Manchester, NH

What the hell is going on?

I huddled under the covers like a child trying to hold the monsters at bay. I might try to pretend I wasn’t that frightened, but I wasn’t fooling myself. It’s difficult to trust yourself when you’ve just spent, what, half an hour being drunk on smells in front of strangers.

Though I couldn’t say I was glad the sales woman had had her own stuff to deal with, so she couldn’t pay that much attention to me. What would have happened if the register had exploded? Death by flying gears?

I didn’t even have enough sense to check for will-workers causing it all. What the hell could make the cash register go haywire like that? What if not Magick?

I’d purchased the candle, but put it at the back of a cupboard. Right now I just couldn’t face smelling something from that shop. Some day down the road I’d want to break the fear I’d gained tonight, but now wasn’t the time. I almost felt like wearing nose plugs to make sure I didn’t smell anything.

At least for tonight.

Next Day

I woke in the morning still tired and a little uncertain or distrustful of things. I can’t go on like this though. It’s no way to live life. I’d need to get hold of John B. Or take a trip back to talk with him. There had to be ways to protect oneself from whoever or whatever did such things. And I needed help in finding those ways.

But today… today I have to get up and get moving. I have a job interview to get to.

After a good shower and some wicked coffee, after the half hour of practice and prep, after dressing in a proper black dress of stylish design, after all that, I left for the interview.

They asked for an eclectic batch of songs to be prepared. Then as you sat there on the stool before the piano they handed you a short list of pieces with the instruction “play them in this order with segues between.”

So you take a deep breath and… no… so I take a deep breath and begin. The combination of songs was the main difficulty, making a decent connection between two radically different kinds of music: classic jazz and light rock, Autumn Leaves and Hotel California. Not my idea of compatible pieces. I set them in the same key and managed a segue that pulled from both pieces. So I think that went all right. And all right for all the pieces after that.

It must have gone well because I now had a day job (part time) at Nordstrom doing the “music to shop by” thing. What with union wages the fact that it was part-time shouldn’t cause too much of a problem. Of course I’d be looking for a way to play at the jazz club, developing contacts, maybe getting together a trio or quartet if I was lucky. But for now the black tea-length dress at the grand would do.

After I had a talk with John B.