by Laer Carroll
He let her take over the controls and perform very gentle maneuvers. Soon she felt she had perfect control of the craft. It became intuitive to turn at exact angles in any direction, raise and lower engine speed, and the many other activities it took to fly a machine in the four-dimensional realm of flight. Her feel for her inertial frame was perfect.
She did not let on any of this. It would make Jimmy think she was delusional. But she wasn't. She had too much proof of this in her extraordinary athletic performance. And in how it felt when she'd traveled in high-speed commercial jets on her musical tour. Then she'd been able to shut her eyes and know just where and in what attitude her body was in four-space.
Finally they landed, Jane feeling on her locked-out controls the yoke's and the foot pedals' movement which brought them safely down. Then she took over and drove them back to the plane's parking slot. Thus began her weekly pilot lessons on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
<>
On the Monday before the first official lesson when dinner was done Alex and Malena told her they had a belated birthday present for her.
Jane had been suspicious all throughout dinner that something was up. She'd seen this behavior before from the two of them, but she waited for them to "surprise" her. To do otherwise would ruin their pleasure.
They led her out to the garage. It held Malena's SUV and normally Alex's sky-blue Porsche. It was missing. Until they raised the garage door and she saw it in the driveway. Atop it was a huge red bow.
Alex handed her the keys and said, in unison with his wife, "Happy birthday!"
Jane gasped, truly utterly surprised. A jolt of joy shot throughout her body.
She took the keys from his hand, her arm and hand running on automatic, staring at--her--car in a daze lit only by the sight of the beautiful machine. Her gaze brightened, color contrasts increased, the edges of the image before her sharpened.
"But--" turning toward them "--you love her."
"I do. But you need a car. I can get that new Tesla which I've been thinking about for some time. Perfect conjunction of need and desire."
Malena said, "More correctly, he's been DREAMING about that new car. Very annoying when I'm trying to get a full night's sleep. Close your mouth. Flies will get in it. Go for a drive."
Jane turned and pulled the two of them into a three-body hug.
"Thank you thank you thank you!"
"Hey," Alex said, "that hurts."
She was indeed hugging too tight. She sometimes forgot her strength. She released them, took the keys, and went for her solo ride in her new car.
The night wind blowing in her hair, she drove on Hill Street north and then onto the 210 Freeway. There she let the legs of the Porsche stretch though never beyond the speed limit. Driving neither too fast nor too slow for the traffic Jane became one with the engine and the car's body and the air caressing that body.
Chapter 7 - School, Sr Year
The rest of the summer Jane visited all the musicians involved in the music fest. She thanked each and chatted with each. The conversation with them always got around to pop music.
"I was impressed with a lot of the successes the last year and this one. Which were your favorite singers? And their groups?"
Everyone had opinions and they were not shy about expressing them. Jane listened with obvious great interest and asked a lot of questions. At the end of the chat she got up and said, "Well, gotta go. My folks want to do something."
She paused. "I sometimes think it would be fun to start a pop group. Oh, well. This year is going to be a heavy one. I wouldn't have time. Got to get ready for college. Advanced Placement courses, extracurriculars which would impress college admission people, you know. Still..."
School started in late August. Jane visited a few more musicians, the last of the ones involved in the Poly fest. By now the word had gotten around that Jane had a wistful idea of starting a pop group. A few had suspicions about her motives for chatting with them. They kept their thoughts to themselves. Most were not interested, but were curious to see what would develop.
And maybe, just maybe, there might be a role for them if the group took off. If not as members, maybe as song writers. Most of them had some trunked compositions. Or ones they were working on. There was a LOT of money in pop music.
<>
Jane's schedule for the school year was similar to that of her last. It had minor differences. Instead of World History she had US history. Human Development was pushed to the second semester, displaced by College Counseling. The second semester of English IV was replaced by Global Perspectives in English.
The biggest difference was language. She took Russian online. To better practice it she chatted with CalTech students who were from Russia. It turned out that there were quite a few.
And almost all of the women had lots of ballet training. Apparently ballet was a big deal Russia. She was fascinated by the different way the young women walked. It seemed almost as if each floated an inch above the floor.
Dancing was popular among the smarty pants of CalTech, several kinds: ballroom, west coast swing, hip-hop, salsa. And the Argentine tango.
There were lessons in the first hour of most of them, including the tango. That dance was so popular there was even a frequent milonga at Tech. That was the word for tango dance party.
She went to a milonga and was hooked. The dancing seemed to combine the discipline of ballet with the creative side of club style freeform dancing or, as her parents called it, "jumping up and down."
She began taking a weekly tango class at CalTech. The music called to her also. Her study of it replaced salsa music as an obsession. There was, unfortunately, not a lot written about it in English. There was some in Spanish. Happily, she spoke and read Spanish.
She drove to over a dozen weekly milongas in LA and Orange County at first, finding the ones she especially liked. There were at least a thousand dancers in the larger metroplex, maybe two thousand or even three.
She especially enjoyed one milonga, at the Argentine Association in Glendale, the city just to the west of Pasadena. Most of the members were long-established Argentine expatriates. She became friends with several of the older women and men. The latter wanted to get in her pants, of course, but never let on. She appreciated their appreciation but never acknowledged it.
Malena and Alex went with her once, as soon as it had clearly become her number one dance venue every weekend. They approved, especially that the mini-bar / sandwich sales did not sell alcohol. Jane laughed at them; she occasionally had a half glass of wine with Malena but had never developed a taste for alcohol.
She didn't point out that several members brought a bottle of wine to each event.
She liked the Glendale milonga because it was close, the members knew each other but were friendly to outsiders, and because once a month a tango quartet played there. This was made up of a violin, piano, a portable-size double bass, and a bandoneon, a small button accordion which gave Argentine tangos a unique almost mournful sound.
She thought it must be fiendishly difficult to play.
She inhaled tango music scores, which were usually short pieces of three to four minutes performance times, as she inhaled everything mathematical. Soon she had a repertoire approaching a thousand pieces, which was prodigious even for long-time professional musicians. For her memorizing them was so easy and she had so little ego that she was only vaguely aware of her precocity. She only knew enough of the social dangers of precocity that she kept her abilities quiet.
Her favorites were of two types: older ones from the first three decades of the 20th Century, and Nuevo tango from the later 20th which used a lot of electronic sounds. With her earmuff ear phones she played them late into many nights after she'd done her homework.
(Her lessons with Jimmy moved to Saturday and two hours length. By now she had graduated to mild acrobatics, advanced stall control, other safety measures, and instrument flight rules and practices.)
One Saturday nigh
t when the piano player appeared a bit under the weather she struck. She'd come early as she usually did band nights to get just the seat she wanted. She'd pondered just how to approach the band to play with them and instantly took advantage of this stroke of luck.
"Hi, Mr Diaz. Rodrigo looks as if he has the flu. Or maybe stayed up a little late last night." Diaz was the bandoneon player and the leader of the group, a portly Argentine expatriate.
She looked mischievously at the piano player, a friend, who gave her the "I've got my eye on you look": Two forked fingers jabbed at his eyes and then at hers.
Diaz's look at Rodrigo was sour. That young man became instantly serious.
"I play the piano and I've been studying tango music. Maybe I could substitute for one or two of the easy traditional pieces. Just so Rod can rest up a bit."
"Are you some kind of music student?"
"Yes. In my high school. I'm pretty good. I won't let you down."
He looked around at the room. It was still early and only populated by the members who'd been around a long time.
"Well, little girl--Rodrigo, get your fat ass off that bench!--let's see what you've got."
Rod got up and went to the mini-bar. He got a cold beer from his stash under the counter, getting a nod from the bar tender. He hid the bottle from the view of Diaz with his body.
Jane settled onto the bench, addressed the keyboard and began to play "La Cumparsita," one of the oldest and still popular tangos.
After a few bars Diaz said, "Enough! Play 'El Choclo.'"
Another famous tango. He interrupted that and had her do three other segments, each of different style.
"That's enough. We'll let you play for the first set. Rodrigo, finish that beer you think I don't know about and take a nap in the van."
As Rod walked out, beer still in hand, Jane got a mischievous urge. She launched into an orchestral piece by Astor Piazzolla, a mid-period composer, player, and conductor, one of his most complex. She played with much gusto, leaning into some parts and playing them forte, some parts piano: loud and soft.
A couple of minutes into it Diaz shouted over the music.
"Enough! Enough! OK, we get it. You can play! Now take a trip to the rest room or whatever and get ready to work.
"Snotty little girl." That was said with a ferocious scowl but with a smile hinted at on the edges of his mouth.
Jane played the full first set, then retired to dance the rest of the night. Near the end of it, as she was leaving, Rodrigo looked at her across the room with a grin on his face and gave her a Thumbs Up, then scowled and favored her with an I've Got My Eyes on You gesture.
<>
Jane did her school work, took flying lessons, danced tango, and occasionally played tangos with Diaz's band. Rodridgo was teased often about being replaceable, but endured the kidding with a noble gaze at the heavens.
Musicians began to call and email her with questions about starting a pop group. She answered all of them with some variation on "I'd like that. But school work is really intense right now."
However, she had dinner with each of her front-runners and talked to them about what they would like to do in the quintet. About it she said, "I'm just playing with the idea of creating a group. Nothing's set yet. I'm still slammed at school."
Finally she picked her first four choices and invited them to a dinner at her house. Malena and Alex expanded the dining room table to seat ten and chatted with each of the four. Afterward the nascent quintet retired to the patio with drinks.
"I intend to begin with the group as a performer, an informal manager, and partial financier. Once we get established, we'll have to find a replacement performer and a replacement manager. Those will have to be two people. A dual role is too much for one person to handle, and there're too many possibilities for conflicts of interest."
"You're not going to stick with us?"
"I'll always 'stick with you' but I've got college and other matters in my future.
"I've read the bios of a lot of pop, rock, and other groups. A lot fail because some members are assholes. All of you are individualists but work well with others. Others fail because their members' creative interests clash. You are all flexible as well as focused on personal projects. All of you are reasonably self-supporting. This will be important in the first few years. I'll help financially, but I have other matters I want to spend my money on, so it won't be much. OK so far?"
The four looked at each other, then shrugged. Mailey, a black girl who played the violin, said, "Who's going to be boss when you're gone?"
"I don't know or care. You will work that out yourselves. But I suggest none of you take being a leader as more than a temporary consensual role for a specific job. A lot of groups have self-destructed when someone gets too bossy. You're a small enough group that democracy ought to work."
After a moment's silence Jane went on.
"I've established a few practices which will help give us a recognized brand. One is that each of us can solo for part of a piece, or for all of a piece. I think it would work well if at least three solos are done during most pieces. Another related practice is two-member talk-and-talkback singing. Also can be a third member commenting on a talk-talkback sequence. All for ways to set us off from other groups."
She waited for comments, then continued.
"Jafari, you're an expert physical percussionist, but you also are expert at beatbox electronic percussion. I want to start with the box as your primary instrument. Do you all have your vears?"
All but Mailey had them on with their faceplates flipped up. She got up to get hers from her car. Everyone was silent until she returned. Jane took that as a good sign, that the three left wanted Mailey to be full participant in whatever was said.
She had them power on and join one of the wi-fi channels running on her base computer upstairs.
"Now watch this video." She indicated an icon on the shared group interface on the computer. A virtual tap would start the visual.
"When we work up to big venues we can have all sorts of special effects: spotlights, fireworks, smoke, rising and falling sections, you name it. But I think we need some effects for small venues. The beatbox can supply that. Here is what some groups have done."
She click the icon. A video came up with a montage of several setups of beatbox fronts or panels in front of them showing flashing and flowing lights. In one segment the lights pulsed with the basic beat of a piece. The lights were not bright, which would take away from the music, but they established an almost hypnotic pulse.
After the video finished Jane said, "These effects are like any other art form. They can be shitty. They can be genius. More usually they are neither very good nor bad. Just mediocre. It might be better to dispense with mediocre stuff altogether. Though I suggest we play with them and see what we can come up with.
"Jafari, you're a technerd. Alberto--" Al was the guitar player. "--you're a visual artist, who as the rest of you may know, has a number of very popular YouTube videos online. I think you and Jafari might work up to something really nice. You two want to try that?"
They both were.
"That establishes some roles. Wang, you're our brass player. I was impressed that you seem to handle just about any wind instruments, both metal and wood. Would you feel OK to switching instruments during a performance? Even within pieces?"
"Piece of cake, Jane. I've been working with wind instruments almost before kindergarten. And what would you play?"
"Piano. Look--" She pointed in the vear display to an icon on the shared screen they were all looking at. A virtual click on it opened it up to an image. "This is a portable piano you see me wearing. Except for the shape, the keyboard's a standard piano keyboard."
The graphic showed her with two keyboards suspended by a strap resting on her tummy. They were separated by a couple of inches and tilted away from each other to make a shallow V. This let her rest her hands on each keyboard and play by touch in a similar way to how accor
dionists played.
Mailey wanted to know, "Why not play an accordion?"
"Because the sound is different. And I'm really good on a piano." In fact, she was nearly a virtuoso.
"Now look at this." She virtual pointed at another icon. It opened up into an image of a band on a stage.
In the middle and back was Jafari seated behind a large beatbox. In front of him on the audience's left side was Mailey with her violin. She was dressed in an African-like outfit, very colorful, with lots of strings of beads from shoulder to knee. On the audience right was Jane, dressed in blazing white.
To each side of the women and a step or three behind could be seen the two men. Alberto had his guitar and wore a sombrero whose brim was so wide it was almost as wide as he was tall. Everyone burst out laughing.
Opposite him was Wang with a trumpet raised high. He wore a round pillbox hat, very blue, and blue robes and had an absurdly Fu-Manchu mustache reaching to his knees. The laughter grew louder.
Wang said, "That's so offensive it's wonderful. I almost think I'd go along with that."
Jane looked at him. He said, "Oh my God, you're serious!"
Then: "My mom is going to kill me."
<>
The J-Group Quintet assembled for their first time to play together in one of the music rooms at Polytechnic School. As a student there Jane had the right to reserve a room for an hour at a time. It helped that the musical director was very interested in what she was doing. Jane's performance of "Requiem" had brought Poly a good deal of favorable publicity.
The first time they played together was so uncoordinated and clumsy it could have been labeled a tragedy. Jane laughed at each of the goofs and said growing pains were natural. The other four members were all experienced and talented performers. They agreed. By the time their hour and a half was up they had noticeably improved.
The quintet members went away with the assignment to come up with pieces they could play together and how to begin adopting the practices of the J-Group pop band which would heighten its "brand."
The next several perfs were better. By the time Veteran's Day arrived in the second week of September they were ready to perform. Jane suggested a Poly celebration. The school agreed. The J Band, its shortened name in the media, played patriotic pieces straight.