Dara, Page, and the Secrets of the Multiverse

▷ 13.1

Page has a knack for finding out things and in getting involved in things he shouldn't have.

It was evident in the farm when he found the missing cattle that has been reported as such since three years ago. His boss told him to count the cows coming in from the field to the barn, and he noticed how the number hadn't quite matched up with what he was told. He checked their tags, and while nothing seemed amiss, he couldn't dismiss the fact that the cows just multiplied during a day out in the pasture. None of them resembled calves, and newborns wouldn't have grown into mature adults in a span of a few hours.

So, he reported it to his boss, and through rigorous investigation on their end, the answer was soon revealed. The additional cows have been escapees from a nearby farm a few years ago. The herd wandered off when the hired hand forgot to latch the fence, leaving the ranch owner puzzled and furious—the worst kind of combination in Page's opinion. Upon returning the cows, the owner was more than grateful. The whole fiasco ended up with Page getting an honorary certificate from the county mayor—something his grandma from two cities away still proudly displayed on her mantle.

Or what about the time when he discovered one of the top artists the recording studio he part-timed in was being scouted by bigger studios in the City of Lights? He was always the last one out, mostly because he only clocks in an hour after lunch and Gary always forgot to bolt the locks. They've always had to deal with leaks of demos, and Page could bet his entire house it was one of those times the door was unlocked. When he took over the guard duty, the leak cases diminished for a few months before they moved up to digital platforms. That was out of his hands, but the routine stuck.

Anyway, it was during one of those nights when he caught Jordaine puffing a smoke by the studio's backdoor. Dressed in a skin-tight leather bomber jacket and fish-net stockings overlaid with a short, black skirt, she huddled in the parking lot for Gary and the managers whenever a studio held recording sessions. For a second, Page considered offering his varsity jacket from highschool to at least cover her legs—it was cold outside, after all—but a set of headlights flashed from the parking lot's entrance. A car he has never seen before pulled up in the driveway, and Jordaine jumped right in.

Behind the tinted double doors, nobody saw Page watching the plate number speed away with their best-selling recording artist. Upon running it with Gary, they found out Jordaine had been secretly contacting the top scout for Broadway and was able to score out a deal. Negotiating a compromise deal and getting her to keep the label were two different battles, and by the time the whole ordeal was over, Jordaine looked at Gary with contempt, and has never stopped for the second year now. Gary owed it to Page, but it cost him his relationship with his highest-grossing artist because now, Jordaine had to work four more years and release two more albums for the label in between her stints in theater.

So when the sound engineers kept complaining about a ghost singing through the pipes or tinkering with the soundboard, everyone looked at Page to magically come up with an answer. It wasn't thrilling. Far from it. With him locking the studio up every night, he had been listening to that haunting voice singing in an otherworldly language for as long as a month and a half. It drove him crazy, just being peppered with trills and hymns he wouldn't understand, but he didn't dare look for where it came from. Nah. His life ain't a horror film waiting to be told to screenwriters. Gary could go and flick himself if he was bent on getting rid of that sound.