Chapter 26 – The Man Comes Around

LAPA.
The Old Music Building.
The Basement.

After its cash injection in the early 2000s, the Omnia Group refurbished many of the rooms in the Old Music Building for use as dance studios, music studios, theatre studios, and art rooms.

The Dance Studios were built to develop students’ physicality, featuring sprung floors covered with Marley, floor-to-ceiling mirrors, and internal music systems.

The theatre rooms, also called black box rooms, were entirely matte black and without mirrors, stacked with assorted rehearsal cubes, lighting, and props.

Music spaces were like black boxes, but covered with acoustic foam and wooden diffusers. These were soundproof boxes where students could play to their hearts’ content—or sob in isolation without the outside world hearing.

In the Old Music Building, there was another type of room, one that would not have existed if the school solely existed on public spending. This was the Cinematics Major section of the school, a transitional space between the three rooms above, where a modest soundstage adjoined an editing suite with Avid hardware and server racks, also serving as storage for camera systems, and finally, as a soundproof theatre for about twenty viewers.

It was in this theatre that William Chen’s crew usually hung out, joined now and then by the girls from Valorie’s clique.

Into the room the group now entered, led by their leader, who had his jacket on his battered girlfriend, trailed by a few wealthy peers and camp followers, and finally, Simone Goode.

When they entered, there was already an Asian giant in the room. A college student who looked older than his years, possessing the physicality of an antagonist who could fight Jean Claude in Bloodsport.

Near the front, a few couches had been set up together with a coffee table with tea and snacks. Where one might expect to find alcohol and cigarettes, however, there were none, for the room’s occupants were students and performers, and the room’s owner knew very well how important it was not to disadvantage oneself.

Valorie, in her prim and preppy get-up, fell into the double-couch, then turned her ruined makeup toward William. God, she can be so pretty. William felt an immense sense of fulfilment. Of all the Valories, this vulnerable, tear-stained girl was exactly his type. It was his ultimate weakness, it was why, when Luciana Mio…

He shook his head to clear his thoughts. That could come later.

“Val,” he said, sitting behind her and holding her hand. “Can you tell me what happened?”

Valorie tried to speak, but the rage, the shame, the memory of it, made her eyes immediately wet and her throat insensible to speech.

“Wang, do you know what happened?”

“Chen-ge,” Wang answered from the dark, his tone impassive and unmoved. “San-jei asked me for a favour. She told the hei-mei to plant her bag, the one you bought from Hong Kong, into Eppie’s locker. I retrieved the master key for the hei-mei, and she presumably did as San-jei told her. Afterwards, she returned the key to me, and I returned it to our friend, Mr Jones, together with the proper recompense for the bother. That’s the extent of my knowledge.”

“Thank you, Wang,” William nodded. Things had happened just about as much as he expected. It was Valorie’s fault—a self-own. He had told Valorie maybe a dozen times to leave the girl alone. The past was the past, and as Seniors, they had reputations and careers to consider beyond the tiny pond that is high school.

“Simone.” His voice rang out.

From the shadows, observed by others, the Jazz dancer stepped into the pool of soft light.

She was trembling.
Beneath the skin-hugging leotard, he could see her muscles tensing.

The girl possessed a nubile figure, though that wasn’t unusual for a place like LAPA. It wasn’t the type that he fancied, but there was undeniable athleticism there, and immense flexibility. He didn’t like Simone, however, though it had nothing to do with her ethnicity. Chen simply disliked poverty. Like the workers in his father’s firm, there was a kind of off-putting desperation in Simone’s face, in the way she moved, the way she talked. The poor were timid and hungry, and oxymoronically prideful and ashamed. They had a low breaking point, he disliked that.

“Go on, explain yourself.”

“I… I did as Miss Sanders told,” Simone’s voice came as a barely audible whisper. “I did as told.”

“I know. We’ve established that it’s Valorie’s fault,” William turned to his girlfriend, whose eyes suddenly ignited with animal rage.

“No… NO!” Simone quivered, her long legs buckling. “I didn’t mean it like that. I…”

“So, you got played,” William continued to the girl. “Did you get played?”

“I can check the CCTV,” Wang offered from the dark. “The only segment that is missing is that of Miss Goode planting the bag.”

“Thank you, Wang.” William felt at ease that he still had some competence left in his inner circle. “Now, the bag.”

He pinched his brows.

“It’s a Birkin. Yes, I know you don’t know what that is, Simone. Suffice to say, it’s expensive. It’s worth more than your whole god damn family’s grocery bills for… six months?”

“Four,” said Wang.

“Oh, it was the black Birkin, was it?”

“Yes,” Valorie spoke at last. “The one you gave me last Christmas.”

“Well, that’s not so bad,” William shrugged mockingly. “If it had been the croc-skin, phew! Hahaha…”

He laughed by himself.
Then he stopped laughing.

“Did you steal the bag, Simone?”

“No!” The girl was on her knees now. What else could she do?

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“I know where your siblings sleep,” William said after spending a minute enjoying the sight of the sobbing girl on the floor. “I know who lives in your hood. Bad people. If you lie to me…”

He looked around for a prop. The room was meticulously clean, and there was nothing to make his point. Feeling deflated, he walked up to the girl and stood over her, then slowly placed the sole of his Oxfords over her ankle.

“Wang is very good at breaking bones,” he said after a few seconds. “Aren’t you, Wang?”
Underfoot, the girl dared not move.

“I have that reputation,” Wang replied on cue. Such curtness was why William loved his right-hand man. Wang really understood him.

“But we are fellow students here at LAPA,” William said, removing his foot. “My father put so much of his own money into this place. Partly for Senator Sanders, and partly because he saw immense potential in the arts and its sponsorship.”