Only the Good Die Young

Chapter 7.1

The practice room is tiny and the walls are painted white. There's a square narrow window on the door that's just enough for someone inside to see out of. A piece of paper that has can't talk...practicing written on it in blue ink is taped to the door, just below the window.

"I'll just get this," says J.J. I glimpse Alex sitting on the risers, glaring at the window as J.J. covers it with the paper. My heart flutters.

There are two wooden chairs, a pair of steel black Manhasset music stands and the usual empty Coke and Pepsi bottles and half-eaten bags of potato chips. The band starts up again as J.J. closes the door. Music comes through the wall, but muffled.

Demanding how J.J. can stand Alex won't exactly win his heart. Instead I say, "I'm not sure why I keep getting lost."

I set my music with the offending bar on a stand and sit down. J.J grabs the other chair, spins it around and straddles it. "Well, clap out the rhythm," he says. He slides his drumstick case under the chair and taps on the chair's wooden back.

This is so humiliating. Clapping out a rhythm is as basic as you can get because you completely ignore the notes. I rest a hand on each knee, blushing fiercely, then count one-two-three-four out loud and try to clap the rhythm indicated. Two beats into the second bar I miscount an eighth note triplet. "Uh, I didn't play it this badly before," I say. My hands stick out idiotically like I'm waiting to catch a football. "I have my Grade Eight piano, you know. First Class Honours."

"You're rushing," says J.J. "You need a stronger backbeat." He leans forward and starts tapping me on the shoulder. "Ready? One, two, three, four..."

With each touch of his hand a tiny shock of electricity runs into my body, up my neck and down my spine. A vision of myself on the cover of a Harlequin romance overwhelms me. I stand on top of a grassy bluff in J.J.'s arms, my head against his chest, my carmine gown rippling in a gentle breeze. Alex is also in the vision, but she's hanging from the edge of the cliff by her fingertips and her strength is failing. My clapping deteriorates into a mess of random beats. This is not helping.

"Try again," says J.J., unknowingly eroticizing the rhythm of Ain't Misbehavin' on my shoulder a second time.

I replace the image of J.J. in my head with a ticking mechanical metronome and make it to the eighth bar before I'm back on the bluff with the wind in my hair. J.J. dips me backward in a ballroom swoon. As he kisses me on the lips, Alex's beautiful soprano echoes off the face of the cliff and she plummets into the abyss.

"Look, can we take a break for a minute?" I say, putting my hands to my temples. "I'm having a hard time concentrating."

"Sure, no problem." He balances his chair on its two back legs and spins a drumstick around his fingers. He probably has a swimmer's body to match his blonde hair, dimples, and cleft chin. As my eyes run over him it strikes me that I hardly know anything about him.

Then, to my horror, I realize I've actually just said, "Who are you, really?"

My skin blushes so fiercely it matches my hair. But instead of the world collapsing, all that falls is a drumstick.

"There's not much to me," says J.J, picking up the fumbled stick. It's the first time I've seen him drop one. "Let me grab another stick. I have this thing about dropping them."

J.J. takes his case from under his chair and slides the stick into a sleeve. He selects a replacement from a vast collection of sticks, mallets and brushes of all shapes and sizes. They're different colours, thicknesses and lengths, and are made out of different types of wood. Some have plastic tips, others are tapered wood. I guess there's more to drumming than just hitting something. Then an unexpected glint catches my eye.