Three Weeks Before

God was at work that fateful New Year's Eve. It had been decided ages ago that this particular New Year's Eve would fall on a Thursday but God used it to change Olivia Reeve Keller's life. Ultimately for good but there would soon be times when it would feel like for the worst.

It was circumstance that found Anton in Boston on that fateful New Year's Eve. And yet God used it to set in motion a trajectory that would lead our protagonist down a path she had only ever dreamed of.

Olivia Reeve Keller would come to prove herself to be an exceptional person, with a strong work ethic and an enormous amount of grit and determination, but her determination had nothing to do with Anton's quick stop in the city. Only divine intervention.

Anton Kaufman was born in New Jersey, just outside Manhattan. He could see the skylines from his bedroom window and spent his childhood dreaming of the big city.

His dad worked for a telephone company that had moved him and his brand new wife from their hometown of Albany, New York to New Jersey to raise a family. Anton's grandmother declared herself too old to move at a ripe age of sixty-five and declared that her son and his children would just have to come to visit her every Christmas.

And visit her they did. Every year. Without fail. Anton only knew Christmas in all it's Albany glory. New Year's Eve, too. He had spent many a midnight at the local pubs, ringing in the New Year. But not this year.

Anton had a recording session scheduled for New Year's Day at his studio in Brooklyn at the unholy hour of 10 AM. But the thought of the crowds filling the city's streets, all crying out as the clock ran down, inspired him to make a pit stop.

It seemed coincidence that Jon Baxter's, founder and CEO of Monstar Records, main source of storage for the Boston offices of said record label was the original studio he had built the label out of; an old building hidden deep in Boston's South End neighborhood. What was once a working studio with an apartment overhead was now storage and an old couch that folded out.

Anton's plan was to take a train from Albany to Boston, spend one evening digging through storage to find the equipment he had been meaning to move to his studio in Brooklyn, catch a few hours of sleep on the crooked fold-out bed and make an early 6 AM train down to New York. Simple. Easy. And not at all what ended up happening.

Anton's stomach was what reminded him of the time. When it grumbled for the third time, he finally stood up straight and winced as his back sighed with relief. All around him were boxes half-open, their contents strewn across the floor. And still, he had not found his synthesizer. The old bass guitar with that special resonance had been properly stored in a closet and easy to find. But some intern must have mistaken his hand-made synthesizer for another regular old keyboard. And goodness knows they had enough those.

Anton declared the evening a loss and made a note to check one last spot tomorrow morning before heading to the train station. Taking a quick fifteen minutes to straighten up as much of the mess he had made as he could, Anton finally headed upstairs to find something to eat.

The fridge was not only empty but turned off and dormant. Had been for years. No one had actively lived in that apartment for almost ten years. Anton grabbed his jacket and rushed downstairs to see if he could find somewhere still open at 11 pm on New Year's Eve.

It was a blend of circumstance and divine intervention as well as Olivia's refusal to take no for an answer that the well-loved South End coffee shop, Hank's Cafe, was still open at 11 pm on New Year's Eve. Olivia had begged her boss, and proprietor, Hank, to keep the place open, declaring it a special occasion that their weekly music night should fall on New Year's Eve, convinced they would get a flood of people there to perform and ring in the New Year.

Hank's was a neighborhood institution. He was staying open for the community. And for one outsider who was just passing through town.

Neither Hank nor Olivia were even aware of Anton's existence at this time but Hank had found he had a hard time saying no to Olivia's business ideas and requests. Most of the time they turned out good. He had learned to trust her instincts over the past three years she had worked for him. And so Hank's was opened until 1 AM New Year's Eve.

The place was packed when Anton spotted their warm glow shining out onto the dark cold city street. The need for food and warmth overcame the desire to avoid crowds and so Anton entered, even after seeing the crowd of people through the front windows.

It was as if he were back in Albany with his cousins. Christmas decorations were everywhere and live music and chatter filled the air. Anton pushed through to the counter, ordered a sandwich then slipped away to the only vacant bar-stool at the end of the bar near the kitchen doors to eat in peace.

Across the room, a constant rotation of different performers made their way up to a small stage, behind what Anton could tell was a microphone bought online, connected to an amp that looked like it had seen better days. Some were good. Most were bad. A few treated it as open mic night at karaoke and were booed off stage before their rendition of a Celine Dion song could even start.

A young woman with a clipboard underneath her arm clapped the final performer offstage.

"Alright, guys. I'm gonna close us out for the night. Hope you don't mind."

She was met with enthusiast cheers. Everyone in the room stopped talking, eating, drinking, and turned to her. She pulled out a beautiful Taylor guitar, it's golden wood shining in the warm light of the Christmas lights that made up the stage's backdrop. She swung a beaten, worn leather strap around her shoulders and took a seat on a bar-stool she had placed in front of the mic.

Anton had kept eating through all this but forgot his sandwich completely when she opened her mouth to sing. No one said a word. Out of respect and awe. Her voice soared over the heads of her audience, it's sweetness relieving hidden depths and power when her song took her from high notes down to her lower range.

It was only on her second song that Anton started listening to her words. And then he was struck dumb all over again.

The place erupted into roaring applause that shook the walls of the cafe, their cheers rattling the coffee pots and threatening to burst through the windows and out into the night. Anton had no choice but to join in on the standing ovation.

She stood and gave a humble bow, her face red and her eyes shining.

"Alright! That's enough!" She finally had to cry to get them to quiet down.

"Here comes the count down!"

And with her, the whole room counted down, "10! 9! 8! 7! 6! 5! 4! 3! 2! 1! Happy New Year!"

She was already singing Auld Lyne Syne and got the whole room to join in when the cheers subsided. Anton found himself singing along.

The cafe slowly started to clear once the calendar had turned and a new year had begun. But Anton stayed at his seat, watching her, his eyebrows low, his brain whirling a million miles an hour. He had so many questions, comments, compliments; he forgot all about his early morning train and stayed behind to get a chance to talk to her.

Olivia wasn't scheduled to work New Year's Eve. She stayed behind after the music night had ended to help clean up because her younger sister, Dani, was at a party and her mom was hosting an all-night Bingo festival at the church. Olivia had nowhere else to go.

Anton watched her as she laughed and smiled with the people who came up to her once she got off the homemade stage. With the room emptying, Anton could tell that it was a wooden pallet, with planks hammered on top, polished to a deep mahogany color.

One of the servers took his plate without him noticing but that was only because they had asked him three times if he was finished and he never answered them. He hadn't even noticed.

He was focused on two things. One: How to get to know more about this performer and her history in music. And two: thinking of a fake name he could give her. If he told her Anton Kaufman, she might recognize, maybe even have seen it in the liner notes from her favorite album by her favorite artists. The last thing Anton needed was for her to know exactly who he was and what he did. He wanted her honest answers to his questions.

"You were good."

He spoke when she approached the kitchen doors with a tray full of dishes. She smiled at him, pausing before pushing into the kitchen.

"Thanks! And thanks for coming. Hold on, give me a sec."

She held up a finger and disappeared into the kitchen only to reappear with an apron tied around her waist.

"Can I get you anything?"

"I'll take a latte."

The train set to depart in only a few short hours was far from his mind.

"Coming right up."

She laughed and joked with other workers, patrons, anyone she came in contact with while she made Anton his coffee.

"Here you go."

She slid a comically large mug across the counter towards him.

"Are you working? Would you care to join me?"

Anton nodded to the empty bar-stool beside him. Olivia responded by leaning against the counter on her elbows, staying behind the counter.

"It's my night off. I'm just sticking around to help clean up."

"Do you work here full-time? I'm Andy, by the way. Andy Smith."

Olivia met his outstretched hand with a firm shake from her own.

"Olivia Keller. Nice to meet you, Andy. And yeah. It helps pay for my other job."

Olivia laughed at the look of confusion on Andy's face as if this were an old joke she uttered often.

"I'm a musician. This job helps pay for equipment and my back-up band."

"Do you get a lot of gigs?"

"Some. This is my most consistent, Thursday nights here. But I'm not getting paid for it. It just helps with exposure. I've managed to make friends with a few venue managers in town and they slip me onto their line-ups when they can."

"How long have you been playing?"

"Professionally? About two years. Guitar since I was five years old. Piano since I was seven."

Anton's eyes widened and Olivia nodded at the impressed look on his face. It was a familiar sight.

"Music's kind of everything to me. I don't have much else. I wasn't very good at school. I loved choir and English but that was it. College was never my end goal. It wasn't until I had graduated and found I had all this free time that I decided to commit."

"Commit to what, exactly?" Anton asked.

"Music. Making it my career. Somehow. Anyway possible. Even if it's forcing my boss to do music nights every Thursday so I have someplace to play every week. It doesn't pay much but I love it."

"The two songs you played. Were those yours?"

"Yup. Single writing credit. All mine."

"That's impressive."

Olivia shrugged like it was no big deal but Anton had written for enough people and known writers who wrote for other people to know that someone with Olivia's kind of voice, paired with her songwriting abilities, was a rarity.

"It just felt like a natural thing to do. I can't afford to buy anyone else's work. I needed songs to perform if I wanted to do this seriously. And I always kind of goofed around with writing poems and lyrics. I just had to commit. It took a while for them to get good enough that I wasn't embarrassed to show them to someone else."

"That's pretty normal. It took me ten years to finally admit to myself I could write."

Anton wished he could take back the words as soon as they had slipped out of his mouth. Olivia's eyes lit up.

"Are you a songwriter too? Just for fun or what?"

Anton shrugged to keep up the appearance that he was no one special.

"Here and there. I don't do it as much as I used to."

"What do you do now instead?"

"I'm a sound engineer." It was the closest thing to the truth he could think of on the spot.

"Cool! Where do you work?"

"I do a lot of freelance."

"So like theaters, studios, that sort of thing."

"Yeah. Something like that."

"Maybe you can teach me. I learned enough to make my own CD but as far as the serious mixing, I am a complete novice."

"You made your own CD?"

Anton had given up wiping the impressed smirk off his face awhile ago. He was permanently impressed.

"Yeah! Here."

Olivia moved down the counter to the cash register, grabbed something, and immediately returned, passing the homemade CD, cover and all, over to Anton.

Anton inspected it, both sides, taking his time to take in every detail. The tracklist was long. A solid fourteen songs. And there, in tiny script at the bottom of the backside was written: "All Songs Written, Recorded and Produced by Olivia Keller."

"You did this yourself?"

Olivia nodded.

"I got some friends to play different instruments for me. I can not play the drums to save my life and I didn't want it to just be guitar and piano."

"How much?"

Anton moved to grab his wallet but Olivia waved him off.

"Free! Please. Keep it. I already feel bad that Hank made me charge for the ones we sell here. I'd give them out on the street if I could. As long as someone was listening to it."

"Thanks."

Olivia looked up and around them. The cafe was almost empty and the clock was nearly 1 am. Anton had never even touched his latte.

"Oh. Wow. It's late. Sorry. I didn't realize. You probably have places to be."

Then Anton remembered his early morning train. But he was too excited to care.

"What are your next gigs coming up?"

Olivia had to think for a moment.

"Well, I'm always performing here. Every Thursday night. And I've got this women's conference in Jersey in a few weeks. That's it for right now. I just finished a whole bunch of shows as an opener for Christmas showcases here in town."

"So every Thursday?"

Olivia nodded.

"Every Thursday. Haven't missed one yet."

"Good to know. I really should get going but it was very nice to meet you, Olivia Keller."

Olivia met his shake one last time, laughing at his formality.

"You too, Andy Smith."

"Happy New Year."

"You too."

*

Olivia only thought about Andy Smith two more times. She asked Sue, her vocal coach, and friend if she knew the name but she had never heard of him. But Anton thought about Olivia almost every day. He never stopped listening to her album. He listened to it on repeat on the train down to New York. He played it for his producer friend that was in town to help him with a project. She loved it too.

He only had to wait until he was finished for the day New Year's Day to call Jon Baxter in LA.

"Baxter. What's up, Kaufman?"

"How soon can you make it out to Boston? I've got someone you're gonna wanna meet."