“Nope. And I don’t really want to be. Right now they pay me as a tour musician, which is more than I would make if I was in the band. But there are other costs that come with my involvement with them. Shit.” Kasi bit her thumb after she hit the button on the power bar.
“Shit,” Neela echoed and stepped towards her. “Did you get electrocuted?”
“No, I’m just sorry to go on and on. It’s not very professional complaining about one gig while auditioning for another, is it?”
“But I asked. I was curious about your dynamics when I saw that photo.”
“What’s that saying about photos and a thousand words?” Kasi’s silver-ring-adorned fingers hopped on a few chords. “Anyways, I’m ready. What should I play for you?”
“Whatever you want. Whatever you think best showcases your skills.” Neela sat down on a drum stool to calm her displaced nerves and felt relieved that the drummer who rented the space next door wasn’t impressing himself with his erratic drum fills at that moment.
“How about something from your first album?” Kasi tinkled the first notes of “Every Song” before Neela could respond. It turned out that she had not only listened to Neela’s album several times in preparation for their meeting but had also taught herself the keyboard parts from three of the songs. Neela was mesmerized by Kasi’s astrology-inspired tattoos, which seemed to shimmer as she played, her arms the colour of a dusk horizon. Before they parted ways, Neela invited Kasi to play with her at her next gig later in the month.
Since then, their relationship had grown, a product of time repeatedly spent in the company of another. Not like a rose, with delicate petals and sharp thorns, but like a backyard tree — steady, reliable. She knew that in an emergency, Kasi would be there for her, but they seldom spent time together outside of rehearsals or shows.
Now outside Rukmini’s oval-glass door, Neela noted that her connection to Rukmini was also technically career-related, but somehow she orbited closer to friendship. Was this because she still didn’t think of Rukmini as a musician or a peer?
Or maybe Rukmini was just an anomaly.
* * *
Since her first visit, Neela never came over empty-handed. She often brought daisies from her yard, and last week, Neela had given Rukmini a Meera Sethi Upping the Aunty postcard.
“This is beautiful!” Rukmini glided her fingers over the protective plastic cover. “She actually looks a little like my aunty.” Leading the way to her bedroom, Rukmini asked, “What do you think of the South-Asian-artists-depicting-aunties trend?”
“Mostly, I think it’s lovely. Honouring brown women who are often cast aside.”
“Mostly?” Rukmini chided. Her favourite Neela thoughts were the ones she held back. Rukmini leaned on the door frame, surveying her room for the perfect spot to display the postcard. Maybe next to the thumbtacked Janelle Monáe ticket.
“Well, sometimes I wonder who made the first aunty homage art piece and how many artists are now ripping off that artist.” Neela typed on her phone and then passed it to Rukmini. “See?”
Rukmini studied the cubist painting of an older brown woman on a different artist’s Instagram account. “Hmm. Are they ripping off or expanding the aunty love? This person’s style is so different from Meera’s. Ooh, side note! Should we listen to Rihanna’s Anti?”
These afternoons in her bedroom reminded Rukmini of teenage friendship. They sat in her room for hours listening to her vinyl collection, often with their legs like ladders against the wall and pillows tucked under their backs, talking about production aesthetics, liner notes and their alternate choices for an album’s first single. Whenever Rukmini played electronic music, Neela became silent and zoned out on her phone — unless it was Björk.
“OK. Fuck, marry, kill Björk albums. Go!” Rukmini demanded the week after they had listened to Björk’s discography from beginning to end.
“One second.” After Neela arranged all of the Björk albums chronologically on the floor, she kneeled over them and declared, “Well, I would marry Vespertine, for sure.”
“Oooh, what a silent and solid marriage.”
“I would kill Volta,” Neela said, lightly tossing the album on the bed where Rukmini was nestled.
“But the Timbaland songs!” Rukmini sat up and shook Volta in the air, like a protest poster.
“I know. But one album has to die.”
“Fuck Post?” they said in unison and nodded sensually at each other.
Neela examined the Orange Crush–coloured backside of the Post vinyl jacket. “Can you believe it was made over two decades ago?”
“I was in grade six, I think. Or grade five?” Rukmini remembered refusing to get her own teeth checked for years after flipping to MuchMusic and catching a few seconds of the creepy video with the gorilla dentist.
“Really? Me too.”
“1985?”
“1985?” Neela repeated as a question, her voice slightly raised. “I assumed I was older than you.”
“You mean, you assumed I was younger than you.”
Rukmini stood up from her bed and collected all the albums off the floor. As she slid them back on the bookshelf, she could feel Neela’s eyes on her. Did she think Rukmini was immature? And if that was the case, why did Neela keep hanging out with her? Not wanting to follow these questions to answers she might not like, she turned around and did her best Björk impression. “Eets all zo quieth . . .”
This seemed to swing Neela out of her own thought vacuum, and she laugh-whispered, “Shh! Shh!”
Going back and forth, they continued singing the opening verse of “It’s All So Quiet,” melodramatically acting out the lines with awestruck eyes and scolding index fingers, belting out the chorus in unison. She loved hearing their voices twist together, even in jest. She especially loved watching Neela sing, the way her voice didn’t seem to come from her mouth but every part of her. Even her nose seemed to vibrate when she sang.
After their singing tapered off, Rukmini threw her arms around Neela and confessed, “I really like you.”
* * *
Neela had developed an internal dialogue with Rukmini.
The Rukmini in her mind was always asking questions. As Neela cycled through her morning sun salutations in her apartment, back flat and head hanging, her inner Rukmini asked, “You know how you can remember all the words to a song you haven’t heard in years? Where do you think all of those songs are stored in the body?”
Before she had realized that Rukmini had invaded her mind, these questions and the process of pursuing an answer — dreaming a thought she had never thought before — had been intoxicating. She pictured every song she had ever loved (or hated) condensed into whole notes that occupied the soles of her feet.