Page 11 of His Sound
3Cake || Flo Rida
JP
I walkout of the metro station tossingmon trucup and down with one hand. It’s French for ‘my thing’ and it’s what I call the little green ball I’ve carried around for most of my life. I’m not exactly a sit-still-and-be-quiet kind of guy, so it helps to have something I can fuck around with when I’m stuck doing something like riding in a cramped metro car.
I spot my band-mates and Shayla standing outside a plain, brown brick building a few feet up the street. I jog over as I pocketmon truc.We’re getting our first look at the new headquarters of Metro Records today.
“Welcome to the dungeon,” Shayla jokes, pulling the door open once I’ve arrived.
After running a booming entertainment management company for a few years, Shayla decided to expand her music industry empire by founding her own record label. Sherbrooke Station just so happened to be in the market for a new label around that time, and she offered us a deal.
Technically she’s not our manager anymore, but not much about our relationship has changed. If there was ever any kind of Sherbrooke Station emergency, I don’t think we could handle it without giving Shayla a call.Câlice, if there was everanykind of emergency, I’d give Shayla a call. If the zombie apocalypse started today, I sure as fuck would be running straight to Shayla’s house the second I found out. She’s the angry lesbian badass everyone needs in their life. She scares the shit out of us and makes us love her all at the same time.
“This is an improvement to that tiny ass place in Saint-Henri,” Matt comments, as we step inside the office space.
“The team is pissed I couldn’t find somewhere more central,” Shayla tells us, “but for now, this is all the rent I can spare, and it’s not too far from my management HQ, so I can bounce between both all day pretty easy.”
The room is one big open space with a few desks set up, staff hunched over their laptops. The interior barely counts as finished; it’s closer to actually industrial than it is to industrial chic. There’s a sander lying on the floor and bare light bulbs hanging from ceiling.
“You need some help with that?” I ask, pointing at the sander.
“Oh, the contractors must have left it. They’re here every morning.”
“Contractors?” I laugh and slap my chest. “You’ve got all the construction expertise you could ever need right here,Votre Altesse.”
Shayla pretends to hate it, but I think she secretly loves it when I call her ‘Your Highness.’
“Thanks for the offer, but I think we’re going to stick with people who actually understand the concept of safety standards.”
“Tell me about it,” Matt groans. “He tried to mix concrete in our bathtub last week.”
“I put a tarp down!” I protest.
I don’t see what the problem with that was. When the muse isn’t telling me to make music, the muse is usually telling me to build stuff, and last week the muse told me I needed to mix up some concrete for a new table to go out on the balcony. It was going to begénial, until Matt came home to the apartment we share and threatened to have our landlord evict me if I didn’t shut the whole thing down.
Matt shakes his head. “Sometimes I wonder how you made it to adulthood.”
“I don’t think he’s there yet,” Ace argues, clapping me on the shoulder. “Still the baby of the band.”
At twenty-three, I’m three years younger than Ace and Matt, and five years younger than Cole. I was just eighteen when Matt and Ace saw me playing at an open mic night and asked me to join their project—so yes, as theseconnardsput it, I am the baby of the band.
“You boys done with the witty banter now?” Shayla asks. “Can we get on to the reason I brought you here?”
“Yes, Shayla,” we all chorus. I salute her.
She leads us over to a corner of the space where the shell of a partitioned-off room has been built, just the wooden framework without any drywall over it.
“Come, step inside my office,” Shayla jokes, moving right through one of the gaps in the wall and turning to face us after we follow her.
“Stylish,” I comment, pretending to look at imaginary furniture.
“It will be,” she says firmly. “Now, I need you guys to take a look at this new tour media.”
“Tour media?” Cole repeats.
His tone gets all of our feelings across in two words. We just spent all summer doing the Canadian festival circuit and hitting up most of the UK. I love being on the road, but the last thing any of us want to do right now is think about another tour.
“Mona has people trying to book you left, right, and centre, and they’re calling here, too,” Shayla explains. “We had to get a phone line that’sjustfor Sherbrooke Station. You boys are making us work.”
