Interruption Two -- For Those About To Rock (We Salute You)
The next few weeks or so developed into a comfortable and delicious rhythm. Kevin was pleased to find that the women in his life all seemed to get along with each other very well, Miriam and Elizabeth doing their best to manage his work life, Natalie managed his diet and exercise routine, and Ashley made sure he didn't take himself too seriously.
Elizabeth had reminded him that he still had three spaces in the house to fill, but Kevin had told her he wasn't in any rush, as he already felt a little spoiled for choice. His majordomo seemed to think he might want to bring on a lawyer soon, as well as a personal physician, but Kevin hadn't felt any real pressure to get either of those.
Miriam, it turned out, actually enjoyed driving him around, saying she found the Tesla Model X a joy to drive, and even when she was working, she and he had developed a great rapport, able to carry on conversations about all sorts of things.
The one thing he
had
decided, however, was that women in his household needed to be exposed to more music, as it seemed like all four of them were barely familiar with anything that hadn't been released in the last ten years. From the Beatles and the Stones to Miles Davis and John Coltrane, he had a lot of teaching to do.
Work on Emily Rouchard's movie score continued a bit at a time, as the director and the star both wanted to make endless notes on what did and didn't work. If he'd been picky about it, it might have seemed overwhelming, but instead it basically just told him that they were very much invested in the movie, and wanted everything to land just right. Given their working speed and the amounts of adjustments he was doing, he figured he would be on the project for another month or two.
Kerry had also started talks with people who wanted to use Kevin's studio to record their album, and in this regard, Kevin was going to be incredibly cautious, as it meant letting a bunch of musicians into his home for eight hours a day five days a week, and he knew exactly what sort of pain in the asses musicians could often be. Dandy Randy was helping her sort through the proposals and demo tapes of the people who wanted to have Kevin produce their album, and Elizabeth tried to aid as best as she could in helping manage the process, but in the end, there was just so much going on, that Kerry and Randy had to take on the lion's share of screening.
He had narrowed it down to two options, a band from Dublin called Fire Castles that specialized in sort of psychedelic post-rock swells and a band from Madrid called Children Of Adventure that did good old fashioned sleazy rock'n'roll. Kevin suspected Fire Castles would be easier to work with, but that Children of Adventure would make the more interesting record, although they struck him as very hard partying people, and he worried that sort of attitude would get in the way of making the music. It was a decision he was still mulling over.
Elizabeth had also informed him that there was an official offer from Robert Rodriguez's people for him to be scoring a new movie he was working on called "One Desperate Man," something Rob had pitched to him as "the Mexican 'Falling Down,'" a description which had more than caught his attention. The script was going to be sent over to him in the next few days, and Kevin was scheduled to start having meetings with the director next week, something Kevin was looking forward to for multiple reasons.
Not only was Rodriguez an amazing director, one that Kevin had been a fan of for a long time, he was also a guitarist, meaning they could speak to each other in three languages -- English, Spanish and music. And the idea that
he
would be scoring a Robert Rodriguez movie absolutely blew his mind. He couldn't believe how far he'd come in just a month or so.
Lastly, in stolen moments here and there, Kevin had started writing a new batch of songs, although he wasn't entirely sure what he was going to do with them, whether he wanted to form a new band, put out a solo record or just give them to some other band to record. There was a certain appeal to the idea of being a modern day Prince, just gifting hit songs to people because he didn't feel like recording them himself. He was considering giving one of them as a closing song to Emily for her movie, a track that basically felt like a lost Truth Knife b-side. With Kerry on drums and him playing basically everything else, that wouldn't be far from the truth, since the rest of the band had often been too drunk or stoned to play their parts and Kevin had been forced to step in and record their parts for them instead.
In fact, he was particularly pleased with the song "Mind Heist" that he'd even had Kerry go in and record the drum part for him, so the song was basically done except for some final mastering adjustments to be made, and he intended to send it with his next batch of development mixes of the score over to Emily and see if she was interested in using it as a credits crawl for the movie, something they hadn't really talked too much about yet, because she and Alice were massively busy with the reshoots, having been doing twelve-hour days for two weeks straight, the action scene they were filming for the opening of the movie having gotten more complicated, because of the quickness with which it had been put together, so the logistics were constantly shifting, making it a nightmare, although Emily seemed confident that they were close to wrapping, and Kevin had no reason to disbelieve her.
All of this meant that Kevin had lost track of time.
When he woke up on the morning of the 3
rd
, the house was completely empty. Ashley was on campus, Natalie was teaching classes, Elizabeth was downtown taking meetings and Miriam was going through the last of the training she needed to take in order to get her guard's license for the state of California. Since he'd moved into the house, he'd never woken up alone, and the feeling was eerie.
He got dressed and walked into the kitchen, finding that Natalie had left out a selection of fruit for him to have as his breakfast, along with a note explaining that he was on his own for the day, and that everyone would be home very late, so he shouldn't wait up for them. At the bottom of the note, Miriam had said that as long as he wasn't heading into any troublesome situations, he should be safe on his own for a day, and that he could consider the privilege of driving himself to be a special treat for the day, and that if he found himself truly in danger, he could call her to come to the rescue.
Kevin was surprised how empty the house felt with just him in it, but took the opportunity to explore it more a little, peeking his head into the each of the bedrooms the girls had claimed, just to look and see how they had customized their living space.
Miriam's room was spartan in its decoration, almost approaching looking like it was unlived in, but there were hints here and there, little things she'd left out on the dresser or the nightstand next to the bed. She'd slept in his bed a few times, but seemed to prefer returning to her own bed most nights. It seemed most of the women in the family were that way -- once or twice a week they'd fall asleep next to Kevin, but the rest of the time, they were happier in their own rooms. Elizabeth had said it was mostly so that when eventually they did find him a wife, she didn't feel crowded by all the other women. It would be easy to get accustomed to always being in bed with him, she'd told him, and that wasn't something they could afford to do.
Elizabeth's room also was ridiculously neat, but had far more clutter to it, all the clutter neatly squared away however, making the room feeling insanely organized, everything compartmentalized and sorted. Both Elizabeth and Miriam made their beds with military precision, the sheets tucked in to make the beds almost look like hotel beds.
Ashley's room, by contrast, looked like an earthquake and a bomb had gone off simultaneously. Clothes were scattered around the room, draped over nearly every surface, and empty plastic water bottles formed a sort of forest bed. Most of the floor was covered with either clothes or books, and Kevin wondered how the hell she even got in or out of the room. Opening the door even a little had forced him to push some of the ground clutter in a bit.
Natalie's room was a balance in between, certainly looking more lived in than Miriam's, but nowhere near as chaotic as Ashley's did. Neither Ashley nor Natalie had made their bed, but Ashley's had also had a bunch of clothes stacked up on it, while Natalie's didn't. The doorway between Natalie's bedroom and her attached bathroom had a chinup bar at the top of it, and there were a handful of weights scattered around the floor, as if she liked having them at hand if she felt the need to pump some iron every now and again.
They'd also gotten all of his stuff moved and settled in from his old apartment, he noted, as he strolled through the empty house, and the new place was finally feeling really like
his
. Putting some of his own stuff up on the walls, concert posters from gigs he'd played at or legendary shows he'd attended, had stripped away some of that sense that he was just living some place he wasn't supposed to be and was making it feel like his own home.
But the house being empty made it feel eerie.
