Too Loud

Uri said he wanted my help with his project. Since I'm okay with computers and tech gadgets, I thought, why not?

We worked out of his Manhattan studio apartment, which he shared with his sweet, demure girlfriend Miko. 

It wasn't long before even Miko's quiet countenance was rattled and she started up with an insistent whine--first about the sound and then about THE SOUND. See, he was trying to get a patent for this system which combined electronics, holographic science, virtual optical experience and sound volume through analogue and digital equalizer systems combined. And all controlled by eye movements. It just needed a little tweaking.

After I'd finished writing the basic code for the program, we needed to test the first phase --which very originally we named Phase 1. We thought of using my name--Prashan--but decided against it. Now, this program was based on the famous Wall of Sound by Phil Spector--so it had to be live. Loud, raw and unfiltered. We had to play music so freaking loud --just for a few minutes at a time, we figured, or we couldn't measure the decibels reached at any given point. Or any other decibel for that matter. Miko covered her ears and moaned again. The neighbors soon joined her. I've never seen eyes so wide in all my life.

"Stooooooop!" yelled Miko, covering her ears with her hands, face pale and frozen like the painting of Munch's The Scream. We couldn't hear her. She couldn't hear herself.

"What are you doing! I'm deaf! I've gone deaf!" She said running to cower in the Bathroom.

Less than an hour later, she came out again. I didn't even recognize her. Her usually long smooth hair was alive, electrified, all in knots, weaponized around a ghost-white face. She screamed against the sound so her head wouldn't implode and lunged at Uri with murder in her eyes. She tried over and over to stab at him with tweezers. She needed to get in close.

Having no way out, Uri decided l was okay as a shield for now. Acting like a good friend but more like a fool, I stretched my arms like a mother protecting her cub. I suffered several stab wounds as her anger turned on me. 

"You!" She screamed as she grabbed a sharpened pencil from the desk.

Miko flung herself at me, squinting her eyes like she'd just discovered a new continent. 

"It was you all along", she steamed. "This whole idea was yours...I just saw the bill...$16.367!" 

I could feel Uri's heart rate skyrocketing behind me as he grabbed at my shirt and pulled, backing us towards the door.

"No, no no no no! Not mine! Not my idea! But if you calm down, HE (italics) will explain the whole thing, Right, Uri?" I nodded encouragingly at the livid girl.

I thought it was a badger behind me as Uri answered with a squeak: "yepp, yepp, I will. Oh, l will..."

"You two are crazy! Look at you!... Look at him", she insisted, staring at me--like l was the devil himself.

But the sound had stopped.

And so she changed, melting into a puddle of exhaustion before me. She poured her quaking little body over the floor, her amassed hair becoming the last solid thing about her.

"$16K! You didn't tell me that!" I said to Uri.

"Well, we talked last week, remember? About what if I did this, what I would need?" He didn't sound so sure. He was miserable and nervous now.

"Yeah, but just to go buy it, dude? What if it doesn't work? Not only that, but what if l hadn't agreed to help you?"

"Then I would've hired you" 

We left it at that. I didn't know whether to hit him or hug him. 

Now, we are in deep. He's telling me about a partnership, stocks, patents and licenses, contracts and deals and I'm just listening as he gathers steam. Should l believe?

"Phil Spector would be proud!!!" Uri shouted out at last, eyes fixed upon me with a glazed, buggy defiance.

I decided that this declaration was Uri's final attempt to convince himself. My back was against the apartment door by then. I could so easily have turned, opened it, and left. Instead, l felt myself sliding down it until l sat on my haunches, trying to keep an aching head on my shoulders.

As soon as we could manage and felt safe doing so, we sneaked out of the apt and poured into the street with our lives somehow still living. 

"Time to do some thinking", I said to myself.

After a while, I said it to him. 

"Agreed, dude, agreed. I can't believe she reacted like that! I never saw her like that, Prashan, swear to God. That was nuts!! We almost died in there!" A still freaked out Uri said.

"Yep, we almost did, look at this mess, I'm bleeding all over the place."

"Shit!, You need to go to the hospital, man. Let's call an Uber and…"

"No, I'll be alright, they're not deep but they hurt like hell!" 

The gentleman at the bank couldn't believe our story, even though we only told him a part of it, not to freak him out too much. It was imperative that he'll give us the loan to get our project off the ground. Being personable is crucial and we thought by telling him what happened we would open the doors of his heart.

Instead, he opened the exit door of his bank. 

The noose is tightening and we're running out of time. He also has to pay the $16 Grand for the sound equipment before the interest alone eats him alive.

Facts 2, Ideas 0.

Plan B was rather simple. The family bank from the neighborhood. It wasn't a big one but our options were rather limited. At least he was known there as his entire family used it even before he was born.

What could go wrong?

"Gentlemen, good morning! Hello, Uri, how are you?" The bank official said, smiling broadly.

Straight to the point, 'no what happened-to-me-story', no drama and the wife is fine. 

In less than ten minutes we were out of there, including handshaking times. 

"Yes!!!!, We did it!"...Son of a gun, we did it!!" A happy Uri shouted while punching the sky repeatedly with roundhouses air blows. 

"I can't believe it. Finally, we got a break, finally!!!" I said, smiling for the first good occasion in a long, long time. 

Miko was on the deck of the cruise ship basking comfortably in the sun when someone softly said: "Madame, your morning paper" 

It was then, barely two years after that whole incident, that she found out that her husband, Uri and Prashan had won the Nobel Prize for Physics for their Wall of Sound 2.0 science achievement aptly named "Phases". 

Sometimes, perseverance pays off in remarkable ways.