The Decade that Roared
Chapter Four
1921, Chicago
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The familiar sound of tinkling bells was replaced with a violent ringing as a fuming woman entered the shop and flung the door closed. Miroku looked up from his reading and smiled mischievously. "Ah," he said, setting the newspaper on the wooden counter, "I see you got my gift." The brunette stepped up to the counter and stood before it, her foot tapping the floor rhythmically, creating a steady beat as she opened her mouth to speak.
"Well considering the fact you handed the thing to me, yeah, I'd have to say I did." Sango lifted the flawless trumpet case and slammed it onto the counter top. "Where's my cornet?" she asked through gritted teeth, her eyes blazing with anger. She looked the young man straight in the eye. Miroku wanted desperately to look away, but he didn't want to give off the impression that he was frightened by this girl's anger...although he was.
"Miss Thompson," he said in his most charming voice, "I must admit that it is rather rude to damage a gift such as this." As he pointed to the trumpet case, he took a quick glance down, thus noticing a crack running up the case's side, and winced.
"Personally," Sango spat. "I find it rude not to heed to your customer's request. I asked you to fix my horn! Not give me a new one, jelly no less!" As she spoke, her eyes scanned the shelves for her treasured instrument.
"Your horn was to beat to even play, kiddo. There wasn't much I could do for it. Couldn't pull any armstrongs at all," He said, finishing this declaration with a sigh.
Sango rolled her eyes at this. "Don't you think I know that? Why else would I have brought it in here?"
"Look kid, all I know is, you can't be in any band with a horn like that." Miroku leaned back in his chair and propped his feet up on the counter.
Sango looked taken aback. "Who said I was in a band?" Now she was having a hard time controlling her anger. A few more wrong words and this guy was gonna have to find himself a new head.
Miroku smiled his annoying (yet, Sango had to admit, attractive) smile again. "So you aren't in a band?"
"Did I stutter?"
"Then why do you play?" he gestured toward the cracked trumpet case.
"Because I feel like it!" she shouted.
"Ha, that's an offtime jive and you know it. Really," Miroku asked, as he steepled his fingers together, looking much like an Italian mob boss, what with his black Fedora and all. "Why do you play?"
Sango was getting really sick of this. She leaned in closer so she was about an inch away from Miroku's face (he had, by this point, leaned closer too,) and said in a low, dangerous voice, "If you don't give me my horn back right now, I swear to god I'll jam a thirty-nine foot metal pole all the way through your left raise. You got me?"
Miroku simply laughed at this threat of bodily harm. "I don't know why you want that thing back so much. I mean, come on, a gal like you deserves better."
"Quit slidin' your jib; you're bad at it," was the quick and harsh reply. She rolled her eyes as she watched him twist a key in a lock underneath his feet."
"Shoot, kid, that hurts." Miroku held a hand to his chest, pretending to look offended at the insult. He handed her the battered cornet case. "Here y'are ma'am."
Sango took the case without question. "Thanks," she mumbled while throwing a couple bills on the counter and turning to leave.
"But as I have said before," Miroku began, "You can't be in a band with a horn like yours."
Sango turned back to face him, finding him to be standing. "And as I have said before, I ain't in a band." she turned to leave again.
"Do you want to be?" Miroku called.
Sango stopped dead in her tracks. "What did you say?"
He laughed. "I said, 'Do you wanna be?'"
"Why are you asking me this?" She glared hard at him when she was forced to turn around again. This time, there was a very broad grin playing across the man's face.
Without missing a beat, Miroku said, "Because I have a little...proposition for you..."
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The words hung in her head the entire day. "I have a little…proposition for you. How about you quit playing your cornet, and try trumpet. If you really don't like it, go ahead and keep playing that beat-up thing."
"But if you find that trumpet suits you the best, how about joining a band. And not just any band, Miss Thompson, but a jazz band, my band."
Sango stared out the window, watching the people pass by in the watery streets. The rain tapped feverishly at the glass and she looked down at her worn-out instrument. It was time for her to move on, after all. She couldn't expect to amount to anything playing that piece-of-crap cornet of hers.
That last thought made Sango shake her head. What was she thinking? A career as a trumpeter was positively ridiculous! Hardly any of the aspiring musician made it to the top, and most of those people had a lot more experience than she did.
She was just a low class woman playing a cornet. What kind of people would think twice about letting her perform?
And then Sango thought about Miroku. Well, he was a well-to-do person who thought it might be a good idea to actually let her play in his band! It would have been great (no, utterly stupendous!) if she made a name for herself through that…
…But it was such a risk! She couldn't afford it.
Kohaku raced down the stairs and headed towards the door, pulling on his coat and staring at his older sister. After successfully getting his coat on and opening the front door, Sango asked, "Kohaku, where are you going?"
Her younger brother stopped his departure to answer her. "I'm going to Rin's house and asking her if she wants to go to the park tomorrow."
"Rin?" Sango raised her eyebrows and said, "Isn't that the girl you like?" He nodded, a blush covering his freckled face. "Kohaku, what's going to happen if she turns you down? Are you sure you want to do that?"
Kohaku opened and closed his mouth a couple of times in thought before finally coming up with his reply. "Well, we all have to take risks sometimes."
Now that caught her off guard.
As her brother dashed out the doorway onto the stormy sidewalk, Sango was trying to convince herself that taking this offer was probably going to be the worst mistake she could make!
And the other side of her brain was retaliating with the fact that she was out of money, her job was most likely going to have to lay her off, and that the trumpet and the lessons were free…
Sango had made her decision.
Grabbing the cornet and a jacket, Sango slid her arms into the sleeves and stood up, dusting herself off lastly. Her cat came dawdling near the couch and she patted its head. "Well, Kirara…Kohaku's right. We do need to take risks, don't we?"
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A/N from Girl in No Man's Land
Alright kids. I wrote this chappie! Actually, no my-name-is-pucca (but she's not here since she's at the Reader's Digest Word Power Challenge thing and left me all by myself) wrote most of the beginning, I simply filled in the rest. Okay, so if you have noticed, there are a lot of funky words and phrases in this chapter, like, 'jelly' and 'armstrongs' and 'slidin' your jib', and stuff. Well, if you know what these words mean, kudos to you. If you don't, well that's what I am here for. Here are the words and their definitions in no particular order:
JELLY: (N) anything free or on the house.
ARMSTRONGS: (N) musical notes in the upper register (haha these were named after Louis Armstrong you know...I think...)
OFFTIME JIVE: (N) sorry excuse
LEFT RAISE: (N) left side
SLIDIN' (slide) YOUR JIB: (V) to talk freely. In this chapter, it simply means to talk.
Yeah. There are more...many more that will probably be used throughout the story, but for now, those are all you have to worry about.
CHEERS!
My-name-is-pucca's added on comment: Ack, it's short. Sorry about that. Okay, well, next chapter will not be the Kagome/InuYasha chapter, as you all had expected. It shall be the Kohaku/Rin fluffy oneshot thing.
And I bought Fedora at the Goodwill for three bucks. Laugh at my poverty.