Fanfare (Country Roads #2) - Chapter 27

Chef never made it down for my practice. I knocked on his door when I finished conditioning, dripping in sweat, and he told me to just go home and he’d talk to me later.

I messaged Kat’s disposable phone when I got home letting her know I’d talked to Chef and he was working on it, but that I didn’t have any answers yet. I also tried to add in some encouraging words to hopefully break through the anxiety I knew she was feeling, waiting to find out what her fate was. That was one of the worst parts of this, not being able to be there and help her through it.

Chef did call later that night, but it was to tell me that he couldn’t do training the next day. I’d hoped that was because he needed to do something about Kat, but part of me was worried he might somehow still be pissed that I hadn’t just gone to him weeks ago, despite what he said.

He hadn’t canceled Tuesday’s training though, which I took for a good sign, or at least I did until I walked into the kitchen and Vinney told me he was waiting for me upstairs.

It turned out he wasn’t alone. Sitting with him were two women I’d never met.

“See, right on time,” Chef said when I knocked and stuck my head in. “Just like I said.”

“Okay, but we need to make this quick. I have a home visit in Canton in an hour and a half that I can’t miss.”

“Sure. Charlie, sit down. This is Teri Coats, she is a social worker with child protective services and that’s Donita Leighton, she’s a lawyer with the National Child Abuse Prevention Network. ”

While I knew Chef had to get CPS involved, Kat’s panic over them had rubbed off on me a little bit and I felt the pit of my stomach tighten.

“I understand you have a friend you think is being abused. Is that right?”

“I know she is. She’s come out and told us she is, and that it’s been going on since she was little. We’ve also seen the bruises from when he physically abuses her.”

“And she told you to not call us when you found out, correct?”

“Yes. She has a condition and she’s afraid if she ends up in the system, she’s going to become a target for people who could take advantage of her.”

“Yes, I’ve spoken to Dr. Rothstein and he’s explained what he could.”

“He did?”

“Doctors are allowed to break privilege to authorities when they feel a patient is in danger of immediate harm, which he believes she is,” Chef said.

“It’s a little trickier here, because she’s not technically his patient, but he was able to explain in the abstract what dangers she faced when being placed in a new environment.”

“Okay.”

“Before I speak to her, I wanted to ask you some questions, to make sure I have the facts available to me before I speak with her family. So she has told you explicitly that she’s being sexually and physically abused, correct?”

“Yes, ma’am. I didn’t want to hear details, but I know it started shortly after her mother died. Her father told her she owed it to him, since she was the reason her mother died.”

“Why does he think that?”

“She was playing in their car when it started to roll back. Her mom got there and yanked her out of the car and she was caught in it, or pulled under, or something like that. I wasn’t clear on the details. The mother died and her father blamed her for the death.”

“And it’s kept going since then?”

“That’s what she said. She sometimes has bruises on her face that I think is from him hitting her, and one time I know for sure, because she said he hit her after she told him she wouldn’t sleep with him. When he caught me with her by the baseball field after school, he was about to hit her when I got in between them.”

“How do you know he was about to hit her? Did he raise his hand?”

“No. He was kind of charging at her. He’d told her to get in the car and she said no, and he started screaming at her and came charging around the car and I stepped in between them, which made him back down. That’s when he pulled her out of school.”

“And you said there were people watching her at home?”

“Yes. There’s a woman who was a friend of her mother’s who she calls her aunt, although she isn’t. Her father told her she got caught doing drugs and was trying to sneak out and get more. As far as I’ve known, she’s never taken any drugs.”

“Does anyone else have knowledge of the abuse aside from what they’ve heard from Katherine herself? Do you know if anyone’s witnessed it?”

“I don’t know, but I don’t think so. You have to understand, he’s considered an ‘upstanding citizen’ around here and is friends with lots of people. It’s why we were worried about going to the sheriff.”

“I understand. I think I have what I need to at least start my investigation. I have to run, but I’ll call and let you know what I can,” she said, giving Chef a kiss on the cheek and showing herself out.

“That’s it?” I asked.

“It’s a process, Charlie,” Mrs. Leighton said, speaking for the first time. “Mrs. Coats is a good person and she’ll make sure your friend gets help. I’ve explained about her situation and your concerns, and she says there are options aside from the foster system.”

“I’ve known Donita for years now, and she’s here to make sure Katherine doesn’t get lost in the process. She’ll also make sure that she gets help after she’s removed from the home.”

“At NCAPN, we believe that abused children don’t just get magically better when you take them out of the situation they’re in. We understand that they have lasting trauma that needs to be addressed, and we work to make sure they get not only the safety they need, but also the financial, medical, and professional support they’re going to require to recover.”

“You said there might be a way to not put her in the foster system.”

“In this case, it’s unlikely she’d go into the foster system unless there’s no other option, since she’s only a minor for a few more months. The first thing they’ll do is try to find relatives that had no hand in the abuse. If that’s not possible, they will look for interested parties that are deemed responsible enough to take temporary custody until the child turns eighteen. It’s only when those two options aren’t available that they’ll put someone her age into a group home, where she’ll basically just wait out the last few months.”

“I think her only relatives are her mother’s parents, but if I remember correctly, they’re both really old and one might already be in a nursing home.”

“We’ve started looking at that and some other options. I know you want to help your friend, but these things need to be handled through a process to make sure her rights are protected.”

“What about her father? Once he knows he’s being investigated, can’t he just take her out of state or something? I mean, the police aren’t going to stop him, especially if he’s got a friend on the force.”

“You can’t move to another jurisdiction to avoid the allegations. We’re a national network and the case would just transfer to whatever jurisdiction he moves to. Besides, in a case for an older child like Katherine, if she requests to be taken out of the home and the allegations are specific and serious enough to warrant it, child services will often do that on a first visit, if they have a place to put her. We’re working on that now so that when Mrs. Coats does finish her initial pre-contact investigation, she’ll have removal as an option.”

“Okay. I guess I’m just worried about her and what he’s going to do. He flew into a serious rage when he saw us together. I wouldn’t put it past him to hurt her more than he has so far.”

“That’s why we’re here. You did the right thing in calling me for help,” Chef said. “Now you’re going to have to trust us to do what’s best for Katherine.”

“I know. It’s just hard. I want to be able to help her, but I feel so useless.”

“You’re not useless. You have to realize that sometimes things are outside of your ability to handle, which is especially true while you’re still young. If you want to help, make sure your friend knows to cooperate with Teri as best as she can. Especially if she’s as nervous about having CPS involved as you indicated. The worst thing that could happen is she doesn’t cooperate, in which case they’ll have to just go on what her father is sure to tell them.”

“Okay, I can do that.”

“Good. Now go down and warm up. You’ve missed enough practice.”

The rest of the week passed without any word from Chef, Mrs. Leighton, or Mrs. Coates and I started to get worried again. I did trust Chef that they’d be able to find a solution, but I didn’t trust her father wouldn't do something drastic once he found out she was being investigated, or that the system would work perfectly and get her out of harm before he could do anything.

I’d tried to ask a few times what was happening, but Chef just told me these things take time and I had to be patient. The problem was, the two-week deadline for her going to the private school was half over and, as far as I could tell, nothing had actually happened yet.

It just made it worse each day when I had to come to practice and not really be able to talk about Kat’s situation.

Chef had a whole plan to get me ready for the tournament, and Sunday’s part of the plan included having me spar with a partner again. He hadn’t mentioned that partner was Victor, however.

“Hey man, how’s it going?” he said, coming over to shake my hand.

“Good. Chef didn’t tell me you were who I was sparing against today. Here I thought I’d have an actual shot.”

“Hey, you might still. It’s been some time since I was out last and I hear you’ve been working hard. I was just telling Chef I have to be careful or you’re gonna cut arse.”

“I’m what?” I said, confused.

“Sorry. I went home last month and spent a few weeks. Whenever I go back, I always bring a little Trini back with me. It means you’re going to beat me in a fight.”

“We both know that’s not going to happen.”

“Not with that attitude it’s not,” Chef said, walking down the steps from his apartment carrying two mesh bags, one with something blue and one with something red in it.”

“I’ll wear the helmet, but I’m not puttin’ on the rest of that mess.”

“I was planning on just helmets and gloves. It’s all he’ll have on in the ring, and anything else will slow him down.”

He set down the sacks and pulled out a padded helmet that looked like it covered the sides and back of the head with flaps that went down and over the cheeks. It wasn’t that firm or hard, and I couldn’t imagine it would absorb that much off of a blow. When he’d said gloves, I’d been expecting something like boxing gloves. These really only covered the front of the fingers and the knuckles, coming together when you formed a fist. The padding was closer to a hard kind of foam, instead of the big, cushioned materials you find in a boxing glove. If this was what I had in the ring, neither of these would do much to keep me from getting hurt.

“These’ll work,” Victor said, pulling on the gloves.

I gave him an unsure look but started to pull them on until Chef stopped me.

“You need to warm up, first.”

He was right. I was so distracted I almost forgot it. Chef had made it clear from day one that I had to get my muscles warmed up and stretched before starting any sparing or training, to keep from getting hurt. I went through the routine while Chef and Victor talked off to the side, watching me but not commenting. I assumed Victor had already been working out, since he was sweaty despite the cold temperatures.

“Ready?” Chef asked when I finished my final lap around the clearing and jogged over to them.

“If you mean am I done warming up, yes. If you mean am I ready to spar against Victor, no. Not really.”

“That’s Charlie, always joking,” Chef said with a laugh as he started to slide the helmet over my head.

I was pretty sure that wasn’t what people said about me, but Victor seemed to get a kick out of it. We moved into the center of the large concrete pad and faced across from each other. Victor was bouncing on the balls of his feet, back and forth, almost like a wind-up toy, and was smiling.

“Go,” Chef said, and it was like someone had flipped a switch on Victor.

He exploded across the concrete at me, his left foot snacking out in a snap kick as he bent sideways, causing it to come in at me from the side. I’d forgotten how fast he was. I shot my arm out, catching him at the ankle and pushed up as I stepped back, forcing his kick to slip past me close enough that I could feel the wind as it passed my chest. Even as his foot was passing me, he dropped, his body falling as it twisted, and his other leg hooking out, catching me on the back of the knee.

I wasn’t expecting it and was already off-balance, because of the step back to avoid the kick, and went down hard. Victor finished his rolling drop, landing on his back and popping back up, bouncing away from me. I was suddenly glad for these foam helmets as my head banged off the concrete. It still hurt like hell, but at least I hadn’t split my skull open.

I got up much slower and less showy than Victor and got set in my stance again. As soon as I was set, he came snaking back in. I blocked a hook and shot out a jab that I hoped would put him off balance, but he was ready for it, juking his head to the side and letting my fist sail right past his head. He used his momentum well, twisting his body slightly as he dropped down and to the right slightly, putting power into a hook right into my stomach. I fell back and dropped to my knees, sucking air. He hadn’t pulled it even a little bit and it felt like a baseball bat had hit me in the stomach.

For a second I had the sensation that I couldn’t bring any air in that happens when you get the wind seriously knocked out of you, almost like I was in a vacuum and there was nothing to breathe. Chef came over and checked on me, but I was starting to get short breaths in again by the time he knelt down, so he knew I was okay.

“Jesus Christ,” I managed to get out.

“Get your breath back and we’ll talk,” he said to me before turning to Victor. “Take a few minutes break while he recovers.”

Victor nodded and walked past me for the restaurant, giving me a reassuring pat on the shoulder. Of course, considering he’d just kicked my ass twice in under a minute, I’m not sure how reassuring it really was.

It took a few more minutes but I finally pushed myself up, taking long, steady breaths. My stomach felt like it was on fire. Victor was a machine and his punches felt like being hit by an iron rod more than a fist.

“I told him not to hold anything back. You’ve done really good since you started training, but you’ve ended up in a few fights with kids who didn’t know what they were doing. I know you aren’t one for overconfidence, but I wanted to see what a serious fight against someone with training would be like.”

“It’d be like I’m going to get my ass kicked,” I said, not terribly happy he’d done this and given me no warning.

“If you play into his game, you will. When you first get into a ring, you need to size up your opponent. If you’ve never seen them fight before, you use the first couple of clashes to get a feel for what they have and how they fight. What are their strengths and how do you deprive them of those strengths? What are Victor’s strengths?”

“He’s fast as hell and he hits like a ton of bricks.”

“Okay, and do you think continuing to try and fight the way you have been so far will do well in countering those strengths?”

“No,” I said, stopping feeling sorry for myself for getting walloped so bad and starting to actually think through what he was saying.

“Are you going to try something to counter those strengths?”

“Yes,” I said.

Chef went back inside and I stood still, looking at the ground, playing through the first fight the two of us had and our short clash just now. I had an idea, but it might have been a bad one.

“You okay?” Victor said, stopping when he came up next to me and putting a hand on my shoulder.

“Yeah, you just got me pretty good with that shot.”

“Sorry man. Chef said I needed to go all out for your training, but I don’t want to hurt you. Are you sure you’re okay to keep going? I know Chef wants you to advance your training faster, but if you’re not up to this, we can call it now.”

He wasn’t bragging or trying to be insulting. I could see it in his face that he was genuinely worried I might get hurt and was concerned for my well-being. For someone who’d just kicked my ass, Victor was a really good guy.

But I also wasn’t throwing in the towel that easily.

“No, I’m good to keep going.”

“Okay. I’m not going to pull back, so if it’s getting too much, call it. Don’t let yourself get hurt.”

I nodded and got into a stance, ready for him.

Chef gave the word and he came at me like a bullet, taking a short leap as he came towards me, fist in the air to put both his body weight and gravity into his punch, which if it hit, would probably drop me. Instead of trying to block or counter it, which would have been the normal move for this, I took a step diagonal step back and to the left, causing him to land partially bent over, his back, head, and shoulders all in line with his fist close to the ground.

As soon as his fist passed me, I moved, tackling him in the mid-section, wrapping my arms around his midsection, pushing him over. I used my arms to twist him as we dropped, so he basically landed on top of me, kind of lying perpendicular across my stomach. As soon as we started to land, I put my left foot against the back of his right knee and locked the foot into the crook of my right knee, and grabbed his foot, pulling it towards my chest.

He started to roll over, but his leg was completely immobilized and it just put him in an awkward angle, with his free leg sitting sticking up in the air and both of his hands well away from me. He tried a couple of swings to try and hit me and made a grab at my right foot so he could break the hold, but he didn’t have leverage at either.

I pulled down on his foot, not enough to cause damage, but Chef had shown me this move just before Christmas when we practiced grapples, and I knew how bad it could hurt. Victor didn’t have a lot of quit in him and tried to free himself again, this time by kicking down with his free leg in a hope to catch me in the face, but my lock on his foot with my hands that I was using as a lever was in the way and he couldn’t get an angle or any power too it.

Finally, he tapped the ground and I let go.

“Jesus,” he said, pushing himself up and limping around for a moment to work out the strain in his joint. “So you’ve become one of these guys, huh?”

I was smiling at him, just happy I’d gotten one up on him, “You’re too fast for me to go toe to toe with, so I had to think of something else.”

“But the Calf Slicer? That’s some nasty shit.”

“You didn’t twist as far as I wanted when I took you down, so it’s the hold that I had available to me. I could have done the Toe Hold, but I wanted to go easy on you.”

“Ohh, so this is how it’s gonna be,” he said, smiling back at me.

Despite just having been beaten, he was enjoying himself. Victor was one of those guys who lived for this kind of fighting, and usually had as much fun when he was losing as when he was winning. Well, almost.

We kept at it for an hour. A few times I was able to take him down, and most of those times I was able to get him in a hold when he went to the ground. It turns out one of the reasons Victor did this as a hobby and had never gone far in it, is he just didn’t do great on the ground. His move was usually to try and take his opponent down hard before they got that far, and keep them from taking him to the ground, but if he couldn’t stop them then he was usually in serious trouble.

We were both limping and I had a serious bruise forming on my side from repeated hits. By tomorrow it would be a deep purple and look pretty nasty, along with several smaller but still nasty friends on my legs and arms.

Despite the pain, I was having a great time, even if I lost more than I won.

“Man, you have really improved,” he said, bumping my fist as we finished.

“Not enough. You still dropped me on my ass more than I took you to the ground. If this was real, you would have kicked my ass.”

“You did much better than you think,” Chef said, slapping my back. “Victor has been training for years and is honestly well out of your league. If he was eligible for this competition and entered it, he would probably take the whole thing. The fact that you were able to get him to tap out such a high number of times is very good. Victor, how do we train? Do we train for the fight we think we’ll have?”

“No, Chef, we train for the fight we have no chance of winning.”

“Why?”

“Because if we can hold our own, or even lose well, we can win the fight we’re expecting.”

“Exactly. It’s just like your music, Charlie. You practice for where you want to be, not where you are.”

“That makes sense,” I said. “Although I’m going to feel this tomorrow.”

“Ice the bruises down good and use a heating pad when you sleep. Take a long hot shower when you get home and again when you get up.”

“Man, I still have a show to do tonight. It’s going to be rough.”

“Nah. It’ll tighten up some, but it won’t start hurting seriously until tomorrow. Besides, I watched you play last time I was here. You get serious adrenaline going, it’ll make the pain go away.”

“I hope so,” I said, twisting to the side to try and keep it from tightening up too much. “Because I’m already feeling like shit.”

Still, it was a good experience. If Chef was right about Victor’s skill level and what type of people I’d be against at the competition, and there was no reason to doubt him, then I should actually do okay. At least as long as I kept my wits about me and kept my opponent from fighting his fight, and making him fight mine.

***

Tuesday came and there was still no word about Kat. At least I had my bruises to keep me distracted. Chef was a little off when he said they’d look bad the next day. It hadn’t been until Monday night when they reached their ugliest look, a deep purple that slowly faded out to yellow and covered the entire left side of my body from just below the armpit all the way down to my waist.

Mom caught a glimpse of it when Tuesday morning when I was coming out of the bathroom after my shower, still pulling on my shirt, and about had a fit. She was ready to storm down to the Blue Ridge and give Chef some bruises of his own and it took me most of the time I usually had for breakfast before school just trying to talk her down.

She still promised she was going to make a very angry phone call to him today, and nothing I said was going to talk her out of it. I called Chef on the way to school and woke him, but at least he had a heads up that I’d accidentally sent an angry mother his way. He assured me this wasn’t the first time this had happened, and he’d take care of it.

In a weird way, I kind of liked the little jolts of pain that happened every time I moved. Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t actually like the pain itself and if I could have I would have chosen not being as battered as I was, but it did remind me that I had almost held my own against someone a lot bigger, a lot faster, and a lot more experienced than myself. It was a not-so-pleasant reminder that all the hard work was actually paying off and I was improving.

I was walking slowly to the table, trying to keep my side from hurting any worse while carrying my backpack, when Hanna intercepted me.

“Can we go talk to Mr. French?” Hanna asked, falling into step with me.

“About what?”

“You talked about his experience playing in a band and dealing with managers, and I wanted to talk to him. I’ve actually really been enjoying this last few weeks helping with the band, and I think Kat was right, this might be the thing for me, but right now I kind of feel more like a glorified roady. I know I’m not actually your manager or anything, but I don’t really know what a manager does or what I should really be looking at or paying attention to. I wanted to talk to him about what managers did, in his experience. Both what they should have been doing and what they did that they shouldn’t have. I mean, if I’m supposed to be using this to see if I like it enough for it to be a career, then maybe I should know what a manager is actually supposed to do. You know.”

She’d started rambling, which she often did when she was uncomfortable, but I got what she meant.

“Sure, let’s go ask him.”

Since Mr. French always seemed to be in his office instead of in the teachers’ lounge where a lot of the other teachers went for lunch, I wasn’t surprised to see him in his little office just off the choir room. I guess I’d come by on Monday to show him the updates we’d made over the weekends’ practices, he wasn’t expecting me today. Instead, he had his door closed with the sound of some kind of rock music coming through. It was loud enough that I could make out lyrics through the door, although I didn’t recognize it.

That actually wasn’t all that surprising since, while I knew a lot of rock music from hearing it played in clubs and bars by my dad and other musicians over the years that had mostly been classic rock and the occasional alt-rock when he’d branched out to younger places.

This didn’t sound like either of those. The actual music wasn’t that complicated, with a lot of fast tempos and power cords, but not a lot of complexity, although there was a lot of use of distortion in the riffs. That was offset by shouted vocals that wasn’t quite metal, but was way more aggressive than other rock music I’d heard.

I knocked on the door and Mr. French leaned back to look through the small square window that he could use to look at the rest of the choir room through. Seeing Hanna and me, he reached over and paused his stereo while waving us inside.

“What was that?” I asked.

“The Street Rats Live at Hayward’s in sixty-nine.”

“I don’t know them, or whatever Hayward’s was. Was that a show you went to when you were younger?”

He laughed and shook his head, “Charlie, nineteen sixty-nine was like fifty years ago. How old do you think I am?”

He sounded slightly offended that I thought he might have been at a concert fifty years ago that there was a chance my guess of late forties was probably off, and kept it to myself.

“Uhh, I …”

“Don’t answer that,” Hanna said.

“I’m just messing with you, Charlie. Hayward’s was a club on London’s south side that was big in the underground music scene. The Street Rats were an up-and-coming punk band until their lead singer passed away suddenly in seventy-one.”

I’d heard of punk rock before and I think I remember someone telling me it was one of the early offshoots of rock music, but I didn’t really know anything about it.

“I’ve never listened to any punk rock,” I said.

“That’s a shame, honestly. Besides it being really good, there’s a lot you could learn from it. Your music is a lot softer than this, of course, but a lot of interesting things came out of it. At the time, rock was still pretty young and wasn’t far out of the early R&B-inspired stuff and punk was one of the first times we got a real stripped-down, hard-edged sound. While its derivatives might be close to metal, which isn’t really your style, I think you should listen to some of the great punk bands of the sixties and seventies. It’ll broaden your musical understanding and, I’m betting, give you some ideas of how to add some interesting twists into your stuff.”

“How did I just get homework during lunch?” I asked in feigned shock.

“This isn’t homework, Charlie. This is what the music business is. All of the greats have listened to the stuff that came before them and learned to use it all to make their own, new sound. Otherwise, you just become one of these cookie-cutter record label guys that’ll disappear.”

“I was just messing with you. I get it. Could you give me a list of some of the people I should be listening to?”

“Sure,” he said, pulling out a sticky pad and scribbling. Without looking up he asked, “What did you kids need?”

“I’m only here for moral support,” I said. “Hanna was the one with the question.”

“Ohh,” Mr. French said, pausing his writing. “What can I do for you, Ms. Phillips?”

“I don’t know if Charlie’s told you, but I graduate this year and I’ve thought that I might want to get a business degree with a focus on entertainment management. I’ve been kind of following his band to a few gigs and helping them set up and everything, just trying to get an idea of what it’s all about.”

“Charlie did mention it, and I told him to warn you to think long and hard about that decision. While I agree that Charlie’s a rare talent and has as much of a chance to make it in the business as anyone I’ve ever met, you want to be careful about tying your future to one person. First, there’s the personal aspect. Working with friends is hard and can put a real strain on any relationship. Managers have to be able to control and direct their bands and good ones need to be able to tell the talent things they might not want to hear. I’ve seen a lot of close friendships crumble under that kind of pressure.”

“Charlie did say something about it, and of course one of the things I’d been thinking about was maybe helping him after I got out of college, but I wasn’t thinking about it just because of him. I’ve been really unsure for a while about what I wanted to major in or do after college, and having spent time watching what Charlie was doing, I found it really interesting. I think this is something I’d like, even if Charlie doesn’t follow it.”

“Okay. I wasn’t trying to presume, but I wouldn’t be doing my job as a teacher if I didn’t mention it.”

“Don’t worry. My mom is way ahead of you.”

“Good. I guess the next thing I should say is that you’d have to be ready for a really competitive and stressful career, if this is what you go for. If you end up working for a specific artist or band, you aren’t just responsible for the business end of their life without being in actual control of the decisions being made, but you also end up being almost like a part-time parent. There’s a lot that goes into being a musician beyond just getting deals and working with record labels. A lot of building a brand around an artist and the actual way artists make the bulk of their money is through touring, which is exhausting and chaotic. You end up being a combination parent, hall monitor, and hatchet woman. You’re responsible for making sure they get what they need to feel comfortable, that that they don’t make decisions that will hurt them long term, without pissing them off so much they fire you, and making sure they do the most basic things like sleeping and eating, which can be harder than you think. It’s pretty grueling.”

“I’m sure there are good sides, too.”

“Sure there are. It’s fun! You get to see the country and sometimes the world, and being part of the team backstage, even if you aren’t up there performing, can be a real rush. Of course, all of that is if you’re working with one band as part of their team. If you go with one of the big outfits, you won’t have time to get any of that. Those jobs pay really well, but you’ll have multiple clients that you have to provide all that same service to, which can be grueling. Burn out is really high in the industry.”

“But the money is good,” Hanna said in mock bravado.

“Yeah, it can be good.”

“So, if I wanted to get a leg up on this, what should I be doing and paying attention to.”

“For starters, know that the degree doesn’t really matter. You need one if you go work with the big outfits, but it doesn’t really matter what you have it in. Business, marketing, advertising, accounting, I’ve seen it all. What really matters is if you can sell and if you have the temperament.”

“Sell?”

“Sure. You’re constantly selling your clients on what they should be doing. They don’t want to do that shoe deal, but it means a big commission for your firm, so you have to sell it to them. That cereal company isn’t sure your guy is the one who they want as the face of their new campaign, you’ve got to sell it to them. That’s what this business is, really. Selling.”

“Ohh, I didn’t know that.”

“It can be hard to see when you’re in the smaller end of the industry, like Charlie is, just playing whatever gigs you can get. Things get different if you ever move up to where the big fish swim, which is where you’ll end up if you’re serious about entertainment management. The gig economy doesn’t really need much in the way of management and they really don’t make enough to be able to afford it, either. The people that need this kind of service are the ones that need contracts and endorsements and marketing deals.”

“Okay,” Hanna said, her face concentrated as she was thinking through what he was saying.

“That’s not to say you won’t get something following Charlie around while you have a chance. A college degree, especially if you plan it right, will give you a big leg up. Consider an accounting minor, since you’ll have to deal with a lot of business management, even if they have their own business manager. Most the people doing this kind of thing don’t know the first thing about how money actually works.”

“Accounting. Right.”

“As far as what to pay attention to, this isn’t going to be helpful, but you should pay attention to everything. The more you know about the ins and outs of how every part of the industry works, the more you can help your clients and the more you’ll be able to relate to them. That’s another problem I’ve seen in management. They know about marketing and business deals, but they don’t really understand the unique challenges that come with the entertainment industry. IF you end up with someone else other than Charlie, it will work big in your favor. For now, go with Charlie to as much stuff as you can, but especially anything away from the Blue Ridge. His connection with Chef Tang and Willie makes that situation unique, so a lot of it isn’t replicable. If Charlie gets gigs at other places, which I have no doubt he will, those are the things you need to pay attention to. Learn what it takes to get a gig, what the band and the club owner need to be happy; and how to judge a crowd, both before the show and after. It’ll help you evaluate any deals your clients get in the future and keep you from setting up gigs that’ll end up being disasters.”

“Okay,” Hanna said, seeming overwhelmed. “This is a lot to take in.”

“Yeah, I know. You asked a big question and it needs big answers. Until you go to college, just keep doing what you’re doing. Try to watch everything and just get a feel for it. That’s all you need to do for now.”

“I can do that.”

Until that moment, I hadn’t really considered what it meant when I said I wanted a career in music. I’d just been going with the flow, following Willie and Mr. French’s lead and doing what I was told. It made me stop and consider how much I should have been paying attention to things like if a gig was right for me, instead of just taking whatever was offered.

It was a lot to think about. For Hanna and me both.