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I turn off the light and head down the hall to sleep in the second bedroom.
10
garbage guitars
Billie
“This is like Christmas!” Stuart exclaims as we wander up and down the aisles at Guitar Center.
“You realize that saying something is like Christmas to a Jew doesn’t have the same impact, right?” I elbow him in the ribs to give my teasing a little extra effect. Stu and I are easy friends like that.
He grins. “Well, let’s just say that for those of us raised in loosely Christian households, having a day a year to wake up to a bunch of presents for no good reason is pretty fuckin’ awesome. And it feels like this. We get to go spend other people’s money on awesome musical equipment.”
“For the club, Stu. It’s not like we’re padding our own stash with hockey money.”
“Still, it’s fun to shop for cool stuff.”
“Okay, I’ll give you that.”
“How much do we have to spend?”
“A lot. They gave us enough to build a lending library so that the kids can borrow the instruments overnight if they want to practice at home.”
“What could possibly go wrong with that?” he asks sarcastically, not expecting an answer, of course.
My best friend, long and lanky with curling, dark hair that falls past his shoulders, wanders off to look at a wall of bass guitars. I follow along and only half-listen as he quizzes the salesperson about the different guitars, asking which ones would be good for beginners and which ones are lighter and with shorter stems.
The Crush will have us come and accept an oversized check at a charity gala this fall. In the meantime, they sent us the real check so we could get started right away. Enough to get a cool instrument library stocked while leaving money to soundproof a small music room and pay part of my salary. It’s a good gift, and it’ll be put to good use.
“This one might be good, yeah?” Stuart’s long arms reach up to pluck a navy-blue bass from its place on the wall. He plucks at the strings and bounces it up and down a bit. “Nice and light. Not too big.”
I peer at the price tag. “Yeah, it looks good. I want to get two or three of different colors and sizes. Instruments are personal. They have to feel right when you play them.”
“Spoken like a true musician, Bill. But what a cool way to mix your day job with your talent, yeah?”
“It is pretty cool, I agree.” I can’t hold back my sigh, however. “But for the idiot hockey player I got stuck babysitting because of it.”
“Oh, you got a hockey player to go with the hockey money?”
“Of course. Big public relations thing. The money comes with strings.”
“Most money does.” He cocks his head to the side and winks.
“Well, these strings are called Calum Lefleur.”
“Calum Lefleur?” Stuart’s voice cracks as he fans himself with his hands. “I have such a sports crush on that dude. Holy smokes, he’s like the best goalie in the league.”
“Well, that’s what he said about himself, too. Cocky jerk-wagon that he is.”
Stuart shrugs. “When you’ve got it, you’ve got it.”
“Puke. Whatever. I assume he’ll get bored of it after a while, so I’ll just entertain him until then, in the name of putting together this awesome program for the kids.”
“Well, a little cocky can’t hurt when you’re out there getting a hard hockey puck winged at your head every few minutes.”
I make a “meh” noise as we play around with the bass guitars some more. Once I’ve made my decisions, we move on to electric, acoustic, and bass guitars, grab a drum kit, then two keyboards. I talk to the manager once we get everything picked out, explaining what we’re doing, and he gives us a nice discount so that we can use more of our budget. This enables us to buy guitar leads, straps, music stands, and sheet music, but also the amps for the guitars. A portable mixer is added to the mix with complementary speakers. If we ever get a “band” up and running, we’ll add in more speakers, maybe some mics. It’s just so exciting.
As we load everything into the back of Stuart’s work van, he says, “You look very smug right now. Proud of your negotiation skills?”
