Sedona Law 5 by Dave Daren (e book reader android .TXT) 📗

he showed no signs of slowing down. He was still youthful and virile, and tonight he attacked the guitar with as much gusto and passion as ever.

Someone handed me a beer, and I leaned against the wall and listened to the guys play. I didn’t recognize the song, I guessed it was probably someone’s original. Who knew with this bunch? Everyone writes, and everyone plays everything.

Vicki found me again as I sat on the edge of the couch, and she perched on my lap, and we listened to the music. They were now onto Penny Lane, by the Beatles.

At some point, a trumpet player popped up, and from all the corners of the house and yard, people suddenly found their way into the living room. With beer bottles, plates of food, hair under dye foil, they all showed up and cheered as the trumpet player launched into a showy solo. He went on for the better part of ten minutes, and he was good. Really good.

By the time he was done, everyone was there, and as the band went back into the lyrics, everyone sang along to the catchy feel good chorus. I would say close to sixty people crammed into that living room. There under the timeless magic of the Fab Four, Vicki leaned back and kissed me.

With the music swelling in the background, it felt a bit like a formula resolution to some romantic comedy. Although, I don’t know what our formulaic story would be. I just knew I was happy here with her.

Penny Lane lasted close to half an hour, although I think it morphed into Sargent Pepper for a while there and then came back around. But at some point it finally ended, and my mother announced an improv contest would be starting.

“We’ve got prizes this time,” she said.

This was met with a surprised cheer. But it was getting late for us, and I had a long day of bad acting ahead of me in the morning. I think that was enough.

Vicki and I said our goodbyes and slipped out of the party.

Saturday morning rolled into our cottage slow and lazy, and I blinked as the light came in through the curtains.

“When we build our house,” I mumbled sleepily to Vicki, “the bedroom windows will not face the rising sun.”

She groaned softly and pulled the down comforter closer to her, but I kept talking.

“In fact,” I rambled, “let’s not have bedroom windows. You know what, why stop there? Let’s have no windows at all, so we don’t have to know what time it is. Let’s build the house totally underground and start a new subterranean society. We will be king and queen of the mole people.”

She threw a pillow at me, and I laughed. Then I leaned over and kissed her cheek and she smiled and slowly stirred.

“Wakey, wakey,” I whispered. “Guess what? We’ve got a whole long day of bad acting ahead of us.”

She groaned. “How did our lives turn into a Christopher Guest film?”

I laughed really hard. “I don’t know, but I’ll bet Jerry Steele’s amps definitely go to eleven.”

She chuckled at my Spinal Tap reference.

“I’m sure they do,” she said and rolled back over.

“Come on,” I shook her body, “I’ll get coffee started.”

She rose, and I made us both coffee and whispered my lines as I got ready. I hadn’t gotten a lot of chances to run lines, and there were memorization techniques for learning lines I’d forgotten from my theatre days.

So, I grabbed the marker off the hallway message board and jotted shorthand notes.

“What is that?” Vicki asked as she emerged, finally ready. “‘George when’? What does that mean?”

I turned sheepishly to her. “It’s a line trick. Half of memorizing lines is memorizing the line itself, the other half is knowing where to put it. So if you make a little phrase out of the last word of your cue line, and the first word of your line, you can memorize the cue. “

“Hmm,” she said as she peeked at the card again. “So, what’s your line here?”

“The cue here is the civilian mob guy is worrying about King George’s army, and I interrupt him, with my line, ‘When people fear their government, there is tyranny. When the government fears the people, there is liberty.’”

“That sounds too eloquent to be Jerry Steele,” she said with a scrunched nose.

“I’m sure he got it off some Thomas Jefferson quote meme,” I laughed.

She grabbed a cup of coffee and took a sip. “You want to run lines? We have a few minutes.”

I eased myself onto the bar stool, and we spent the next half hour pounding really bad lines into our skulls.

“I shall write to the Governor at once,” Vicki declared as she put on her best Downton Abbey voice, and I snickered. “He must know the plot of the British forces and he can save our city from destruction.”

I chuckled as I filled in for George Washington. “Dear Martha, you must not go to the Governor. If you do, our connections to the Sons of Liberty will be revealed, and we will be executed for treason.”

“But if they destroy our city, our home, our friends, what will there be to live for?” Vicki read.

“You must not think this way, Martha,” I supplied.

“But, it is true, my dear George,” she said. “For what is a country, but a way of life? What is worth dying for but one’s home?”

We both paused as we tried to digest the line.

“It makes sense,” I admitted, “but it just needs to be tweaked.”

“Yeah,” she sighed, “I get why The Count hates this movie.”

My phone buzzed with a text, and I saw it was my mother as I read her message.

“My mother wants us to go to a gardening party,”