Brass and strings.

As the glass elevator went up you could hear the sound of strings, the chords and vibrations in the wood.
The building was pretty much all glass but there was also a lot of metal too, railings and columns. It was mostly all offices and a big balcony-like hole in the middle that looked down into the lower floor.

He wasn’t really sure why they were there or what that building was, but he knew he was going to have to translate. When they got to the counter the guitar music had long stopped playing, they were not talking anymore.

Instead, there was the sound of a brass saxophone coming from the lady at the counter.
They lined up and waited for their turn, in the meantime his dad explained why they were there, but he still didn’t understand. His plan was to make strings into brass and brass to strings and nothing else.

When their turn came, the sweet friendly brass notes from the lady at the counter made him start to sweat a little. She addressed his dad first but with a nervous look, his dad looked down at him for a little help. Quickly he threw a couple of notes together to answer, and she very calmly replied, to him this time, he looked at his dad who looked even more lost now and repeated the sax notes on strings for him.

This went around a couple of times, he didn’t really know what most of the notes meant but he understood enough to play them from brass to strings but his dad seemed to understand them as soon as they were strings.

At one point though the questions got easy and with the little brass he knew it became a back and forth with the lady at the counter, he was actually surprised he was understanding and could reply. His dad put a hand on his shoulder and with one of the very few brass notes, he knew he paused the conversation so that he could also understand.

He stopped the saxophone notes a little embarrassed that he forgot his mission and told his dad on strings about the questions, address, names, and phone numbers, he assured his dad if there was anything important he would ask him before saying any final notes.

She started to put information on the computer, so there was no more saxophone music playing, except for everyone else around them. When she was done she handed him an envelope that then he handed to his dad, they walked back through the hallway to the glass elevator. He then pushed the button to call it, his dad was playfully repeating notes in saxophone but they were just a mixture of notes on strings.

He then would play the correct note for his dad to listen and repeat, but this would go back and forth so much, without any success, that he would even forget what the right note was supposed to sound like so they laughed and went back to strings as the doors of the elevator closed.