The Orchestra - Sinfónia Lifsins - 32. A Proper Television Drama

“Remember that whatever happens today, I’ll be waiting for you in the warm-up room afterwards.” Arnar patted my shoulder. The stage had already been set up for our live televised concert, meaning there were more cables, cameras, and microphones around than there would be people on stage. “I miss this place.”

“Then how about we get rid of the kid and have you sit in the leader’s chair just pretending to play? We will sound better that way.”

“Siggi, you should stop being so mean to Gunni. It’s not his fault I had to retire.”

“It’s his fault he was hired. He should’ve known this isn’t the place for him.” Speaking of the devil (more like the ‘sweet little angel made of so much sugar that everyone gets diabetes just by standing next to him’), the replacement chose that moment to climb up onto the stage. Arnar smiled to him, they shook hands, and exchanged all the required social niceties.

“I’m very pleased to finally talk to you properly, Gunni.”

“Thank you. It’s an honour to meet you.” The replacement’s face entered ‘tomato mode’. “I’ve heard so much about you; it’s nice to finally talk to you in person.”

“Same here. As far as I can tell, you seem to be a very good and capable player, despite what some people say.” Arnar looked pointedly towards me, though the replacement did not follow his gaze. He just got his ears and neck to match the colour of the rest of his face.

“Thank you. That means a lot to me.”

Arnar and his replacement were doing a great job of forgetting about my existence. Not that I wanted any part in that conversation, but I had better things to do with my life than watch the kid get praised by the person whom he stole his job from. This was the kind of situation where a sex-addicted best friend would have been actually useful. If only the bastard had the decency to read my thoughts and appear on demand…

“Hey, Siggi, can you come with me for a bit?” Not the bastard, but Gísli. Close enough. It was still an excuse to get away from the kid.

“What is it?”

“Not here. Let’s find an empty room.”

“You? Really? I didn’t think you were one for public sex.”

“Special occasion, unforeseen circumstances. You wanna come or not?” Gísli sounded like me when I wanted my brains fucked out to forget about my crappy life.

“Sure, why not? I have nothing better to do for the next ten minutes.”

And that was how Gísli and I ended up in the storage room next to the double basses’ empty cases trying to eat each other’s tongues without messing up our expensive white shirts and black linen trousers. He was nothing like the bastard, but it was enough of a distraction. Maybe I could get him to fuck me for real once the concert was over.

“Thanks for the company.”

“What was that all about? What made you of all people go for a backstage snog? I was expecting Dmitri to find his way to my cock, not you.”

“I just needed a distraction, that’s all. Isn’t that what you say when you ask me to fuck you?”

“Fair enough, I won’t bother you about it anymore. Let’s just get this concert over and done with. The TV people are annoying me already. They put a microphone on my cello and I’m really not happy.”

“At least be glad that you’re sitting far away from the trumpets. Someone thought it would be a good idea to get them microphones too.”

“Have I told you how much the TV people are annoying me today?”

Despite his relative lack of height, Gísli managed to swing his arm over my shoulders and walk with me until we got to the stage door. For some reason, he then decided it would be a good idea to walk to his timpani while staring at Karen. While dozens of cameras filmed his every move. For national television. Obviously something had to go wrong.

Gísli tripped on one of the annoying cables littering the stage floor, and would have fallen face-first into the marimbas if Sarah had not caught him. What a great start to our concert.

Arnar was sitting in the front role of the audience, directly facing me. He tried to smile and wave, but his encouragement was not anywhere near as effective as it had been when he did it from the chair in front of me on stage. Now it just made me want to strangle the kid with my A string.

Live televised concerts like this were proof of our orchestra’s skill. Despite having just one WTF Rehearsal beforehand, our stunt without the conductor worked perfectly, and the fireworks went off just as planned. It was not surprising, after all the ISO was made of eighty experienced musicians with exceptional talent (plus the replacement). One of us even had a previous life as an international celebrity. When Vác came on stage for the Clarinet and Bassoon Concerto, at least half the audience erupted in the loudest fangirl screeching noise to ever be recorded in a classical music concert. Some of the people responsible for such noise were dressed in weird colourful uniforms, complete with make-up and hairdos too elaborate to come from anything other than a TV series.

Vác, the former actor-star-international-celebrity, was wearing the same kind of colourful uniform. The guest bassoonist, a guy called João Cardoso, wore a matching uniform, plus a horrid green spiky mess for a hairdo.

There were many reasons I never bothered to watch fantasy TV shows and movies. Their costume department accounted for about half of them.

At least our one-time pop culture crossover meant plenty of applause at the end. A happy audience meant good reviews, and good reviews built our prestige. The prestige sometimes brought better pay (though other times it brought international tours to far-away lands where the only food available was the kind that could kill me).

(...)

The rest of the concert was just as successful. Arnar properly hung out with me during the interval, the audience was moved by Gummi’s speech about Isaac, and Gummi himself cried as we played through the Funeral March of Beethoven’s third symphony. At least half the orchestra followed his lead.

“That was excellent, guys. You were phenomenal tonight!” Arnar greeted everyone who arrived through the stage door to the warm-up room. “It was a very moving performance.”

As with all post-concert parties, everyone drunk a week’s worth of alcohol, laughed their stress away, and pretended they would not have to come back the next day for more endless rehearsing. This time around, though, there were reporters and photographers everywhere. Gummi had decided it would be a great PR opportunity for the ISO. Something about presenting us more like ‘normal’ people.

Anything we did was duly registered by paparazzi and nosy reporters. The replacement and the bastard cuddling in the corner: sure. Karen and Sarah drinking loads and generally making fools of themselves: why the hell not. A great PR opportunity indeed.

“So, Siggi…” Gísli approached me again. The nearest paparazzo was following Vác’s every move as he tried to eat an innocent slice of strawberry cheesecake. “It looks like Dmitri won’t sleep at home tonight again, so if you want some different company…”

“Still horny? Careful there, Gísli, we can’t have two Dmitris in the same house; it’s not sustainable in the long term. Actually, not in the short term either.”

“I don’t plan to become a new Dmitri, don’t worry. It’s just for tonight…” Gísli looked towards Karen and Sarah. There were paparazzi around them too, but the girls did not give a single particle of excrement.

“I’m not really in the mood, but…” But Karen had just grabbed Sarah by the hips and performed the cheesiest romantic kiss ever, and Gísli looked like he could do with some brain bleach. “Whatever. We might as well.”

We found another empty room, away from the prying paparazzi. I gave a latex-free condom to Gísli, he found lube sachets in his pocket, I dropped my trousers to my ankles, and he laid me on a table that happened to be conveniently pushed against a wall. It was quick, by far not the best fuck in the world, and considerably messier than it would otherwise have been had we had access to certain pre-fuck cleaning procedures, but it was still sex. Some amount of endorphins had to be involved.

We continued our work-place sex at home, purely because it looked like neither Dmitri nor Karen would be back that night, and we needed distractions. Gísli’s reasons for needing such distractions were obvious to anyone who saw his almost catastrophic stumble at the beginning of the concert. I did not need to waste saliva asking him about it.

As for me, I needed to find a reason to not run back to Arnar’s house and stay there until the bastard was no longer fucking the brains out of a little kid. So far, being back at the house I shared with my colleagues only made me realise how much I needed my old home.

So I let Gísli’s cock fuck away my feelings, until my body could no longer stay conscious.