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Sammy makes an effort to find Nick after she chats with Elrod about how busy she's likely to be over the next couple of weeks.  After a few false leads she finally manages to track him down to one of the small practice rooms where he's belting out an Audioslave song with a karaoke machine.

She enters the practice room and closes the door behind her.  She has an appreciative smile on her face as she leans against a wall and listens to him sing.  Its not a googly fan-worship kind of smile, but the kind of smile she'd give to somebody in the band who was playing their instrument well.  When he's done, the smile turns into a grin.  "Nice!"

"Thank you, thank you."  He takes a bow to his audience of one.  He looks at his watch, "Did you have the room after me?  I'm notoriously over, sorry about that."  He starts to gether his stuff up.

Sammy gestures with her hands to slow him down, "No, no, I don't have the room reserved.  I'm looking for you.  Mrs. Sherwood wants us to do something together for the Winter Concert-- she said she'd spoken to you already?"  She's a little nervous about this part of it; listening to him perform was easy, talking about performing with him is an entirely different matter.  Tension manifests in the form of tiny little zephyrs playing gently with the ends of her hair.

"Cool"  He says, his smile wide as he comes over to her.  "Any thoughts?  something Christmasy, or maybe just winter like.  Smoldering love song maybe, with heavy sex."  He stops, his expression turns to one that might be seen on the face of a man that just opened his locker and found a severed head.  "Sax, saxaphone."  His hands make gestures like he's playing the instrument, "Don't read into that, I mean, not that you would.  Well, now that I've sadi it obviously you can't not read into it."  Nick stops speakiong and looks at the ceiling.  He closes his eyes, and then takes a deep breath.  He looks back at her, and his voice is completely different, something nasally, with a whine to it.  " What we've got here is failure to communicate. Some men you just can't reach, so you get what we had here last week which is the way he wants it. Well, he gets it. And I don't like it any more than you men."

Sammy scrunches up her face at him* then laughs, a finger waggling at him in reprimand.  "Don't you go quoting movies at me to cover up your slip.  I know a couple of sax therapists who would be happy to help you with this particular problem, if you think you're up to competing with someone very skilled at getting the best performance out of their instrument."








*"meggy-face"

"Well.  Can't blame a guy for trying."  He goes back to putting his stuff away.  "So, when last we left our intrepid adventurers, Nick had made a fool of himself and Samantha was politly ignoring it.  Let's see what happens next."

Hoo-boy.  I think he wants to play.  OK, kiddo.  Bring it. 

Sammy grabs a piece of notebook paper and rolls it into a tube.  She holds it in front of her, like a microphone.  She turns partly away from Nick and says in a tv reporter voice, "Are we on? OK... Hello, Joan.  This is Samantha Jameson reporting live from Oak Park River Forest High School.  I'm standing in front of an adolescent male Homo Sapiens thespianus in full posturing mode.  Note the red tint to his cheeks and his indirect, sidling movements, accompanied by occasional random, nonsensical vocalizations.  I have it on good authority that the school is in danger of being overrun by these creatures as the Winter Concert approaches.  They are attracted by crowds and spotlights and are mostly harmless unless antagonized and... uh-oh, I may be in some danger here, Joan, I seem to have attracted the creature's attention!  Back, back, strange creature, back to your lair!"  She swats in Nick's direction with the rolled up paper.

Nick smiloes, hunches over, and forms his hands into claws.  "I am not an animal, I am an actor!"  He raises one arm up as if in defiance of some unseen authority.  Afterward he straightens up.  "Okay, so you have a sense of humor, and you sing.  Greg even says you look good in a gown.  So, what should we do.  There is the tried and true crap, we could do a Romeo and Juliet thing, or some old worn out duet.  I don't think Mrs. Sherwood could survive if we did a comedy stage routine for the Winter Concert."

"Duelling banjos?"  Sammy shrugs again.  "I haven't had much time to think about it.  Ms. Sherwood said she wants something modern, whatever that means."  She looks him over in an evaluating way.  "It should be funny.  You're funny, you should get to show that off.  No clown costumes though.  Clowns give me the heebies.  Duelling singers, each one trying to one up the other in a funny way, and at the end we sing together because we're friends?  Or is that too stale?  Or a Dean Martin - Jerry Lewis / Lucille Ball - Desi Arnez kind of thing, with one of us being serious and the other totally screwing around?"

"Well, let's stick to singing.  It'll give you some time in front of an audience, and you wont have to focus on anything but your voice and the song."  Nick sits down.  "Modern?  I have the feeling she doesn't know what that means, I mean the woman drives a '76 toyota."

"Eeeew."

Sammy gropes around in her backpack looking for something.  She pulls out a small green notebook and flips it open.  "Do any of these work for you?"  Its the list of songs that Elrod et al have been putting together for the band.  "I have to learn them anyhow."

Nick takes the list and scans it.  "Nothing jumps out and screams sing me.  Well, why don't you look for something.  You know what you're comfortable with tone wise.  I can sing just about anything.  We'll start practicing as soon as you have something.  My place okay? My room is sound proofed."  He hangs his head and kicks at an imaginary object on the floor, "I didn't always sing real purtee."

Sammy is somewhat frustrated because she doesn't know what to do either, but she stuffs it down deep inside herself at the same time she stuffs the notebook back in with the rest of her books.  "Hey, I just figured out I could really *sing* in the last month or so.  Before then my musical talent was strictly limited to instruments."  She zips up her red backpack and shoots him a glance.  "This probably won't help, but I am totally stuck for ideas right now.  I've never ever done anything like this before.  I've heard you sing, but I don't know if you've ever heard me, and neither of us know what we'll sound like together.  If you want, I could meet up with you right after school this afternoon, we could go to your place, and we could just sing.  Maybe we can stir up some ideas that way."

"Sure.  We'll play some tracks, sing some, see what we like."  Nick scribbles his number and address on a notepad page and gives it to Sammy.  "I'm probably home before you're out of band practice.  Just come by whenever."

"Sure," Sammy says as she shoves the address in her pocket.  "Unless you want to come hang out at band practice and meet those sax players."  She laughs.  "We could always recruit some people and do a 40's big band kind of thing.  Although that could be risky; Greg didn't bother to tell me how you look in a gown."

Nick turns, shifts his hip out and puts a hand on it in a very come'hither way.  "Da'ling, I look Faabulous."

Sammy giggles.  "That settles it then.  Just don't look too good or else I'll develop an inferiority complex."

Sammy finishes up her classes for the day, goes to band practice, and gives Elrod a call to let him know where she is going.  She ducks behind a corner and flies up and away towards Nick's house, coming down in a discreet spot about a block away.  She walks the rest of the way to his front door and rings the bell.

The woman that answers the door is a smiling round woman with a warm smile and an apron.  "Oh, you must be Sam."  She says, come in.  Nick is in his room, just down the stairs there."  She points to a set of stairs that obviously lead to the basement.

Nick's room is like a sound studio gone horribly wrong.  There is sound equipment, computers, TV sets and movie and band posters all around the room.  Careful study shows a bed behind a curtain, and a desk in a corner.  Nick is sitting with headphones on watching what looks like an old black and white detective movie.

Sammy approaches in such a way that Nick can't be startled by her appearance unless he's totally engrossed in the action on the screen.  She looks at the movie, trying to figure out if it is one she has seen before.  Her dad loves his old movies, and she's kept him company through a lot of them.

Nick spots her as she moves into his field of view and he smiles.  "Hey."  he says, taking off the headphones and pausing the movie.  Sammy recognizes it as one of the Thin Man movies.  "No trouble finding the place I hope?"  He goes over to a mini fridge and gets a bottle of water, offering Sammy one.  "So, I have a pile of tracks for us to listen to and we can see if something fits."  He looks at his watch.  "You're earlier than I expected, you get a ride over?"

Sammy just shrugs and smiles.  "The wind must have been at my back or something."  She opens the bottle of water and takes a big swig, cutting off that line of conversation.  When she surfaces for air, she comments "Thin Man?"

Nick looks at the screen.  "Oh, yeah.  You a fan?  I love these.   Awesome onscreen chemistry, snappy dialogue.  Some of my favorites." 


He goes over to the computer and calls up a playlist.  "So, I figure we can just listen to some stuff, sing along, and see if anything realy strikes us.  Sound good?"

"I watch a lot of movies with my dad.  These are pretty good."




"Works for me."  She waits for him to start the songs then moves over next to him to begin listening and singing.  She's a little nervous at first but relaxes soon enough.

After a little while listening to songs that were nice but didn't quite measure up for one reason or another, Sammy finally hears something that makes her sit up and listen more intently.  "Play that one again, please Nick."  She shoots him a glance as the music moves around them.  "I think I could do this one.  How about you?  Its a little..." she cocks her head slightly and smiling, raises an eyebrow at him, "warm, but I think it'll work if you like it too.  If we do it right, it'll definitely get attention.  What do you think?"

Nick nods.  We could pull this off.  Let me get some live versions from other sources.  YouTube is full of stuff like this.  If you can come by tomorrow we can watch those, try to decide how we want to present it."

Sammy nods with excitement.  "I can come by."