. “We do our best and we let the music take us where it will. I’ll be there for you, Cindy. We’re in this together.”
“Thank you, Jacob,” she finally sighed. “I love you.”
Well, shit. Now I’m nervous. She’d never made that an explicit declaration before and I didn’t know what to do with it. I didn’t have time to process it all because Dr. Donahue was approaching us with instructions.
“When you are ready to begin, we’d like you to start with one of your favorites. You can choose whatever you’d like, whichever instruments you’d like. That will get us all relaxed. Then, you will hear one of us call out a piece from your repertoire. Don’t rush yourselves. Make sure you are ready and then begin when it is right. We’d rather you take your time to center yourselves and start cleanly than rush into a piece with errors,” she said. “We’ll tune the lighting so it is focused on you and the audience is blacked out of your vision. Play as we all know you are capable of playing.” We nodded and thanked Dr. Donahue for this opportunity. I watched her go to her seat as the houselights went down and the stage lights came up. Fortunately, Remas had practiced this with us yesterday. I wasn’t expecting to see every seat in the hall filled, though.
Cindy and I consulted for a minute regarding what we felt was best and ready. In some ways, the Mozart 11th piano concerto, third movement, also referred to as ‘Mozart in Hell,’ was our favorite. Might as well start out with something hot.
We completed our six-minute rendition and brought our instruments to rest, to await the first request. There was no applause, nor did we expect any from the only people whose opinions counted.
“Cantos desiertos, fourth movement, ‘Llanto,’ please,” a voice said from the darkness. Cindy and I conferred quietly, got ourselves centered and started the four-minute movement. Then, once again, we paused and waited quietly, assuming the jury was making notes.
It continued for over an hour. A voice from a different part of the room would call out a piece at random from our repertoire, we would take a minute to confer and make sure we were on the same page, and then we would play. Piazzolla. Schubert. Morricone. Pujol. Debussy. There was just one thing missing. Even when we were getting second requests for Riley, Piazzolla, Pujol, no one asked for another piece by Mozart. I was worried we might run out of pieces before they got tired of having us play.
“Thank you, Marvel and Hopkins,” the voice of Dr. Donahue spoke out at last. There was finally a solid round of applause, but the lights didn’t come up. “We have one more request for you,” she continued. “We understand you have a dancer who will perform with you later this evening. If she is available, would you please grace us with Mozart’s Symphony No. 40, first movement, Molto Allegro?”
We nodded toward the voice and Sophie joined us on the little stage. Apparently, she had been warned in time to get her costume. I had to switch instruments to the viola da gamba. Cindy dried her flute and we all met together to confer. I’d taken Dr. Donahue seriously about not rushing things and wanted to make sure we were all ready to make the transition to this rapidly moving piece. I sat in my chair with the viol grasped between my knees and Cindy leaned against my shoulder. This was the only piece in our repertoire that we really had choreography to. The rest we simply played as a duet. But having the jury specifically ask for Sophie to join us meant they wanted to see what we did with the choreography.
We’d carefully chosen our outfits for the audition. I was wearing simple black slacks and a black long-sleeved shirt, buttoned to the neck. Cindy was similarly in black slacks and a long-sleeved black blouse. Sophie created a stark contrast to us, dressed mostly in white with splashes of red and blue. The music fit Sophie’s style perfectly. For Mozart, it has a near tango rhythm. And Sophie sizzled. Cindy was not idle either. I couldn’t participate in the dance because I have to hold the viol between my knees, but Cindy chased Sophie around the stage, finally falling back in defeat as the piece reached its conclusion. We completed the seven-minute movement as Cindy and I just burned up our instruments in the heat of the moment. Sophie had her scroll with the words “I’ve read the manual,” inscribed on it and we ended and held our positions.
There was applause again and the lighting shifted to house lights.
“We have a small reception to thank Marvel and Hopkins for their audition this morning,” Dr. Donahue said, standing to address the audience. “Please join us in the Reardon Room if you have a moment to spend with them.” That effectively kept people from coming to the stage to greet us while we put away our instruments. Emily volunteered to guard the instruments for us so we could talk to the students and faculty who had attended the audition.
Coffee, tea, small sandwiches, and cookies were on the reception table. Cindy once again latched onto my hand as we negotiated the group. If I let go of her hand to shake the hand of someone else, she gripped my elbow. Sophie, having also performed, pulled my left arm around her waist, making it clear that she belonged to us. It made it awkward to hold a plate or cup of coffee. I finally gave up and just assumed I’d grab something later on.
The chit chat was pleasant. Typically, a person we met would start out with “Very nice performance. You’ll go far.” Then they would mention some particular passage that they liked or had advice on before fading back and making room for someone else. Of the fifty or so who attended, I only met three who were pre-service. The rest of the room was about evenly split between faculty and in-service with a very few post-service. Eventually, Dr. Donahue suggested we move to a conference room where the jury would discuss our audition with us.
I guess this audition was a little unusual in that we weren’t auditioning for a specific part in anything and there was no ‘competition’ auditioning right after us. We were simply being judged based on our performance. I didn’t even really know what the outcome of the audition could be.
“We’ve not formally introduced the jury or your entourage,” Dr. Donahue said. With that, the half-dozen people at the table introduced themselves. I was surprised that Remas was part of the jury as was a post-service student. “We are happy to welcome your mothers to the table,” she continued. “Perhaps you could tell us about the rest of your team.”
“Thank you, Dr. Donahue,” I said. Cindy had nearly shrunk to invisibility. “Cindy and I, along with our dancer/choreographer/agent Sophie, our producer Donna, and our logistics manager Emily, are part of the same pod. Laura and Leon are star students in our videography program at school and are working with Donna to produce a special for our patron base.”
“You say ‘part of the same pod?’ Are there more of you who consider yourselves to be part of this unit?”
“Yes, ma’am. There are seven others. We have an age range of sixteen to forty-two. We are committed to each other, personally and corporately. We will support each other through years of service and hopefully for many years to come. Two of our number are serving now and one has entered service as of this morning. We all talked to her and told her we’d be waiting for her contact from basic in three weeks.”
“That’s a total of…?”
“Twelve of us, ma’am.” I saw one of the other faculty making notes.
From that point, the questions flew regarding everything from our favorite music and musicians to our goals in life after service.
“When looking at your repertoire, we noted a strong bias toward Mozart,” one of them said. “For that reason, we focused on the other composers in your stable. You did an excellent interpretive rendition of the two pieces that showed a strong inclination toward performing beyond the bounds of the composer’s intent. Who does your arranging?”
“We’ve been fortunate to work with our orchestra conductor and our individual instrument instructors on arranging the music.”
“There are no arrangers in your pod?”
“Uh… no, sir.”
“I’d suggest you either find one or become one. You have a unique sound and instrumental combination. You need to have someone providing music for you or things will start to sound the same. That is something coming to the National School of the Arts would help you with.”
That was the first time anyone had specifically mentioned us coming to the school. It marked the turn in conversation from interview to recruitment. Each of the jury members had a good reason we should drop everything and move to Washington DC. Some of the reasons were really good. It just didn’t seem reasonable that we would make that leap with me still having to go into service and Cindy trailing behind. When the comments wound down, Dr. Donahue turned to our mothers.
“You are undoubtedly concerned about sending your children away,” she said. “I sympathize. So much so that I’m suggesting a delay.” She seemed to collect consent from each of the people at the table. “Jacob will turn eighteen this year which starts the clock ticking on when he must begin service. Cindy has a lot more time on her clock. You will note that we suggested this audition date for after Cindy turned sixteen. We can recruit students into pre-service training at that age, but that would only emphasize the difference in timing between the two. We have developed a strategy and it has been approved by our regional service headquarters. There is an early volunteer program that allows students who are under the age of eighteen to begin their service early. Unfortunately, while we can recruit Cindy as a student, we could not recruit her as a volunteer until she’s reached age seventeen, a year from now. Further, there is the matter of splitting up your pod on a moment’s notice. Getting you here for school in six weeks would create an unnecessary hardship in our opinion.”
“So, you are not offering us admission?” I asked, just to make sure I was clear on what she was saying.
“Oh, the offer is certainly on the table. We would like nothing better than to bring you and Cindy into a program here at the National School that would help guide and mold your careers, both in the service and beyond. However, we’d like to suggest this alternate course of action.” Dr. Donahue yielded the floor to the admissions director, Mr. Stern.
“We suggest that you return to Indiana for the next academic year,” he said. “Complete your diploma. Get Cindy through eleventh grade. Prepare your entire pod for a move next fall. We’ll need to assess the pre NSAT for each of your eligible pod members and those currently in service. While you may all need to complete basic and NSO training at different facilities, we would do our best to bring you all together in one location for your service. One year from this week, when Cindy turns seventeen, come here to take your induction oath and Cindy can apply to enter service a year early. As soon as you have completed basic, assuming you pass your requirements, you will be admitted to the school as an in-service student. You will get the best training we can give you to become the top musicians of your instruments. In return, you would be required to perform in a variety of venues on behalf of the National Service. It is not just a free ride to more education. You will pay with your service.”
“Um… sir?” I glanced at Cindy and she gripped my hand as tightly as she could. “You might have noticed that our performances are not always flattering of either the service or, at times, the administration. Are you saying we need to conform to a promotional mode? I’m not sure we can do that.”
Donahue grinned at me and Stern nodded his head.
“It has come to our attention that much of the country is in varying degrees of opposition to the National Service. We want a deputation team that can show the service is open to change and improvement. We are only seven years old. There are bugs to be worked out.”
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