The thinking doesn't stop for a long time.
In the morning, I wake up to:
Good morning. That's not a thing we've established yet but I'm establishing it now. You get a morning text.
I text back:Good morning. I like this rule.
Good. I'm making more rules. Rule two: you answer when I text. Even if you're busy. Even if it's work. I'm now your priority.
I think you’re a tyrant.
I learned it from you. I know your group chat doesn't accept partial loyalty.
Fine. I accept your tyranny.
Good. Rule three: I get to know about the things that matter to you.
This is a lot of rules.
We've only just started.
I read the last text twice, then a third time.
I’m lying in bed on a plain Tuesday, late for a job I don’t love, and the only thing I want to do is answer her.
Me:Fine. Yes. All of it. You tyrant.
I hit send, and I get up, and the whole grey commute I’m smiling like someone keeping a very good secret.
CHAPTER 4
THE VOICE NOTES
Month one tastes like memes.
Her:a cat sliding off a piano. caption: this is me at soundcheck.
Me:A dog howling along to a bass riff. Caption: my role model.
Her:a toddler destroying a set of pots and pans. caption: your competition.
Me:That kid has better timing than half the session players I've worked with.
Her:
Month two, we argue about music.
Her:flatwounds for warmth, roundwounds for attack. this isn't an opinion, it's physics.
Me:Roundwounds for warmth is a crime and somewhere a luthier just felt a chill.
Her:i will send you a frequency chart.
Me:Please don’t.
She sends a frequency chart. It’s annotated. Colour-coded. We argue for a few hours. She cites sources. She concedes a point and then circles back two hours later with a counterexample she’s been researching, and it’s good, and I tell her so, and she sends a gif of someone taking a long, elaborate bow.
On Tuesday a festival offers us the sunset slot on the main stage—the booking we clawed toward for years—but they want an answer by the end of the next day and a whole leg of tour reshuffled to make it fit. I send Jo the details, the routing problem, and my three least-bad solutions. Two years ago she’d have called inside twenty minutes with options of her own and a spreadsheet I didn’t ask for.
