I followed him into the kitchen and gazed at the modern appliances and the rich cabinets. When he ran water into a cup and immediately dipped in a tea bag. I gasped.
"You forgot to heat the water," I said.
He laughed.
"No, this faucet gives boiling water
immediately."
"Really?" I took the mug and felt the heat around it.
"C'mon, I'll show you my studio," he said proudly and led me back through the hall to a door. We went down a short flight of stairs to a large room with light oak panelling and wall-to-wall coffeecolored Berber carpet. The piano was off to the left. On the right was a bar and a pool table, a built-in television set to the left of the bar, and a small sitting area consisting of a settee and two oversized chairs, one a full recliner.
Against the wall on shelves were neatly stacked tapes. records and CDs. below them was Balwin's sound system.
"These amplifiers are four hundred watts," he began, beaming with pride. "I've got multitrack recording capability with nonlinear track mixing and editing as well as digital mixing on this sixteen-track, twenty-four bit studio recording workstation."
One look at my face brought a laugh to his.
"Sorry," he said. "I get carried away sometimes and talk the talk."
"I don't know much about these things."
"It's all right. The main thing I'm trying to say is we can produce a CD of your singing if we have to, but whatever we record, it will be very high quality. Just in case they ask for something like that."
"I don't have money for this. Balwin,"
He laughed again.
You don't need any money, Ice. I'm taking care of all that."
"Why?"
He looked flustered for a moment, glanced at his piano, and then smiled and said. "'Because I love music and I love to hear it done well and you do it better than anyone at our school," he explained.
Embarrassed by his explanation, he moved quickly to the piano and scooped up some sheet music.
"Look these over. I sifted through my collection to pick out what I thought you might like to do and what you could do well," he said.
I put the mug of tea down on a small table and went through his suggestions. One brought a quick smile to my face. It was Daddy's favorite. "The Birth of the Blues." He loved Frank Sinatra's rendition. I pulled it out of the stack.
"What about this?" I asked.
He nodded.
"That's the one I would have chosen for you. too," Balwin said. "Let's tinker with it."
He went to the piano and began to play. I didn't need the sheet for it. I had sung it enough times, singing along with Daddy's Sinatra recording.
"Jump in any time you want." Baiwin said.
I did. He played to the end and then nodded.
"Good," he said. "but you're going to do a lot better before we're done."
I laughed at his tone.
"You sound like Mr. Glenn talking to our chorus."