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“I’d like to use both yours and his. I think they work perfectly together. If you’ll let me. Of course, I’ll have an orchestra record his compositions – as many as he wants. If you’ll just agree to soundtrack my film for me, then we can all sleep peacefully.”
I smiled. “Yes. I will.”
“Oh, thank heavens. You have no idea how long it’s taken me to find you – and your father. It’s like I’ve had this song in my head I haven’t been able to actualize... thanks to you, this film will finally be made.”
“It’s an honor. Thank you. For liking my work. No one had listened to it in... over a decade. So thank you.”
Outside, I called another taxi. From one major musical project to the next. It was time to sound check for theNeedleheadgig tonight.
Sylvester
Concerts take a hell of a lot of preparation. Luckily, I’d hired the best in the business to take care of everything – the venue, the stage manager, a team of technicians – so all I really had to do was rehearse with the band and make sure I turned up on time.
Check and check.
Somehow, I still found myself nervously stalking around, making sure everything was underway that should be underway. I found it odd that I was nervous. Performing never had made me nervous before. Instead, it had had a way of relaxing my body, loosening up my limbs so that I didn’t care about anything but the moment I was living. I supposed it had been a long time since I’d gigged, not counting Reed’s gig in which I had accidentally stolen the spotlight.
Felix was my shadow as I paced back and forth across the venue, barking out lines from the song to test me. In lieu of any poetry to read, he had taken on the role of ‘coach’ – an oft-underappreciated and usually unstaffed role in the group make-up of a band.
Mainly he’d been focusing his efforts on drilling the lyrics into my brain, worried I was going to bungle them. “Sylvester, the one thing you absolutely must not do is get these wrong. Not because I don’t love spending twenty-four-seven of my life with you, but I really do need to return to teaching at some point...”
I sighed. “Do you want me to write them on my hand?”
He nodded enthusiastically. “Yes please.”
With the lyrics to the chorus of our new song scrawled in the palm of my hand, I went to check in with Luna and the band.
Luna was sound-checking on the stage. I’d asked her what she’d been up to when she got back, and she told me it was a secret, with a smile. She said she would after she was sure everything tonight went well. I could tell she was a little apprehensive of what our next move would be after delivering this message to Apollo.
I found the band hanging out in front of the stage, where the front rows of the audience would be, up against the barrier. They liked to do this before a gig, I remembered now: look up at the stage from where the audience would be and imagine what it would be like to watch the gig from there.
“What do we think, guys? How many people are gonna show?”
Reed looked at me. “Did you not see? We’ve sold out.”
I blinked. “Oh wow. I hope Apollo’s not bought all the tickets.”
“Even if he has, that’s a decent chunk of cash. Though I guess you’ve got enough of that already.” Reed eyed me. His joke was a gentle way of gauging how tense I was. And since I’d forgotten to laugh, he must have figured I was pretty tense. “Hey, go and take a break. I’ll keep an eye on things from here. You’re just winding yourself up.”
I smiled at Reed. He’d always been the stressed one at our concerts before. “Oh, how things change.”
“They change, they stay the same. Funny combination, huh?”
I waved a single hand to the guys and took Reed’s advice to get a break before the concert.
There was an area just out of the backstage, an outside area designed for artists to smoke in. I didn’t smoke, but it was nice to get some fresh air, and there was a little tree and some plants that made the area a serene spot to be. I sat down on the bench, and looked into the branches of the tree. My breathing steadied and my muscles relaxed, slacked of tension.
A little noise from behind me – Luna was in the doorway. She smiled coyly and came to join me on the bench. “Hope I’m not interrupting your moment of peace. That’s why I came out here, too.”
“No, please join me. We can have a moment of peace together.”
Luna rested her head gently on my shoulder, and I pulled her in close. We watched a small breeze pick up the leaves of the plants in the courtyard, like it wound though the strands of her hair so she had to sweep them off her face.
If everything went very wrong tonight, there was a chance this might be the last little moment of peace like this for a while. We may as well make the most of it while it lasted.
Luna
The atmosphere was electric.Needleheadwas a band that had stood the test of time – their music had never become too dated sounding, in part because they had been just slightly too obscure to amass legions of imitators or to influence the dominating styles of the years they had been making music. As such, their following, which was quite sizable to begin with, had only grown since then.
