Wait until the music's over

44. The date, the non-date and the no date (Pt. 2)

"Hey Mike, I was beginning to lose hope" I open the large metal door and the state of Eddie as he appears on the other side suggests that it must have started raining again.

"Why?"

"Well I've been knocking for an hour to get in" he explains running inside.

"Really? Sorry man, we didn't hear anything"

"Don't worry, it's ok" the song we've been working on is slow, but the volume must have been really loud if we didn't hear him.

Eddie pats on my back and then takes off his rain drenched jacket, as he follows me down to the basement.

"Finally! It's about time! How long does it take to put some fucking change in a parking meter?" Jeff welcomes back his roommate throwing a basketball card at him, one of the many he's been buying lately and spreading all over the place.

"We thought you got lost. Or found a very original way to ditch us and go back to San Diego" Stone remarks, while Eddie picks up the card landed on the floor.

"It took me like thirty seconds to put money in the meter, I spent the rest of the time right here outside, knocking on the door like a crazy person, waiting for you to give a fuck about me"

"I didn't hear anything" Stone talks to Dave, who answers and shrugs.

"Me neither"

"Anyway... while you were outside playing with coins, we didn't waste any time and came up with a new song, just saying" Stone keeps on picking on the guy, who gives me the card and walks up to the guitarist: it's Derrick Coleman of the Nets.

"Actually, I didn't waste any time either" Eddie pulls out a small scrap of paper from his pocket, opens it and keeps it at Stone's nose length. Gossard looks at him perplexed.

"What's that?"

"The new song I came up with, based on what I could hear through the wall. Consider that all I could hear was the bass so I basically wrote the lyrics on that" Eddie retorts kinda humbly, but showing a certain satisfaction.

"You mean you just heard a couple of vibrations from outside and already wrote down the song?" I ask him just as surprised as the others, at least judging from their faces.

"Well, since I had to wait anyway, I thought fuck it I might as well write something and optimize our time. Anyway it's just a draft, also because I'd like to hear the song better"

"Oceans?" Stone asks, now holding the precious sheet of paper in his hands.

"The flow of the song reminded me of the waves... and I miss going with my surfboard, I had to write a little love song for it sooner or later, it was just a matter of time" Vedder explains as he opens up a water bottle Jeff has just handed to him.

"It's a weird song actually, it's all bass and drums, I don't know if it's gonna end up in this album, it hasn't got much to do with the rest. But it's been going around my head since yesterday, I had to take it out" Ament tells us again about his inspiration.

"Come on, don't worry, you're gonna meet again very soon... right?" I ask while I peek at Eddie's lyrics from behind Gossard's back and Eddie's face suddenly loses color.

"What?"

"You and your surfboard, when we'll be in San Diego" I explain.

"Anyway let's just try this song once again all together, ok?" Stone gives back the lyrics to their owner.

"Yeah, but ehm first... I wanted to say... well, when I was away I remembered one thing..." Eddie basically tears the sheet of paper off Stone's hands and starts stammering out.