Page 9 of Uriah's Orbit
Grant rolled his eyes. “So is my grandma, but I still make her cookies. What’s your point?”
“He’s not Pavarotti and he’s not Hugh Jackman!”
“I’m the only one of the five of us whose voice you won’t let evolve. I’ve been singing the same way since my original audition,” I said. “Why? This pathetic whiny boyband bullshit is outdated. We have real instruments and real songs, that we really write, and you just won’t lay off.”
“Don’t mess with the formula, boys.” The condescension in his voice was ice cold.
Grant smiled behind his back and gave us the thumbs up. He’d gotten through to Angela, which meant we had a meeting to go to tonight.
“Let’s stop for now,” I said. “We’ll just collect ourselves and try again tomorrow.”
“Waste of time, Austin,” Frankel grumbled. “But it’s your dollar, so whatever. Lose the Jackman voice, and we’ll make real progress.” He turned and marched back into the sound booth and then out the door.
“She said she’ll meet us at Leonardo’s in an hour,” Grant said. “She was up in Harlem helping at the Children’s center.”
“Totally cool,” Bryce said.
“At this point, I’d meet at two in the morning on a crumbling dock ten blocks north of the Battery, with a hot fresh crumb cake and brick of blow,” Taylor said.
“I can get the blow,” Luis said.
“Let’s talk to her. We all want this change,” I said. I held up my finger and shook my head. “Outside. We’ll talk on the way to Lorenzo’s.”
The speaker clicked on and the sound tech’s voice filled the room. “I can hear you, but the recording system is off. If you’re going againstthe Meister, I’m all for it. Guy’s an asshole. Homophobic shitburger.”
“Shitburger.” Taylor nodded. “I like it. I’m stealing that.”
We all walked into the sound booth and the guy sitting there stood up and offered a hand. “Marcus Romano. If you need studio time after you ditch the ahole, call me or my boss Jerry. We’ll find it.”
I shook his hand, and narrowed my eyes at him. “Marcus. Why are you familiar?”
“Voice,” Luis said. “It’s his voice.”
He rolled his eyes, and reached into his back pocket. He offered me the card he’d pulled out. All five of us looked at it like some kind of stupid Scooby-Doo cartoon.
“Marcus Chastain,” Grant mumbled.
“Oh shit!” Luis yelled jumping back and laughing. “You do audiobooks!”
We all looked at Luis, confused.
“What? You all play video games on the road. I listen to audiobooks. Fuck off. The man has a voice to make even the straightest of the straight become a little bi curious.”
Marcus laughed. “My boyfriend calls it mybedroom come fuck mevoice.”
I laughed. “Please, tell me you seduce him.”
“Of course. I proved, about three weeks ago, that I can make anything sound like pure sex by reading the white pages of an old telephone book.”
“Up top,” Grant said, and fist bumped Marcus. “Can you sing? This asshole here thinks he’s Hugh Jackman and Frank doesn’t like that.”
“He doesn’t sound like Hugh Jackman,” he said, clicking a few buttons on his laptop. “He sounds like Sebastian Bach singing Dr. Jekyll and Mister Hyde.” He peered at the five of us. “And if you’ve never heard that soundtrack from the 90s, I suggest you find it and give it a good damn listen. Because that’s him. And Taylor?”
“Yo?” he stepped forward.
“You’re dead to rights about voices maturing, and how Frank isn’t letting him mature his.”
“Fuckingthankyou,” Taylor said.
