Сара Пинскер - A Song for a New Day

Jeannie stopped. The woman behind crashed into her, and Rosemary walked straight into both of them. She flinched at the contact, stepping backward onto someone else’s foot. The unexpected touch left her so flustered she almost missed the response to Colton’s question.

Jeannie answered without teasing, which suggested why she was the guide; it would be easy enough for someone working here to laugh, to forget what it had been like to be new. “Some were musicians already, Before, with live shows and everything. I know it’s hard for some of you to imagine a time when people made a living playing live concerts for live audiences, but a lot of our musicians, even the younger ones, never stopped imagining it. They came to us, or we sought them out, because we’re the ones who can make it happen for them.”

She started walking again, and the group raced to keep up with her. “I know we promised to show you a live recording, and you’re in luck. We have a very special performance today. If you’ve never seen Magritte play, you’re in for a treat.”

Colton gasped, and a couple of others perked up at the news. Rosemary pretended to be excited as well. She knew she had a lot of catching up to do in her musical education.

The narrow hallway ended in a locked door. Jeannie flashed a pass and ushered them into a space as big as a Superwally Fulfillment Center. The change from low-ceilinged hallway was drastic, but the soundstage itself wasn’t so different from what Rosemary had expected. She’d pictured an auditorium, given the way Patent Medicine had played, or at least something the size of the Bloom Bar. All of their moves had been so much larger than life.

She’d expected the size, but not the silence. She’d imagined a set filled with people, bustle, music. Instead, the enormous space was filled with small modular rooms, like trailer homes. Rosemary looked for a stage. If not the exact one from the Bloom Bar, at least something similar. Speakers, amplifiers, lights. Something.

Jeannie spoke as if someone had asked a question. “You’ll understand in a minute. Take it all in. There’s a quiz later.”

They all exchanged glances. Rosemary couldn’t tell if the part about the quiz was true or not, so she tried to memorize the layout. The walls were lined with digital clocks stating the hour, minute, and second in three dozen cities around the world. Wires snaked everywhere from the trailer-boxes.

Jeannie glanced at her watch, smiled. “They’ll arrive any second now.”

As if on cue, a door opened on the hangar’s far side, where the wardrobe and makeup wing branched off. A tall black woman entered, wearing a silk dress the color of rain. The man following her looked like he might be related—they had the same cheekbones, the same build—and a white woman trailed them waving a tablet. “Are you sure you want to change the order now?” she asked. “The techs aren’t going to like it. You’re on in ten minutes.”

The tall woman had an accent Rosemary was unable to place, even after all her vendor services calls. Caribbean, maybe? “I am not interested in playing ‘Warm Bed’ tonight. I am not feeling that song. I want to play ‘Misnomer’ instead.” She wasn’t shouting, but her voice carried across the cavernous space.

“Mags,” the man said, in a similar accent, matching her in volume, tone, and timbre. He wore a black suit with a stripe and tie the same color as the woman’s dress. “Be reasonable. They don’t have time to redo the cues for us.”

“Asking to take one song off a set list is not unreasonable.”

“Are you asking to remove the song, or replace it? Removing is easier than replacing.”

“If we remove it, the set’s too short.” They neared Rosemary’s group. Up close, the performers were even taller, and both faces were covered in thick makeup. The woman sighed dramatically, but didn’t acknowledge the audience to her conversation. “We are artists, not trained dogs. I don’t bark on command.”

The man looked at the second woman, raised his eyebrows, then shrugged. “My sister says we aren’t playing ‘Warm Bed’ tonight. Let us know if you prefer for us to cut it and run short, or substitute ‘Misnomer.’ It’s the same length.”

The second woman exited through a side door, leaving the performers—the artists—behind.

“I am not being unreasonable,” the woman repeated as they walked over to two box-rooms, each entering one.

“You can move closer to take a look.” Jeannie gestured for the group to follow the artists.

“Who are they?” Rosemary whispered to Colton. She chose him in part because he had reacted so dramatically to the performer’s name, and in part because he’d been the one brave enough to ask anything. Not to mention he was the one she was least likely to ever interact with again if hers was a stupid question.

“Are you serious?” he whispered back. “She’s the queen of Zoukhop. She and her brother practically invented it. She’s like the national hero of Dominica.”

As they got closer, Rosemary realized each trailer was an isolation booth, each with an array of cameras and lights and microphones orbiting a ministage. They had foam-padded walls, with windows into the booths on either side. She tried to reconcile the new information with her memory of Patent Medicine. The bassist’s wink must have been to someone outside these windows.

“I don’t understand,” she said.

Jeannie heard her. “It’s always a shock when you first see them. Like being handed a single puzzle piece and asked what the whole looks like.”

Rosemary struggled to make sense of it. Inside the room on the left, the man stood just outside his spotlight, tuning his guitar. To the right, Magritte—Mags—sat on a stool, staring into a camera, arms crossed. Air conditioners whirred, creating more noise than any of the other equipment.

A voice boomed over an intercom, bouncing around the hangar. “We’re cutting ‘Warm Bed.’ Please cut ‘Warm Bed’ from your cue sheets. The set will be two minutes and forty-seven seconds short. I want acknowledgment from every department in the next minute. Ping Control if there’s a problem, but don’t have any problems.”

Rosemary didn’t hear any acknowledgment, or any problems, so there must have been some other method of conveying those from each department to the mysterious intercom person. The guitarist moved into the spotlight in his tiny room. A light shifted a couple of inches along a track, then another did the same. The woman in the other booth still hadn’t moved.

The air conditioners cut off and the hangar’s overhead lights guttered, leaving machine silence, an absence of hum. Someone in the group giggled. Inside the booths, spotlights lit the performers, stark against the surrounding darkness. The man began playing his guitar. Mags must have stepped into her position in the moment the lights went off; now she swayed in time with her brother’s syncopated strum.

“Why can’t we hear them?” somebody asked. Rosemary was glad the question had come from someone else.

“Ssssssh,” said a second person.

“Those are isolation booths,” another voice whispered. “They’re soundproof.”

“In both directions?” the second one asked again.

“Ducklings,” said Jeannie in a normal voice, cutting through the argument and answering in favor of soundproofing. “This way.”

The group followed their guide away from the booths. Rosemary kept pace but glanced over her shoulder as she went. She still didn’t understand how the pieces added up to the whole.

They went through yet another door. So many doors. Rosemary had no idea if they had already been down this hallway or seen this control room earlier. If they had, it had only been in passing. Now it was full of technicians and engineers, all in their own half-walled booths, all watching the two performers on monitor screens, from a hundred different angles.