Laura made a small sandwich out of turkey meat and sourdough bread, spreading a little mayo, a little mustard, then throwing some lettuce and tomatoes on it. She then put a small dab of the potato salad on her plate next to it. She loved potato salad—loved anything made with potatoes really—but she knew that it would go straight to her hips and butt if she had more than a dab. Dave was always warning her not to plump up on him. He didn’t like fat women.
She went back to her seat in front of her microphone stand and began to pick at her food. She was really too stressed out to be hungry, but she knew she needed to put something in her stomach.
Celia came and sat next to her, in the chair normally reserved for Mary, but Mary was sitting next to her son over on the drum platform. They were laughing about something as if they had no care in the world. Was he telling her some tales about his drug fueled orgies, perhaps? Any mother who raised a son like Kingsley would probably be amused by such tales.
“How are you doing?” Celia asked her.
She shrugged. “I’m starting to feel like maybe this whole thing was a mistake,” she said.
Celia nodded thoughtfully. “Perhaps it was,” she allowed. “That all depends on you.”
“On me?”
“On you,” Celia said. “We all heard you play when you auditioned. You’re capable of amazing expression and phrasing with your instrument. You impressed us all greatly.”
“I’m very good at what I do,” she proclaimed firmly. “I’ve been playing this instrument since I was ten years old. I’ve been studying music theory almost as long and I’ve always worked on playing expressively.”
“No one is questioning your talent,” Celia said gently. “You’re just not displaying it when you play my tunes. And, unfortunately, that is exactly what you were hired to do.”
“I’m trying,” she insisted.
“That’s just the thing,” Celia said. “I don’t think you are—not really, anyway.”
“You heard me work more than two hours with you on The Struggle. How can you say I wasn’t trying?”
“You don’t like the song, do you?” Celia asked.
“I have nothing against it,” she said softly.
“Let’s be truthful, Laura,” Celia said. “You don’t like it much, and you like Done With You even less. Am I right?”
She shrugged. “The Struggle is starting to grow on me a little,” she said, “but you’re right, I don’t care for Done With You at all. It’s rock and roll music, with electric distorted guitars, and I just don’t care for the entire genre.”
“And, because of that, it’s hard to come up with proper phrasing because you don’t enjoy the underlying song?”
She took a deep breath. “Maybe,” she admitted. “Like I said, maybe I’m not the right girl for your little project here. The money is good, of course, but ... well ... it might be best if I just let you find someone else.”
“I don’t want someone else,” Celia told her. “I want you. I want you blowing that horn the way you did on Someone To Watch Over Me, the way you did on When the Saints Come Marching In. That talent will make my songs shine, will make people sing along with them when they hear them on the radio, make them buy the album in droves when it comes out. And, quite frankly, I don’t have anyone else. I want you to stay but I need you to find a way to get over your contempt for my music and start plugging in the way I’m sure you’re capable of.”
“But how?” Laura asked. “I can’t help the way I feel.”
“Perhaps not,” Celia said, “but you can open your mind a little, can’t you?”
“What do you mean?”
“You try to wrap your mind around the thought that maybe we don’t suck as much as you think we do, that maybe we really are capable of producing some palatable music you might actually enjoy.”
“Well...” she said doubtfully, not daring to articulate what was actually on her mind.
But Celia did not really need a full answer. “And we,” she continued, “will start working on a way to generate a little camaraderie, a little band cohesion with you. I think that is an important factor in mutual composition.”
“How are you going to do that?”
Celia smiled. “You’ll see after lunch,” she said.
She would answer no more questions about her plan. She simply went on eating her own sandwich and sipping from her diet Coke. Laura thought about asking her a few questions—primarily about how she had ended up being friends with such an unsavory character as Kingsley. She seemed to remember that a few years ago Kingsley had ended up getting in a fight with some of Celia’s band at the Grammy Awards. Obviously, they had gotten over whatever that issue had been about. Was it because Jake had come on to her, perhaps? That seemed a likely possibility. In the end, however, she kept her mouth shut. Did she really want to know any more about these people than she already did?
When the lunch break was over, both Ben and Ted went after the leftovers and began packing them up into Tupperware containers.
“You want in on the swag, Laura?” Ted asked her.
“The swag?” she asked.
“The rhythm section gets to keep the leftovers,” Ben told her. “That’s the rule they laid down when we signed on. Of course, you’re not the rhythm section, but I’m sure we can include you in the deal.”
“Hell to the yeah,” Ted said. “My goddamn refrigerator is already full. I haven’t had to buy groceries in a month.”
“Uh ... I’m okay,” she said. “You go ahead and keep the ... the swag.”
“Fair enough,” Ted said. They went back to packing up and soon, the food was neatly stowed away in ice chests that both had brought just for this purpose.
At promptly two o’clock, lunch was declared to be at an end and everyone returned to their seats.
“All right then,” Kingsley said, twirling a guitar pick in his fingers while his black Les Paul sat on his lap. “What next? Back to Done With You? Maybe try to make some headway?” He cast a sour glance at Laura as he said this—a look that implied he knew who was responsible for that lack of headway. Again, she almost wanted to call him out, say something nasty in reply, and, again, she remembered what kind of man she was dealing with. She kept quiet.
“I think,” Celia said, “that I want to try a little experiment.”
“What kind of experiment?” Kingsley asked.
“Well, it occurred to me that we need to have a little exercise in band cohesion here.”
“We have band cohesion,” Kingsley said. He then looked directly at Laura again. “For the most part anyway.”
Laura could hold her tongue no longer. “I’m sorry I don’t fit in with your little group here,” she told him. “I’ve tried, but this music you’re playing is just not ... not what I’m used to. Like I was just telling Celia, maybe this wasn’t such a good idea after all.”
“Maybe it wasn’t,” Jake agreed.
Laura opened her mouth to say something else—quite possibly something along the lines of Fine, I’ll just be on my way then, and you can stick your fifty dollars an hour up your derriere! —but Celia opened her mouth first.
“This is exactly what I’m talking about,” she said. “We need group cohesion, and the member who is feeling like she doesn’t belong here is Laura.”
“I don’t think I do belong here,” Laura said. “I’m not sure I’m ever going to feel like that.”
“It’s only been two days, Laura,” Ben told her. “You haven’t really given us much of a chance.”
“Nor have I been given much of a chance either,” she returned.
“Touché,” Celia said. “That’s why I want to try this little exercise—a kind of a jam session, if you will.”