The Quartet
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Opus OneChapter 13: Quartet free porn video
Allison was falling in love.
Over the last few hours of being with Emily, Sandra and Richard, she had started feeling something she hadn't felt for many years. It had always been there, but now it was thrust into the forefront of her thoughts.
As she drove her rental car back towards the city, she took a glance at Richard. He looked tired as he stared out of the passenger side window at the dusky fields.
Allison cast her mind back to a warm summer day eight years ago.
"Allison, look, dear, there's something here for you!" her mother had called out when Allison returned from school. As she shrugged off her school pack, she had a feeling she knew what waited.
Sure enough, when Allison entered the kitchen, her mother pointed to an envelope sitting on the table. Embossed in the corner was the gold, red and blue seal of the University of Sydney. The envelope was not thin, and Allison felt a flutter of excitement.
Her father watched with a smile from the other side of the table as he sipped his tea. Allison tore open the envelope, and unfolded the letter. The letterhead was from the Conservatorium of Music.
"I'm in!" Allison said after reading the first few sentences.
"To the music program?" her mother asked.
"Yes. Oh, and they have given me scholarship, too!" Allison passed the letter to her mother, and her father read it over her shoulder. Allison could see the pride swelling through them. Their faces grew progressively more radiant as they finished the letter.
After sharing a long hug with them, Allison sat on a stool, fingering the pages.
"What are you going to do?" her father asked gently.
Allison smiled wistfully. "I don't know."
For a week, Allison went back and forth between her choice. She could either pursue flute at the Conservatorium, or enter the honours biology program at the University of Melbourne, where she had also gotten scholarship. In a way, she wished that the music school had not accepted her, so she didn't have to make this choice. But she hadn't ever led her life based on wishes and what-ifs, and she wasn't going to start now.
She had two equally good opportunities available to her, and she would soon have to decide the course of her life. It was a difficult thing to do at seventeen.
Allison pulled slowly into the small lot by their dorm building. The day's fun was coming to a close.
"Hey, thanks again for giving us a ride," Richard offered.
"It was no problem."
"Great meeting you."
"Have a good trip home," Emily added, as she and Sandra climbed out of the car and shut the door.
They traded waves through the window, and then they turned to go. Allison watched the two girls each wrap an arm around Richard's waist as they walked to the building. She wondered where she would be now, had she chosen differently. As her imagination worked at producing the scenarios, she sighed heavily and backed out of the lot.
On Monday, school got serious.
In the morning, Richard met up with Dave, and got a whirlwind tour of the equipment in the control room followed by some basic training on the mixing board. As Dave went through and explained the function of all the controls, including which ones Richard could leave alone and which were critical to a good recording, Richard began to make sense of the seemingly complicated layout.
"You see," Dave said, "for most of the recordings we do here, we want to capture the sound of the musicians and the concert hall as they are. So we try to mess with the sound as little as possible, which means the mixer is simple to use. Everything is done through microphone selection and placement, rather than making electronic changes."
"So do you set up microphones every time there's a concert, like you did for the recording sessions?" Richard asked.
"No," Dave said, pointing through the window to the empty concert hall. "We have four microphones hanging in the hall that run up into the mixer here. There are two mounted on that center bar, and then the two flank mics. We use those for the concert recordings. While it would be nice to place mics wherever we liked, there is an audience to consider, heh, heh."
"How do you move those, then?" Richard looked at the microphones. They were suspended from the ceiling on long cables, perhaps fifty feet in length.
"Up above the hall, we can adjust the height. From here," he said, leading Richard over to a panel on the wall, "we can move them forwards and backwards."
Dave flipped open the panel and revealed three metal spools with thin black nylon wound around the hubs. Pretty cool, Richard thought. As he looked out into the hall again, he noticed the thin black lines running through the air to the microphones.
"Don't worry about moving any mics yet," Dave said. "I still need to show you how to get levels, run tape, keep timings, and a bunch of other stuff."
"I'm ready," Richard said.
"Good," Dave said. "Lesser people have left at this point, overwhelmed."
"Nah, this is neat," Richard said.
Dave grinned and nodded, and handed Richard two tapes, which looked like very small VHS tapes.
"Mostly we record on DAT tapes..."
In theory class, Dr. Dobra seemed to have decided that one week was enough leisure time, and he started the class out with a quiz. He played a series of intervals on the piano, and had the students write down what they were.
Richard didn't find the intervals particularly hard, since they were limited to the handful that Dr. Dobra had covered the previous class. He could visualize them in his mind on the keyboard, see the two keys that needed to be pressed to produce the interval.
Next to him, he could hear Sandra humming the intervals almost inaudibly as she tried to work them out.
At the end of the quiz, Richard noticed that Dr. Dobra threw in a few intervals he had not covered. The man has no principles, Richard thought. He could still see these intervals on his mental keyboard, but wasn't sure exactly what to call one of them. The terminology was still new to him, so he wrote the notes instead.
After the papers were collected, Dr. Dobra admitted he'd thrown in a few 'new' intervals, to which the students let out a combination of relieved groans and disgusted moans.
"I always have trouble with the ones that are low register," Sandra said. "I think it's because I don't sing down there," she added.
"Sandra," Dr. Dobra said. "Please sing for us. Example twenty-one." Dr. Dobra had a knack for finding the talkers in the class immediately.
Sandra set to singing the melody, while the rest of the class followed along. Richard, however, got lost in her voice. Every time he heard her sing these simple examples for class, Richard's arm hair stood on end. He wondered what she sounded like when she sang a real piece. Maybe it was time to have her perform one of these nights.
Another late arrival to English was inevitable after Dobra kept them slightly over. For someone who doesn't tolerate lateness, he sure doesn't mind going past the end of class, Richard thought.
As he walked back towards the dorm, the aroma of coffee hit him as he passed Buck's. He was addicted to their iced mochas, thanks to Emily and Sandra. Almost instinctively, he turned off the sidewalk and crossed the grass and headed towards the coffee house.
He had just gotten a surprise check from his Dad, in his mailbox. He felt a little bad, since he had only called him once last week. But Richard cashed the check anyway, after English class, and now the money was burning a hole in his wallet. It must have smelled the coffee, too.
Richard ordered a large iced mocha to go, and then browsed the flyers on the bulletin board. He grinned when he saw the one for the music festival still hanging on the wall. It had been a fun day, swimming with the girls and Allison. Richard wondered what she had thought of the three of them.
"Iced mocha?"
Richard snapped out of his thoughts and grabbed his drink. As he headed for the front door, he noticed Allison sitting at one of the tables. It was almost like his thoughts of her had made her appear.
"Allison?" he said, approaching her. She was reading a journal. Something with graphs and tables.
"Oh, Richard, hi! How are you? What a surprise!" she said all in a rush.
"Yeah, I was just getting a mocha," Richard said, raising his Styrofoam cup.
"Me too. I'm taking a break from the lab."
"Is the lab nearby?" Richard asked.
"Um, yeah, fairly close," Allison said vaguely. "What are you up to?"
"Just finished classes for the day, so I'm going to go practice for a bit."
"Sounds wonderful," Allison said earnestly. "I'm stuck with this paper about the latest news on the p53 gene," she said, rolling her eyes.
"Looks like you're busy, so I won't keep you," Richard said, although he was happy to have seen her again.
"No, the paper's not any good. Looked promising, but..."
Richard shrugged. "Don't look at me. I'd have no idea."
Allison laughed as she closed the journal up and set it aside on the table. "Do you want to sit for a moment?" she asked, gesturing to the chair across from her.
Richard set his bag and cup down joined her.
"I had fun the other day," she said, her eyes lively.
"Me too. I hope we didn't make you uncomfortable," Richard said quietly.
"Uncomfortable?"
"I mean, you know, Emily, Sandra and me."
"No, I see stuff like that all the time back home."
"Really? We need to go to Australia then!"
"No, I was just joking," Allison said, laughing.
"Oh, too bad. It's hard being private about it."
"What do you say when people ask you if you are together?" Allison asked, her voice full of interest.
"I don't know. Usually we say we're friends. But it must be obvious."
"Well, when you are all kissing it is pretty obvious," Allison said.
"Heh. We usually don't do that. Just at the music festival. There wasn't anyone there that we knew, so..." Richard trailed off.
"It must be fun. I mean, to be starting music school."
"Well, it's fun, but it's also a lot of work. Only one week has gone by, and already it feels like a month."
"But you are doing what you love," Allison said.
"Yeah, true. Aren't you?" Richard asked, meeting her eyes with his.
Allison hesitated for a moment. "Yes, for sure. But it's different. Music can do things to people that nothing else can."
"Well..."
"I mean, no one comes to my lab to watch me do research," Allison continued. "No one is moved by what I do."
Richard frowned. "No one comes to my theory classes to watch me sight-sing melodies either, believe me. People probably would leave the room, if they could!"
Allison giggled. "Okay, right, it's not all fun and games for you either, but..."
"And if you find a cure for cancer, think of the benefit. All the music playing in the world won't do that."
"But it might ... What's it like to get up in front of a full concert hall and play for people?"
"Well, I've never given a full recital in a big hall. I gave a few small recitals to friends and family in my house, and played a few pieces as part of my teacher's studio recital. That was pretty big: maybe eight hundred people went to that."
"Wow, it must be amazing to play in front of people who are listening to everything you do."
"Don't you play the flute?"
"Yes, but not very much anymore. My research is all-consuming, I'm afraid."
Richard shrugged. "No free time?"
"No, not at all. I'm trying to finish up my dissertation. By this time next year I should be getting my Ph.D."
"That's pretty cool."
"Yes, one more milestone, I suppose."
"You don't sound that excited about it," Richard said.
"I usually am. The last few days I've not been as excited."
"Why?"
"I don't know. Hey, Richard, can I ask a favor?"
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