Suzie’s House 307 : Totally Different

That band the kids had formed was practicing in Suzie’s parlor when Miranda dragged herself home. It was pretty late, but there was no sign of Vin yet, and the only sign of Suzie was a cake and a pile of cookies on a cooling rack. Miranda settled at the kitchen table with a glass of milk and plate of cookies. It made her feel young.

The kids were getting good, but it’s still hard to listen to a band that keeps stopping and starting in the middle of a song, and now and then an argument would break out. So much for her peaceful retreat from the world. But what can an adult do but endure?

It was kind of hard to tell, but she thought they were writing all their own music now. They’d played some rock tune for a few weeks, then dropped it and now had two or three songs they played over and over. She’d heard them so many times she had them memorized.

So, naturally, she started to sing along. If she really wanted to, she could make her voice sweet, but she wasn’t much in the mood, and was tired enough that she wasn’t even hitting all the notes right and didn’t care. She got into the spirit of it and actually started to enjoy herself, and kept right on singing when the band came to one of its irregular stops.

And kept on singing even when they didn’t start again. When Tracy walked in, Miranda was swinging her glass of milk back and forth like an Irishman in a tavern singing a funny song and belting out words like, “No home, no haven, no place in the world.”

“That isn’t supposed to be a funny song,” Tracy said.

“Oh, no. It’s a great song. I’d love it if I hadn’t already heard it a few thousand times.”

Tracy winced. “I guess it takes a lot more practice than a revitalized when I first started the band.” She walked over to the refrigerator.

“Realized,” Miranda corrected automatically.

“Huh?”

“Realized. It’s harder than you realized. Revitalized means…”

“I know what it means,” Tracy cut her off. The girl poured herself a glass of milk and swiped some cookies, not bothering with the plate. Suzie would be grumbling about crumbs in the morning.

“We should have just gone with Gene and me, and maybe one other person.”

“I don’t know. The girl with the bag over her head has a good voice, and I like both drummers.”

“But we can only get everyone together at once here, and playing together is the thing we need the most practice with.”

“I hear you and Gene practicing in his room all the time.”

“We aren’t practicing. We’re writing songs. There’s this one we’ve been working on that I think is going to be big. I mean, it’s so good it could get us a record contact all by itself.” Tracy raised her chin and stared Miranda down.

Contact, contract, it wasn’t as if Miranda would argue. “Yeah. I know it’s good. I was singing it just now, wasn’t I?” She chugged half her milk. She had an early morning tomorrow.

“No, no. That was Bitter Harvest. I’m talking about Trust the Destruction. Totally different.” Tracy bit into her cookie. “We’ve got those two and one more called Scaredy Cat.”

Bitter Harvest, Trust the Destruction, and Scaredy Cat. They all sounded pretty much the same to Miranda.

“But I guess you don’t really want to hear that.” Tracy looked morose.

Miranda popped the last piece of her cookie into her mouth to keep from saying anything. She really wasn’t going to say anything. Especially not anything snippy. “So, I hear there are some practice rooms for rent downtown that have soundproofing. You should check into it.”

“I already did. To get one we can all fit in will cost a couple hundred dollars every month.”

“A couple hundred? That is a bit stiff.” Miranda pushed against the table as she stood. She felt tired to her core. “Still, I’d be willing to pony up fifty a month, if you can come up with the rest.”

“Really? Wow. Thanks Miranda. I’ll take you up on it.” Tracy looked delighted.

“Good. Let me know when you’ve got the rest.” Miranda headed for bed.

Fifty a month? Well worth it to get her heaven back.

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