Sophie enjoyed her first day back as a court reporter. Luckily, the freelancers she found to cover for her didn’t squeeze her out of her niche. They were capable, but evidently didn’t overshadow her talent. Since the time that she started to work regularly, she developed a pretty good relationship with the woman who usually scheduled the small pool of freelancers they used for depositions, hearings, and trials. Sophie said Karl would keep the woman updated concerning her availability. Luckily, Karl and this woman had a job lined up for her almost as soon as she returned.
Even though the streamed-on-demand concert was getting close to breaking viewing records, she was sure that in the courtroom Michelle Wilson - with her hair in a bun, her black-framed glasses, and her pantsuit - would not be mistaken for Sophie Choice.
During a morning break in the proceedings, a man in his early 20s, wearing skinny jeans and a flannel shirt, came up to her in the hallway. She was headed to the restroom when he asked: “Can I have an autograph?”
“What did you say?”
“May I have your autograph?” he whispered.
“An autograph from me?” she asked, as she glanced down at her court-reporter façade for reassurance, looked up and greeted him with a sarcastic smirk. “Excuse me, but I need to use the ladies room.” She continued on her way wondering if this Caucasian dude, trying to look like what some fashionistas call a ‘hipster,’ had just destroyed her anonymity.
“You really look like Sophie Choice,” he said as she walked away. While she relieved her bladder, she wondered how much longer she could continue her job before her public persona destroyed her privacy. Such notoriety was easier to handle when she was younger, but after spending a long stint in shadowland, she grew accustomed to being under the radar. As she washed her hands, she watched her reflection in the mirror and realized pant suits, glasses and hair buns were no longer enough to mask her identity. Incidentally, the pantsuit she was wearing resembled one she wore in a scene in the music video. Why hadn’t she noticed that earlier? In fact, during the weeks in L.A. her usual attire was pantsuits. Shit.
As she left the restroom, she spotted the ‘hipster’ standing in the hall talking with a man and a woman of similar age and with similar fashionista tastes. They noticed her immediately, smiled and waited for her to pass before the woman said, “I hate to be rude, but aren’t you Sophie Choice?”
“You’re the tenth person to ask me that recently, but no, I’m just a court reporter and must get back to work. Sorry to disappoint you,” she said as she walked by.
“According to news I’ve read online, a court reporter who works here is Sophie Choice,” the hipster girl replied.
Sophie stopped walking, turned to face the girl. “Where the hell did you read that?” she asked with strong stress on “hell.”
After the break, Sophie was back at her post typing on her steno machine. The first few minutes were much like before the break with the court proceeding back to its regular excitement of lawyers mumbling, but soon whispering from the public gallery was increasingly audible; no doubt, something was causing this commotion. Sophie surmised it was coming from the people she met in the hallway. She did not dare to look in that direction since, even though she was making an audio recording of the trial and could go back to listen to what she needed to transcribe, she tried her best to produce a word-by-word transcription of the court proceedings on her stenotype machine. The chatting coming from the gallery, however, was distracting.
“Could we have some order in the court?” the judge said. “We’ll clear the gallery if you do not be quiet.” This did the trick and the public gallery was calm for about 15 minutes until the judge said, “Bailiff, please remove the woman in the second row who is taking photographs with her smart phone.” Sophie glanced over and saw that the hipsters were in the second row. Even if the Bailiff forced her to erase her photo folder, the photographs she took had probably been automatically saved on a cloud account.
Shit.
“I found them,” Karl called from his room to Sophie in the kitchen preparing dinner. She walked to his room and saw her skinny son sitting in front of the laptop on his desk.
“Hell, those were taken this morning,” she said, looking down at the three pictures that had been uploaded onto the SNS page of Leilah Stacey. All were side shots and the caption read, “The rumor is true: Sophie DOES work in a court. Go figure.”
“You know, you don’t need the job,” Karl said, watching his mother’s face as she stared at the screen of his computer.
“Need it or not, I won’t have it for much longer.”
“No, I guess you won’t.”
When Karl and Sophie arrived in front of the courthouse the following morning, there were several news crews waiting for something at the main entrance to the courthouse; with probably several members hiding near the side entrance Karl had parked nearby.
She tapped Karl’s arm. “Get out of this space before someone realizes who we are,” she said as she ducked down in the seat. Karl did just that, took her home and then drove back toward the courthouse on his way to school. She got on the phone and called in sick.
“Are the rumors true, Michelle?” Barbara, the woman who scheduled the court reporters, asked.
“It’s not a rumor, I’m really sick,” Sophie said, trying to make her voice sound rough and sore.
“I kind of figured this would happen, so I contacted Leon to cover in case you couldn’t make it today.”
“Why did you think that?”
“The news crews started to turn up a couple of hours ago. An officer asked what they were doing; he was told they were waiting for Sophie Choice to arrive.”
“Who’s Sophie Choice?” Sophie whispered.
“It just so happens that you are, my dear.”
Ryuji and Malcolm were getting the studio ready to shoot produce for one of the grocers in Muncie. While Ryuji was in L.A., Malcolm secured the contract to handle all of the photography used in the newspaper ads for this small supermarket chain. The past couple of days, they took pictures in several of the stores and today they were going to start photographing some of the major produce that needed to have better lighting to look its best. It was kind of hard to move around with the boxes of fruit and vegetables on the floor of their small studio, but they were able to get the lighting situated correctly and were about ready to start with the strawberries. Just then the phone rang.
“I’m sure I know what that’s about,” Ryuji said, moving from the camera mount they placed over the strawberries so that no shadow would obscure the fruit. He walked over to his smart phone sitting on a nearby table, pulled back his long, black hair and brought the phone to his ear. “Make it quick; our schedule is pretty tight today.”
“The number of paid views has reached the two million mark.”
A frown appeared on Ryuji’s thin face and he unconsciously tapped his right foot as he waited for Diamond to finish. “So, you expect me to pack my bags tonight?”
Diamond glanced over to Emily who watched incomprehension cover his face. “You said you might play with us a few nights if the video got over two million views.”
“Well, I didn’t expect it to reach that mark so bloody fast. Look, I’m willing to play a few shows, but I really need to get some work done here first,” Ryuji said, staring at Malcolm waiting for him to get off the phone. Ryuji held up one finger to indicate that he was almost finished talking. “So, where’re you playing tonight?”
“I gave you a copy of the schedule, didn’t I? We’re in Phoenix and will be playing in Tucson tomorrow. It’s hard to believe, but the shows have been packed so far: fucking ‘sold out!’” Emily walked over and hugged him around the waist as he said that.
“It sounds like you don’t need me. Things are going fine, right?” Ryuji rolled his eyes and kept tapping his foot. “I’ve really got to get back to work. I’ll be more than happy to play a couple nights when you get into the Midwest.”
“We’ll be in St. Louis in about a week. How’s that?”
“Just a second,” he said, covered the small hole that functioned as the receiver on his phone, nodded towards Malcolm to get his attention. “Do you think we’ll have everything done in about a week?”
“Not if you don’t get off the bloody phone,” he said, looking over the set making sure everything was ready for Ryuji to resume.
“I’ll look online to get the date you’re in St. Louis and ring you in a couple days to firm it up. Got to go, bye.”
A couple hours later, while they were eating ramen for lunch, Ryuji was making slurping noises. His long hair hung around the bowl as he used chopsticks to guide the noodles to his mouth and sucked them in. It was an opportune time but Malcolm hesitated to bring up the imminent changes about to occur in both their personal and business lives. Obviously, Ryuji would have to spend more time in L.A. if the TRinkets continued on this rise from shadowland. Malcolm, however, grew up in Muncie and enjoyed living here. The city itself wasn’t big, but it was large enough to support their business and it was close enough to bigger cities like Indianapolis and Cincinnati.
They first met as students at the Art Institute in Indianapolis. Although Ryuji was a decade older, Malcolm thought they had a lot in common: photography, duck hunting, et al. Time went by and they realized that in the competitive world of commercial photography, they’d be more successful as partners. Malcolm never worried about what Ryuji had done in his earlier life nor did he wonder what compelled him to move to a state with relatively few Japanese-Americans. All that mattered was they enjoyed life together. Now, however, all of that would probably change.
Suddenly, Ryuji looked up from his bowl. “If we finish the supermarket account, I could be gone a few days, right?”
“I don’t see why not. We don’t have anything else booked on the calendar except that hunting trip we planned, but hey, the Dogs are calling.”
Ryuji smirked. “I think that’s more like baying, as in ‘baying at the moon.’”
“It’s amazing, though, at how huge this is becoming. Hell, I thought the New York Times controlled the zeitgeist, but I don’t think the boys in their news room are manipulating the internet to obsess about the TRinkets.”
“It’s fucking crazy. Did you see that those pictures of Trink and his dog have gone viral?” Ryuji asked as he picked up the ramen bowl to finish what was left.
“I guess a gray ponytail is ‘in’ this year. It’s a little scary, though. Paparazzi are next, eh?”
Ryuji put down the bowl again and pointed his chopsticks at Malcolm. “Actually, weren’t those paparazzi who took the shots of Sophie? They caught her in the fucking court looking serious, professional, and so non-rock ‘n’ roll; hair in a friggin’ bun and wearing old-maid glasses.”
“It’s surprising that, so far, you’ve been immune.”
“That’s because no one gives a shit about Asians. We’re not individuals remember? We all look and think alike. Currently, we just focus on playing piano and getting accepted to Harvard. We’re only in the picture when there’s paranoia about devious forces lurking under the radar, like cybercrime by the Chinese. Overall, though, they’ve got Islam filling that role.”
“Or black whores like Sophie or hermaphrodites like Maddie,” Malcolm added.
“Now, you’re scaring me. Next, it’ll be gay, Asian photographers from the Midwest, huh? You’re right, the 24/7 cycle never sleeps.” Just then, Ryuji realized his playing in St. Louis could be the expediter of change.
“You can always resume your career once the current fifteen minutes of fame is over and we’re back in shadowland,” Malcolm said, reading Ryuji’s mind.
Ryuji smiled and said, “I’ve just designated you to be the group’s photographer.”
“And someday, I’ll have the key to the vault of the ‘Great Trinket Archive,’” Malcom joked.
“Remember, trinkets are items of little value. ‘Great’ isn’t usually an adjective used to describe them.”
“Sophie Choice Really Is a Court Reporter in Kansas,” read the headline of an article on a major news website. Julian looked at it and smiled. He was sure the pictures of her looking like the average middle-aged mother at work would slow the climb of the pay-for-view video the TRinkets put out over the Internet. Who wants to watch their mother performing on stage?
He quickly read the article and found out that Sophie, actually Michelle, had been working as a freelance court reporter for a little over ten years. Michelle was highly respected in the field for both her accuracy and speed. A woman interviewed for the piece, the one in charge of scheduling the court reporters for the county courthouse, stated that Ms. Williams was so reliable she was given top preference in the selection process.
“I had no inkling Michelle had been in that band. It’s amazing she was able to keep it a secret for so long,” the woman was quoted as saying.
“The career may be a secret, but not her long-term drug abuse and kinky lifestyle,” Julian wrote in the comment section.
On another laptop he wrote, “I’ve always wanted to get into her pants.”
He switched to his third machine and added, “You want to get into the pants of that? You’re one sick puppy.”
Back to his first machine he wrote, “Her life has been as much of a lie as her songs are meant to deceive her audience.”
For the next hour he kept up addressing and responding to comments that his three personas wrote. He would respond to any comments written by a different reader (or troll) as well. By the end of that session, he had written more than a hundred comments and had taken the focus from just Sophie to the dangers that a group like the TRinkets can inflict on the mores of our society; the dangers of marijuana on turning more people into becoming psychotic; and the dangers of legalization to both this country and the world.
George had written comments to the same article. Both he and Julian were unaware, but they ended up being the only people commenting on the article save for one other person who probably was a troll as well.
“That guy’s a pretty sick puppy,” George mumbled after reading a comment that was actually posted by Julian. He wrote in response, “You can bite my big, white dick.”
This went on for some time. After this, Julian jumped to an article that focused on Trink out dog walking, while George focused on articles about marijuana legalization. In the typical working day as a troll, both George and Julian would end up making a search to see if any update about Ryuji would appear. It was not until early November that both spotted a review about a Diamond Dog concert in St. Louis.
“Our man Ryuji’s in the news!” George called to Mavis.
“What did he do?” Mavis asked, getting up from her chair and walking over to George standing in front of his desk.
“He did a guest appearance at a Dog concert and played a couple of TRinket songs with them.”
Mavis stood next to her husband and looked at the article he found. “He played with dogs?”
“That’s the name of the band the new drummer and guitar player for the TRinkets are from: Diamond Dogs,” he explained as they looked at a photo of Ryuji playing bass that was embedded in the article.
“Please don’t write any crap about him, okay?” she asked with a pleading look on her still seductive face: crow’s feet and all.
“I’ll try to weave my web around the Dogs and spare your little darling,” he said as he started banging away on a laptop. An hour later, he left his desk to take a leak. While gone, Mavis jumped up to see if he kept the tab open. She noted the name, went back to her little desk in their bedroom and looked up the article to see what George wrote about Ryuji. While she read the comments, George called to her from the dinette area, in which his standing desk was located. “How’s your novel coming?”
“Not so well,” she replied as she scrolled down the vituperative comments George wrote. From what she could find, it appeared that George kept his promise. There were a few extremely negative comments aimed at Ryuji; mostly ones focusing on his poor skills as a musician, a couple about his tainted sex life with Sophie and the other band members, and even a few about Ryuji supposedly living with a male lover. These, though, did not appear to be written by George since she could surmise that the three major commenters were from his triad of machines and these were not their source. How many jerks are out there?
While they were preparing supper, Mavis asked, “Do you think someone is going to invade Ryuji’s private life like has been happening to some of the other members of the group?”
“With the insanely quick rise of their popularity, it’s only a matter of time, don’t you think?” he replied. “Why do you care so much?”
“I don’t know, I just think it’s sickening that a person’s sexual orientation and such is exposed for the world to see …”
“You’ve been reading my comments, haven’t you?”
Links to the previous chapters of Book Three
(https://steemit.com/fiction/@keniza/wackos-to-obliterate-book-three-chapter-1)
(https://steemit.com/fiction/@keniza/wackos-to-obliterate-book-three-chapter-2)
(https://steemit.com/fiction/@keniza/wackos-to-obliterate-book-three-chapter-3)
(https://steemit.com/fiction/@keniza/wackos-to-obliterate-book-three-chapter-4)
Copyright (©) by Kenneth Wayne