Chapter 26: Dissonances

The band assembled the chilly afternoon following the previous day's tumultuous events, eager to put in at least a modicum of practice towards their rapidly approaching engagement at the Teen's Ball.

“You staying this time?” Cecil quipped upon entering the room, in which Marion was the only current occupant, seated at his drum stool with a cigarette.

“I don't know where he is man,” Marion replied, tapping the cigarette nervously into an ashtray perched upon Sylvia's amp. “I had a guy check the police station and they wouldn't give him info on anything.”

“Are you surprised? Why would they tell him anything?” Cecil replied, throwing his coat onto his chair. He placed his hands together and blew into them, attempting to warm them up.

Marion didn't respond, occupied with his cigarette and some indeterminable object which caught his gaze somewhere in the room.

“Floyd's a freak, you know that. He probably just broke out of prison,” Cecil gave sarcastically, beginning his piano warm ups.

“Yeah,” he replied without much conviction.

Upon that halfhearted remark the door to their practice room opened as Aster and Sylvia entered, the mood of the room quickly chilling as Aster closed the door behind her.

“Good afternoon!” Sylvia greeted in her usual cheerful tone, releasing her guitar case from her back as Aster moved without a word over to her amp.

Cecil and Marion gave tepid greetings in response to Sylvia, Aster speaking not at all as she went to work setting up her bass.

The uncomfortable embargo on conversation implicit from Aster's mood quickly set the atmosphere of the entire room as the four readied themselves in silence. Aster and Cecil in particular proceeded with an increasing aggression not-so-subtly directed towards one another— exacerbated further by the other party's unwavering quietness in response.

After some minutes of this hushed setup, the time came to finally begin, and the hum of various amplifier tubes filled the difficult air with a warm buzz as the switches were flipped one by one— the constant oscillation itself seemingly beckoning that first voice to break it.

Aster did not oblige, instead immediately playing the intro notes to the first song on their setlist— copies of which hung before all of them scrawled in Sylvia's messy handwriting.

The band entered in sudden and sloppy fashion, taken aback by Aster's sudden start. Sylvia and Cecil caught up and locked in quickly enough, but Marion's beat staggered and ebbed in and out of tempo, before falling completely out of time.

He apologized, took a drag from his cigarette, and Aster began again— this time affording them the luxury of a diminutive mumble of a count-in.

Again however, Marion fumbled and fell out of beat, throwing his beret across the room in frustration.

“It's this fucking hat! It keeps falling in my face while I'm drumming. How am I supposed to do anything while trying to keep this fucking rag on my head?” he shouted in exasperation, throwing his sticks against the snare.

“We have to look proper Marion, you know that!” Sylvia replied as he retrieved his sticks and beret from the floor.

Aster stood in silence by her amp, waiting for the cue to go again.

“Who's going to want to see us looking like a bunch of mimes, though?! Man, I had leather jackets, we played at bars and tore the fucking place up! Now look at me!” he lamented, taking another hit from his cigarette.

Aster remained awkwardly standing next to her amp, watching on as Marion took the time to finish his smoke. Cecil hunched over at the piano and massaged his temples, the incessant humming of their amps growing only louder as their irritation unfolded.

“I don't think we can do this in two days,” he finally gave in, turning to Aster, who responded with a look of horror.

“We just need to practice,” she sputtered out, playing notes on her bass to try and will the band into moving once again.

Much to the anguish of her swelling heart however, Cecil rose in defiance of the rhythmic pulsing, shutting the wooden cover over the top of the piano's keys.

Aster gripped tightly at the neck of her bass, aware she was watching her plans fall apart.

“Cecil, man, I know I split yesterday, but I'm here now. The beret stuff isn't even that big a deal anyways. Let's just play some stuff out,” Marion said as Cecil began to put his coat on.

“It has nothing to do with that Marion, I just don't think there's any possible way we can be ready in time. We barely made it through the last shows, why do we think we're ready for this?”

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“I don't think they even went—”

“So you're not even going to try?” Aster began with a noticeably agitated tone to her voice. The three of them turned in surprise to see Aster gritting her teeth, eyes beginning to well up.

“You're just going to fuck off without giving it a shot? Because what, The Cherubs wouldn't take you? Because of yesterday?”

“Aster—” Sylvia interjected as Cecil turned to fully face her.

She continued.

“Of course you're never going to fucking make it if this is how you act! When has greatness ever come to anyone who just ran off when it got too hard, least of all to go and mope in a dim poet bar.”

“You don't fucking know anything about me, Aster!” Cecil finally retorted, walking right up to her. Sylvia and Marion rose from their spots, waiting in the wings to de-escalate what was unfolding before them.

A flushed complexion not unlike the one arresting Aster's angered, tear-stained face took hold of Cecil's, his expression exhibiting a rare divorce from the reserved, muted look of apathy he usually cast over everything. He looked thoroughly angry, the rage itself battling with obvious attempts to not well up in tears much as Aster was in the moment.

“You don't know anything about what I've been through, you just showed up out of nowhere and started playing and people flocked to you! You just cobbled us into your band with not a fucking word of thanks! For anything! We're just forced to play your weird, difficult arrangements. How are you any better than Johnny Vallerie? Just tell me you don't want my music on your fucking album! You're going to suggest I'm a coward, but look at you! You're not even self-assured enough to have other people's songs sit next to yours!” he screamed.

Aster's bushy brows furled inward, to a degree that had yet to be seen on Peppermint Plains ground at that time. Her face became an absolute palette of crimson due to the resulting mixture of sheer embarrassment and anger that welled up within her. She struggled to foster any sort of reply to Cecil, whose words had hit back much harder than she had expected, her brain giving up as she began fully sobbing.

“Fuck you!” she shrieked, collapsing to the floor as she bawled into her hands. In a fit, she threw off her bass with a loud crash— the loud, low echo swelling up and swallowing all in its hideous feedback.

“Sylvia, turn that off,” Marion shouted over the din as Cecil angrily left the back room.

“Fuck this. I quit,” he announced halfway out the store. Marion followed with weak attempts at persuasion as the door shut and bell clanged behind them.

“Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you!” Aster continued to cry into her knees as Sylvia sat down next to her. She placed her hand on Aster's back as she continued to wildly sob.

Marion returned to their rehearsal room shortly after, looking grim. “Yeah, Cecil is pissed,” he reported simply, making his way back over to his drum kit.

“He's gone, Floyd's gone. What are we supposed to do now?” he said, lighting up another cigarette.

“Honestly, I don't want to put you guys in any more of a bad spot, but what's the point of me even staying after this?” he continued.

Sylvia turned to him with a look of silent reproach as she consoled Aster, who was still hysterically reciting curses into her knees.

“You know how much of a hothead Cecil is Marion. Let's just give him time to cool down.”

“No, fuck him! If he wants to go let him!” Aster hiccupped in response through her cries.

“They both need time to calm down, I think,” Sylvia suggested comfortingly, patting Aster's back. “How do you feel about going out and doing something right now, Aster?” she asked, pulling Aster's hands away from her face in a bid to soften her swollen eyes with a smile.

It worked, to a degree, as Aster's hysteria began to temper somewhat. Her hiccups were severe and her sniffles loud, as Sylvia helped her up.

“But what about Floyd? What are we even doing here if he's just gone?” Marion questioned with worry as he hit another cigarette.

Sylvia couldn't help but share his look of unease at the mention of Floyd, but swallowed her own intense feelings of woe at his missing. “Just let me fix this Marion, okay? You should go relax too,” she suggested, exiting the store with a sullen Aster in tow, all her combative, thorny airs rendered null by the wearing of Sylvia's oversized coat.

“Now let's see just what kinda fun we can have!” Sylvia chirped.

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