Thank You For the Music

Thank you for the Music

"You're mad!" yells Cassie.

"I'm what?" I yell back. She sticks her tongue out at me. It's a joke we have. Cassie's a metalhead, and for half the time (at least half the time, actually) our apartment vibrates to the grinding guitars and strangled vocals of that most refined of sounds. I'd known about it before we moved in together, of course. You get the person, you accept their music as part of the package, it's the way it goes. As long as she in turn put up with my eighties synth-pop, which pinged out in our living space the other (almost) half the time, we were good.

Anyway, the joke is Cassie tends to play her heavy metal a little too loud - I mean, it's all above board and within the government Maximum Safe Volume guidelines (we don't want the police on our backs, after all) - but let's just say she pushes the boundaries a little. And the thing with her kind of music: when it's loud, it's LOUD. If we ever can't completely hear each other, there are times it comes close.

It's also loud enough to play havoc with the voice control, so she's in the habit of carrying the remote around indoors - this was after I'd complained for the umpteenth time about her screeching, "Half volume!" into the air and the sound system not taking a blind bit of notice because its tinny little ears were clogged up with Metallica.

Now, she stabs moodily at the reduce volume button, then gives me a look. "Happy now? I'm just saying, the last time you ran off like this on one of your novelty jaunts, you came back in such a stinking mood. What is it this time?"

"Yeah, well." I shrug. "That didn't work out, but this time sounds really interesting." I'm still a bit embarrassed about last Saturday, when I'd gone over to see a bloke in Streatham who'd promised "something really far out", only to be fed some derivative, badly edited pap that was absolutely stuffed with dodgy subliminals. So not only uninteresting, but also illegal. Well, even more illegal. I risked breaking the law, and for what? I'd paid him, then quickly made my excuses and left, as they say. I felt a right prat. There were too many scammers around, and I'd fallen for one. But that was an occupational hazard - if you really wanted something new, something under the government radar, you had to take some risks sometimes. I couldn't bear the only alternative I could see: numb, dumb conformity. I've explained this to Cassie more than once, but she's so straight it's untrue. Sometimes I wonder if she'll ever understand.

"Woman in Wandsworth," I add. "Notice in Darkchat, you know, the usual. Says she's got something really different." I sigh, knowing how it sounds. "Yeah, yeah, I know that's what they all say. But I've really got a good feeling about this one, you know? Like, her ad was so, I don't know, understated. Like, take it or leave it. As if it didn't need the hard sell."

Cassie arches an eyebrow. "A woman, eh? Single, is she?"

"Doubt it. It's not like that. She'd hardly be advertising something like that if she was after something else, would she? Those ads attract a right bunch of weirdos. Like me." I grin in what I hope is a reassuring way.

"Dunno. Maybe that's what she's into. Look, what am I supposed to think, Pete? You go running off on these weird excursions, seeing who knows who. I just ..." She touches my arm. "Just be careful, OK? I saw on the news only yesterday, another of those police stings, breaking up an illegal sounds party in Luton ... I just don't want you getting into any trouble, OK?"

"I know, I know. That's why I don't go to those things. Those people are just asking for trouble. They know how the government is about unauthorised music. I'm always careful. Only use Darkchat, which they can't monitor ..."

"Sure about that?"

"Right now, fairly sure, yeah. They'll probably shut it down sooner or later. But it's always been the same - whenever they close one way, we'll find another. Anyway, they've got bigger fish to fry than the odd lone weirdo like me. And as I've told you, if I go somewhere and get so much as a sniff of anything off, I'm out of there right away. No messing around. And I only go during the day, never at night. So I am always really careful. You don't need to worry. OK?"