Amiya Wil's Arc

Chapter 7 of 8

Quincy's manager called Monday morning and asked Amiya to come to the compound in person. Quincy wanted to meet her before the sessions started. He named a time two days out. Amiya hung up and stared at the clock on her studio shelf. She had two days to walk in and tell a man with three Grammy walls that her room was not ready for his team. If she said nothing, his engineers would arrive next week and find a vocal booth built for one woman with a cracked mic. She needed to say it to his face first. She spent Monday night at her desk with a leather ledger she used for production notes. She wrote every track in progress on the left page. On the right, she wrote what her studio could do and what it could not. Her booth had one good condenser. No isolation panel. No backup preamp. No engineer chair. She slid red status cards into the back pocket for the gear she was missing, amber for the gear that needed repair, green for what worked. Six red cards. Four amber. Three green. She closed the ledger and put it in her bag. Wednesday at noon she walked up to the compound. A tall boundary gate stood at the entrance, dark metal with copper inlays, a small crest at the top that read the date and the house mark. A guard checked her name and waved her through. Past the gate, a wide circular plaza opened up, paved in interlocking stone with a mirrored ring at the center. Quincy stood at the edge of the ring in a black coat, hands in his pockets, watching her cross. She did not wait for small talk. She pulled the ledger from her bag and opened it on the raised center stone between them. She turned it so he could read. She walked him through the red cards first. The missing isolation panel. The single condenser. The preamp she could not afford this month. She told him plainly that if his engineers came to her room next week, they would lose two days fixing it before they cut a single take. She said she wanted him to know now, from her, not from a tech on day one. Quincy read the cards. He flipped two pages back and read the track notes. Then he closed the ledger and handed it back. He said his compound had three booths sitting empty most days. He said she could track vocals here for the run of the project, on his gear, with her engineer if she brought one, and the time would not count against her advance. He said he respected that she walked in with the problem instead of hiding it. Then he told her to be back Friday at ten to pick a room. Amiya walked back through the gate with the ledger under her arm. The credibility problem was gone. The next one was already forming. She would be cutting her record inside his walls now, on his clocks, and every choice she made in there would be made where he could hear it.