After the more or less dramatic events at Gonzo's workshop, I was not in the mood to meet people. It was Friday evening, and I was invited to Matt. No, it was not a party, but just to meet him and a couple of his friends, talk to them and listen to their music.

Meet more people? I am not good with people, and I met so many in the last few days that I was a bit overwhelmed. But as I was glad to be with my Joe, I had to let Flo meet her Matt. I had promised her this.

Speaking of it, Joe did not invite me for this evening. Hm? OK, we are not that close yet, and he is free to do what he pleases, but…

Ah, whatever. Do I not like my freedom? I do, so let's let him also enjoy his.

I was more worried about Gonzo. What will he do, and what will he tell Helen to get out of dodge? What can he tell? I was half-naked in his arms, but what about the blood on my back and forehead? Could my moaning be interpreted in different ways? What did she see?

Better not think about it; the more I think, the worse it seems to get. So let me try to think of something else. Matt, for instance.

The address was in a quiet neighbourhood. Only beautiful villas around. I thought they were poor and barely scraping a living?

The garden door was open, and a short way led to a lovely house hidden under trees. My thundering bike rattled the windows and scared a flock of little birds that left the neighbouring tree without a fight.

There was a sports car parked near the house and a Jeep behind.

Is this the correct address?

I parked the bike behind the car and disappeared my helmet. I did as I would have stored it in the tiny cargo bay. I stood aside and removed my glasses when he erupted through the main door.

“Hi, Dolores!”

“Hi, Matt! Hello?”

Cala left Flo to have the lead, and Flo moved as she always did in her super gracious way. How the fuck does she do that is beyond my imagination, the effect being always instant: their eyes came pinned to my body.

Their, because another boy came with Matt out of the house, a skinny brunet plagued with acne.

“Hi, Dolores! I am Hew! Pleased to meet you!”

“Hey, Hew! Nice meeting you!”

“Wow, what do you have here? Is it yours? Beautiful! Is it seven hundred fifty cubic centimetres? What a beautiful beast!”

He was repeating himself, his eyes wide and round, inspecting the bike.

I shrugged:

“I have it from Gonzo, a special rent, not bought.”

Another guy came out of the house:

“Hi there!” - he turned to Hew - “Oh come on, you pretend to be a connoisseur! That's a thousand three hundred bike, my friend!”

He came to shake my hand. Hew hurried behind him.

“What? Really?”

A fourth guy swarmed out of the house. I looked at Matt.

“Dolores, these are Hew, Mike and Tom!”

Hew and Tom were now aligned to shake my hand. None had pretty faces or nice muscles like Joe. Hew and Mike were a bit smaller than me, my super Cala-long-legs making me a bit taller than I was before; else, we would have been the same height. Tom was taller. He was very tall and thin. Yes, I 'grew' since I am Cala; I am almost one meter eighty now, just a couple of centimetres smaller than Matt, but Tom was still some ten centimetres taller; however, he must not weigh much more than I do. OK, maybe a little. Mike had a round face and was the most corpulent in the group, but not outright fat.

After they ceased admiring my bike, we entered the house where I met Matt's mother, a small, frail woman not reaching to my nose. You wondered how she could have given birth to that neanderthal. Yeah, true; I recognized some of her traits in his face, especially the eyes.

She left soon thereafter, and we were in the living room eating chips, drinking soda and talking about the real reason for our meeting: they were a music group struggling to make a name for themselves, and their first public performance was scheduled for next week. And Flo accepted to be kind of judge and adviser for them.

Mike came closer to me, asking, interested:

“So you are a performer yourself?”

Flo shrugged:

“Not really. I told Matt I love music and took some music lessons. That's all.”

What did she tell him? OK, I took some piano lessons when I was a little girl, but that would hardly recommend me as a music guru. Matt came closer:

“Did you not say that you used to sing?”

She sighed with a betrayed look:

“Matt, that was only in family circles.” - she shrugged again - “anyhow, let me hear how you perform!”

That's not true? I never did such… Oh fuck me, Flo had told him about her life, not mine. What does her game life have to do with us? My voice was as melodious as a cock's crowing: I could be loud and wake up the dead with my voice, but that was the only quality one could check at my singing performances.

Hew drew a face:

“We don't want to chase her right away with our noise?”

They laughed, but Matt stood up.

“Dolores, grasp the pop-corn and follow me; our instruments are in the other room on the garden side.”

It was kind of a second living room with a vast library covering part of a wall. Several hundred, maybe even one thousand books neatly arranged in rows above rows. I love books, and seeing them woke my interest, but Flo postponed the book study hour for later.

She put herself comfortable on a sofa with chips and drinks aside, standing near the fireplace, the library behind and to the left, and huge windows in front, towards the garden.

A beautiful room; however, the parquet was old and in dire need of replacement or at least maintenance, especially in a couple of corners that seemed to have suffered from water spillage. The same for the walls. Actually, the whole house gave that feeling of old, clean but a little decrepit.

They had the instruments in front and to the right of my place. I did not even have time to make myself super comfortable when they started.

The first song was a disaster. They were not concentrated and tried to impress. A lot of false notes, Mike drummed a couple of times out of rhythm, Tom's bass did not synchronize with Matt, who played the main guitar and Hew's organ playing was not bad, but by itself, not integrated with the rest.

Hew's voice was almost as good as mine, I mean good to awake the dead, whilst Matt's was with indulgence acceptable but too hushed. The song by itself was not bad; an original piece that had some excellent ideas in it.

Flo spoke frank with them:

“That was dreadful! The song might be interesting, maybe even good, but I do not get to enjoy it when you do not coordinate?”

As she stood up, Hew jumped.

“Wait, wait, don't go! We can do better!”

Flo towered several pillows to make herself comfortable and sat back. Typical Flo. I almost could see her flapping her wings and spreading herself in the newly constructed fluff-fortress. She laughed:

“Hew, I am not the type to run away at the first cacophony. I only prepare myself for the next round.”

Uh. Oh. Cacophony… That was a brutal verdict but a fair one.

Their second try was a little better, but the vocalists were still needy. In my mind, they would remain so; they do not have what is needed to be a singer. You have to face it; you cannot make a songbird out of a duck.

Flo had grasped the melody and understood what they were trying to produce, so she explained it with an example.

“Not la, la, laaa, Hew, you missed the tone almost every time; you need la, la, laaa!”

The fuck? First, she impersonated him almost perfectly and then she sounded so melodious that I was stunned. How could she do that with my voice? It was Mike who drew the same conclusion:

“Could you sing together with him; that might possibly help?”

Flo sighed, but I know she likes singing. I don't know how I know it, but I know it. I did not stop to analyze the implications of this incongruence between my alter-ego and me. She hesitated a moment. She got the notes from Hew. Why is she hesitating? She had excellent control of my voice.

She finally shrugged:

“It should be OK to exercise”

They repeated with her, and the overall sounded much better. Now even I grasped more of the song. It was an interesting original song, not a copy or a rehash of I don't know what masterpiece. It was a lovely work of art and sounded great with her singing. If only Hew would not add his falsehood to it.

Tom was the one who said it bluntly:

“What if you just stop singing, Hew?”

“What? But how do I exercise if I stop? Who would be the vocalist?”

Tom looked at me:

“Would you sing it? Just for us here? To let us get the idea how it really sounds?”

OK, and then? Who would sing at your performance?

She accepted:

“Ahm. OK”

So we did it again. There were minor points to improve here and there, but it sounded good. Even Hew was better as he did now concentrate on his instrument. It sounded so good that Matt looked at me when we finished:

“Would you consider singing with us?”

I knew it would come to this. She probably too, yet she hesitated.

“Why do you hesitate?”

“Because I do not play fair. I imbue my voice with magic; that's why it sounds good. I make it sound as I want it to be.”

I thought for a moment about it.

“Is there a risk of blowing up the phones around? Did you just blow them up here?”

“No. Who do you think I am?”

I did not answer that. If there is no risk of blowing up phones, then where is the problem?

“What is fair? Everybody does the best they can. I do not see the problem. If you like to sing in that tavern for one night, you can do it. Why not?”

Mike had arranged through an acquaintance to perform in a tavern. The whole meeting was a rehearsal for that performance, and with what they were showing now, they would go down with flying colours.

That tavern was a kind of a pub specialized in launching young music bands. They've made a name for themselves through it and had a loyal and numerous audience coming to their weekly shows. One would start with one or two songs. If the audience liked what they heard, then the group or performer could sing as much as they and the audience wanted to hear. If not, one could be booed from the first song. Yeah, you had the right to finish it, but hey, you would need a lot of courage and motivation to finish a piece when somebody is booing you. Each Thursday, there were a couple of groups who tried to perform, and then the pub switched to records, mostly a potpourri of older performances. If you performed well, you were asked to come back at a later date, on the weekend and could even cash good money.

Flo shrugged.

“Well, I could try...”

She stood up and took her jacket off, facing them with the notes in her hand. They played the song with Flo singing again.

Whilst she sang, I watched them. It was interesting to see how this had evolved. Gone were the looks at my hips, legs or breasts. They concentrated now on the music, and the music sounded great.

I could tell that the same transformation had happened to me. These were no longer some ugly losers. No, they were my new companions in creation.

Could I say creation when it was only interpreting their song? But the way she interpreted, the way she helped the cadence, the way she sang that was creation too. We were creating something, something fragile and beautiful, like a flower. Each line was another leaf, each note another colour added to it.

When we finally stopped, I took a deep breath. We looked at each other, grinning happily. After a while, Mike broke the silence:

“That was good! That was really good!” - he turned towards Hew - “Can we hear a replay?”

Oh, they were recording?

Hew pushed some buttons, and the loudspeakers started to resonate with the very song we sang. Hearing it, I saw that flower in front of my eyes again. It was not perfect, but it was beautiful. There were some minor blunders here and there, but the overall feeling was good. Is that voice I hear from the loudspeakers really me? I was flabbergasted listening to the song. I had the feeling I could listen again and again and never get full.

“You understand why I hesitated? It is magic!”

How can there be magic? Magic on a recording? Music is always a kind of magic.

“Should we try again?”

Tom had said that as if he was afraid we could destroy it if we tried to sing the song again.

Hew brought me a microphone, and we did it again and again. Almost every time it sounded better, Flo found her rhythm and had more courage, and they lost their hesitations and fear. She added her ideas and interpretation to the song, and indeed it sounded better.

After a while, when we thought it was perfect, Mike came up with a new proposal:

“Let's try my ballad.”

We did that and several more. We sang the whole night through until their fingers got wound, and I could not keep my eyes open anymore. Flo had carefully healed my throat a couple of times, and then we listened again to the recordings.

We could not stop. It was as if we had discovered a new world. A world of creation. Nobody wanted to be the first to stop.

It was morning when Matt's mother found us still gathered there. I was one of the first who fell; I was sleeping on the couch between those many pillows, and Tom was sleeping on the floor near the sofa on one cushion, dragging on my blanket whilst the other three boys were still working, reviewing the records.

The bond that formed between us in that short night was already surprisingly strong. I did not expect that. The point was that in addition to that creation feeling that we shared, working on these various songs, I started to understand them better and what they tried to communicate, even how and what they've seen from life. Their songs tried to convey feelings and emotions. Some were naive, even childish; some were elaborate and surprisingly deep thoughts.

I understood more of their beings than I would understand spending weeks talking with them. I am already friends with this band of losers. OK, they are no losers; they only look like.

During breakfast, I got a phone call from ma. She was nervous as she had called home and had found out that I was not there. Not even ma's phone call did disturb my peace of mind. I just explained to her that I was with colleagues, that we worked together and did not realize how the time went by. What did we work at? Music. I was not answering in panic, but I had to give my phone to Matt's mother, who then confirmed that we had been there the whole night making music. To her surprise too.

Ma was at first confused, not knowing how to react. I heard the two mothers talking to each other, a bit confused but not really disturbed by their children’s activities.

I shrugged. We are not children anymore, even if we still go to school.

Well, I was then admonished why did we stay the whole night, and I should know better than to let the poor people rest, but at least she was happy that I was not doing other nonsense. Matt's mother even made her listen to one of our recordings so I could finish my breakfast.

We agreed to go to sleep at home and come back in the evening to exercise more. At least I think we can make an acceptable performance on Thursday if the boys or Flo do not get a panic attack in front of the public.