The Pianoplayer: A lesbian love story

8.

A few days had passed. Adolé's phone was silent. That didn't make things better. She still found herself pondering over and over again as soon as her tight recording schedule offered her even the slightest chance to do so.

On several occasions she thought about how to interpret this contradictory behaviour of the French colleague, but no matter how hard she tried, she could not reasonably explain it. What plausible solution could there be to this? In her eyes, this behaviour was childish and characterised by total uncertainty.

Certainly this behaviour was not worthy of a world-famous, widely travelled world star who had already experienced a lot. Normally, she would bring whole halls to rapture on stage with self-confidence and would not let anything upset her. Even high celebrities in the auditorium were no cause for excessive excitement for her. So why were performances in front of thousands of people no problem, but simple sound recordings with her so difficult?

Why didn't she just come up to them and say what was on her mind? After all, she was old enough to address and resolve conflicts. She wasn't 17 anymore! She was a grown woman in the middle of life! Adolé continued to ponder over this impenetrable being whenever the opportunity arose. The scratch on her leg in particular was a mystery to her. But surely there was an obvious explanation.

Whatever the case, Adolé tried to continue to deal professionally with the selected pieces of music. At the same time, her aim was still to make the joint album as imaginative as necessary and at the same time as entertaining and relaxed as possible. She would have loved to know what Michelle's opinion was about her selection and approach and which pieces of music she worked on herself in her own music studio. I wonder if they would fit in with the pieces she had already worked out and the whole album?

Adolé decided that - since they were both adults - they would soon have to do a studio session together, as their managers had planned from the beginning, but Michelle persistently avoided it. In the end, it should be possible to do this between two music professionals. Especially since in her opinion a real single was still missing on the album, a piece of music that had the potential to become a hit. It had to be able to exist outside of their Schlager and classical circles, something like "New York, New York" or "Fly me to the moon". And something like that should be composed and recorded with a certain concentration and constructive teamwork.

So the next morning she went straight to the small remote recording studio where Michelle used to work with her studio musician all to herself. In memory of the experience she had at that door last time, she knocked a little louder and more insistently this time. She entered when she heard a brief "Oui?" from inside. Michelles sat alone at the piano with her cell phone as a recording device and was surprised to get visitors so early. As usual, she said nothing, but nodded briefly to welcome them.

Adolé then took matters into his own hands and, after a short squeeze, got to the point fairly quickly.

"Michelle, shouldn't we lump together our own work and compare what we have so far? I understand that you don't want to work with me, but while you're composing your pieces here in the studio, we're working on other pieces out there in the other recording studio. We're also making some progress, but ultimately that's not what the inventor intended. Shouldn't we just have a studio session together for simplicity's sake, so that we can both contribute something to the project at the same time?

Adolé silently expected protest, but nothing like this happened. Only a short thought and another nod signalled to her that Michelle had understood what she was about. Apparently, for the sake of the outcome, she was prepared to put her personal concerns in the background and tackle the matter. She had an objection, however, which did not take long to be formulated.

"But just the two of us, nobody else. We should do it alone," she said briefly and succinctly as usual.

Adolé briefly weighed up how and when this could be possible and then decided to agree. It occurred to her that the studio musicians had been working with her non-stop for weeks, so they were certainly happy to have a day or two off. So she agreed without further lamentation. They briefly discussed when they were both ready to compare their progress and set Wednesday and Thursday of the next week for this purpose. Adolé thanked Michelle briefly, smiled at her and left the small recording studio as quietly and deftly as she had entered it.

As expected, the musicians were all happy with this development and the fact that they also had a few days off. So that the joy was worth it and because Adolé was so happy about this step in the right direction with the French keyboard player, she gave the band and the technicians the days until the weekend afterwards completely free. A little bit of relaxation did them all good and so they arranged to meet again for work in the studio on the Monday of the week after the tuning.

Adolé knew Roswitha would not be pleased. From time to time she had to take such solitary actions on her own and decide independently what was important to her. She also liked to take responsibility for herself at times. She could rely on her intuition and her feeling, after all the whole production stood and fell with her. And her feeling told her clearly that they would need this time and that in the end they might even be further than what they had achieved with the whole team in the weeks of separate work.

9.

The time until Wednesday passed like chewing gum for Adolé. Finally the "normal" work on the album was over and the intensive time of the two star musicians alone was just around the corner. Adolé was as always punctual in the studio. There she was completely professional. They had agreed in a short WhatsApp message sequence without further incidents to start at noon.

As Adolé had irritatingly observed in the course of the last few days, she was looking forward to this day with this troublemaker, who did everything to be disregarded and belittled by God and the world. Nevertheless, she was curious to see what they would be able to accomplish together and had brought one of her beloved lattes from her favourite American roasting house to celebrate the day.

It didn't take long until Michelle also arrived at the studio. The morning had been beautiful so far, the sun was shining high from the sky and Adolé immediately noticed how light and summery Michelle was dressed. For the first time she noticed what a slim, sporty, almost perfect figure her companion had. She also noticed her shapely breasts, which instantly raised her pulse rate. A sight she found very attractive. She had to pull herself together to look into her eyes when they greeted each other formally and succinctly as always. They shook hands and then both turned to their scores.

In order not to let an embarrassing silence arise in the first place, Adolé took the floor.

"Would you like to hear some of our songs? We have recorded a few tracks here that I would like to play for you. I'm curious if you like them.". After an obligatory short "I'd love to." Adolé went to the mixing desk and expertly pushed a few buttons. Shortly afterwards, some brief impressions of her work so far were heard. Some of the songs she had already sung, some were still without lyrics, but the melody still gave them a first impression of the mood of the piece.

Michelle was visibly surprised that the sound recordings outside her cocoon had already progressed so far and also that her actual core competence on the grand piano had been almost perfectly taken over by a studio musician. It was obvious that she had not expected to be replaced so easily.

Adolé, who noticed this immediately, tried to reassure her and made her understand that the sequences had already been recorded by the studio pianist, merely to clarify the possibilities, and that Michelle could - if she wanted to - record these tone sequences afterwards. This would of course contribute to the authenticity of the whole record.

They spent the afternoon interpreting the pieces that appealed to Michelle in various new ways and here and there Adolé even sang the pieces in a completely new way, only accompanied by Michelle's wonderful piano playing. The result was a fabulous atmosphere that was indeed reminiscent of the old unplugged concerts.

The new recordings dragged on disproportionately long, as Adolé had carelessly given the sound technician some time off and therefore had to jump back and forth between the microphone and the mixing console himself.

Overall, however, Adolé was surprised how smooth, productive and pleasant the work with the pianist could be. She still could not understand why this had not been the case from the beginning.

At a late hour, as they were almost approaching the end of the day, Michelle suddenly took the floor. "Would you like to hear what I have so far?" Adolé was astonished by this sudden advance. "Of course!" it shot through Adolé's mind. How could she have forgotten to ask Michelle about her results?!

"Oh, yes. Of course. Gladly," she hurried to reply and noticed the heat creeping up her neck again. She hated it when she was so unobservant. After all, today was supposed to be a review of what they had achieved so far and where they should start again. How could she assume that only she would perform her compositions?

In addition, of course, she immediately noticed how skilfully the pianist had seized the opportunity and simply switched to the confidential "Du" without comment - an approach which, as Adolé noticed, she enjoyed more than she had expected. So she was looking forward to this joint session. Maybe at some point an opportunity

arose to talk to her in a normal way and just to talk about a few things.