-backed up for a new line about carpet crawling, finished with your homework of the next music-
When the octopus finished, he handed the instrument back to the man, who in turn handed it to it’s owner, now wide-mouthed like the kind of fish the octopus would crawl across carpet for. The man collected the $200 and noticed no thinning of the line. This always happened and for the monetary gain of it the man was pleased, but he mostly liked the con and now these suckers were only lining up to see what the sea creature would do with their instrument.
This is another reason why you choose a bar across the street from a concert hall, the man thought, it takes longer to run out of instruments. With that the man motioned the bartender for another scotch and the suckers clamored to pay for it.
The Trumpet fish melted into the Playbill wallpaper revealing the next sucker in line. The man was not thrilled to see it was a violinist. He had known the octopus long enough to know it’s sounds, and the whine that would follow the sight of a violin on outstretched arm bordered on disgustingly indulgent. It was his weapon of choice in the war on breviloquence, and rightfully the man feared a twenty minute concerto. This time the man’s expression of warning would pivot on his neck like a snakehead if it had to- he’d hunt down the cold ebony marbles of the octopus and turn them to doe eyes.
Acknowledged, the whine stopped abruptly, but the tentacles continued to tremble with anticipation. The poor internal somatotopic map of its body was the octopus’ worst enemy and most obvious poker tell. Its wiring was alien madness. With 2/3rds of its nervous system split between its arms and a complete lack of a neurological feedback path to its brain, its thoughts traveled like the ripples of an earthquake and its lies were often betrayed by the aftershock. When the man directed the octopus’s gaze to its scheming tentacles the sound wound back up and quickly lowered a couple of octaves. The man recognized this as the sound the octopus made when it was fooled and bitter and betrayed.
The arms wound down and the bitter octopus waited now like a labrador tired of agreeing to the particulars of a trick it had preformed time and again.
Satisfied, the man handed over the violin and the octopus immediately set about tuning the E to E flat. This meant Danse Macabre to the man, which was fine with him. It wasn’t his favorite piece but the violin part was relatively short, especially if the octopus jumped right to the modulating solo near the end as he had in the past. When the man dropped his guard to scope out future concerns within the line of suckers the octopus quietly abandoned the scordatura and returned the instrument to its standard tuning.
The man was sharp, but overconfident enough in his upperhand that he often left the coals of the last situation with just enough heat to get a fire going again. This complimented the signal-pause of the octopus perfectly, and if it wasn’t for all the residual public battles it produced, this cadence would paint them as charismatic as Butch and Sundance.
By the time the man had remembered the order of the octopus’s loyalties it was too late. He winced at the bravura of rapidly descending notes, the Allegro molto appassionato of Mendelssohn’s godamm 30 minute violin concerto.
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