Morgana’s Gift
by Corrupting Power
Intermission Two — Hungry Heart
When Kevin got up the next morning, he had been intent on immediately going after Elizabeth and fulfilling his promise to collar her and make her place in the house official, but as it turned out, Natalie cornered him and started him on a workout routine before he’d made it three steps from his bedroom. She’d warned him that the first few weeks of training would be the worst, but that she had rewards planned for him as he would begin to get whipped into shape.
For the next hour, Natalie put him through his paces, and by the end of it, he was drenched in sweat and he felt like every part of him was on fire. She warned him that tomorrow, he was going to be unbearably sore, so they would focus on cardio instead.
As his reward, she blew him in the living room, deepthroating his cock again and again until he fired cum down her throat. After that, she sent him to the showers while she made him breakfast. When he returned, clean and dressed for the day, there was a breakfast scramble waiting for him, and as promised, it might have been the best food he’d ever tasted.
“Where’s Elizabeth this morning?” Kevin asked Natalie as he ate.
“Oh, she sent you an email, but she’s doing some more prescreening for potential candidates today, so she won’t be back until late this evening. Your schedule for the day is pretty light. You only have the two meetings,” Natalie told him. “They’re both in your email.”
Kev checked his phone and found that he did indeed have an email from Elizabeth with his schedule. The first meeting was about reissuing the Truth Knife album, and was mostly just hammering out some specifics about what the rerelease would look like. The second was going to be a more complicated meeting, with a studio technician who was going to help him get the recording studio in the house up to whatever specifications he wanted.
Both meetings were scheduled for the afternoon, so it gave him time to explore the house a bit. There were, in fact, twelve bedrooms in the house, each with an attached bathroom, although the size of each room varied quite a bit. Obviously, he was in the house’s main bedroom, as it was easily the largest, but he found that a few of the other bedrooms also already had things in them, one for Natalie, one for Elizabeth and for Ashley.
Ashley’s room was the easiest to spot right away, as the teenage girl had wasted no time in decorating and customizing her space, with posters for various bands up on the wall, although he was surprised to see that she had somehow found a Truth Knife poster and had hung it up over her bed.
Thankfully, none of the members of Truth Knife had considered themselves particularly photogenic, so the poster was just psychedelic art in the vein of the CD cover, an anthromorphized tiger and fox, each in a suit of armor, crossing swords in some sort of duel, waves crashing down on them from either side of the tiny rocky island they stood on.
Kev had always loved the artwork they’d gotten for the Truth Knife stuff. It was all done by a local guy named Max Wraithbone. Kev liked the man’s stuff so much that he’d actually kept the original artwork for the CD and had it framed. He was sure Elizabeth had brought it to the house, so it was hanging somewhere, and he was certain he’d find it soon enough. He was sure now that he was making music again, his and Max’s path would cross once more.
Max was an eccentric local artist whose appearance tended to rattle people who didn’t spend some time getting to know him. He looked a bit like Charles Manson, with a big bushy beard, long stringy hair and rail thin arms and legs that Kev suspected had done their time with heroin tracks in them before he’d gotten clean to survive the 1980s on. He had to be in his sixties or seventies, but the drugs and sex had kept him preserved, or maybe pickled was a better term. In addition to doing artwork for some local bands, Max tended to pay his bills by either doing artwork for surfboards or by tattooing his artwork onto people’s skin. Every time Kev saw him, Max offered to give him some skin ink for free, and every time Kev had turned him down, but now he was actually considering it.
Kevin shook himself from his memories about his weirdo artist friend and backed out of the girl’s room to continue his exploration of his own house.
Natalie’s room was right next to Ashley’s, but it couldn’t have been more contrasting. While Ashley’s room had been full of clutter, Natalie’s room looked barely lived in. The closets were closed, the bed neatly made and nothing at all on her floor. In fact, the only reason he could tell Natalie was staying in the room was that there was a purse draped over the chair in front of the vanity, and there were hair care and skin care products lined up below the mirror. Kev wondered if she just hadn’t gotten moved in yet, but he did find it surprising how bare the room was. He decided he’d check in with her over the next few days and see how everything was working out.
The room next to that was clearly the room that Elizabeth had moved into. If Natalie’s room looked barely moved into, Elizabeth’s room looked extremely lived in, like she’d been in it longer than he’d been in the house. Of course, Kev knew that Elizabeth had been keeping all of her things in the pool house when he’d first showed up to the house, so it hadn’t been so far to move it all.
The room was filled in wall to wall with art hung on the walls, clothes on hangers, make up on the dresser, even a clothes hamper off to the side of it. She also had a desk in her room, with a laptop dock, and a briefcase resting atop it. Kevin was tempted to open the briefcase and see what sort of surprises Elizabeth had lined up for him, but decided it would be bad form, beyond the fact that he suspected the briefcase was locked.
All of the other bedrooms were empty, and Kevin wondered how long it would be before the entire house was filled up. On his exploration, he also found that there was a room that was filled with exercise equipment, a sort of private gym. Other unusual rooms included a liquor cellar and a pantry that was barely stocked, although he suspected that Natalie would fill that up soon enough.
Just as he thought he was nearing the end of exploring the house, he found one last door on the ground floor that he hadn’t explored, and when he opened it, he immediately understood why it was nestled so deep in the house—sound buffering.
It was a large room that was bisected by a thick glass wall, one half of it a soundproofed recording room, the other half partially consumed by a giant mixing board attached to a couple of computers, with his collection of guitars hanging on the wall, surrounding the framed original artwork for the Truth Knife CD cover, a pair of feathery angel wings cradling an orb that seemed to be the earth in some portions and an eyeball in others, each border of the piece being the image of a knife with the word “TRUTH” engraved on the blade. The title of the album, “Wayward Dreamers” had been lacquered on the bottom blade in red fingernail polish.
This was his studio.
Kevin had spent much of his young life dreaming about these kinds of spaces, and now he had one that was his, a studio of his very own. The recording area was large enough that if he wanted to, he could fit a whole five piece band in there, while he was working at the mixing desk with perhaps an engineer or two.
He’d given some thought to what he’d said to Elizabeth earlier, and decided that maybe he’d been too hasty to dismiss her suggestion. The idea of being a producer wasn’t such an alien idea the more he thought about it, but he decided he would have to be very selective about the artists he would be willing to produce. He’d made his judgment too early because he had been thinking about it in terms of his old life, where he didn’t ever have the option of saying no to anything that made him uncomfortable. If he decided to be a producer, Kev’d initially thought, he would have to take any artist that wanted to work with him, and that would mean being saddled with shitty people constantly infighting and not at all focused on the music. But now he could say no to anything or anyone, which meant he could be selective about it, and could work with artists that intrigued him and didn’t seem like total dickwads.
Not only had all of Kevin’s guitars been brought over, either Elizabeth or Ashley had set up all of his guitar pedals, although they’d all been chained together without enough attention paid into what order they were attached.
People who didn’t play guitar heavily thought as long as the pedals were all connected, the results would be the same, but one of the things Kevin had learned early on was that the sequence in which the sound came through affected the output dramatically. Where you applied distortion and transformative effects in the chain was a vital part of cultivating a sound. You couldn’t just link them together in any old order and expect to get what you wanted.
In his old apartment, the pedals had mostly been unplugged so that he could build a sequence as needed, kept in a box next to the amp, but here, there was so much room that the girls must’ve figured he wanted to have access to any of them at all of the time.
Kevin was waiting for people to show up anyway, so he unplugged all of the pedals and then began reorganizing and reconnecting them in the sequence he liked the best. He knew that he really needed to strap them all down into the pedalboards, but there was always that lingering fear that he would want to reorganize them again to get some particular sound for a track.
He got the pedals reconnected and then plugged in his old beat up electric blue Stratocaster, flicked on the Orange crate amp and jammed out for a little while, flooding the studio with waves of heavily distorted sound. He wasn’t after any particular vibe—he just wanted to play.
It was nice to cut loose and simply jam. But like all things, he knew he couldn’t spend too long, and sure enough, after about twenty minutes, he felt his pocket vibrate, letting him know his first meeting had arrived.
The meeting didn’t take too long, but Kevin was delighted that Elizabeth had found a new label that was genuinely interested in reissuing the Truth Knife album. CDs were mostly a dead item at this point, but the new label would make sure the album was available on Spotify, iTunes, Amazon Music, Deezer, Tidal and whatever other platforms kids were getting their music on these days. Not only that, they were going to give him the masters and ownership of his publishing rights for the songs, something that didn’t mean much to most people, but it was exactly what he wanted out of it.
What surprised him the most about his meeting, though, was that the label representative wasn’t just familiar with his band, they were a big fan, and had already gone to the label and found the extra five songs that Kevin had recorded for the album, most of which had never been heard by even the band’s most devoted fans. One of them had been included as a b-side on a version of the single that had only been sent to radio stations, but the other four had never seen the light of day. Hell, he’d barely even remembered those songs, so when the label rep played them for him, it was like a tour down memory lane, and he agreed that they could be included in the album’s reissue.
After his meeting with the label rep, Kevin had a late lunch, then headed back into the studio space, this time with a more concrete plan of action. Now he intended to put it through its paces, and for the next hour or so, he tested all the microphones, checked the soundboard and tested the sound proofing on both sides.
There was an iPad in the room, thankfully, as he opened up a text window and started typing in notes of things the studio would need that it didn’t currently have. They ranged from big things like some specific microphones to smaller things like an actual velcro pedalboard that he could put all of his guitar pedals into. After recounting the number of effects pedals he actually owned, he made a note that he probably needed two of the extra large versions to get all the pedals he used regularly, and two more for the pedals he used more sparingly. He also immediately noticed that he needed chairs and stools for the recording area, as well as a couch for the room with the mixing desk, and maybe a few more comfortable chairs as well.
Musicians always bitched about not having enough places to sit, and even a band with five people in it usually had a couple of friends or managers or groupies as part of the recording process, and a good studio needed space to accommodate them.
Along with that, the studio space needed to have a minifridge of some kind, some place to keep drinks and snacks in, especially if he was planning on putting long hours in down here. He knew Natalie was going to make sure he didn’t load it up solely with sugary drinks, but would probably grant him that some bands were going to need their soda fix.
Beyond that, the recording room was going to need some basic bracers and dampening spots to ensure that if they brought a drum kit in there, it wouldn’t overwhelm the room. Bands took a variety of approaches to how they liked to record. Some insisted on all being in the same room at the same time, something that could be a pain in the ass to record and mix properly. Others preferred that each piece be recorded separately and then assembled afterwards.
Truth Knife had been somewhere in between, for a variety of reasons.
Daniel, the band’s vocalist, insisted he always have the room to himself when doing vocal takes, which was fine, because he was a perfectionist who took a million times to get anything he liked on his best days.
Kelly, the band’s bassist, showed up stoned or drunk at least half of the time, which meant he would take two or three tries at a song, and if none of them were good enough, Kevin would just go in afterwards and rerecord the bassline on his own. Kelly never knew the difference.
Charlie had mostly just been the band’s rhythm guitarist for live performances, but he’d insisted on giving it a go in the studio as well. If he was honest with himself, though, Kevin wasn’t sure there was a single note played by Charlie on the album. Everything had been either out of tune, out of time or just blatantly sloppy that he’d replaced everything the guy had done. They needed him for live shows, where he did fine enough, but when it came to studio time, Kevin wasn’t going to let the guy’s drunken ass drag him down.
But Kev had actually genuinely liked playing with Kerry. She’d been a hell of a drummer, capable of whatever style a particular song called for, and more often than not, adding flourishes that he hadn’t even considered. At least a few times, Kerry had come up with a slinky groove beat out of thin air and he’d written whole songs around those.
As Kevin went about itemizing what the studio needed, he found himself coming to an interesting decision. He pulled out his phone and typed in a number he hadn’t used in at least four months, praying she hadn’t changed her number.
“Kevin, you old sumbitch,” Kerry’s jovial voice said to him. “How the hell have you been? Where the hell have you been? After the band broke up, you told me you were gonna call me when you felt like you got your shit together. Did you? Or are you calling me to ask for a favor like bail money?”
He laughed immediately, and wondered why he’d waited so long to call her. If there was any one person in the band he’d missed, it had absolutely been her. There had never been any sexual chemistry between them, mostly because Kerry was a lesbian, but their whole relationship had been more of a sibling feeling anyway. “When the band imploded, I guess I kinda did too, Ker. But the last week or so I’ve come out of it and lucked into a new life. It’s a story you wouldn’t believe if I told you, so I won’t bore you with the details.”
“Aw, I kinda like your boring details, Kev, but sure. So what’s the buzz? Why you ringin’ me up?”
“What’s your schedule looking like for the next few months? You go back to teaching high school students how to bash the skins?”
“A bit, but I’ve been workin’ as a session musician here’n’there too. And you askin’ ’bout my schedule makes me think maybe you need a session drummer. That what this is about?”
Kevin smirked a little, glad that Kerry couldn’t see him at the moment, as she might’ve used that smile against him. “Sort of. Consider it maybe a session audition for a more full-time gig.”
“I’m not playing with those two fuckers ever again, Kevin, so if Kelly or Danny’s in, I’m absolutely fucking out! I might be able to handle Charlie if I have to, but I don’t see the fucking point considering how worthless he was most of the time.”
“Kerry, I’m fucking done with the lot of them just as much as you are. The same goes for Charlie. And you’re not the one who caught Kelly selling some of the band’s gear to get a fix. I almost couldn’t afford rent getting two of my axes back, so why the fuck would I ever want to see any of their junkie asses again?”
“Yeah, well, Danny’s a misogynistic prick, and I’m sick of hearing his fucking apologies for grabbing my tits while he’s drunk. I don’t give a shit how good a vocalist he is. My new girlfriend would be the living shit out of him anyway.”
“I’m absolutely with you there too, Ker,” Kevin sighed. “I’m done making excuses for his shitty behavior because of his talent. There’s gotta be other talented singers out there who aren’t fucking assholes, so next time I need a singer, Danny will be a lesson I remember, not a name I call. But I don’t need a vocalist. I need a drummer. Hell, I need the best drummer I know. You interested in giving it a go?”
“What’s the gig?”
“I’m going to be scoring Emily Rouchard’s next movie, starring Alice Karteaux.”
“The fuck you say.”
“If I’m lyin’, I’m dyin’.”
“How the holy fucknuts did you land that gig?”
“I’ve got a new manager now who’s capable of moving mountains when she wants to, and it turns out that she sent Rouchard a copy of our album to convince her I could do it, and she dug the Truth Knife sound, so I’m going to be dipping back into that style for the score, and it wouldn’t hurt to have a tight sticker behind the kit when I did.”
The other end of the line was silent for a few seconds before Kerry spoke again. “Say that I ain’t opposed to this. What’s it an audition for beyond that gig?”
“A bunch of things. I’m going to be doing a lot more composing for movies now, since having an Emily Rouchard movie on my resume will draw all sorts of people in, but I’m also considering both taking a swing at being a producer and maybe starting a new band up as well, and frankly, you’re one of the only people I’ve ever known in the music industry who I never wanted to punch. And you’re stupid fucking talented, so maybe if the movie score works out, you’d consider coming along for part of the ride.”
Kerry sighed a little bit. “Is this a pipedream or an actual paying gig you’ve got?”
“Paying gig, I promise. Upfront work, with a cut of the royalties from soundtrack sales and streams. Look, I don’t blame you being skeptical, okay? I know I would be if I were in your shoes, but do me a favor and think about it. Hell, if you want to come by my new place and see the studio I’m setting up tonight, you can.”
“Wait, you’re setting up a studio in a home? In your home? What the hell did I miss over the last few months?”
“Tell you what, I’ll text you my address and you can come up here for dinner and we can talk it over, okay? I’ll show you the house and the studio, tell you what I can about the movie and we’ll see where it stands.”
The drummer seemed to consider it for a long moment before she agreed. “Yeah, fuck it, why not. I can’t stand the little prick I’m supposed to be teaching tonight anyway. She’s a brat who’s only learning to drum to piss off her folks. But this time we’re getting shit in contracts in advance, you hear me? No more fucking handshake deals, not with you, not with labels, not with fuckin’ anyone.”
“All above board in advance, Ker. Remember, I got just as fucked by the label as you did, maybe more.”
“Yeah, okay then. I’ll see you tonight.”
After she hung up, Kevin texted her the address for the house, then sent text messages to Natalie, Ashley and Elizabeth, informing them he was going to be having a dinner meeting in the house tonight. Ashley shot back a message saying she would grab dinner on campus, so Natalie didn’t need to make anything for her.
Almost immediately after that, his phone rang with Elizabeth on the phone. “Dinner meeting, sir? You really should have me manage all your scheduling.”
“This was sort of a spur of the moment thing, Elizabeth,” Kevin said to her. “I realized I was going to need a drummer for Ms. Rouchard’s movie so—”
“Oh! Did you reach out to Ms. Friedlander?”
Kevin was fleetingly caught off guard before he remembered that Elizabeth had talked to all of his band members when she was vetting him. “Kerry, yeah. She’s coming over to talk it all through. You’re welcome to join us for dinner, naturally.”
“Absolutely sir!” she said, an unconcealed enthusiasm in her voice. “She was the most pleasant member of your old band to talk to. Her appearance certainly threw me off at first, but once we started talking, I found her charming and delightful. I’ll wrap up my screenings a little early and will be home in time for dinner.”
“Great, let Natalie know and I’ll see you tonight. How’s the screening going anyway?”
“Now sir,” she giggled, “it wouldn’t be any fun if I told you anything in advance! Toodles!”
She hung up on him and Kevin caught himself smiling at the phone after she did.
Kevin also sent an email to the man from the label he’d met with earlier in the day. As part of the meeting, they had set up royalty payments. All of the band members had signed their royalty rights over to him long ago in exchange for cash payouts up front, but Kerry had always said she’d regretted that, so in the email he made sure that Kerry would get awarded her percentages from the reissue, even though she’d technically signed them over to him. He would just give them back to her for nothing, something the guy at the label didn’t seem to understand, but agreed to. Kev didn’t know how much money it was going to be worth, but he felt like it was the very least he could do for her.
Not long after that, Kevin’s second meeting arrived and caught him completely by surprise. “DR?” Kevin said as he opened the door. “What the actual fuck are you doing making house calls to play studio prep monkey?”
The guy on the other side of the door was someone Kevin had spent a decent amount of time with. Randall McDonald, also known as Dandy Randy. DR, as he was often shortened to, was a mostly well kept guy in his early fifties who looked like he’d walked off the set of a seventies sitcom. He was called Dandy Randy because he was always wearing suits, but somehow the suits never looked modern, more like he’d walked out of a 70s copy show, like somehow the man had inherited an entire vintage wardrobe from his father or older brother. Hell, maybe the guy just spent his off days at second-hand shops. DR had a shoulder length mullet, and a handlebar mustache that sunk all the way to his chin line, giant circular rose-tinted glasses over his pale blue eyes.
Dandy Randy had been the keyboardist for a band called The Brand New Antiques in the late 1980s that had done relatively well for themselves until the tidal wave of grunge had killed their audience overnight. Since then, he’d rebranded himself as a studio engineer, but had spent most of the past decade always working for the same guy, a producer named Doomsday Davis.
The reason he’d known DR, and Doomsday as well, was because they had worked on “Wayward Dreamers,” Truth Knife’s only album. Doomsday had lived up to his nickname, but had been able to wring out some great performances from himself, Danny and Kerry, although Kevin had wondered how much of that had actually been because of Dandy Randy, who had been the album’s engineer. DR had a deft touch on the mixing desk, and knew just how everything should fit together.
“Oh, hey Mr. Bishop. I didn’t know you’d be that Mr. Bishop,” the man said, taking a heavy drag off his vape pen.
“Please, DR, just call me Kev. And you didn’t answer my question.”
Randy nodded, blowing the drag out into the air before taking another deep hit off of it, then blowing it again into the air outside of the door, stepping into the house only after he’d done so and tucked away his vape pen. “Me and Doomsday had a falling out, brother. It’d been coming for years, but, like, about five months ago or whatever, I was mixing the new Calcified record for him, and the dude lost his shit for no fucking reason at all. It finally just came to blows. My husband told me to just be fucking done with him, that I shouldn’t work with any motherfuckers who take a swing at me. So I finished that record and the last couple of times he’s called me, I just haven’t bothered fuckin’ answerin’ him, dude. But I still gotta pay the bills somehow, and since all my work was with the dickface and his studio, you can imagine the uptight bitch ain’t recommending me to anyone who calls asking. So the last few months, I’ve just been helping people set up home studios to pay the bills. Fuckin’ blows, man, but homeboy’s gotta eat, yknowwhatI’msayin’?”
Randy could be eccentric, Kevin would be the first to admit, but he was also a wildly talented engineer and mixer who didn’t deserve to be sidelined, after engineering some of the best rock albums of the last twenty-five years. He’d done some amazing work for Truth Knife, and now Kev found himself in need of a permanent engineer.
Kevin found himself wondering not for the first and certainly not for the last time exactly how Elizabeth could be this good at her job, connecting him to just the right people at just the right time. He didn’t doubt for a moment that Elizabeth had found out that Dandy Randy had been out of work and that the two of them had gotten along well enough that Kevin would want to bring Randy on board.
“So, while you’re going through this new studio with me, Randy, I want you to consider whether or not you’d like to come on board as my studio engineer full time.”
“Whoa! You mean that, dude?”
“C’mon in, and we’ll talk it over.”
As the two walked downstairs, talking about the studio and what sort of things it was going to be used for, Kevin sent a text message to Elizabeth, saying “You are so going to feel something around your neck tonight after dinner.”
“Promises promises,” she shot back.