Circles Collide

Chapter 17: The Best Vacation

San Luis Obispo County, California

July 3, 1997

Chastity Best, known pretty much universally as Chase unless she was in serious trouble (something which did happen with her on a fairly frequent basis), had just turned fifteen years old the week before and was now on the adventure of her young life. She was in the front seat of a sixty-five-thousand-dollar BMW 7 series car driven by her uncle Jake Kingsley, the world-famous (and infamous) rock and roll musician, on the way to the airport where he was going to fly her to Los Angeles in his private plane so she could meet her absolute idol, Celia Valdez, and then actually hang out with her for the next few days. She kept having to pinch herself to make sure this was all really happening and not just a dream.

She was getting better at convincing herself this was reality. She and the rest of her family—her mother, father, older sister Grace, older brother Brian and his wife Julie, and her nephew Everett—had flown first-class from Salt Lake City International Airport to Los Angeles International two days before for a two-week visit with her Aunt Laura and Uncle Jake. At LAX, a long stretch limousine (with a uniformed driver, a fully stocked bar, a television, and a VCR player inside) had picked everyone up and taken them to a smaller airport across the impossibly huge and crowded city. There, Jake had flown them all over some mountains and along the coast to San Luis Obispo, near where their house was. The flight in Jake’s plane had been rather crowded, with every seat taken up except the one in the small toilet (and Grace and Chase would have to alternate using that seat for takeoffs and landings on any flights where Aunt Laura was along for the ride as well—several such trips were planned during the vacation), but once they’d landed and all piled into three cars and made the twenty-minute drive to Jake and Laura’s radical house up on the cliff, the true adventure began.

She had her very own room in the house! It was a room that was twice the size of the room she and Gracie shared at home, with a bed that was also twice the size of hers, a walk-in closet, her very own bathroom (complete with a bathtub with little jets that shot water out), and a window that looked out over the ocean! The house had a pool table, a pinball machine, something called a shuffleboard table, refrigerators that were endlessly stocked with Pepsi, a bitchin’ stereo system with a huge collection of CDs, and a big screen TV with a huge collection of recorded movies. There was a radical housekeeper named Elsa, who talked with a British accent, called her “Miss Chastity”, did her laundry for her (as long as she emptied her pockets and put it in the hamper), fixed snacks for them throughout the day, made awesome breakfasts and dinners, and then cleaned everything up afterward herself (as long as they finished what was placed on their plates and as long as they put everything else in the places she had designated they be put). And there was a hot tub out on the edge of the cliff the house sat on; a hot tub that she was allowed to use as much as she wanted. And she used it quite frequently, sitting out there for hours at a time, staring out at that amazing expanse of blue water that was the Pacific Ocean until her skin became wrinkled like a prune.

Their first full day in Oceano they had spent mostly in the huge sand dunes along the beach, riding four-wheel ATVs with big flags sticking up from the rear. She and Gracie had been allowed to each have their own ATV to themselves! And after the day of riding, they had come back to the home, taken showers in their private bathrooms, and been served a meal of homemade chicken tacos, refried beans, and Spanish rice.

Uncle Jake and Aunt Laura had the friggin’ life! And all because he knew how to play his guitar and sing a little! Friggin’ amazing!

But none of that could even come close to comparing to what was going to happen today. Celia friggin’ Valdez! she thought with a near religious awe. I’m actually going to meet her in a about an hour! Oh my God! What will I say to her? What will she be like? Will she like me? Why would she like a kid like me? Will she even talk to me?

“Relax, Chase,” Uncle Jake said with a smile, obviously picking up on her thoughts to some degree. Uncle Jake was a very perceptive guy (and, she could not help but think, pretty friggin’ hot in a bad-boy sort of way—after all, he wasn’t a blood uncle, right?) “Celia is just an ordinary person like you and me. She likes spunk, and you’ve got a lot of that.”

“You think so?” she asked.

“I know so,” he assured her. He seemed about to say something else, but then his attention was suddenly distracted. “Ohh, here it is,” he said reaching for the volume button on the car’s radio screen.

“That song you were talking about?” Chase asked.

“That song I was talking about,” he said. “It’s debuting this morning. Let’s listen. Tell me what you think about it.”

“Okay,” she said, sensing that he was not just trying to shut her up so that he could listen, but was genuinely interested in what her opinion of the song might be. That made her feel very adult.

The DJ on the local alternative rock station was introducing the new tune to the listening audience—a large portion of which were college students from Cal Poly. “ ... from a band called V-tach, whatever that means,” he was saying. “Their debut album will be coming out in a few more weeks and is produced by none other than Jake Kingsley, our local cliff-dwelling, noisy-airplane-flying celebrity who used to front Intemperance. I’m told that the members of V-tach are all members of the band that backed Kingsley last year at the Tsunami Sound Festival in Indian Springs, Nevada, where all the reviewers report they stole the show from the headliner Matt Tisdale, former guitar player for Intemp. Bigg G, the piano playing rapper who was part of Kingsley’s band for the TSF is, alas, not one of the members of V-tach, but nevertheless, this is some good, solid alt-rock music. Give it a listen. It’s called When I’m Not Home.”

The song began to play. Chase instantly liked it. Unlike her parents, sister, and brother, who listened to nothing but country music (Uncle Jake was trying to arrange a visit from Obie II, who they all worshiped), Chase loved alternative rock, thought it was the best friggin’ music ever invented, and had a keen appreciation for the jangling guitars and emotionally tragic lyrics that often went with the genre. She had no musical training of any kind, had never picked up an instrument in her life, but she had a love for music that transcended the average fifteen-year-old (or even the average forty-year-old) by a light year or two. As she listened now, she was drawn to the changing tempo and alternating distortion levels of the guitars between the verses and the choruses, the rhythmic backbeat that alternated along with the tempo, the lyrics, which she had no trouble at all interpreting even though it was a first listen, but most of all, the smoky, sexy sound of the lead singer’s voice as he sang out those lyrics.

The song came to an end and Ironic, by Alanis Morrisette began to play. Chase made a sour face as she heard it and was grateful when Uncle Jake turned the radio down to nearly sub-audible level.

“What did you think?” Jake asked, again, not with simple politeness, but seemingly with genuine interest.

“I liked it,” she told him. “It caught my attention right away. The guitar was good and the lyrics were totally bitchin’.” She flushed a little, forgetting for a moment that she was talking to an adult and not one of her peers. “Uh ... sorry, I mean cool.”

Uncle Jake chuckled. “I’m unoffended,” he told her.

“I really dig a song where I know what the singer is singing about,” she said.

Uncle Jake’s eyebrows went up a bit. “And you understood what he was singing about?” he asked.

She rolled her eyes. “Duh,” she said dramatically. “He’s talking about someone coming to his house and doing his girlfriend when he’s not home. How can you interpret that as anything else?”

Uncle Jake looked surprised and then smiled at her warmly (making her feel a little funny in the stomach). “That is, in fact, what he’s singing about,” he said. “You seem very astute at picking up lyrical meanings.”

She shrugged. It didn’t seem like that big a deal to her. “I love his voice too. Is he good looking? Please tell me he’s good looking ... and single.”

“Phil is a pretty good-looking guy,” Uncle Jake said. “And he is single.”

“Wow,” she said, already starting to fantasize about him.

“He’s also quite gay. He used to be Laura’s roommate when she and I first met.”

Her hopes came crashing down. This was tempered, however, by the shocking revelation that Uncle Jake had just laid on her. “Aunt Laura used to live with a gay guy?” she asked.

“For several years,” Jake said. “Until she moved in with me after we got together as a couple. They were really close friends. Still are, as a matter of fact. Phil walked Laura down the aisle in place of your grandfather at our wedding.”

“No shit?” she said, forgetting again that she was talking to an adult.

Uncle Jake did not even blink an eye. “No shit,” he assured her.

They talked more about the V-tach song as they continued the drive and Uncle Jake promised to give her a copy of the CD as long as she promised not to give any copies of it to her friends prior to its actual release. She promised not to. He then pointed to the radio. “I noticed a little wince on your face when Alanis started to sing,” he said. “You’re not a fan of Ironic?”

“No,” she said, making the sour face again. “Not only have they played that friggin’ song to death—I mean, they play it at least once a friggin’ hour on the alt-rock station we get out of SLC—but the lyrics are just dumb.”

“Really?” he said, that keen interest showing in his face again. “Why do you think so?”

“Because most of that shi— ... uh ... stuff that she’s singing about is not ironic. If you’re going to sing about things that are ironic, you should make sure they actually are ironic.”

“Explain,” Uncle Jake requested.

She explained something she had tried to describe to her dumb-ass friends who loved that stupid-ass song on multiple occasions. “Having it rain the day you get married is not friggin’ ironic. It’s a bummer, yes, but not irony. Not taking someone’s good advice is not ironic either. It’s stupidity or ignorance. And having a dude who is afraid to fly die in an airplane crash is also not ironic. It just means he was right to be friggin’ afraid. A fly in your friggin’ glass of wine? That’s not ironic, it’s friggin’ gross! And meeting some hot dude and then finding out he’s married? How is that shi-- ... uh ... stuff ironic? It isn’t! It’s just another bummer!”

Uncle Jake was laughing now, but not in a mean way. “Chase,” he told her, reaching over and patting her on the shoulder, “you are completely correct and years beyond your age in musical sophistication.”

She blushed again, both at his words and his touch. “You think so?” she asked.

“I know so,” he said. “And that makes me extremely glad that you enjoyed When I’m Not Home.”

“Why is that?” she asked, glowing at his praise.

“Because now I know it is going to sell like mad,” he told her.

“You know that just because I liked it?”

“Well, I already suspected that it was going to be a big hit—V-tach’s first of many—because that is my job, to find and produce good music. But there is always that little doubt in my mind before each new tune hits the airwaves. Am I wrong? Am I losing my touch? You are the first listener I have encountered who has actually heard the tune and you like it. My mind is now at ease, and for that, I thank you.”

“Uh ... you’re welcome,” she said, pleased. And then her mind went back to the lead singer. “When you say gay though, is he completely gay?”

“Completely and thoroughly,” Uncle Jake assured her.

“That really is a bummer,” she said.

“But not ironic,” Uncle Jake said, causing both of them to crack up.

When the laughter died down she looked meaningfully at her uncle. Something had occurred to her. “Did Aunt Laura used to walk around in her bra and panties in front of him?” she blurted. The thought of being able to walk around freely in your underwear in front of a guy without embarrassment was strangely intriguing to her.

Uncle Jake laughed again but did not answer the question. She got the feeling that he did not know the answer himself. Maybe she would ask Aunt Laura later—not in front of her parents, of course.

They arrived at the airport and Uncle Jake went about pulling his radical airplane out of its hangar and doing a bunch of the preflight stuff that needed to be done. She followed him around, keeping silent as he had requested, and he explained everything he was doing as he did it.

“Okay,” he said when the checks were finished. “You stay here and make sure no one flies off with my plane. I’m going to go file the flight plan. Shouldn’t take but five minutes or so.”

“You got it,” she promised.

He drove off in the Beemer and she wandered around the plane, looking at everything, paying particular attention to the strange front wings mounted just in front of the cockpit windows. She then read all the various warning stickers that were mounted near the sensors and the panel openings. After that, she examined the little doodads that stuck out here and there. She remembered Uncle Jake calling the little tubular doohickeys that were mounted on both sides of the cockpit and just below and in front of both main wings pitot static tubes and said they were what measured airspeed and angle of attack—which he further explained meant the angle the plane was going as it moved forward through the air. He had pulled little covers off of them during his walk-around. All of the covers had long red ribbons dangling from them with the words REMOVE BEFORE FLIGHT written in large white letters. That made sense to her. Though Uncle Jake had not specifically said so, she intuited that the pitot static tubes worked by having air flow into them. If they were covered in flight, that air would not flow and they would not be able to tell the pilot how fast he was going and what angle he was flying up or down. If you did not know that information while in flight, that could probably cause all kinds of weird problems—some of which might end with you smashing into the ground or the ocean. But why would you have to cover them when you were not flying? Wouldn’t it be easier to just leave them uncovered all the time so you didn’t have to worry about whether or not you remembered to remove them? She decided she would ask Uncle Jake about this once they were up in the air and that sterile cockpit rule was no longer in effect.

Uncle Jake returned on foot and opened up the main door of the plane. They climbed inside and he actually let her sit in the copilot’s seat. Way cool! He started up the engines and went through another set of preflight checks, calling out things as he did them, one by one, though usually not stopping to explain what it was he was talking about this time. Soon, he declared his checklist complete and he spent a moment talking on his headset thingy to one of the controllers in the airport’s tower. Chase was not wearing a headset—Uncle Jake had offered her one but she did not want to mess up her hair before she met Celia Valdez—so she did not hear the tower guy’s responses to him. Jake pushed the two levers between the seats forward and they began to move. There were no other planes moving around right now so it did not take them long to get to the turn that led onto the runway. Uncle Jake went throughout another checklist—setting flaps, verifying something called trim (which made her giggle a little—trim meant doing it, something that she had never done before but which she and her girlfriends talked about endlessly) and a few numbers preceded by V’s. At last, he pushed the throttles up again and turned onto the runway so they were facing down it, directly on the centerline. He throttled back down and brought them to a stop.

“You ready to go?” he asked her.

“Let’s do it!” she said enthusiastically. She had found that she quite liked flying, especially in Uncle Jake’s plane, and that taking off was her favorite part.

“Okay,” he said. “Why don’t you help me out then? Put your hand on those throttle levers and slowly push them forward until I tell you to stop.”

“Really?” she asked, her enthusiasm kicking up a few notches.

“Really,” he said. “Just be sure that you advance them together at the same pace. Nice and slow, keep them together.”

She nervously reached out and put her left hand on the two side-by-side levers. They were not very big and she could grasp both of them easily. She pushed forward, surprised at how much force she had to use to get them to move. As they moved forward, the sound of the engines began to get louder and the plane began to move forward, slowly at first but quickly picking up speed.

“That’s good there,” Uncle Jake told her. “Thanks for the help.”

“Anytime,” she said with a smile.

They left the ground about fifteen seconds later, passing over the perimeter fence for the airport and climbing higher and higher into the sky. Uncle Jake flipped up a lever and the landing gear came up. He flipped another lever (“flaps to zero,” he said as he did so) and there was a whine of machinery from behind them and she felt the now-familiar sensation of falling as the nose came down a bit and they began to pick up speed. The town of Oceano, with the sand dunes they had ridden on yesterday and the bright blue ocean beyond was now visible in front of them. She thought she could actually see the cliff where Uncle Jake and Aunt Laura lived for a brief moment before they passed over the water and turned to the left.

They climbed to twelve thousand feet. Uncle Jake showed her the altimeter and taught her how to read it. It was easy when you saw how it worked. Just like an old-fashioned clock. The scenery was amazing as they flew. From up here in the front, she could see everything! Uncle Jake pointed out the sights as they came into view. There were the coastal mountains, and the city of Santa Maria, and then Oxnard—mere suburbs that were each more than twice the size of Pocatello. Off to her right, she could see the Channel Islands, and boats and ships down in the water looking like tiny little toys with V-shaped wakes stretching behind them opposite of their direction of travel. Far in front of them, beyond another set of mountains, was a brownish-gray haze. He told her that was the Los Angeles basin and the smog layer it was famous for.

As they descended over that last mountain range and over the huge expanse of houses, buildings, and freeways that was Los Angeles, she began to feel nervous again. Celia Valdez is down there! And I’m going to meet her as soon as we land! Oh my God! Can I do this? Do I have a choice at this point?

Once again, Uncle Jake picked up on this. Even though the cockpit was supposed to be sterile at the moment, he reassured her. “Don’t worry,” he said. “She really is nice. Much nicer than me.”

They touched down smoothly at the same airport they had left from two days ago. Uncle Jake drove the plane off the runway and followed a series of taxiways until he came to an area where a whole bunch of planes were parked and there was a large building adjacent. He pulled into a spot near the building and shut down the engines.

“We have arrived,” he told her. “And Celia is here. That’s her car parked over there.”

“Which one?” Chase asked, looking at the row of parked cars.

“The gray Mercedes,” he said.

“I don’t know what a Mercedes looks like,” she said.

“The most expensive looking car in that parking lot,” he said.

That was the clue she needed. She quickly found the vehicle in question and looked at it in awe.

They unstrapped from their seats and Uncle Jake opened the door just behind the cockpit and folded down the small set of steps. They stepped out into the warm air—it was noticeably higher in temperature and humidity here than it had been in San Luis Obispo—and out onto the tarmac. The sound of aircraft engines could be heard from several directions and the air had the distinct smell she had come to associate with the jet fuel that airplanes like Uncle Jake’s ran on.

“There she is,” Uncle Jake said as they reached the nose of the airplane. He pointed in the direction of the building.

Feeling a little jolt of adrenaline, Chase looked in that direction. At first she could not credit what she was seeing. Yes, there was a good-looking woman heading in their direction, a friendly smile on her face, but that wasn’t Celia Valdez, was it? She was wearing jeans and a sleeveless button-up peasant blouse. Her hair was in a ponytail and she had on a blue baseball hat with the letters L and A superimposed upon them. She looked just like anyone else in the world—perhaps a bit more attractive and fit than most—not a goddess. But then Chase noted the guitar case she carried in one hand and the suitcase she carried in the other. And she looked carefully at the woman’s face. She had no makeup on except lip gloss, but the facial resemblance to Celia Valdez could not be denied. It has to be her! she was forced to conclude. She felt all the spit in her mouth dry up at this realization.

Uncle Jake smiled and walked forward, meeting her about halfway and taking the suitcase from her hand, leaving her with just the guitar. The two of them exchanged a hug and Celia actually kissed him on the cheek affectionately. They exchanged a few words she did not hear clearly and then they turned and walked directly toward her. Chastity felt her heart beating faster in her chest as he idol approached.

“Celia,” Uncle Jake said when they were all face to face, “this is Chastity Best, my niece from Pocatello. She’s your number one fan and she likes to be called Chase, right Chase?”

Chase’s mouth was now open in awe. She tried to respond but all that came out was something that sounded like: “Arrgh gast a maw.” Oh my God! she thought desperately. I can’t friggin’ talk! She’s going to think I’m a moron! Or that I’m having a friggin’ stroke! Or both!

Uncle Jake chuckled at her, though in a sympathetic way, not in a mean way. “Well put,” he said. He turned to Celia. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen her speechless before.”

Celia’s smile grew warmer and she took another step forward. “It’s nice to meet you, Chase,” she said. She set her guitar case down on the ground and then held out her arms for a hug.

She wants to hug me?? Oh my friggin’ God! “Blast a maw,” she said.

Celia chuckled and put her arms around her. Chase was amazed at how tall she was. She stood a good six inches taller than her, almost as tall as Uncle Jake. Her body was firm and fit as it pressed against her. She smelled of vanilla. Instinctively, she returned the hug. I’m actually hugging Celia Valdez! she thought in amazement.

It lasted only a short moment and then it was gone. Celia stepped back and regarded her for a moment. “How was the flight in?” she asked her.

Chase took a deep breath and commanded herself to articulate coherently. “It was ... uh ... you know ... fun.”

“Yes,” she said, nodding. “It is fun to fly in Jake’s plane. I used to be afraid of flying—I still am a little bit, to be honest—but it has grown on me over the years, especially flying with Jake in this plane.”

“I ... I love flying,” Chase managed to blurt. “I never did it before until I met Uncle Jake.” She flushed. “Flying that is. I still haven’t ... uh ... done ... uh...” She realized what she had been about to say at the last second and snapped her jaw shut. She took a deep breath again. “Never mind. I’m babbling.”

Celia patted her on the shoulder affectionately. “That’s okay,” she said. “I’m flattered that you like me so much that I can reduce you to babbling. But don’t worry. I’m just an ordinary person like everyone else.”

“I really love your music!” Grace told her.

“Thank you,” Celia said.

“And I found out on the way here that Chase has fairly deep appreciation for music,” Uncle Jake told her.

“Oh yeah?” Celia asked.

Uncle Jake nodded. “We heard the debut of Home on the way here. She liked it and correctly interpreted the lyrics. And she does not like the song Ironic because most of what Alanis is talking about there is not, in fact, ironic.”

Celia smiled, delighted. “I’ll take an endorsement like that to one of our projects any day of the week.”

Jake had the FBO services pump his tanks half full and then they immediately left for the return flight to SLO. Celia sat in the copilot’s seat—her always preferred location when flying with Jake—and Chase sat immediately behind Jake, where she could see and talk to Celia with ease. And talk she did. She quickly recovered her voice and spent most of the flight jabbering to Celia, asking her a thousand questions about her childhood in Venezuela, her time with La Diferencia, and her recent years as a mega-star. Jake, who listened to the conversation but contributed nothing, noted that Chase had enough tact not to bring up Greg Oldfellow or the allegations that Celia dallied with her pilot out on the road. This reinforced his already strong opinion that his recently discovered niece was actually a pretty good kid.

They came in to land just past 11:30 AM and Jake parked the airplane in his rented hangar. Chase insisted on carrying Celia’s guitar case for her while Jake carried her travel bag.

“How is Teach doing?” Celia asked as they made the hike back to the GA terminal. They had not seen Celia in more than a week now.

“Looking forward to seeing you again,” Jake said with a little smile.

Celia returned the smile. “I’m looking forward to seeing her as well.”

The little inflection that each of them put on the word seeing was no accident. Both knew exactly what they meant by it. Since that day nearly two weeks ago when the three of them had a session of steamy, erotic threesome sex at Celia’s Malibu house, they had gotten together one more time for more of the same. This had also been in Malibu, after the last KVA meeting prior to the debut of Home. It had been just as good and the three of them continued not to feel regrets, shame, or any other negative emotion associated with what they were doing except for a bit of guilt that they were not feeling any regrets or shame or other negative emotions. All in all, the three of them remained very enthusiastic about the new dynamic they had brought to life and looked forward to future endeavors.

Perhaps even tonight, Jake thought now as he saw the little sparkle in Celia’s eye. This was a realistic hope. Though Laura the Prude had reigned supreme when the two of them had stayed at the Best house in Pocatello, Laura the extremely horny second trimester Nymph was still firmly in command while the Bests were staying with them. She had to hold a pillow against her mouth every time she came, but she was certainly not being prudish.

They threw the luggage and the guitar into the back of Jake’s BMW and then climbed in, Chase in the back, Jake behind the wheel. They drove back to the house on the cliff and introduced Celia to the rest of the Best clan. All were pleased to meet her, particularly the males. Grace, however, had a hard time even meeting her eyes, let alone speaking to her. She managed to shake her hand briefly, but that was the extent of their first contact.

Dinner that night was New York steaks that Elsa had procured from a high-end butcher shop in San Luis Obispo near the historic mission. While she prepared a large garden salad, sauteed mushrooms, and made her famous garlic mashed potatoes, Jake went out on the deck and fired up the large charcoal grill that sat next to the more convenient gas grill. Joey and Brian followed him out there. While waiting for the coals to burn down so he could grill the steaks, Jake drank a few bottles of his favorite beer—Foghorn India Pale Ale from the Lighthouse Brewing Company in Coos Bay—while the two generations of Bests drank their favorite beer—Budweiser from the can. They had tried the Lighthouse Ale that Jake offered them on their first night—genuinely curious about what “hoity-toity beer” would taste like—but had been hard pressed to even finish their bottles before they became warm. “It’s too strong,” Joey had proclaimed. “Too heavy,” had been Brian’s opinion. And so, Elsa had picked up a few cases of the red and white cans for the houseguests. She knew that if the Bests did not drink it all before they left, the excess would sit in the bottom of the pantry until their next visit.

The Best males were impressed with Jake’s skill on the grill. No slouches with a charcoal grill themselves, they found it quite down-to-Earth that Little Bit’s highfalutin husband—who had most of his actual housework and other chores done for him by a live-in housekeeper—actually knew had to perform a manly skill like cooking a steak on the old Weber. And when they tasted their steaks at the dinner table, their opinion of him shot up a few more notches. The steaks were juicy, grilled perfectly, and had a smooth, exquisite texture unlike anything they had ever tasted before. Naturally (though perhaps a little reluctantly), they attributed this to Jake’s touch with the coals and the spatula and not the fact that they were eating expensive, restaurant-quality meat instead of the cheap cuts from the local Walmart meat counter, which was what they were used to.

After dinner, while Elsa cleaned up (Jake was paying her an extra three hundred dollars a day for the duration of the visit, though none of the Bests knew this), everyone else went out to the cliff to watch the sunset instead of breaking up into gender groups as was the Best family tradition. Chase and Grace donned their modest one-piece swimsuits and climbed into the hot tub to watch it from there. Joey, Sarah, Brian, and Julie all gave the cognac Jake offered a try, dutifully drinking it as directed. They then switched back to Budweiser in the can. Joey and Brian did, however, legitimately enjoy the Cuban cigars that Jake produced for them. They were, however, quite scandalized when Celia fired one up as well and sat in their circle, smoking with them and drinking her cognac just like one of the boys.

Hollywood people, Joey thought, resisting the urge to shake his head. He hoped that Grace was not being too influenced by the Mexican singer she worshiped.

And that night, after everyone had gone to bed, Celia, fresh out of the shower and wearing a long t-shirt and nothing else, crept out of the smallest of the guest rooms and slinked down the main hall to the master suite. She slipped inside, where her hosts were eagerly waiting for her, both of them naked and freshly showered themselves, the only light in the room that coming from a series of candles that had been lit. She slipped out of the t-shirt, climbed into their bed, and the three of them spent the next hour putting their bodies, fingers, lips, tongues, and genitals together in as many ways as they could think of. Celia was particularly fascinated by and drawn to Laura’s pregnant belly, which seemed to be getting a little bigger by the day now. She touched it and rubbed it and kissed it frequently. And they found a novel way to keep the entire house from knowing their business when Laura came. When it happened under Celia’s tongue, Jake would put his member in her mouth. And when it happened under Jake’s member, Celia would plant her wet vagina on her mouth.

Celia did not sleep in their room when the act was finished. No one commented on this or protested it or even thought much about it. It just seemed like the right thing to do and it happened by unspoken mutual agreement.

Everyone, even Elsa, spent the 4^th of July out on Brent Hadley’s charter fishing boat. As promised, Brent took out all ten of them, plus baby Everett, privately on his boat (which was capable of accommodating another twenty fishermen plus five or six more guests) for the price of letting him use pictures of Jake and Laura in his advertisements. They left Morro Bay marina at 6:30 AM, just as the sun was rising in the east, and motored out into the Pacific Ocean more than fifteen miles. The sea was reasonably placid, with gently rolling five-foot swells that imparted an almost soothing rhythm to the vessel as they chased after schools of ocean fish that lived and fed off the central coast of California. No one got sick and everyone had a great time. Everyone except Everett caught their limit of rock cod and Gracie even managed to hook into a ling cod, which she had to fight for the better part of thirty minutes before they could gaff it aboard and kill it. Brent’s deckhands took plenty of pictures of Jake and Laura, particularly when they were reeling in fish or holding their catch.

After stowing all the gear, the deckhands cleaned and filleted the fish for them, packaging it in plastic bags and stowing it all in ice chests filled with salt ice that the boat’s icemaker had produced. While this was going on, Brent motored slowly back to Morro Bay, arriving in the harbor just before sunset. He did not take them back to the marina, however. He motored over and wound his way through more than a hundred other boats that were anchored in clusters around the bay just offshore of the town itself. He found a suitable place and dropped his own anchor. The group sat around, munching on deli sandwiches and drinking cans of Budweiser (even Jake and Celia—there was a time and place in life for drinking watery canned beer). Jake produced Cuban cigars for all who wanted them (Celia once again scandalized the Best family by firing up), including Brent and the deckhands.

As darkness fell and the stars came out, Jake and Celia took out their guitars and spent about an hour entertaining everyone by playing and singing for them, taking turns for the most part, but occasionally throwing in a duet. They mostly did classic tunes, even venturing into what country music they were familiar with in deference to most of the Best family. Neither of them played any of their own songs. Soon, the applause and whistles were coming not only from the people on the boat, but from those on the boats surrounding them. Sound carries quite well across water and more than two hundred people first noticed and then enjoyed the unplugged performance, none but those on the boat with Jake and Celia realizing who they were listening to, but most realizing that whoever it was, they were very talented.

And then, at ten o’clock, the reason everyone was anchored out here began. It was the famous Morro Bay Independence Day fireworks show, known throughout central California as being one of the best. It went on for more than forty minutes, huge plumes of multicolored explosions that boomed and banged out over the harbor, sending thrilling concussions through the air and blinding afterimages to their eyes.

After the ten-minute grand finale, Brent motored them slowly back to the marina. It took nearly an hour due to the boat traffic all trying to do the same thing at the same time. Finally, however, they docked and were able to put their feet back on dry land. They took their ice chests and made their way to the three vehicles they had used to get here. Laura, Elsa, and Julie were the designated drivers (though Elsa and Julie had both put away more than a few cans of Bud during the day part of the adventure). It was after midnight before they made it back to Kingsley Manor.

Everyone was tired and grimy and smelled like fish. The house’s fresh water system and the hot water delivery system were given the test of their lives when seven showers were fired up all at once. It held up to the test with only a barely noticeable drop in water pressure or temperature. Jake and Elsa stored most of the fish in the walk-in freezer, setting enough aside in the main refrigerator for a beer-battered fish-fry that was planned for the next night. After that, Jake wearily trudged to the master suite. There, he found Laura and Celia, both freshly showered and dressed in lingerie, lounging on the bed and listening to soft-rock music. They were not touching each other, were, in fact, on opposite sides of the King-sized bed, leaving the entire middle section empty.

“Go shower up, sweetie,” Laura told him with a smile. “You have women to satisfy.”

He gave a faux-sigh of the long suffering. “If I must,” he said.

“You must,” Celia told him.

He took a shower. It was a fast one. And then he managed to satisfy both women (though they were active participants in satisfying each other as well).

Later, after Celia had slithered back to her own room to sleep off the day and night, Jake lay on his back in the darkness while Laura, smelling pungently like sex, lay cuddled against him under the covers. Her breathing was deep and regular and he assumed she was asleep. He was just starting to drift off himself when she suddenly stiffened against him and rolled completely onto her back.

“Oh my God!” she barked, excited.

Jake’s eyes flew open in an instant. “What?” he asked. “What is it?”

“It’s Ziggy!” Laura said. “I just felt her move.”

“Really?” he asked. He knew that she was now in the early stages of when such movement could be detected by the mother, but so far she had not felt anything that was even questionable.

“Really,” she said. “There was this flutter in my stomach. Here it is again!”

“Where?” Jake asked, putting his hand on her swelling stomach—by now it had gone beyond merely being a bump.

She took his hand and moved it a little lower, just to the right and below her belly button. “Right there,” she said. “There it is again! Can you feel it?”

Jake tried, but all he could feel was her breathing. “I don’t feel anything,” he said apologetically.

“That’s okay,” Laura said. “I do. And it’s Ziggy. I have no doubt about it. She really is in there!”

“Did you doubt that?” Jake asked.

“Not really,” she said. “But until now ... well ... it’s hard to describe. It didn’t really feel real.”

“But now it does?” he asked.

“Yeah,” she said happily. “Now it does.”

The Bests had the time of their lives during their trip to California.

The morning after the fish-fry, Jake flew Celia back to Los Angeles. Chase and Grace tagged along for that ride, as Celia and the shy seventeen-year-old had bonded a bit during their time together—they had had a lengthy, in-depth discussion about what it was like to be brought up in a religious family and then to later harbor doubts about the religion in question—and both girls received warm hugs and kisses on the cheeks from the famous singer. The next day Jake, Laura, and the two teens left everyone else to fend for themselves and flew to Hayward Airport just south of Oakland in the San Francisco Bay area. They drove a rental car into The City where Jake had booked them rooms at the Ritz-Carlton. They spent that day and the next exploring San Francisco, doing all the touristy things that people did there, like riding the cable cars, walking across the Golden Gate Bridge, taking in the Haight-Ashbury District and Chinatown, and visiting the wharf and Alcatraz. They dined in fancy restaurants and ate clam chowder out of bread bowls.

The four of them returned to Oceano and two days later the entire group climbed into the plane and flew to Gibbs Field just north of San Diego. Since Laura was along for this trip they had to utilize the toilet as a seat for takeoff and landing—though the door could be secured in the open position when the little room was used for this purpose. Grace and Chase were the two smallest people other than Everett so they were designated to this undignified position—Grace on the way out, Chase on the way back—but once the plane was at cruising altitude, the toilet-seater was allowed to emerge back into the main cabin and sit where Everett’s car seat had been strapped into one of the rear-facing seats (Jake prudently did not mention that if they crashed during landing or takeoff, Everett would stand a decent chance of being the sole survivor due to the seat and his positioning) while someone held the toddler in his or her lap.

In San Diego, the Kingsleys put everyone up in suites in the Sheraton hotel (Jake lied and told Joey that the rooms had been gratis thanks to yet another advertising deal—Joey did not even question that at this point) and the next day they went as a group to the world-famous San Diego Zoo, Balboa Park, Sea World, and rounded out the evening with a fancy dinner at a restaurant atop one of the high-rise hotels. The entire restaurant slowly rotated around, offering views of the harbor and the city during the course of the meal.

The final three days of the Best vacation were spent in Los Angeles. They flew once again to Whiteman Airport and then settled into the Granada Hills house. Though Chase and Grace were once again forced to share a room (and a bed, though it was a big bed), this minor inconvenience was offset by the fact that the house had a swimming pool. The two teens spent a good portion of their mornings and evenings in that pool, and the rest of the Best clan made judicious use of it as well (even Everett). While in LA, they did all the LA things. Jake took them to Hollywood, took them on a limo ride up into the Hollywood Hills, took them to Disneyland, and they had dinner at Pauline’s house and got to meet Obie II, their country music idol. Tabby enjoyed playing with Everett during the visit and Joey and Brian even choked down a few glasses of bourbon on the rocks after Obie informed them, in a voice that implied he was speaking the Word of God Himself, that that was what real men drank.

There was one sour note to the Best’s visit. It came during the LA portion. Joey, feeling an intense sense of family love and appreciation after hanging out with his sister and brother-in-law the last twelve days, decided to call his estranged parents and try to reconnect with them despite his sister Laura’s stern warning that it was a bad idea. He did manage to make contact, but the conversation did not go as he had envisioned.

“Well?” Laura asked gently when she found him sitting by himself on the couch shortly after the phone call. Apparently taking Obie’s words to heart, he was sipping from a glass of Jim Beam Black Label on the rocks.

“Mom answered the phone,” he said, taking a sip.

“Yeah?” she asked, turning and making a careful descent onto the couch to sit next to him. Ziggy had certainly thrown her balance and grace for a loop and she was still trying to adjust to it. “What did she say?”

“You don’t want to hear,” he said sourly.

“No, I really don’t,” she agreed, “but I think I should.”

“I told her that me and the rest of the family were here in town,” he said. “All of us, including little Evie.” He took a breath. “She told me that we had been instructed long ago to never come here, to stay in Pocatello and live our own lives.”

“That just warms my heart,” Laura said sourly.

“Yeah,” he said. “And then I told her that the reason we were here was because you and Jake had invited us, that we were visiting you because you were family and because you were pregnant and there was soon going to be another member of the family, another grandchild.”

“And what did she say to that?”

“She said she knew that you were pregnant, that she had read all about it in the papers, and that the child you are carrying is most certainly not part of her family.”

“Really?” Laura said, not terribly surprised, but hurt all the same.

He nodded. “She said it was Satan’s spawn at best, some nigger’s lovechild at worst.”

Laura’s eyes widened for a moment and then she actually giggled. And then the giggles turned to laughter.

“What’s so funny?” Joey asked, confused.

“That she thinks that having Bigg G be the father is worse than Satan being the father,” Laura said. “That’s fucking hilarious!”

Joey looked at her in astonishment for a moment and then started to understand the humor of the situation. Soon, he was laughing with her.

Meanwhile, out in the backyard, Jake was swimming in the pool with Grace and Chase. He had set up the water volleyball net and the two teens were taking him on, two to one, and losing quite badly thanks to Jake’s familiarity with the sport, his familiarity with swimming, and his keen athleticism that came from his daily runs and the fact that he had spent a good part of his life performing aerobic exercise night after night up on stages.

“You could at least let us win once,” Chase complained after he beat them for the third time, with scores of 11-1, 11-2, and now 11-4.

“Why would I do that?” he asked politely.

“Because it’s the nice thing to do!” she cried. “We’re just kids, and girls, and you’re a friggin’ adult man!”

“But you outnumber me two to one,” he countered. “You should have the advantage.”

“That’s not the point!” Chase said.

“Perhaps not,” Jake agreed. “But I never let anyone win anything. It’s a rule that will carry you far in life.”

“Not even a stupid game of pool volleyball?” Chase asked, indignant.

“Not even that,” he said. “Suppose I had let you win. What impetus would you have to try to improve your skills at the game?”

“I don’t need to improve my skills at this game,” Chase insisted. “I’m not trying to be a professional pool volleyball player. I’ll probably never play this stupid game again until the next time we visit you.”

“That is not the point,” Jake said, using her own protest against her. “The idea is to nourish your competitive instinct and motivate you to learn and improve. That skill does not just apply to pool volleyball, but everything in life. No one is ever doing you any favors by taking it easy on you, by letting you have an easy out, an easy victory, an easy path through the proverbial forest. For instance, look at how you improved in just the three games we played. In the first, you were completely uncoordinated with each other, unable to work as a team to take advantage of your numerical superiority over me. You only scored that one point because of a lucky shot. But on the subsequent games, you started to learn to coordinate, to play as a team to some degree. You started to pick up on the strategy of one of you luring me over to one side while the other hit the ball to the other. It was rudimentary, and I’m not sure you were consciously aware you were even doing it, but that is how you scored one of the points in the second game and three of the four in this last one. I have no doubt that if you were to stay here another two days and we played ten or fifteen more games, you two would be mopping up the pool with me.”

Both girls considered his words carefully. “Do you really think so?” asked Grace.

“Absolutely,” he said. “Want to try again and put the theory to the test?”

They did not want to, pleading fatigue. Instead, they ducked under the net and paddled over to the underwater sitting ledge in the deep end so they could sit down and rest for a bit. Jake paddled over with them, giving them the ledge while he put his back to the edge of the pool and secured himself by spreading his arms wide while he lay on his back, his legs floating out before him.

“It’s such a bum that we have to go back home tomorrow,” Chase pouted.

“All good things must come to an end,” Jake quoted.

“True,” she said. “Pocatello is going to seem so boring after California though.”

“Maybe,” said Grace, “but it will be nice to get back home, back to our own room, our own things, the normal routine.”

“The normal routine bites,” Chase said. “I wish I could stay here forever.”

“This would quickly take on the routine of normal life and you’d be bored with it as well,” Jake suggested.

“I seriously doubt that,” Chase returned. “Do you ever get bored with the life you lead?”

“Honestly ... no,” Jake admitted. “But there are aspects of it that can be quite unpleasant.”

“Like what?” Chase asked.

“The list is quite long,” Jake told her. “Privacy is extremely hard to come by. Everything that Laura and I do is subject to being printed in some tabloid rag or announced on a Hollywood gossip show. And those same reporters are free to make things up about us if they don’t happen to have any actual facts to print or report and there is little to nothing that we can do about it. A vast majority of the town we live near despises us and believes anything they hear about us even though they do not know us at all. And we are constantly navigating in a world filled with people who are trying to exploit us and screw us in any way they can, which makes us mistrustful of the motivations of pretty much everyone.”

“Wow,” said Grace, awe in her voice. “That’s deep.”

“Hella deep,” Chase said, just as awed. “You know, that’s what I really like about you and Aunt Laura, Uncle Jake. You both talk to us like we’re adults instead of a couple of teenagers.”

“Yeah,” Grace said. “I really like that too.”

“I’m glad to hear that,” Jake said, circling things around to what he really wanted to talk about, “because I have a favor to ask of both of you.”

“What is it?” Grace asked.

“Yeah,” Chase said. “We’ll do anything for you.”

“It has to do with all those pictures you have been taking during your time here,” Jake said.

“The pictures?” Chase asked. “What about them?”

Both girls had brought cheap 35mm cameras with them and both had shot at least ten rolls of film over the past two weeks. Many of those shots had been of the famous sights and scenery of coastal California—particularly Grace’s, as she planned to paint many of the landscapes and seascapes she had encountered once she got home—but a good portion were also of Jake, Laura, and Celia. There were shots of them individually and together. There were shots of them posing with the girls, both individually and together, shots where they stood arm in arm on the ocean cliff, in front of the airplane, inside the airplane in flight, out on the fishing boat, on the ATVs, at Disneyland. Jake knew that he personally had had his photo taken no less than twenty times with one or both of the girls, sometimes with Laura or Celia in the shot, sometimes without. Chase, in particular, had exclaimed on multiple occasions that she couldn’t wait to show those shots to her friends in Pocatello, so they could see that she really had hung out with her Uncle Jake and Aunt Laura and, most significant of all, Celia Valdez.

“It’s like this,” Jake explained. “You heard about what happened with that photo that Laura and I took with that ramper at the Pocatello Airport, right?”

“Yeah!” Grace said. “With Ron! Brian went to school with him. Ron was a senior when Brian was a freshman.”

“Brian says he is a total computer geek with no social skills,” Chase added, a considerable amount of contempt in her voice at the thought of such a creature.

“Uh ... yeah,” Jake said. The was the first he had heard that Ron the ramper and Brian knew each other. “Anyway, Laura and I met Ron when he helped us with our plane when we visited you back in December. He took a bunch of shots of the plane, and of Laura and I with his coworker, and then the coworker took one of Ron and Laura and me. Are you familiar with what happened next?”

“Like... yeah,” Chase said. “Everyone in Pocatello knows what happened next. Someone got ahold of that shot of you and Ron and Aunt Laura, photoshopped it, and started spreading it around on the internet saying that Ron was a drag queen and that you and Aunt Laura had kidnapped him from South America and were keeping him as a sex slave that does the windows.”

“Right,” Jake said.

“But nobody believes that,” Grace said. “The newspaper put out an article explaining that it wasn’t true. They showed the original picture and interviewed Ron and he told them he sent the picture out to some photography club in an email. Everything was explained.”

“Everything was explained to the people of Pocatello,” Jake said, “where a lot of the people know Ron the ramper and were inclined to accept the evidence before their eyes despite the fact that I am evil incarnate to most of your quaint little community. In the rest of the world, however, that story was not published and a great many people actually believe that Laura and I are keeping a Venezuelan transexual in captivity and that our money and fame is compelling authorities to look the other way about it.”

“Really?” asked Grace, wide-eyed.

“That’s totally uncool,” Chase added, outraged at the thought.

“People actually believe that ridiculous story?” Grace asked, shaking her head.

“They really believe it because they want to believe it,” Jake said. “And none of the newspapers or media outlets want to publish the Pocatello story because they have no interest in telling the truth about us. They cannot write a story about the allegation because it is provably untrue and would open them up to libel charges, but they are under no obligation to declare the rumor untrue.”

“Wow,” Chase said. “I see what you mean about the bad side of your life.”

“I’m glad to hear that,” Jake said. “So, you’ll understand when I tell you I am a little concerned about all of those pictures you took of me and Laura and Celia, particularly the ones with you two in them.”

Both girls eyes got a little wider. “Are you saying,” Chase said, “that you think people will think that ... that ... me and Gracie and ... and you are ... you know... doing it?”

“If those pictures were to get out into general circulation,” Jake said, “yes, there are people out there who would suggest that, would possibly even come up with a story like what they came up with about me and Laura and Ron the ramper.”

“That is so disgusting!” Grace said, genuinely appalled at that thought. “You’re our uncle! And old enough to be our dad!”

“That doesn’t matter to the people who pass these sort of things around,” Jake said. “They could put any story they want on it and a certain amount of people will believe it. They might put in the story that you are my nieces and that I’m giving your mom and dad money to look the other way about what we or doing or they might say you’re a couple of sex slaves I bought in New York City. They might even say that Laura or Celia is involved in this thing as well.”

“Gross!” Grace said. “I mean, Aunt Laura is nice and all, and Celia is too, and they’re both beautiful, but they’re women! Older women!”

“That doesn’t matter to these kind of people,” Jake said.

“What are you saying then?” Grace asked. “You don’t want us to develop the pictures?”

“No, that’s not what I’m saying at all,” Jake told her. “I want you to have your pictures of your vacation and I want you to treasure them. I want you to be able to show the prints to your friends. What I don’t want is for any of those pictures or negatives or, worst of all, digital copies of the shots, to end up floating around on the internet or in a chain email. Where do you get your pictures developed?”

“At the Walgreens by our house,” Grace said. “That’s the closest place and the cheapest.”

“Very good,” Jake said. “Walgreens does them in the automatic machine. Most of the time, nobody even looks at them before they give them to you. And even if they do look at them, it is unlikely anyone would steal a copy because it would not be hard to trace where it came from. Go ahead and get them developed, show the prints to anyone you like, but please promise me that you will not give anyone any of the prints, or the negatives, or ever send any of the shots out digitally in email or any other way if they have Laura or me or Celia in them.”

“I promise,” Grace said. “I don’t want anyone thinking that I’m some New York sex slave or some incestuous slut.”

“I promise too,” Chase said. “Cross my heart and hope to die.”

“And stick a needle in your eye?” Jake asked.

Chase giggled. “And stick a needle in my eye,” she agreed.

“All right then,” Jake said. “I thank you for your cooperation in this matter.”

“Like I said, Uncle Jake,” Chase said. “Anything for you. You’re the raddist uncle ever.”

“A title I will embrace proudly,” Jake said, knowing that he was the only uncle on either side of their family that they had anything to do with. “Now then, are we ready for another match?”

The two girls looked at each other and nodded, smiles on their faces. “Let’s do it,” Chase said.

They did it. This time, they cooperated a little bit more and only lost by a score of 14-7.

Joey, in the tradition of the Best family when it came to thanking a host for having them stay in their house, took everyone out to dinner that last night. He insisted on paying for the meal himself. Since Jake knew that his pride demanded he do this, he did not argue the point and did not suggest a restaurant, knowing that anything he (Jake) suggested would probably bankrupt the waste management employee. Instead, he heartily agreed when Joey suggested the local Black Angus steakhouse in Santa Clarita. The entire group arrived there at 7:00 PM, all of them dressed in jeans and pullover shirts. The adults who were not pregnant drank bottled Budweiser. The kids and Laura all had soda of varying kind. Jake ordered the sirloin steak and shrimp and was happy to find that it was not all that bad. Joey paid the bill with his credit card. Jake did not even offer to pick up the tip, knowing that such a gesture would be offensive to his brother-in-law.

Once back at the Granada Hills house, Jake and Joey went out to the patio to enjoy a few glasses of Jim Beam on the rocks (Joey seemed to be developing a taste for the bourbon thanks to Obie) and a couple of Cuban cigars. Chase and Grace took the opportunity for one last swim in the pool and were splashing around happily as the two men puffed on their stogies.

“I just want to tell you one more time how much we all appreciate all this, Jake,” Joey told him. “This really has been the best vacation our family has ever had.”

“We were happy to have you,” Jake told him, speaking truthfully. “It was good to get to know everyone a little better. And I am so happy that Laura has some actual family now that she can talk to and get together with.”

“We’re happy to have her in our lives too,” Joey said. “The kids actually have someone they can call ‘uncle’ and ‘aunt’ now. They’ve never had that before.”

Jake nodded. “And I have a new brother and sister-in-law,” he said. “And nieces and a nephew that I didn’t have before. I still don’t have a mother-in-law or a father-in-law, but ... hey, is that such a bad thing?”

Joey chuckled. “I don’t think it is,” he said. He, after all, did not really have to deal with a mother-in-law or a father-in-law either.

“Laura and I were talking last night,” he said. “We would like to come out to Idaho and visit you all again if that’s all right. Maybe over the first few days of the Christmas break?”

“We’d like that,” Joey said. “Sarah and I were actually talking about the same thing.”

“Little Ziggy should be about six weeks old then,” Jake said. “As long as she and Laura are healthy, we’re up for it.”

“Let’s pencil her in then,” Joey said.

“Agreed,” Jake said. “But ... uh ... there is something that I’d like to talk about regarding the Christmas visit.”

“What’s that?”

Jake took a deep breath and then released it. “I don’t want you to get me wrong here, Joey,” he said. “We enjoyed your hospitality on our last visit and Laura explained to me that it is traditional that family stay with family when visiting. I understand that. I really do.”

Joey’s gaze darkened a bit. “Are you saying you don’t want to stay with us when you visit?” he asked slowly.

“Well ... not because we don’t like staying with you,” Jake said. “We had a good time. But I felt terrible that Laura and I displaced Chase and Grace from their room while we were there and they had to sleep on the couch.”

“It’s a minor inconvenience to them,” Joey said firmly. “They understand that they have to give up their room when family visits.”

“Uh ... yeah,” Jake said, “but it’s still an inconvenience to them, to you, to everyone. And it’s an inconvenience that is not necessary. We are perfectly capable of staying in a hotel room when we visit. It won’t hurt us financially even a little bit. I would like the girls to be able to stay in their room and everyone else to not have to fuss over us.”

Joey was shaking his head. “I won’t hear of it,” he said firmly. “Family stays with family. That’s the way it’s always been.”

“Uh ... yeah,” Jake said again. It was time to play his trump card. “You see, the thing is, the girls being inconvenienced is not the only issue at hand here.”

“It’s not? What do you mean?”

“You’re a man of the world, aren’t you, Joey?”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Well ... to be brutally straightforward, a man likes to have frequent ... you know... relations with his wife. You picking up what I’m laying down here?”

Joey stared at him for a moment and then slowly nodded. “I am,” he said.

“And the fact of the matter is,” Jake explained, “that Laura ... and myself ... cannot bring ourselves to have those relations while staying in our nieces’ bedroom. And around Christmas vacation we will just be getting to the point where we will be able to resume said relations after a long period without them due to Ziggy and her birth. I would prefer not to delay the resumption of relations because we are in an environment that prohibits it.”

Understanding dawned on Joey’s face as this explanation sank in. “Ohhh,” he said at last. “I get it.”

“I was hoping you would,” Jake said.

“In that case,” Joey said, “I would recommend the Lancaster Hotel downtown. It’s pricey, but probably the best place in Pocatello.”

Everyone said goodbye when the limousine arrived to pick up the Best family at 8:00 AM. They had a first-class flight from LAX back to Salt Lake City that would board at 9:35 and take off at 10:05. They spent the better part of fifteen minutes giving hugs (the females and the females and the females and males could hug each other) and handshakes (the males could only do this, except for Everett, who got hugs and kisses from both Jake and Laura). Finally, they all piled inside and the long white car drove off down the street and disappeared from view.

Jake and Laura watched it go and then turned back toward the house.

“I already miss them,” Laura said as they walked back to the front door.

“It was a nice visit,” Jake agreed. “Your family is all right.”

“That part of it, anyway.”

Jake nodded and said no more.

“Well,” Laura said, “I guess we’d better start working on the laundry and getting the house back together so we can fly home today.”

“Let’s do it,” he said.

They stripped all the beds and started a load of linen in the washing machine. There was at least three more loads of linen and two of towels that would need to be washed, dried, and put back in their respective places before they could even think about heading home. By the time the second load was in the dryer, all of the other housework had been completed so they decided to go to the bedroom and have a nice fuck while they waited for the latest laundry cycle.

It was while they were going at it hot and heavy that Jake heard the phone ringing from the living room. He put it out of his mind and continued his rear-entry thrusting in and out of Laura’s vagina while he rubbed her swollen belly with one hand and played with her dangling breasts with the other. She was crying out loudly as he fucked her, without restraint for the first time in a few weeks. The phone eventually stopped ringing and he heard the beep of the answering machine fielding it. About two minutes later, his cell phone began to ring from its place on the charger on the dresser. He ignored this as well. And then Laura’s phone began to ring as well, going through two cycles of its own.

Jake’s cell phone rang through yet another cycle before he finally reached his climax and unloaded himself in Laura’s clutching chasm. They collapsed together on the bed, a pair of naked, sweaty messes, and lay there, panting, holding each other closely, feeling the blessed postcoital bliss they enjoyed so much.

Finally, Jake rolled over on his back. Laura did the same. She looked over at him. “It sounded like someone was trying really hard to get in touch.”

“Yeah,” he said with a sigh, knowing that such a thing was rarely good news.

“Are you going to see who it was?” she asked.

“In a minute,” he said.

It was actually closer to ten minutes before he finally rolled to his side and put his feet on the floor. He walked over to his phone and picked it up. He had never bothered to set up the voicemail box on the cell phone, but he did now have caller ID and missed call identification. He flipped it open and looked at the screen. Both calls had come from Nerdly.

“What the hell?” he muttered. He walked over to Laura’s phone and picked it up. The missed call on her device was also from Nerdly.

“Who was it?” Laura asked.

“Nerdly,” Jake said.

“What did he want?”

He gave her a look. “I don’t know what he wanted,” he said. “I am not a phone psychic.”

“You’re a funny man,” she said without humor in her voice. “Why don’t you go check the answering machine?”

“Right,” he said.

He walked naked into the living room. The answering machine was on the end table next to the couch. The red light indicating a message was blinking. He pushed it and heard the beep. A robotic voice told him the date and time of the message. It then began to play.

“Jake, this is Bill,” Nerdly’s voice said. “I need to you call me as soon as you get this message. This is important. I’ve just received the most peculiar phone call.”

Jake waited to hear the details but there weren’t any. That was the end of the message. The machine beeped and told him that he had no further recorded communications to ponder.

Peculiar phone call? he thought. What the fuck is going on now?

He picked up the cordless phone and dialed Nerdly’s number from memory. Bill picked up on the second ring. He had caller ID as well and knew who he was talking to.

“Jake!” Nerdly said. “I tried multiple times to achieve communication with you on multiple devices. Where were you?”

“I was engaged with something, Nerdly,” Jake told him.

“Engaged with what?” Nerdly returned.

Jake took a deep breath, irritated in advance at whatever news Nerdly had to share. “I was fucking my wife, Bill!” he barked. “I did not want to stop to answer the phone.”

“Oh,” Nerdly said simply. “I see. I hope it was enjoyable.”

“It was,” Jake assured him. “Now, what’s going on? What’s so important that you had to call four times in five minutes?”

“I just got the strangest phone call,” Nerdly said.

“From whom?”

“From Matt,” Nerdly said.

Jake’s eyes opened a little wider. “From Matt?” he asked. “You mean ... Matt Tisdale?”

“Matt Tisdale,” Nerdly confirmed. “He called me here at home thirty-four minutes ago.”

“What did he want?” Jake asked, with no idea what Matt possibly could want.

“He wanted to talk about the possibility of signing with KVA Records for his next solo album,” Nerdly said simply.

Jake stood stunned for a moment, naked, still reeking of his wife’s sexual musk, his penis still a bit swollen and wet with her secretions.

“Are you shitting me?” he finally asked.

“I am not shitting you,” Nerdly said. “The enquiry was sincere.”