Amiya Wil's Arc

Chapter 6 of 8

Sunday morning Amiya sat at the desk in the back of her studio with the marked contract still open on her tablet. The Quincy sessions began in four weeks. She had no finished song to bring. If she walked in with nothing, his producers would hand her their beats and call them hers. She wrote one line on a sticky note and pressed it to the pinboard above the desk lamp: bring two tracks done, or don't go. She pulled out the small gold-faced demo box from the bottom drawer. Four reels inside, labeled by year. These were the rough cuts she had performed at the launch. Rough was the word. The vocals were live takes through a cracked mic. The drums were borrowed loops. None of them were hers on paper. She could not sing for two weeks. She could still write, and she could still build. She set the small black console on the desk and powered it on. The amber ring lit. The display showed three half-songs she had started after the showcase and abandoned. She played the first. Eight bars of piano, a hook hummed under her breath, then silence. The second was a drum pattern with no melody. The third was only a bassline. Three skeletons. She had four weeks and one working hand on the keys. She made a plan on paper. Week one: finish the writing on all three. Week two: cut the demos clean at her desk with the mic, voice or no voice, using the scratch hum tracks she already had. Week three: bring in a session keys player and a drummer from the recovery program's cousin network and track real parts. Week four: mix two of the three to release quality and leave the third as a bargaining piece. She wrote the buyer at noon and asked for an advance against the collab to cover the players. The buyer wrote back in an hour. Approved. She worked every night that week alone at the desk. The candle burned down twice. She wrote lyrics in a notebook and tapped melodies into the console with two fingers. By Friday she had three finished songs on paper and two rough instrumentals locked. She booked the keys player for the following Tuesday. She moved the demo box to the center of the desk where she could see it. Four weeks later she walked into the glass-fronted compound a few blocks from her studio with a drive in her pocket. Two mixed tracks. Her name on the files. Her publishing. Quincy's manager met her at the door and asked what she had brought. She handed him the drive and watched him load it. The first track played through the room speakers. He listened to the whole thing without speaking. Then he said they would build the session around her sound. Amiya nodded. She did not trust him yet. She had bought the room anyway.