Chapter 139

“You’re a storyteller. Dream up something wild and improbable.”
—Laini Taylor, Strange the Dreamer

INDIA INK

Those words you found on the written page
That sounded so wise, the thoughts of a sage,
They weren’t really mine; I confess to deceit.
They just came from my pen as I sat in my seat:
The words and the thoughts of someone, I think,
Who works in a lab mixing India Ink.

I know each bottle I buy at the store
Is filled with great words of wisdom and lore.
Great poems, a novel, a play and short story,
Fantasy figures and tales of glory—
Thought up in front of a stainless steel sink
By the chemist who mixes India Ink.

Ms. Faber, our creative writing teacher, liked my ditty. I got an A on it. She wasn’t quite so fond of my narrative poem.

“If you decide you’d like to submit this somewhere for publication, talk to me first,” she said. “I can show you how to cut half of it and not lose the sense.”

Okay, so it was a little repetitive. That was part of the point. But the new assignment was going to kill me. We were supposed to write a personal essay based on a life experience. I couldn’t even think of a life experience I wanted to write about. Ms. Faber wasn’t Ms. Levy. If I wrote about my amazing sex life, I’d be put on detention and recommended for counseling. I could write about music or running but it seemed I’d used those topics for nearly every class I’d had. I didn’t know enough about fame yet to draw any conclusions.

It was going to be a long week.

Everyone wants something for nothing. I suppose that’s true of me, too. But I also have respect for the worth of things. I tried to let that show Tuesday afternoon when Cindy and I met with the string quartet to rehearse.

“How loud do you want us in this section?” Darrell, our violist, asked.

“Um ... Why are you asking me?” I had no idea how loud he should play.

“You guys are the soloists. We’re accompanists. You get to choose how it’s played.”

“Just don’t give us some weird tempo that will make us look bad,” Rhonda, the cellist, said.

“I ... uh ... don’t know.” I looked desperately at Cindy. She looked like she wanted to crawl in a hole. She took a deep shuddering breath and stood up.

“Mr. LeBlanc has been rehearsing us on this all year,” she said. “Changing from full orchestra to a sextet shouldn’t change any of the markings or tempos he’s given us. Carol, you’re in first chair now,” she said looking at our violinist. “Please tune us and give us the beat to get us started.”

“Yes, ma’am,” she said. Cindy cringed a little. Nonetheless, Carol gave us the note we needed to tune to and then tapped out the tempo with her bow. We were a little ragged coming in and she stopped. “If I have the tempo, you have to follow me,” she said. “Let’s take it again.” She waved her bow and we actually all made the entrance. We ran straight through and stopped. I think we were all breathing kind of hard.

“I think we let the tempo creep up on us,” Cindy said. “I’m out of breath.”

“Yeah. It was like a race to the finish,” Rhonda said. “Without a conductor, how do we hold the tempo?”

We worked for an hour and ran sections with Carol sometimes counting the beat out loud. The last run-through wasn’t bad. In fact, I liked it a lot.

“I love working with you guys,” I said. “It was hard work but we really made progress. Thank you for your leadership, Carol.”

“I only did what our boss asked,” she said, looking at Cindy. I smiled at that.

“Hey, we are going to get this pulled together for the Spring Preview Concert in six weeks. How would you all feel about performing it a week before that?” I asked.

“Really? Where?”

“My church has asked Cindy and me to perform for Easter sunrise service and has left it up to us to determine what we play,” I said. “We could do this and have a real performance under our belts before the concert.”

“Sounds cool,” Jack said. He was bagging his double bass to put in the storeroom.

“Sure. It’s not like we’re ever going to get paid for something like this,” Rhonda muttered. “I don’t know why I waste my time.”

“Wait!” I said. “I forgot we were planning to do a live stream of the performance that morning for our patrons. If you are willing to do the stream with us, we could pay ... a hundred bucks apiece?” Everyone looked at me like I’d just grown another head. Shit! I hope I didn’t offend everyone. “Is that not enough? We’re not experienced in paying performers. Everyone who has done something with us has been part of our pod.”

“You two are... ?”

“I say we do it,” Carol said. “We’re going to rehearse this two afternoons a week for six weeks regardless. Getting a hundred bucks for it makes it almost okay.”

“I agree,” Darrell said. “Thanks for offering to pay, Jacob. I think we would have done it for free—at least I would have—but being treated like our contribution is worth something really helps.”

Bruce Sandusky came up to me Wednesday morning. From what I’d put together out of pieces of V2 memory and things my parents had said, Bruce must have been my best friend in grade school. Since V3 came to life, we haven’t spoken more than a half-dozen sentences to each other. But suddenly Wednesday morning, we were old buddies again when he caught up with me in the hall after third period.

“Jake, me lad, how’s my man?”

“Oh, hey, Bruce. Good. You?”

“Never better. My Janice is so hot my cock is about to melt. I made her shave so we didn’t start a brush fire.”

“Oh ... uh ... interesting.”

“Hey, she’s a real big fan of Marvel and Hopkins. How about doing me a fav and shooting me the link to your latest performance? She’d go apeshit if she got to see it before anyone else,” he said.

“Oh. I’d like to, but I can’t do that.”

“Why, man? I told her I’d get it for her.”

“Um ... sorry but until we release it on the thirteenth, it is exclusively for members of our Patreon community.”

“Man, you going to screw me on this for five bucks? You sure have gone mercenary.” He was getting a little huffy and I was getting PO’d.

“It’s not about the money to me. It’s our contract with patrons. They paid for exclusive viewing rights until it’s released to the public. Giving out the link to non-patrons is cheating the patrons who paid for it.” Not only that, once the link was out it would get posted, probably on Bruce’s girlfriend’s Facebook and Twitter and Instagram.

“Yeah, whatever. Don’t let your head get so big it doesn’t fit through the doors.” He stormed off. I felt pretty strongly about dealing honestly with my patrons but maybe I was being too uptight about it. I was going to check this out with the pod to make sure we were all on the same page.

We were all over at Donna’s studying Wednesday night. Cindy’s mom had sent over a huge pan of lasagna for our dinner and we were all moaning about how full we were. We got the table cleared and were sitting around it with open computers and pads of paper. Desi and Beca were sprawled on the sofa with books open and Livy and Rachel were moaning about their class in business law and ethics. It was a dual credit class at Ivy Tech and was their first class in the morning. At least they were taking it together.

I’d finished my English assignment and sat with a blank screen in front of me, trying to figure out what to write for my creative writing personal essay. Every time I wrote something down, I backspaced it until it was gone.

Donna was sitting across from me, working her way through a pile of literary review essays. It didn’t look like she was having any fun, either.

“I’m sorry pod mates,” she sighed. “I need a glass of wine. I seem to have a class of illiterates this term and I need to dull my senses.” Nanette already had a bottle and three glasses on the kitchen counter and was removing the cork.

“Trade you,” I said. “I’ll grade your illiterate essays if you’ll write me a literate one.”

She tossed a pile of papers in front of me.

“What’s your subject?” she asked.

“Seriously?”

“No, not seriously. You know I wouldn’t do that. I’m willing to brainstorm with you, though. It would be a good break.”

“We need to get home,” Rachel said. “Who’s riding back with me?” Livy, Desi, Brittany, Cindy, and Beca all raised their hands. “Jacob, trade cars with me, please. I need six seats.”

“Sure. I think I’ll stick around and brainstorm this paper with Donna. Thanks for taking care of our girlfriends, sweetheart,” I said. I kissed Rachel and she whispered in my ear.

“With Donna, Nanette, and Sophie all drinking wine, I wouldn’t hurry home if I were you.” I kissed her again and then worked my way down the line of girlfriends as they headed out the door.

“Let’s get more comfortable,” Sophie said. With that, she did that Houdini thing I’ve discovered women can do where she pulled her arms inside her shirt, wiggled a little and thrust them back out of the sleeve holes holding her bra.

“If you get much more comfortable than that, I’ll never get this essay written,” I sighed. On the other hand, given the choice between writing my essay and watching Sophie get really comfortable ... Nanette shoved a glass of wine into my hand.