Page 2 of A World Apart
“Oh, it does not,” I laughed, reaching out a hand to grab her elbow and pull her along with me. “Besides, we’ve spent so much recently on Ubers. Food doesn’t buy itself, you know.”
Becka grumbled, but didn’t argue. “It’s your fault, anyway,” she muttered darkly.
“Behave! How is it?” I asked, raising my eyebrows at her but not slowing down.
“Well, I can hardly show you around from the back of a bus, now can I?” Becka clearly thought this was a solid argument, but I only rolled my eyes.
“Alright then, now you’ve shown me around, I’d quite like to enjoy the benefits of food security for the rest of my time here.”
“Yeah, yeah. Quit manhandling me, crumpet-muncher,” Becka laughed as she pulled her arm free from my grasp, but continued to match my pace all the same.
I scoffed. That was one of her better ones.
“That would hit harder if it wasn’t coming from someone who microwaves her tea.”
“I’ve started taking the bag out first!” She protested.
I clutched my chest and pretended to keel over. “Y’know, you wouldn’t be allowed to step foot in Yorkshire.”
She looked at me with a frown. “The Shire?”
I sighed. “Never mind.”
Suddenly, Becka pointed away from me and cried “Yo! That’s our bus. Run!” And without waiting for me, Becka began to double-speed it down the road to where a bus was just now pulling up at our stop.
“Bollocks!” I muttered, earning a scandalised look from a middle-aged lady just coming out of the Seven-11 on my left.
Becka was already on the step of the bus by the time I caught up to her. She smirked at me as I fumbled for my pass.
“Not bad for someone who microwaves her tea.” She laughed as we moved towards a couple of free seats in the middle of the bus.
She’d been right though; the morning bus did smell like petrol.
Just like every morning since I’d moved here, I looked out of the window as the city sped past and I smiled. Would the novelty ever wear off?
I’d come to LA on a whim, a vague, fuzzy sort of hopefulness for a bright future that wasn’t yet fully formed in my mind. Isn’t that why everyone moves to LA? To follow their dreams?
All I knew was that I wanted to be involved with music. From its inception to its creation. I loved everything about the journey it took from pen to record, and I wanted to be right there in the process.
Chapter 2
It’s been three weeks since I started working at Pisces Studios and I was still not quite used to it.
Before I started working here, I’d had some big misconceptions about what a commercial recording studio was actually like. It made me laugh to think about how I used to picture it. I’d always envisioned it to be some tiny little building, niche and unspeakably cool where you just went in and magic came out.
I feel like such a tit even admitting that to myself. My imagination was based on the recording studios we had at university. They were small and purpose built, basically an office with an enclosed booth separated by a pane of glass. Professional, but small and identical to the half dozen others in the same building, a rabbit warren of aspiring musicians and technicians.
In reality, a commercial recording studio was a far more scaled-up affair. The front of the building was polished stone and looked like any other trendy-but-corporate offices. The inside was a little more like what I expected once you got to the 1st floor − or 2nd floor, as my American hosts called it. Once you were past the reception area and into the back of the building it became a collective of where music creation meets corporate. Reception and storage were on the 1st floor, along with a cavernousroom used for orchestral and big band arrangements, the studios were on the 2nd and the business and meeting rooms were at the top on the 3rd. That was where Becka worked as head of the social media team.
She also managed client expectations as a secondary responsibility.
“Needs, wants, and wishes,” she called it. These varied from things our guests absolutely needed, like a specific brand of mic, to their ‘wants’, like a specific brand of soft drink, to ‘wishes’, where they might demand to have a masseuse present for the whole booking to massage their throat with jasmine oil in between sets- to my knowledge, that’s never happened, but with some celebrities, you really never know.
“Do they get everything they wish for?” I asked once.
“They can certainly ask.” Was all she’d tell me.
Me? Nothing so glamorous. Broadly, my job role was ‘intern’. What that actually meant was that I was technically under the general operations team, which covered social media, marketing, public relations and the bookings team. I, however, did none of that but it was the only team that Becka could get me a job in because the production team − musicians and technicians- didn’t take on interns. I was a paid intern, but barely. I made enough to split utilities and food with Becka, but not the rent, which she covered on her own.
