by Ted Staunton
I’m about to say it doesn’t feel as if we’re winning right now when a guy walks up and says, “Hey, are you the—”
“Yup,” I say.
“Will you do the song?” He holds up a twenty. Maybe Lisa’s right after all.
Lisa says, “With all the comedy stuff?”
“Well, yeah.” The guy shrugs as if it’s a no-brainer.
Lisa looks at me. I look at her. What now? Twenty bucks is twenty bucks. Is it worth acting dumb for?
Lisa smiles at the guy. “We’ll do the song, but we can’t do the comedy today. Ace hurt his neck doing the video, and his doctor won’t let him. Sorry.”
We start to play. The guy pockets his twenty and tosses in a five instead. “Thanks,” he says halfway through and walks off.
We finish and look at each other again. “Hey,” I say, “a five is still great.”
Lisa nods. “But…” Then she shakes her head and sighs. “I see what you mean.”
I check my tuning while I try to find something to say. “Hey,” I remind us both, “the producer for Garden Avenue Kids doesn’t want the comedy. She wants the song.” I check my sixth string. It’s flat. “Maybe when people hear it there, they’ll pay more attention.”
“Yeah,” Lisa says, “you’re right.” I tune up my sixth string, and then she says, “Would you do it again?”
“What? Like, the video?”
“Yeah. But on purpose. Would you act stupid to get attention?”
“Well,” I say, “Denny does it all the time.”
Lisa rolls her eyes. “No, but say it was to get attention for another song?
I guess I mean, was this worth it?” She sighs, and her shoulders slump. “Like, it did work out. But think about the last couple of days. Even busking was more fun before everyone wanted us to act silly. If that’s what you have to do to get people to listen, it’s pretty lame. In fact, it’s horrible.” Now Lisa plucks a string and checks her tuner. She looks down, then at me. She’s waiting for an answer.
I say, “I don’t know. Maybe it would be okay if I thought people were laughing with me, not at me.”
“How would you know for sure?”
That’s a tough question. I shrug.
Lisa says, “I don’t know either. Maybe you couldn’t know. But what do you think? Would you do it?”
Answers crowd my head. One of them is Nooooo. One of them is For a million dollars. The one that comes out is, “Maybe…with you.” The “with you” kind of trails off into a mumble though.
Lisa smiles and does some more tuning. “One more,” she says. “Then I have to go. What should we do?”
“‘I’m A Believer.’ We haven’t done that yet.”
It’s an easy one, and people like it because they know it from Shrek. Lisa even does the accent the second time through, and I have a harmonica bit. When I open my eyes after my solo, guess who’s standing in front of me?
As the song ends, Denny says, “Yo, don’t thank me, just throw money my way.” He’s looking in the guitar case as he says it.
“How about bricks?” I say.
Denny doesn’t get it, as usual. His arms flap around. “I told you it would work! I told you a video would get your song out there! And now a million people know my name and style.”
“And think that Lisa and I are nimrods. You left out that part, Den.”
“C’mon, Ace. You win some, you lose some. Just be glad I check all the comments on my YouTube account. Do you think you could show that producer some of my other stuff?”
Lisa doesn’t say anything. She puts her own guitar away. Now she scoops the money from my guitar case and puts it on top of hers. She kneels down to divide it up. I take down our sign and put Chuck’s guitar away. I remove the harp rack and tuck my pick in my pocket. “What other stuff?” I finally say to Denny.
“Well, there’s the Doom Master footage from your place to work with, but what I’m really thinking is, we all do a follow-up. I’ve got this great idea. We need to make fake space suits and get helmets. Have you got a song that would go with that?”
“Not yet,” I say. “All the rest of our songs are about zombies, but we’ll get right on it.”
“Yessss,” Denny says. “Zombies in space!”
I don’t even try to answer. Lisa stands up. “In your dreams, Denny.” She hands me my money. It looks like quite a bit. I stuff it in my pocket to count later.
“I’ve got to go,” she says to me, “or I won’t get to work on time.” To Denny she says, “Thanks for sending the message, Denny. Don’t thank your gal pals for us, ’kay? Later.”
Lisa grabs her guitar case and heads off down the street. Denny calls, “Will do, Lee. Ciao!” Then he says to me, “Hey, want to see a movie Friday? Death Watch III is opening. My dad can drive.”
“Yeah, why n—” I start to say. Then I say, “Wait. Watch my guitar.” All at once, I know I have two questions to ask, and they’re not for Denny. One is for when I get home. I have to ask Mom if she is thinking of selling the house. The other I can ask right now. I run down the street. “Lisa! Lee!”
She turns. I catch up to her. We’re face-to-face. It’s now or never. I pant, “Uh, ah, on, um, Friday, do you, uh, maybe want to do, like, a movie or something?”
Ted Staunton divides his time between writing and a busy schedule as a speaker, workshop leader, storyteller and musical performer for children and adults. When he’s not writing or presenting, Ted likes to perform with the Maple Leaf Champions Jug Band. He also enjoys running, reading and listening to music. Ted and his family live in Port Hope, Ontario. For more information, visit www.tedstauntonbooks.com.
