London Harmony: Feel the Beat (3 page)

There was applause around us and I smiled and held my hand out blindly toward the Robinsons in a grasping motion. They each took my hand as they left, giving it a squeeze. Amy giving me a kiss on the cheek saying, “That was one of your better mixes Abigail.” I blushed as she left with the boys.

I said into the air belatedly as they headed off to find a place to perform, “Thank you!” I'm always so bloody awkward with people. Why can't talking to them be as easy as music?

I played a few more sets. I had fun with some with a pair of drumsticks. I picked up different beats and tones with various materials around me, and made a mostly percussion number to a fun, harder song I pulled from the world around me. I played my tambourine through that one. I heard the clock strike eleven above me when I started. This would be my last number in this location, I'd have to start packing up to move after it.

I was a little nervous, because the whole half hour I played, that person stood in front of me with his arms crossed, never moving, never making a noise. Once my number finished, I blushed at the applause that thumped around inside me like a thousand heartbeats. I thanked everyone, “Thanks, I'll be shuffling off now to Maiden Lane a block over if you want to hear more.”

As I fumbled for my glasses that un-moving person finally turned and walked off. Once I could see again, the person had already disappeared into the crowd.

I quickly stowed my gear, then opened the little locking drawer in the case and went about collecting the lolly people had thrown in my upturned lid. Wow, it looked to be over fifty or sixty quid. I locked the drawer and then pocketed the couple business cards people had dropped in. I can usually land a business who needs performers or a band needing backup singers for a weekend. The ones I enjoy the most are the people in the underground music scene who just want to jam and make music.

I held the cards close to my face to read them, one tavern and one for Kinsgston and Associates, who the bloody hell were they? I shrugged and buttoned everything up and started down Southhampton with Percy singing and humming our way to Maiden Lane to set up again.

Some arms wrapped around my midsection from behind as I half walked, half danced. I was grinning before Ray said, “How's my Abbers today?” I spun and hugged her as Percy whined. She released me and dropped to a knee in one smooth motion. “Hello my handsome boy.” She scrubbed his ears.

She walked with me as I grinned at her playfulness. “Hi, Ray. It's such a brilliant day.”

She squinted an eye, “You are always in such a great mood. Makes me wonder if you are hiding something.” I swallowed, she always tells me that she thinks my cheerfulness is covering for some sort of shadow inside me, some sorrow. She's most likely right, but on the same token, I truly am happy most times.

I gave her a crinkled nose stunning face and quipped, “I'll not borrow any gloom nor doom thank you very much. Have you sang today?”

She nodded. “I'll sing in the market round about three to square out the day if you want to hit early supper with Randall and me after. I could call Temperance if you like.”

I blushed and smiled at her. “I'd be happy to join, but I can find my own dates thank you very much...” Then I added, “Mum.” Since my mum is always trying to set me up with 'nice young men' and Rayleigh knew it. Mum is okay with me being a lesbian, but she worries too much about people thinking ill of me because of it, so she's always throwing boys at me like I'd suddenly go straight. I never tell her but it sort of hurts.

Ray said with sarcasm, “Gee thanks, Abbers.” Then she bumped my hip then added playfully, “When was the last time you brought your own date? Oh, that's right never.” I stuck my tongue out at her. She giggled and those bright purple giggles with that warm yellow tone ricocheted around inside me causing me to smile. “Very mature.”

Then I pulled out my mobile and gave her a wicked grin. “As penance for your indiscretions, give me some sugar for my next set?” She smiled as she nodded. I hit record and she gave a trilling ad-lib that shot bursts of multicolored blasts of light around me. God did I love her voice. I made a show of saving the sample, I could definitely work something around that. I'd load it into my iPad on the next set.

I grinned at her as she peeled off calling back, “See around three?”

I called back as Percy and I continued on, “See you then brat,” for which I was rewarded with another giggle.

The day simply flew by as we changed locations each hour. I had amassed quite a sum for the day. None of the other locations were as profitable as the market, but I had a right brilliant time. On my last set two of my pedals went dead. They were always shorting and I had been biding my time as I eyed a nice eight pedal set. Looked like I'd need another trip to the Broken Note that night. If it weren't for them, I swear my gear would fall apart.

I finished early so I could catch the last of Rayleigh's set. I liked to enjoy her singing without my glasses on so I could truly see the beauty of what she crafts without the hindrance of sight. As I danced and drummed my hips to her last set, someone bumped my hips. I grinned at bumped back.

“Hey shorty,” Randall said. I rolled my eyes as I continued to sway to the music, he's one of the few blokes I can't see eye to eye with. I'm tall, he's taller by a hand.

I glanced at his shadowy blur in the brightness of the courtyard and gave him a grin. I felt him pull my equipment case from my grasp. Always a gentleman this one. I approved of Ray's choice in him. He made her smile.

I whistled loudly, causing red hot spiked to shoot through me along with the bright red wavering in my vision when she finished. It took her no time to join us by our side as I pushed my glasses back on with both hands. Makes it easier when you have no equipment and only a box with your permit and name taped to it like she did.

She looped an arm around mine and the other in Randall's and said in her best Audrey Hepburn voice, “Shall we supper darlings?” I blushed and Randall chuckled as we made our way to his SUV.

We had a great time at a quaint little cafe in Soho. I got a couple cross looks at people for having Percy inside with us, I still can't fathom people who don't think service animals should be inside an eatery. What, did they want people less able than me just to sit out on the curb to eat?
Wankers.
Without my glasses, Percy would be just about my only way to get around in the world. He and the silly cane in my bag. Just to make a point I placed some of my meal on a plate for him. Bad form I know, but I never claim to be perfect. The waitress saw and brought a small bowl of water for him.

We had a grand time then they offered to drop me at home, I countered with, “No but thanks, I have to get my stomp pedals looked at.” I smiled and fluttered my eyelashes at Randall. “Drop a girl at Broken Note?”

Ray answered for him, “We'd be delighted to.” Then she started bobbing in her seat from side to side swaying to my tapping my fork on a water glass and thumping the table lightly with my other hand, I hadn't realized I was doing it and stopped. She grinned at me. “I love how you absently pick up the beat of the environment around you like that Abbers. You are already good, but that's what makes you great.”

I blushed at the compliment and I left a large tip since Randall snagged the bill before either Ray or I could react. I had to get rid of the change in my pockets somehow, I had twenty or thirty quid in them. My pickle jars at home were overflowing and I disparately needed to make a trip to the bank.

I tilted my head and listened, the engine was throwing off these spears of red spikes through my head and I winced, and I was getting an odd copper taste in my mouth. “There's something wrong with your engine Randy, it's making a weird pinging tick that wasn't there earlier.”

They both listened intently then shared a look and Ray shrugged. “If she says it's there, then it is love.” He nodded agreement, they were one of the few people in this world that knew of my synesthesia. Then she tilted her head back toward me, examining me, and made a sour face at what she saw. “Tastes bad huh?”

I nodded in agreement and sighed. “And needles in my head.”

Randall grumbled, “And I just had Rhonda serviced.” Poor bloke. Ray and I exchanged grins at the name he gave his beast.

Rayleigh turned on the radio and she and I sang all the way to Broken Note, to Randall's smiling pleasure. I hopped out and Randy, being the gentleman he is, unloaded my case for me and Ray kissed my cheek as she started to get back in. “You'll be right?”

I nodded. “The Tube is just there.” I pointed across the street then bid them farewell, “Thanks you two. Love you bunches.”

Ray said, “Love you too lady. See you tomorrow?” I nodded then waved as they pulled away from the curb.

I looked up to the run-down storefront. You couldn't see through the windows as the areas that weren't taken up on the inside by handbills for local bands were blocked by a myriad of instruments and parts of instruments, and things not really recognizable but had to be related to music in some manner. It looked like someone's eclectic great aunt's attic.

The inside was in even more disarray, and dark. I could see ok, but it was hard for me to focus. That's where my furry boy came in and guided me around the stacks of odds and ends on the floor that were piled up past my waist.

I got to the old shop counter, squinted, and saw the old dusty shop bell and dinged it. The red burst of color faded to purple as the tone resonated. I heard a heavy Welsh accented voice cussing, “Bloody hell. Not a second of fuckin' peace!” Then louder, “One moment!”

A moment later, the owner of the shop Scooter came out from behind the curtain that separated the musical bramble shop from the old service station mechanic's bay of the back room. Well, his name is actually Scott, but the rest of the tinkers call him Scooter.

He's the perpetual thirty-year-old with tanned skin, dark hair, and a beatnik patch of black hair on his chin. If it weren't for the fact that just about every square millimeter of the muscular man was covered in tattoos, including his face, you'd think he came from a Dobie Gillis rerun.

His gruff expression turned into a genuine smile as he saw me and poured on his Welsh charm, and taking my hand to kiss as he said, “Prynhawn Da Abigail ! Mae'n dda gweld chi eto hardd,” with a cute wink. The musical flow and lilt of the language always felt like a gliding dove on the breeze as the warm yellows and light violets swam.

I blushed and lowered my eyes, he knew my Gran was Welsh so he knew I'd understand. I reclaimed my hand and said shyly, “You always say such sweet things Scooter.”

He grinned ear to ear. “And are you finally comin' to your senses and fallin' sway to my charms?”

I tilted my head and smiled at the cheeky bloke, I liked him a lot. My mum was scared to death of him just because of his tattoos, but he was really a sweet man. I shook my head in mock sorrow and copied his accent, “Alas, if only it were, but I'm just in need of a repair today.”

He inclined his head in capitulation, knowing it was the fairer sex for me, he really enjoyed our banter as I did. He leaned down and unclipped Percy's harness and bib so he knew he was off duty, then ruffled his ears and my boy ran back through the curtain. He reached and took the handle of my equipment case from me and offered his arm. He always did Percy's job for him in the back room. He always says, “Let the poor bloke have a break, I'll be your extra set of peepers.”

We went into the back room with him asking, “Stomp pedal again?” I nodded and he sighed. “You really need to replace it or upgrade like you want to. The repair bills alone almost pay for it.”

I nodded. Maybe it was time to take the plunge and practice with a different set of pedals. I just hated learning the positions of each pedal. I had to perform with my glasses on a few times before I had them down.

I looked around the big open bay. It always looked like a chop shop for instruments here with the five rows of benches with half a dozen tinkers working on instrument and equipment repairs. All the walls had floor to ceiling shelving units filled with parts and instruments.

No matter what Broken Note may look like to the casual observer, they are the best repair shop in the city. They even have an exclusive contract with the London Royal Symphony to service their instruments and maintain their sound system.

I grinned at Percy making the rounds getting some lovin' from all the workers. He's so bad, my boy. Scooter brought me to his desk and I sat in a chair as he knelt by the case and deftly opened it saying, “Let's see what we have here.” He slid out my pedal assembly and plugged it into a panel that was half disassembled beside his workbench, then tested each. With practiced ease, he took the casing off the pedals and attacked it with some sort of test meter.

A few seconds later he grumbled to himself with deep purples then said to me, “You've blown the capacitors somehow.” He pinched and stroked the patch of hair on his chin and squinted his eyes. “That's the third time now. I don't think your inverter is supplying clean power. We'll have to check that out.”

He raised his fingers to his lips and it was like a red hot spear was jammed through my body when he whistled loudly for attention. He shouted, “Tink! Got a job for you!” I blinked at him rapidly and he cocked his head at me then blushed. “Oh, sorry. I forgot you were sensitive to sounds.” I shrugged an okay with a tight smile. Mum had told him that the first time we came here, and I never corrected her, but I don't like going around advertising my synesthesia.

I saw a woman I had never seen here before stand up and start making her way over. She was a tiny woman with shiny pastel blue hair with a pink shock down the middle. She had more rings on her fingers than you would think would fit and colorful tattoo sleeves traveling up her arms that disappeared under her white faded band t-shirt. I couldn't quite make out which band from where I was standing. She had lots of metal in her ears and possibly a nose piercing.

I know my description sounds a little rough, but she was the opposite of that, the overall look was quite sexy like those Suicide Girl models that look a combination of cute and dangerous. Bloody hell. I reached up with both hands quickly and pulled my glasses off and stuffed them in my pocket as she approached. I didn't need to look like a geek. The world disappeared into fog and shadow around me.

The bluish fog entered my vision and Scooter said, “Tink, this is one of our VIP customers, Abigail Addison. Abigail this is our newest technician, Tink.”

She said in a tone of resignation, “Miss Addison.” It was like a guitar string had been plucked and was vibrating in the warmest greens and purples I had ever seen. The sound of it made me inhale sharply and I was just barely able to stop my involuntary smile.

I replied, “It is my pleasure Tink.”

We stood in silence for an awkward couple seconds. I was feeling quite self-conscious then Scooter grabbed my hand and moved it up and I felt a slender but calloused hand grasp mine and we shook. Oh bloody hell, had she been holding her hand out?
Smooth Abigail, smooth.

I felt like a right git as I grabbed my glasses from my pocket and reluctantly put them back on. I tried to recover as she squinted at me and regarded my glasses for a moment. I sputtered, “Tink the tinker is a coincidental alliteration.”

Her face hardened and she almost glared at Scooter. I was almost panicking, had I said something wrong? She looked at Scooter accusingly as she spoke to me, “It is Isabelle actually. Belle.” Her voice rose so the rest of the room could here. “Scooter and the BOYS here thought it was funny that someone named Belle was a tinker. So the unruly wankers started calling me Tinkerbell or Tink for short.”

The look she shot the other techs could have melted battleship steel and the guys all looked down and suddenly found their repairs quite fascinating. I giggled at her ability to instill the fear of God into the blokes. Scooter was grinning like a bloody muppet so I backed the woman by backhanding Scott in the gut and tilting my head at her, saying, “Abigail, please Belle.”

She grinned when I twapped the smug man. Then she scrunched her nose to one side and her lips to the other, her nose ring sliding across her upper lip, as she squinted one eye. “You're okay Abigail.” It was overly cute and I found myself curling my toes at her dulcet tones.

She looked me in the eyes for just the barest moment, she looked confused then looked away to my equipment, leaving me wondering what had confused her. She murmured, “What do we have here?”

Scott explained, “I think her setup is supplying dirty power. It's blowing capacitors in the pedals.”

She nodded and took his meter from his desk and tested a couple things and nodded. Then she looked over my setup carefully and did a couple more things. Grabbing tools from his desk even though it clearly made him anxious seeing other people touching his gear.

I suppressed a grin when I realized the shirt I thought was a band tour shirt was a Rainbow Dash shirt from My Little Pony. This woman looked like she would lay anyone flat that laughed at it.

She made a sour face and said, “Amateur set up, who the hell uses an automotive inverter with sensitive electronics? That, and the old Vexley loop stomp boxes are notorious for amperage overcharge of their caps. Who put this shite together for you?”

Tommy cleared his throat at his workstation and timidly raised a hand. She chuckled and said to him in a placating manner, “Overall you got an awful lot in a traveling case Tom-tom, great concept, just poor execution.”

He looked embarrassed and went back to work. Then she looked up at me, squinting an eye. “Why you need so much in one case?”

Scooter answered for me as I just blushed under her scrutiny. By the gods, she had a commanding presence and the other Tinkers seemed to defer to her. “She uses it in her busking. She's in the Garden now and she needs to be able to set up and break down quickly. Estimate?”

She looked at the clock on the wall then said, “I can patch it up in about thirty to sixty minutes by simply replacing the capacitors, but it is just going to break down again unless she replaces the inverter with one more suited for the job. Or at the very least, adding a line conditioner.”

I squinted at her. “Is it really that bad a setup?”

She looked up at me then back at Scooter and Tommy, then sighed and said, “I make it sound worse than it is. It really is quite ingenious, I can see where it saves you time in the setup. The equipment choices could have been better though. And there are a few things I would have done differently. The battery especially. But for occasional use it is fine.”

I shrugged as she started hauling my gear toward her workstation, I followed behind her. She said, “But it sounds like you use it more heavily and depend on it? Do you have a backup?”

I shook my head, aware that Scott didn't follow and I was alone, talking to this tiny woman who belonged in an alternative pinup magazine somewhere. I shook my head and gathered my wits. “Just my old setup that took fifteen minutes to set up and tear down, it only gave fifteen or twenty minutes to perform at each location.”

I tried to defend myself. “I have been thinking on updating my setup. I depend on it more and more. How long would it take to make it right?”

She contemplated it a minute. “To do it right, you'd have to start over from scratch instead of bodging it. But to make it more reliable, I could upgrade a few things and have it for you say...” She looked at the clock again. “Monday noon, since we don't work Sunday.”