“No, not my sister. Tell me about your other clients?”
She nodded and looked at me while she finished chewing and swallowing the food in her mouth. “It depends on the design,” she said. “But minimum for everybody else is a thousand. If it’s complicated then it cost more. If it’s basic and doesn’t take me a near century to do it then a thousand is the minimum it comes off as.”
I whistled. “My sister’s ripping you off.” She laughed at this. She has a beautiful laugh so I was glad I could make her laugh.
“She doesn’t know and you won’t tell her.” She pointed at me. I didn’t make any promises because I would tell her. I figured I would tell my mother too so she could know this woman doesn’t want money from us. Although I think my mom knew that by now. She’s actually really cordial toward her now. I think Topaz telling her off basically earned her a lot of respect from both my mother and my father. Nobody knows how to handle my mother—not even my father.
“A near century huh?” I chuckled and she nodded.
“Part of that was the client’s fault. You get one revision included in pricing and I know that, but with the specifications he wanted I knew it would take a while and be difficult so I contracted him for six thousand. The man couldn’t make up his mind. It was almost every couple hours he sent me an email with something new he wanted to make sure I added. It’s like, dude, at the rate we’re going you’re going to have a circus for a logo.”
I laughed at that because she was animated now which is a heck of a lot better than the depressed look she had earlier. I just had to keep her talking. “So what did you do?”
“I eventually, through much prayer and meditation, managed to finish his design without killing him.”
I laughed again. I haven’t ever seen her angry. I don’t think she ever could be angry. Strange that I felt that way seeing as though this is the longest conversation we had ever had, but I had seen glimpses of her with Hina, and from what my sister told me about her I just couldn’t imagine Topaz ever being angry.
“That wasn’t the end of it though.”
“It wasn’t?”
She shook her head no. “Then he wanted his one free revision. So I did that.”
“And that’s it right?” She shook her head no again. I was starting to think her job was more heartache and headache than it should be. She loved design and I knew that because Hina had told me as much, and because I had seen the work she did for my sister. There was no way to get that kind of passion out of a passionless soul. Her heart was in every project, but I knew that didn’t mean every project was rewarding.
“No, it’s just all he got included in his package. Ten,” she held up all her fingers, thumbs included. “Ten revisions and on the last one I told him to take it or find somebody else.”
“What happened?”
“He took it.” She shook her head. “But only because the other guy he tried to get didn’t even give him a sample he thought met the caliber of my work. Go me,” she winked.
“Go you,” I nodded. Heck yeah, I had seen her work and I knew she was good. She was brilliant.
She sobered and looked at me. “You’re not doing this because of Jace, are you?”
“I’m doing this because I need a logo with class and still a knock them on their butts look.”
“Now that I can give you. Actually,” she stood up and gave me a show of the back of her index finger while crooking it. I assumed that meant she wanted me to come with her. I followed her back to her office and watched as she pulled a velvet covered album from the shelf. She flipped through pages and then she came to what she wanted to show me.
“I would give you something to fit your specifications of course, but when Hina told me about your business venture I just got all these crazy ideas of what your design might look like and so I started drawing. I know you play piano, but I also know you do music for a lot of cellist so I just played around.”
I looked at the drawings. There were six of them total and all of them were beautiful. I could easily use any of them, but I wanted her to have to work for it. Not that she hadn’t worked for it here, but in my mind putting her to work would help take her mind off some of her pain. Plus, with her mother being out of town I didn’t want to leave her alone. Hina wasn’t in town, or even the country, to be here for her either.
No, this wasn’t about Jace. I needed the design and I was thinking of asking her, but…well if I was going to be completely honest I guess asking her to do it now did have something to do with Jace. I could have waited another two or three months for this because the site designer already told me it wouldn’t be done anytime soon. Good thing I already had a site. I just wanted something to fit me—hard edged yet smooth in all the right places.
“I do have some ideas. I love these, but I think if we discuss my vision and yours we can merge the two.” She could come over to my place, get a feel for what I did by sitting in the studio with me while I recorded Tanaka Ikeda’s cello playing. She was working on a new CD using some of my music, most of my music with only two pieces of her own. That would give Topaz a feel for what I do and what I write and I figured that would help in creating a kick butt logo design.
“I agree,” she nodded as I flipped through the book some more.
“Oh no,” she placed her hand over the page I was about to flip. “This is my personal book and I don’t show it to anybody.”
“I’m your first,” I winked. Yes, there was something to my tone that had me suspect as well. I tried to turn the page but she wouldn’t let me.
“It’s just…it’s not all business.”
My eyebrow arched. Not all business sounded intriguing. The look on her face, like she had something to hide, made me want to know more and I intended to get my way. I was going to take control here because I wanted to see what she was trying to hide.
“I...these are from a part of me nobody gets to see.”
Nobody? Hmm. Not even my sister. That made me more curious than I was before so I expertly used my other hand to remove hers and I flipped the page. I noticed how her cheeks blushed red and her eyes closed. When I looked down I could see why. Hot, holy hell, she was naked. Granted it was an artistic nude with no full on anything, but she had a cello between her legs covering parts any man would love to get a look at. The way she was twisted showed just a hint of her breast.
Sweet Jesus look at that body was all I could think. I turned the page again and there was another. This time she was lying in the bed, sheets covering where they needed to be, but not all of her. Next to this picture was a five by seven piece of embossed stationary with calligraphy writing. That writing was hand done and now I knew something else about her, she had beautiful penmanship. I wanted to see more pictures, but curiosity always called me when the mood struck me so I decided to read it—aloud.
“You touch me,” I paused at that first line. Now this could be good. “And I feel your caress like your fingers were meant for my body. They roam, softly, knowingly, playing me like the ivory keys.” Oh yeah, I could envision that looking at the picture there. “I ache, spreading my legs for you. Knowingly you smile willing to help yourself too.” I kept reading and what I was reading was not what I expected. She’s a virgin in body only because her mind, her passions, her desires were aching for somebody to come release her, claim her, take her to the heights of pleasure and beyond. By the time I finished reading her poetry I was hard and nearly ready to explode. I could imagine what she was feeling when she wrote it. I just wondered if she wrote it for that jerk Jace.
I didn’t ask particulars. I just kept flipping the pages looking at one beautiful picture after another. In some of them she was naked. In most of them she was clothed, but the artistry of them was so passionate, so perfect, that I couldn’t help but study them. Reading her words next to each picture seemed to open my eyes even more to the woman in front of me and by the time I reached the end of the book and looked up at her I had this feeling she knew she had jus
t bared her soul to me.
“Beautiful,” I said because I meant it—beautiful pictures, beautiful words, beautiful woman. The next man she dated better deserve her.
“Thanks. Don’t tell anybody; okay?”
“These are good. Why hide them?” She should have plastered them on every wall—those pictures were that good. That was art and she should have been beyond proud of her work.
“Because they’re feelings I shouldn’t be having and pictures I shouldn’t be taking. Nothing, never mind…” she waved her hand as if to let me know she wouldn’t try to explain it so I nodded and closed the book she was trying to take away from me. But I didn’t close it before getting one more look at her with that cello.
“Do you play?” I pointed to the book as if the picture was still in front of me.
“No, not really. I tried. I sucked. I moved on.”
“You shouldn’t have given up.”
She shrugged. “Honestly, life got really hard in New York and I couldn’t play in the apartment so with school and all I just didn’t practice. But I started back last year trying to teach myself. Last year as in December so I haven’t been on it for that long and I’m not really any good at it.”
I nodded and looked at her earnestly. “Maybe you’re just too hard on yourself.”
“Nah. Well…I am, but I really do suck at it. I’m not even going to lie about it. I’m not good at it, but I could be one day. I just love the cello, but the reality is I’m better at piano than cello—that’s not saying much because I’m not good at that either.” She laughed and I shook my head.
“Pick one.”
“I can’t. I love cello, but I love piano too and since they’re just instruments I don’t see why I can’t try to learn both. Well, other than time restraints. I seem to take pictures with my cello, but I actually do try to play a half hour on piano every day.” She held up her hand to stop me from speaking. “I know a half hour isn’t much.”
I shrugged. “Everybody has to start somewhere. I was actually just thinking you should shoot some pictures on the piano.”
She smiled wickedly. Had she already done it? Oh yeah, she had. “Show me.”
She laughed slightly and shook her head. “No way.”
“I’ve seen the cello pictures and then some. What’s so different?”
She blushed and lowered her head shaking it fervently. “It’s almost like porn.”
I laughed. Porn to this woman was probably seeing a man’s underwear covered penis in a picture. “Show me and let me be the judge of that.”
She walked over to a file cabinet, pulled a key out a side box on the table and then went rummaging through one of the cabinet drawers. I guess rummaging is the wrong word because she seemed to know exactly what she was going for as she reached the middle between all the files and pulled a small box out.
“More than one?” I smiled and winked. I was silently praying for more than one and that alone should have sent shivers of fear racing up my spine, but it didn’t. I chalked it up to just a man being curious, not a man starting to desire that hot little body of hers. She deserved better than me. Beyond that, she was nursing a broken heart. She hadn’t even begun nursing it really. Rebound relationships weren’t a good thing. Not that I wanted a relationship with her.
I kicked the thought out of my mind. What I wanted was to see this picture that was kind of like “porn” that she talked about.
“No. Just one. Don’t laugh; okay?”
How could I? She would have to be dressed like Bozo the Clown to make me laugh. “Show me.” My impatient streak was showing and that was rare for me. I was actually, usually anyway, a patient man.
She opened the box and pulled a picture from inside. The picture was five by seven and matted to a board. She handed it to me face down and was reluctant to let go so I could turn it over, but as soon as she let go I was too curious not to look swiftly. What I saw took me by extreme surprise. Her piano is a mahogany baby grand and there she was with her near naked butt on the keys. Her breasts are small but perky, her head is thrown back and her hand is in the black lace panties she’s sporting. I could tell they were black because even though the picture was black and white, except for the piano, the darkness of the panties told me they had to be black. All I could see was a woman in orgasm. Holly hell…“Were you coming?”
She squeezed her eyes shut and bit her lip. “Not really,” she said and I wondered if she were telling me the truth. “I was thinking of coming. I was thinking of what it would be like to have a man take me right there. My mother was out at one of her mid-day meetings and the mood just struck me. I dropped work, got all dolled up and nearly naked, set up the tripod and took this one. I process my own black and white film so this was the best one that I shot and decided to print. I hand tinted the piano for that picture and that’s the one I decided to mount. The black and white without the tint is in here,” she handed me another picture from a different box.
I was so engrossed in the picture I was looking at that I hadn’t noticed she had gone to get another box while she was talking to me. Both pictures were amazing but something about the hand tinting had me realizing this woman was a pure artist. Somebody had stifled her development. She could have been doing artistic nudes and making a lot of money, yet here she was hiding her nudes.
“I’m glad you shared these with me. Do you have any more of these?”
She laughed. “Maybe. But I’ll never tell.” She laughed again. Laughing was good compared to last night and this morning. “You know what my dream is?”
“No. Tell me.” I leaned forward while clinging to the picture and dreading the moment when I knew she would take it away and lock it up again. I’m a man—I can appreciate a fine human form—a fine womanly human form. There was nothing suspect about the ache in my body—nothing at all I told myself.
“I want to shoot something like this with a man. Like I want him to be without his shirt and me almost naked, maybe bra and panties, and I want him to hold me, caress me, kiss me…you know, something to fit the poems I have written.”
I heard the low growl escape before I could stop it. Her words sparked a lot of images for me. One thing I was thinking since it was still a dream for her that meant she hadn’t let Jace see her naked, touch her like this, and that made me happy. Why did that make me happy? I rationalized it was because Jace was an idiot and idiots didn’t deserve to get glimpses of heaven—Topaz was sheer heaven in my book.
Chapter Three
I think I knew what Arashi was doing. I mean I’m not stupid or anything like that. He was trying to keep me busy so I wouldn’t think about Jace so much. I knew he needed the logo, but seeing as though he told me he wouldn’t need it for two to three months I had an idea that maybe he hadn’t really meant to ask for one to be done this soon. Maybe he wanted to wait, but to try to help me he moved his timeline.
I didn’t mind. I wanted to do the work for him. This was kind of dreamlike for me because I love music too so doing something sexy for the logo design that had the hard edge he wanted but still had an air of professionalism in that, come hither and hire me, look would be a fun challenge. I figured it should be perfect because he was such a good guy.
Months of barely there conversation and I was thinking he was such a good guy after one night and an entire day spent with him. He didn’t go home that day until late and after he left I did cry some more. I cried a lot, but then I thought of the day I had and how I had laughed and I told myself to move on. Jace didn’t deserve my tears; that’s what Arashi had said to me when he saw me ready to tear up before dinner. I told myself those words and I managed to stop crying long enough to fall asleep normally instead of crying myself to sleep.
Arashi had told me to be at his place at eight. He wanted to discuss the design and he also wanted me to be there when Tanaka came in to record. He wanted me to sit in the studio with him, watch him work, hear the music and get a feel for what his company would be about, what his lab
el could bring to the world of music. “A new sound with edge, grace, class, and above all else, skill and talent.” He had said that to me as I walked around the studio. It looked like a professional recording studio. It was different from what I expected. One time, when I came to their place, I had heard a cellist playing, but Arashi told me that was because they had been in one of the adjoining offices. Tanaka wanted it that way before going into the studio. He couldn’t understand why, but he wasn’t going to pressure her to get her butt in the studio if she had some kind of ritual to keep up. He said it was odd because she hadn’t done that before.
Then I thought about it, she had seen me in passing and maybe she wanted me to hear what she could give to him. I don’t know, I was being silly I guess, but I was going through a lot and my mind was just piecing things together—probably inaccurately too.
“So what drew you to writing and producing music?” I have to admit my curiosity was about more than just doing a design for him. I really wanted to know. His parents weren’t into music. His sister wasn’t in the music business. He was the only one and he just seemed to love it so much that I wanted to know what inspired him, drew him to it, and kept him working on it even when things didn’t appear to be going in the right direction when he was younger.
Love in Music Page 3
