Light From Uncommon Stars(45)
“Amazing,” Katrina heard Miss Satomi say.
Katrina looked at Lan, who now avoided her glance. She looked up at Shirley, but she was focused on her job.
Katrina wished that she had time to talk to her, but she had her own work to do.
“Get Martha,” Miss Satomi said.
As Katrina played, Shirley first showed the sound capabilities, how to work with effects, balance, even how to simulate microphone placement.
Katrina’s heart began to race. With this studio, she could create videos that could match any online!
And then Shirley nodded to Edwin.
“Let’s try the character mask.”
Edwin hit a switch, and they were all suspended as in clouds.
“No, Edwin, the foreground.”
“Sorry!”
“Huh?” Suddenly Katrina was in armor. Then she was wearing a glistening jade and rhinestone ball gown. Then, she was in a cosplay costume from the anime Sword Art Online. And she had bigger boobs.
And these changes weren’t merely visual—they felt real.
“The projector focuses energy from the reactor into a state very close to matter—in essence, virtual mass,” explained Shirley. “This permits the projections to interact with the physical world as if real. So be careful not to scratch your violin on your, um, armor.”
Katrina nodded. She was still herself. Everything was just shifted a bit here and there. It was cosmetic, decorative, nothing more. But then, she saw herself on the monitor.
“Oh my God.”
Gently, she put Martha down. She stared at Shirley, then at Miss Satomi, and then up at herself again.
* * *
“‘Liebesleid,’ ‘Love’s Sorrow.’”
Katrina must be playing videos in her new studio.
Shizuka smiled to herself. Game music was great, but it was good that Katrina was expanding her knowledge. She hadn’t realized that Katrina knew of Fritz Kreisler. This piece was an excellent choice, though. Perhaps one day his work should be in her repertoire.
Ah, to be young and not need sleep. Shizuka turned off her lights. The recording was not too bad, either. Shizuka didn’t recognize the violinist—probably one of those younger players—but the expressiveness seemed to faithfully follow the old-school nuances of Kreisler himself.
Wait. Shizuka opened her eyes.
“Katrina? Katrina?”
The Queen of Hell rushed to the studio and opened the door.
“Miss Satomi?”
Katrina was floating through the air, her body altered by the projector, in a glowing, flowing gown.
“You’re playing Kreisler?”
“I heard this in an anime. Then I found the original. It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”
“W-where’s the music?”
“The sheet music? I was going to download it later. For now, I have it in my head.”
“I … see. How long have you been working on this piece?”
“Oh, since dinner. Eeek—what time is it? I didn’t realize it was so late.”
Since dinner?
And she was playing Kreisler, just like that?
Shizuka watched Katrina, floating and luminous, overhead. She had been tired and ready for sleep. But as she watched her student now, Shizuka felt as if she were watching the rising sun.
* * *
Markus Tran glared from his Corolla. Some punk was revving his engine. His car was a quasi-streamlined thing with a lot of stickers on it; another primitive shithead who thought going 0 to 0.00000089469 times the speed of light in 6.6 seconds was something to brag about.
Mom would have said just let him go. But that’s what moms always said. And Shirley would have her thoughts, but with all due respect, she was the last person who should make a comment about how to handle life outside the donut shop.
Shithead revved his engine again. Markus looked at the shithead and flipped him off.
“What the fuck, fagg—” was as far as the shithead got.
“Internal combustion. Loser.”
APRIL
15
Once upon a time, in San Gabriel, a man named Vincenzo Caputo opened a pizzeria and called it Caputo’s Pizza.
Vincenzo; his son, Vincenzo Jr.; and his son Vinnie were proud Caputos. They fought Mexican boys who called them “Vinnie the Puto.” They went to high school, took metal shop, and played football somewhere on the offensive line. But most importantly they made Caputo’s Pizza a San Gabriel fixture.
Even after Caputo’s Pizza was finally sold, the Huang family kept the name. And since Mr. Huang, a heavyset Asian man with a perpetual smile, bore a more than passing resemblance to the face on every Caputo’s Pizza box, people started calling him Papa Caputo.
Nevertheless, Caputo’s Pizza began to change. Pasta was still on the menu. But the pasta began to be served with black bean sauce, or with fish eggs and curry. Over time, the pizza oven became a sturdy storage space for bags of rice, cans of oyster sauce, sesame oil, pickled turnip, and red Thai chilis.
And then, Mr. Huang’s wife, Mama Caputo, started serving an old family recipe for Hainan chicken.
And instead of the lively loud aroma of tomatoes, sausage, melting cheese, and the music of Sinatra, these diners were met with the rich, mouthwatering aromas of poached chicken, green onions, fish sauce. And the music of Sinatra.