13

Weeks passed. Matt, Steve and I tightened as a trio; my rust flaked away, Matt learned to adjust his playing with the loss of the second guitar, and Steve started branching out quickly with the bass. We practice more often, covered more hours. We worked on a few new songs, too--the kinks weren't worked out of them yet, but they were great as far as first runs go.

The murder investigation seemed to reach an end, but we barely noticed. A suspect had been apprehended, as promised: a vagrant spotted prowling the campus that night. The prints on the pipe were too smudged to fly through any sort of reconstructive software, but as far as time and place went, they had him.

I'd also forgotten about Linda, possibly out of necessity. Something bothered me, though; something I missed, a point I didn't absorb when I first met her. I never saw her, either. Not in any of my classes, in the cafeteria or Snack Shack, nor in the library or fieldhouse or faculty offices. The day after the murder was the first and last time I'd seen her at the college. A shade in maroon, tethered to darkened corners and eclipsed offices.

But the office was lit. The boxes were gone from the floor, the sprawl of debris reined within the confines of each desk. Three seats were occupied, three heads looked at me as I poked my head in the door.

"Hey," one of the staffers tossed at me. It was a trapdoor sort of comment; offhand, sure, but it would either elicit an explanation for my presence or make me feel really, really awkward.

I nodded, offered small half-waves to everyone in the office. "Yeah, hi. Um, I'm here to finish filling in the rest of the, uh, the form for my band for--for the band competition."

The staff guy furthers from me dug through a manilla folder, looked up at me. "What's your band's name?"

"We don't, uh, have one."

The staffer immediately looked back down and pulled out the papers I'd worked on a few weeks ago. Handing them to me, he asked whether it was the correct one. I told him it was, and he tossed me a pencil.

"Feel free to take a seat, if you want."

Having gathered the info I needed off of the other two guys--both at class--I plugged the empty gaps. Except for one--band name.

I stood and handed the sheet back to the staffer, who flipped through it. "Looks good. Huh." He flipped back to the first page and paused. "Band name?"

"Still don't have one."

The staffer tossed the form pack back into the folder. "Well. You're gonna need to eventually."

"I reckon I knew that."

"At least before the concerts." He chewed on his snack mix.

"Yeah. Got it." I hung in the doorway, a clothesline teetering with the weight bowing it. "Is there anything else I need to do?"

More snack mix tossed into the maw. "Nope. We'll probably contact the band members later on and let them know what you need to do by next month." His enameled cheer was mostly gone. "And come up with a damn name, capisce?"

"Right."

I swayed a moment more and turned to leave, walked the short hall that led to the meaty body of the student center, and ran headlong into Linda.