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01 . . .
Kyle is immediately struck by how hot their new guest is, which means he has to immediately mutter about it to Joey.
“I hope he stays. I love a good - what is it, like - manly man? He looks like he could fix all the broken shelves in my kitchen.” (Of which there are many, because Kyle lives in a shitty, shitty apartment.) “He would tell me I’m bad at fixing my own shelves and I would tell him thank you, I wonder what part he sings oh god oh god he’s coming over here.”
Joey, the only other bari under the age of 30, rolls his eyes at Kyle. “Hi,” he says to the guest, who’s shorter than both of them, with long hair, and… incredibly muscular up close, oh god, Kyle is going to be useless all night. “I’m Joey. What’s your name?”
In a gruff voice that makes Kyle need to bite his lip, the guest answers, “Roy Chapel.”
02 . . .
“I didn’t expect him to come back,” Ryan comments to Jackson at the afterglow, over beers that Jackson clearly hates. Ryan doesn’t know why he keeps drinking them. Maybe it’s a gender thing? Guys drink beer therefore Jackson has to if he wants to pass, or something? “He looks too… I dunno, cool for something like this.”
Most of the guys in their chorus are either retirees who have been doing it forever, or young guys within ten years of their college graduation. Roy Chapel is squarely in between those two camps, and certainly hasn’t been doing barbershop forever. Most of the other younger guys are queer, like Jackson, or straight but nerdy, like Ryan, who plays an unhealthy amount of online chess and also Magic: The Gathering. Roy Chapel, on the other hand, seems like he walked straight off a construction site and into the rehearsal space.
From the lead section, Ryan and Jackson also have an excellent view of Roy’s face, and he grimaces every time there’s a particularly cheesy seventh chord.
“He thinks he’s too cool for us, too,” Jackson adds, and then uses a phrase that betrays him as the same kind of terminally online trans guy as the ones Ryan played D&D with in college: “doesn’t he know that cringe is dead?”
03 . . .
When it’s a young guy auditioning, Ryan and Theo run the audition. When it’s an older guy, Cole and Mac do it. Roy, however, isn’t really either; unsure what to do, Theo waves his hand at Mac, as Roy’s section leader, and lets the old guys take the lead.
Roy sings his memorized bari part perfectly fine as far as Theo can tell. He’s too used to tenor, where he’s always singing the highest note; bari parts are all over the place and he can’t follow them. For his solo song, he sings a country song about a breakup. It’s nice enough, it suits his voice. When they present him with Kyle’s compiled list of “Ten Teachable Tags” and tell him they want him to look at “Lone Prairie,” Roy squints at the sheet music like he’s never seen it before and mutters, “one of these days someone will tell me what a tag is.” But he picks up the tag after one try.
When he leaves, Theo looks at Ryan, Cole, and Mac and shrugs. “He’s a good singer,” is all he says.
“And we need baritones,” adds Cole, “especially before Division Convention.” The all-important performance coming up next month, where they compete against other barbershop choirs for a spot at Districts.
So it’s an easy decision, to open the door to the side room and interrupt Roy from where he and David are in an intense conversation about… going camping…? and say, “welcome to the Rose City Ringers’ newest member, Roy!”
04 . . .
There’s something about Roy Chapel that doesn’t add up.
Jackson would never admit it to any of the guys, but he does his fair share of Insta-stalking. Roy Chapel isn’t online anywhere , except as a hashtag on a sports fanpage. Apparently he played professional baseball about five years ago, for all of one season, in a minor league team over in New England. At the time, Jackson had only made note of this to mention to Theo, who loves baseball.
But that hadn’t been the only weird thing about Roy Chapel. Something that Jackson will admit to his guys is that he has a somewhat encyclopedic knowledge of weird obscure music, and Roy Chapel is a dead ringer for a country singer called Kenneth Crane who, like Roy Chapel the baseball player, had surfaced very briefly (this time in Tennessee) before disappearing. The first week, when he’d stuck around for afterglow (having muttered something about “it’s free beer” to anyone who so much as looked in his direction), his voice on the tag Justin had taught him sounded identical to the recording of Kenneth Crane that Jackson had found later.
When he’d told Ryan this, Ryan had joked that maybe Roy was in witness protection, or something. Privately, as someone who is deeply, deeply envious of Roy’s physique, Jackson considers that maybe Roy had done some kind of murder himself.
05 . . .
Justin is wholly delighted to spot Roy-the-new-guy ahead of him on his walk to rehearsal. He’d call out to him, except Roy is deep in conversation with two other people. A tall Black guy in a scarf that Kyle would totally wear to rehearsal, and a skinny blonde woman dressed like a goth acrobat.
Justin is not usually an eavesdropper, but there has been enough gossip about Roy in the Ringers-under-30 groupchat that he finds himself half-jogging, as surreptitiously as he can, up to the three of them, until he can catch what they’re saying.
“I still don’t think this is the best method of approach,” Roy is muttering to the Black guy, in the same gruff tone of voice he uses to address everyone at rehearsal. Maybe Roy doesn’t hate everyone there and this is just how he talks. “There has got to be a better way for me to blend in. I don’t want to wear their stupid clip-on ties.”
Justin is offended. He is going to steam those ties before they go to Division Competition in a week and a half.
“It’s the best way to keep the target distracted on the night of the job,” his friend answers. “There’ll be the afterparty. He’ll be drunk. Just keep talking to him until Parker--shit.” He cuts himself off as his phone rings. “Parker, we gotta go . Eliot…” And who the hell is Eliot? “Just have fun.”
Roy (or Eliot?) grimaces. A few moments later, Justin grins to himself, because he hears Roy humming the bari part to one of their competition songs. The guy is growing to love barbershop, whether he wants to admit it or not.
06 . . .
Roy is a great addition to the baritone section. It makes Mac happy to see the chorus growing in such a way, with so many great singers, especially right before a big performance. So many young guys, too, which will certainly impress the other choirs. Without cool, viral groups like the Westminster Chorus or Voices of Gotham in their district, most of the choruses in the Evergreen District are predominantly older men.
Nowhere is this more obvious than in sectionals. Half of the baritone section are young guys now; Kyle, Joey, and now Roy. Roy doesn’t joke around the whole time the way that Kyle and Joey do–he’s a bit older than them–but he takes in everything with a sense of wonder that reminds Mac of when he first discovered barbershop, back in his thirties, with the Quaker City Voices.
Even without proper singing posture, the kind that Theo and the director try very hard to drill into them, Roy sounds great. He’s clearly been using the learning tracks! And even though he sits apart from everyone while they rehearse in the basement of the building, he blends so well. The baritones sound like such a cohesive section, and Mac is so proud.
07 . . .
Thank goodness that Roy still had room in his car, because Cole’s catalytic converter had gotten stolen , of all things, the day before the convention. He had texted Cole an address to a brewpub in one of the nicer parts of Portland.
“He told me he was a consultant when I asked,” Theo mutters to Jackson, who stands next to Theo and Cole on the curb, waiting for Roy to pull the car around. Jackson’s mouth twists.
“Maybe he consults for the restaurant,” Cole suggests.
“Actually,” says Roy from the street, making Jackson startle, “I own it. And I cook.” Funny. Cole hadn’t noticed the car coming.
It’s a nice car. Newer than Cole would have expected from a guy like Roy. But still functional, none of the flashy stuff that Cole’s sons have in their cars. Overall, it fits with Cole’s image of the man. Sensible.
08 . . .
As the only other guy in the chorus between the ages of 30 and 60, David has naturally been very curious about Roy. Is he a dad? Does he have anyone at home? What does he do for a living? Roy has avoided most of his questions and only really chats with David about hobbies. But David’s curiosity has now really been piqued, after day two of Divisions.
Roy had shown up ten minutes late to call, looking angry and apologizing under his breath. His hair was a mess. David met eyes with him from where the basses had congregated and noticed a smudge of… was that blood ?... on the side of Roy’s hand. Roy had met David’s eyes, frowned, and wiped his hand on the side of his dress pants. His shoes were scuffed in an odd pattern, like he’d dropped something sharp on them.
The performance had gone fine, but Roy hadn’t stuck around to watch the rest of the choir competition, nor had he gone to lunch with the rest of them, nor had he come back to watch the quartet finals that night. No one knew where he was staying the night, but he wasn’t in the AirBNB with the younger bass clef singers, and none of the others had seen him in any of the hotels.
And yet, here he was at the afterglow, not drinking for the first afterglow David’s ever seen him at, and doggedly singing tags with the same guy.
David doesn’t know his name. He’s older, with an FBI sort of haircut. If David remembers right, he was in one of the other choruses, maybe the one from Washington?
He keeps an eye on Roy and the other guy all night. They sing tag after tag and Roy keeps pressing beers into the other man’s hand. David sings “Cornbread” with them and notes that Roy is wearing some kind of Bluetooth earpiece.
And then, abruptly, Roy puts a hand to his ear, says he needs to take a call, and walks straight out of the hotel lobby.
Weird, weird guy.
09 . . .
There are news vans at the hotel.
Cameras. Big boom microphones on sticks. Not exactly what Joey was expecting to see when he drove there to pick up Justin and Ryan and take them back to Portland.
“What the fuck is up with that?” he asks them as Ryan slides into the passenger seat. “If they were covering Divisions, they would have been here yesterday–”
“--And why would they be covering Divisions,” Ryan finishes. “Not even local news cares about us.”
“I wish they would,” says Justin wistfully. “But Joey, I don’t know. They kept asking if we were part of the Seattle choir.”
Joey hums and fiddles with the radio dials in his car, which he hardly ever uses, until he hits on what is hopefully a local news station.
“--indicted today on charges of defrauding tenants and knowingly impersonating state agencies, all according to information made public by he himself on social media site FaceBook last night.”
Justin’s mouth drops open. “Someone got arrested ? I guess I did hear sirens this morning?”
When the news anchor drops the name, Ryan and Joey exchange looks. “That’s the guy Roy Chapel was following around last night,” Ryan says slowly.
Joey shrugs. “Guy’s fucking weird.”
“I wonder if he had something to do with the arrest.” Justin seems contemplative.
“Wouldn’t put it past him,” says Joey. “Like I said. Guy’s fucking weird.”