And a state of the art recording studio.
Waldo had mentioned that the owner is thinking of selling at the end of the year. I’m calculating my worth and wondering if I just might be able to pull it off. I couldn’t live here all the time, but as a retreat from LA?
Maybe.
I like the neighbor too.
Harmony has crept into my mind so often this week. I might as well admit to myself that I could easily fall for her. What I had thought was going to be a nice distraction, is close to becoming a full-on obsession.
Does Lennox feel the same way about her?
Shit.
???
Forty-five minutes later, I lean against the studio wall and listen to Hugo and Lennox. They are playing through a new piece they’ve been working on.
“It’s good.” It really is good. It is exactly the tone we've been looking for. A new sound, something to propel us forward. We are not teenagers any more, closer to thirty than twenty.
The music we make has to grow with us.
“Lyrics?” I ask.
Lyrics—the dirty word. None of us feel particularly skilled in that area. Somehow we have always managed to get by,
because our hooks are tight and our sound is awesome.
But fuck man, lyrics are hard.
Hugo picks up a pile of notepaper, looks at it then throws it in the corner in disgust. “I've got jack shit,” he grumbles.
“Lenny?”
Lennox surprises me by pulling out his phone. He looks hesitant.
“I took Harmony to see Clara’s show at Bend amphitheater last night,” he says.
“OK,” I say. I look at Hugo and give him a ‘do you know what this is all about?’ look. Hugo shakes his head.
“Lenny?”
“Clara has been ill.”
“Bad?”
“I think so.”
“Shit, I’m sorry. Is she OK now?” I am immensely sorry. I like Clara a lot. But Lennox? He loves her.
When Lenny had hitchhiked to LA from Utah, he ended up at a shelter which had a lot of kids who had run away from the LDS. There had been a battered old piano in the corner of the food hall and one day a shelter benefactor had come by while Lennox was playing around on it.
The benefactor sat down and played with him for hours.
That person had been Clara. It was Clara,who then went on to fund his music degree—and get him into a program which supported his dyslexia throughout college.
That was when I met him. I got a job as a student-aid in the learning resources department, and had been assigned to Lennox.
That little punk.
