Fourth Chair
Chapter Five
By Missy

TITLE: Fourth Chair
PARTS: Five of Undetermined
RATING: PG-13 for one adult reference and one mildly salty word; use caution.
DISTRIBUTION: To LW, FG and Kai so far; any other archives are welcome to ask, but disclaimers must be included, my email left intact. send a URL, and provide full disclaimers as well as credit me fully. Please inform me if you are going to submit my work to any sort of search engine. Â Please do not submit my work to a search engine that picks out random sets of words and uses them as key words, such as "Google"
Please contact me in order for this story to be placed on an archive, or if you want know of a friend who would enjoy my works, please email me their address and I will mail them the stories, expressly for the purpose of link trading. MiSTiers are welcomed! Please do inform me that you'd like to do the MiSTing, however, and send me a copy of the finished product. I'd also love to archive any MiSTings that are made of my work!

CATEGORY: SOL
PAIRINGS: What do you think? ;-)
FEEDBACK: PLEASE?!
SPOILLER/SUMMARY: Laverne and Lenny's daughter may be a great cellist in the making; one whose intelligence makes them feel both blessed and mystified. Can they possibly let her go to New York alone?'


For Chesh

****

Laverne's smile was thin, and Lenny knew that she was just itching to be alone with him. Unfortunately for him, it wasn't in the best way.

She cornered him over the dishes, while Aria played with Christian in the living room.

"Dope!" She hissed. "We said we weren't gonna interfere in her gift!"

"I ain't! I just offerin' her a short-term job."

She groaned. "Len, you just wanna keep her close."

This was true; for every bit his heart attack had panicked Aria, it had made Lenny feel guilty. He would never be able to forgive himself for stunting her childhood.

"There a crime in that?" She snorted. "Yer pop gave you how many jobs when she was your age?"

Laverne blushed, but said nothing. She turned to him. "She's different from me. She's special."

Lenny deliberately did the only thing that without fail drove Laverne to distraction. He swiped a few of her shaggy brass locks aside and kissed the nape of her neck. The result was always the same; goosebumps and a shiver.

She purred, rubbing her back against his front. They weren't kids anymore, and instead of an instant hard-on she sent a wave of pleasant tingles through his body.

"Mmm...tonight." She said.

His blue eyes widened. "Wow; we're actually gonna do it?"

She tried to poke his ribs, but he glibly avoided her. "Keep doin' that," She said, pointing a scrub brush at him, "An' we won't!"

He laughed out loud as he disappeared out the back door.

***

"No, no, no." He repeated, listening to the latest Vauxhall And I vocal track. "He's screaming into the mic!"

"Well, he was kinda sloshed when we taped it." Lenny's teeth ground together. "Easy, Len." Squiggy cautioned. Lenny sent his best friend a warning look, knowing that he scolded with only the best of intentions. Lenny grunted, hunching forward in his chair.

"Fine. I'm gonna just put his vocals low in the mix."

Squiggy snorted, tossing a piece of popcorn chicken into his mouth. "Their management ain't gonna be happy."

Lenny snorted. "Remember when we was the management?" He deliberately put up the cymbals higher, making Val Du Lac's voice sound small in the scheme of the mix.

Swiftly, the music took over. They bobbed their heads as appreciatively as they had for Dylan when he had graced the studio. That was four years ago, before the heart-attack, and before Squiggtone Studios had been outmoded by Electric Ladyland. Now they played host to the impoverished and the old school. Their means had reduced drastically from the first heady years, when Aria was little, something that would depress Lenny, were he in a position to fret anymore. But, in his opinion, he wasn't. God had spared his life for a reason, when it hadn't spared Frank's.

In six months, he had managed to give his daughter and his wife complexes. In four years, his daughter had transformed into a different person.

He still remembered clearly running through parks with her, trying to feed ducks. She had never been afraid of those damned birds, but they had always terrified Lenny, mostly because they weren't discriminatory over who they nibbled, or what.

A phone rang, and Squiggy lurched toward it. Lenny smirked to himself; probably one of his not-so-hot dates, trying to eviscerate his ever-bachelor. But Squiggy's lips thinned out to a frown as he hung up the phone.

"Aria's school." He said. "You'd better go. They said somethin's wrong-"

Lenny was halfway out the door when those last words came to Squiggy.

"-but it's not too serious."


****

Lenny was directed to the nurse's office, and there her found Aria, sitting on an orange plastic chair and hyperventilating into a paper bag.

"What's wrong, honey?" He asked her. He patted her shoulders, which sent her into a spasm of dry heaving. He shot the very dissolute nurse a look of alarm.

"Your daughter started hyperventilating in the middle of an algebra quiz." She said, continuing to file her nails. "She's having a panic attack."

"How do you know?"

"Mister, this is one of the world's toughest schools. Half of the girls here are on Prozac."

While Lenny mentally took down the woman's name, he cradled Aria against his chest. For all of her seeming toughness, she had no independence left in her, and burst into tears against his chest.

"I couldn't, I just couldn't." She babbled, and he knew how long gone she was because she was using contractions. She had a particularly tough fifth grade teacher who had so traumatized the students during English that she still didn't feel comfortably using her own way of speaking. "I'm sorry..." She wept.

"Honey, it's okay..." He sensed that it was a long time coming. She had been internalizing so much for so many months.

"I wanna go home." She said. "Can we go home?"

Lenny gave the nurse a sideways glance, and she shrugged. "It's two o'clock. She's only missing an assembly, anyway."

Lenny memorized every nuance of the woman's behavior. If he had his way, the school board would have an earload from him at the next PTA meeting.

****

Laverne arrived home to two sleeping daughters and an eating husband.

"What happened?"

"Aria had an attack." He explained. Confusion crossed her face. "The school nurse said it was a panic attack."

Laverne shuddered. "My poor girl."

"Left her on the couch wit some soup. She slept most of the night."

"I wanna watch over her tonight." Laverne said. Lenny nodded, even if he selfishly groaned to himself, knowing that they weren't going to get to do what he'd asked of her the night before.

It was proof of love, a different love, but no less great in his heart, as they both spent the night beside their suddenly fragile daughter.








To Chapter 4
To Chapter 6


















(Close This Window To Return To LAS Fic)