Fanfare (Country Roads #2) - Chapter 33

We got a late start the next day, mostly because there wasn’t any specific thing we had planned. Mostly Hanna wanted to just look over the campus and talk to someone in the business department, if she could. She hadn’t called ahead or set up any kind of meetings, mostly because it wasn’t clear to anyone if there was a system in place to do that for new students who’d already been accepted into the program. In the end, we decided we’d just wander around and try and get a feeling for the campus and see what happened.

Sam tried to convince Kat to stay and hang out with him instead of going with us and both Hanna and I could see a serious crush growing there. Kat, for her part, continued to be amazing with him and played it off, not being overly friendly or promising anything, but not dismissing him out of hand either. If we came back here in a couple of years, after he hit puberty, she might have to nip it in the bud for real; but she’d shown that whatever anxiety attacks she’d had dealing with people, it didn’t seem to apply to kids.

We made it to UNC by ten in the morning and started to wander the campus and it was really nice. The buildings were brick and, at least to my untrained eye, very colonial. The bell tower behind the Wilson library stuck up and could occasionally be seen peeking over the other buildings or trees. My favorite part was on the other side of the library. There was this long rectangular park that had crisscrossing paths and several rows of trees that looked like the kind of place I’d like to just sit and people watch. It seemed really relaxing.

It wasn’t the college’s spring break yet, so there were college students kind of scattered across the park, some propped on trees others laying across the grass or sitting in small groups. Two guys were at one end throwing a Frisbee, but most of the kids seemed to be studying and I thought there was a good chance they were in the middle of their midterms, or whatever it’s called in college.

The football and baseball stadiums both looked pretty great from the outside, although with no games going on, there wasn’t any way to go in and look around. While you couldn’t see anything in the football stadium, if we found the right place, I could kind of see over the shorter wall around the baseball field. It was at least enough to see the press box or whatever it was, perched above the seats. While I liked our baseball field, and it was really nice compared to the other schools we played from the area; just the bits I could see here made me wish I could play a game or two, just to see what it was like.

While the cemetery on campus was a little weird to me, everything else was amazing. I could definitely see this as somewhere I’d want to go. We finished wandering around and grabbed a late lunch just off the campus grounds at some fast-food burger place I’d never heard of, and then went looking for the business department. It was off in one corner of the campus near the student center.

While not as nice, at least to my eyes, as some of the buildings at the center of Campus, it was at least near what looked like dorms and the aforementioned student center. It wasn’t immediately clear where we’d go to talk to someone affiliated with the business school, and were just kind of wandering around, probably looking like tourists.

“Are you kids lost,” An older guy in a button-up shirt said.

“Yeah,” Hanna said. “This was one of the schools I was accepted to, but I never did a campus visit here before I applied, so I was just kind of looking around and trying to make up my mind if this was where I really wanted to go.”

“Congratulations on getting in. What’s the verdict? Have you enjoyed your visit?”

“Yeah, I’ve liked it a lot. I’d kind of had my mind set on going somewhere out west until recently, so I hadn’t really considered how nice the campus was.”

“Trying to get away from home or just love the idea of living out on the west coast?” The guy asked.

I’d expected him to tell us we shouldn’t be walking around the school building, and I definitely didn’t expect the extended conversation.

“I do think I’d like living in California, but honestly most of it was about getting far away.”

“You’d be surprised how often I hear that. A lot of my students are from the Midwest and wanted to get as far away as possible, just like you. They ended up here instead of going out west.”

“You’re a professor?” I asked.

“Yep. I teach here in the business school. Are you two also planning on coming here?”

“I don’t know. We both have more time to think about it. She’s a junior and I’m only a sophomore. We just came as moral support.”

“What do you teach?” Hanna asked.

“It varies. This semester I’ve got management 3242 and 3140.”

“I don’t know what those are,” Hanna said, sounding almost embarrassed that she didn’t know what the codes meant.

“3140 is management and organizational behavior and it’s one of the ones pretty much everyone who comes through the business school needs to take. I’ll be honest, it’s not super interesting for either the students or me, but it is important stuff to know once you get out in the real world. The other one is more interesting. It’s a degree-focused course for our talent management-focused students and it covers acquiring and maintaining talents.”

“Really,” Hanna said, suddenly more interested. “That was actually the reason we stopped by the business school, other than to just look around. My application was for just a standard business degree, but I was hoping to change that to the talent management focus, actually.”

“You’d need to go down to admissions to talk to them about altering your degree plan, although they can’t really do that until you accept and get into the system. What made you want to change, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“Well, a business degree was just kind of the default, since we had to pick something. My mom’s a realtor and kind of runs her own business, and she thought I would have a lot of options with a business degree.”

“She’s not wrong.”

“Probably not. Recently though, I became really interested in talent management, and was thinking it might be an interesting career.”

“What got you interested in it?”

“He did, actually,” she said, pointing at me.

“Ohh? Famous movie star?”

He asked, clearly teasing me, but in a good-natured way.

“No, sir. I’m a musician.”

“Interesting. Done anything I might have heard?”

“No, we haven’t made it or anything. We mostly play local bars.”

“Don’t let him fool you,” Hanna said. “He’s had clubs asking for him, he’s got a standing gig at a local bar and restaurant, and a talent scout for MAC records coming out to see him in a month.”

“And you said you’re a sophomore in high school?”

“Yes, sir, although the other members of my band are older, mostly in their early twenties.”

“But it’s clearly your band.”

I just shrugged but Kat said, “Yes.”

“That’s pretty good for someone your age,” he said, seeming genuinely impressed before turning to Hanna. “So how did he get you to start considering talent management?”

“I just found the whole process really interesting. I was there when he got … I don’t know if discovered is the right word, but noticed at least. A guy who plays at a local bar and used to be a pretty big deal on the blues circuit heard him play and invited him to play guitar in his band. From there Charlie started writing music, getting his own gigs, and putting together a band. I didn’t have anything to do with it, but he let me tag along and listen in when he’d worked out some of the gigs and put together the band, and it was … I don’t know, fun.”

“You know it’s more than that. When things are coming together, it can be fun, but the real legwork can be frustrating, exhausting, and disheartening. You’re fifty-percent babysitter for the talent, making sure they’re getting the deals they feel they should be getting, convincing them to do shows they might not want to do, and getting them to do the appearances and promotion that none of them want to do. You’re fifty-percent time marketer, selling your clients to record labels, convincing radio and television outlets to book them for appearances to raise their name ID, and calling on marketing departments finding your people sponsorship deals. You’re fifty-percent publicist, making sure they’re not out there harming their brands by doing stuff that will end up with them crucified in the courts of public opinion, and you’re fifty-percent financial advisor, making sure they aren’t blowing their money and making bad decisions to keep up their lifestyles.”

“That’s two-hundred percent,” Kat pointed out.

“Like I said, it’s a tough job.”

“So is everything though, right?” Hanna said. “I bet there isn’t a professor on this campus that’ll say ‘no, this field is dead easy. Any idiot can do it.’”

“Probably not. Still, I don’t know if you realize it, but if you do make it into the program, you’re going to have a big leg up. Most of the students who enroll in our programs have no experience with the field they will be working in. Seeing the inside workings of an industry puts you a step ahead of your classmates, which won’t matter so much in the classes themselves, but will matter a great deal when you start looking for internships.”

“I would have thought a lot of former talent would make the move to management when they couldn’t perform or whatever anymore.”

“That’s true, especially in the sports end where, because of the physical toll it takes, there’s a shelf life to how long they can perform at a competitive level. The big names usually bank off their name recognition and go into things like broadcasting and commentating. It’s mostly the next level, those good enough to make it to the professional level, who start looking at talent management. Some of them are really good at it, but a lot aren’t. They might have the industry knowledge, but they’re lacking on the business side of things, which is just as crucial. And when you’re talking about music, performing arts, and the like, you see a lot less of that.”

“So it’s better to specialize in an area that doesn’t get a lot of former talent looking for work.”

“Sure, if you find it interesting. If you wanted to do something like sports, then do it. If you perform for your clients, you’ll get more.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

“What’s your name?”

“Hanna Phillips. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to take up all of your time.”

“Hey, I’m the one that stopped you. We don’t get a lot of prospective students wandering around down here, it was nice to meet someone excited to be in the field,” he said and then reached into his pocket, pulling out a business card. “Do me a favor, once you put in your request with admissions, email me your information and I’ll see what I can do about making sure you transfer over. I’ll warn you, I’m not tenured or anything, so I can’t promise anything, but I’ll pass your information on, and make sure they take a serious look at you.”

“Really?” Hanna said, a giant smile on her face as she took the card. “That’d be amazing. Thank you so much.”

“Sure. Just keep that enthusiasm when you come here. Deal?”

“Deal!”

We said our goodbyes and made our way out of the building and towards the admin offices.

“Can you believe that?” Hanna said.

“I take it going here just moved way up on your list?” I said.

“Are you kidding? I know he said he wasn’t promising anything, but what are the chances I find anything like this kind of offer anywhere else.”

“I wouldn’t take those odds,” Kat said. “He seemed really nice.”

“He did, didn’t he? Man, I’m so pumped right now.”

Hanna kept talking the entire way to the admin building. I hadn’t seen her this animated in a long time, and never about school. Even when she’d been bouncing the idea off Kat and me about doing talent management as a career, it had been kind of dispassionate, like a mental exercise or something.

This was the first time that it seemed like she really wanted it for a career, which was great. Not because I wanted her to manage me or anything, although I did, but because I knew what it was like to find that one thing you were passionate about and wanted to do the rest of your life. I was really happy she seemed to have found hers now too.

The next day was kind of a lazy day. Since we didn’t have plans till later that evening, we got a really late start, which was fine by me. I didn’t get a lot of opportunities to sleep in, so I’d take them where I could get them. Once we finally got up and dressed, we headed over to Raleigh, since that was where I had to be later in the day, and I followed the girls around as they shopped.

Even though I was making more money now, it still wasn’t all that much and the bulk of it went to help Mom with bills, so I couldn’t really afford to buy anything. They did humor me while I browsed around a music shop but after that, we spent most of our time in clothing stores and shoe shops. I spent most of the time sitting on benches just kind of waiting, although occasionally they’d ask me for a ‘guys opinion,’ although I didn’t have the heart to tell them a guy’s opinion on shoes began and ended at sneakers. I couldn’t even tell the difference in some of the things they asked about, let alone if it ‘went’ with some outfit.

I tried my best to hide it, but I’d never been as happy as when the time rolled around for us to get going. They’d had a good time, which was the point of the entire expedition, but I’d been bored out of my mind. We left and grabbed something to eat, since we still had about an hour to kill, although I kept it really light. I’d called ahead before we left and arranged to meet Victor at the place he trained at, since he’d visited me several times but I’d never been out here before. He’d mentioned he wished he had a regular training partner, since apparently most of the workouts he did were solo. While I couldn’t help him with that, I figured I could return the favor he’d done for me and stop by when I was in town to spar with him once.

Victor’s place reminded me more of Master Zheng’s training studio, although without the ring in the center. It had a very high ceiling and two of the walls were mirrored, with racks of traditional weapons along the third wall. Except for a small tiled area near the entrance, the floor was a blue carpet that lifted up a quarter of an inch higher than the tile and looked to be well padded.

There weren’t any organized classes going on and besides Victor, who was off to one side already stretching, there were only two other people in the building. A very thin, lanky white guy was in the center of the floor doing some kind of dance or practice with a very thin, straight-bladed sword. An older, maybe middle-aged, Asian man with a shaved head sat in an old chair off to one side watching the guy with the sword move around the floor, the sword twisting and twirling in fascinating patterns.

The three of us kind of stood off to the side quietly, feeling a bit out of place. Everything was so different from training with Chef that I was a little off-kilter. Between the weapons, the small banners like scrolls with Chinese writing on them hung here and there on the walls, and a few framed pictures of various kids doing martial arts, the whole place felt so much more professional and official than the setting I was used to, that it made me feel a bit like an imposter just being there.

The kid in the middle finished whatever he was doing and bowed to the man in the chair, who got up and extended his hand as he approached the lanky guy, taking the sword from him.

“Not bad, but you’re still missing this middle section. After the circle you need to move sharp into the block,” he said, demonstrating the move.

I’d thought the lanky kid was impressive until I saw the older man do it. The sword almost seemed to be an extension of him, as it whipped around in a circle. It was incredibly graceful, his arm almost seeming fluid, when suddenly his hand snapped out, the sword cutting up so that it ended parallel to his body and then stopping just as abruptly, except for the blade, which vibrated, making a metallic ‘wha-wha-wha’ sound as it shed all the built-up energy the man had put into it.

“Remember, sharp. Also here, you’re hand needs to be up, above the head. The bent elbow is so lazy. Not here, here,” he said, demonstrating his hand extended above his head, his wrist turning at a right angle with two fingers extended.

Since Chef was teaching me self-defense and competitive fighting, everything we did was more practical, with weapons being limited, at least at the moment, to blunt items. He’d never shown me anything like this, and I wasn’t really sure what the use for it was. It was beautiful, to be sure, but it looked more like dancing than anything else.

Finally, the older man stepped away and turned towards Hanna, Kat, and me.

“You must be Charlie,” he said, doing a small half-bow instead of a handshake.

Chef didn’t really go into bowing and all that, but I was vaguely aware that it was a thing in the community, and I’d seen a few people do it at Master Zheng’s school. I repeated the gesture back, although a lot more awkwardly.

“Yes, sir.”

“Shifu.”

“Sorry. Duì shīfù.”

“Ohh,” he said, grinning. “You speak Chinese!”

“No, Shifu, only a few words.”

“Still very good pronunciation. You should practice. It’s a beautiful language and you would sound very good.”

“Umm, okay,” I said.

This whole exchange had me off balance and I wasn’t sure if I should introduce Hanna and Kat, or ask about the sparing I was supposed to do with Victor, or what.

“Victor tells me you are training with Tang Li.”

“Yes. I’ve been with him since the end of last summer.”

“Good, good. Has he taught you much kung fu?”

“I think so, but he teaches me a lot of things from different disciplines, and he doesn’t always explain where it’s from.”

Thankfully, Victor came jogging over at that moment, interrupting the twenty questions.

“Sorry, I didn’t notice you over here. Shifu, this is Charlie Nelson, the student I told you about. Charlie, this is Master Yuan.”

“You didn’t say he was a first-year student, Victor. That is a little unfair, don’t you think?”

“A little, but he keeps up. Charlie’s pretty fast and he trains a lot harder than I do. I think Chef Tang has him training seven days a week.”

“I miss them sometimes, so not every week is like that,” I interjected.

I didn’t want to make it sound like all I did was train.

“Still, that is very good dedication. That is how we trained at the temple. Training every day builds strength, focus, and skill. Still, take it easy on him, yes? I don’t want you hurting our guests.”

“He will,” Victor said, purposefully misunderstanding the statement.

I was surprised when Master Yuan started laughing a big, boisterous laugh much larger than the joke had really been worth.

“Good, Good,” he said before turning to the lanky guy who was still kind of standing around. “Timothy, they have the floor.”

Timothy bowed slightly to his master before walking off towards the tiled area, grabbing a water bottle from what I guessed was his backpack and sitting cross-legged on the ground. I’d thought that Master Yuan would go into the little office off to one side of the tiled area, but he sat back in his seat, placed his hands in his lap, and looked towards where we’d be sparing.

Although I already knew I’d have an audience with Hanna and Kat there, having someone like a master there judging you was a very different thing, especially when it wasn’t a person you knew. I pushed it aside and tried not to think about it. It wasn’t like I hadn’t dealt with this before, and I’d have similar situations during the competition and when I played for the record exec, so maybe this was good practice.

Besides, I was pretty sure I could control my nerves and just ignore him, or at least I was until Victor asked, “Have you warmed up yet?”

I had not, and one of the things Chef drilled into me repeatedly was how important it was.

“Sorry, no. Let me do a quick run through and then I’ll be good.”

“Don’t worry about it. Take your time. I usually come in mid-week to just get some good stretching in, so I’d be here for a while, regardless. I’ll be over here stretching, so just yell when you’re ready to go.”

“Sure,” I said, still feeling a bit foolish.

I ran through my standard stretches and warmups, very conspicuously not looking at Master Yuan. I didn’t actually do the full thing Chef had me do, since it could take thirty minutes and it could be a little exhausting. Besides just various stretches, and muscle warmups he always had me go through the eighteen basic movements in Kung Fu, both as a way to cement the skills and as a way to get the heart pumping. While I’m sure it was valuable, it was kind of on top of the normal warmup and I didn’t think it was really needed right now.

“Okay, I’m good,” I called out to Victor, looking around for the first time since I started my warmups.

Timothy was still seated on the floor, although the water bottle was now on the floor next to him and Master Yuan was still silently watching, his eyes following me as I walked over to Victor.

“Okay, let’s do this,” he said hopping up and jogging into the middle of the floor.

I took my stance across from him and waited patiently. Victor had this thing where he liked to give a faint and pull back into the defensive, suckering you into an attack he was ready for. He didn’t do it every time, but he did it a lot, so I always let him come in first, backing off slightly on the attack. You’d think he would have figured out by now that I knew his move, but maybe old habits are hard to break.

He took a step to the right and pulled back, while I held my distance, moving slightly to the left, trying to force him to shift. He gave me a faint smile when he realized I’d recognized what he’d done and changed tactics. Instead of moving to counter me to hold the distance, he moved into my turn, twisting slightly and throwing a side kick.

He was still fast as ever, but he’d telegraphed the kick when he’d had to twist to get the power he needed, giving me time to react. I dropped down, below the level of his leg and reached up with both hands grabbing his ankle while and twisted into a back sweep, my extended leg catching him hard on the ankle. Because I twisted around with the sweep, I pulled the leg I was holding with me, completely throwing him off balance.

He went crashing to the ground and I continued around, now pivoting on the leg I was still holding, wrapping my legs around it and pulling up in a more traditional leg lock.

He tapped out and I released, bouncing away from him.

“Man, you moved fast on that one.”

“Not really, I just saw it coming. You telegraphed your kick.”

“I did?”

“Yes,” Master Yuan called from the side. “You attempted to gain position with the counter move against his circling motion, which brought you halfway to the sidekick, but still left you with an adjustment. You should have moved back to adjust, forcing him to come with you, making the change seem more natural. Doing it with a pivot on your balancing leg tells your opponent what you were going to do.”

“Ohh, I didn’t even think about it. Good eye,” he said to me.

“Thanks,” I said, grinning.

I didn’t get the upper hand on Victor often, so I took a moment to enjoy the praise. That was, unfortunately, the last time I had managed to get one over on him. He was still too fast and was able to recognize and counter what I attempted too quickly for me to get another one over on him. I’d won one, which was on the better side of how I normally fared, but I hoped Kat and Hanna, who hadn’t really watched me fight someone who actually knew what they were doing, didn’t think too badly of me.

“Enough,” I said, picking myself off the ground. “I can’t take anymore.”

“You really are getting better,” he said, helping me up.

“Really? ‘Cause it felt like I spent a lot of time on the ground.”

“You’re making smarter moves, and a couple of times you almost got me. You’re also getting better at working out what I’m doing and countering it. The last time we sparred, I was able to get you on one or two moves max, this time it was more like two or three. That’s a pretty good improvement.”

“I guess, although it doesn’t feel like I’m improving.”

“I can see all of the time you practice in your performance,” Master Yuan said. “You are young, but if you continue focusing on your discipline, you have a chance to go very far.”

“Thank you, Shifu. Chef … uhh … Master Tang says that perseverance and dedication are the most important things to succeeding at my goals.”

“So it is, so it is. Listen to him and you will do well. Kung Fu isn’t about fighting or beating your opponents. It’s about finding the balance in all things. It gives you the tools to find that balance for yourself.”

I nodded, not sure what else to say. I appreciated the philosophical thoughts Chef taught me while we trained, but at times I wasn’t sure I bought into the spiritualism of it. Still, the tenants were a good way to measure my actions, so there was something to it.

“I know you young people have plans, so I won’t keep you. Keep up with your training, and please come back if you are in town. I would be happy to have you train with us.”

“Thank you, Shifu,” I said, giving a slight bow to him.

“Plans?” I asked Victor as we walked over to Kat and Hanna.

“Sorry, I mentioned to him I might be busy, but I hadn’t actually run it by you yet. Wednesdays are that busy, but there’s a club that lets ‘sixteen and up’ in, until ten. I thought you and your friends might like to go.”

“We can ask the girls,” I said.

I’d never actually been to a club before, except backstage with my father, so I was equal parts excited and terrified by the prospect. The girls, however, were completely into it.