Part 5
Location: School
Time: 9:06am
Status: Considering becoming a motorsexual.
Daphne's car was very boring looking, but it could go really, really fast. Of course, Justin would never make it go really, really fast. Because he was not a delinquent but a responsible, young adult. So he only burned out the tires once as he left the street and after that he was like a saint all the way to school.
On the drive over, he thought about things. He did not worry, because worrying was unproductive and distracted him from what was important. Like Qui Gon said, 'Be mindful of the future, but not at the expense of the moment.' Jedi Knights were so cool, he had to rent that movie again.
He pulled into the parking garage oposit Discovery Sounds, a local recording company that had discovered they could get several large govenment grants if they took in helpless music students, and tought them how to work for them for minimun wage, while pretending to learn the inner workings of professional music.
Once inside, he hung up his winter coat, and climbed the two flights of stairs to the school's level. Half way up the stairs he had to go to the bathroom. He opted to stop and use the one on the first floor, it was a private investigaters office. He liked to go in there whenever he had an excuse because of a deep seated childhood belief, that lots of interesting things happned around P.I's. So far the most interesting thing to happen was that a man had been crying in a chair once, when he'd come in and had proceeded to collapse onto Justin and sob loudly about some photo's of his wife sitting in a cafe with another man.
Jillian, one of the three partners who owned the business, came in and pried him of Justin and sat him down forcefully into one of the waiting chairs. She gave him a simple statement about jumping to conclusions and even if those conclusions were founded it was all his fault for letting his marriage get to that state. She didn't use big words Jillian, but her tone was so forceful that Justin felt she could convince a lawyer to "not twist words, because it's wrong!". Since that time nothing so interesting had popped up, but Justin still had hope that one day he would walk in on a ninja assasin and Richard in the middle of a heated battle over the life of a helpless client, if only for a change a pace.
Opening the door, Justin peeked in and saw the only change was a new box of doughnuts on the coffee table. Chris must be hear already, he was always the first to arrive. Chris's office door was shut so Justin sneaked by it on tip toe and silently slipped into the bathroom. Of the three investigators, Chris definately liked him the least. He was an older ex-cop, who Justin suspected left the force to escape the mandatory therapy sessions. He claimed it was because he got bored with it, which was stupid because he was the most cronically boring person Justin knew.
Slipping out of the bathroom, he slid across the floor and out the door. Closing it behind him, he thought he heard the sound of Chris's boomarang slicing through the air next to the door. That thing gave him the creeps. Shivering he sped up the stairs and entered Discovery.
Today they would be doing recording, which was both a good and bad thing. Good because it meant he would be helping with the live recording and mixing, and bad because it was boring. Contrary to popular belief, recording a song was not at all interesting. First they would take down one part of the song, the base, the vocals, they had to do each part individually. This would take at the very least, 5 tries to get perfect. Then they fiddled with it in every way imaginable to see what would make it sound best, then repeat this with all parts for every 3 seconds of music. When it's done, if it still dosn't sound right, you have to go over it all again. Justin made his own music so he was used to the work, but at least he didn't have to deal with other people while doing it.
Put on top of all that, moody artists, time budgets, faulty equipment, generally being overworked and grouchyness, it could be hard. But it wasn't all bad, some days things went really wrong and others things went really right. It generally depended on who you where working with.
Justin opened the door of the big studio, where they did all the live recordings, and checked out who he'd be working with today. Okay, there was Erika, Benji, Jamie and Mr Patrick today. Not too bad, Benji and Jamie would take a really long lunch break and Erika would try to read his palm again but atleast Ethan wasn't here. He didn't feel like getting chatted up today, he had to much to do. Shit, the brunette he saw yesterday just popped up in his head again. That shouldn't be happening, the whole point of 12 hour crushes was that they ended after 12 hours. It got worse as images of Daphne, happy in love, filled his head like a whale song. Soft and whining and unstopable.
Shaking his head to clear it, he sat down next to Mr Patrick at the tables and checked that everything was turned on and that all the right buttons where flashing. Erika was helping the artists in the booth with the mic, telling them what cords not to step on if they wanted to live, that kind of stuff. She must have said something weird, like she always did. Because the 3 young men in the booth with her started staring at her before turning to each other with questioning looks. Erika came out of the booth and sat down on Justin's other side.
"The blonde's gonna leave for a group with a record deal soon."
She picked up a textbook on synthisiser wiring and started flipping through it like a magazine. Justin would have groaned but he was to used to her inner weirdness.
"Did you have to tell them that?"
"I didn't, I just told them we don't allow smoking in the building."
Erika looked slyly at his way through slitted eyes. Justin smiled back openly. He knew there was a reason why he liked her occasionally.
"Musicians." He muttered.
They where both fighting grins when Benji came in complaining about being all alone in the little studio. Mr Patrick told him to fuck off very politely and they finally got to work.
To be continued..