Circles Collide

Chapter 20: Working It All Out

Posted: 01.08.2023, 04:34:11

Malibu, California

October 10, 1997

It had been a long, busy Friday for Jake, Laura, and Celia. The workups for both Celia and Matt had come to an end the day before and it was now time to move the entire operation up to Coos Bay to begin the recording process. The bulk of the day had been spent packing up audio equipment into the moving truck that would take it north to Blake Studios. Packed in with KVA’s equipment was Matt’s equipment and instruments as well—though at least Matt and his band had done their own packing. In the morning, everyone from both bands would be Oregon bound, though most of the crew was going by ground transport and it would take them a few days. The Nerdlys, who wanted to start getting things together at the studio, had already left the day before and would be arriving the next morning. Jake, Laura, Celia, Matt, and Jim, Matt’s paramedic, would be flying up there in Jake’s plane, leaving Whiteman at 11:00 AM. It would be the first time that Laura met Matt in her life. It would also be only the third face-to-face encounter between Matt and Celia since the infamous Grammy Awards ceremony of 1985, the night that the guitarist had gotten into a fight with Miguel, La Diferencia’s bass player and Jake had gotten a black eye from Celia’s brother, Eduardo, who had been trying to punch Matt but missed. It promised to be an interesting trip. Jake was not particularly looking forward to it. Neither was Celia. But it would have been insulting to ask Matt to drive all the way to Oregon when he was one of the primary performers being recorded.

After seeing the equipment safely on its way and turning Celia’s keys and Mercedes over to Coop (he, Charlie, and Eric would be driving it up to Oregon together—a strange combo of their own), the three of them had piled into Jake’s truck and driven back to her Malibu mansion together. They arrived just after sunset and Celia ordered Chinese food to be delivered. While they waited the food to arrive, they all took showers individually to cleanse the grime and sweat of their daily labors from their skin. All dressed in night clothes—Laura a shiny pair of silky green maternity pajamas, Celia a long t-shirt with nothing on underneath, and Jake a pair of sweat shorts and a Harley-Davidson t-shirt. They ate their Chinese food and then cleaned up the mess. And then it was time for bed. Jake and Celia had been eagerly anticipating the usual Friday night threesome all day. The problem was that Laura, swollen, uncomfortable, and cranky in her thirty-fourth week of pregnancy, was not in the mood. This led to a dilemma.

“It’s okay,” Laura insisted to her two lovers. “I am honestly and sincerely telling you two this: Go in the bedroom and fuck each other. I don’t mind.”

“We can’t do it without you there,” Jake insisted. “That is the rule and I think we should stick by it.”

“So ... you want me to just sit in the room and watch you two fuck?” Laura asked. She shrugged dispassionately. “Okay. I can do that if you want.”

“No,” Celia put in. “You have to participate as well. If you were just watching us it would be even more awkward than if we were doing it by ourselves.”

“I have a baby constantly pushing stomach acid up into my throat,” Laura told them. “That same baby has also caused a hemorrhoid in my butthole from the pressure she is putting on my butthole blood circulation. When I lay down, it gets hard to breathe because she is pushing on my diaphragm as well. I’m sorry, guys. I love you both dearly and I enjoy all the sweaty, stinky things we do when we get naked together, but I’m just not feeling up to it tonight.”

They sighed in unison. “All right,” Jake said, resigned. “I guess we’ll just wait for another day.”

“Maybe tomorrow night,” Celia said. “Our first night in the Coos Bay house. That might put you in the mood, Teach.”

“Of course, we’ll have to sneak around and be quiet,” Jake added. “The Nerdlys will be there. They left yesterday, remember? They should already be there when we fly in.”

“And the rest of the band will be there on Monday,” Celia put in. “We’ll have to be even sneakier and quieter once they all move in.”

Laura glared at them. “This is what it’s come down to? A guilt trip?”

“Is it working?” Jake asked hopefully.

She sighed. “You two are insisting that you’re not going to fuck if I’m not involved?” she asked. “Seriously? Even though I’m giving you explicit permission to do it?”

“It wouldn’t be right, Teach,” Celia said. “We have an agreement.”

“It’s all for one or none for all,” Jake said. “You and I can get it on by ourselves, but you and C can’t and me and C can’t. That’s the rule.”

Laura rolled her eyes. “Okay,” she said. “Celia, if I took off my pajama top and let you suck on my boobs while he fucks you, is that an acceptable level of participation?”

Celia and Jake looked at each other and then nodded quickly. They were both, after all, very horny at the moment. “Yeah, that works for me,” Celia said.

“That is clear and unmistakable participation,” Jake added.

“All right,” Laura said, standing up. “Let’s do it then.”

“Hell to the yeah,” Jake said with a smile. He held up a palm to Celia, who slapped him with a high five. “Let’s get to it.”

They got to it. They went to the bedroom and Laura pulled off her pajama top and tossed it on the floor. She laid down on the bed on her back, her head propped up on pillows. Jake and Celia undressed completely. They both spent a few minutes sucking on Laura’s breasts and, of course, this had the predictable effect on her. After Jake went around behind Celia and entered her from the rear, Laura pushed on Celia’s head, urging her further downward.

“You know,” she said, a little breathless now, “I wouldn’t mind if you ate my pussy out just a little bit.”

Celia giggled. “Just a little bit?”

“Just a little bit,” Laura said.

A little bit turned out to be a lot. She managed to lick and suck Laura to two orgasms before Jake fired off inside of her. By that point, Laura was fully in the game. She made Celia lay down on her back and she put her face between her legs to lick up all of Jake’s offering. And that led to Jake’s resurgence. He entered his wife from behind and gave her one more orgasm before firing his second load inside of her.

They collapsed to the bed, Laura in the middle, and stared up at the ceiling as the sweat and juices dried from their skin.

“You know,” Laura said after a few minutes, “we’re going to have to come to some kind of accommodation with this all three of us thing.”

“I thought we accommodated it pretty well just now,” Jake said.

“That’s right,” Celia said with a naughty smile. “You are a pushover for having your nipples sucked, Teach. As soon as we put our mouths on you, you were ours.”

“That is true,” Laura agreed. “But that’s not going to work once Cadence is born. There’s a six-week moratorium on my pussy after that. And if you start sucking my boobs after she comes out, you’re going to get a mouthful of her milk.”

Jake looked over at her, startled. He hadn’t thought about that. “I guess Cadence wouldn’t like it if we drank her milk,” he said.

Celia, however, seemed to be intrigued by that thought. “I wonder what it tastes like,” she pondered, a little shine in her eyes. “Is it perverted for me to think about something like that?”

Laura sighed. “Lactation and out of order pussy aside,” she said, “I’m likely not going to be in the mood as often as the two of you are. I’m going to be tired and sore and worn out at times. Are you just going to go without when that happens?”

“I guess we’ll have to,” Jake said with a shrug.

“Yeah,” Celia agreed. “That’s the way things go.”

“That’s not fair to you two,” Laura said. “You shouldn’t have to go without just because I had a baby and can’t be involved.”

Jake was shaking his head. “We’re not going without anything,” he said. “If Celia wasn’t involved here, I still wouldn’t be getting any for six weeks anyway.”

“And I wouldn’t be getting anything at all,” Celia put in. “We can keep our hands and genitals off each other when you’re not in the mood, Teach. Don’t worry about us.”

She looked from one to the other and then smiled a warm smile. “I really do love you two, you know that?”

“We know,” Jake said, leaning over and giving her a big kiss on the mouth.

“And we love you too,” Celia said, giving her a kiss of her own once Jake was done. She then leaned over Laura’s body a bit more and kissed Jake.

They laid back on the bed. Soon, Laura was drifting off to sleep. Celia curled up against her and began to nod off herself. Jake, though tired, was not quite ready to go to bed just yet. He rolled away from them and put his feet on the floor. He picked up his sweat shorts and Harley shirt from the floor and put them on, not bothering with the underwear. He then quietly left the room and went back downstairs to the family room and the bar. It was still more than twelve hours until he would sit down in the cockpit of his plane. That meant he was good to have a little scotch on the rocks out on Celia’s deck.

On his way to the bar, however, he caught sight of his cellular phone sitting where he had left it on one of the end tables. The little green light was blinking on and off, letting him know that he had a missed call. He sighed and changed direction, wondering what was happening now. Another Matt incident? Some snafu with the equipment or one of the musicians? Had Coop crashed Celia car? Had Little Stevie and Liz crashed Jake’s car? There were not many people who had his cell phone number. And those that did rarely called with good news—especially not after nine o’clock at night.

He picked up the phone and flipped it open, looking at the screen to see who had called him. It was Jill Yamashito, his accountant. Now why would she be calling on a Friday night? He dialed up the voicemail number and put the phone to his ear. This did not shed any light on the subject. Jill’s message was simply a request for him to give her a call as soon as possible.

He dropped the phone into the pocket of his sweats and continued his trip to the bar. Only after he had a triple scotch on the rocks in hand and his butt on one of the deck chairs overlooking the dark beach did he flip the phone open again. He navigated the contacts list to Jill’s home number and pushed the send button. About twenty seconds later, the phone began to ring in his ear.

“This is Jill,” her voice said after the fourth ring.

“Hey, Jill. Jake. Just returning your call.”

“Hi, Jake,” she said, her voice neutral, as usual. “Thanks for calling back. Sorry it’s so late. Where are you?”

“In Malibu at Celia’s place,” he said. “We’re staying the night here and then flying to Oregon tomorrow morning to get settled in.”

“Oh...” she said slowly. “That’s right. I forgot you were leaving tomorrow.”

“What’s up?” he asked her. “We got some shit going down, or what?”

“Oh ... no, no shit going down,” she said. “It’s just that that prospective buyer for your old plane—the Chancellor—that I told you about a few weeks ago ... do you remember?”

“Yes, I remember,” Jake said. Jill had been trying to unload his Chancellor ever since he had closed the deal on the Avanti. Selling a high-end used plane, however, was not as easy as selling a car or a house. It was a perpetual buyer’s market since one had to wait for the person or entity who was interested in that particular aircraft to appear out of the ether. “The Korean dude, right?”

“That’s right,” she said. “Jae Luc. He’s a structural engineer from Reno. He specializes in casino construction. I’ve talked to him multiple times now and he is very interested in the Chancellor. He wants to fly out and have a look at it soon.”

“Well, have him come on out,” Jake said. “It’s just sitting there in the hangar at Oceano airport. I take it up once a month or so just to keep it from rotting.” And, though the Chancellor was quite tame and quite slow compared to the Avanti, Jake still enjoyed flying it. There was a lot of nostalgia connected to that plane.

“That’s just the thing,” Jill said slowly, her voice uncharacteristically hesitant. “I kind of told him that ... uh ... he would get to meet you when he came out to see it.”

“You told him that?” Jake asked. “Why would I need to do that? We just need to give Dave at the airport forty bucks and he will open up the hangar for him and can even pull the plane out so he can inspect it.”

“That is true,” Jill said, “but...”

“And I have copies of all of the maintenance records stored in the plane just so a buyer can look them over,” Jake added.

“I know that,” she said, “but he really would like to meet you. He’s a fan of yours.”

“He is?”

“He is,” she said. “He told me that he’s seen you in concert multiple times, both with Intemperance and when you performed with Gordon. He was also at the Tsunami Sound Festival for both nights. He is really interested in the aircraft, partially because it belongs to you, and I think that having you meet him and talk to him about the plane might help clinch the deal.”

Jake felt that Jill was being truthful about this, but he was also detecting something else in her tone, something she was not telling him. He smiled. “Do you have the hots for this dude, Jill?” he asked.

“What? No, of course not!” she said, perhaps a little too aggressively. “We’ve never even met before. I’ve only talked to him on the phone.”

“Is he married?” Jake asked.

“Divorced,” she said. “For more than eight years now. He has a ten-year-old son that he has joint custody of.”

Jake chuckled.

“What?” she asked, clearly exasperated.

“You talked about his marital status and child custody arrangements while discussing the sale of my aircraft with him?”

“It came up in conversation,” she said. “Are you going to be able to do this at some point, or not?”

He chuckled again. It was just so enjoyable to hear Jill flustered. “All right,” he said. “Laura has an OB appointment next Friday afternoon at two o’clock. We’re flying down for it and then staying through the weekend. Can your engineer make it out on Saturday?”

“I’ll have to check with him, but that shouldn’t be a problem,” Jill said. “He owns a Cessna 172 currently and told me he can fly directly to Oceano whenever is convenient for you.”

“Well, pencil it in then,” Jake said. “It’ll be sad to finally sell that old girl, but also happy since someone will be flying her regularly again.”

“It’s just an object, Jake,” she said, not for the first time. “It’s not a he or a she. It’s an asset that is currently costing you more than a thousand dollars a month in storage, maintenance, and insurance fees.”

“I suppose,” Jake said with a sigh. “Just give me a call when you have the time nailed down. Oh ... and not too early please. We’ll really want to sleep in on our Saturday after a week of getting up early.”

“Understood,” she said.

A limousine picked up Matt and Jim from the Granada Hills home at 10:30 AM the next morning. Matt was a bit hungover, like usual, and dressed in a pair of faded jeans and a white t-shirt that showed two stick figures engaging in rear entry intercourse and had the motto “FUCK YO MAMA!” prominently displayed above that. He carried the travel bag that he used out on tour with him. In his shirt pocket was a Marlboro pack that contained eighteen filtered cigarettes and two tightly rolled joints. Jim was dressed in jeans and a more conservative t-shirt (his featured a picture of Bart Simpson on it) and he carried his own travel bag plus the football that contained all of the emergency medical supplies he would need to treat Matt if he went into some life-threatening cardiac arrythmia.

The trip to Whiteman Airport took only about fifteen minutes. The limo parked in front of the general aviation terminal. Out on the tarmac, Jake’s airplane was already parked, a fuel truck connected to it by a hose. Jake, Celia Valdez, and Jake’s old lady were all standing around near the open door of the plane. Matt could not help but admire the aircraft. He had heard tales about how the residents near this airport and the one in San Luis Obispo were always complaining about the noise it made, but he had never seen an actual picture of the plane. It was sleek and cool looking, with the hammerhead wings on the nose and the backward facing engines in the rear.

He felt a little stab of jealousy that his former bandmate could afford something as expensive as that, but fought it down. He had been working closely with Jake the past month—an experiment that was turning out to be much more successful than either of them could really have hoped for in the beginning—and if there was one thing he had reluctantly come to acknowledge, it was that Jake was a hard worker. He had seamlessly moved back and forth between two projects underway, both of which were operating under a hard deadline, and had managed to keep both on the rails and moving along through sheer force of will. And he had not been a prick about it, at least not with Matt. He had come to their sessions, listened to what they had, made suggestions in a polite manner, and then let Matt and the band figure out the best way to implement those suggestions. He had never once insisted on a change or modification to a tune if Matt himself strongly disagreed with it. And Matt, in turn, had made his best effort to listen and fairly evaluate each modification suggested instead of hating it immediately by default. All in all, he could not help but feel that his music was being positively enhanced and that this might be his best CD yet. Jake had gotten better at producing over the years and Matt had gotten better at listening to advice.

He and Jim got out of the limo and walked over to the plane, bags in hand. Jake came over to greet him, his old lady walking with him. He let his eyes appraise the bitch that Jake had married and knocked up. He had seen pictures of her, of course, and knew that she was a hot little spinner, but this was his first time actually meeting her in the flesh. And even though she was quite obviously in an advanced state of pregnancy, and even though he was most definitely not into pregnant chicks, he had to admit that she still looked good. Though her stomach was sticking out in front of her and she kind of waddled when she walked, her face was still very cute, very wholesome looking, and the rest of her body was still shapely and hot. Her tits were even bigger than the pictures he had seen suggested they would be. Maybe that was because she was knocked up. He had heard before that a bitch’s tits got bigger when that happened.

“Matt,” Jake greeted. “You ready to fly?”

“I’m always ready to fly,” Matt told him. “You should know that shit.”

Jake gave a polite chuckle and then put his arm on the redheaded bitch’s shoulder. “This is Laura,” he introduced. “Laura, the rather infamous Matt Tisdale.”

“Nice to meet you,” she said, holding out her right hand. It was a dainty hand, but not a manicured one. Her nails were short and unpainted and even had a few chips in them. He realized that this was not because of lack of femininity on her part, but because she was a professional saxophonist who had been playing a lot recently. Pushing those keys all the time probably played hell on a bitch’s nails.

“Nice to meet you too,” he said, politely enough, shaking with her. Again, he noted that her fingertips were not soft like a woman’s, but calloused like someone who used them for a living. He wondered if that felt weird to Jake when she gave him a handjob. It would almost feel like a dude was pumping the shaft. Oh well ... to each their own. He broke the handshake and then turned to Jim. “This is my man, Jim,” he told Kingsley’s bitch. “He’s a paramedic. He hangs out with me in case I need him.”

“I see,” she said with a nod, asking no questions. She shook hands with Jim and told him it was nice to meet him.

By this point, Celia had stepped forward. Matt took an even longer look at her. True, she was a bitch extraordinaire, but goddamn if she wasn’t hot! She was dressed in jeans and a white blouse that showed off that premium rack of hers like no fucking tomorrow. Her hair was tied up in a ponytail and she had only a light coat of lip gloss on, but her face was still one that a man just wanted to nut on.

“Celia,” he greeted. “How are you today?”

“Feeling good,” she said, her face keeping its neutral expression. “Ready to get to work.”

“Fuckin A,” Matt said with a nod. He then made the official introductions between Celia and Jim. They shook hands.

“I really enjoy your music,” Jim told her.

“Thank you,” Celia said. She too asked no questions about why Matt had a paramedic traveling with him and staying with him in Oregon.

“Suckup,” Matt whispered to Jim when Celia turned away and headed back over to the plane.

“All right,” Jake said. “Let’s go over and get you two and your baggage weighed.”

Jake had explained yesterday that this was a necessary part of riding in his plane. “Let’s do it,” he said.

“I trust you adhered to my rule about cocaine in your baggage?” Jake asked him.

“Yes,” he said sourly. “There is no cocaine in my bag or in Jim’s.” And this was true. He had sent six grams of uncut Bolivian shit in one of his guitar cases that had gone on the equipment truck, but there was not so much as a flake in the bag he was flying with.

“Excellent,” Jake said.

“Do you want to check?” Matt asked defiantly.

Jake looked him up and down for a moment and then shook his head. “No,” he said. “I trust you.”

Matt nodded. He then patted his shirt pocket. “I do have a couple of doobs with me though. Is it cool if we burn once we’re up in the air?”

“No,” Jake said without hesitation. “It is not cool.”

“Aww, come on, dude,” he pleaded. “I won’t be a Bogart! There’s enough for everyone.”

“The FAA frowns upon the hotboxing of an aircraft in flight,” Jake said. “And Laura’s OB frowns upon her being in a hotboxed aircraft in flight.”

“Oh ... yeah, I guess,” Matt said with a frown. When had Jake turned into such a fucking stickler for rules? “Well, is there somewhere around here that Jim and I can burn before we go up? If I’m going to fly in a badass plane like this, I gotta be stoned.”

Jake sighed. “Let’s do the weigh-in and then you can go around behind the hangar complexes and light up,” he said. “But make it fast. And don’t let anyone see you.”

“Right,” Matt said, happy again. “You got it.”

They put their bags on the scale and then themselves. Jake wrote down the readings on a piece of paper on a little clipboard and then he opened up the cargo compartment at the front of the plane and began loading the baggage in. Matt offered to help but Jake declined, telling him it had to be put in in a specific way. Something about balance and shifting or some shit like that. He and Jim then took their walk, finding a secluded haven behind the hangar complexes. They burned one of the joints down to the roach, which Matt then popped in his mouth and swallowed. By the time they made it back to the airplane, both of them were cataclysmically stoned and ready for adventure.

They boarded the plane and Jake directed them to the two forward-facing seats just behind the cockpit. The Valdez bitch was sitting in the copilot’s seat and Kingsley’s bitch was sitting in one of the rear-facing seats behind Jim and Matt’s seats. This was a bit surprising.

“You know how to fly the plane?” Matt asked Celia.

“I do not,” she said, “but this is where I always sit when I fly with Jake.”

“I see,” Matt said slowly, though he did not. He turned to Laura. “Don’t you want to sit up here though, close to your old man?”

“It doesn’t matter where I sit,” she said. “I’ll be asleep before we even hit cruising altitude.”

“Really?” he asked.

“Really,” she said. “I always sleep on planes. It’s a good way to pass the time.”

And, sure enough, she was right. They roared into the sky fifteen minutes later, climbing steeply and heading north. And before they even cleared the mountains north of the San Fernando valley, Kingsley’s bitch was sound asleep in her seat, her hands resting on her swollen stomach, her head bobbing up and down in the turbulence.

It was a little bumpy until they got out over the San Joaquin valley and then the ride smoothed out. By that point, they were at cruising altitude, which Jake said was thirty-two thousand feet. Far below, Matt could see the agriculture fields and the little thin black line that was probably I-5. Pretty cool shit. And then something else occurred to him.

“Hey, Jake,” he said. “It’s okay to talk now, right?”

“Yeah,” Jake said. “We’re up above ten thousand and the autopilot has the plane. What’s up?”

“I noticed you have what appears to be a bar back there,” he said.

“Yes,” Jake said. “It’s one of the amenities that comes with a four point seven-five-million-dollar plane.”

“Damn,” Matt said, impressed. Four point seven-five million fucking bones? Jake really was doing well. “That’s some serious coin. Anyway, that bar ... is that for anyone?”

“Help yourself, Matt,” Jake said. “I had it stocked with fresh ice this morning with you in mind. Just be sure to re-secure the bottles after you pour.”

Matt smiled and unbuckled himself, happy once again. “You’re all right, Jake,” he said.

“I try,” Jake said.

As soon as Matt got up, Jim unbuckled and joined him.

The plan that Jake had come up with that would hopefully give the KVA/Matt Tisdale relationship the greatest chance of successfully making it through the grueling process of recording and mixing a CD was simple. They would keep Matt and his people as separated from Celia and her band as possible. They would work in two separate studios at Blake Studios, with Jake and the Nerdlys alternating days between them as necessary. And, most importantly, Matt and his band would stay in their own rental house in Coos Bay, miles away from where Jake, Celia, Laura, and the others were staying.

The house that KVA was renting for Matt, Steve, Austin, Corban, and Jim was a five bedroom that sat on beachfront property just north of the Coos Bay Bridge. It was not on a cliff, which meant there was a small danger of a tsunami washing it away, and the larger danger of one of the drunken and/or stoned bandmembers drowning in the ocean, but KVA and Matt decided to take their chances with this. The best feature was that it was isolated, butting up against state park territory, which meant the nearest neighbor was more than a quarter of a mile away. Though it was costing KVA twelve hundred dollars a week for them to stay there (and God only knew what kind of damages they were going to have to pay for when the fivesome eventually moved back out), Jake considered it money well-spent.

Austin, Steve, and Corban joined Matt at the rented house on Monday night after spending two days driving up in Austin’s Chevy Suburban. They would use that vehicle for transportation during their stay. On Tuesday afternoon, the five of them drove to the studio to tour it for the first time. Obie—who was recording his own new CD in the third studio (and would make occasional use of the Nerdlys himself as part of his agreement to allow Matt and Celia use of the other two simultaneously)—met them when they arrived.

“It’s good to meet you, Matt,” Obie greeted. “I’ve been an admirer of your guitar work for years.”

“Thanks,” Matt told him. “And I have to say, your music doesn’t suck ass as much as most country music does.”

Obie chuckled. “How often does a man get a compliment like that?” he asked.

Matt and the boys were quite impressed with the studio, which was still one of the most advanced in the world when it came to digital recording. They were also impressed with Obie, who took them out for a night of drinking on the town after the tour. All five of them were hungover and out of sorts when they reported for duty at 9:00 AM the next morning for their first session.

Naturally, the vast majority of that first day was taken up just setting up the equipment and the microphones and sound-checking and adjusting everything until it almost (but not quite) met the satisfaction of the Nerdlys, at which point Jake would step in and gently call an end to the adjustments. The most actual recording they got done that day was the first bass track of the first verse of the first tune out of the ten that had been picked for the project. And even that was just the preliminary recording, just enough to help set the drum track for the verses portion.

The next day, the Nerdlys went through the same process with Celia and her band while Jake worked with Matt and his band in the other studio. Under Jake’s direction, they managed to work their way through all of the bass tracks on the verses for the first tune and the barest beginnings of the drum tracks. His interaction with Matt remained professional and respectful and Matt returned that respect without argument or even vibes of resentment or discontent. But then again, they were only working on the rhythm tracks. If there was going to be issues, it was going to be during the recording of the vocals and the guitar tracks.

The studio days ended at 5:00 PM. Matt and his band would climb into the Suburban with Austin behind the wheel and then head back to their rental house. They would stop somewhere along the way and pick up a pizza, or some fast-food burgers. They would then eat and drink alcohol, smoke weed, and Matt would snort some cocaine from his stash. On Friday night, he promised them, they would go hit the town and pick up some Oregonian gash. They all looked forward to Friday night.

Jake and Laura, however, were not able to join them or Celia and her band in the studio for the Friday session. They had an appointment to keep in San Luis Obispo.

Dr. Gloria Niven was in her early forties, a reasonably attractive brunette with a Minnesota accent. She was a graduate of the UC Davis School of Medicine with a residency in Obstetrics. She had a whiteboard in the reception area of her office that listed the number of babies she had delivered in her career and it was updated with each new delivery. As of this afternoon’s visit, that number was 1478 delivered, which was further categorized into natural births and caesarean section births. Those numbers stood at 1253 and 225 respectively. Jake and Laura were comforted by these numbers, but they were more comforted by Dr. Niven’s calm, cool, confident demeanor. They had complete confidence in her competency to see them through this pregnancy and birth process.

Laura was in one of the exam rooms now, undressed below the waist except for her socks and wearing a hospital gown over her maternity shirt. Her legs were up in stirrups and spread widely. Dr. Niven was standing between those legs, her gloved right hand up inside Laura’s vagina as far as it could go, only the thumb sticking out. Laura was wincing at the pressure.

Jake sat in a chair next to her, holding her hand, pondering the fact that when Celia put her hand up inside Laura’s body it was erotic, but when Dr. Niven did it, it was disturbing and stressful.

“Everything feels perfectly normal up there,” the doc said once her hand was removed. “The mucous plug is firm and fully intact, the cervix is tightly closed with zero percent effacement.”

“Good to know,” Laura said sourly as she removed her legs from the stirrups and let them close up again.

“Sorry,” Niven said with an understanding smile. “The pelvic exam is necessary, but uncomfortable. I’ve had two children myself, so I can relate.”

Laura nodded. “You have to do what you have to do,” she said. “We’re still on track then?”

“Everything looks good,” she said. “The baby is head down, just like she should be. She’ll start to drop down into your pelvis in the next few weeks. There is no glucose or ketones in your urine, so it looks like you won’t have to worry about gestational diabetes. If you were going to get it, you would have had it by this point.”

“That’s also good to know,” Laura said.

“I’d say that you can expect delivery on or about your due date,” Niven said. “Your pelvis seems big enough to accommodate the baby and her head is down and extremely unlikely to change orientation this late in the game. That means a vaginal delivery is extremely likely. Her heart rate is solid and she seems to be at the appropriate size for her gestational date. You may get that Thanksgiving baby after all, but it’s possible she may come a day or two after. It is a first pregnancy and first delivery, after all.”

Laura nodded. Jake nodded as well.

“Any questions?” Dr. Niven asked.

“Well ... yeah, a few,” Laura said. “We were wondering ... uh ... you know ... how long we could keep ... you know... doing it.”

“You mean sexual intercourse?” she asked.

“Yeah,” Jake said. “And ... you know ... other things along that line.”

“Like oral sex?” she asked.

“Yes,” Laura said, blushing furiously. “Oral sex. We ... uh ... we like doing that.”

She nodded matter-of-factly, as if Laura had told her that she liked having a piece of toast in the morning. “Understandable,” she said. “I’m assuming you’re referring to Jake performing the act on you?”

“Yeah,” Jake said slowly. “That’s right.” And someone else performing it on her as well, he did not add.

“Well, with vaginal intercourse,” Niven said, “you can keep that up all the way until pretty much the end. Once the mucous plug comes out a few days before delivery, however, you probably should not ejaculate inside of her any more. There is a risk of infection at that point.”

“Uh ... okay,” Jake said. “No more after the mucous plug comes out.”

“As for oral sex, you can do that right up to the end if you wish,” she added, “but sometimes it’s not exactly aesthetically pleasing for the giving partner. Once the mucous plug is discharged, there tends to be a fairly steady leakage of mucous and a little blood from the uterus.”

“I see,” Jake said.

“It’s harmless to the giver of oral sex,” she quickly put in, “but most people, as I said, find it aesthetically unpleasing.”

“Okay then,” Jake said. “So, we should plan to stop when the mucous plug comes out.”

“Most people stop long before that,” she said. “Usually, it’s because the mother is uncomfortable in the late stage of pregnancy, but the flow of secretions is also a factor as well. There is an interesting school of thought about the female orgasm and the onset of labor, however.”

“Oh yeah?” Laura asked.

“It is thought—though not actually clinically proven because it is hard to do a proper study on something like this—that the oxytocin release that occurs during orgasm may be a trigger to start the labor process in motion.”

“Really?” Jake asked, interested. Though he was not the most medically savvy person in the world, this did make sense to him. Oxytocin was released in large amounts when a woman had the Big O. It was also what they gave—in synthetic form—when they wanted to induce labor, as they had done for Pauline.

“There is plenty of anecdotal evidence to support the hypothesis,” she said. “So, once you’re at or about forty weeks gestation, there may be some benefit to having a good orgasm or two, whether it’s through traditional intercourse, oral sex, or manual stimulation of the clitoris.”

Jake thought it amazing that she could talk about getting it on in so clinical and boring a manner. It could be that she and Nerdly were actually soul mates whose paths had missed.

“There is one other thing we’d like to talk about,” Laura said.

“What’s that?” Niven asked.

“It has to do with how long labor is likely to last once it gets started.”

“Well,” Niven said, “unfortunately, as a primigravida woman with a small frame, it is likely to be considerable. Eight to ten hours minimum under ordinary circumstances, perhaps even as long as twelve to eighteen. If you were to go much more than eighteen, I would start to consider a C-section, particularly if there were any signs of fetal distress.”

Laura nodded, though she did not seem upset by this prediction. She seemed happy about it.

“Is that good news?” asked Niven.

“It is for us,” Laura said. “You see, we’re going to be up in Coos Bay, Oregon when my due date rolls around.”

Niven raised her eyebrows a bit. “I don’t really think it’s wise to go on vacation that close to your due date,” she suggested.

“It’s not vacation, doc,” Jake told her. “We’re working. Laura is the saxophonist for Celia Valdez’s new album and I’m the producer of it. The recording studio is in Coos Bay and we’ll be smack dab in the middle of our session time come late November.”

“I see,” Niven said slowly. “You do not plan to have me deliver the baby at SLO Baptist then? You’re going to deliver in Oregon?”

“No, not at all,” Laura said. “We are completely committed to having you deliver at Baptist. Our plan is to get our butts here from there as soon as labor begins.”

Niven was now looking at them as if they were insane. “Travel from Oregon to SLO at the onset of labor?” she asked. “That’s a terrible idea. I don’t recommend that at all.”

“What’s wrong with it?” Jake asked. “I’m a pilot, remember? I’m sure you’ve read all the articles in the paper about our noisy plane disturbing the peace all the time. That plane can make the flight from North Bend to SLO Regional in an hour and thirty-five minutes of flight time. It’s only another ten minutes from the airport to the hospital. If the minimum labor is eight hours, that will give us plenty of time.”

“That minimum labor time is only applicable if this labor stays routine,” Niven said. “What if it’s not routine? What if you are one of those rare women who delivers her first child in thirty minutes? That can happen, you know. Or what if you do not recognize that you are even in labor for the first six hours or so? That is actually much more likely, particularly in a primigravida who has no experience with the sensations of first-stage labor.”

“We’re going to bring Celia along with us,” Laura said. “She wants to be present at the birth anyway. She can time contractions for me and all that.”

“But still,” Niven said, “an hour and thirty-five minutes is a long time in which something bad can happen.”

“It’s not like that flight is over the ocean or the Gobi desert, doc,” Jake said. “There are towns and cities and airports all along the route between North Bend and here. If something bad starts to happen, I can be on the ground someplace with a hospital in less than fifteen minutes and have an ambulance meet me there. That’s a better deal than you’d get driving from a rural area into the hospital.”

“Uh ... well ... still,” Niven said, “I have to advise against this plan. There is no reason to take a chance. You should return home at thirty-eight weeks or so and stay put here until labor. That way, you will be taking no chances.”

“We can’t do that,” Laura said simply. “We have a deadline to meet and neither of us can take two or three weeks off. It’s going to have to be the fly-out-at-the-onset-of-labor plan. Nothing else will work.”

Niven nodded. “I can’t forbid you to do that, of course. I just want you to understand it’s against my advice.”

“Understood,” Jake said.

“And you absolutely should not attempt this if labor begins more than two weeks early,” she added. “You would be delivering early if that happens and there is much more of a chance that the delivery will occur quickly. If early labor begins, just go to the nearest hospital with labor and delivery services.”

“I guess that makes sense,” Laura said. “We’ll do it.”

“What do you plan to do once the baby is born?” Niven asked next.

“We’ll take a few days at home to get used to being new parents and settle into a routine and then fly ourselves and Cadence back to Coos Bay with us,” Laura said.

“She’s a music baby, doc,” Jake added. “She’s going to spend her first few months of life in a recording studio with her parents, learning how to put down tracks, mix them, and then master them.”

Jae Luc was tall for a Korean, standing just a tad under six feet. He was also stocky and appeared to be in excellent shape. He was dressed in a pair of dress slacks and a dress shirt—an outfit that reminded Jake of Greg Oldfellow. His accent was thick, as English was clearly not his first language, but perfectly understandable. Jake first met him in the office of Oceano Airport, where, to Jake’s surprise, Jill was standing next to him and able to introduce him.

“How did you get here?” Jake asked his accountant after he and the engineer shook hands and exchanged greetings.

“Oh ... well, actually, Jae picked me up at Heritage Executive and flew me here for the meeting,” she said, blushing a little.

“I see,” Jake said slowly, hiding a sly smile. His suspicion that there was some chemistry between the Korean engineer and the Japanese accountant grew a few sizes. There was absolutely no reason why Jill needed to be here for Luc’s informal inspection of the aircraft. He was just here to take a look at it, get a feel for it. They were far too early in the process to start actual negotiations on price.

“It was good flight,” Jae said, looking a little awkward himself. “I really liked approach into Oceano. Good view.”

“I always did like landing here,” Jake agreed. “Unfortunately, my Avanti needs about six hundred more feet of runway than they have here.”

“The Avanti is amazing plane,” he said. “I am jealous.”

“It really is fun to fly,” Jake said. “But so is the Chancellor. Shall we go take a look at it?”

“Please, let us do that,” Jai said.

They walked out to the hangar and Jake opened the door, revealing the twin-engine turboprop aircraft that was hooked up to a shoreline to keep the batteries charged. Jae fell in love with it at first sight. He walked around it, running his hands everywhere, touching the props and the tail and the flaps. Jake knew almost immediately that they would soon be entering escrow for the sale of it...

He looks like me when I first laid eyes on the Avanti, Jake thought, feeling a little warm glow of contentment inside. He honestly did want this beautiful aircraft—the plane he and Laura had had their first adventure in, the plane whose wing he had once fucked her on, the plane that had featured quite prominently in the chain of events that led to him and Celia having sex in a Portland hotel room—to go to a good home. And, though he did not think it likely that Jae Luc would have nearly as much adventure in it, he would care for it and treat it well and fly it frequently.

“Do you want to take her up?” Jake asked.

Jae’s eyes got a little wider. “Right now?”

“Why not?” Jake asked. “She’s fully charged, has more than half a tank of fuel, is current on maintenance, and hasn’t been up in more than a month now. She could use a good shakedown flight to get the fuel and the lube circulating around. How about we cruise over to Catalina, have a little bite to eat, and then come back?”

Jae was nodding. “I would like that,” he said.

“Right then,” Jake said. “You coming with us, Jill?”

“Uh ... yes, of course,” Jill said. “You know I always love riding in your planes.”

He knew no such thing. She had always only done it when she had to and had never really seemed to enjoy it. But he did not call her out on this. “Cool,” he said simply. He pulled his cell phone out of his back pocket and flipped it open. “Let me just call Laura and tell her I’ll be out for a while.”

Laura complained about her heartburn, her hemorrhoid, and about how she had to pee every five minutes. She then told him to have fun while she sat there at the house all alone. He agreed with everything she said, apologized for being away from her for so long on their rare day off together, and then told her that he loved her. He hung up and put the phone back in his pocket, feeling a little drained by the conversation. They then pushed the aircraft out of the hangar and Jake walked Jae through the external preflight checklist. Once this was complete, they walked together back to the office to file a flight plan. Jill stayed behind to guard the aircraft. Jake took the opportunity to feel Luc out a little regarding his accountant.

“What do you think of Jill?” he asked.

“She is very nice,” Jae said. “Very helpful in setting up meeting and possible sale of the airplane. Can I tell you again how happy I am to meet you, Jake?”

“I’m happy to meet you too, Jae,” Jake said. “I hope we can do business together on this aircraft. I also hope that you and Jill can stay friends when the deal is done.”

Jae nodded thoughtfully. “We might,” he said. “I enjoy talking to her. She never been married, right?”

“Never has,” Jake said. “She’s always been kind of married to her work. She takes accounting very seriously you know.”

“I respect that work ethic,” Jae said. “I have it myself.”

“I wish you luck with her,” Jake said. “She’s a good girl.”

“Jill or the aircraft?” Jae asked.

“Both,” Jake said.

They filed the flight plan and walked back.

“What are your ratings?” Jake asked the engineer.

“IFR rated but not commercial,” he replied. “I’ve recently completed the multi-engine, turboprop, and pressurized flight modules. I’m still building up hours for the test flights. If I decide to purchase the plane, I should be done by the time escrow closes.”

“So, you do know how to fly a twin-engine turboprop then?” Jake asked.

“I do,” he said, “I’m just not supposed to do it with passengers aboard.”

“Hey, Jill and I aren’t really passengers, we’re business acquaintances. Why don’t you take the left seat?”

“You want me to fly the plane?” he asked, surprised.

“You can take off and bring us up to cruise flight,” Jake said. “I’ll guide you through the flight to Catalina and go over the autopilot with you. I’ll land us when we get there though. The airport is a little tricky.”

Jake was afraid that Jae would be a stickler for the rules, but he was not. He was delighted to jump in the left seat. Jill seemed a little nervous when she heard the plan of action, but she said nothing and climbed right in after them.

They had a good flight to Catalina. Jae took off and brought them up to seven thousand feet without any issues, exclaiming all the way about how fast the Chancellor climbed. Jake nodded, thinking that eighteen hundred feet a minute was awfully slow compared to the three thousand feet a minute the Avanti could climb, but everything was relative. He remembered his own days in the Cessna 172 which strained to even climb eight hundred feet per minute if there was more than just the pilot aboard.

Jake landed them on the elevated runway at Catalina and parked them near the restaurant on site. They had a nice dinner of steak and baked potatoes, all of them abstaining from alcohol. Jake felt a little like a third wheel during this portion of the day as Jill and Jae spent the entire meal talking to each other and ignoring him. They talked of where they had gone to college, how they had started their careers, and a little of their family background. They smiled at each other frequently and Jake could feel that chemistry flowing back and forth. They then climbed back into the plane for the flight back. Jake took off, thrilling Jae to the core with the exhilarating launch from the clifftop at Catalina, and then let the engineer fly them back across the sea to the pattern for Oceano. He was able to make a smooth touchdown directly on the centerline without any issues. Jake then took over and taxied back to the hangar.

“I’m going to buy this plane,” Jae said once they disembarked and pushed the aircraft back into storage. “I would like to start the official process on Monday morning.”

“Sounds good,” Jake said. “I’ll be back in Coos Bay on Monday though. You’ll be dealing primarily with Jill here.” He paused. “I hope that’s all right.”

“Oh ... yes, that is fine,” Jae said. “I’m looking forward to working with you on this, Jill.”

“Me too,” Jill said shyly.

“So...” Jake said as they walked back to the office for the final time, “are you staying here in the area tonight, Jill?”

“I have a hotel room in San Luis Obispo,” she said. “The ... uh ... same hotel where Jae is staying.”

“The Marriott,” Jae said enthusiastically. “Nice place.”

“Yes, it is,” Jake said with a smile. “But there’s no need for you to stay in a hotel, Jill. Laura and I would be delighted to have you stay with us for the night.”

“Uh...” Jill said slowly, her eyes casting to Jae for a moment and then back to Jake. “I ... uh ... already booked the room and paid for it.”

“A pity,” Jake said, his smile increasing a little. “Think of the money you could have saved.”

“Sometimes,” Jill said, “you just have to splurge a little.”

Jake chuckled. “Who are you?” he asked her. “And what have you done with Jill?”

“Excuse me?” she asked, confused.

“Never mind,” Jake said. “I trust you can guide Jae here safely to his room?”

“I think we’ll manage,” Jill said.

They parted ways a few moments later. Jake was happy that at least someone was going to be getting his weenie wet tonight. His own prospects were not looking so good.

Obie, Pauline, and Tabby were staying in Obie’s house in Coos Bay while Obie was working on his CD. Jake, Laura, Celia, and the Nerdlys had dinner with them on the following Friday night so they could have their regular business meeting. Obie made some homemade chili and then grilled up some bratwurst for the occasion. Jake, Obie, Celia, and Pauline all had various alcoholic beverages to go with their meal. The Nerdlys were not in the drinking mood so they had lemonade. Laura, naturally, abstained from alcohol as well. Jake himself would be on the teetotaler list in another seven days. That would be when they were within two weeks of Laura’s delivery date and he would need to be ready to fly them to SLO at a moment’s notice. The partners talked no business until after the meal was complete and the servants had taken the dishes away.

“All right,” Jake said, a glass of twenty-five-year-old scotch on the rocks before him, “I have good news to share.”

“I like good news,” Pauline said. “Let’s hear it.”

“I was able to meet with the suits over at Aristocrat last Friday before Laura’s OB appointment. We’re starting to see a significant upswell in CD sales for Brainwash II over the past three weeks.”

“How significant?” asked Pauline. She had been up here in Oregon for almost six weeks now and felt decidedly out of touch with what was going on.

“More than six hundred thousand since we started pushing for airplay and promotion of Glory,” Jake said. “And growing every week.” Glory was one of Marcie’s tunes, a moderate tempo feel-good piece expounding on how good it was to be alive in the world and in love. It had a catchy hook line and complex guitar work by Steph and Jim that was complimented by Marcie’s voice on the lyrics. Jake had always considered it the best tune on Brainwash II and had pushed for it to be second promoted on the theory that it would start to push CD sales. It was a theory that seemed to be correct so far.

“That is good news,” Pauline agreed. She had been worried about the initial sluggish sales of Brainwash II despite the popularity of the first promoted tune—Jim’s What’s in a Name?

“Indeed,” said Celia, who had a glass of scotch of her own. “The band should get respectable royalty checks next quarter. And they’ll only get bigger from there.”

“Yes, I think they’ll be happy,” Jake said. “The question is, do we want to start working on their next CD come the summer? Or do we want to give them another year off like we did with their debut?”

“I think we should get them back in studio in the summer,” Pauline said. “It seems obvious to me that this CD is not going to sell as well as the first. We’ll all make money off of it—Brainwash included—but we could have done better. I don’t think it’s a good idea to let them fade from consciousness for a whole year. We can record their efforts over the summer and release it whenever we feel the time is right.”

“I like the sound of that on the surface,” Jake said. “But remember, I’m developing new material and will be ready to start working it up once Project Tisdale and C’s new CD are done. It seems likely that I’ll be ready to hit the studio come early spring.”

“Well,” said Obie, “it seems like y’all are managing to work with two studios at the same time right now. I might be able to schedule the time for you if you think you can pull off a Brainwash III and a Jake Kingsley at the same time.”

“I don’t know that I can do that,” Jake said. “Right now, I’m not responsible for any recording except for some backup singing and maybe a few overdubs, so that lets me concentrate on being the producer for both projects. If I’m recording my own shit, however, I’m responsible for all the lead vocals, all of the primary guitar work, and some of the secondary guitar work in addition to the production. I cannot do that and simultaneously produce a Brainwash project. And—no offense, Nerdlys—I don’t think it’s a good idea to put out another Brainwash if I’m not able to produce with everything I have.”

“I thought we did a good job,” Nerdly said with a pout.

“And you did,” Jake said, appeasement in his voice, “but a successful CD needs me and the two of you together. The shining example of that concept is V-tach.”

“They are enjoying quite the run of popularity currently,” Nerdly had to agree.

“Fuckin’ A they are,” Jake said. “Home went to number one on the chart and hung in there for three weeks. It’s still getting saturation airplay nationwide. And Rock started getting airplay three weeks ago now. You know how that is going.”

They knew. Rock was the tune My Rock to Cling To, an alt-rock love ballad that featured both Ben and Lenny on the acoustic guitars, Lenny playing a fingerpicked melody while Ben played chords (with a generous helping of distorted electric overdubs engineered in by Jake during the recording process). The song was widely popular since first debut and was currently shooting up the charts in several crossover demographics.

“It should reach the top ten by next week,” Pauline agreed.

“That’s right,” Jake said. “And CD sales picked up in correlation with the popularity of Rock. We’re on track to break Platinum before the first of November. V-tach is definitely going to be happy with their fourth quarter royalty checks. And we still have three more radio friendly tunes to promote after Rock. I don’t mean to toot my own horn or anything, and I’m not trying to minimize the contributions of everyone else involved, but it seems clear to me that my involvement in V-tach was helpful to the cause. I want to be involved on that level in all future projects.”

“I agree,” said Celia.

“As do I,” said Pauline.

The Nerdlys both nodded, though with perhaps a bit of reluctance. “It does seem that your production skills combined with our engineering is a respectable collaboration set,” Nerdly said.

“All right then,” Jake said. “So ... no Brainwash III until at least we have a master in hand for my next CD.”

“That will likely be ... when?” Pauline asked. “Next September?”

He nodded. “Assuming no delays,” he said. He reached over and patted Laura’s bulging stomach. “We are about to become parents, remember? We have no idea how much that is going to affect production.”

“Oh, don’t worry about that at all, Jake,” said Pauline with a smile. “Having a baby is nothing. You’ll hardly even notice a difference in your life.”

Jake looked over at her. “I sense a bit of sarcasm there,” he said.

Her smile got bigger. “You sense correctly,” she said. “Your entire existence is about to change. I really hope you’re bracing yourselves for it.”

“She speaks truly,” said Sharon. “I hope you both are appreciating sleep when you get it. There is not much of it in your immediate future.”

The work went on. Matt and his band continued to work in Studio A five days a week while Celia and her band continued to work in Studio B. Jake and the Nerdlys continued to bop back and forth between the two studios, trying to keep their eyes and ears on everything that was transpiring. Progress was made slowly, like a stream eroding a rock, but this was normal and expected. Both projects remained reasonably on time and only slightly over budget. Most importantly, the relationship between Jake, the Nerdlys, and Matt, while strained at times, stayed in the land of copacetic.

There were a few incidents, of course, but they occurred outside the studio, not inside.

On the first weekend in their rental house, the Coos County Sheriff’s department paid the band a little visit because Matt and the boys had been out on the beach trying to pick up on passing women who were out for strolls on the public beach. They did not succeed in this endeavor, but they did manage to infuriate the boyfriend of one of their prospects, a man who wisely did not try to engage them in physical combat to protect his lady’s honor, but did know the right thing to say to get the cops there in force: “One of them is a black guy.” Four units showed up (half the deputies on duty in the entire county that night) and, once discovering who the perpetrators were, sternly advised them not to repeat the behavior or they would get to tour the inside of the Coos County jail. Matt, showing a little wisdom of his own, did not antagonize the deputies, but simply promised that they would try to keep their pickup attempts confined to single women only.

On another occasion, the Coos Bay police were called to a local pizza restaurant after Matt and the shift manager got into a verbal altercation regarding the accidental placement of pineapple on one of the pizzas the group had ordered to take home with them. In this case, the manager (he was twenty-three years old and a perpetual stoner) was not so wise and, instead of simply apologizing and quickly making a pineapple-less pizza to replace the wrong order, accused Matt of being an idiot for not knowing that pineapple was standard on the Luau pizza. When Matt, reaching his limit at that point, said that he did know that and had specifically told the person taking the phone order not to put the pineapple on, the manager accused him of lying since the order-taker (an eighteen-year-old who was also a perpetual stoner) claimed that he had received no such instruction. Fortunately, the Coos Bay cops did not have a lot to do in their small town and showed up quickly, getting there just before Matt started his ritual of laying on of hands to both the shift manager and the order taker. In the end, they accepted a full refund for all of the pizza, made a vow they would never patronize the establishment again, and went to a bar and ate bar food for their dinner instead.

Jake suspected that there would be more incidents such as this as long as Matt was a temporary resident of southwest Oregon. They would just have to deal with them on a case-by-case basis as they came up and hopefully nothing that led to actual handcuffs on wrists would transpire. He was absolutely amazed, however, with how well things were going inside the studio. It was almost like there had been no bitter break-up of Intemperance, no accusations of murder, no acrimonious hatred.

It was almost like he and Matt were meant to work together. They did not socialize with each other, and they still danced on eggshells around each other to some degree. But Project Tisdale seemed to be moving right along.

November 25^th, Laura’s due date, came and went without incident. She remained pregnant and not in labor. The mucous plug sealing her cervix and protecting little Cadence (who did not feel so little to Laura) remained firmly in place and intact. Laura and Jake spent the day in the studio, Laura working on some of her saxophone tracks (she was able to rest her horn on her bulging stomach by this point), Jake working primarily with Matt and the boys as they laid down some of Corban’s rhythm tracks.

November 27^th was Thanksgiving. Everyone had the day off, as well as the following Friday and the weekend beyond it. Jake made a twenty-six-pound turkey for the occasion and everyone else who could cook contributed the side dishes. After the kitchen and the house was fully cleaned, everyone settled in to relax and do what they liked to do at night. Jake and Laura were sitting on the couch as the evening came to a close. Jake was strumming his guitar—the same melody (now modified and a bit more complex) that he had been playing on the day that Cadence got her name. It still had the same effect on her. She would kick in time with the cadence of the tune, as predictably as the tide. This never failed to delight both of her parents and anyone else who witnessed the phenomenon.

Celia was witnessing it with them on this night, not for the first time. She had her hand on Laura’s belly while Jake strummed and laughed in delight every time she felt the kick on the fourth note of the melody. Laura seemed to be in a particularly good mood on this night.

“You know,” she whispered to Jake and Celia during a break in the playing, “I think this might be a good night for C to ‘accidentally’ stumble her way into our room.”

“Oh yeah?” Celia said, immediately interested. It had been almost two weeks since the last time the three of them had gotten together. Laura just was not in the mood much these days. Understandable, since she had a nearly fully grown alien being in her belly that was getting ready to emerge.

“Yeah,” she said with a nod. “I really want someone to eat my pussy out. It doesn’t matter which one of you does it.”

“We can take turns,” Celia suggested. She was not really all that anxious to get her mouth on Laura’s vagina—though she would not hesitate to do so—but was anxious to feel Jake’s manhood thrusting inside of her and Laura’s tongue licking his spend out of her.

But Jake saw right through her. “Are you really in the mood for love?” he asked her. “Or are you trying to induce labor by having an orgasm or two?”

She smiled sweetly. “Does it matter?” she asked. “Either way, I get an orgasm or two, and the two of you get to fuck. Isn’t that a win-win kind of situation?”

They had to admit that she was right.

After everyone was in bed, Celia crept into their room wearing nothing but her fuzzy white robe. Jake and Laura were already bathed and naked and waiting for her. They got into bed together. Jake licked and sucked between Laura’s legs until she had the first orgasm. Celia then took over and started working her toward a second and then a third while Jake fucked her from behind. Laura then licked Jake’s spend out of Celia’s vagina, doing so quite enthusiastically. All were sweaty and satiated when it was over but, alas, Laura did not go into labor.

The next morning, however, she did lose her mucous plug.