A late night conversation had gotten it in the minds of Carole and Tuesday that it was simply unfair that they were making poor Roddy do everything to set up when all they do was go on stage afterwards and get all the applause. Although he was initially hesitant, the girls insisted until he eventually had to agree. Perhaps, he had to reason to himself, it would be good to have another pair of hands or two to hand him things would save him time having to fetch things every few minutes so, so things would hopefully end earlier than expected.
Well, they arrived at the time he had told them, but the lad was not waiting outside.
Not all too phased, the two made their way inside, relieved to find that it was unlocked.
The first thing that was obvious was that the hall was bathed in shadows, only half the lights currently turned on making it seem a little bit more gloomy than a music hall had any right to be. Secondly, and far more importantly was that Roddy was, in fact, in the room, toe tips against the wall, looking up at a light in complete silence, a roll of brightly coloured tape in one hand.
This was, as anyone would expect it to be, very bizarre and brought about significantly more questions than it answered.
"What are you doing?" Carole asked, this not only coming from a place of genuine curiosity but also as a way of announcing that they had arrived.
The lad's response came at first with a hand gesture that suggested /give me a second/, crouching down as he tore a scrap of the tape away from the roll with his teeth, the pre-existing marks suggesting this was not the first time, and left it on the floor as a red spot.
"Measuring. Standing with a straight back, the line between where your feet meet and whatever you're trying to mark would be at the same point, give or take a couple of milimetres." As he said this, he gestured between the light be was still standing beneath and the mark he had made on the floor, and a sweeping motion to indicate the other near identical dots under the other wall lights. "They asked me to mark out the lights for when the seating gets set up."
"Have you been here very long?" queried Tuesday, quite sure they had arrived on time.
He simply responded to this with a shrug, the slightest hint of awkwardness in his smile.
"They asked if I could come by before we set up to get that done first."
"We could have come by then, it's not like we were doing anything important." the keyboardist stated, wandering off to examine the space they were to perform in on the following evening. In the presently empty space, her footfalls echoed just a little, suggesting good acoustics when the space was filled with bodies and the seating that was to come.
"You didn't have to be here all by yourself." added the guitarist, her eyes wandering between the other two in the room with no real end location in mind.
"It's alright, really," Roddy returned, his hands raised in a gesture that appeared visually equal parts reassuring and surrendering in its delivery, "It was easier to do alone, you would have have just been standing around doing a whole lot of nothing," he paused, glancing into the gloom, his attention directed towards a shape that was large and difficult to make out in the darkness, "But now you guys are here, could you give me a hand with putting up the lights."
When both of the girls agreed to this, he ran off to switch the house lights on so they would be able to see what on earth it was they were doing. It never did anyone much good to bump in without actually being able to see what was being done. It was not long before the room was illuminated. The light, while expected, still managed to make the paler skinned girl wince, having glanced up at where the lights were.
When Roddy emerged from whatever hidden nook the music hall held for the main power-board, he made his way over to the shape that he had previously given his attention. The shape was, the lights revealed, a large elevated platform. It was silver in colour and looked remarkably like an oversized step ladder, complete with steps in one side and some flimsy looking support beams on the other.
"Just tell us what to do, oh wise director!" called Carole as the musicians made their way over to where he waited, a note of friendly teasing making itself known in her tone.
"That's technical director," he corrected, something of a laugh in his voice.
"Well then," said Tuesday, the shared humour present in the way she spoke this, "Will you be so kind as to technical direct us, oh technical director?" She accompanied this with a curtsy that was so needlessly formal that her girlfriend could not help but laugh in response, setting the sounds of merriment bouncing about the room.
"Well then," Roddy began, "If you both could pass me the lights over there, one at a time, once I'm up there then we can get that over with."
This was met with a clumsy sort of salute. Without skipping a beat, and with the ease of one that had done much the same action time and time again, Roddy scrambled his way up the metal ladder, the sound of his feet hitting the steel loud in the silence. Taking their cue, those who were to remain on the ground hurried off to fetch the first two boxes that contained lights.
"Did you want us to bring them up to you too?" the blonde called out across the room, fixing her hold on the box she had taken.
"No," he called back, "It's not safe to have more than one person up here, especially if one of the people don't have a license to use it," he paused, then added a thoughtful, "Technically I'm not supposed to be up here either."
"Wait what?" the brunette responded, the response coming without her even thinking about it.
"It's technically illegal to use this without a back safety rail," the youth who was very much using the equipment that was presently lacking the safety rail that should have separated the platform from the stairs, "But you're not gonna tell on me, are you?"
"No!" the two chorused as they made their way towards the base of the contraption they had just learnt was not as safe as it should have been.
Carole, who had gotten there a moment or so faster than Tuesday did, held her light up as high as she could. She had assumed that the one she was passing it to was going to come down to claim it, as one really should, but this was most definitely not what he did. Roddy moved himself down part of the way before he swung himself haphazardly down, holding onto the hand rail with one hand, only one leg on the stair as he took the box with his free hand before hauling himself up to busy himself with getting the light in place along the bar. Tuesday was very much aware of the feet of the platform shifting as he engaged in his risky behaviour, which was bad enough on its own, but was almost just as aware of the safety warning that said to definitely not do precisely what he was doing.
This was all very stressful to watch, but it was thankfully largely uneventful and went by smoothly. Then, of course, he needed to set the higher lights on the bar above the one he had just set. Unfazed, he propped himself up balancing on the edge of the one of the safety rails. His balance was precarious, and the rail was definitely not wide enough to accommodate the way he lent over the empty space between him and the floor.
"Oh, please don't do that!" Tuesday squeaked, watching him with alarm.
"Don't worry," he called back down from his perch very much in the roof, "I've only fallen once before."
"You've fallen before?"
"Not in a while, I'll be fine." His reply was not as reassuring as he thought it would have been.
When he did, eventually, come back down to the level the other two were waiting, the relief was palpable. Somehow, this by itself had managed to take three quarters of an hour, though it was productive so it went by with easy. It was a marvel that he did not injure himself, though he had done this far too many times to count. The illegality of the equipment itself was less important than the illegality of the way that he used it, though in his defense he did usually not have anyone else in the room to see him.
"Please don't do that again." the darker skinned girl exclaimed, clapping the male on the shoulder, retracting her hand a moment later when he flinched as a result.
"We're on the ground from now on." he promised, this being met with a collective sigh from his companions, who had clearly been far more worried about the whole thing than he was.
"Now, we have to test the lights we just put up, and make sure the mics they have work. So," he paused, clapping his hands together, "Could you run up on the stage so I can make sure everything is working?"
By all logic this should not have taken all that long at all. But, of course, that meant it took far longer than it should have. From up his far corner with the tech desk, he had to run to adjust a light or change a lighting gel no less than ten times, leaving him increasingly more and more out of breath by the time he returned to his seat. Somehow, however, this was the easier of the two tests. The lights were up and running as they needed to be, but as soon as the microphones were turned on, the room was filled with a horrible, booming crackle from one of the speakers that caused the two performers to call out in alarm. He was able to fix this, and of course he was, but it involved him having to work out what was the problem before he was able to fix anything at all. Made sure each of the leads were in properly, done with help from the other two? Crackle. Turn one of the speakers the microphones were projecting to off? Crackle. Turn off another? Crackle. Turn off the last one? No crackle. It took ten minutes of swapping and replacing leads before he managed to eliminate the issue. Thankfully he knew how to jerry-rig the speaker a little to make up for there not being enough leads to accommodate the replacements, tape and an adapter working its wonders as he had hoped it would.
The hassle was worth it in the end. The awkward microphone testing conversation that the girls provided on the stage let him set the levels to something that would need only the absolute minimum tweaking when it came to the actual performance. From anywhere one happened to be located in the room, he made sure by dashing around to various points in the room to judge the volume, it would sound as though Carole and Tuesday was standing an arms length away from them. All in all, it sounded very impressive indeed!
"Hopefully you didn't find that too boring." was the first thing that Roddy said once he made sure everything was switched off so they could leave without him getting chastised for wasting power or any other less than fun matter that the owner of the building could pin on him if they could.
"That was fun!" Carole declared, glancing over to where Roddy was making sure the door was locked up tight.
"You have to bring us along next time too!" Tuesday agreed, flashing her girlfriend a grin, feeling particularly pleased with their assistance.
Roddy, who very much felt as though he had run a marathon, even with the help they had offered him, which was a big help even if it seemed to have been not much at all, offered the young musicians a wonderfully genuine smile.
"Maybe next time you guys could do some of the running for me?"