A Skittery Sax
The noises had only impinged on Emil’s consciousness when he was almost to the band’s “suite”, such as it was, in their Trond-mandated flophouse, but once it had, there was no denying it.
Someone was practicing on a saxophone in the band’s quarters, and in the band’s style of jam.
Emil’s stomach tightened as he listened in the hallway outside their door. The player was pretty good--not as good as Emil, but certainly not bad.
Was this Emil’s replacement in the “Malmö Musikers”?
After a few lifetimes of agonized hesitation, Emil nerved himself up to go in and see who the player was. Best to get it over with; besides, he’d need to pack his sadly few things and be ready to strike out for... wherever he could go this time. Maybe Bergen?
“Mikkel.” Emil didn’t realize that he’d spoken aloud until the big man slowly turned to face him.
After a long silence where Mikkel stared at Emil with a faintly puzzled expression, the Dane finally rumbled, “Well, aren’t you going to join in and make it a proper jam session?” Emil’s look went from shattered to confused. “Didn’t Sigrun send you over so we could see how we jam together? She said she would.”
Emil was just about to faint from relief when a stranger’s voice spoke behind him. “Mind if I join in, too?”
At that, the bedroom door flew open, Tuuri shooting forth like a rocket with a cry of, “ONNI!” Emil managed to dodge in time to avoid being bowled over in the wake of Tuuri’s rush to greet her brother.
Tuuri and Lalli had mentioned this third Hotakainen to their band-mates, of course, so the blocky Finn wasn’t a complete stranger. Nonetheless, Emil and Mikkel were rather more reserved in their greetings.
After a few minutes of Tuuri gushing at Onni, with only grunts of varied tone as responses, Lalli slinked in. Onni made as if to hug his cousin, but a slight backpedal from Lalli cued Onni to simply clasp Lalli’s shoulders instead.
Eventually, once Tuuri was more or less talked out, the newcomer pulled forth a sax from one of his bags, Emil grabbed his own sax, and they joined Mikkel in an impromptu trio, Tuuri and Lalli watching.
Emil was hard-pressed to keep his dismay out of the music after the first few licks. Onni was fantastic. It was actually hard for Emil to keep up with the eldest Finn, and more or less impossible for Mikkel.
“Imagine doing that with us tonight, onstage!” Tuuri gushed. “It would be brilliant, Onni!”
Onni’s face went completely blank, and he dropped his sax. A moment later, he was flat on his back in a dead faint.
*
They’d had to blindfold Onni to get him onstage, and instead of an announcement of the band, Taru put up a banner reading, “Blind Onni & the Malmö Musikers”. None of their audience seemed to get the joke--”Blind Luck” playing for them onstage--but they still liked this new guy’s sound.
The Evening well very well, Onni only trying to get away twice and throwing up (in the backstage hurl bucket) once. After some of Lalli’s shenanigans, this was positively easy to handle.
Emil was so torn. Onni and his sound brought the band up a notch, certainly, and they all sounded great in concert, but there was a fearful, jealous part of Emil that was glad the Finn was so stage-phobic.
Sigrun, nobody’s fool, was trying to smother Onni’s fears and doubts with a flood of enthusiastic words, but Onni stood against her like a stolid Finn rock against a snowstorm.
Tuuri was rather sniffly after Onni left, so Emil knew Lalli would need some distracting as well. Maybe they could work on arranging one of Bing’s songs for the band? Now that Mikkel had been tapped as back-up sax, a lot of possibilities were open...
