Chapter 165

“I want to be justice, love and the wrath of God all in one.”
—Marjane Satrapi, Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood

16 SEPTEMBER 2021

I’m more nervous about today’s performance than any Cindy and I have given. I haven’t really had time to let all the implications of our performance sink in. It almost feels like Cindy and I have already begun our service. We planned the performance for our patrons and that’s how we’re approaching it, but the National School did all the audience development, provided the space, is paying us to be here and covering our expenses, and is providing the camera crew. Aside from the screw-up with letting us know what was expected—which is still gnawing at me—everything has gone smoothly.

Last night, I found out a little of the dynamics of the commission. It’s got a noble purpose, but like all things that smack of politics, each member of the commission has his or her own little fiefdom at stake. So, they are each trying to bring in a definitive resource to tell the commission what is wrong with the service. We are—I am—Dr. Donahue’s dog in this fight. I think she believes I will toss off another one-liner in the performance tonight that will become a new meme or hashtag or rallying cry. I’m planning to keep my mouth shut as much as possible.

And then there’s Remas. It’s clear she wants to become part of our pod, but even having had sex with her—something I’d repeat anytime and look forward to the next—I’m not sure we know her well enough to marry the girl. And that’s how I look at my pod. Em, Beca, Rachel, Joan, Desi, Brittany, Sophie, Nanette, Livy, Donna, Cindy. I consider myself married to each of them. That is such a contradiction of character for me that I have to shut off all the logical arguments in my head and wall them away so they don’t interfere with the strength of our bonds. Where does Remas fit and how do we deal with yet another girl who is a thousand miles away from us? Did I get the strength of our relationship across to the commission yesterday?

I need to run. Things are always clearer after a run.

I ran a fast 10k with Nanette Thursday morning. If we didn’t get delayed here, I planned to run the race at West Noble Saturday. I’d begun to look at the performance and our relationship with the National School as disruptive to our lives. Donna, Nanette, and Sophie were taking a week off from their jobs. The rest of us were a week away from school. And our employers, teachers, administration ... they all seemed just fine with the disruption because the request came from the National Service.

We had a final run-through at ten. As a test, the video crew would stream the first performance at one o’clock to an auditorium at the National School for an invited audience of students. The eight o’clock evening performance would be streamed to our patrons. We already had a couple thousand reservations in for the evening performance and I was thankful we were routing the stream through the school. They had a much wider bandwidth for a live audience than we had streaming from our usual servers. If our audience kept growing, we’d need something with the streaming capability of ESPN.

What a problem to have.

We didn’t plan to release the entire hour-long video on YouTube. The production crew had promised a solidly tight edit of just the Glory piece for release on YouTube. They’d be able to edit from the recording of both performances to pick the best shots and interpretation.

Our ‘costumes’ arrived at noon as we were all gathered in the dressing room. For Cindy, Desi, Remas, and me, it just meant our regular performance clothes—all black—were clean and pressed. Sophie and Brittany, of course, examined their costumes to be sure everything was perfect. Sophie would dance both Mozart’s Symphony No. 40, first movement, Molto Allegro, what we called I read the manual, and the Glory pieces. Brittany would join her in the Glory dance.

At one o’clock, Cindy and I walked onto the stage to a round of applause from the audience of around 300 people.

Since we had no printed program, Donna welcomed the audience and told them the order of music. Then she introduced Cindy and me and we took over. Between numbers, I gave the name of the next piece we would play. When Remas and Desi joined us for GBU, I introduced them. And, of course, I introduced Sophie and Brittany.

The performance wasn’t flawless, but it was pretty damned good. I saw Dr. D, Governor Adamson, and a couple other of the commission people I recognized slip out as soon as the applause died. Then I was blindsided by a hot redhead.

“I love you! That was awesome,” Rachel said. She planted a kiss on me that had me ready to rush her to bed. She turned and did the same to Cindy who blushed hot pink but returned the kiss with vigor. All our pod mates got greetings once we got Rachel back to the dressing room.

“My entire cadre of forty trainees got assigned to the show. We have to be back in class at three o’clock, but that gives me a few minutes to spend with you,” Rachel said.

“Where are your classes?”

“Just across campus. Even dressed professionally in heels, it’s an easy ten-minute walk. I’m so glad they gave us time to see your performance. Most of the people in the audience were NSO trainees, but we’re at different weeks in our programs.”

“I wondered where they were pulling an audience of 300 people from,” Donna said.

“And you!” Rachel said, turning to Remas. “I’ve heard so much about you and I’m glad I got a chance to meet you with my mates. I’m here for at least eight weeks. I hope we can get together to ... chat, you know.”

“Let’s exchange numbers,” Remas said. “I’ve had fun with the rest of the pod but I’ve really missed meeting you, Joan, and Livy. It will feel like we have a connection here in DC if we can get together sometimes.”

“I have to go. They have zero tolerance for tardiness here. I love you, Jacob. I love you, Beca.” She continued down the line of all our mates and then rushed out the door to make it to class.

“Is the evening audience going to be NSO trainees, too?” I asked Remas.

“I don’t know. I didn’t know about the afternoon. We have people who are responsible for audience development and they didn’t keep me informed of things any better than the contract office did,” Remas said.

“Has that blown over?” I asked.

“Well, I haven’t been back at the office since you got here,” Remas said. “I got an email from Dr. Donahue this morning that said the source of the miscommunication had been identified and the school apologized for causing me undue stress. She reaffirmed my position and promotion were secure.”

“That’s a relief,” Donna said.

“You guys were the reason it was resolved so quickly,” Remas said. “Dr. Donahue is a great person and director of the school, but she does jump to conclusions sometimes. Fortunately, when she’s wrong, she admits it. I don’t think you’ll have any difficulty working with her.”

It was going to be a long night. We managed a quiet dinner with only Dr. Donahue plying us with questions. It was a light meal because we needed to perform at eight o’clock. Apparently, that’s about the time people in Washington start thinking about an evening meal. We needed to be at the theater to get ready at seven. After the hour-long performance, Cindy and I would continue to answer questions from both the audience and our patrons for another half-hour or more. That process would be managed by Joan and we’d respond to questions she highlighted on our iPads. Then there was the cocktail party reception. It wouldn’t even get started until ten. At least it would be held in the lobby of the theater and we wouldn’t have to travel anyplace.

I gathered Cindy, Desi, Sophie, Brittany, and Remas into my arms in the dressing room a few minutes before eight and just whispered a few words about how important each of them was, not just to the performance, but to me personally. I kissed each of them. We all checked in a mirror for lipstick smears and then Cindy and I went to the stage.

We started the program with Piazzolla’s Libertango, a lively enough piece to get things rolling and then did the second movement of Pujol’s Suite Buenos Aires. Those were dynamic enough pieces that they got the audience in a good mood and we followed it up joined by Desi and Remas for The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. The sound pickups on our instruments kept the music from losing volume for the video when we split into three different parts of the stage for our final faceoff. In the theater itself, the acoustics were good enough that we didn’t need to worry about a disconnect.

The last half hour of the performance included Sophie’s stunning dance for I read the manual and got a solid round of applause when she finished with the scroll displayed in front of her. Even though the scroll of Jefferson’s quote was superimposed in the video, the lighting crew had managed a display of the text projected on the end wall of the theater so those in the audience could see it, too.

Our final piece in the main program was the Glory requiem. We’d combined it in our—Remas’s—arrangement with the finale in order to get a solid six minutes for the YouTube release. This piece, too, concluded with a type marquee superimposed over our video and projected on the back wall of the theater.

All persons held as slaves are, and henceforward shall be free. —Abraham Lincoln, Proclamation 95

After the applause died down, the four of us launched into our new improvisational piece, Mozart on Fire. When we ended, the audience was standing to applaud and stomp their feet.

Our concert was finished.

That wasn’t the end. Cindy and I were preparing to answer questions from our fans when Dr. Donahue took center stage.

“We are so pleased to have been able to host Marvel and Hopkins in Washington for this performance and live stream to their patrons. We want everyone to know that we have offered admission to the National School of the Arts to Jacob and Cindy next year. We are happy to further extend that offer to vocalist Desiree Whitcomb and dancer Brittany Adams and hope they will all join us in Washington next summer,” she said. Desi and Britt both squealed when they heard that news and danced around in a circle. “I would like to introduce another guest this evening for just a few words. Ladies and gentlemen, Vermont Governor Aaron Adamson, Chairman of the President’s National Service Review Commission.”