Wheels of Steel, Book 1 (12 page)

She heard a faint sound of musical beats and he reached in his pocket for a cell phone. “Link.” He said. “Yeah, I already saw it.” His brow gathered and he looked peeved. “It’s not cool. I don’t give a shit, that wasn’t cool to post that…that was…” He just shook his head a grimace appeared on his face. Robin got up and washed the remaining dishes while he talked.

“Dude!” Link was saying. “No one even thought the seizure was real, didn’t you see that?! The guy filming it was tripping out at how you threw that in at the end! Fuck, Top, if we start teaming up I’ll throw a seizure in at the end! They all love the fact that we’re in wheel chairs and our logo with the wheelchair and it’s like Daft Punk with the helmets! Top…man we gotta talk about expanding our horizons. Go check out the comments on that guy’s page! People are wanting to know where they can see us play!” Jason put the phone on speaker and wheeled into the living room.

“Hold on, I’m looking.” He refreshed the desktop computer and went to Youtube. After a moment he was back at the video letting it play out as he read the three messages. “Link, ass! There’s only three messages and you left one of them!”

Link was laughing. “Yeah, well…”

But the other two were asking about where they’d be playing next. And one even said that they had all of Wheels of Steel mixes; which only amounted to seven, though YouTube had some practice mixes that got lots of positive feedbacks.

Robin had washed up the last few dishes and the Portishead beat caught her attention. She went out to the living room, curious, and saw Jason at the computer. Then she heard someone begin scratching with the tune and it was really good. She walked up behind him to see what he was looking at. It blew her away when she saw the familiar red tangle of curls suspended behind headphones.

She looked at Jason in awe, pointing at the big computer monitor. “That’s you…” Jason looked at her quickly and then pressed stop.

“Link, I gotta head out.”

“Top-’ But he disconnected the phone.

“You’re a DJ?” She asked in admiration. Then she really took a close look at his equipment. And that’s when she finally understood what the woman in the cafeteria had been talking about. And of course Top was his stage name. God she felt dense. Jason was shutting down the computer.

“Some friends and I mix music and make videos under the name of Wheels of Steel.”

“Oh that is so cool! And you’re on YouTube?”

He wheeled himself to the closet. “Yep. Look, as much as I love talking about mixing and beats, we gotta head out, it’s after seven. I need you to grab my backpack and laptop.”

Robin jumped to her task even as she was still curious about the new information she’d learned about this strange young man.

He rubbed his cheek. “My Mom’s going to shit if she sees this…” She hated facial hair. He didn’t much care for it either but now he was getting pretty shaggy and even though it was his thing to be the defiant son, the beard was just damn itchy. “You’ll meet my Mom tomorrow. Open the door.”

She opened the door. “I’m going to meet your Mom?” She didn’t know why she needed to do that. If his Mom was going to be around then she didn’t need to be here. She kept that thought to herself though. He wheeled down the walkway and to her car. She opened the door for him and he stood up and swung his legs out until he was in position to sit down in the passenger seat. Once again she wondered why he didn’t use crutches or a walker. She loaded his things into the backseat and then quickly loaded the wheelchair into the trunk. Today she did it much faster.

He was already wearing his headphones and had tuned her out. She would have asked him about his music but he obviously wasn’t interested in talking to her. She slipped a CD into the player. He wasn’t the only one who enjoyed music while driving. She put in Maxwell’s Black Summer’s Night. After a while she saw Jason smirk, or at least she thought it was a smirk. Sometimes it was hard to tell when his face tensed and relaxed under a power that wasn’t his own. The only things that were exceedingly clear is when he smiled or when he scowled--the latter done with more frequency.

“What?” She had thought about ignoring the look but was curious. “You don’t like Maxwell?”

“It’s not that. Let me just guess, you have C.D’s with Erykah Badu, Trey Songz…” He stared at her, “and Drake when you’re walking on the wild side.”

She glanced at him. “What’s wrong with that?”

“I didn’t say anything was wrong with it. I just had you pegged right.” She listened to the same rehashed R & B and hip hop and probably thought that was all there was.

“I don’t have any Drake. So there, you were wrong.” Now it was her turn to scowl. “And it’s no big leap to look at a black woman my age in Cincinnati and guess what kind of music I listen to. If I was in the south you would have guessed Ludacris, T.I., Chamillionaire.”

He was staring out the window when he said, “Oh I’m so sorry Miss Jackson, did I forget OUTKAST, I apologize a trillion times.” She cracked a smile. Well he certainly knew his music.

He glanced at her. “So what do I listen to?”

“Everything.” She said. “You’re a D.J.”

Jason looked at her; really looked at her for the first time.

Chapter 11

At school she got him out of the car and into the building quite efficiently, not giving him the opportunity to complain about anything she did. His first class was some type of math. She could tell by the equations written on the dry marker board. They were early enough that people were still filing in. Jason pointed out where he wanted the laptop set up and then he wheeled up to the professor. They talked in hushed tones. The professor seemed to be considering something and he glanced at her then he nodded his head.

He wheeled back to where he had her set up but didn’t bother to explain what he and the Professor had been talking about. “I wish you would have remembered to grab my coffee.” He said. Then he opened his laptop and powered up. She ignored him, wanting to say that she was an aid, not a psychic. But she was not interested in starting an argument. He slipped on headphones and she saw him navigate to YouTube. Damn, is that all he did was listen to music? She liked YouTube also but she did do other things.

He was plugged into a playlist which he minimized and then he pulled up another page. It looked like hieroglyphs. He then opened up the book bag that she had set out for him and withdrew a calculus book. She knew it! Some type of math!

He stared at her. “Okay, Robin. I use a graphic software for calculus because my handwriting is pretty bad. The program I use is MathEQ, but sometimes I need hands. So I’m going to ask you to write some things out for me-”

She sucked in a nervous breath. “Jason…I don’t know anything about calculus.”

“You don’t need to. I’m going to show you what to write, ok?”

“Ok…” She did not want to do this, but as long as all she had to do was copy what he told her then she’d do it.

“Ok, on the board is the problem. Write it on the paper. Write the word PROBLEM first and then the figures.

Oh my god…She wrote the strange figures down. He pulled up an online calculator and began putting in figures. It seemed to take him a long time of putting in figures, concentrating on what he was doing, but after a few minutes he turned to her again.

“Write the word; LIM.” She did it. “Write an equal sign next to it. Now draw a horizontal line…longer. Good. Now on the top line write a number three…” And on and on he went telling her to write numbers and X’s and minuses and parenthesis and then a new row of numbers and symbols and then finally the last which was the answer. “Robin, write Solution. Write my name on it and hand it to the Professor.”

She got up and went to the Professor’s desk. He appeared to be doing some grading. He glanced up at her and she handed him the paper. When she turned to go back to her seat he stopped her.

“Just a minute. This will only take me a moment.” She waited while he placed various checkmarks on the paper. He handed it back to her with a giant C circled. Then he went back to his other problem.

She took it back to Jason who grabbed it out of her hand. He nodded his head and powered off the computer. “Come on. Let’s get out of here.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

“One problem and you just walk out?”

“Well…if I know how to solve the problem I don’t need him, right?” She grinned. If only High School had been like that! “I have a syllabus.” He continued. “I do five problems for homework each night and then email them to him and he lectures on Mondays.”

“So what do we do now?” She asked as she rolled him out of the class.

“Anything we want. I have forty-five minutes before my next class.”

“Good because I have to use the bathroom.”

While they headed to the ladies room he was greeted by several people that high fived him or asked about a CD. He finally just directed her to the restroom while he talked. She rushed off, close to being at a critical stage. When she returned he was with another guy who was also in a wheelchair. She recognized him from lunch yesterday.

The guy looked at her and then smiled. “Hi. I see you returned. Most of them don’t,” he joked. Jason shook his head as if the guy was no more than a pesky child.

“This is Link. He’s one of my DJ partners.” Link reached out and shook her hand. He had short cropped blonde hair, blue eyes and a tan that suggested that he got out every so often. He was handsome and wore an easy smile with a big upper body, though Jason had a big upper body, too. It must be a wheelchair thing.

“Nice to meet you.” She said, thinking this is something that Jason should have done yesterday. “I’m Robin Mathena.”

“So this is your first job as an aid?” She nodded wondering how much Jason had told about her; he’d probably described in detail every mistake she’d made.

“They’re not all as bad as him.” He winked at her and Jason managed to give him the finger. “Look,” he became serious again, turning his attention back to Jason. “I need to make more CD’s. More Love is selling like crazy.” He reached into his pocket and withdrew a thick wad of money. He counted out several hundred dollars. “That’s your cut minus the cost for the CD’s.” Jason counted out the bills and pocketed them.

“How many do you want to make?”

“About two fifty each.”

“Fuck! Are you serious?”

“Yeah, that’s what I’m saying Top, we need to be thinking on a bigger scale.” Robin followed quietly as they wheeled themselves out of the building and to the parking lot.

“Well fuck that, we’re not burning five hundred CD’s. We need to talk to Amberly and Patty about this.”

“It’ll cost money if we don’t do it ourselves.”

“So. It takes money to make money.” They reached a van and Link wheeled around to the back and unlocked it. Inside was a box half filled with CD’s. He went around behind Jason and grabbed the younger man’s book bag and placed about ten of them inside.

Link suddenly looked at her. “Did you give her one yet?” Jason didn’t answer. “You are one tight Muther Fucker.” Then he smiled sweetly at Robin. This all made her a little uncomfortable; boys cursing and giving each other the fingers. Boy’s just naturally had bad behaviors and she wanted to make sure that Jason understood that she wasn’t going to be treated badly.

“Here sweetheart. Hope you like it.” Robin accepted the CD. On the cover was an upside down wheelchair over a drawing of a turntable. MORE LOVE was written across the top in fat white block letters.

“Thank you.” She was very interested in listening to more of what Jason did; especially if it sounded as good as the mix she’d heard earlier. “Just one song?”

“One song is all you need when it’s eighteen minutes long.” Link responded while filling up his own book bag. “We sale these for ten bucks. Let your friends know. Great for parties.” He sounded like a sales man. He turned his attention back to Jason. “We oughta record that one we did last night. Man that was so sick!”

“It was pretty sick.” Jason agreed with a reluctant smile.

“Fuck, it made my balls explode!”

“Hey, there’s a lady present.” Jason said. She gave him a surprised look.

“Sorry.” Link said, remembering her. “Alright guys, I’ll see you at lunch. Gotta dash!”

“Bye.” She said politely. She positioned herself behind him. “So, where to now?”

They moved to Western Philosophy. And while Jason interacted in the lively discussions, Robin was bored. Her eyes began to droop. She tried every tactic she could to stay awake but two jobs, four hours sleep and coming down from a coffee buzz was more then she could bear and before she knew it she was sound asleep.