75 Godiva, Friday afternoon

[vdistinctive]

Eliot had handwavily spent the week looking up tips for teaching guitar. He was self-taught, himself -- other than the tips he'd gotten from Kaye-Lynn during his very brief tenure as a country music sensation -- and it was a skill he'd picked up young enough that he didn't 100% remember how he'd gone about it. It was good to review some of the bare basics for himself, and besides, it'd been forever since he and Kathy had had their regular teaching sessions. He'd rather missed them.

He'd picked up a fancy auto-tuner so they wouldn't have to spend their whole first lesson on tuning by ear -- they could cover that later -- and a variety of beginners chord books in different musical styles, since he wasn't sure yet what kind of music she'd want to play. Probably not the early American standards or country-western classics that he'd first learned. Though he'd probably try to sneak some Hank Williams or Johnny Cash in there somewhere.

He was, in fact, warming up with some Johnny Cash while he waited for Kathy to arrive. He really had been everywhere, after all.

[ooc: for Kathy and the partners, though if anyone else has a burning desire to visit, that's okay too]

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[spin_kick_snap]

After meeting up with Dante to at Groovy Tunes, Kathy made her way over to Eliot's place, brand-new acoustic guitar in hand. "Look what I got!" she announced, holding it out for Eliot's inspection. "Isn't it pretty?"

And, more than that, quality. Jono took care to stock quality merchandise and Dante hadn't been about to let her walk out with anything sub-par.

[vdistinctive]

That was the Kathiest accoustic Eliot had ever seen we're assuming. "Very nice. Grab yourself a drink if you like, and let's see what we can make it do."

And don't mind the excitable dog hopping around in circles and tripping over herself because Kathy! Kathy yay! Happy Kathy! Look, it was Kathy!

Val would greet her friends that way even if they just went out for the paper or something, but she really hadn't seen Kathy in a little while. . . .

[spin_kick_snap]

Kathy didn't have quite the same levels of enthusiasm that Val did, the incident in the night still stark in her memories. She didn't think she'd go off and devour Val in a fit of zombie hunger, but she hadn't exactly been around a lot of animals to test this in the interim.

"Hi girl," she said, reaching out to gingerly scratch behind Val's ear. "How've you been, huh?"

Getting to the kitchen was an interesting challenge when a dog kept trying to interpose herself between you and literally everything else.

[vdistinctive]

Kathy you tease! That ear scratch barely gave Val time to cover your entire hand with scritches!

"Val," Eliot called, spotting Kathy's trouble right away. "Down, girl."

Val stopped where she was and looked back at him, head cocked to a confused angle. But! Kathy! Then he patted the front of the chair by his legs and she came running over to get Eliot head-scritches instead.

[spin_kick_snap]

Kathy immediately felt both relieved and guilty. Turning down puppy affection was hard, but she was still so worried about accidentally hurting Val.

But still, she'd missed the weight and warmth of a puppy pushing against her legs. (Shh, Eliot. Val would always be a puppy.)

She got herself some juice, then rejoined Eliot in the other room, picking up her guitar again so she wouldn't be tempted to call Val over and deliver on those long-awaited Kathy scritches.

[vdistinctive]

Val looked from Kathy to Eliot, all big puppy eyes. (Yeah, Eliot was not going to argue with Val being a permanent puppy.) "You gonna let us work?" Eliot asked her. "Or do you need spend some time in your crate and calm down?"

Val gave a big puppy sigh, making her lips poof out with the breath, then settled in on the floor to watch.

"Good girl." He looked back over to Kathy. "Alright. First thing, let's get that sucker tuned up."

[spin_kick_snap]

Val's life was the hardest. Poor little girl with no one to give her all the scritches she so clearly deserved.

"Okay," Kathy said, holding her guitar in her lap. That much, at least, she could do correctly. "I have to twist the pegs, right?"

She didn't know how much or how tight, but she knew that pegs needed twisting!

[vdistinctive]

"That's the general idea, yeah," Eliot said. He held up the auto-tuner, then demonstrated it on his own guitar. "We can cover the specifics of how later, when you get a better ear for how things're supposed to sound. For now: short cut."

[spin_kick_snap]

"I appreciate short cuts!" Kathy said, reaching for the autotuner to try on her own. "I'm supposed to loosen the strings every time I put her away, right? To prevent warping or something?"

[vdistinctive]

"It definitely won't hurt," Eliot said. "Even if you don't, you're gonna want to retune any time you pick it back up. Just changes in weather and temperature will pull it out of tune."

[spin_kick_snap]

"But what if it's been sitting in my nice, climate-controlled bedroom for awhile?" Kathy asked. "Or does, like, ambient humidity and barometric pressure and stuff count, too?"

[vdistinctive]

"You're talkin' about a delicate balance between wood and metal." Or vinyl, but Eliot was happy just assuming everyone went with metal ones. "Everything is gonna affect it."

[spin_kick_snap]

"Makes sense," Kathy said, nodding. "Loosen the strings whenever I set her down, okay." Beat. "...Do you have a notebook handy? And a pen? I should have brought one, but I didn't think."

Because if you thought Katherine Hana Li was about to learn something and not take notes, you were a damned fool.

[vdistinctive]

"Um." Eliot really should have seen this coming. She'd taken notes about knife fighting. And yet. "Yeah, lemme see if I can find one."

He got up to go sift through a book shelf on the other side of the room.

"You know you're mostly gonna just wanna develop muscle memory and habits here, right? I don't really know a lot of theory."

[spin_kick_snap]

"I'm gonna go to the library and borrow some books," Kathy said. "Maybe poke Dante for pointers, too. But remembering everything I'm supposed to do is a good first step to me doing it."

[vdistinctive]

Eliot nodded. "Fair enough." His learning style and Kathy's were very different, but they already knew that.

He located a small reporter's notebook left over from . . . some con, somewhere . . . and a pen, and tossed them to Kathy. Val jumped to her feet, ears perked up, but settled back down when Eliot went back over to his chair. "A scuffed up guitar kinda works for my whole music style, but if you want to keep yours pristine, you can probably find a guide for it online or something."

[spin_kick_snap]

"Because you like old, gutteral music about broken down cars and lonely towns where your love used to live until they done run off in the factory layoffs," Kathy teased, as if she hadn't been the only other person in Eliot's life who had known who was going to be at the CMAs.

In fairness, though, that was pop-country.

[vdistinctive]

"Yup, songs exactly like that," Eliot agreed. He played a couple jangly chords that could come right out of the Hank Williams Jr. discography, then nudged the auto-tuner in her direction. "But the basics should be the same, even if you're lookin' to play something new and flashy all about how much you love going to clubs and wearing popular brand name clothes and not actually knowing anything about Mick Jagger."

Honestly, even Eliot's five-or-more year out of date knowledge of dance-pop was fairly impressive, considering.

[spin_kick_snap]

"I only dance with boys who look like him," Kathy said. "I keep hoping they'll call me, maybe, on Friday."

Those songs should all be old enough for Eliot to recognize!

[vdistinctive]

"Hot damn," Eliot responded, dry as a bone. "I bet then you call the police and a fireman."

[spin_kick_snap]

Kathy beamed at him with pride. Modern music! "It's a night I won't remember," she promised, "but I'm the one they can't forget."

Which was true enough in its own way.