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I’m staring at the large stack of bills on my desk when Josh arrives Monday morning, tossing his bag on the floor inside the door of his office before going to the kitchen.

“Addie!” he calls. I can hear him moving around in the kitchen, pulling a coffee cup out of the cupboard and rinsing it out before pouring his coffee.  He kicks the wheels of my chair, startling me. I jump.  He laughs, setting down a cup of light khaki colored liquid in front of me.

“Hey, wake up,” he says, smiling. “Did you work last night?”

“Yeah, sorry. Thanks, but I don’t like coffee,” I say, pushing the cup aside.

“If you’re going to keep up this schedule, you’re going to have to learn to like it.  Trust me.  It took me a while too, but what I’ve made you is basically cream with a dash of caffeine.  Try it.”

I take a tentative sip, trying to make sure I don’t let too much in to her mouth in case I start gagging. It’s a terrible reflex.  If I don’t like the taste of something, I can’t choke it down like a normal person.  It’s like my whole body revolts. I tried coffee before and it hadn’t turned out well.

This smells different though.  When the hot liquid hits my tongue I’m surprised by the sweetness.  With the next sip I lets a bit more into my mouth and feels the warmth spread down my throat.

“Wow.  This really is good.”

“See, I told you.  Come into my office.  I’ve got a project for you.”

I take another drink and follows Josh into his office.  He picks up his bag as he walks in, pushing a chair out of the way with his foot, then turning his body sideways to fit in the tiny space between the front of his L-shaped desk and his wall.  His office is just to the right of the reception area, a long narrow room that is actually smaller than the supply closet.  He chose it over what became the supply closet because of the window, but he keeps the shade drawn most of the time.  There is a book case just inside the office door with an old boom-box on the shelf that stays perpetually tuned to talk radio and is on all the time.  I set my coffee on the edge of the desk, grab the chair Josh had pushed out of the way and settle into it just inside the frame of the door.  The room is covered in Revolver memorabilia.  I recognize a t-shirt from their first tour.  I have the same shirt at home.  It’s too worn out to wear but too sacred to get rid of.  Josh settles himself into his chair, turns his computer on, takes an iPad out of his bag then settles back with his feet up on the metal supports of the desk.

“You like it?” he asks, indicating her coffee.

I take another drink.  “I really do. What’s in it?”

“The secret is to use flavored coffee and flavored creamer.  That way, you don’t have to add any additional sugar, but it gets nice and sweet.”

I nod.  The announcers on the radio show are distracting me.  The volume is low enough that I can’t tell what they are saying, but high enough that I can’t tune it out.

“Your radio almost gave me a heart attack the first morning I opened. When I unlocked the door the alarm started beeping, then I heard people talking.  I thought there was someone in here.”

Josh laughs.  “What’d you do?”

“Flipped on all the lights as fast as I could and ran to the alarm.  By the time I shut it off I realized it was your radio- they must have said the call letters or something, but I still felt like I had a heart attack.”

“Sorry.  It doesn’t shut off.”

I wonder if he’s kidding.  I can’t tell by his face.

“The switch is broken,” he says.  “And the plug is behind the bookcase, so I can’t unplug it very easily.  So it stays on.” A file opens on his iPad and he takes his feet down, leaning closer to me and sharing the screen.  “Here’s what I’ve got for you.  Revolver’s starting to record next week.  I need you to arrange for hotel and food for the guys for the next few weeks.”

Josh is in his late thirties, married, and had been working in the music industry for six years before he came to Clouded.  He wears ringer t-shirts and blue jeans every day. A lot of his t’s are band shirts from the early nineties, mostly groups that he has worked with.  He also has a full line of plain ringer t’s that he wears whenever he has meetings outside of the office. In the four months I interned I never saw him dressed up.  He was originally hired to book shows for the acts on Clouded’s roster, and brought Revolver, the pop- punk band that he had been booking, to Seth for management. I had been a fan Revolver since high school, and they were how I first learned about Clouded. He still does some booking, but his main roll now is managing Revolver for Seth.

The four members of Revolver live in Nashville when they aren’t touring, so they had been to the office a few times while I was interning.  Their music is loud, fast and fun, and so are they.  The three original members of the band grew up together in Seattle, bonding over their hate of grunge rock and bands like Nirvana and Pearl Jam.  They had their first radio hit when they were still teenagers with a song that made fun of high school dances.  At their concerts a crowd of screaming teenagers, boys and girls alike, crowd the stage, bobbing their heads, dancing, and singing along with every word. I’m thrilled to have the chance to work with them.

“Where are they recording?” I ask, opening my notebook.

“Studio 6, same place they did their last two albums.”

“Isn’t that here in town?”

“Yes.”

“Don’t they live here?”

“Yes”

“So who am I getting hotels for?”

“The guys.  They need to feel like they are “away” when they record, it helps them concentrate.”

“Okay. How many rooms?”

“Five.  Each of the guys gets his own, so does the producer.”

What a colossal waste of money.  “What about the food?” I ask.

Josh gives me a blank look.

I try again. “What do they need?”

“Everything. Make sure they have enough food for the whole two weeks.  Stock the kitchen at the studio and create a budget for meals. There should be snacks in the hotel rooms too.”

“What do they like to eat?”

“Anything.  They’re guys.”

“Okay,” I say again, trying to think of a way to get a few more details, or some more direction. “Anything else I should know?”

“Nope.  But don’t tell anyone they are recording. Especially no one at the label. And I need to see all of the invoices before they are paid.”

I nod, wanting to ask why the label doesn’t know about the recording.  Usually that’s something they would pay for.  In return, they would also be involved in every decision, from producer to song selection.  Contractually, the label has the right to steer the project in the direction they want it to go.  Most artists don’t love it, but when the label is going to invest hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars, they get over it.

Josh sees the confusion in my face.  “We’re in contract negotiations.  The guys need to record now because they’re touring this summer, so I can’t wait on the label any longer.  Plus if we get it done, we can ask for a bigger advance because they’ll already have something to work with.  If not, we can easily find it a new home and still get it out this fall.” He starts typing on his computer.  “I just sent you Sean and Simon’s phone numbers.  Talk to them about the food.  Jacob and Gavin will eat whatever.” He grabs a stack of contracts off the corner of his desk and starts flipping through them.  “Thanks,” he says, without looking up.

“Um, I’m sorry, how do you want me to pay for it?”

Josh looks up.  “You don’t have a credit card yet?”

I shake my head.  Am I supposed to have a credit card?

“Here, use mine.  You’ll have to run it as a debit card so they don’t check your ID.  And ask Seth to get you a card.”

I read Cutting for Stone as a part of my second packet for this semester in The Writer’s Loft. This is my essay. I’m now about 3/4 of the way through, I’ll update after I finish.

Marion was conceived, it seems, through an affair between a surgeon and his nurse. A nun. Sister Mary Joseph Praise was Thomas Stone’s right hand in Operating Theater 3 at the tiny Mission hospital known as “Missing” in Addis Ababa. Their affair was a complete secret until the day she gave birth—and died.

The sight of Sister Mary Joseph Praise, nearly comatose and with a head visible in the birth canal drove the normally impressive Doctor Stone to near insanity. Rather than attempt a caesarian section or vaginal delivery, he attempts to crush the baby’s skull in order to deliver the fetus.

It was Marion’s twin brother, Shiva, that Dr. Stone attempted to kill. Hema, the midwife who had been away for several weeks, arrived and delivered the babies via c-section in time to save the children. It was too late for Sister Mary Joseph Praise. Despite the attempts of Hema and Matron, the overseer of Missing, to get Dr. Stone to acknowledge his children, he abandons them and Missing, never to be seen again.

Hema adopts the children and raises them as her own, taking Ghosh, the hospital’s internist, as their father and her de facto husband. The children are raised at Missing along with Genet, their cook’s daughter.

<<<<<>>>>>

Verghese does a masterful job of weaving details of setting into the framework of the story. He inhabits Marion at each age and stage, at once telling the story as an adult looking back and as a child experiencing everything for the first time. You as the reader see the world through the eyes of a newborn baby, assumed dead, placed in a bowl off to the side while everyone works to save his mother. You watch your parents struggle to cope with your twin brother’s apnea and feel the connection the boys, who were born with their skulls joined by a flap of skin, feel for each other.

The details of the setting, Addis Ababa and Missing Hospital in particular, are laid out clearly, and each of the characters are fully developed. However, it is in the character development and setting of the scene that Verghese lost me a few times.

During the birth, which spans the first 109 pages of the book, you meet several characters: Thomas Stone, Sister Mary Joseph Praise, Ghosh, Hema, the Probationer, various people that were on the airplane from Aden, the plane’s captain and others. At minimum, these characters are given a few paragraphs of back story. Most, however, are given several pages. Verghese weave plot and conflict into the back story and switching from character to character at just the point that the reader stays hooked enough to slog through another person’s life story to find out what happened to the original one. In places, though, this method of introducing so many people so early on left me both confused and tempted to abandon the entire project.

My second issue with Verghese’s writing is minor and all but disappears once you move into Part Two (although I’m only half-way done with the book, so it may come back as Marion grows). His use of medical vernacular and terminology becomes a thick mud, getting my mind stuck on concepts that aren’t overly important for the progression of the story, making it hard to keep forging ahead. However, as I said, once Marion is born and begins to grow, the medical language all but disappears. I have just reached the point where Marion is discovering his love for the science of medicine, so there is the opportunity for it to come back. I am hoping that by learning it along with Marion as he grows it won’t become so daunting.

Finally, the last point to discuss in the first half of Cutting for Stone is setting. Verghese makes Addis Ababa itself and Missing Hospital in particular into characters in the book, weaving in information about the area, the scenery and the political climate of Marion’s youth. His language is poetic and he does a beautiful job of weaving Amharic and English together. In this case, the limitation is my mind and imagination, when I think of Ethiopia and Africa the images in my head are of tribes and photos I saw as a kid in National Geographic Magazine. I have a hard time reconciling the squalor poverty in my brain with a city of modern conveniences like electricity, a fully operational surgical theater, and paved roads for the Emperor’s BMW. Verghese may have anticipated this, because even after the setting has been well established he continues to add details here and there, filling in the picture.

All in all, I’m enjoying the book. I’m hooked to Marion now, I want to know if Dr. Stone really is his father and, if so, will we ever find out for sure? Will we ever see him again? I see Marion’s aptitude for medicine and am eager to see him grow in the hospital and where his life goes. I’m hoping that the person with the week-overdue copy returns theirs to the library by Tuesday so I can renew mine, if not, I’ll buy the kindle version. Verghese is coming to speak at Libscomb this summer and I’m planning to attend. Three months or so ago I listened to an interview with him and really enjoyed it.

I finally finished re-photographing all of my etsy items tonight (see them here). When I went downstairs to upload the photos I saw this beautiful sky. Click on any of the picture to enlarge them, then you can use your arrow keys to go through the rest. Check out the little wispy cloud in the middle pictures– it just seemed to keep moving without going anywhere, like a kaleidoscope.

Sleepy Merbabe in Yellow Jammies - - OOAK by KarenLHoward

Sorry I’ve been MIA this week, it’s been a busy one. I’ll add the reading and writing posts later this week. For now, here’s my Etsy treasury of the week: Sleepy. Enjoy!