Jem…Chapter 67

Chapter 67

I’m smiling as I get to the van and Rayne takes the guitar case and gets it put in the back with hers. I smile at that and the fact that she’s opening my door for me. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

We’re kind of both smiling and she gets in and starts the van up and we head out not even really driving fast just that relaxing kind of cruising. If it was warmer out we’d have the windows down instead of up with the heater on.

Still it’s just a good new start to things after everything that’s going on and we’ve got the tunes playing and actually for awhile we’re listening to… Starlight Butterfly!

Its different hearing it like this rather than listening it with the critical ear when we’re doing our online recording and self production stuff. Music is a whole different animal while you’re driving in a car.

Oncology and Billy Holiday are really good just driving and with the volume cranked way up and Invisible is kind of good in an angsty way I might try a few other ways to sing it. I think I can do better with it.

We switch over to some other songs or rather mixes on Rayne’s MP-3 player on shuffle and we’re listening to some of our favorite artists all shuffled together and singing along to some really great songs.

*Living on a prayer* By Bon Jovi.
*Hold my hand* By Hootie and the blowfish.
*Got my mind set on you* By George Harrison.
*Pour some sugar on me* By Def Leopard.
*Warrior* By Scandal.
*Don’t You* By Simple Minds.
*It’s the end of the world as we know it* By REM.
*Girls just wanna have fun* By Cindi Lauper.

It’s a lot of fun and we’re at the lights to pull into the mall and there’s a car load of a lot of guys there either going to the college or skipping school and they’re staring at us as AC/DC starts to blast *Black in Black* and Rayne and I are head banging to the opening guitar riffs.

The look on their faces is actually worth a few giggles as they’re giving us this whole Huh? Look and we pull out ahead of them into the mall parking lot giving them a wave and crack up as their still looking our way trying to figure out if they actually saw what they had just seen.

Trust me seeing two girls head banging and rocking out isn’t something that you see everyday here in Harper’s Point. Especially with a cool van.

We get out and get our purses and we head into the mall. It’s actually really different to me now. Not really different but there’s a difference now between all the stores being stuff for Angel/Jem and being for me as the girl that I am.

Oh wow really no wonder women shop, I’m seeing this in a whole other light as the mall really is more that seventy percent set up with the female shopper in mind. We hit the bank first and we take out some money not a whole lot because well while we’re doing good I don’t want to spend too much of our possibly quite needed cash.

We hit Eclipse which is a fairly cheap trendy kind of store and them La Senza which is really higher end of things for the likes of us and a lot of other people…but it’s lingerie mostly too…and I don’t know if it’s just me but I really like this stuff. I do shell out twenty five dollars on two pair of these white knit styled leggings that look really good on me.

Suzy Shier is another place that’s sort of up my alley taste wise. It’s the younger urban professional woman kind of stuff and I’m thinking that I might be looking here a lot for some of my more business with the band and maybe school clothes.

We’re still just looking but I’m making a mental list of needs, wants and must haves in my head. And it’s actually kind of fun trying some of these things on…though with small hips and no real girl butt some things are harder to find that even come close to fitting me right. Rayne’s also having her share of problems not being one of the perpetually skinny girls and she’s not handling it bad though…she knows how to shop for herself and her body type.

Bluenotes, Marks work Warehouse, Payless…okay we spend a few dollars in there getting me some things. Rayne’s just looking but I guess she’s okay for some stuff but I get a cute pair of pink with white Puma sneakers and a set of cork wedges that make me feel nicely tall and have that support all the way through so I’m not as clumsy feeling as I am with heels and I got a pair of those comfy ballet flat shoes well I got two pairs of each of them since it was BOGO there and that was awesome.

Rayne’s carrying my bags grinning at me. “Wow, angel you are such a girl.”

I smile. “Yeah…yeah I am and I like myself a whole lot more you know now that the stuff that’s been going on is out of the way.”

We go to Sears and there’s a lot there for both of us to look over and the Same goes for Target though I find things at Target actually a bit more teen speed and stuff than Sears which has nice things but some of their nice things are pretty steep.

Although in Sears I’m looking at not just clothes but some of the stuff in house wares and some of the things in the appliance section. We have a washer and a dryer and they work but for me it’s one of those how long things and I get an application for a Sears credit card. I have a bank account now and ID so getting a charge card for stuff for me or the house isn’t a bad idea.

We do hit Dollarama there’s one in both malls and we look around and we get a get things we need dishes wise. Hey I’m more that willing to pay for some cheap but really decent ceramic stuff like a gravy boat and a pitcher and a baking dish that’s kind of like really cheap corningware.

We leave the mall and head out to the van and put our stuff away and get our guitars out and we walk over to the benches and the little decorative plant/garden strip where the city buses stop and pick people up and it’s close to lunch and just inside there’s the food court area with a bunch of stuff and a Starbucks and a Tim Horton’s and a Second Cup and this mall’s actually just two blocks down the street from my old high school.

We set up our guitar cases and we start playing our stuff from Starlight Butterfly and the kids are coming and going from Junior and Senior lunch breaks and they usually will hit the malls and it doesn’t take that long before we’re getting tips and change from some of the students and honestly we’re recognized and that helps us take in some cash and the junior students are actually more impressed with us busking than the Seniors are and they dig a little deeper and give a bit more and…Rayne loosens her clothes between the lunches to show a bit of bra and some of her ample cleavage off and that does have it’s own effect too.

We play for the crowds of kids here our entire set as well as we can without Kimmie and Brooklyn doing a sort of unplugged acoustic style and we add in a few other songs like…

*Burning in the Deep* By Adele with Rayne doing the singing and I’m jamming out the fast strum. She’s a popular artist even with the kids now.

*Handle with care.* By the Traveling Willbury’s A great, great band in my opinion and this was a really great song of theirs. We share the chorus and I sing the stuff done by Tom Petty and Rayne actually croons out the Roy Orbison stuff. Oh we are so doing this one tomorrow night.

“Eternal Flame* By the Bangles.

*Manic Monday* By the Bangles.

*Enjoy the Show* By Lenka.

And we switch it up when the seniors come around with some harder stuff mixed in with our Starlight Butterfly stuff.

*You Oughta Know* By Alanis Morissette You can do this on the acoustic guitars as long as you strum kinda intense and angry and get really into the groove of it and Rayne’s singing this one as she does really good with her stuff and it’s pretty popular with the whole teen girls and the older teen girls at that.

Guys…any girl likely by the age of seventeen has been fucked around by some asshole enough that this song is ingrained into the female psyche.

Or in Rayne’s case it’s Summer. Honestly I think there’s a lot of the cheating, stealing hurt’s gone now but the family stuff still.

And…maybe…maybe I’ll uhm…Movie Theater her sometime. (Blush.)

*Come as you are.* By Nirvana it can be done too as long as you play the lower notes and again this is a cover that Rayne can do really well. It’s got to be that gothic related to grunge thing or something.

*Oncology and Billy Holiday* By Starlight Butterfly get played twice and so does my acoustic of *Invisible.*

*Who makes you feel* By Dido one of my faves and I’m singing it the Rayne…just because I have to…I’m not even playing Rayne’s doing all the guitar work and it’s just an amazing song. I want to do this in a nice dress maybe for a Tuesday night show.

We play actually between both lunches for almost two hours and even a good number of the shoppers and even some of the staff on their lunches are there listening to us play and it’s still cool and scary at how much money gets going really. We get the change from lunches or coffees and that’s usually toonies and change to go with it or at least with the kids and the shoppers are decent with the change too. There’s a smattering of bills too mainly fives and the odd tenner except that Billy And Davey show up and they get coffees and stuff but they toss in a twenty each and stay awhile and listen to us play.

Billy has this look on his face and takes out his phone. “Here, play that cancer song again.” He goes to take out another twenty and I shake my head no. He sets it in Rayne’s guitar case with a don’t argue with me look.

He’s filming us on video with his camera. And I think I remember hearing yesterday when we were talking and stuff that her guy’s in remission. We both duet it singing back and forth to each other and getting caught up in those words and the emotions with it. He gives us a smile that sort of looks a bit off for a guy like that and he steps up and he hugs me and Rayne both.

“I…I lost too many to the big C…shit …Jen will love this. Heck she’ll love most of your stuff.”

Carmen Wilson one of Adam’s girls went passed with her little entourage and she tosses in a fresh bank machine twenty giving me this look. “Heard you’re Jase’s cousin?”

“Uhm…yeah…”

“Jase was okay…” Her voice is quiet, not whispered but…low, sad?

“He’d be surprised…he said he wasn’t well liked.”

“Sometimes…sometimes you just never get to be the person you want to be…”

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah, better now.”

She leaves headed inside. And I’m watching her go and I know there’s something going on. I actually look at Billy. He just nods and get that tough look again and walks into the Mall. “Coming D?”

Davey just gives us a nod but a friendly one and heads in with him.

There’s a few more people dropping bills and wiping tears from their own cancer close calls and experiences…we can’t help but stay, listen, hug and talk with them.

I’m crying as is Rayne when we hear some of their stories, especially when it’s someone they’ve lost whom they’ve loved so much.

We write out our online information and stuff several times and I’m really glad that we’ve got the song on I-tunes. I look at Rayne as we’re all talking. “When we get home we’re going to set up the Oncology account to pay into a donation account for the Cancer Society.”

It made the afternoon more than worth it and we head out and end up going downtown to The Pine Tree to count our cash and the twenty Carmen dropped wasn’t just one but a hundred dollars the bills all together because they’re so new.

“Maybe she didn’t notice?” Rayne says.

“I don’t know, there’s something going on with her. I think she did this on purpose Rayne?”

“Why?”

“I think some of the people in Adam’s circle of followers might not be the people I thought they were.”

“Sounded like she liked Jase?”

“No…she didn’t, she’s actually spit on him and even in his face several times.”

“That’s fucked up.”

“Yeah but she was talking like she regretted the stuff she did to Jason?”

“Maybe she does?”

“Maybe…I’m hunched a bit just remembering the crap that they all pulled…honestly it’s really hard to turn that coin around in my head and look at both sides of it.

Rayne leans on me in the booth and holds me and moves my hair aside and gently kisses my neck. “We don’t know their situations Angel, who knows what Adam’s doing.”

That’s already what’s a chord in me.

“Yeah…you’re right, I wouldn’t put it passed him to be doing something nasty to them too….ruling through fear, it’s the Marshal way.”

“So that’s why you sent the guys in after them?”

“Yeah…that and to see what they might be up to in case they were going to try something nasty.”

“You think?”

“Even odds, like I said she’s one of the people that made my life hell. Adam might be pressuring them or they just might be like that.”

“So the money?”

“It’s money, we need it just as much as everyone else. If she made a “Mistake” and comes after it we’ll know that she was just trying to pull some shit.”

“Guess we wait then?”

“No, we go shopping again. We cleared a lot of cash today.”

“How much?”

“Just over four hundred?”

“What!?”

“Her and the guys were close to half. But add in the shoppers and we must have had a hundred kids dropping their change too.”

“Damn that’s like half my full time hours paycheck.”

“We can’t do it all the time though they’ll get sick of us fast enough if we do.”

“So what now?”

“We eat and then go shopping some more and take the change to the bank and put the money back we took out this morning.”

“Sounds really good actually.”

I get up and head to the counter and I can actually smell passed the great café smells the scents of my pine nut brittle recipe and the roasted mixed nuts with the other stuff they’re making and I put in an order for the house salad and soup and a pot of tea for two and head back to where Rayne’s talking to Mr. Walker and rolling coins up for us to take to the bank.

I give him a casual hug when he gets up. “Thanks for the coin wrappers.”

“It’s no problem I’ll buy the rolls from you too, in this business we always need change. I see you had a good day.”

“It’s has been a good day. But I’m not going to push our luck too much busking.”

“Smart but once in awhile is more like advertising than making money.”

“Yeah, I like to think of it as a good way to show we’re still grass roots performers.”

“Keep that, it’ll sell you more word of mouth than you think.”

“It’s our stock and trade word of mouth but online word of mouth too.”

“Oh I know we follow your site here.”

“Really?”

“Yes, we feature Starlight Butterfly here and we get a bunch of fans in pretty regularly and it pays us to know what you girls are doing.”

“Oh, that’s very cool.”

“Indeed, listen we should talk about Halloween.”

“Okay?”

“I want to book you for the night and take a sort of take on us being the Pine tree and do a Halloween party with this whole adult faerie costume party thing.”

“Oh that sounds like it’d be fun. But you don’t seen the type no offence.”

“I’m not but there’s a few of the bars doing themes this year and it’d be a missed opportunity for us if we didn’t.”

Rayne looks up setting the coins aside. “You can advertise it too with the hobby gamers shops and the ren-fair sites as a more Samhaines fete of the fae thing, it might bring in a few more but if word spreads it’d be a draw here after awhile.”

His eyebrows raise. “Interesting, can I join you ladies?” the food’s arriving and we both nod and we all sir down to talk business.

I love this, I honestly love this stuff.