Right Back to You

9. Fixer Upper

The concert was a bigger deal than Jimmy imagined it to be. Entire armies of men flocked around carrying banners and equipment, all under the watchful eye of a short black woman screaming her lungs out. Most of the times at them, some of the times into a headset that seemed to be an extension of her.

At first, he started carrying things like he usually did during these jobs. And he was needed since there was a butt-load of very big black speakers that needed to be arranged into a wall on the sides of the stage.  He'd barely moved two of them and an amp when the woman's wrath descended upon him.

"You!" she yelled. "What are you doing?"

Jimmy halted, the third huge speaker shaking in his arms. "Bringing this speaker up on stage." It was insanely heavy which made the fact that it was just for the sake of old rock and roll décor even more annoying.

"You're the tech guy, aren't you?" the woman insisted, snapping her fingers at him. Her nails were impressively long.

"I guess."

"You guess?"

God, she should really take a chill pill. Jimmy put the speaker down and leaned his elbow on it. "Okay, I'm sure it's me." At least he was around 90% sure. "Do you need anything tech-y?"

"If you're the tech guy, I won't waste you lugging stuff around," the woman declared. "I'm paying a fortune for you. "

Good to know since Jimmy himself wasn't getting any of that fortune. "Sorry about that."

"No sorry. Just go check the equipment and prepare everything for sound check. I have a lot of other incompetent people who can move this stuff around."

"Okay, sure." 

Not like he enjoyed moving heavy things in particular and the woman was right.  He was half convinced there was more than one company involved, because he'd never been part of such a large ensemble. For a moment, he wondered who was playing, but he'd never cared about that stuff. Plus, he was so out of the loop, he probably wouldn't recognize any names anyway.

So he abandoned the speaker next to the entrance and headed inside again. The people in the room seemed to have multiplied in the few short minutes he was out as they struggled to build the two massive speaker walls on either side of the main stage.

Jimmy had no idea why there was so much fuss for a pop act that didn't even have a proper band. But it seemed as if someone would be playing some instruments because two electric guitars and the amps had been brought on stage while he'd been out. So he grabbed one of the tool boxed from next to the speaker wall, headed that way and started plugging everything in.

Afterwards, he strummed the chords of the guitars to check that the sound was perfect. Except it wasn't. He frowned and strummed again. It was hard to tell with all the noise of banging, yelling and cursing, but there seemed to be a mild tremble in the speaker that shouldn't be there. Just to make sure, he dropped the guitar, headed for the amp and took out a screwdriver to open it up. Yep, there was some dust on it which need to be cleared out.

With careful moves, he cleaned the equipment, checked for anything else that might be wrong with it, then pawed around for the screwdriver to close it back up.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?"

He jumped at the angry voice and glanced over her shoulder. He half expected the short, screaming woman to be there, even if he'd already gotten used to her screeching voice. Instead, a girl with orange curls running down her back glared at him, her fists on her hips, her green eyes blazing.

She had orange hair. Like literal fire. He'd never seen that shade before and he found himself wondering if it was dyed. Then he wondered how long her hair would get if he pulled on a curl.