CHAPTER SIX
Bong!
“May I take your order?” Gina asked, her hand pressing down the ‘speak” button on the battery pack around her waist. She looked up to the monitor and saw a dark minivan on the screen, the feed from a camera mounted on the roof of Royal Burger, showing the next car at the drive-thru. All she could think was: Minivan. Family. Twenty dollar order.
Through the fuzz and the dull hum of the minivan’s engine, the reply came: “Ah. Let me get a number four.”
“Drink with that?”
“No pickles!”
“Number four no pickles and the drink?”
A pause. “Coke.”
“Anything else.”
“Ah. Kid’s Meal. Chicken Tenders.”
“Drink?”
Another pause. “You have apple juice?”
“No. We have orange.”
“Hi-C.”
“Fruit Punch?”
“Pink Lemonade.”
Gina’s fingers flew over the order screen on the register, hitting buttons that actually had the printed words “Kiddie Meal”, “Royal”, “Small”, “Medium”, “Large”, etc., stuck to the so-called transparent vinyl protecting the ten year old register from dirt, on similarly browning stickers, red for drinks, green for sandwiches, etc., whose edges were starting to curl from the slow buildup of grease and dirt.
“Six forty-six. Drive through.”
Gina, already making the drinks, turned to see the store manager, Agnes Rolen, a bony, creaky woman with the standard issue short curly forty-five year old mom haircut, wave to her as she put on her peacoat and walked out into the dining room, getting ready to leave. She poked her eyes over her shoulder for a moment and their was a brief interruption in the energy of the dining room, all hesitant breaths and anticipatory eye contact. Gina, almost on instinct, walked over and nodded to her as she grabbed out the order receipts that came out of the printer by the front end registers.
“Bye Gina,” Anges said.
“Bye, Agnes.”
“Four piece chicken,” Caitlyn said, poking her head in from behind the fryers, as Henry dumped the four piece baggie in the fry bin and walked back to Specialty Board.
“How long on fries?”
Caitlyn wiggled the baskets in the grease. “Fifty-five.”
“Pull them at thirty.”
“Right.”
Bong!
“One second, sir,” Gina said to the minivan driver, now at the window, and then, pressing down the talk button: “May I take your order?”
~
Royal Burger’s Guilderland franchise stood at the corner of Fuller and Western Avenues. It was diagonally across Western Avenue from Stuyvesant Plaza, a small, homely, outdoor mall of about thirty or so stores, giving it the official designation of Royal Burger- Stuyvesant Plaza. From the outside, it was a small, brown building that eerily reminded Gina of wooden shelters in parks from field trips in grade school. It did modest business, thanks mostly to the fact that SUNY Albany was right across the street and the corporate offices forming Executive Plaza and the State Offices Campus were right nearby.
Caitlyn Avery had been working there since the beginning of the Fall ‘97 semester, the start of her last year at SUNY Albany. Her mother had just about cut her off, financially, and she knew that if she had any intentions of moving out come spring, than she had better start a regular job and accumulate some cash. Royal Burger hired her quick, and at six twenty-five an hour (almost unheard of for a part time worker). Working twenty-seven hours a week (forty over winter break), Caitlyn had managed to get about five hundred dollars together. It was not enough to get a studio, but it would be more than enough money if she could stand sharing a two bedroom with someone. But who?
She picked an old friend of her from her freshman year Biology lab, Kristen Cook, and approached her about it. Kristen liked the idea immediately, and the two of them went landlord hunting and found one, an old, greasy, deeply Christian man named Al Trout, with rooms to spare. He rented them a nice two-bedroom on Lark Street, close to Washington Park, the Plaza, and all of the bus lines, for five hundred and fifty dollars. They lived there the entire summer after Caitlyn’s (and Kristen’s) graduation without much incident.
When September rolled around, Kristen, apparently suffering from some kind of post-graduation anxiety, came home one day and out of the blue told Caitlyn that she would be leaving in a week. Caitlyn was shocked and angered, feeling that she had been abandoned. She didn’t know anyone, really, in Albany, anymore (most of her friends had left after graduating), and the though of living with someone she didn’t know well left her cold. She shared a room with her older sister most of her life, and shared a double room with a roommate for three years of college. The reason she got an apartment in the first place was so she wouldn’t have to deal with that shit anymore. She was very intent on having her own space and having it clearly marked.
When Kristen told her she was leaving, Caitlyn immediately stopped talking to her and waited for her to leave. She actually left two days later, not even using the whole week that she said she would need. Caitlyn didn’t mind. She had no intention of looking for a roommate anytime soon.
Caitlyn toyed with the idea of explaining the situation to Al and asking him if he could find her a one bedroom or a studio at around three hundred. But she didn’t really want to go through the hassle of breaking the lease, signing another, and so on. Plus, she figured Al would be happiest if all he did was get a check in the mail every month. If that trust was somehow skewed in any way, the more liable he would be to stop by, and if she did intend of using that huge closet in her room to grow bud over the winter, that would be a very bad thing to have as a possibility.
Enter Gina Becker. Caitlyn knew Gina, by name and face; they had been in the same class three semesters in a row. The three classes were all core cirriculum requirements and therefore it was random that they happened to be in the same one three times straight. They first talked about halfway through the second of the three classes, a Natural Sciences requirement called Exploration of Space. They both sat in the back of the class and at some point realized that they had both been in the same Business Law class the previous semester. They began talking casually (neither one of them remembers who started the first conversation), and, by the time they saw each other randomly the following Fall in Geology 101, had developed a friendly acquaintanceship. They hung out a couple times, with neutral results. Caitlyn liked Gina, but thought that she might be too much of a depressed loner to bother getting real close to. Caitlyn, immersed in loneliness and depression enough without needing someone to validate it, convinced herself that she found Gina prudish and elitist. Gina would actively seek out Caitlyn’s company in class and always stop to talk when they ran into each other on the Podium, but took Caitlyn’s apprehensiveness as an immediate insult and became highly affected by their interaction to the point where she could not decide which was stronger: the desire to become tight and entwined with Caitlyn, or the fear, the desire to run away every time she saw her.
Even through this, there was a warm, mutual pleasantness to their acquaintanceship. They always waved and always planned to make plans. This was where they were, in relation to each other, when Gina walked into Royal Burger one day after a night class, for a Chicken Sandwich value combo. It just happened to be the day after Kristen had left.
“Caitlyn!”
“Hi, Gina,” Caitlyn said, looking up from wiping down the front counter. She surveyed the empty dining room and saw no activity at the drive-thru. She pulled her headset off so it hung around her neck and adjusted her hat.
“I didn’t know you worked here.”
“I didn’t, until this spring.”
“Oh.”
“How’s everything?” Caitlyn asked. The beginnings of a plot were forming in the center of her brain.
“Okay, I guess. Your hair is getting long. I remember it being real short.”
“I guess I have let it grow out a bit,” Caitlyn said, taking her hat off and tugging at her consistently four-inch blond hairs.
Gina proceeded to order, a Royal Junior with cheese value meal.
“How’ve you been?” Gina asked. “I haven’t seen you since the semester started.”
Four white tee-shirts, covering four eerily similar put together bodies, walked in. Two with hats, both white. They stopped and looked at Gina and Caitlyn for a second, then stared with amazement at the lighted menu board above all of them.
“I’ve been okay. I’m living down on Lark Street now.”
“Lark Street!” Gina said. “Sweet! Studio?”
“No, two bedroom.”
“Who is it? Anyone I know?”
“Well, the room is free now, actually.”
Gina pushed her waist against the railing, letting the four SUNY Albany white-caps pass by her. “Really?”
“Yeah,” Caitlyn said, releasing a planned laugh with enough chest cavity to make it sound real. “Need a room?”
“Actually...”
“May I take your order?”
~
WHITE CAP #1: Lemme get a... a chicken sandwich.
CAITLYN: The meal or just the sandwich?
WHITE CAP #1: The meal.
WHITE CAP #2 (obviously intoxicated): The meal, yo.
WHITE CAP #1 (to WHITE CAP #3): What do ya want, yo?
WHITE CAP #3: Get me a Royal.
WHITE CAP #1: One Royal.
CAITLYN: Anything else?
WHITE CAP #1 (Shaking head and laughing): Nah.
GINA: You serious?
CAITLYN: Yeah. Six-oh-three.
WHITE CAP #3: Yo, I got the three. (Fishes through pockets, looking for change)
GINA (leaning forward): How much is rent?
CAITLYN: Thank you. Four dollars. (To Gina:) Two Seventy Five. Gas and Electric included.
WHITE CAP #4: Lemme get a number one.
CAITLYN: Cheese on that?
WHITE CAP #4: Yeah.
GINA: Um...
WHITE CAP #4: Here’s ten.
CAITLYN: Three sixty-six. There’s your change.
WHITE CAP #4: Thank you, sweetie.
CAITLYN: Here’s your cups. (Hands cups to WHITE CAPS nos. 1+3)
GINA: When would I have to let you know by?
WHITE CAP #2 (practically falling over the counter now): Yo, lemme get...
CAITLYN: As soon as possible, really.
GINA: Give me your number, I’ll call you tomorrow. I’ll tell you about my situation. You’re obviously busy.
CAITLYN: Number?
WHITE CAP #2: Number two, Double Royal. With cheese. No mayo. Coke.
CAITLYN (writing on notepaper): Here. I’m working until eight. Call me at nine.
HENRY (poking his head around Royal board): Fries down!
(SCOTT, a speckled, pale teenager, emerges from the right and drops two baskets of fries in the grease. HENRY places Royal sandwich on the chute.)
GINA (taking the paper from CAITLYN): I will.
(CAITLYN walks to the back and comes out with GINA’s order, in a brown bag)
WHITE CAP #3: Yo, where’s my order?
CAITLYN: Coming.
GINA: See you later, Caitlyn.
CAITLYN: Bye Gina.
~
When Gina called Caitlyn the next day, they arranged to meet for drinks that Friday and talk about it. They ended up having a blast. Gina, who was able to transfer off-campus with remarkably little resistance from the University, moved what she had with her in two bus trips that Sunday. Gina, who was pretty much living off of her (rich) parents at this point, had enough cash to pay October’s rent up front, thinking she would have nothing to worry about until at least November first.
Mr. and Mrs. Becker were not pleased at all when they heard of this arrangement. Gina tried to explain to them that it was a crucial step, along with her college education, of her becoming a fully independent woman. She explained to them that she had been yearning for her own space, her own independence, for a long time, and no longer enjoyed living at the dorms. She wanted a space, a “little pocket of the universe that [she] could call [her] own”, as she told her parents.
Her parents agreed. They would sponsor her little space. They agreed to send her two-hundred and seventy-five dollars a month. And nothing else.
“Shit,” Gina said to Caitlyn, after hanging up the phone that night.
“C’mere,” Caitlyn said, extending the bong. “Have a hit.”
“Thanks,” said Gina. “But bad news.”
“What’s that?”
“I have to get a job.”
“So?”
Gina took her hit and pointed her lips upward, exhaling the smoke from her lips in a straight line. The smoke spread evenly in all directions against the ceiling and hung there, resembling upside-down fog hovering over a river. She looked at Caitlyn and grimaced. “I have to get my first job.”
“What?” Caitlyn shrieked incredulously.
Gina nodded.
“Well,” Caitlyn said, “I can get you a shit job tomorrow.”
“No, not-”
“I can get you six twenty-five.”
“Urgh,” said Gina.
“Tomorrow.”
“Fine,” said Gina.
~
Gina started working at Royal Burger on November 15th. Caitlyn trained Gina on Royal board her first shift. Caitlyn was pretty much able to choose her spot working in the back, making the food, away from the customers, having worked there almost a year (an unusually long time given the 250% turnover rate in the store). Gina learned quickly and by the end of her first week could pretty much handle anything that came her way. She had pretty much resigned herself, from the start, to sucking up any kind of resentment and disgust at the job and setting out to do whatever it was they wanted her to do, and do it well. Agnes, the store manager, sensed Gina’s good work ethic and promptly moved her to up to the cash register. By the end of the month she was working lunch-time rushes at the drive-thru with little problem. By working four five hour shifts a week she earned herself a good ninety dollars a week. She found that by punching in a little early, and waiting until the last possible minute to clock out that she could push the net pay on the check to three digits. Five twenties had a much more profound psychological impact than four and a ten, and Gina knew this. She always smiled to herself when it happened, chalking it up as one of the small victories in life, a mental notch, a little bit of fuel boost.
Gina had managed to save about two hundred dollars by the time that finals rolled around. It was the day before finals started across campus (Gina’s first was Monday, 10 a.m.). Gina, because of her little envelope of twenties in the top drawer of her dresser, was able to cut her hours down to fifteen a week, giving her plenty of time to study for finals. She had four finals; two on Monday, one on Tuesday, and one on Friday. She would be working Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday. She had set it up so that she would keep that schedule through Christmas, but she was still undecided as to whether she would stay in Albany over winter break. She didn’t really see the point of staying at her parents’ house, seeing as how she had her own place now and she knew that it would be tense at home. She figured she would probably stay at home for Christmas Eve and Christmas, and probably the next day or two, if only to see some of her high school friends.
In the end, though, she wanted to stay in Albany for the majority of the break. The job sucked, sure, but it wasn’t that bad. Gina had accepted the fact that she liked being employed and sort-of earning her own keep. The worst part about the job was the stigma attached to working for a fast food chain while in her senior year of college. All the jokes everyone had made, all her life, about the stereotype of the loser twenty-year old “flipping burgers at McDonalds” were in her face constantly. But in the end, it was attractive because it was consistent, in pay and in keeping her busy. And, by staying in Albany, she knew she would be in her own apartment, her own place, and doing things her own way, at her own pace.
Plus she didn’t have the internet at home. Her computer system, which her parents had gotten her before she left for her freshman year and then upgraded last year, was, in Caitlyn’s words, “a pretty sick piece of machinery”, high speed and chock full of RAM. The internet, especially IRC, had become something more than a hobby, something less than an obsession, to her. She had been talking to reed for about two weeks now, almost consistently every night and sometimes until four or five in the morning. Because reed was two hours ahead, he was able to goad her into staying online “just a little longer” by saying he wasn’t tired and wanted to talk some more. Their incessant chatting on #life had actually started screwing up the sleep and work schedules of the channel regulars. Random people would drop by and see people there, and stay. Even frau, normally withdrawn, had started chatting with ChainSaw, an Art History major from the University of Arizona, of all places. Camille hadn’t mentioned suicide (or crydydian) in two weeks. In a recent e-mail, crydydian had told her that he hadn’t seen this amount of activity on the channel since he and Pillbox wrote Pillbot and started #life back in ninety-six.
The last bus left at eleven, and Gina and Caitlyn, when they were closing, wouldn’t get out until at least eleven-thirty. They had an arrangement with Agnes that if they agreed to close, they’d have to be guaranteed a ride home. Usually Henry, the full-time night closer, would be able to drive them downtown. If not, Agnes had said that whatever manager was closing that night would drive them home. This particular night though, like most, it was Henry. Henry was thirty years old, a born again Christian, published religious poet, and worked at two Royal Burgers, opening one two towns over, and then closing Stuyvesant. One night, Caitlyn and Gina probed him and found out that he had his schedule set up in a way that he was working every single day, and hadn’t had a full day without work since this past Easter. The three of them were all pretty bitter about Royal Burger anyway, so they were always at least able to talk about that on the way home, if they felt the need for talking.
Henry dropped them off after a silent car ride home. They walked up the stairs, exaggerating their weariness. Gina, with a quick skip, was the first to reach the landing and opened the door. She and headed straight for the couch, turned on Pix 106, the local classic rock station, and waited for Caitlyn to emerge from her room with her galss bubler. They packed and smoked and drank beers leftover from last night’s twelve pack and talked about work, and Gina bitched about having to take two finals Monday, one after the other, even, and Caitlyn complained about the dissent in Ted and Turk’s band, Cast Iron, over their sketchy New Year’s gig, and they eventually laughed, and got tired, split into their rooms, Gina intentionally waiting for a few minutes before logging in, and Caitlyn chain-smoking in front of a blank canvas, thinking about how bad she wanted the cover art for the band’s album, praying they wouldn’t break up, willing to toss the $100 and the credit on the CD jacket just to have it out there, just to have her work able to be seen by anyone...
~
Nick Kohl was feeling pretty shitty, all around, not just side effects from his flu shot. He had not gone downstairs to the bar at all, letting Chuck hold down the fort for the evening. He woke up at noon and immediately knew that he wouldn’t be doing anything at all for at least the next twenty-four hours. He went immediately to the doctor, who shrugged and scripted him a mild antibiotic. He hadn’t eaten anything at all, only four glasses of orange juice and only three cigarettes. He was sitting at his computer, wrapped in a blue blanket, a tremor of a chill running through him every so often. The fourth cigarette of the day was practically staring out of the open pack at him; he was staring at the last line he had written, the first line of chapter two:
It was a good thing he didn’t come home last night, because they were waiting for him.
It was perfect. He had decided, once he had finished chapter one, that he wanted to make the narrator a very ambiguous character, at least for now. He had made it clear that the narrator was more or less, a normal Joe, living alone, probably very isolated from the world-at-large. What Nick wanted to keep secret (for now) was the stock that the narrator had in this particular guy, Johnson Trevor, and the events of his life, why he would (or wouldn’t) think it was in danger, why he would (or wouldn’t) want to try and help/save him. If he could.
So this is what he was to explore in chapter two. Narrate the events of the previous night, and show the narrator’s reaction. Nick was really looking forward to writing it. He was finding that he would write a little bit, two pages, one page, one paragraph, at a time, and then think about where the story was going. He had the bare bones of the thing, but found that it (the actual writing of the book, the novel) was something that could only be accomplished as a progressive, evolutionary process. Everything that wrote, every individual sentence, came as a direct result of the last sentence he had written. And every chapter, every chuck of action, chunk of story, would be the offspring of the one before it. And it would come out clean that way, he reasoned, because he would be creating the thing, the novel, the way he experienced the world. As a thing constantly under revision, always open to new information, to a different perspective, anything that disproved or didn’t jive with previous experience.
Nothing was incorrect, nothing was flawed. I just had never experienced anything like that before. How could I have been expected to accept it?
He sat, his cold fingers stretching off of the mouse and extending towards the pack of cigarettes. He had been breathing deeply, in and out, without pain, for a good half-hour. Whatever kind of bronchitis thing, whatever kind of flu or cold he had, could definitely handle another cigarette. It would ground him, set him at the gate.
He lit, and erased the sentence:
It’s a good thing that he didn’t come home last night, because they were waiting for him. Now, I don’t know for a fact that they were there to harm him. Hell, I don’t even know for sure that they were even there for him. But something about this whole thing I’ve been seeing, this whole thing, and the way it has been going on, tells me that they were. And I know that whether or not he comes home tonight, they’ll be there again. Waiting in their Buick across the street, right in front of my doorstop, their heads tilted up. I wondered if they had as good a view of his apartment as I did. They smoked cigarettes, I know, because I saw them throw the lit butts out the window. Maybe they were waiting for him. Maybe they were waiting for one of the two girls. But they were waiting, and left promptly at five a.m. on the dot.
The next day, on my way to the bus stop, on my way to work, I stopped for a moment in front of my apartment to see if there was anything there, any clues, any piece of anything that I could use. There was a watery spot in the snow where there car had been, and twelve cigarette butts, the brown speckled kind, probably Winstons or Marlboros. I didn’t want to pick one up, or lean close to it to see. I was afraid someone would see me, even though I was doing nothing, which was nothing even though it was something out of the ordinary. How often do you see people picking stuff off of the ground? Even if it’s change, even if it’s a quarter, I’m still like, kind of weirded out by it, like, is it really that important? Even though it’s nothing.
After we got off work me and George went down to the Pit and threw back a few, bitching about our boss Henry and chain-smoking and he told me about this girl Sherry that he wanted to fuck and how she was all ripe for him. I didn’t want to hear it. I knew the girl, and besides, I had other shit to attend to. We were hanging out in the Pit for a while and even got in a good game of pool and got to talking about the old days when shit was real good.
But I had to leave if I was going to do my thing. I knew if he was coming home he’d be home by midnight or twelve-thirty, and last night the guys in the Buick showed up at twelve-fifteen. I found a reason to split with George, even though the energy was good and the wallet full, at eleven-fifteen, eleven-twenty. It was a quick cab ride to the place, Division Street, where we lived. I got
Nick Kohl paused to ash his cigarette and look at the screen, slightly furrowing his brow without realizing it.
It was a quick cab ride to the place, Clinton Street, where we lived. I got to my doorstep at eleven-forty and paid the hack. I went into my lobby and pretended to check my mail until I was sure he was around the corner and then I moved. I left the lobby and walked out onto the street. It was poorly lit, like every night on the street, and empty. His light was off. I crossed the street, looking around me to make sure.
Alls I knew was that my plan was to walk in the building, and nothing else. For some reason I was deathly afraid of passing him in the hallway, even though I knew there was no way he would recognize me, or even care to notice me, given all the shit he was going through. But I thought maybe he would take notice of a strange face in his apartment building if he was paranoid enough. And I thought my eyes would give me away. I was sunken with guilt for even entering the place, and my heart was racing the whole time. I felt the metal latch on the inside door and could not tell whether it was the metal or my hand that was cold. I pushed against it gently and felt it give. The door was open and I knew I would be going in.
Inside, everything was cold and grey and metallic, and very isolating and long. There were mirrors along the sides of the entrance way, and I was staring at myself all over, not believing what I was doing and at the same time couldn’t fathom it, because it was nothing. I was just in the building.
The first apartment on the right was 1A, and I knew that Johnson was one in from that, and on the second floor. It would probably be 2 B or C, depending on how the apartment letters were set up on the ground floor. I went around the corner and looked at the doors. From the set up I saw, trying to see how it fit three-dimensionally and to orient myself to where my apartment was, I figured it had to be 2B. I went back to the entrance, looking at the mailboxes. There was no name on 2 A, B, or C. My head began to spin. I thought I heard a latch unhook from around the corner, down the long hallway. I thought they heard me walking, the echo. I was wearing my heavy boots, I had to, for work in the winter, but I cursed myself for wearing them anyway. I was frozen, like the two poorly insulated glass doors my body was placed in between of. They looked with their glares and allowed the cold air to make them seem brittle, as if touching them would crack them, as if they were thin, and vibrating.
I was standing still when the Civic pulled up. There were two men inside it, both wearing glasses. They were looking right at me. I was looking at them. I could not help it. I was looking that way, and they pulled up into my field of vision. I did not recognize them.
I wasn’t doing anything in there. I stepped out and watched them watch me leave. I walked right past their car, not looking at them, not giving up the fact that I knew they were looking at me, their heads slowly turning at the same time, at the same slow, gravy speed. Synchronized. Together.
I walked up to my apartment, and opened the door just wide enough for me to squeeze in, trying not to let any hallway light in. I stayed far away from the window, and never turned on any lights or the television so they wouldn’t see what apartment I was in from the street, if they were watching, if they were even there all night again. I know they were but I didn’t see. I listened to the radio all night, classic rock, at a low volume.
~
****crydydian has joined #life (03:20)
<sloegin> hey cry
<crydydian> hey busy tonight
<Camille> re eric
<ChAiNsAw> Yo CrYdYdIaN
<PtBlNk> sups
<Pillbot> Ping!
<crydydian> hey everyone
<frau> hey eric!!
<reed> greetings
<crydydian> hey reed good to see ya
<reed> :)
<crydydian> hey who are you new guys?
<Camille> where’d you go eric
<sloegin> sophomores from Tucson
<crydydian> oh i see
<ChAiNsAw> Tucson!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
<ChAiNsAw> !!!!!!!!!!!!!
<sloegin> they’re toying with the bot
<Pillbot> Ping! PtBlNk rules!!
<PtBlNk> hehehehe
<Camille> oh my
<crydydian> good thing Pillbox isn’t here
<sloegin> really
~
*crydydian* are you busy msging with reed?
/msg crydydian off and on
*reed* so c’mon
/msg crydydian he’s asking me what I look like
*reed* please?
*crydydian* so tell him gina
/msg reed they’re not that great
/msg crydydian I’m so stressed!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
*reed* uh huh
*crydydian* why?
*reed* hey gina if you don’t want to that’s fine
*reed* I’m just curious, that’s all
*reed* want to put a picture of a face with the words
/msg crydydian argh
/msg crydydian hang on
/msg reed ok here goes
/msg reed I’ m about five six, long brown hair, dark green eyes, um
/msg reed a little heavy, but not much.
/msg reed curvy :)
*reed* :)
/msg reed and?
*reed* ?
/msg reed you’re not going to ask, rich? I’m surprised.
/msg reed hmph.
*reed* honestly, i don’t know...
/msg reed 38C
*reed* oh!
*reed* :)
/msg reed don’t tell crydydian
/msg reed ok?
/msg reed rich?
*reed* he said he knew already. Hm..
/msg reed *gasp*
*crydydian winks at you
~
****reed has left #life (04:06)
<crydydian> gina?
<crydydian> done so soon?
<sloegin> he said he was tired
<crydydian> feeling better?
<sloegin> still stressed
<crydydian> about what?
<sloegin> about Caitlyn, my roommate
<crydydian> mhhm what about her?
<sloegin> nothing specific
<sloegin> it’s just
<crydydian> ?
<sloegin> you know, we all worry sometimes eric.
<crydydian> we do
<sloegin> ...
<crydydian> ...
<crydydian> gina
<crydydian> i’ll be lurking, k?
****crydydian has left #life (04:21)
~
Caitlyn knocked on Gina’s door a little before five. Gina, who was off of IRC by that time and nestled in bed, sat upright and told her to come in. She turned the knob a little and poked her head in, the light from the street highlighting the contrast with her heavily shadowed eyes. She leaned in further with an awkward posture, suggesting what Gina took to be caution, hesitating a minute before understanding that she was completely welcome.
“Can I come in?” she asked.
“Sure,” said Gina, pulling the blanket to her waist, searching for her lighter.
“I wanted to show you something.”
“What is it?” Gina asked, taking the black lighter from Caitlyn’s outstretched hand.
“The cover art,” she said, bringing an envelope from around behind her back. “For the album. There are three. For the Cast Iron CD. One is the cover, one is back, one is the band photo.” She handed Gina the envelope.
Gina thumbed the flap of the envelope for a second, them looked up at Caitlyn. She had lit a cigarette without Gina realizing it and was smiling like a ten year old girl. “This is great, Caitlyn,” she said. “Are these the final prints?”
“Yep.”
“Shit! Amazing, Cait.” She took the papers out of the envelope and looked through them. The first, with the word BACK COVER written above it in black marker, was a beautiful black ink sketch of an eyeball.
“My eyeball,” Caitlyn said as Gina looked up.
Gina flipped over to the band photo, the four of them, without instruments, inside Turk and Marshall’s garage.
The final one was a picture of a night time city-scape of a gotham-like metropolis, except every building was just the framework, the steel girders. There were a couple of people walking around on the beams, carrying various construction tools, hammers, drills, etc. The detail and perspective on it were incredible. The inscription at the bottom was Protect This Shell.
“Album title?”
“Yeah.”
“Caitlyn, these are amazing.”
“Thanks, Gina.”
“No,” Gina said, waving them in back and forth in front of her face. “This front cover is incredible.”
“I worked so long doing each thing on it,” Caitlyn said. She came fully in Gina’s room and pointed at the picture. “Each girder, each person. It was one of the most fun projects I’ve ever done.” Her eyes were widening, trying to make eye contact with Gina and at the same time trying to make her look at the picture. “See this one?” she asked, pointing to a roundish structure in the front, lying behind a skeleton of a bridge. “I took Madison Square Garden as the model for that, but tried to throw in a little Roman Coliseum for the old school factor. As if they had build it with steel instead of marble, or whatever they used.”
“Well, whatever, it’s good shit, man.”
“Thank Marshall mostly. He gave me the album title and the concept and then gave me free range.”
“When is it going to be released?”
“February, if all goes well.”
“What’s wrong?”
“There’s a bit of dissent in the air over the New Year’s Gig.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s the set list. Again.”
Gina frowned.
Caitlyn got up and moved towards the door. Gina gave her pack the pictures. “It’s bound to happen.”
“What is? The set list problem?” Gina asked.
“The dissent,” Caitlyn said. “Civil wars. Factions opposed. Turk and Marshall have a vision. Unfortunately, that vision is at odds with other old-school scene traditions.”
“I don’t get it.”
Caitlyn sighed and tried to look out the window. “Innovation need not betray ideology.”
Gina took a long drag of her cigarette and looked at Caitlyn standing in the doorway. “No,” she said. “It most definitely need not.”
Caitlyn smiled and bobbed her head repeatedly, drunkenly, towards Gina in agreement. “This is one of those things that is going to continue to be huge for me in ways I’d like yo to understand. At some point. But for now, good night, my friend,” she said, raising her head and closing the door, her shoulder and part of her right breast peeking out of her worn, sleeveless Megadeth tee shirt.
“Night, babe.”