<0010 A Bowl of Soup>
The next morning, Saturday, January 11, 2025.
Lydia’s condominium.
Morning sunlight filtered through the guest-room window. When the faint light touched her eyelids, Cynthia slowly opened her eyes.
She picked up her phone, still plugged into its charging cable. The moment she checked the time, her body reacted before her mind did.
“9:17…!”
Long-distance travel. Nerves. The audition. Unfamiliar food. The dampness left behind by the South’s cold winter rain.
All of it had weighed on her at once, leaving her completely drained, and she had ended up sleeping late.
“Oh no, I’ve been so rude to Boss…!”
Cynthia scrambled out of bed. She hurriedly pulled on her clothes and roughly combed her disheveled hair into place with her fingers.
Then a delicious smell drifted in from the kitchen.
When Cynthia opened the door and stepped out, Lydia was already awake. She was dressed in simple indoor clothes, holding a mug of coffee in her left hand while quietly stirring a pot with a ladle in her right.
“Good morning, Cindy. You need breakfast.”
Cynthia hurriedly bowed her head.
“I-I’m sorry…! I overslept!”
Lydia smiled and shook her head.
“Waking up a kid early the morning after her audition sounds like a labor-law violation. I already ate.”
Lydia gestured toward the dishes laid out on the table.
Cynthia sat down in front of a buttered sandwich and a mug of coffee.
With both cheeks flushed, she murmured,
“…I could’ve made breakfast myself.”
Lydia smiled casually.
“You had an audition yesterday. And I’m the one who owns the place.”
Lydia took a sip of coffee, then slowly stirred the pot of soup.
Damp light came in through the window. Yesterday’s rain had stopped completely, but plenty of clouds still remained in the sky.
Cynthia was still holding her sandwich with a trace of tension in her posture.
Lydia glanced at her and gave a quiet chuckle.
“Don’t be so nervous. I’m not exactly a particularly good adult.”
Cynthia blinked.
“…Pardon?”
Lydia spoke in a perfectly matter-of-fact tone.
“You’ll find out soon enough, but I’ve seen a lot of ugly and bizarre things in the music industry and show business.”
It sounded like a joke.
But not entirely.
A brief silence followed.
Then Lydia continued in a more practical tone.
“When you keep seeing that kind of thing, you start forgetting what you told yourself in the beginning—‘At least I’m never going to become as rotten as those people.’ Little by little, anyway. Then your own character starts getting worse. At some point, I started becoming like my ex-husband… No. Never mind that.”
Cynthia had no idea what she was supposed to say.
Lydia shrugged like someone accustomed to that reaction.
“But don’t worry. I may not be a good adult, but at least I don’t have a hobby of starving the youngest member of my band to death.”
Then Lydia slid a freshly filled bowl of soup toward Cynthia.
It was a thick, pale cream soup.
A faint aroma of clams and butter rose from it.
Cynthia lifted her spoon and took a bite.
The cream was hot and heavy.
Salty clams, large chunks of potato, carrot, and celery.
The scent of black pepper came afterward.
“…It’s delicious.”
Lydia calmly drank her coffee.
“Good.”
She set the lid back on the pot at an angle.
“Katty always complains that I put too many potatoes in my soup.”
For some reason, hearing that made this band feel remarkably comfortable to Cynthia.
“But… um…”
She carefully stirred the soup with her spoon.
A green lump surfaced through the white cream.
“Is broccoli normally supposed to go in clam chowder?”
Lydia’s hand stopped.
“Ah.”
Her expression grew slightly stern.
“So you’re saying it too. Not just everyone else.”
Cynthia froze with the spoon still in her hand.
Lydia spoke quietly.
“Don’t leave any behind. Chew it properly.”
<0011 Back to New York>
Lydia’s home in the Warehouse District of New Orleans was a condominium converted from an old brick building.
The building itself had once been a nineteenth-century warehouse, and Lydia’s unit was on the fourth floor.
One private bedroom. One guest room. A small music room.
A living room with the red brick on one wall left exposed rather than covered over.
Windows overlooking the communal swimming pool in the central courtyard.
In the guest room, Cynthia washed her face, applied toner and lotion, brushed her hair, and prepared to leave.
Meanwhile, she could hear Lydia speaking to someone on the phone in the living room.
“I need a case for a bass guitar. Yes. The person who needs it has a 2:20 flight, so we’ll be there by eleven.”
Cynthia rushed out of the room in alarm.
“Boss, I already have an instrument case!”
After ending the call, Lydia gave Cynthia a sideways look and a wry smile.
“Yeah. You did a wonderful job flying with your instrument in that flimsy gig bag. But I’m not letting someone who’s about to start touring keep flying around with an instrument in a gig bag. If it gets damaged, we lose a show.”
Cynthia’s face turned red, and she could no longer bring herself to argue.
A little while later, at eleven in the morning.
At a music store they stopped at on the way to the airport, Cynthia stood holding her new instrument case, her cheeks still flushed.
“A soft case costs three hundred and eighty dollars…?”
The ponytailed young man working at the store laughed.
“It’s top of the line as soft cases go. That’s what they cost. Besides, Ms. Coleman paid for it.”
Having finished the purchase, Lydia was slipping her credit card back into her red Gucci wallet.
Cynthia murmured, still red-faced,
“Boss, this… I’ll pay you back later…”
“No. The instrument case isn’t a present for you. It’s an equipment investment for the band.”
Lydia opened the door of the music store and headed across the parking lot.
“And when you come back to New Orleans next Friday, leave your current bass at home.”
“What? Why?”
“You were lucky when you came here yesterday. But if you keep hauling an instrument back and forth through airports and spending more than three hours on planes, sooner or later you increase the chances of damaging it. There’s no guarantee there’ll be room left in the overhead bins every time you board, and there’s no guarantee every flight will let your instrument into the cabin without a problem.”
Lydia paused, then got into the driver’s seat of the Corvette.
Cynthia climbed into the passenger seat, carefully holding the bass upright at an angle in its new case. Lydia looked at her and continued.
“And you’re still young, but carrying that thing around for half a day at a time will wear you down too.”
“Then how am I supposed to rehearse if I don’t bring my bass?”
“Obviously the band buys you an instrument. One you can keep here at the rehearsal room.”
“Oh…”
“Pick out what you want to use with the band and let me know by Monday. Send me the link through the Slack messenger we use.”
“Yes, Boss.”
Cynthia was so overwhelmed by the generosity that she simply bowed her head.
Later, at 12:10 p.m.
Louise and Katty were already waiting outside the departures level of Louis Armstrong International Airport.
Katty was holding a bag of po’boys she had picked up somewhere near the airport.
Cynthia and Lydia joined them, and before Cynthia went through security, the four sat down on a nearby bench and shared the po’boys.
Cynthia held hers in both hands and carefully took a bite.
The new material of the instrument case leaning against her shoulder still gave off a faint fresh-from-the-store smell.
Katty said,
“A po’boy’ll keep you full. Should hold you over until you get back to your parents’ place in Brooklyn.”
Cynthia swallowed the bread in her mouth and answered softly.
“Thank you for getting this for me.”
“It’s nothing. Can’t have you getting on a plane without lunch.”
On the other side of her, Louise quickly took out a napkin and placed it in Cynthia’s hand.
“Don’t drip sauce on it. The case is brand-new.”
Cynthia flinched.
“Y-yes!”
Lydia watched them with a faint smile.
Before going through security alone, Cynthia wiped her fingertips several times with the napkin, then adjusted her grip on the handle of the touring soft case.
When she had arrived in New Orleans yesterday, she had been a student auditioning for the band with a single gig bag on her back.
Now she was Satin Crescent’s part-time bassist, having only just stepped into the world of professional musicians.
At the security checkpoint, Cynthia turned around and bowed to the three women.
“I’ll be back! I’ll see you next week!”
Only after saying it did she realize what had just come out of her mouth.
She had said it as though this were somewhere she was already expected to return to.
Lydia smiled faintly.
“Yeah. See you next week, Cindy. Then we’ll start rehearsing for real.”