Amiya Wil's Arc

Chapter 4 of 8

Monday morning Amiya walked into the buyer's office with the proofs in a flat black case. The buyer slid a venue brochure across the desk before Amiya sat down. A small theater with a glass roof and gold trim, already booked for a Friday three weeks out. The buyer wanted a live launch tied to the collection drop. She wanted a name on the marquee that would pull press. Amiya had pitched an artist she had been developing for a year, a singer who could carry the room. The buyer said she had passed. Two other names had passed. Without a headliner the event pitch fell flat, and the buyer would pull the live component by Wednesday if no one was confirmed. Amiya took the brochure home and put it on the cutting table. She called three managers that afternoon. Two did not call back. The third quoted a fee that would eat the advance and half the placement money. She hung up and sat in the storefront with the lights off. Upstairs in her studio she kept a matte-black sphere on the shelf above the speakers. It held every track she had recorded over four years. Demos she had written for other voices. Hooks she had cut at two in the morning when no one was awake to hear them. She had never put her own name on any of it. She had always been writing for a singer she would hire. She pulled the sphere down and set it on the desk. She played the first track. Then the second. By the fourth she was standing. She called the buyer at seven the next morning and said she would perform. The buyer was quiet for a long beat. Then she said, send me three tracks by noon. Amiya sent four. The buyer wrote back at one. Approved. Marquee goes up tomorrow. She had eighteen days. She booked the theater's stage for night rehearsals and brought in a sound engineer from her recovery program's wider circle. She practiced after the seamstresses went home, alone on the lit stage with the glass roof above her. She missed cues. She forgot a verse twice. The engineer made her run it again. On the ninth night she got through the set clean. On the twelfth she got through it twice. Friday the line wrapped the block before the doors opened. The promoter had set a tall lit archway outside the entrance, its woven panels flickering as people pressed in around it. Amiya stood backstage in her grandmother's gold hoops and watched the room fill through a gap in the curtain. The buyer was in the third row. Her mother was not. Amiya had not asked her yet. She stepped to the mic and the first track started. Her voice held. The room held with it. When she finished, the buyer was already typing on her phone. The collection was now tied to a face the press would remember. Hers.