[IC] Patience - Modern/Drama - A cautionary tale of getting exactly what you want.

[LightAlysCity]

The day began just like every Sunday morning had for the past year in apartment 42c. The mid-morning sun made its way through tall curtainless windows serving as a natural alarm clock. Parker emerged from beneath a sea of blankets, stretching her shoulders and rubbing the sleep from her eyes. She gathered a mess of long, blonde waves into a knot on the top of her head, securing it with a ribbon. However, it didn’t take much more than the few steps to her bedroom door for various strands to make their way back into her face.

Just like every Sunday morning for the past year in apartment 42c, her roommate Kevin – from whom she had kidnapped the oversized Guns N’ Roses tee-shirt she was currently wearing as a nightie - had planted himself on their couch, mindlessly picking away at one of his many guitars. She slinked past him and into the kitchen, acknowledging him with no more than a groggy glance. If he had learned anything from their years of friendship – it was that Parker was not a morning person. He knew to give her at least twenty minutes before uttering a single word directed at her. Half consciously, she pulled a couple mugs from the dishwasher and set a pot of coffee to brew.

Just like every Sunday morning for the past year in apartment 42c, she poured two cups – one with cream and sugar for herself, and the other black with two sugars for Kevin. She made her way back to the couch – dragging her knee-high sock clad feet with every step. She sipped from her own cup and dangled Kevin’s as he took it with a gracious half-grin. Parker sat and leaned against the arm on the opposite end of the couch, propping her feet up on Kevin’s thighs and grabbing a book and a pair of glasses from the coffee table across from the pair.

Just like every Sunday morning for the past year in apartment 42c, Parker sat flipping through some book she had probably read a million times while humming along to the various classics Kevin would fool around with.
“Did you cash your paycheck yet?” She asked, pushing her glasses up the bridge of her nose. Simply dismissing the question and asking one of his own, Kevin replied “How’s what’s-his-name?” Parker rolled her eyes. Kevin had met Adam numerous times; she knew his indifference was more intended to get on her nerves than anything else. Instead of answering him, she moved to his side of the couch and shoved his arm, disrupting his previously seamless guitar solo.

“Teach me somethin’,” changing the conversation once more, she pulled his guitar so that it was sitting half way on her lap and half way on his. It was these mundane Sunday morning rituals that had kept Kevin and Parker so close over the past year. Although their lives were becoming increasingly different, Sunday morning’s unwritten traditions persisted.

[HeySeuss]

Kevin was more of a morning person -- economics forced him to be that way. He'd taken a job with UPS during the first winter out of school as a package handler, loading the trucks up. 4am-9am, the sunrise shift, unloading trucks. It'd given him an appreciation for physical fitness he hadn't had going in, though he also realized that there was no way he'd make a driver position in a couple months. When he'd been in high school, which he graduated with a less than stellar grade point average only through a series of haggling deals made with his mother to prevent dropping out, he'd been all but impossible to wake up. Now? He could pull himself up at 7am sharp, even if he'd only slept four hours. So he'd taken the guitar, an old Martin acoustic model; this old black lady came in the store saying it had been her husband's for fifty years, and she wanted it to go to the right sort of player. He paid her what she asked and hid it from the boss, but only barely.

In any case, that was the guitar that Parker was trying to get ahold of, and though it was this beautiful old thing that he loved, he let her grab it in a way that would have earned most other people a slap or something; she was, after all, handing him coffee, and that meant that he had to let go anyway.

“Teach me somethin’,” She told him.

He almost told her "let's try some Slayer today" but that would probably have garnered him a look of loathing; that sort of metal wasn't for everyone, and Parker was definitely one of those people; even one coffee in her wasn't going to be enough. But beyond that, the idea was to do something simpler and learnable in a day, not to show off. It had to be kept simple, or it'd be discouraging.

He glanced around the apartment, which was decorated less according to his tastes than to hers, but which included a comfortable couch and some other furniture, kept clean only by a rigid sort of self-discipline, while figuring out what to play -- part of the ritual was to pick good songs. He'd learned from his stepfather, who had an electric guitar at the time, and came to acoustics later. But there were good songs out there that almost demanded an acoustic guitar. Others could be converted over, but he'd been saving one, "I dunno, I think you're starting to run me out of songs here, Parker, unless, of course..." the usual way of it was to hand her that Martin after getting the basics of the song down and then grabbing one of his own to take up another role. It wasn't as simple, sometimes, as just playing the whole song on one guitar -- some required two to do right.

In any case, he started to move fingers and pick over the strings; a simple melody that repeated itself, but was highly distinctive. Once in a while, he played Pink Floyd, but it was not a regular thing, but it seemed like the right time to work on it -- a wistful sort of tune, a trip down memory lane. That was "Wish You Were Here" to a T. Simple song, but one of the best. Some of them were like that.

"Once you have that, I'll get mine and play the other part," he told her.

[LightAlysCity]

Parker hardly watching his hands as Kevin showed her where to place her fingers. Her asking him to teach her to play these songs had nothing to do with any desire to become a guitarist. Instead, she paid close attention to how effortlessly he picked and strummed; never looking down to make sure his fingers where in the correct place - like it was something he had been born doing. Parker had picked up a few things but nothing had really been committed to her long term memory. She knew enough to be able to pick at the choruses of some of her favorite songs that he had taught her.

"Once you have that, I'll get mine and play the other part," he told her.

“Actually, Kev, can you show me that one more time?” Without hesitation, he started from the beginning and played it again; picking and strumming slower than he had before. This time, Parker’s eyes carefully followed his finger placement. He released the guitar to her as she placed her fingers on the frets where his had just been. As she strummed the sound came out much less melodically than it had for him. Just like he had told her hundreds of times, she pressed down harder on the strings. It helped a little, but as she moved her fingers to the next position something sounded a bit off. She glanced up at him quizzically; without having to say a word he moved her fingers to where they were supposed to be. She strummed again. Much better.

After a half dozen failed attempts, she finally got the general idea. Despite the choppiness, Kevin apparently thought she was ready to move on. He hopped up and disappeared into his room, presumably to retrieve another guitar for himself. Parker continued to play the same riffs over and over to herself while she waited for his return. She sank further into her seat and readjusted the guitar so that it was supported more by the arm of the couch than her hip. After such a stressful week, she couldn’t think of a better way to unwind. In the small two bedroom apartment, the rest of the world seemed to melt away. It was there that her nagging boss and her hopeful academic advisors ceased to exist. Even her boyfriend, Adam, knew that Sunday mornings were specifically reserved for unwinding.

As Kevin was making his way back to the couch there was a faint knock on the door. She hadn’t been expecting company and she knew that most of his friends felt comfortable enough to let themselves in. After a second knock, she looked up at him and claimed “not it,” something they had done as children in order to be immune to the responsibilities of being “it” when playing games like tag or hide-n-seek. She continued to mindlessly strum Kevin’s guitar while he went to get the door.

“Hey man, is Parker here?” It definitely wasn’t like Adam to show up unannounced.

[HeySeuss]

"Fuck," he muttered, mostly because she was adept at calling 'not it' on a regular basis, since childhood. It was possible it was some sort of religious call or something else -- the knock didn't sound like cops, and Kevin knew what cops sounded like. They pounded hard and didn't care, this was lighter, and so he figured it wasn't LAPD. All the same, Kevin wasn't the guy to greet the cops; he had a lurid tattoo of a medusa on his arm and, when he pulled his hair back into a ponytail, had piercings. On the other hand, he was a good one to scare off the Jehovah's Witnesses. Probably why Parker left him with door duty.

It was the next best thing; Adam himself -- six feet and change of bad attitude wearing a pale blue button-down shirt front tucked into a pair of pink chino shorts, which apparently was fashion in fratland. He even was wearing boating shoes and those were probably fashionably expensive ones. The guy was buzzcut, though, as a break from prep fashion that proclaimed alpha maleness or something, and there was an expression there that showed that he was less than pleased to see Kevin there. [i]Well tough, dude, I live here,[/b] he thought right back. He felt obligated to take this guy's shit and try to be the good guy, but this grated. All the same, the guy was at least all 'dude' and 'man' because Parker was listening, So he had to play along. Cave would have laughed his ass off at the scene.

"Sure. She's right on the couch," he told him calmly, even as he stepped back.

"So how are you, Kev, still working at that pawn shop?"

"Uh, yeah, but it's a guitar store."

"Yeah, but you buy and sell used guitars, right?"

"There's a difference," Kevin insisted mildly.

"Sure," he said, with a hint of a smirk, though verbally agreeing, in a fashion. The conversations often went like that.

That was about all Kevin could take of Adam's small talk, so he just nodded and got out of there -- no doubt he had an all-fired important reason to interrupt Sunday Morning, but Kevin didn't really need to hear it. The truth was, it was two days before a gig and they were still having to run around on equipment rentals and other necessities of the business. There was plenty to do on a Sunday to get that all set up, as well as a shift at work later. "I'll be in my room Parker, got stuff to do," he told her as he headed for that -- he wanted to pluck the guitar out of her hands with Adam around, because he didn't trust the dude not to somehow abuse his instrument, but that'd probably offend Parker a bit-- she was holding it. It made him grit his teeth as he closed his bedroom door; it felt like he was leaving one of his children behind to the wolves there.

His room was his -- it was guitars on stands, a speaker and an amp, real nice ones, and a mattress on the floor, covered with rumpled sheets. It was milk crates holding an alarm clock and beanbag chairs and stools. He had his own bathroom, with a shower, and that was marginally neater. The place was cluttered with wires and cables, equipment in general, and there was a laptop there, and it was cutouts and posters all over the wall. It was the definitive man cave, if one happened to love guitars over everything else, but it suited him. By avoiding ever bringing a woman back to his place, he also deftly sidestepped having to make the place look too-too nice. On the other hand, a woman would be impressed with the types of shampoo and conditioner in there-- because long hair meant having to care for it, especially when it was thick like Kevin's.

There was a temptation for Kevin to stay at the door and listen in on his friend's conversation with her douchey boyfriend, but it passed -- instead, he stepped over a couple pieces of clothing on the floor and into the bathroom, where he cranked up the heat on the shower. It was going to be one of those days, so he figured he might as well clear his head and get it together before Cave woke up (at noon or somewhere thereabouts) and everything started...