The Meet-Cute

August 12, 2008.

i)

Magritte had only ever heard good things about Vancouver's Granville Island and so, naturally, it was the first place she set out to find upon arriving in the city. The Greyhound station her bus pulled into had been only a short walk from the Skytrain that would carry her two minutes to Granville Station. And it was here that Magritte had the good sense to find a nice, unintrusive space to sit cross-legged and lay her old, faithful piano keyboard across her lap.

The instrument, pulled out of its cozy bed from within her large duffel bag, was a well loved Yamaha PSS-270. Its dull, black, plastic body was covered in ancient, disintegrating stickers, and a generous amount of electrical tape served to hold its batteries in place.

With an affectionate press of a button, she woke the machine up from its slumber, selected her choice presets and, with no specific setlist in mind, began to improvise a little tune. Something cute and fun, perhaps a little bit like Donkey Kong’s Stickerbrush Symphony in tempo and progression. Or just…”Stickerbrush Symphony”, wholesale, why the hell not? Improvisation melted seamlessly into the classic video game tunes that were fondly familiar to her.

The beloved instrument cradled in Magritte’s lap had been pulled apart and reassembled more times than she kept track of. But still, it held together and played its charming FM sounds dutifully. A tidy row of silver metal switches, lined up along the side of its body, were left carefully undisturbed as her fingers danced across the yellowed plastic keys. Magritte had learned very early in her busking career that the general public did not appreciate the unpredictable discordinance of a bent circuit as much as she did. And so that row of silver little switches connecting the data lines stood stoically in their ‘on’ position, not allowing for any delightful surprises, but also not deteriorating the synth-chip’s sound into glitchy noise on a bad turn. Perfectly vanilla, perfectly agreeable, endearingly nostalgic.

She had placed an old ball cap upside down infront of her, tossing in a few quarters of her own as a way of inviting more from friendly pockets. Ideally, she’d play an hour or two and leave with enough change to buy a coffee. Not just a Tim’s coffee–no. She wanted a decadent foamy latte from a cute, artsy little cafe she could sit in. She couldn’t bear to walk through the streets of Granville Island without having the spare change to treat herself on an impulse. And so–she’d not leave the train station until the passing public funded her frivolous spending habits. After all, it was her birthday. She deserved a little gift.

Busking in a transit station was always a bit of a trade-off. It was a bustling place full of foot traffic but the people here were focused on reaching their destination; busy and preoccupied. In a place like this, Magritte had no expectation to captivate loiterers. Not many transit-goers could spare a minute or two to sit and listen while she hammered out her cheap little tunes on cheap little piano keys. And so, when a well worn pair of tan colored, loose-laced Timberlands entered her field of vision, stopping definitively to stand before her, Magritte turned her gaze upward to welcome the listener with a wide, sloppy smile.

Without giving her brain time to register the face she was speaking to, Magritte opened her mouth to chime a cheery greeting. She was cut off faster than she could process his expression.

“You’re in my spot.” The man’s voice was curt, and the cold annoyance in his tone was mirrored in the expression on his short, square face. Pale blue eyes looked down a sharp, slightly bent nose at her. His narrow lips were pressed narrower still in a stern line, framed by a full, sandy colored beard and moustache. Atop his head, long hair of the same light color was pulled back into a small, tight bun; more slick and tidy, but far less full than the sloppy bun that Magritte’s unruly mane of curly rust colored hair had been wrangled up into.

Her dorky smirk dissolved with a few confused blinks into a slack jaw of nervous apology. “O-oh! I uh-s-sorry!” Her startled gaze snagged itself on the acoustic guitar slung over his shoulder, and the instrument’s exciting potential made her straighten her back with intent. She found her smile again. “What if–maybe we could jam? For a few minutes! And then I can scoot on outta here and leave you to it if you want. It’s been a long time since I’ve had the chance to–”

“Do you have a permit?” His tone was unchanged by her eager proposition.

“Huh?” It wasn’t that Magritte didn’t hear him, but she needed a moment to process what was being asked.

“You can’t be here without a permit. Not the stations, not anywhere in Granville either.” The unaccommodating man took a few steps towards her duffel bag and used the top of his foot to lift and slide it away from where she had safely tucked it. “Get a move on.”

Magritte protectively reached out to grab her bag as the man carelessly footed it out of ‘his’ space. And in doing so, she caused her keyboard to slide off her lap, forcing her to clumsily abort her duffel-grabbing effort in favor of clutching her instrument before it could somersault over the edge of her knees and land face-down onto hard ground.

The man, it seemed, was done with words and had already begun moving into the small space that shoving her bag out of the way had created. She felt her face turn hot as she began to gather up her items. Any desire to engage the guy more than she already had was lost along with her nerve.

As she relented to stowing her keyboard back into her duffel bag, an unfamiliar hand shoved a cold, unopened can of Coke in front of her face.

“Here you go.” Another man’s voice. A softer one, this time. Magritte glanced up to meet eyes with the stranger who was offering her a free drink, only to gaze into a pair of red, plastic, star shaped dollar store sunglasses. He gave the soda can a little shake, prompting her to take it into her hands. “Sorry I took long, I had to give someone directions to the aquarium.”

“Is this…for me?” Holding the can in both hands, Magritte stared at the unopened beverage, unsure what to do with it.

The new stranger leaned onto his back foot. “You said coke, right?” Before Magritte could stammer out a response, the new stranger turned his attention to the man with the guitar. “‘Ey, Kurtis. You mind, dude?”

The unaccommodating man, ‘Kurtis’, had just started settling in, and looked towards the new stranger with an expression that appeared as perplexed as Magritte herself felt. He turned up both his palms in a slightly contentious gesture. “Didn’t know you were playin’ here again. I’ve had this spot for, like, a year. People don’t usually park here without asking me first.”

“Okay, but you can’t just kick ‘em out like this, man.”

“I didn’t know she was with you–”

“Doesn’t matter,” Magritte’s new best friend replied. “Sixty minutes. It’s not a long time to wait if you gotta wait.”

Magritte, who had been watching Kurtis’ confidence slowly drain from his body with each passing second, turned to examine the cut of her spontaneous new accomplice. His hair was a shade or two darker than Kurtis’, and trimmed much, much shorter, with longer locks in front that fell in straight tufts over the tops of his ears and just past his thick, blocky eyebrows. His eyes remained obscured by the cheap plastic shades, and their childish novelty paired strangely with the well trimmed goatee that fanned out from under his lip to define the curve of his somewhat long but gentle chin. And he had with him a rectangular instrument case of…some variety. Not big enough for a guitar, not small enough for a flute. It didn’t give away the shape of the instrument inside, but the black oxford cloth and gold colored metallic detailings of its exterior gave it a classy, charming look she had not seen for an instrument case before. It was cute. Magritte wondered if such a style was available for portable keyboards. His hands, which wore white fingerless driving gloves, cracked open his can of sprite, and he took a casual sip while waiting for Kurtis to, “Get a move on.”

Relenting, Kurtis shuffled away from the spot he had been deliberately crowding Magritte out of. With a snort and a nod of his head towards her, Kurtis said, “Can’t exactly play Paganini on a Portasound, Raf. What’s on your setlist?”

Raf brandished a lopsided smirk and jutted his chin in the direction of Magritte’s upturned hat on the ground. “Put a toonie down and I’ll show you.”

“Fuck off.” Kurtis’s scoff was accompanied by a laugh–one that sounded surprisingly genuine to Magritte's ear. “I came here to earn change, not spend it. But I’m curious to hear how the Ephrem Classical pairs with Toy Piano.” Raf let out a low groan that could have been mistaken for a growl. Moving into the corner that Kurtis had surrendered, he unslung his instrument off his shoulder with a shrug. “There’s plenty you can play on just forty-nine keys.”

Being very confident about this fact, Magritte couldn’t help but provide her insight on the matter. With an enthusiastic lean-in, she interjected, “Yeah, like Kirby’s Dreamland!”

Raf’s head flinched in her direction almost imperceptibly, and if she had caught the subtle downward twitch of his eyebrows that betrayed a pang of confusion, she might have felt a bite of embarrassment. But instead, she heard him agree. “Like…Kirby’s Dreamland, yeah.”

He turned to look over his shoulder at her, his sunglasses mercifully hiding the bafflement in his eyes. Magritte beamed gleefully back up at him.

“Well, have fun.” Kurtis levelled a stern yet somewhat pleading glance at Raf.” I’ll be back here in an hour. Don’t let anyone else move in if you leave early, please.”

Raf simply shrugged and sipped loudly from his can of sprite in response.

As Magritte watched Kurtis disappear into the foot traffic, she began to tentatively scoot back towards where she had previously sat. “I didn’t mind giving that guy his spot back, he was just kinda–”

“A dick. Nah, I saw that. S’why I stepped in.” Raf had carefully set his instrument case down, and was in the process of zipping it open.

Leaning slightly to get a peek at what he was playing, Magritte said, “Thanks for the pop, by the way! I can pay you back after. If uh–you’re actually gonna stick around and jam with me.”

He pulled his instrument out of its protective cradle; a pale varnished wooden violin. “Don’t worry about it.” Inside the carrying case, Magritte noticed two bows neatly stowed. The bowstrings on the bow Raf selected was a standard white color, but the strings on the one he left in the case were an eye-catching red.

“Truth be told,” tucking the chin rest of the violin beneath his chin, he played one string, and then two experimentally, “I don’t really play anymore.” His fingers closed around one of the tuning knobs at the head of the violin, but if he had tweaked it at all, it wasn't perceptible. “So it’s gonna be pretty rough. But uh…gotta commit to the bit, I guess.”

Magritte took the moment to open her soda and enjoy a refreshing sip. “What kinda music do you normally play?”

“Classical,” he replied almost too quickly. “You?”

Magritte hesitated for a second. She should have had an easy answer for this by now, but all she could manage was, “a bit of everything. Anything, really!”

Raf ran his bow over the strings again to hear their tune before turning to look at her. “Yeah?” His eyebrows were raised, and his smirk favored one side of his face; an expression Magritte interpreted as incredulous. He fidgeted with a tiny, lone knob on the violin's body where the strings ended.

“Y-yeah! I, um…” Settling her keyboard back into her lap, she turned it on. “You can just play whatever, and I can fill it in. I can improvise, I think.”

Raf paused and stared down at Magritte’s little Portasound with a sigh much heavier than he intended. The thing was lacking, not just in keys, but in sound. It was a struggle to think of something he could play that she’d be able to accompany. The titles which did come to mind where…overplayed and would have to be simplified considerably to suit the keyboard's limitations. Weighing it in his mind, however, he decided that ‘simple’ may benefit not just the limited range of her instrument, but of her musical skill as well.

He ran the bow over his strings to measure their tune one last time before tentatively, very slowly playing the first few crystalline notes of Für Elise. He felt a tension he didn’t know he was holding melt off his shoulders as he watched Magritte’s face light up. She curled over her little piano in a hurry to play his accompaniment. She knew this one.

She picked a soft, more ambient sound from the keyboard’s voicebank, electing to quietly cushion the violin’s notes rather than chafe against them. It was…difficult. Her little yamaha and its quaint library of FM chip sounds did not get along nicely with ‘real instruments’ that were being played ‘straight’. It wanted to be weird and annoying, just like her. But the notes Raf played, while simple, were extremely clear in tone; neat and tidy. The bow did not once stutter unpleasantly on the rough strings, it glided with practised ease. And with a great deal of restraint. This guy…he was playing beneath his skill level. For her sake, presumably. Like a gentleman.

As Raf brought Für Elise to a close with the last, steady draw of his bow, Magritte swapped her soft, ambient voicing out with an annoying music box sound, and began hammering out a choice section from the 3rd movement of Appassionata. Her fingers slammed the keys harder than was necessary, solely because she enjoyed the percussive sound it added to each obnoxious, feverish note.

Lowering his violin, Raf watched Magritte’s fingers flutter furiously across the mini keys with respectable precision. Holding both the bow and the neck of his violin in one hand, his free hand reached up to remove his sunglasses and he rubbed his eye with the heel of his palm. A humbled snort escaped through his nose. “Yeah, okay.”

“Play any song.” Magritte slowed her fingers to a stop without completing the movement. “Even if I don’t know it, even if it goes beyond the range of my little piano, I can improvise something nice for it, I promise!”

Fitting his sunglasses back on, Raf let out a tentative hum. “I’m not much of an improviser–” “You don’t have to improvise anything! Play whatever you want, however you wanna play it. I will improvise around whatever you give me!” Magritte’s voice had risen to an excited shout, and instinctively, she withdrew into herself just a little bit, as if making herself smaller would also make her voice smaller, too. “It’s my favorite thing to do. It’s a lot of fun.”

His incredulous smirk returned, but this time his brow furrowed slightly, encouragingly, under his growing sense of intrigue.

“It’s–” Magritte held up both hands haltingly, “it’s probably not gonna be like how you know it should be. Just…so you know. It might even be…bad? In some parts? But-! Mostly it’ll be neat! I promise!”

“Neat…” Raf brought the violin up once again to rest under his chin. “Neat’s cool. Alright, let’s see, then.”

As though he had been inspired by Magritte’s aggressive interpretation of Appassionata, he began with a series of fast, chirpy, clean notes of his own. A wholly different song, but Magritte recognized this one too. She had most often heard it as a phone ringtone, but she couldn’t recall who composed it nor what the song was titled. She provided a jaunty, equally bouncy accompaniment that she’d have described as ‘percussive’. The violin’s unwavering confidence was a delight for Magritte’s deft little fingers to dance around. He never fell out of tempo, and she was able to punctuate his notes with hers in perfect time. Maintaining synchrony for the entire length of the fast paced composition filled her with such satisfying joy, she had failed to properly appreciate an obvious fact about her musical accomplice until he brought the song to a close; he was a skilled musician. Staring up at him from her spot on the floor, Magritte’s wide eyes almost sparkled with delight. “You’re like…Concert hall good, aren’t you? Are you part of the local orchestra? Or at least like–aspiring to be?”

Raf’s gaze hung on her as both his jaw and posture slackened. “Uh…”

She didn’t give him enough time to respond, hitting him with another question. “What was the title of that song? I just know it as one of the Nokia ringtones.”

“P–” Raf’s stunned silence cracked with a laugh that sprang forth from his chest and took him by surprise almost as much as Magritte’s line of questioning had. “Paganini. It’s–it’s Paganini, Caprice number…number 24.” The response was punctuated with warm chuckling. “Or, you know, that one phone ringtone, yeah.” He smirked at her for a moment longer, studying her for any sign that she was putting him on. “How do you…accompany me that well, on that little machine, and not even know the song?”

Magritte waved her hands in front of her. “No, no, I knew the song! I’ve heard it before, I just didn’t know what it was called.”

“Yeah, alright.” He snorted one last incredulous laugh and brought his violin back up for another song.

Magritte stopped him before he could settle on his next pick. “Do you play professionally? I mean, it sounds like it but, like–”

“No.” Before Magritte could inquire further, the first notes of their next song filled the space between them, drawn out of his violin with long, purposeful strokes of his bow.

The next several songs, Raf played seamlessly one into the other–without pausing for conversation. That was just as well for Magritte. It had been ages since she was given the chance to play music with someone, and never had she played with someone who was so…solid? Consistent? The real deal. Usually, she had to avoid getting carried away when playing with another person. It was very easy for her to close her eyes and get taken to places that her musical partners could not follow along with. But with Raf, she was finding herself challenged to keep up with him. Most of the songs he had chosen, she had not heard before. And so she needed to keep an attentive ear out if she wanted to pick out repeated phrases, and predict melodic trajectories.

Finally, they arrived at the end of an especially eclectic piece, and Raf did not immediately follow through into another composition. Instead he lowered his bow, and Magritte took her opening to converse again.

“I really liked that one. It was super janky, in a fun way.”

“Yeah,” Raf said. “I was always fond of it, too.”

“Did you write it?”

“Did I–” Raf palmed both his bow and violin in one hand, and massaged his eyes and browline with the other. “No, some guy named Ravel did. Tzigane, that one’s called.”

Magritte chewed the inside of her cheek. “R-right.”

He furrowed his eyebrows at her. “You knew that one, though.”

“I didn’t.”

“...You just let me solo the first four minutes based on vibes?”

“I thought I missed the bus on it.”

“The actual composition has no accompaniment until about half way through, so…bravo.”

“Wait, really?” Magritte leaned forward eagerly. “Did I play the accompaniment correctly, too?”

“Not even close.”

“Drat.” She slumped.

“Was good, though.” Raf picked up his sprite from where he had placed it, on the ground next to his case, and drained the last bit of its contents.

Magritte perked up again. “Yeah!?”

He held the lip of the empty can between his teeth as he began tucking his violin back into its carrying case. “Mmhm.”

Magritte watched him pack up for a moment longer than it should have taken her to realise, “Wait, you’re leaving already?”

Raf zipped his instrument safely away before removing the empty soda can from his mouth. “Yeah, I gotta get going. But look,” He bent over to collect Magritte’s upturned ball cap off the ground. The few quarters she had started with now had a generous handful of friends with them; more quarters, some loonies, a few toonies and–

Magritte accepted the hat when Raf handed it to her, and pulled a crisp twenty dollar bill out of it. “W-who left this!? I wasn’t even paying attention, I should have said thanks!”

“A mystery.” He slung his violin case over his shoulder.

Magritte urged him to wait, fluttering a hand at him. “Half of this is yours!”

“Nah.” He favored her with a smile. “Genuinely, this was a treat in itself. It’s been a long time since I’ve played for fun like this. It…was fun.” That last part sounded as though it came as a surprise to him.

Frowning, Magritte pleaded with him. “Okay, okay but–okay. Lemme treat you to a coffee then, at least? If you’re in no real hurry.”

Raf paused to regard her with a measuring stare. He then sighed and shoved his hands into the pockets of his black denim hoodie jacket, waiting for Magritte to stow her keyboard away into her bag.

Zipping the duffel closed, she hoisted it with effort over her shoulder and beamed up at her new friendly acquaintance. “If you know any cute, cozy coffee places with a real decadent latte, I’m open to suggestions!”

“There are…a few.”

“I’m Magritte, by the way!” She extended her hand out to him.

With slight hesitation, Raf shook it. “Rafael.” As the two of them began to make their way out of the station together, he dared to ask, “Are you here visiting, or..?”

“Oh!” She bounced on the balls of her feet, “I just came in from Calgary like…two hours ago. Ideally, I’d like to stay until the spring, but that’s gonna depend on things.”

“Calgary?”

“Yeah! I was in Edmonton before that, and in Winnipeg before that–but that was mostly a fever dream. I wasn’t there long. Montreal before that, though, was nice..!” She talked the entire walk, and he was content to quietly listen.

ii)

Hitting a cafe during rush hour wasn’t Raf’s definition of a fun idea, and he was well practised in the art of saying ‘no’. Yet, for some reason or another, that skill failed to find him when the wide-eyed little Portasound busker insisted on treating him to a coffee. The streets outside Granville Station were abuzz with traffic of all kinds. The wide sidewalks were, at least, accommodating to the amount of pedestrians that relied on them during the city’s busiest times of day. The same could not be said for the roads as cars rolled slowly forward, bumper to bumper. Still, the ambience was manageable despite all the bustle. Only the hissing, honking noises of transit bus breaks would coax the occasional wince out of him in their random, unpredictable intervals.

The little portasound busker, ‘Magritte’, kept up beside him in lock step. She hadn’t stopped talking since they began their walk together and, in honesty, he preferred it that way. She was a dishevelled little thing, more than a head shorter than he was. Her manner of dress was as sloppy as the thick bundle of curly, dark red hair that flopped loosely atop her head. Her grey sweater was several sizes too large, covering her to the knees. With sleeves that hung far past her hands if she didn’t scrunch them in her palms. Black leggings were tucked into knock-off ugg boots whose soles had eroded so severely on the outer edge, Raf was concerned she’d roll an ankle if he made her walk too briskly. She smiled so vehemently as she spoke, that her lips rarely closed around consonants, making it difficult to understand her at times.

“–so when my dad was like, ‘you can stay here and work, or you can move out and do your music stuff’, I moved out. That was like…oh–almost three years! I was eighteen. I just turned twenty-one today!” She accompanied that last sentence with a joyful little skip that caused Raf to turn his head and watch her.

“Well, happy birthday.” He exhaled a small laugh. “Vancouver’s an expensive place to live, but house hunting here probably already gave you the full story on that.”

“Rent’s insane,” Magritte echoed his small chuckle. “But the weather’s way more agreeable in the winter, which is what I’m after. And the music scene! I heard there were tons of musicians in Van, and look–I’ve already met two in the first few hours of being here!”

“Oh, you’ll meet more.” The way he said it made it sound more cautioning than he intended and he diffused it with a snort. “Guess the music stuff must have paid off after all, if you can afford a place in the city.”

There was silence between them and Magritte chewed the nail of her forefinger for a moment. “It actually hasn’t, I’m not a professional musician by any means. I’m just really good at finding a lot of short term work and stuff. Sometimes it’s music related, but not often enough to call it a living.”

“Mmh.” Raf glanced down at her. The bounce in her step had vanished and he watched her chew on her lip beneath a knitted brow. With a shrug he said, “You sounded good in the station, all things considered. You stopped, you listened, you came in at appropriate moments, you improvised really well. The pieces I played weren’t really…great for busking…and demanded a lot more than what your little keyboard could reasonably provide, but even your rests were composed and natural. You didn’t drop off abruptly any time the melody brought you past the range of your keys, you played into it.” He smirked. “I’m not gonna lie and say we did a great justice to Paganini today or anything, but I was very surprised by what you were able to pull off. I dunno, seemed like the chops of a professional to me.”

That brought the bounce back into her step, though she continued to chew on her lower lip. Raf was content to see her spirits buoyed at least somewhat by his sentiments. He hadn’t embedded a single white lie into his assessment.

They arrived at the cafe of his choosing; a popular spot, very near to the station, named Caffe Artigiano. The outside seating was full up with patrons, but Raf hoped the inside would be a quieter space to sit anyways. Opening the door, he followed Magritte in. It was busier than he would have liked, but he couldn’t have expected differently, considering the hour. Still, one thing he appreciated about the place was that it did not play music. Only the sound of numerous quiet conversations filled the air. Raf gravitated towards a freshly vacated table in a far corner, and Magritte followed him to it. Her gaze hung on the coffee menu that loomed above the counter.

He waited for Magritte to pick her seat before gently offloading his violin case onto the seat across from her. “I’ll go order. Was it a latte you said you wanted?”

“Actually…” She let out an indecisive little sigh. “A mocha, I think. I want…choco. Oh, but–!” She dropped her duffel bag onto the ground before unzipping a side pouch and pulling out the twenty dollar bill that had found its way into her upturned ball cap at the station. She held it out to him. “With this! Please?”

He hesitated before taking the bill from her. “Yes, ma’am.” There was no point in telling her that the twenty had been his before it became hers. The thought was what mattered.

The line at the counter wasn’t long, despite the busy patronage, and Raf soon returned to their table and evicted his violin case out of the seat across from Magritte. Finding an unused chair from a nearby table, he pulled it up next to him and sat his carrying case on it.

He reached over the table to hand Magritte the change, and she stared at it blankly for a moment before saying, “–Oh!” with a bit of a start. She turned her palm up to receive it.

Magritte stuffed the money back into the pocket of her duffel bag. “So, Question.” She sat back up and looked to Raf. “You say you’re not a professional, but you sound like...you know…Properly trained, or whatever.”

“Mmh.” It was a predictable topic, but not one he wanted to stay on. “Or whatever.” He laughed. “Yeah. Parents pushed it onto me a little too hard. I’ve got the training, but playing it is a chore and I kinda hate it.”

Magritte’s eyes grew wide and rueful and she shrank against the backrest of her chair. “Wait, really?” She covered her face with the sleeves of her sweater and threw her head back with a guilty little groan. “I’m sorry, I made you play so many songs!”

Raf patted the air in front of him in a placating gesture, “No, no. You didn’t make me do anything, relax.” He sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “I did that to myself. I meant it, though, when I said it was fun. It was the first time in a long while where I actually enjoyed myself once things got going.”

Magritte drew in a deep breath, recollecting herself before tentatively asking, “Enough that you’d wanna do it again sometime?”

A beleaguered laugh escaped him, “No.” He had given her much of his time and energy already, and being asked for more put a bitter taste in his mouth. The arrival of his iced americano and her hot mocha couldn’t have been better timed. As soon as it was placed in front of him, he brought the drink to his lips and took a long sip.

Magritte sheepishly turned her gaze down to admire the little white hearts in the foam of her coffee before she started to drink it. She placed the cup back down but kept both hands curled around it. “Did you enjoy it when you were younger?”

“Music?” Raf shrugged. “I don’t remember. It doesn’t really matter.” His gaze turned down towards her duffel bag as he grasped for a better topic. “Is your main instrument the piano?”

“Yeah! It’s what I had access to, growing up.”

“Who taught you?”

“Oh, I, uh…mostly just the internet and stuff. My parents didn’t wanna waste money on it, and my highschool didn’t have like…a music class or anything. Just choir. None of my friends played music.”

“...You learned online?” “Well, like…on Myspace and LiveJournal. Lots of people share what they know there, and I made some really good online friends who tried to teach me things. We’d share music with each other and do weekly challenges and stuff. It was fun.”

“So, self-taught, more or less.”

“Mostly. Oh, except–!” Magritte ducked down to unzip the main pocket of her duffel bag and dove her hands into it. She rummaged around until she produced a small mp3 player and earbuds attached by a chord. “There was a year when I was living in Montreal, my girlfriend was a jazz pianist. And then we met other, um…friends who taught me more in that one year than I think I ever learned in my entire life. It was her and a whole lotta horns. They all let me use their instruments and taught me proper technique and stuff. I think they liked watching me stubbornly struggle with it. In the end, I was only able to record one song before I had to, um, move on. But I’m still kinda proud of it. I dunno if you wanna–it’s instrumental and kinda eclectic, but I loved making it.”

In response, Raf extended his hand, and Magritte spent a second scrolling through her library of mp3s before stuffing the little music device and earbuds into his open palm.

She performed an excited little wiggle in her seat as Raf wordlessly placed an earbud into his ear. “Just hit play, and it should be the right song.”

Raf wasn’t sure what he had expected to hear. He was, at least, perfectly comfortable with listening and offering his honest input. He didn’t believe in ‘bad’ music. There was skilled and unskilled music, there was music that fit his tastes and music that really didn’t. But none of it was bad. All music created deserved to be created and allowed to exist–if only for the satisfaction of the musician who produced it. He was prepared to tell her that the best music she could make is the music she enjoyed making, even if it didn’t resonate with his personal tastes. He pressed ‘play’.

What hit his ear was an uptempo half-time funk sound carried on a unison horn line; crystal clear, well mixed, high quality audio. Right from the jump, the sound had a quirky, catching character. He fitted the other earbud into his ear as a sustained note leapt into an energetic, off-beat ska groove. His brow furrowed deeply as he tried to discern the instrumentation. The drum fill might have been digital, but the winds sounded far too dynamic to be synthetic. And there were…three of them; the two horns he couldn’t quite specify, and then a baritone sax. The horns took centre stage, confident and playful, supported by a jaunty walking bassline and synthetic, bubbly organ accompaniment. Despite its G minor key signature, the character of the piece was lively and a little goofy, smart but playful; it was simply–fun. A smile lit across his face as the melody modulated G minor into G Phrygian for the bridge section. The effect was a jesting ooh gonna getcha vibe.

He listened to the end of the song before he began to comment on it. “Very cool. Your jazz friends weren’t sleeping on their music theory classes. I assume the organ is you?”

Magritte shifted nervously in her seat as her thumb smoothed over the handle of her coffee cup in small, repeated strokes. “I borrowed instruments for this one and recorded it in…um, my girlfriend’s parents' house. They had a music room where I was allowed to record things.”

“You borrowed–right. But the horns..?”

“Yeah.”

Raf levelled a measuring stare at her.

“I recorded each instrument separately,” she began explaining, “It’s uh, piano, trumpet, trombone, and–oh! The baritone sax was played by Sadie, one of my, um…jazz friends.” She let out a weak laugh. “And then, like…a bass, I also played. And a synthetic drum fill ‘cus…none of us knew how to actually play drums.”

“You played each instrument? Learned them and recorded this song within the span…of a year?”

“No, just the trumpet and trombone! I already knew piano and bass.” Confusion must have been apparent on Raf’s face, and she tried to address it by saying, “It’s all digitally processed, so it sounds a little more–”

“No, I–I know that.” Raf massaged an eyebrow with one hand. “You’re the songwriter too, I assume?” His tone was a little more sharp than he’d have liked it to be. It betrayed his incredulity.

Magritte picked up her cup and eyed him nervously over the rim as she sipped from it. “No, I don’t know how.” She sounded embarrassed. “I can’t read or write music. I just sketched a bunch of it out digitally first, and then–”

“Fresh compositions? By ear?”

“Yeah. And then I recreated it with the correct instrumentation.” She chewed on the nail of her thumb. “It works, I think.”

“That’s still songwriting. It counts.” Raf sniffed and leaned back in his seat. “I gotta be honest, and don’t take this the wrong way but…it’s a little hard to believe.”

Magritte’s nervousness dissolved into a flattered grin. “Yeah?”

Raf’s brow twitched downward as he tried to read past her demeanour. He had expected a more sheepish response, if not a more defensive one. His doubt wasn’t intended as a compliment, but if she were being wholly honest with him, perhaps it made sense that she’d take it as one.

He drained the last of his americano. “So, you’re not pursuing this professionally, because..?”

“Oh, I am!” Magritte shrugged and turned her eyes to the upper right corner of the room. “It’s just been kinda…difficult.”

“Yeah? Why’s that?” It was a stupid question he already knew the answer to. Music was more easy to find nowadays than ever before, but discoverability still relied on knowing how to promote the work and get the right ears onto it. And, across the entire spectrum of skill, this is what everyone tended to blame for the inability to live off their–

“Money.”

“M–!” The response was so sudden and matter-of-fact in tone, Raf couldn’t stop a bark of surprised laughter from escaping him. He’d have laughed the same way if someone had just dumped a bucket of ice water over his head.

Magritte slapped her palms down on the table and leaned forward with wide eyes to state her defence. “Instruments are expensive, lessons are expensive, computers are expensive, software and sound libraries are expensive! Everything’s so expensive!” She slumped back in her seat, turning her palms over in an exasperated gesture. “If I could afford to go to school and actually like–learn music, and if I could afford to rent instruments and recording equipment and stuff, I could make more songs! I could upload like…whole albums! I’ve got all these doodles with my shitty midi libraries and they might sound actually good if I could just record them properly! But it’s been like…four years since I left home, and the only properly produced track I have to show for it is that one.” She flopped her hand towards the mp3 player on the table. “So, I just make my little digital doodles, and I come up with tunes that suit the sounds I have access to. I like it. I’m happy I get to make any music at all, but it’s a bit niche, you know? And I have all these other ideas in my head that need like…better, less…synthetic sounds. There are libraries that sound pretty convincing, but all the best ones are…expensive. And vocals are hard to record with the stuff I’ve got.”

Raf held up his hands in effort to placate her. “No, I know, you’re right–money. I just–” It wasn’t a struggle he had ever faced, and he couldn’t help but feel like a bit of a heel over the fact that he hadn’t even considered it as an obstacle to the extent that she was describing it.

“On the other hand,” Magritte’s voice took on a capitulating tone, “With the right skill, I should be able to produce bangers with whatever I’ve got, yeah? And,” she took up her coffee cup in one hand, staring into its contents, “if I was better at saving money, I’d be able to afford those really good sample libraries just fine, probably. I just like my sweet foamy lattes too much.” She sighed a little laugh at herself.

Raf let out a low groan of disagreement, but didn’t elaborate on it. “I kinda…want to listen to those ‘digital doodles’ you mentioned.” If nothing else, it’d give him an idea of how much input her jazz friends had over the composition of the song he heard. If the obvious compositional prowess flexed in that fun-loving jazzy ska piece were completely absent in her little sketches, he wouldn’t chalk it up to being just a fluke.

Drawing in a deep breath and holding it, Margritte reached for the mp3 player and scrolled through its contents before handing it to Raf. “You can just skip through these as you like. It’s all a little–” She wrinkled her nose and let out a grunt in place of any real adjective.

With an affirming little snort of his own, Raf took the little music player and put the earbuds into his ears once more. He pressed play, and immediately understood what she meant. The synthetic instrumentation was wholly lacking in dynamics, and the musical ideas present in the melodies begged for more colourful phrasing. As he skipped from one song to the next, he grew more frustrated. The compositional writing was good. Consistent with the first song he had heard, Magritte seemed to really love playing with eccentric progressions and modulations that were unconventional for the mood or emotion that the song was attempting to capture. And ever present in each little composition was this boundless sense of joy. But god, the instrumentation (or rather, the lack thereof) really, really held it all back.

As he listened, his lips pressed into a thin line. Finally, with a low groan that betrayed his thoughts, he took out the earbuds and handed the music player back. “Yeah, that sucks.” The end of that statement stuck in his throat as he sputtered to clarify, “Not the music–”

“Yes, the music.” Magritte’s giggle was one of genuine affirmation as she tucked the mp3 player away into her duffle bag.

“No,” Raf argued, “your toolset. There’s a lot of skill here, but the cheap synthy sounds aren’t doing it any favours. You went absolutely ham on those horns in the first song, and I don’t hear any of that in these sketches because it’s just not possible. There’s a lot of energy that is just…missing. Even watching you play at the station, yeah your keyboard suffers the same limitations, but at least in person I noticed you’ll even make use of like…the percussion of your fingers hitting the keys, which, you know…is dynamic.”

As he spoke, Magritte retained a smile and provided small nods before asking, “You like it, then?”

Raf leaned back, folded his arms and chewed on the question for a second before replying, “Yeah. I do. A lot.” A lot. There was a corner of his mind that begged him to get back home to his apartment and try out the melodies with an instrument that could do it proper justice. Jesus Christ, this actually makes me want to play the violin. The realisation made his lip curl with a feeling in his gut that he couldn’t quite identify. “You know…”

Magritte, taking the last remaining sips of her latte, turned her eyes up at him with a little “Hm?”

There was a pause while Raf wrestled with himself. “I, uh…work at a recording studio not too far from here. Just down on uh…Powell Street.” He felt his jaw clench. There was no good reason for him to tell strangers about where he worked. There was no possible good outcome in doing so. Mentioning it felt too much like an open invitation for her to pop in at any time, for no good reason at all except to make things uncomfortable. “It’s called Hi-Note, and it’s got like…a pretty standard assortment of instruments to rent out and such. It closes early.” He wasn’t looking at her. Brow furrowed, he stared at the ice melting in his otherwise empty glass. “Swing by tomorrow night, after eight, and maybe we can jam for like..half an hour or something before I head home.”

He didn’t glance up to see her expression, but her voice was slow to rise to his ears. “..Wait, really?”

No. “Yeah.” What the fuck? “Really.” Unable to unfurrow his brow, he managed to at least turn his gaze towards her. Her eyes were so large on that petite face of hers, and her lips parted slightly, muscles tense with the anticipation of some kind of catch or condition. Or, perhaps she had picked up on his apprehension and was waiting for him to revoke the offer. For some reason, the idea of doing so suddenly felt…unconscionable to him.

In a small voice, she said, “I’d really like that.” The restraint of her response was belied by the way she wiggled in her chair. Beneath the table, her leg wagged restlessly like an excited dog’s tail. “Eight o’clock?”

“Mmhm.” Raf felt some of the tension in his browline relax as a slight smile passed his lips. “Let's see if we can revisit some of those tunes you have. Just–for fun. No recording, nothing serious.”

It seemed that Magritte could never keep a smile off her face for long, and once again, that broad, delighted grin of hers painted her features. “Yeah, yeah! I’d like that a lot!”

“Alright then.” Raf knocked his knuckles twice on the table like a gavel, before standing up.

As he reached to retrieve his violin case off the chair next to him, Magritte pressed her fingertips to her temples. “Hi-Note, eight o’clock.”

Raf favoured her with a lopsided smirk. “Don’t forget.”

“I won’t. I’ll see you there!”

He provided her with an affirmative little wave, but by the time she had realised he was taking his leave, Raf was already halfway to the door.

He heard her call out to him, “Thank you for the–um–everything!”

Looking back to her, Raf returned the sentiment with an appreciative nod before pushing through the cafe doors; exiting onto the busy sidewalk outside. He wanted to get home before sundown… To play his violin.