Chapter 18

Jason roused from slumber. Aja’s brown arm was around his waist from behind. He started to rise and she held him tight. “I’m not letting you go,” she said.

“I need to whiz.”

“You’ll be right back?”

“Right back.”

He returned and rejoined her between the sheets. They lay facing each other and caressing each other’s face. “That was amazing sex last night,” he said. “Messy, sticky, sweaty...”

“Mmm ... Tonight is bath night,” she replied, “so messy, sticky, sweaty is out.”

“I dunno, Aja. Last night could hold me for a few days.”

“I know. I’m still glowing inside. Did you have plans for today?”

“I thought I’d take Daymon to the station and let him play with the board in the auxiliary control room.”

“He’ll get a kick out of that.”

“Care to tag along?”

“I’ve got things to do. Unlike you, it’s not easy for me to get stuff done during the day.”

“Feel like dinner out? I could make reservations.”

“Maybe...”

“It’s getting late. We should get busy.” Aja pushed him onto his back and lay atop him. She cradled his face in her palms and covered it with kisses. “This isn’t the kind of getting busy I was thinking about.”

“I don’t want more sex,” she replied. “I just can’t get enough Jason.” She rolled off of him. “I’ll take a quick shower and make coffee.”

Jason sat at a small desk in her room. He flipped open a tablet and reviewed his email. Aja stepped out of the bathroom in her robe and with a shower cap on her head. “Water’s nice and soft this morning,” she said. “The softener must’ve recharged overnight.”

“I have email from my sister,” he said, “regarding my mom’s visit next week. She’ll put her on the coach at eight and we pick her up at the intermodal station at half past noon.”

“Bus? I though she was going to fly.”

“She was, but the airline discontinued nonstop service from here to there. Now, if you want to fly, you need to change planes in Baltimore. What was a half-hour flight is now six hours or more.”

“Your mom doesn’t drive?”

“Around town, yes. Not this sort of distance. Her vision isn’t very good.”

“I’d be glad to look at her eyes, Jason. I’d do it for no charge.”

“I’ll pass that along.” He switched off his tablet. “I’ll take my shower now.”

The doorbell rang and Jason answered it. He saw Phyllis and Daymon standing on the stoop. “Come in,” he said. Daymon entered carrying a backpack. “What do you have there?” he asked.

“CDs. I thought we could make a mix disc.”

“I think we can.”

“Is Aja around?” Phyllis asked.

“She left about an hour ago to run some errands. I’ll bet she could’ve given Daymon directions to get here on the bus.”

“I’ll bet she could. I’m amazed at how well she gets around without a car. I understand why she don’t have one, though”

“We’re working on that,” Jason replied. “She and I have reservations at a new Asian place downtown so we’ll drop Daymon off on our way there.”

“Well, I hope you have a good time.”

“Thanks, Auntie,” Daymon said.

“Walk with me, Jason,” Phyllis said. Jason headed toward the door and Daymon followed him. “You stay put,” she said to her nephew. “Grown-ups need to talk.”

“Yes, m’am.”

Jason walked with Phyllis toward the visitors’ lot. “I wanted to say,” she said, “I see the difference in her since you’ve been in her life. You are good for her, Jason. She has had her share of trouble with men. More’n her share. When she announced that she had invited you to share her home, I was alarmed. Of course I didn’t say anything in front of her but after you left, Oscar and I had a long discussion. I wanted him to intervene, but he says, they adults. Adults make their decisions and deal with the consequences. She’s a big girl, she’ll be thirty in April.”

“I wanted you to be the first to know -- we’ve set a date. October twenty-one, next year.”

“Oh, Jason!” She threw her arms around him and hugged him. “I know you two will be very happy. Have you told your mom yet?”

“Not yet. My mom is visiting next week and we’ll tell her then. If Aja tells you, make sure you pretend it’s news.”

“Will do, Jason.” Phyllis said as she unlocked the white Chrysler. “Bless you -- the both of you. And, welcome to the family.”

Jason headed back inside. “Okay, Daymon, let’s go.”

Daymon headed toward Jason’s car and they drove toward the radio station. Jason opened the rear employee’s entrance and escorted him into the radio control room.

“Hello, Art-Thur,” he said to the engineer on duty.

“Jay-Son, good afternoon. What brings you here today?”

“This is Daymon -- Aja’s cousin. He thinks he might want a career in radio, so I was going to show him Control Room B ... unless it’s an imposition.”

“Carry on. Oh, by the way -- I caught Aja’s set at Summer Blast. I didn’t realize what a set of pipes she has. Tell her I thought her performance was awesome.”

“I will tell her that.”

Jason led Daymon into the auxiliary control room and closed the door. “Wow!” the boy exclaimed as he looked around.

“It looks complicated but it’s really rather simple,” Jason explained. “The board has two outputs -- Audition and Line. Audition normally goes to the speakers mounted up here. Normally, Line would go to the transmitter if we were doing a broadcast from here. Right now, I have it patched into our digital recorder.”

“Okay, cool,” Daymon remarked.

“Each of these faders is connected to a source. We have CD1 and CD2, two compact disc players. We also have faders for the boom mic and the mic in the announcer’s booth. We still use cartridge tape, so we have faders for those.”

“Awesome...”

“Above each fader is a switch. When it’s in the center, that fader is disconnected. If you flip the switch to the left, it connects the source to Audition; to the right it connects to Line. Got it?”

“Yeah...”

“I’m going to set up the digital recorder.” He pulled a keyboard from a slide beneath the mixer panel and typed “Daymon WNLX Mix Disc” to create a recording program. “The recorder is really only a computer with some special hardware and a very large hard drive,” he said. “It’s capable of recording four tracks, which is plenty for our purposes. We’ll be using two today for stereo left and right. Are you with me?”

“Oh, yeah, Jason. It’s all really cool.”

“The recorder on this board has touch screen. When you’re ready to record, just touch the big red button on the screen. The trick to making a mix disc is to switch between CD players -- cue CD1 on Audition and set your levels. Then start the recording, switch CD1 to Line and hit Play. While that cut is playing, you cue CD2 on Audition, set levels, switch it to Line. When CD1 is done, switch it back to Audition and press Play on CD2. You can get a rhythm going. Ready?”

“Ready, Jason.”

“Don’t forget to press record.”

“Right...” Daymon touched the screen, flipped the CD1 switch to Line and pressed Play on the drive. He cued CD2 with his second selection. Jason watched as the boy switched from one drive to the other. “I think you’ve got the hang of it, Daymon. Once it’s all recorded, I’ll show you how to mix it down and burn a disc.”

Daymon sat in the passenger seat holding his new mix disc in a clear CD jewel case. “We have some time before your cousin and I have to get ready for dinner,” Jason said. “Would you like to give me a hand setting up my audio equipment?”

“Oh, yeah,” Daymon replied. “I sure would.”

“This won’t be a permanent setup -- just to see how it fits in the condo. I’ll pop into the hardware and get a spool of speaker wire.”

They reached the condo. Jason and Daymon began hauling equipment up from the basement. “Grab a couple of chairs from the kitchen,” Jason instructed, “and we’ll use them as stands for the rear speakers. I’ll put the columns on either side of her bookcase. Run downstairs and see if you can find that power strip.”

“Right, Jason.”

Jason finished making connections. He picked up a remote control. “Let’s make sure we have the phasing correct...” He pressed buttons to send white noise to different combinations of speakers. “Switch the polarity on the right rear.” Jason tested the setup again. “Sounds good.”

The front door opened and Aja entered. “What is going on here?”

“We’re trying out Jason’s audio setup,” Daymon replied.

“Those speakers had better not scratch those chairs,” she said. “We have wires running everywhere.”

“It’s a test setup to see how it sounds here in the living room,” Jason replied. “Since the basement is unfinished, I can run wires under the floor for a permanent installation.”

“You’ll be drilling holes in the floor?”

“The wires would go in the walls. The two rear speakers I’d mount on the wall at about the six foot level. I can paint them to match so they won’t be intrusive. The only other things you’d see would be the two towers and I’d replace your current TV with my sixty inch one.”

“Jason ... I don’t know. Those columns are so ugly.”

“No, they’re not. I think they go well with your decor. They’d be on either side of your bookcase.”

“You can see the insides.”

“You mean, you can see the drivers. That’s because I have the foam covers off. I can put them on if you’d like.”

“What’s the point of all this? I told you, I probably can’t hear any improvement.”

“We were just about to try it out.” He led her to her sofa. “You sit here and I have just the disc to test it with.” He dropped a CD into a player, closed the drawer and started playback.

“The church service,” Aja remarked, her jaw slack. “Oh, my God! It sounds like you’re sitting right in the middle of the congregation.” She looked up at Jason. “When I’m wrong, I’ll admit it and I was wrong. Even with my tinnitus this sounds fantastic, Jason -- the ambiance.”

“Here comes the solo...” They heard Aja’s voice as she sang a solo gospel number.

“She’s right over there,” Daymon said, pointing to the left.”

“How?” Aja asked. “This came from the broadcast?”

“Derrick’s mixer board isn’t like what we have at the station,” Jason explained. “His is more like what you’d find on a sound stage. He can adjust the spatial placement of each sound source, and he has microphones all over that church. The mixdown he feeds us is surround-sound encoded. If you had this sort of setup and were listening to the FM broadcast live, it would sound like this. Lucas Street AME is the only church we broadcast in surround-sound. All the others are in dull, boring mono.” Jason ejected the disc. “Well?”

“If you can make it look neat...”

“Oh, I can. Actually, we’ll need less equipment than for your current setup. Right now you have a DVD player for your TV and a CD player for your stereo. I’d integrate everything, so the TV is part of the sound system. We’d use my BluRay player for movies and for audio. I’m not using the subwoofer -- it would only annoy your neighbors, anyway; and I’m not using the front center speaker. The receiver can create a ghost center channel. Believe me, you’ll love it when you see it. Right now, Daymon’s going to give me a hand stashing all in the basement, until I have time for a proper installation.”