No one has time for that shit, Sumi had texted her as Rukmini waited in the venue for the opening acts, her ritual Sumi wanted no part of.
You’re just gonna have another deadline tomorrow, D1! Just come!
LOL I bet you don’t even know who the opening acts are, Sumi teased.
I don’t, but who cares! What’s with this city needing everyone to be vetted?
If Rukmini was going to a show, she wanted to have the beginning-to-end experience, no matter how boring the openers were likely to be, and not just to ensure a return on her investment. She found the whole concert hierarchy distressing, and if she didn’t attend the entire show, she felt she was only contributing to it.
In between texts, Rukmini glanced in the direction of the door, hoping Sumi — or anyone — would show up and help fill out the sparse room. She fretted about low turnout at every show she attended, which her therapist would probably attribute to her fear of abandonment. This is why she could never perform live.
Vetting is my job brown queen emoji. I don’t even want to see The Turn Arounds.
Neither do I. I’m doing this for you!
Very collegial of you, Sumi responded.
Rukmini took off her leather jacket, tying it around her waist. Do you think Marcus will take his shirt off? Rukmini asked, referencing his notorious abs display.
Fuck I hope not. Skinless chicken is not good for my *vegetarian lifestyle*
LOL!
Rukmini headed to the bar and ordered a beer, wishing she had brought one of Puna’s quiche tarts that had been sitting on the kitchen table. But as the first few sips of beer settled inside her, her nerves and hunger settled too. She pulled her phone out of her back pocket and tweeted:
friends don’t make friends see opening acts by themselves
Would Sumi be offended? It wasn’t really a subtweet. They were besties. She put her phone in her plaid shirt pocket. From her new perspective at the back of the room, a healthy crowd had gathered, though she now, thanks to Sumi, pictured everyone as skinless chickens cloaked in winter jackets.
At 9 p.m. sharp, a statuesque brown woman glided onto the stage. Rukmini gasped, recognizing her immediately. She had heard of Neela Devaki and seen photos of her online but hadn’t read any commentary about her music in Toronto Tops or anywhere else. She seemed to be more of a local fixture, a name and a face, than a musician, which was likely why Rukmini hadn’t thought to look up her work.
Neela was wearing a black dress with gold trim that tied around her neck. A train that had to be at least two metres long slithered behind her. With her emerald electric guitar in her hands, she reminded Rukmini of Versace-era Courtney Love. She shook her head, annoyed that this was one of the only references she had for a female frontwoman. The audience applauded mechanically and then resumed their chatter, but Rukmini’s hands were still, clasped in prayer.
Neela stared at the crowd, silent. A minute passed, then another. The crowd began to hush and shift uncomfortably. Rukmini felt certain that Neela was clairvoyant and, like a teacher, was determining her lesson plan according to what she read in the minds of the audience members. Rukmini ducked behind a tall white man, worried that if Neela locked eyes with her, she would know that she had never given her enough attention.
When Neela finally broke her silence, Rukmini gasped again, unprepared for the bass of her vocals. Neela’s voice was neither sweet nor raspy, tender nor sensual. Rukmini was reminded of her grandfather’s death, and the two weeks her family had spent beside his hospital bed, waiting for him to pass. His room had smelled sour, despite the growing number of bouquets of not-quite-white-but-not-quite-pink carnations fighting with the boxes of Timbits for table space. Listening to the sound of his laboured breathing and coughing fits made her wish she too would escape her own body. When she later described Neela’s voice to Puna, she said that it sounded like the feeling of watching someone die, like witnessing every leaf on a deciduous tree change colour and fall as autumn transitioned into winter.
Rukmini wept for the duration of Neela’s thirty-minute set that seemed to render the entire stage aglow. Tall Man turned around mid-show and offered her his checkered handkerchief. Given her state, she wasn’t able to refuse it, despite its revolting aftershave scent.
As Neela strode offstage, Rukmini rushed out of the bar, still clutching the soggy handkerchief. She forgot about The Turn Arounds. She forgot about Sumi. She drifted through Chinatown, kicking the fresh snow and humming the melody of Neela’s closing number.
Every song’s about falling in love or breaking up
Nobody’s singing to me
* * *
When Neela learned from her Twitter feed that RUK-MINI had covered her song, she rolled her eyes and ignored the cover. Until she saw she was tagged in a write-up by Sheep & Goat.
Underground Canadian jazz singer @NeelaDevaki’s Every Song reshaped into breathtaking classic by cover singer @RUKMINI
Her spine straightened. Although she rarely agreed with their reviews, even a mention on this music blog could boost a musician’s career. She wasn’t sure if she was more vexed that she was finally being featured because of a cover or that the blog covered covers. She also wished the word “jazz” came with a trigger warning. While her music featured the occasional horn or upright bass, and she did revel in Ella and Nina on rained-in weekends, decoded, “jazz” always read to her as “we aren’t sure how to describe your music because it doesn’t sound white.”
And the word “breathtaking.” When she had released her debut album eight years ago, she had almost forgotten to put on her shoes before she hastened to the indigo Toronto Tops box by her bus stop, straps still unbuckled. She opened the rusted box and breathed in the smell of freshly inked words. After grabbing the third copy from the top, to avoid the ones that had already been flipped through, she knelt and spread the paper out on the sidewalk. When she reached the new releases page, she scanned for her name above the paragraph-long reviews. She almost didn’t see it in the bottom right corner.
Neela Devaki (self-titled) 3.5/5
An interesting combination of sounds shows Neela Devaki is not just a pretty face (as featured on her breathtaking album cover), but a musician to watch.
As she reread the review, she noticed that her fingernails were digging into her cheek. She hadn’t spent four years painstakingly writing songs and saving up to record them to be watched. She then scratched her nails into the paper until there was a hole where her review had been. When she finally stood up, she chucked the paper in the recycling bin on the other side of the bus stop.
Since then, equally vague and inappropriate comments about her appearance coupled with occasionally polite comments about her music had been published, but she dreamed of being known for writing a classic, timeless song. Reading the Sheep & Goat headline, she reminded herself that some musicians — or rather wannabe musicians like cover singers (who were basically karaoke singers) — were more attached to being timely and an immediate sense of connection. But she wanted everlasting. She wanted to write songs that burrowed so innocuously into a listener’s psyche until the melody became not familiar, but family. Blood.