This One Time At Band Camp
No? Okay, sorry. I got it now. I know what people mean when they say I lack stage presence or whatever, I thought you were going back to that. I misunderstood you.
So yeah, I don’t really talk and I don’t really like using vocal tracks. The vocals aren’t exactly the same thing—I do use them, like you said—but it’s related. And if I’m uncomfortable with the question it’s because I’ve been asked it before and I explained myself badly.
There’s nothing wrong with talking or singing, it’s just not what I do. For me… Anything I express during a show, I want to do it in the music. I’m starting to get a bit more relaxed about it, maybe, but when I talk it’s more like an interruption—or that’s what it feels like to me, and since it feels like that to me it comes across as unsure and the uncertainty seeps into the music and I don’t want that. If I have the stage, and I have your attention, I know that isn’t forever and I know I can’t control how you interpret what I’m doing. But there is a part of what I do that’s practiced, that’s deliberate, that I can control, and I’m not gonna ruin it by talking.
Ages ago, back when her boldest piercing was the one through her tongue and her hair was only discoloured by a few blue streaks, Vinyl Scratch lived alone.
Technically she still lived alone, but it wasn't the same. Once upon a time, people didn’t notice her. Tried not to notice her, even. It had been strange to feel that alone, especially since Vinyl had never felt less lonely.
Her first apartment was halfway up an old concrete building at the end of a long concrete hallway. One of the best things about living there was never having to see the place when she looked outside. Being at the end of the hall meant she had two exterior walls and a little less space than her neighbours, which suited her fine. Her power bill was high enough without more space to heat.
Encamped here, Vinyl watched a handful of years play by like an unedited film reel. Tiptoeing around the edges of life eventually became impossible and she got sucked in and painted up and put on stage, but for that little era the only people who payed her any mind were ones she was glad to have do so. Nobody she knew would question her whether she slept all day or woke up with the sun and worked until it set. It was like someone had cast a spell and she magically slipped into the background.
An old man lived in the apartment opposite her. Alone as well, he was a short and skinny foreigner in his sixties. He left early and his lights usually went out after he had a drink on his balcony around ten. Every now and then Vinyl would see him when she was out—at the grocery store, maybe, or at the liquor store across the street. He drank beer. He preferred the cheapest imports, but if something good was on special it was certain that a few unusual empties would show up in the bags outside his door. And he was a mailman. His jacket and cap said so. Until she saw him on a bus one day, that was all she knew about him.
Since Vinyl got on at the first stop she could almost always get her favorite seat. Window, driver’s side, all the way at the back. That day the seat next to her was eventually filled by someone with a distractingly orange shopping bag made of wastefully thick plastic, from which this person pulled a heavy new sketchpad and a sleeve of sharpened pencils.
Vinyl knew nothing about art supplies, but one glance was enough to convince her that these ones were expensive. The paper was thick, and even under the dull fluorescent bus lights it glowed. She had to look away from the blank first page, it was impossible not to imagine the number of pads like that which had been bought by aspiring artists and now probably sat in drawers, their first five or six pages amateurishly filled with forgotten scribbles. She would have been too intimidated to draw on it, way too intimidated to learn on it.
The cars and storefronts slipping by grabbed her attention while she thought about this, but Vinyl eventually looked back just on reflex.
Even in pencil, the sketch was amazing.
She knew less about drawing than she did about art supplies, but she still knew this was incredible. This person drew so quickly, with little mechanical motions and no structure (or none that she could see, anyway), and perfect shapes just sprung up under his hand. Eventually she looked up and recognized her neighbour, and apparently he sensed that she had done so because he paused and smiled at her, but he didn’t say anything and went back to his pad.
The detail in the features had amazed her, but a moment later they were brought together in the single form of a face and Vinyl was left utterly baffled. It took her only a second to find the person on the page—a young man in a suit standing by the door, staring at the opening pages of a new hardback bestseller. The image was perfect. Not a single stroke was wasted or misplaced.
Vinyl watched her neighbour’s eyes, but they never once looked up at his model. Ten minutes from their building, at a stop about a block away from a club where Vinyl knew a couple strippers, her neighbour jumped through the doors at the last minute. On his way out he handed the man the picture, and by the time the guy registered what had happened the bus was moving again. He was still staring at the torn page when Vinyl got off.
During her tenancy in that apartment Vinyl saw him do that maybe a dozen times. She never distracted him or talked, and he never sat next to her again.
The fifth time it was a drawing of her. Hair in her face, hand on her cheek, staring out the window with a peaceful, happy… Smile? Smirk?
Whatever the expression—or even the emotion in her expression—she had never seen it before. On anyone. It defied description, it came across in every one of her features, every detail, the way each strand of hair fell over her forehead and the relaxation with which her eyelids hovered open. The short shadows of her fingers over one cheek and the longer one of her nose over the other. Even her earrings were right, their shininess somehow exaggerated in dull graphite strokes. There was nothing that didn’t call attention to something else. It was uncanny, possibly a truer representation of its subject than the subject itself. If she truly had been wearing that pensive stare, she felt sure no one else had ever noticed it.
***
This is where Vinyl usually stopped talking. She had plenty of other stories from that era, most of which were far more outlandish, and though this was one of her favourites it was also a bit of a test for her, a track she could play back on anyone for a sense of their emotional compatibility. When she told it (and she rarely did) she would watch the listener and just take in their reactions. It rarely failed to give an answer by this point.
But that was not where the story ended.
***
A few nights after receiving her portrait Vinyl stepped onto her balcony for a drink, her feet bare and her hair still dripping from a hasty shower. He was there, on his deck with his own open can, but Vinyl’s eyes and nose were immediately drawn to the smoldering, self-rolled cigarette between his fingers that she suspected contained no tobacco. More than a few of her neighbors availed themselves of that particular habit, but Vinyl was momentarily surprised to learn that this grizzled foreigner partook. She opened her can to get his attention. Confronted by his gentle smile, Vinyl was bizarrely conscious of her baggy T-shirt and undersized shorts, despite the fact that she had stood out here in them plenty of times, not always alone, and occasionally for the same purpose as her neighbour.
The man took a long drag and offered it to her.
“You make music?” He asked her while she smoked. Vinyl handed it back, coughing. It burned worse than she was used to.
“It’s not too loud, is it?” She asked.
He shook his head. “Not too loud. I don’t sleep much, slept too much a long time ago. You know?” He chuckled a little while Vinyl tried to swallow her coughing with a couple sips of her drink. “Too much time wasted. Besides, you are not here every night. I sleep no better either way. Boyfriend?”
“Something like that,” Vinyl said, unsure how much she ought to reveal, taking another drag in the meantime.
“Girlfriend?”
Vinyl held her breath until he took it back, and managed not to cough. “Something like that.”
“Hah!” The man started laughing with enthusiasm, but only the first laugh had any sound behind it. The rest were almost like coughing, but Vinyl could still hear the mirth in his deep, raspy chortles. “You mean neither, then. Good.” This time Vinyl waved him off when he offered, and he finished what was left in a few solid drags. “You’ll be old like me soon, you’re smarter than I was if you can tell when chasing is worth it.”
“It isn’t often.”
He reached for an ash tray. “No. But sometimes…”
Vinyl found herself nodding. Chasing was a good word. She didn’t chase. Really, she didn’t bring that many people back to her apartment. She didn’t deny herself but she wasn’t indulgent either, and at any rate other people had homes too. She took things forward if they fell in her lap, but she didn’t chase.
“I was a fool once. I tried to get to know people forever. Like my drawings.” The old man leaned out over the city, his mind probably as far away as his homeland, wherever that was. “Why we don’t think about time? We do, but not when it comes to people. Every person we meet we sort in our minds in some way, but we never say ‘how long should I know this person?’ Forever? A year? A week? A day?” He turned away from the horizon and looked at her knowingly, his eyes pinched like he was squinting to see through a haze. “A night?”
Vinyl didn’t flinch, the man was plainly indulging in his intoxication. “Twenty minutes on a bus?”
His mad grin widened, pulling his thin lips back over his tobacco-stained teeth. “I never spoke after to someone I did that to. Did you keep it?”
“Yes,” she whispered. A strange euphoria began tickling her chilly toes at his remark, and she was surprised to find herself suddenly brimming with urgent questions to the point that she could barely bring herself to phrase any. “Of course I did. That was… how can you do that? You just draw things like—”
“No, sorry.” He cut her off with a wave and backed away, shaking his head. “Forgive me, that was weak. I should not have asked.”
Vinyl stared at the diminutive man as he looked back out over the glowing night, the streets almost completely silent. “Were you… I mean, you’re an artist now, too. But were you ever—”
“I am a postman.” It was clear that he was not going to argue.
“Do you only draw?”
“I paint. I draw for other reasons. I draw to listen.” He looked behind himself, and after a moment’s pause he gestured towards his room.
Vinyl found herself walking through their building to his door. He was not there to meet her in their dull white hallway and for a moment she wondered whether she should wait, but the door was unlocked and when she stepped inside she quickly noticed the obvious fact that they lived in mirrored layouts of each other’s homes. She knew where to go by making every wrong turn, like she had entered her own apartment in some odd parallel universe.
In his version of her living/bedroom there was a camp bed in the corner and a tarp on the floor, and an easel, and some vague shapes she couldn’t really identify in the dark. Instinct made her reach for the light switch in exactly the wrong place. She hit it.
It was too much. His paintings were incredible. Not meticulously detailed like his sketches, but done in happy strokes of brilliant colour with a patch here or there in striking focus and detail. They looked blurred, softly suggestive of the shapes that occupied them, and Vinyl could not imagine seeing any of his landscapes in real life without her eyes welling up and blurring in exactly the same way. And there were so many, stacked along the walls and hanging haphazardly over each other, like they had been hastily stored for transport to the next famous gallery, absent their brothers that had sold thus far.
“I listen when you work, sometimes,” he said. “It is fair you should see this.”
“You…” She wanted to ask something meaningful, to say anything that would match the bizarre magic before her in significance, but she managed only a pathetic, unimportant question: “Where do you keep them?”
“I give them away. Like the bus, once they are done they go. It is like drawing, I think; the image is stuck to me and struggling to escape and when finally it is on the page, I have peace. We are free of each other. Once they are done, I move on.”
Vinyl’s fingers hovered, shaking, above the surface of one of the images. “You don’t, I mean…” She looked around his apartment. It was nicer than hers, but that was only due to the fact that her own furniture consisted of whatever her landlady wasn’t using for his other tenants. “Sell them?”
“Hah!” He choked on his laughter again in that same, breathless cough. “Once, I tried many times. I sold some. Not enough. I wished most of all to be a successful painter, but I only got my second wish.”
Vinyl could barely breathe. To be a mailman? “What?”
This time he laughed only once, before closing his eyes and shaking his head. “Surely, if I wished most to be a successful painter, my second wish could be only one thing…” Vinyl had no idea what, but her heartbeat was tearing her apart. “To be... an unsuccessful painter!” He said, and he tossed his head back again, too happy to breathe as his throat worked out his empty chuckles at the joke he sounded too used to telling. A single laugh escaped Vinyl’s tight throat and threatened to send her over the edge, her vision actually blurring and she just started laughing and before long she wouldn’t be able to control it.
“Go, now. Don’t be bothered by an old postman.”
She wanted to apologize, to say he was wrong, but she found herself nodding and backing away anyway and the next thing she knew she was at her door and she made the mistake of looking down the long, white hallway to nowhere in her badly fitting underwear and just stood there, bare legs shivering, before getting back inside her little room. It was dark and she could hear every breath she took before she even felt it lodge in her throat, each deeper but no more stable than the last.
She didn’t feel anything from the drug but her mind was still swimming, his words echoing clearly and getting louder when she fell, sprawling on the big mattress on her floor and not even bothering to get undressed, but the position was too much and she ended up hugging a pillow and just fucking shaking, staring at the base of her wall which was only a few steps from that unsuccessful artist and his unthinkably perfect pictures which were probably all dozing in his room of unsuccessful art.
It was the only time Vinyl felt truly lonely while she lived there. She could never tell whether the emotion was her own or if he had just somehow impressed his upon her. The phantom feeling of some imagined companion conjured itself against her that night and kept her calm even as it made her feel emptier. Right then she knew a handful of people who would be willing to share a bed but none she would let see her like this, so she woke up alone, and when she was calm enough to find a friend and bowl her over with the tension she refused to explain, she did.
They spoke a couple more times, and she spotted him on the bus doing his portraits every now and then. She only ever saw one more of his paintings. He moved out three months before she did. They hadn’t crossed paths for at least a week, but she knew from the little rectangle wrapped in wrinkled paper leaning against her door that he was gone. It took her a week to work up the guts to open it.
This is where Octavia started crying.
Octavia’s spoon stopped swirling through her cloudy cocktail and fell, clattering to rest in her glass. She had been staring into her drink for so long, pinching that thin-stemmed piece of silverware like a scalpel, that Vinyl had started to worry.
“What is that?” Vinyl rubbed her eyes, yawning. “I forget what you ordered. Coffee something?” It looked really good.
“You never went to band camp, Vinyl.” Octavia’s eyes stayed fixed on her drink like she had caught it cheating on her.
Doing her best to smile, Vinyl continued. “What’s in it? Kirsch? I kinda want one.”
“Vinyl… You’ve never been to band camp.”
The second time they met, Vinyl managed to convince the cellist that she had never learned to read music. It had taken some work, but the look on Octavia’s face when she finally bought it had been worth every second. She was wearing that look again tonight. Vinyl shrugged. “They didn’t do it at my school.”
“No?”
“No. We went on trips and stuff.”
“Oh, you did now?” Octavia looked up, her head tilted at a ridiculous angle. She couldn’t be serious about this.
“Yeah, we did. We’d do a tour once a year, maybe, and go to a couple festivals. We just never went to camp.” Octavia did not look reassured. “What? It was fun, I had fun. Who cares if I never went to camp? How much have you been drinking, anyway?”
“Okay...” Octavia said, nodding. Maybe she was coming to terms with it. “And you call yourself a musician?”
Maybe not.
“Well, I write and play music, I guess. And people pay me for it too. Sometimes. Sure, I’m a musician.” A sharp nod tossed Vinyl’s bangs over her eyes, and she smoothed them back as she dragged out the biggest, most simpering grin she could manage.
Eyeing Vinyl suspiciously, the cellist lifted her glass and missed her lips, staining the rim with a smear of dark red lipstick, but she pretended she hadn’t and still kept her eyes fixed on Vinyl’s while she drank. Vinyl lifted her brow. Octavia’s goofy mishap had ripped through her facade of seriousness, and when she set the glass down there was restrained laughter tugging at her eyes.
The tension lost. Vinyl took a bitter shot of coffee from a cup obviously meant for sipping. Too bad, anything this delicious deserved to be taken in real doses. The waiter would be around soon to top it up anyway. Nothing would ever make paying this much for three mouthfuls of black coffee seem normal, but she needed the caffeine and this coffee was really, really, good.
Her now-empty cup was staring back at her, and didn’t offer any disagreement. “I’m gonna hazard a guess, Octavia. You did go to band camp.”
Octavia perked up, raising her eyebrows and smirking a little, apparently happy enough with her teasing to drop it. “I did, yes.” She sunk a finger into the foam on her drink, curling out a dollop and sticking it in her mouth just before it dropped on her grey blouse. “I enjoyed it quite a lot, actually.”
Vinyl watched Octavia suck her finger clean. Her coffee was still empty. “I’m happy for you.”
They were drinking in the lounge of a hotel in which neither of them were staying. Octavia had just done a small gig and was wearing the smart, low-interference outfit she had played in (though apparently it wasn’t as comfortable as the stretchy cotton pyjamas in which Vinyl knew she practiced) which besides the blouse included a slim skirt and stockings. She also wore her bow tie, which she insisted was purple despite Vinyl’s assertion that it was only a few shades darker than her lipstick. Whatever she wore, Octavia didn’t look out of place in the dimly-lit, thickly-carpeted bar that currently had fewer patrons than fireplaces.
Vinyl had been anticipating a rare empty night before her publicist had called and asked her to make an appearance at a new rooftop club. She turned her down at first—having spent all night traveling, all day awake, and none of the last two days playing—but then an acquaintance to whom she owed a favour called to invite her to a new rooftop club he was opening. Go figure. So she called back and told her publicist that she’d changed her mind, and her mildly confused publicist had sent her the details. It turned out the club was across the street from the hotel that apparently owned it, and for some reason the flier listed all the events being hosted in all their facilities. One private function’s announcement mentioned the cellist that was going to be playing, so Vinyl arranged to grab a bite with Octavia before the show.
It was an odd confluence of events, maybe, but everyone in the Equestrian music world knew it for the delightful little tangle of crisscrossing paths and unexpected connections it was, so Vinyl was used to serendipity, welcome or otherwise.
Taking in Octavia’s costume led her to suspect that her own outfit had probably cost the most, even though it would make her stick out more than her blue hair did if anyone else entered the room. A hunt through her disorganized luggage had yielded a pair of designer jeans that had gone somewhat neglected and took their revenge by fitting tighter than she remembered. She had enough tank tops and tees to offset the possibility of a crisis on that front, and she had chosen one in orange neon that didn’t quite make it to her first navel ring. It too had gone somewhat neglected, but apparently bore no grudge and rewarded her for the choice by fitting a bit tighter than she remembered. Feeling nostalgic, she had opted for a pair of sunglasses with yellow lenses that she hadn’t worn since she started favoring her purple ones. Also, she couldn’t find her purple ones.
Maybe she was neglecting her clothes too much.
Nothing she wore was cheap, but she had learned to shop like this after a few fashion show gigs that had practically come with wardrobe requirements, and it was a look she found herself very reluctant to give up.
Although...
Octavia’s clothes might look neutral, but Vinyl was wary of being deceived. It’s just like that damn cello. Vinyl could sell all her equipment and then she might afford the insurance for that thing. Can’t see what she’s wearing underneath.
Sure, Tavi was a geek, but she was a weirdly playful one with really mismatched tastes that only made sense to her, and she was good at showing only what was necessary on the surface. It wasn’t really fair that the cellist pulled off such a reserved look so well. They had similar features, but Vinyl knew her height made her look skinnier. No, really it made her look lanky. Octavia could let her proportions do all the talking. Or her complexion. Same with her hair, actually. Thick, black, and enviably cooperative compared to Vinyl’s unkempt mop that behaved with the uniqueness of its color and somehow maintained an industrial-grade oil output no matter how well it was washed. Octavia had chided her for it, but she had once confessed to thinking that if it weren’t for the fact it was neon blue her hair would be entirely unremarkable.
A solo piano recording played more quietly than was necessary on the room’s (not unsophisticated) sound system. Since they had stopped talking, Octavia had been staring at her and hadn’t blinked once. “So, what have you been doing these days?”
Vinyl ran her hands through her hair. Octavia was starting to sound like a reporter. Or an old friend, maybe. Not someone she had been away from for a week. Must be the alcohol.
“Just got back from the coast, played a couple beach gigs.” The memory made her grin. “Told you that already. What else? Finished a tour pretty recently obviously, I’m trying to take it easy until the pressure starts mounting for an album. Mostly I’m working on some new stuff and booking into the summer circuit.” She glanced at her empty cup. “Also, I haven’t slept since yesterday.”
“Neither have I, it’s past midnight.”
“Then two days ago.”
Octavia was nodding, looking a little worried. “You mentioned that earlier. You do look tired.”
She didn’t need to see herself to know it. It was a relief to be talking again, especially since she’d only managed to buy a handful of drinks at the club. Her ‘friend’ didn’t give her anything and they were badly understaffed. Only one person bought her any drinks even though she recognized at least three promoters and a dozen patrons. It was mostly professionals who looked like they’d rather be at a casino or a strip club and a lot of kids who’d obviously been packed in by the promoters.
The place was too young to have a personality still. Or bartenders, apparently.
“Oh, how was the beach?” Octavia’s eyes shot open as the silence distracted her from her worries. She sounded jealous, and started stirring her drink again. “How come I can’t get gigs like that?”
“Learn to play the ukulele.” Octavia stuck out her tongue, her smile dissolving (too readily, but Vinyl was used to the cellist’s weird reflex), but before she could respond Vinyl went on. “It was fun, I guess. Weather was good.” Octavia was rolling her eyes. “What?”
“Vinyl, your stories are about crazy bouncers mistaking you for a fan and trying to kick you out of the club you’re playing in, or stage techs who wire your gear wrong so you have to learn a new configuration on the fly and still play a show.”
Vinyl put her hands behind her head. Her face felt a little warmer and she let her smile grow. “I’m just magic that way.”
“I’m sure you are.” Octavia studied her for a moment. “You don’t really go to the beach to have fun and enjoy the weather, do you?”
Vinyl swallowed a yawn. “I’m not a good storyteller.”
“Oh, I know you can’t tell a story. But interesting things happen to you for some unfair reason, and I like the way you talk about them.”
Octavia did seem interested, at least. The reporter voice was gone. “Alright. The night before I played my big show I dropped into the venue.”
“To case the joint?”
“No. What?” Octavia didn’t say anything, but was fighting to keep her grin restricted to an encouraging smile. Vinyl bit her lip. “The place was cool. New, smart layout, did good business. It’s a resort town I guess but it had four competitors nearby and no taxi service—”
“Very interesting, Professor Scratch. What will our next Nightclub Management lecture be about?”
Vinyl brought her palms down at the table, eliciting an excited laugh from Octavia. At least she seemed to get something out of these little interruptions. “I’d like to see you manage a nightclub, actually.”
“I bet I could do it.”
“Really?”
“Sure! Why not?”
“You’re a bit feisty tonight.”
One of Octavia’s eyebrows rose. “So?”
“Convince me later, then. Let me talk.” Vinyl paused to remember how far she had made it. “Right. So it sounded bad at the entrance, but it was way worse on the beach. I mean, I actually thought about eating my glasses.” Octavia snickered. “I’m serious, chewing on broken glass might have distracted me from this, maybe. The speakers weren’t good, but they were okay. If I had to buy something that would be rained on every now and then they’d be fine. But the distortion was awful. I mean I like loud, but standing around in that mess was unbearable. Like, anyone would have noticed and done something.” She lifted her glasses and pinched her nose. “I also thought there was an echo at first, but it was just her transitions.”
Octavia leaned in eagerly. “You’re a huge jerk!”
“Oh it was awful. Just… terrible music and everything. The weirdest thing is that everyone there was fine with it. I came late but I just ended up leaving. Walked down the beach for a while, met some people with a fire, and slept there.”
“That’s more like it.”
“I was there for ninety minutes, maybe two hours. She played the same song four times, Octavia.”
The cellist’s incredulous grin got even wider. “You’re making this up.”
“It was like listening to the radio.”
Octavia giggled again and started tapping her spoon on the edge of her glass, sending out a clear ring. “And your gig? The rest of the trip?”
“Blew the walls off, obviously.”
“I thought you said it was on a beach.”
“Oh yeah. Well, doesn’t matter if it’s me. But I did enjoy playing. With these gigs, sometimes... I can’t get into it. I can play fine and the crowds have energy, but I can tell half of them are there to drink until they get too smashed to know what’s happening, a quarter like the music—maybe they’d even come to a concert, like a real stadium show—but still wish they were doing something else, and the rest fall somewhere between mild and genuine interest. Stop laughing! I’m serious.”
“Okay, I know what you mean, sort of. But you have to know how dangerously cliché that is.”
“That isn’t what I meant. At all.” If Octavia wore glasses, Vinyl knew she would be looking at her over their frames. “People go to these beach places for vacations. Half the club had probably been there three times that week already and the whole town is filled with distractions. They don’t go for the music, these gigs are photo ops. It’s all just second-guessing whether they’re doing the most worthwhile thing on their holiday, getting worked up over getting what they paid for.”
“Is there a fine in this place for not ‘Living to the Max?’”
“Might as well be...” Vinyl’s coffee had been refilled, so she started on it again, hissing when she burned her tongue. “Touring is tiring, but completely different.”
Octavia lifted her index finger, like someone about to deliver a lecture on something unimportant. “I bet I have it worse than you.”
Vinyl snorted. “Oh please.”
“People listen to classical music because it’s fashionable.”
“Oh yeah, you’re right. I forgot that fashion doesn’t hit Electronica.”
Octavia lifted an eyebrow, and lifted her finger higher. “What do you think this was tonight? Someone has a snazzy party, it’s just something else on their event planning checklist. One or two people might bat an eyelash when I throw a little flavor in for a measure or two.” She flicked the edge of her glass, making it ring. “I’m ambient noise, Scratch. At least your crowds listen to you.”
“Don’t really give ‘em a choice, do I?” Vinyl set her finger on the edge of the ringing glass, silencing it. “Besides, you play for an orchestra too. And I know my fans like my music, it’s the crowds that will listen to anything that get at me.” She took a drink. “I want to do a rave.”
Using her tongue, Octavia pulled her lower lip between her teeth and tilted her head, then shrugged in agreement and went back to her drink.
Maybe no one could ever really choose their audience, but Vinyl remembered doing a better job of it than some of her agents had. Having a marketable reputation was nice, but it demanded more concessions than she expected. Still, some of their riskier bets had payed off, an oddball gig here and there would click every now and then. One director had approached her, told her that her music was far enough outside of the mainstream, well known enough in the electronic world, and good enough by any standards to make a splash as a film soundtrack. She’d never considered movies, but boy had he ever been right.
The start of a new song pulled her back to the lounge, where Octavia was staring at her a little forwardly. She wondered again how many drinks the cellist was ahead of her by. “What?”
Octavia moved her head a little and blinked out of her stupor. “Nothing. Just staring.”
“I know.”
“You have a funny look.” She started fiddling with the spoon again. “Sometimes.”
“I look funny? Thanks.”
Octavia didn’t bite. “You look… satisfied, but distracted. The same as on your posters.”
Vinyl knew exactly which poster Octavia was talking about, but she had to think about her look on it.
“See? Like that! Exactly like that.”
“I wasn’t trying.” Vinyl touched her lips with her fingers, feeling her face. “You mean the tour poster, right? That’s just how I look.”
“No you…” Octavia started, before cutting herself off and drawing back. “Actually… you do look really distracted when you’re playing. It’s weird, like you’re focused but at the same time relaxed. And happy. I guess, I’ve never seen you look like that otherwise before.”
“Well, we haven’t really hung out that much.”
“We have known each other for a while.”
“But we haven’t really hung out that much.”
“Five times?” The cellist couldn’t keep her dark eyes from pleading just a little.
“Four, maybe. Look, If you’re thinking I’m not having fun with you, you’re wrong. If that’s how I look when I’m playing… I mean, there’s not much that tops that for me. And I really don’t warm up to people that quickly.”
“Yes you do.”
“No I don’t. I’m a pretty internalized person.”
“What? You aren’t at all!” A carnal look came over Octavia’s face, like someone had just made a mistake while describing some feature of her cello and she was about to offer a long, detailed correction.
“Oh yeah?” Vinyl leaned back, ready for the challenge. “Think about it. I totally am.”
Octavia started shaking her head and just kept on going while she spoke. “You’re a DJ.”
“That’s like the most solitary career in music ever. I have to go out of my way to involve others. How have you not realized this about me?”
“But… Your shows are huge, and your audience, you deal with so many people!” Octavia’s head shaking must have made her dizzy, so she stopped. A bit of her long hair came to rest on her front. “And those magazine shoots, all those interviews about… You weren’t even wearing underwear in that poster I was thinking of.”
Vinyl grinned when Octavia realized of what she’d just admitted and dutifully blushed. “You noticed? Anyways, that’s not the same. I’m not shy, I just slip into my own awesome little world a lot. Especially when I’m working. I can deal with tons of people—I even like people—and I can be friends with anyone if they listen to music with me, but I don’t force it. I live in my head.”
Things seemed to be falling into place for Octavia. “You don’t really talk during your shows, do you?”
“See?”
“Or to anyone. You were really rude at that party we met at.”
“I was?”
“Well… not to me. Those other guests.”
Oh yeah… “I wasn’t rude.”
“You were! I almost didn’t talk to you.”
From Octavia’s look, Vinyl assumed she actually had made some kind of serious social mistake. “They weren’t that interesting. Not everyone needs to be interested in everyone all the time.” She shook her head. “There’s such a double standard, too: if I act naturally, I’m rude. If I try to be friendly, I’m drunk, or on drugs, or a DJ. People respond really awkwardly to me. Like I’m an alien. I’d rather just stay at home and practice or do something with people I already know. I mean, it’s hard for me to want to communicate outside of music. If people can’t listen, or won’t listen, how much can we really share?”
“So that picture, your stage look…” Octavia looked truly surprised. “You come across as a total party girl in the media.”
Vinyl invented a gesture somewhere between shrugging and nodding. Fatigue was starting to mess with her motor skills. “People see what they expect. I like music, and I like the culture, and I definitely like to party.” She pulled the lemon wedge from her untouched glass of water and squeezed it dry before dropping the peel in and pushing it under the ice with her straw. “A few drinks take the edge off when it comes to dealing with people, but I wouldn’t do it if I didn’t like to drink. I’d rather just not deal with them.” Octavia raised an eyebrow. “And as for the swimsuit photos, why not? If it’s a photographer or a designer with something to express, well, I’m kind of into fashion, and I can handle an interview. It’s rewarding to have a real discussion, and a good reporter will give you one if you’re honest.”
Octavia was nodding. “I never thought of it that way.”
“Right? The posters… yeah, they’re probably hanging on the walls of a dorm bathroom or two.” She took her first sip of water. “But from everything you know about me, do they come across as disingenuous?”
Octavia pursed her lips. “I guess not.”
“Do you think I’m using my looks to sell my music?”
“Well, kind of. Not really I guess, though.”
“Why?”
Octavia looked into her eyes. “I think they show how you feel when you play.”
“Really?” Octavia nodded. Vinyl actually smiled at that, it hadn’t been what she was expecting. “That’s sweet. I’ll sign one for you if you want.” She plucked an ice cube from her glass of water and popped it in her mouth, crunching it with her molars and relishing the shock of cold after all the coffee.
“I thought you were a lot more different from me.” Octavia said.
Vinyl stopped chewing and swallowed the icy shards. “Oh we are different. You’re outgoing.” This stupefied Octavia. Her mouth opened, but she didn’t say anything, so Vinyl continued. “You’re really shy though.”
“That doesn’t even make sense!” She almost looked angry.
“Sure it does, were you listening to me? When we first met you were completely shy.”
Octavia looked away. “Maybe I was a little starstruck.”
“So was I, but I’m the one who kept that conversation afloat until we found something you’d talk about.”
“Jazz? Is that why we ended up talking about jazz for an hour? Why did you even bother if people put you off so much? I wouldn’t have been shy if you hadn’t recognized me.”
Vinyl forced an insincere frown, eliciting an impatient scowl from Octavia. “Too bad. I like your music, and I was interested in you. If you were expecting a brush off or just the chance to to buy me a few drinks well, I guess it pretty well backfired.”
As the piano track crept back in to fill their silence, Vinyl could detect a tiny bit of shame in Octavia’s eyes. Before she could apologize for it a smile found its way back onto Octavia’s flushed face. “I was surprised you listened to my music.”
Now Vinyl felt ashamed. “Actually, I was too. About you.” Someone had once asked Vinyl if she listened to anything but techno. She had asked that person if he read anything but the sports section. “The world’s getting more like that. You could go your whole life without ever listening outside a subgenre. Still, doesn’t excuse me. I’m sorry.”
“Me too.” Thinking about this dulled their enthusiasm. “I’m glad though. I didn’t expect to see you again if I got you talking. Definitely wasn’t expecting the tickets and passes.”
Vinyl entwined her fingers and cracked her knuckles “Told you I liked you. I’m glad you came that night.”
“Didn’t think you’d see me again?”
“No, I knew I’d see you again. Just didn’t think you’d take me up the first time.”
“Why not?”
Vinyl ran her fingers behind her ear, pulling her hair with it. “So what was so great about it?”
“What?”
“Band camp.”
Octavia’s head tilted. “Oh... I thought you meant something else.” Her smile became alarmingly suggestive.
“What?”
“Nothing,” she said, her eyes narrowed. “I thought you were starting a joke or trying to set me up for something. Well...” Octavia’s eyes found the ceiling. “I don’t really remember as much as I used to.”
Vinyl let her head fall into her hands, which tossed her hair forward so her thick blue bangs hung in a curtain around her face, and though she had meant it to be a gesture of exasperation it reminded her of how tired she was. It felt way too good. “Seriously?”
“Hey!” Octavia snapped, tapping her finger as she tried to assemble the story in her mind. “It was a long time ago, I do remember it. It’s just sort of blurred together. Time flew by, so much was happening to me and it just swept me along.”
Vinyl rubbed her eyes under her glasses. It wasn't that long ago. Pulling her hair back by running her fingers through it she grinned wickedly. Even if she’d never been to band camp, she’d heard the stories. “So it was just a steady supply of moments to get caught up in? I know that feeling.”
Surprise struck Octavia as her words played back in her head, and she inhaled sharply. “Vinyl Scratch! You’d better not be thinking what I think you are!” Making no effort to mask her suggestive smirk, Vinyl lifted her head and bored her eyes into Octavia’s flushed face. “You’re so immature! It was completely innocent, Vinyl.” If circumstances had provided, Octavia looked like she’d be hitting Vinyl with the biggest cushion at hand. As it was, she had to settle for turning up her nose with the snobbiest ‘hmph’ she could muster, “We were children.”
She didn’t know if it had anything to do with the caffeine, but Vinyl felt her energy returning and with it, the odd brand of perception that was crucial for teasing Tavi. “How many years did you go?”
“Seven,” Octavia started smugly, before her eyes shot open.
“And how old were you in your last year?”
“...Seventeen.”
Vinyl nodded. “I’m sorry for doubting you. At that age girls are particularly well known for lacking an exploratory instinct and for eschewing the use of mind-altering substances.” Octavia glared at her, but still found Vinyl’s mad grin infectious. “Oh, and promiscuity too. Right. My bad!” Pathologically, and despite herself, something made Vinyl wink.
The skin on Octavia’s face was pulled back and she looked at Vinyl with narrow eyes, her face on fire. “That’s not the point. If anyone tried to get away with that the teacher’s would kick them out. They were super strict Vinyl, do you think I’d risk that?”
“Drugs, you mean? I guess not. I’m just teasing you, Tavi, keep going.” Vinyl said, her delighted little smirk still not totally dead.
Octavia tossed a long lock of hair over her shoulder, rolling her eyes before smirking back. “I bet you’d like that, wouldn’t you? You’d probably bathe in hormones if you could.”
Never one to keep her emotions off her face, a dreamy distance washed over Vinyl’s features. “I think anyone would like that.”
Octavia ignored her. “Well... how do I... Okay. It was like the only time when I was never bored at school. They had all kinds of things planned for us, just like normal, but we played so much every day that I actually felt fulfilled, you know? Usually we’d have band for an hour or so, and so much more time for everything else, but I felt bored in my other classes after an hour or two and just wanted to play music, and for a week every year I actually got to.”
Her eyes had fallen to the polished table, but when Octavia looked up again she found Vinyl watching her intently, waiting for her to continue. “But it wasn’t just that. It was like for that week, it got reversed for everyone, everybody in band suddenly lived in the world that made me happy. We worked so hard together and at least for me… I was so happy; it took so long to perfect our simple little pieces during the school year but here everyone’s focus was on the most important things to me, we progressed so fast I could actually feel it. The first time I ever remember being tired enough of playing in a group was there.
“And the best part was it wasn’t only me! My friends could tell too, even if they didn’t understand it. Everybody knew they had played a real part. They all had a role. Even this one girl, she was in my dorm room that first year, we’d never really clicked because our interests were so different and at that age everything is political. Well, our circles of friends started to overlap, in that environment there was no difference. And when we weren’t playing everyone would study our other classes, or we’d go swimming or watch movies, and even stay up talking in the dark, all together. I felt like I was in a real band, we shared so much. It was the first time I was in a real band... It lasted for a while, but it always wore off again after a month or so... It...”
Although Octavia had paused, Vinyl still didn’t interrupt her. The cellist looked like she hadn’t finished, but was unsure of whether to say what her instincts suggested. She finally looked Vinyl in the eyes. “It was really intimate.”
While there was a delicious joke in there, and one Vinyl had been waiting to make, she decided to hold on to the atmosphere for a moment. Maybe she had been missing out. When the cellist raised her face she found the DJ nodding, as if in agreement.
“How many of those have you had?”
Octavia blushed. “Not too many. I’ve had a few. You’re the one who kept me waiting.”
A little guilt came over her, but Vinyl pushed it aside. “You’re starting to sell me.” She said, sliding her empty cup to the table’s edge. Her hands came together and an eager smile slowly returned to her face. “But I remember being a teenager, and even after all that mushy stuff you just said, being stuck with a few hundred of my friends in one place for a week would focus my attention elsewhere.”
“Vinyl...” Octavia’s tone was aggressive, but the blush that was deepening on her cheeks said there was more to the story, and despite her best efforts to keep it there her scowl refused to stay. For a moment it even looked to Vinyl like she was trying to decide whether to share a secret. “You really want to hear about that?”
The DJ’s fatigue evaporated and she leaned in as far as she could, the unexpected motion spooking Octavia into dropping the threat from her expression. No way. “No way.” Octavia looked away. “No way!”
“I did say we shared a lot...”
Vinyl couldn’t be sure, but she was pretty certain her jaw had irretrievably embedded itself in the table. Little Tavi? Somehow two words squeaked their way out of the dumbstruck DJ’s mouth. “...Like what?”
“Well...” Octavia fidgeted, flushed beyond recovery. “CDs...”
The word left an impact on Vinyl’s brain, and then she deflated. “What?”
“You, know, like...” Despite beginning shyly, Octavia’s face quickly cracked and once she started chuckling it was only a matter of time before she laughed herself out of breath and sat, pointing at Vinyl, unable to say anything, or even breathe.
“Okay,” Vinyl nodded. “Guess you got me.”
The cellist nodded furiously, still trying to catch her breath. “We did, though. First time I heard dance music was on a bus to camp.”
“Well at least something good came of it.” Octavia opened her mouth to rebuke her, but Vinyl went on heedless. “I guarantee you though, there was stuff going on somewhere like that, even if it flew over your head.” Maybe not anything too intense, but she hadn’t forgotten how stifling the sexual tension in high school had been.
Octavia seemed to think about it, her mood returning. “Well… maybe. But there’s nothing wrong with that, is there? Why are you so interested?”
Vinyl wasn’t going to let the cellist turn the tables. “No reason. But I bet you drew some interest if this place made you shine as much as you make it sound.” A rosy hue returned to Octavia’s cheeks, whether it was due to the implicit compliment or because she had hit a mark, Vinyl couldn’t tell. “Even if nothing really happened, you’re hiding something. You must at least have thought about it.” Octavia looked away. Bingo. “See! I knew it! Come on, just tell me, I’m not gonna—”
Octavia turned back with fiery eyes, but her voice went low. “You can hear about it if you want, but it was totally innocuous, Scratch.”
“Then why are you so embarrassed?”
“It won’t sound right if I say… it was innocent. We were just teenagers, and people were really... friendly.”
“And…?” Vinyl would have cringed at the eagerness in her voice if Octavia weren’t being so coy.
“So… well… Okay. For example, there was this big movie screen, and at night they’d put on a kids movie and we’d all come down in our pajamas with our blankets and pillows. There weren’t really chairs, so we just sat on the floor and maybe shared a blanket with a few people so you could have one on the ground too. Some girls still had wet hair, or their friends were brushing it or something. Usually you don’t see people like that, the way they look at home, when they’re vulnerable. It just felt really safe.”
“That’s all?” Said Vinyl. That’s not all.
“Yeah. Or… someone might fall asleep on your shoulder, or in your lap.” Octavia started fidgeting again, her violet eyes lost focus. “Someone wound up holding your hand, sometimes. See? Just stuff like that. Stop looking at me like that! Like you’re so innocent...”
Vinyl wiped the grin off her face. It actually was pretty mild. “Any boys?”
Octavia’s eyes lit up like she had just been dealt an unbeatable hand. “I went to a girls school.”
The look of pure elation on the DJ’s face told her she had decided on her victory too soon.
“Well well…” This was too good. Vinyl’s voice went very quiet. “That explains a lot.”
“What was that?”
“I said I can’t believe I didn’t know that about you.” Time to take a few blind shots. “There’s actually a lot I don’t know about you. Where did you have your first kiss?”
“Not at band camp.”
“Where did you have your first kiss at band camp?”
If Octavia had looked embarrassed before it was nothing compared to now. Her face paled, she must not have expected to be caught. Something occurred to Vinyl and she let her grin dissipate a little. “Tavi, I’m not trying to be mean or anything. I’ll tell you all my stories if you want, really juicy ones. Though none happened at band camp. And it does sound really fun. I’m jealous.”
The distant look that crept over Vinyl’s face and made her shoulders rise melted a little of the defensiveness from Octavia’s demeanor. “…Really?” Vinyl nodded, her eyes closed but her attitude as friendly as ever. “Good. It was in a dorm.”
And Vinyl’s eyes shot open to fall on Octavia’s victorious smirk. After a moment, she nodded. “You’ve been playing with me? I must really be tired.”
Octavia shrugged in a deliberately silly fashion, trying to mock Vinyl’s reflexive gesture. It didn’t look right without exposed shoulders, though. “Not really. Want to hear more?” Vinyl let her gaze go blank and shrugged even more aggressively than when Octavia had been trying to mock her, her arms flailing briefly, eliciting a giggle from the cellist. “It was on a dare. When I was almost fifteen, another girl got dared to kiss me. She had just turned sixteen, but we were in the same year. I don’t remember why.”
“What did she play?”
“Trumpet.” Octavia said. Vinyl blinked, and slowly nodded. “What?”
“I used to play brass.”
“I know.”
Vinyl licked her lips. “I’m remembering a lot of embouchure exercises.”
Octavia seemed to get a little redder, but Vinyl may have been wrong. Her glasses made things kind of dim. “Are you telling the story now, Scratch?” Vinyl shook her head. “Good. I’ll share this, but you owe me one after.” Vinyl nodded.
“I was super alarmed, I’d never been on either end of that kind of dare. There were six of us in the room, and she had to climb up to my bunk. I thought she’d just stand on the ladder because my head was right there but she pushed me back and climbed on all the way, and the stupid ceiling was too low so we had to be lying down, and I was looking up while she sort of half-leaned over me and she kept feeling me through the blanket because it was completely dark and she couldn’t see what she was doing. Someone took a flashlight out to see if she would really do it, so I kind of got blinded at the last second. I don’t think they thought she would go through with it.”
Octavia stopped and Vinyl let go of the table. The realization that she’d been clinging to it made her clench her hands into fists. “And?”
It stayed silent, but Octavia was clearly thinking. Remembering, more likely. “She was… she had good… well, embouchure.”
Silence returned. Oddly, even though Octavia had clearly ended the conversation Vinyl closed her eyes. She was too relaxed, the coffee was having the wrong effect. It kept her awake, sure, but she had become too used to the stimulant of a screaming crowd and flashing lights that gave her energy in the form of animal adrenaline; coffee and dozy lounge music instead had no impact on her at any level besides the inhibition of whatever was trying to drag her the last few yards into sleep.
“Why aren’t you drinking, by the way? Isn’t that part of your whole identity thing?” Octavia leaned forward like a cop interrogating a suspect. “How many drugs are you on right now? And don’t give me any of that ‘the tabloid press are not to be trusted’ nonsense.” She held her gaze for a moment, purple eyes burning into her prey, before sitting back down and snickering.
“That’s a really insightful question, Tavi, and I’ll answer it if you let me ask one of my own. Why aren’t you at home, uptightedly turning down party invitations and being judgmental about commoners?”
Octavia blinked twice. “None of that for me, thanks. It turns out worrying over high society tension is bad for my playing. I think you may have mistaken me for my clientele.” She really laid on the professional tone as she finished.
“Is that so? You’ve clearly mistaken me for mine.”
“Have I? So that’s your natural hair color? Those glasses are prescription? That isn’t an obnoxious tattoo of a contrived stage name on your arm? Are those all fake piercings, too?”
“Oh, okay. We’re getting into this now?” Vinyl kept her voice down, but grinned knowingly. Octavia had picked a battle she could not win. “Do you really want to pull out the tattoo card?”
Octavia bit her lip. “Why not?”
“You have a tattoo on your ass.”
“My hip, and so what? You do too!”
“Yours is a treble clef. ”
“I have no idea where you’re going with this,” Octavia said. They both knew where she was going with this.
“You play the cello! Why do you have a treble clef? You use a base clef!”
“Not always! And instruments don’t use clefs, Vinyl. It’s more complicated than that.”
“I know, Tavi. And I also know the cello’s range, and that it’s probably shown up on nearly every staff of music you’ve ever played, except for the odd tenor or—yes—treble.”
Octavia nodded her head from side to side, they both knew she’d heard it all before. “I know we’re fighting, but it actually makes me a bit happy that you know all that about my instrument.”
“No good composition suite comes without a cello voice.”
“I’ll take your word for it.”
They went silent until Vinyl realized that there was something she still hadn’t asked. “Why...”
“The tattoo artist didn’t know what a bass clef was. Or that’s what my friends told me the next day.”
Vinyl opened her mouth to speak and closed it again, making Octavia smile. “...Setting that aside for a moment, couldn’t you just describe it? It just looks like a weird comma with a colon.”
“I’m told I tried.” Octavia’s eyes shifted up like she was trying recover the memory.
“Which brings me back to the other point: how did this happen? I can’t believe I didn’t talk this out of you the first time we met.” Octavia raised an eyebrow. “Well, the first time I saw it. Must’ve been distracted or something.”
Silence returned, but Octavia was clearly thinking, and for the first time that night she wasn’t meeting Vinyl’s eye. This is gonna be good, she realized, a smile tugging at her lips.
“You can’t laugh.”
The DJ smirked, shrugging noncommittally. “I can’t promise that now. You’ve been making fun of me all night, are you really gonna kill the atmosphere like that?”
“It’s not funny.”
“Then I won’t laugh.” Vinyl said, although Octavia didn’t sound convinced by her own assertion at all.
Before she started she finished her probably lukewarm drink, grimacing at the unwanted concentration of liqueur that had sunk to the bottom. “Well... when I was younger I really wasn’t convinced that I could make a career out of music. Being accepted into the Royal Conservatory was a huge deal, and when I got my letter I felt pretty sure of myself. That didn’t last long.” She paused to slide her shiny hair over her shoulders again.
“I loved learning there, and practicing there, and playing with everyone. They were all talented and passionate... I was incredibly happy. I even got good recognition, strong comments from my instructors, scholarships, everything. And the more I performed, the more I enjoyed it.
“But I started doubting myself. Not because of my playing, or the pressure, though I was forced to progress more quickly than I ever had. It’s just... I’d never had a sense of how the scene worked. There was so much pressure to think about our careers, from professors and recruiters and even the other students, and everyone was always socializing. Don’t get me wrong, I like eating in restaurants and drinking in bars, and when I moved to the city I found I didn’t mind dancing in clubs that much either. But the urge only came every week or two—less when I could always be practicing and studying—and everyone around me made connections and went out all the time. It felt mandatory, like I’d missed a syllabus or something, and that if I didn’t catch on to this... stagecraft I’d never be able to perform. I was getting great grades, but I felt like nobody heard me at all. It was like learning that I’d been playing wrong forever.
“So, it started to change my work. The more distant I felt, the more I distanced myself. I practiced more, left my friends earlier, and my professors’ feedback got... not worse... less enthusiastic. One day the thought of just quitting occurred to me, not for the first time, but it was the first time I actually saw it as an option and not in some abstract way. It didn’t feel impossible. I wanted it to end.” Octavia paused to steady herself with a deep breath before looking back into Vinyl’s eyes.
The DJ wondered how Octavia had ever thought she would laugh at this.
“I was practicing, and I just started thinking, and kept thinking. The song was this terrible piece, all glissando. It felt like an exercise. Then I suddenly realized how much time had gone by, and I started listening to myself. The song felt more natural now, even though I thought it sounded bitter, and then I noticed something.
“I was enjoying it. Between worrying about staying ahead of my classmates musically and falling behind in the social racket I had stopped having fun. I enjoy playing the cello. I love it more than anything. The fact that I’d been thinking about leaving it behind a minute before seemed surreal. So I kind of decided… Well, more like just realized that I could play the career game as much as I had to, but didn’t need to do any more than that. I was there to play. Maybe some people liked the connecting and dealing, and that was fine. For the first time I didn’t feel like I needed to put my career before my music, as weird as that sounds.”
“It doesn’t sound weird.” Vinyl interrupted, shaking her head forcefully.
Octavia’s tongue flicked out over her lips. “Then a girl who studied composition with me came into the practice room I was in, which I thought was strange. I asked her what she needed and she basically told me I was feeling better. I asked what she meant, and she said she could hear it in my playing.” Vinyl was smiling, and Octavia gave her a look that said she’s better keep it in. “She asked what I’d been up to, and I had to think about it. I didn’t even know how to say it even though it felt like the most important thing I’d ever realized. ‘Nothing,’ I said. Made something up about figuring out that stupid song. So she said if I was finished I could join her for a drink—it was a Friday—and I was about to turn her down when I thought about it and realized I really wanted to celebrate, I felt like I’d graduated or something. And the next morning I had a tattoo.” She sat back, and couldn’t help smiling at Vinyl’s open mouth.
“...Octavia…”
“What?”
“That’s an awesome story!” Vinyl was leaning very far forward, palms flat on the table. Octavia was blushing, but she kept eye contact. “How could you think I’d laugh? I mean it was kind of funny, but like...” She sucked a breath in through tight lips. “The morning after you had that… idea about your music a treble clef just appeared on your ass!”
Octavia laughed. Hypocritically, Vinyl thought. “That sounds stupid, Vinyl. And I knew it was a tattoo. And it was on my hip”
“But you didn’t get it deliberately! It just happened to happen... then...” The DJ realized she was stumbling. “I know you know this is a cool story. It’s like...”
“Cosmic?”
Vinyl’s eyes narrowed. “Your word.”
“I know. I was really surprised, but I knew I was keeping it. I think I deserved it after letting myself get tangled up like that and forgetting what was important to me.”
Vinyl shook her head. “Damn. I wish my tattoo story was as good as that. I just really wanted it, so I got it. Though in a way, you did get yours when you remembered what you wanted.”
“So you’ve just always known what you want?”
“Nope! But I do have a music tattoo in the same place as you, and we are both musicians.”
“I guess, if you’re using the word in a broad sense.”
They sat for a while. Octavia had calmed down a bit, probably because Vinyl wasn’t biting at her taunting anymore, and she was the one to break the silence. “Well, you do have a free hip, so next time you have a cathartic experience and get too drunk to remember I’ll make sure you visit a tattoo parlor.”
“Right back at you. Make sure it’s a good image, though. It better be relevant to whatever ass-tattoo-worthy event triggered it.”
“It’s going to be a cello.” Said Octavia.
Quick on the draw. She’s probably right, though. “Yours is gonna be a bowtie.”
“I can’t wait.”
The pair went back into silence, allowing the gentle, repetitive piano score to reprise its role as the room’s sole sound. Nothing disturbed their little island in the warm sea of polished wood and soft light for what felt like a long time, and they were happy to leave it like that. Finally, an envoy from the world they both made their careers in came with their bill, and Octavia beat Vinyl to it. She’d usually offer to pay, but Octavia made it feel like it was her night.
Vinyl suddenly realized that she hadn’t asked something, and felt incredibly rude. “I forgot to ask, how did your show go?”
The cellist nodded in reflection for a moment. “Really, really well,” she decided. “It was actually a lot of fun. Exciting.”
“Exciting?” Vinyl asked, offering her the chance to rephrase.
“Yes.”
“Not usually a term for the kind of crowd you draw.”
Octavia bit her tongue and narrowed her eyes, playing at being a little offended. “I get some pretty interesting audiences, you know. It’s not all just people who can pay for a private booking. Although the crowd wasn’t that exciting tonight, I guess.”
“No?”
“No. But it was the first time for a long time that my hands were shaking before I started.”
“You were nervous?”
“Excited, Scratch. Like I used to get for these little shows, or how I feel before playing somewhere really important.”
Vinyl decided to prod. “I wonder why that was,” she said.
The cellist’s warm, purple-red eyes narrowed, and her hand found a strand of hair to play with. “Nothing jumps to mind, detective. Bit of a mystery I guess.”
“Well I’m sure you can work it out.” Vinyl wondered how Octavia’s lipstick had stayed so perfect. All of her makeup, actually.
“Hmm...” Octavia put her fingertips to her lips, playing with them as she thought. “Well as you know, they gave me that little staff closet you saw earlier so I had a place to get ready and leave my things, and when I left I was feeling fine.” Octavia was clearly in a storytelling mood tonight. “But as soon as the door clicked shut behind me I just started smiling and I couldn’t stop. My heart started going like mad. I couldn’t tell but I’m sure just thinking about how I must have been blushing made me completely red.” As she gave voice to the memory her body restored itself to the flustered condition she was describing like she wanted to give an example. Even Vinyl couldn’t keep up her aloof demeanor and found her friend’s idiotic grin contagious. She was probably blushing too, and she knew her complexion was more prone to show it.
“So, I got to the doors, I took a really, really deep breath, and then I walked in. The host spotted me, guided me to my cello which was right where I left it, and before he introduced me he shook my hand and said how thrilled he was to have someone so sophisticated at their little soiree.” Vinyl snorted, earning a chilly look before Octavia continued. “Then he introduced me. He was a bit of a show-off, obviously, with all his clients and colleagues to impress. And they looked impressed, Vinyl. I hadn’t even played a note and they were all gawking at me. If I would have had to say something there’s no way I could have formed a sentence.”
“So what did you do?” Vinyl was leaning forward now more than she had been before.
“Well, I smiled, nodded at them, and I played. I know how to give a show.” Octavia leaned back, tapping her index fingers on the table in a distracting single paradiddle.
“You didn’t go anywhere at all with that!” Vinyl put her hands down on Octavia’s to stop the drumming, and she was surprised to find they were a little shaky. “You sure you aren’t forgetting anything?”
Vinyl held Octavia’s gaze, Octavia’s face framed from behind by the soft orange glow of the fire and the smart, comfortable cut of her outfit, just slightly dulled by the yellow tint of these particular glasses. “There was one other thing...” Octavia hesitated, smiling, but a little disappointed at the fact she was enjoying being made to say it.
“Do tell.”
“Four or five minutes before I had to go in there I was burying my face between your legs.”
Even though she had known what was coming, Vinyl’s hands still squeezed Octavia’s. “Yeah, I remember something about that. Like your life depended on it, I recall.”
Octavia’s gaze had softened, but Vinyl’s attention was on the hose-clad foot toying with her calf. “Thanks for coming to see me off. I missed you.”
“You’re weird.”
“Look, I know you’re expected to have like a three-way when you want to relax. You must forget what it felt like when you weren’t automatically assumed to be a debauchee.” Vinyl grabbed the roving foot with her own, challenging Octavia to continue with her little game of pinning insults everywhere. “Come on. I just think it’s exciting to be talking to someone and say to yourself ‘if you saw what I was doing five minutes ago...’”
“Because in your case they would be floored, and in mine they wouldn’t blink, is that it?”
Octavia lifted her arm reassuringly, like she was about to object. However, only a single word left her lips: “Yes.”
Vinyl came to a conclusion. “Sounds to me like you need to start trying harder then, bring some imagination into your game.” She smiled widely when she saw Octavia’s genuine blush, truly flustered for the first time that night. The DJ was a little worried she may have offended her, but her quiet voice put that fear to rest, and she rolled her eyes in preparation for one last jab. “You were a fine arts student, weren’t you? Shouldn’t be too hard.”
“Performing Arts.” She pulled her hands out from under Vinyl’s. “Yours or mine?”
Octavia’s place was farther. Too far to walk. “Yours, let’s get a cab.”
“Don’t want to carry my cello? Or, let me guess... you haven’t unpacked.” Octavia undid the cuffs of her shirt and loosened her bow tie.
“I just like the way your expensive underwear looks all over your spiffy bedroom.”
“Spiffy?” Octavia didn’t rise to the bait, but Vinyl didn’t care: her foot had stopped rubbing her calf for a moment before resuming, hoping to go unnoticed. “Tell my decorator you think that.”
This made Vinyl’s eyes widen. “You have a decorator?”
“No.” Octavia deadpanned, but giggled when Vinyl’s eyes fell. “You’ve been awake too long. Let’s go.”
Her fatigue reasserted its presence. “Yeah. I need a shower, though.”
“Me too.” They both rose.
“Yeah right, I bet you had one before you came.”
“No sense wasting water.”
Vinyl wanted to argue, knowing that the longer she kept the conversation alive the more ideas Octavia would get about how to use their time together. Not that she didn’t have a few herself. Nonetheless, instead of deploying any of the witty retorts queued up in her brain she realized just how tired she was getting. Truthfully, her imagination was getting away from her as well, and while Octavia leaned her head on her neck in the cab, pretending to doze, Vinyl let her hand untuck the Cellist’s shirt so her fingers could tickle the base of her spine. They had to squeeze in the back with Octavia’s over-sized instrument, and despite the fact that she was better rested it was the cellist who had managed to claim the best dozing position. Vinyl quickly got over it though, since it meant that both of Octavia’s hands were in good positions to explore.
And explore they did, the fingers lazily toying with the ring above Vinyl’s navel grabbing all her attention (Octavia had told her it was her third-favourite piercing). It felt a little weird. She realized suddenly that she was clicking her teeth with the stud in her tongue, and that Octavia was watching, so she stuck it out.
The gesture earned her a mind-shredding kiss that simmered her nerves down into a syrupy mess. It was hard for Vinyl to focus with Octavia wrapping herself around her, but when her instincts told her to she did manage to get a word in.
“Octavia, I owe you a story.”
Author's Note
I let this sit on a shelf for a couple years, figured I’d dust it off and complete it. Wasn’t exactly sure where it was going when I started it. I guess I still don’t know.
It was fun to write anyway, and while I'm working on other stories it's been so long since I published something I felt I just had to. It's encouraging to remember how it feels when things go more or less right sometimes.
So you made it past the prologue? I like that part, but I was worried about it when I published this. I hope it was enough for most people to stick around in the wish of getting some mindless flirting.
Leaving a review is never the wrong choice. I’m interested to hear what you think, so all comments welcome.
