Different Circles

Chapter 1: A Visit Home

High above central California

July 3, 1991

The 1982 Cessna 414A Chancellor cruised placidly along in level flight 17,500 feet above sea level, its twin Ram VII turboprop engines driving it through the thin air at 220 nautical miles per hour. Inside the aircraft the pilot and his passengers sat comfortably in a cabin pressurized to eight thousand feet of altitude. Outside the windows they enjoyed a panoramic view of the cloudless summer sky and the foothills and peaks of the Sierra Nevada mountains off to their right. To their left, the broad expanse of the Sacramento Valley stretched off to the west, framed by the low, rolling hills of the California coastal range. The city of Sacramento and its suburbs could be seen sprawling out beneath an ugly brown haze of summer smog. The aircraft flew more or less directly above the boundary between the valley floor and the foothills of the Sierras.

Jake Kingsley, former lead singer of the former rock band Intemperance, was sitting in the left-hand cockpit seat, his hands resting gently in his lap as the autopilot handled the mechanics of keeping the plane straight and level and on course. Jake had been a licensed private pilot for three years now. He carried an instrument rating, a multi-engine certification, and a pressurized aircraft operational certification. As of leaving the ground for this flight, his logbook showed 424 total hours of pilot time, including ninety-seven in the 414A Chancellor, which he had purchased two years before. If not for the months he had spent in self-imposed exile in New Zealand, he likely would have had another hundred hours or more in the log.

Jake was thirty-one years old on this day. His brown hair, which had been shoulder length, sometimes even longer, for his entire life past the age of thirteen, was now cut short, just barely falling over the tops of his ears. On his upper lip he now sported a carelessly trimmed mustache that extended just a tad beyond the corners of his mouth. Since his return to the western world from Oceania six months before, he had found that the short hair and mustache made for an almost foolproof camouflage. After all the years of trying to disguise who he was from adoring fans and committed haters by putting on hats and sunglasses and bulky clothing, the simple haircut and lack of shaving his upper lip had succeeded almost too well. Sometimes, these days, he had trouble convincing someone he really wanted to know he was Jake Kingsley that he was Jake Kingsley.

Jake’s body was looking a little better these days as well. Currently dressed in a simple pair of denim jeans and a button-up short-sleeved shirt, the blossoming beer belly he had recently sported was gone, replaced by the mostly flat and firm abdominal region that had marked much of his younger days. True, he was no longer skinny and gaunt as he had been back in his high school days, when his peer-assigned nickname had been “Bone Rack”, but he cut a respectable figure thanks to the morning runs he now habitually engaged in up in Griffith Park above his Los Angeles home, the thrice-weekly sessions on the weight machines in the downstairs of his home, and the relative reduction—though certainly not the elimination—of his alcoholic beverage intake.

Since the sky was clear with more than thirty miles of visibility, Jake was flying the plane under visual flight rules, or VFR, though he was only five hundred feet below the maximum altitude for such a thing. He did have his transponder squawking at Oakland Center for courtesy flight following, both so they would know that he existed and where he was if something went wrong, and so they would know where he was in relation to the commercial traffic flying above him. The plane passed a waypoint on the flight path—the VOR beacon located near Mather Air Force base outside of Sacramento—and turned gently to the right, settling on a new heading of 015 degrees—directly toward the small foothill town of Cypress, California thirty-six miles outside of the Heritage metropolitan region.

“We’re sixty miles out from Cypress muni now,” Jake told the woman in the copilot’s seat. She was not a licensed pilot, and was, in fact, never comfortable in the air at all, despite the fact that she had chosen both a profession and a marriage in which frequent air travel was pretty much mandatory.

“That means we start to descend now?” Celia Valdez, former lead singer of the former pop band La Diferencia asked, her white teeth nibbling a little on her lower lip. It was something she did when she was nervous, a habit Jake had learned to recognize over the past few months as they had spent an average of fifty hours a week together in a small, rented studio in Santa Clarita outside of Los Angeles.

“That’s right,” Jake said with a nod. He checked the frequency settings on his communications radio, confirming the primary channel was still set to the regional ATC frequency. It was. He keyed it up and spoke, his words picked up by the microphone on his headset. “Oakland Center, November-Tango Four-one-five.”

“This is Oakland Center,” a female voice replied. “Go ahead, Four-one-five.”

“Four-one-five is beginning descent toward KCCA, maintaining present course, will cancel flight following at four thousand feet.”

The air traffic controller repeated back his words, her voice calm, cool, professional. Jake suspected her voice would remain at that same tone and inflection even if a fully loaded 747 was reporting a catastrophe and declaring an emergency. I copy you’ve collided with another aircraft, your roof has peeled away, and you’ve lost three engines, she would chirp. Can I give you a vector to the nearest airport?

Jake punched the altitude he wanted to descend to—3000 feet—and the rate of descent he wanted to maintain—1200 feet per minute—into the autopilot panel. Upon hitting the enter key, the plane immediately began to nose down. His avionics package did not include an auto-throttle, so he had to manually pull back the two levers, his eyes tracking on the airspeed indicators to keep them at or about 220 knots indicated. The engine noise wound down and the altimeter began to spin downward.

“See?” Jake said to Celia with a smile. “Nothing to it.”

“As long as nothing goes wrong,” she said, giving her lip another chew.

“As long as nothing goes wrong,” he agreed. “Remember the first rule of flying with me though.”

“As long as you don’t look worried, then I have nothing to worry about,” she dutifully recited.

“Exactly,” he said. “That’s the beauty of getting to sit in the cockpit.”

Celia gave him a weak smile, chewed her lip one more time, and then continued to grip the sides of her seat with her hands. She was just one of those people who was never going to be comfortable in the air.

Like Jake, Celia was looking a little better these days than she had in recent times. She too had had her entire musical career thrown into turmoil and uncertainty at about the same time as Jake and the rest of Intemperance had gone their separate ways. Type-cast as a teen pop singer despite one of the most beautiful contralto voices since Karen Carpenter, she had been unable to secure an acceptable contract for a solo album after Aristocrat Records refused to pick up La Diferencia for another album. Locked into depression and anxiety that was amplified by the problems her husband—actor Greg Oldfellow—was experiencing in his own career, she had put on thirty pounds and let herself go to some degree.

The challenge of going independent and producing her own solo album had had the same effect on Celia as it had on Jake. Hope and purpose were great healers. She had stopped the midnight snacking (and early afternoon snacking, and the late morning snacking) and had started hitting the gym once again. The effect was now apparent. As she sat in the right cockpit seat, dressed in a pair of tan slacks and a sleeveless cranberry colored blouse, she was back to her fighting weight of one hundred sixty-five pounds on her nearly six-foot tall, Amazonian frame. Her dark hair flowed majestically over her shoulders and her breasts pushed alluringly at the front of her blouse. Her hips and rear-end were back to their premium proportions—the curves of which made men ache with wanting when they saw them.

Sitting immediately behind the two vocalists in the cockpit, in seats that faced the rear of the plane to maximize the room, were Bill “Nerdly” Archer and his wife of almost two years, Sharon Archer (formerly Cohen). They were part owners of KVA Records (the “A” in KVA belonged to them), the limited liability company formed to produce both Jake’s and Celia’s upcoming solo albums. The Nerdlys (as they were called by pretty much everyone who knew them) were perhaps the most sought after audio engineering and mixing team in southern California. They could have named their own price at any of the major recording studios that produced more than ninety percent of the American music market. Instead, they worked for free with Celia and Jake in a tiny, three-room studio in an empty commercial complex in Santa Clarita. Actually, they worked for more than free. They had put up a million dollars of their own money for the privilege of having that A.

The Nerdlys were looking pretty much like they always looked. Bill was sporting a button-up black shirt with a pocket protector and four pens in it; a pair of khaki cargo shorts with multiple pockets, most of which were filled with a variety of objects like a Velcro wallet, a tape measure, extra pens, an asthma inhaler, and even a protractor (“you never know when you might need a protractor,” Nerdly always said); a pair of black socks; and an open-toed pair of Birkenstocks. Sharon had on a pair of baggy jeans; an even baggier T-shirt from her alma mater: UCLA, from which she held a Master’s Degree in Audio Engineering; and a pair of generic sneakers she had bought at a discount shoe store near their home. Both had headsets on that were plugged into the plane’s communication system.

“Do what I do when I ride in this contraption with Jake, Celia,” Nerdly said.

“What’s that, Bill?” she asked.

“I think about the mathematical calculations related to air travel.”

“You mean the odds?” Celia said.

Nerdly winced a little. “I’m not a fan of that term,” he said, “but, yes, that is what I’m referring to. Now, granted, flying in Jake’s plane is not as statistically safe as flying on a commercial airliner, but as long as he is a qualified pilot and the aircraft is maintained properly at the prescribed intervals—and I happen to know that Jake is quite fastidious about that—and, of course, you’re flying in good weather conditions, such as we are now, then you’re talking a likelihood of fatal accident that runs around one in twenty thousand or so. Compare this to a likelihood of one in five thousand for automobile travel.”

“That is a pretty good statistical analysis,” Celia had to admit.

“Indeed,” said Nerdly. “It’s all a matter of perspective.”

“If we do all crash and die, it can’t be right now,” said the fifth person in the plane—Pauline Kingsley, Jake’s older sister, the manager of both Jake and Celia, and part-owner of KVA Records. She was seated in the very rear of the cabin in a forward-facing chair. “If we have to go, it needs to be after we’ve put your albums out, or at least recorded them. That way, we’ll be able to cash in on the tragedy.”

“Well ... our next of kin will be able to, anyway,” Jake said.

“Yeah,” Pauline agreed. “The situation does have its drawbacks.”

“Can you imagine though?” piped up Sharon, in all seriousness. “Jake and Celia both dead in a plane crash and then the albums are released a few months later? We wouldn’t even have to promote them. We’d go platinum on both in the first week.”

“That would make Greg very happy,” Pauline said. “You know ... once he got over his wife dying and all that.”

“This conversation has taken a turn toward the morbid,” Celia said with a shake of her head.

“Hey, C,” Jake said. “We’re just talking industry realities here. Nothing stirs up album sales like a well-publicized death. We just need to pick the right time to cash in on it.”

“Madre de Dios,” she muttered, though she could not hide a slight chuckle of amusement.

When they passed below five thousand feet and were only ten miles out from Cypress Municipal airport, Jake declared a sterile cockpit condition. All of his passengers knew that meant they should not talk or otherwise distract him from his task of safely landing the plane. Despite their earlier conversation, all knew it was in their best interests to follow the rule, particularly when they were to land at an airport Jake was not familiar with.

Jake brought them down to thirty-five hundred feet and followed his navigation notes until the small airport was in sight. It was nestled onto a plateau just north of the historic gold rush town, its single runway a 7/25 that was thirty-two hundred feet in length. There was no wind to speak of, so he decided to bring them in from the southwest approach. There was a ridge about half a mile from the runway on the northeast approach—something he really did not want to deal with on his first landing at the field.

He circled around once in the pattern and then lined up with the runway for his final approach. The engines wound down, the flaps were incrementally deployed, slowing them to ninety knots of airspeed, the gear were lowered, and they touched down neatly on the centerline of runway 7 with barely a thump.

“Nice one,” Celia said appreciatively as they completed the rollout.

“Naturally,” Jake replied with a smile.

He parked the aircraft in one of the visitor spots near the airport office, pulling it in between a Cessna 172 and a Piper PA-24. The five of them exited the plane and spent a few minutes stretching their legs after the semi-cramped two hour and twenty minute flight. Jake spent a few minutes securing the plane to the two tie-down rings embedded in the concrete of the parking slot and then directed everyone to remove their baggage (one bag apiece, no more than thirty pounds) from the cargo boot in the nose of the plane. Once the bags were all removed and the doors all securely locked, they headed over to the airport office. Here, a 1990 Toyota Land Cruiser had been parked.

“Is that our ride?” asked Sharon as she looked it over.

“I’m thinking so,” Jake said, “since it’s exactly the model I requested and parked exactly where I told them to park it.”

“A Land Cruiser, Jake?” Pauline asked. “Really? You couldn’t have got us a Caddy or something comfortable?”

“Well, Mom and Dad live up in the mountains now,” he said. “I thought the four-wheel drive might come in handy.”

“They only live two miles off the main road and their access is paved,” Pauline told him. “Not only that, it’s July, not the dead of freaking winter. Were you picturing some Donner Party shit or something?”

“Well ... I didn’t know what to expect,” he admitted. “I know they live on the edge of the canyon, so ... you know?”

Pauline shook her head. “They’re only at an elevation of thirty-two hundred feet. It only snows there once or twice a year, sometimes not at all.”

“Well, it’s better to be overprepared than underprepared, right?” Jake said.

“No,” Pauline said. “It’s better to ask someone who has freakin’ been there what vehicle would be appropriate.”

“I’m a man, sis,” Jake told her. “We don’t ask for advice.”

This earned him another shake of the head. He ignored it and went inside the airport office, where a young woman, moderately attractive, was working behind a counter. She looked up at him without interest or recognition when he entered.

“Help you?” she asked.

“I’m Jake Kingsley,” he told her. “I just flew in from LA. The rental car company delivered a Land Cruiser here for me. I believe that is probably it outside in the parking lot.”

The name caught her interest a bit. Her eyes immediately locked onto his face, examining him carefully for a moment. She took in the short hair and the mustache and then gave a little shake of her head. No, not that Jake Kingsley, her disappointed expression said. The disguise had worked its magic yet again. She put her eyes back on her desk and pulled up a set of keys on a tab. “Right here, Mr. Kingsley,” she told him. “I’ll just need to see some ID first.”

“Absolutely,” he said, pulling out his wallet and opening it to reveal his driver’s license. He had recently had it updated with a new photo, one that showed him as he currently appeared.

She looked it over briefly, her eyes flitting from the photo to his face a few times. She either did not notice or did not realize the significance of the address and zip code listed. “That looks like you,” she said, handing him the keys. “It must be weird to go through life with Jake Kingsley being your name, huh?”

He smiled a little. “Why would that be weird?” he asked.

She looked up at him again. “Uh ... you know, because it’s the same as Jake Kingsley the singer.”

“There’s a singer named Jake Kingsley?” he asked, as if surprised.

“Uh ... yeah,” she said, as if talking to a retard. “From Intemperance? He’s only the most famous singer of the past ten years or so.”

Jake shrugged. “Never heard of him,” he told her. “I mostly listen to talk radio.”

“He’s the singer that snorted cocaine out of that girl’s butt crack that one time,” she said, somewhat exasperated.

“Wow,” Jake said, shaking his head a little. “Cocaine from a butt crack? That sounds kind of depraved ... not to mention unhygienic.”

“Yeah,” she said dreamily. “Some girls have all the fun.”

“I guess so,” Jake told her. “Anyway, I’d better get going. You have a nice day now.”

“You too,” she said. “And give Intemperance a listen sometime. You’ll love them.”

“Maybe I will,” he told her and then walked back out, singing the chorus for I Am Time, one of Intemperance’s most popular hits, softly under his breath. The girl stared at him, wide-eyed, as the door closed between she and Jake.

They loaded up everything into the back of the Land Cruiser and then piled in after it. Jake and Pauline sat up front. The Nerdlys and Celia crammed together in the back, sitting shoulder to shoulder with Sharon in the middle. Pauline directed Jake to drive out of the airport grounds and onto Highway 49, the main route through Cypress, until they reached State Route 38 in the center of town. There, Jake turned east and they began to climb higher into the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains.

Approximately fifteen miles later, after a twisting, turning, climbing drive along the badly maintained two-lane road, Pauling directed him to turn right onto an even narrower two-lane passage called Canyon Ridge Road. They wound through a forest of towering pine trees for about ten minutes and then came to a narrow, paved access road that was marked with a wooden sign on a post. The sign read: Paradise Homestead. Below it was a smaller sign that read: Private Property.

“This is the entrance,” Pauline said. “Just another quarter mile or so to the houses.”

Jake turned onto the road and drove about five hundred feet before coming to a closed steel gate, painted forest green, with a camera and an intercom box. Pauline directed him to stop at the box and push the button. He did so and was rewarded with his mother’s voice.

“You made it!” Mary Kingsley said excitedly. “Hold on a second while I open the gate.”

“You got it, Mom,” Jake said, feeling the first stirring of emotion. He had not seen his mother or father in person in nearly eighteen months now.

“Come right to our house,” Mary told him. “Stan and Cindy are already here. We have lunch ready for you.”

“On the way,” he said as, before him, the gate started to slowly swing open.

He drove down the access road, which rose steeply through the trees beyond the gate. At the top of the hill it turned forty-five degrees to the right and entered a large cleared area a little more than a quarter mile wide by five hundred yards deep. Two houses sat upon the land, one at either end, both tucked into the far corners. The area between the houses was mostly manicured lawn with a few isolated evergreen trees poking up. There was a tennis court almost equally between the two houses. There were two outbuildings that appeared to be garages, one near each of the houses. Beyond the land was a steep, rugged hillside that dropped down into the Heritage River Canyon. On the other side of the canyon—which was perhaps a half a mile wide at this point—were jagged, hillsides of rock and tree-lined plateaus that grew higher and more rugged. Rising beyond these were the granite mountains of the Sierras.

“It’s beautiful,” Jake said appreciably.

“Yeah,” Pauline said with a smile. “They picked their place well. Take the right fork of the road. Mom and Dad’s place is the one on the right.”

Jake nodded. He would have known that even had he not been told. The house on the right side of the property was a single story, spread out to take advantage of horizontal space and to avoid staircases. Jake had advised his parents on that design back when development of the property had still been in the planning stages. The house that belonged to Stan and Cindy—Nerdly’s parents—was a two story with a wrap-around balcony on the second level. The Nerdly parental units preferred to be a bit more pretentious with their domicile.

There was a circular driveway in front of Tom and Mary’s house, currently empty of any vehicles. Jake pulled in and brought the Land Cruiser to a halt. Before they even stepped out, the front door of the house burst open and two sets of parents came rushing out to meet their children.

Tom and Mary, Jake and Pauline’s parents, were both in their late fifties. Tom, the former lawyer for the ACLU, was tall, just an inch shorter than Jake’s six foot one inch, and had not the merest trace of the beer belly he had sported for much of his life. His hairline had receded slightly from his forehead over the past ten years, but, except for a few speckles of gray around the ears, maintained the dark brown color he had been born with. He was wearing a pair of khaki shorts and a pullover t-shirt with the logo of a local brewery printed on it. His legs were well-muscled and his eyes were free from the glasses that had adorned his face for as long as Jake could remember.

Mary also retained her natural dark blonde hair color, though she too was showing a few streaks of gray here and there. Her legs were short, her body thin and well proportioned. Her face was attractive, the resemblance to Pauline unmistakable, though Pauline’s hair was much darker. Once she had been capable of turning young men’s heads as she passed. Now, in her moderately late middle age, she was a distinguished and attractive woman who could still easily pass for early to mid forties. One of the most distinguishing things about her, however, was the asymmetry of her arms. There was nothing wrong with her left arm, but her right was quite noticeably larger in diameter, tighter, and significantly more toned and muscular through the bicep, triceps and forearm region. This was from a long career spent playing the violin professionally, mostly for the Heritage Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra. The right arm was the one that had spent a lifetime moving a bow across the strings of her instrument.

Jake’s parents took a brief moment to take in the sight of their wayward son—they had not seen his hair so short since he had been in grammar school, they had never seen him with a mustache, and, undoubtedly, they had feared he would look haggard and strung out after the last year and a half he had put in during his journey through the life of a rock musician—and then both rushed up to him.

Tom reached him first. He did not bother with a handshake, he simply wrapped his only son up in a big bear hug that Jake returned heartily, feeling a small tear form in his left eye.

“Welcome, Jake,” Tom said when the embrace was broken. There was strong emotion in his voice and Jake saw him wiping at his own eyes. “It’s good to see you.”

“It’s good to see you too, Dad,” Jake told him. “Sorry I’ve been away so long.”

Mary embraced him next, her hug softer, more motherly, longer in duration. She was freely crying as she held her son, her words choked with joy at holding him in her arms. “Welcome to our place, Jake,” she told him. “I’m so glad you’re here.”

“Me too, Mom,” he replied, kissing her on her wet cheek. He pulled from her hug and stood back a moment. “You two look great,” he observed. “Retirement is definitely agreeing with you.”

“It’s all the tennis we play,” Tom said. “And the hiking we do on the canyon trails.”

“We get a lot more exercise these days,” Mary said. “Not having to go to work every day frees up the time.”

“It shows,” Jake said. He turned to his father. “Where are your glasses, Dad? You look really different without them.”

“I had the RK surgery,” Tom told him. “I wrote you about it when you were living in New Zealand—several times I mentioned it, in fact.”

“Oh ... yeah,” Jake said guiltily. “It must have slipped my mind.” It had not slipped his mind. He had not opened any correspondence from home during his expatriate phase, which was why Pauline and Jill Yamashito, his accountant, had had to fly across the globe to finally track him down and pound a little sense into him. He still had not read any of those letters. In his haste to get back to California and start working on putting KVA Records together, he had left all of them unopened in a drawer in his home on the South Island.

“Yeah,” Tom said with a nod, “it sounds like you had a lot on your mind back then.”

“You don’t know the half of it,” Jake said.

“I kind of like your new look, hon,” Mary told him, reaching out to touch his mustache.

Jake shrugged. “It’s an almost perfect disguise,” he told her. “I can walk around in public now without people hounding me.”

“I almost didn’t recognize you,” Tom said. “My first thought in the first second was: ‘who the hell is that?’”

They had a chuckle over this and then the Kingsley parents finally acknowledged their other offspring, Pauline, who was standing just behind Jake. Hugs were exchanged, as were warm words of greeting, but the emotion of the moment was not quite as strong. Pauline, after all, kept in regular touch and flew down to visit every few months. She had helped them hire the contractors who had built the place and had helped her father clear all the legal obstacles that had cropped up along the way.

After greeting their daughter, Tom and Mary turned their attention to Celia, who was shyly hanging back near the rear door of the Land Cruiser. She had never met Jake’s parents before and they were a bit puzzled why she had come along for the visit. They knew who she was, of course, and that she and Jake were partners in the record company and both working on solo albums, but they also knew she was married to Greg Oldfellow and that there was not (or at least there shouldn’t be) any romantic involvement between her and their son. He was not bringing her home to introduce a girlfriend, so why would she be here?

Still, they were gracious when the introductions were made and they made her feel welcome.

“It’s very nice to meet you, Celia,” Mary told her. “I have one of the guest bedrooms all set up for you.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Kingsley,” Celia replied. “I’m looking forward to a tour of the house.”

“Oh, call me Mary, please,” she said. “I don’t even let my music students at the high school call me ‘Mrs. Kingsley’. It’s so formal.”

“And I’m Tom,” Tom said. “We don’t stand much on ceremony here.”

“Mary and Tom it is,” she said with a smile.

“Pauline said your husband can’t join us?” Mary asked.

“He wasn’t able to make this leg of the trip,” Celia replied, keeping the answer vague, implying that Greg was simply too busy with movie business to accompany her to meet Jake’s parents. In truth, there was no movie business for Greg Oldfellow these days. The abomination that was his last movie—The Northern Jungle—had all but destroyed his career. He had been offered no roles except for in slapstick parody movies as comic relief. No one was taking him seriously as a serious actor anymore. The real reason he had not accompanied her was he refused to fly in Jake’s plane, thinking it a cramped deathtrap flown by an inexperienced pilot. He had not wanted Celia to come along either and Celia’s insistence on making the trip had led to a long, still unresolved argument between the two of them.

“That’s too bad,” Tom said. “I would have enjoyed meeting him. I think he’s a wonderful actor and I own several of his films in my collection.”

“He’s going to meet us on the second leg of the trip in Oregon,” Celia said. “I’ll give him your praise.”

They beamed at the thought that a famous Hollywood actor—even one who was technically washed up at the moment—would be hearing their names.

Meanwhile, at the other end of the driveway, Stanley and Cynthia Archer had finished greeting their son and their daughter-in-law—it had been the better part of six months since they had last seen them in person—and wandered over to meet Jake, Pauline, and Celia.

“Stan, Cindy,” Jake greeted, shaking hands with the former and giving a hug to the latter. “It’s good to see you both.”

“It’s good to see you as well, Jake,” said Stan. He was a shorter than average man, standing around five foot six inches, and he had a moderately advanced receding hairline. He, like Jake’s parents, looked to be in better shape these days than he had throughout his previous life. A career desk jockey who had worked for Mutual of California Insurance as a specialist in structural and business underwriting, he had always been more than a little round around the middle. He was now at least four inches smaller in the waistline than he’d been at his son’s wedding some eighteen months before.

“I like your new look, Jake,” Cynthia told him, her brown eyes tracking up and down from his face to his hair. “Haven’t your mother and I always said you’d look good with short hair?”

“You did always say that,” Jake had to agree. “You look good as well.”

And she did. Whether it was from walking the trails in the canyon or playing tennis or just generally living better in retirement, Cindy—who he had always thought of as almost a second mother—had dropped at least fifteen pounds since the wedding as well. Her brunette hair had been cut short and neatly styled recently and her face also appeared to defy her age. She could have passed for forty easily, despite the fact that she was fifty-four.

After greeting Pauline, the Archers were then introduced to Celia.

“It’s very nice to meet you at last,” Celia told them. “Bill talks about both of you all the time.”

“Only the good stuff, I hope,” Stan said with a chuckle.

“Is there any bad stuff?” Jake asked. “I’d like to hear that.”

“I’m sure he has a multitude of fascinating narratives about his career as an insurance underwriter,” Bill said seriously. “I always try to get him to share some with me, but he only says they would be boring.”

“Insurance underwriting, boring?” Jake said as if appalled. “Get the hell out of town with that, Stan!”

“Exactly!” Bill said. “Promise me that you’ll share something with us over dinner.”

“Uh ... well,” Stan said, casting an evil (though amused) glare at Jake, “I’d love to but ... you know, there are privacy issues involved.”

Bill nodded seriously. “Oh, of course,” he said. “Forgive me. I wouldn’t want to imply that your honor and professionalism should be forfeit simply because you’re now engaged in financially stabilized voluntary unemployment.”

“Well put, son,” Stan said, then turned his attention back to Celia. “So ... I hear you and Jake are making solo albums together with Bill. How is that going?”

“We’re moving along quite nicely,” Celia said.

“In fact,” said Jake, “the solo albums are part of the reason we came to visit.”

“It is?” asked Mary. “What do you mean?”

“We’ll talk about that in a bit, Mom,” Pauline said. “Maybe with lunch.”

“Of course,” Mary said. “Although I can tell you my curiosity is now piqued a bit.”

“We’ll un-pique you soon,” Jake assured her. “For now, how about you show me your house. I’ve been dying to see it.”

The house was quite nice. Though not as large as either of Jake’s houses—the one in the hills of Los Angeles or the one in the hills of New Zealand—it was practical, roomy, and well built. There were four large bedrooms spread throughout the single floor. The master bedroom where Tom and Mary slept was almost a house onto itself. A large picture window on the southeastern wall faced out over the Heritage River Canyon and the mountains beyond. The bed—a super king sized with a canopy—occupied only a quarter or so of the available space in the room. There was a large walk-in closet that was the size of a standard bedroom in a standard house, a sectional dresser and mirror set made of solid mahogany, and an entertainment center—also of mahogany—that was equipped with a forty-two-inch television set. The master bathroom featured a large soaking jacuzzi tub and separate glass enclosed shower. Another picture window looked out over the canyon from in here.

In addition to the bedrooms, there was a large kitchen equipped with propane fired appliances set into a granite topped kitchen island. The cabinetry in here was also of mahogany. Adjacent to the kitchen was a formal dining area that Mary and Tom confessed they rarely used, preferring instead to take their meals in the more intimate kitchen nook. The living room was adjacent to this and featured a projection television set resting in another large mahogany entertainment center. The wrap-around sectional furniture was light brown and rested upon a dark colored hardwood floor. In the corner of the room was a wet bar stocked with a variety of liquors, beers, and wines. Beyond the living room was a hallway that led to the secondary bedrooms, all three of which were equipped with queen sized beds and thirty-inch television sets. Two of the secondary bedrooms shared a connected bathroom with a smaller version of the shower and tub combo in the master. The third secondary room was right next to the communal bathroom in the hall.

At the far end of the house was another room that was larger than the guest rooms but not quite as large as the master. It had its own half-bath attached to it. This was what Tom called the entertainment room. A pool table was the centerpiece of this room. A variety of chairs and loveseats were arranged around it. On the wall near another large window was a top-of-the-line stereo system that had two turntables, a CD player, and a cassette player in addition to the stereo receiver. Arrayed on shelves to either side of the stereo were Tom and Mary’s music collection, which was considerable. Records—some dating back to the early 1950s—were neatly arranged alphabetically. Jake remembered many of these records from his childhood. There were complete collections of Neil Diamond, the Rolling Stones, the Animals, The Beatles, Peter, Paul, and Mary, Simon and Garfunkle, Beethoven’s symphonies by a variety of performers, Bach, Straus, and, of course, Intemperance. The CD collection was considerably smaller and consisted almost entirely of duplicates that his parents had purchased in order to enjoy the superior musical reproduction of their favorites. Most of the classical as well as the Stones and Neil Diamond were represented here. Jake was a bit chagrined to note that there were no Intemperance CDs in the collection.

On the wall opposite the stereo system and the music collection was a glass encased display cabinet. It contained Mary Kingsley’s Nicolas Lupot violin. An instrument worth around twenty thousand dollars (it had its own insurance policy, the underwriting paperwork issued back in the day by none other than Stanley Archer of Mutual of California), she had played it through the last eighteen years of her career with the Heritage Philharmonic. It had been retired with its owner, resting in the case ever since. Though his mother still played the violin quite regularly in her position as conductor and instructor for the Cypress High School orchestra, she played one of her many secondary instruments for that gig. Jake had a notion that maybe that violin would be coming out of that case soon. For what he had in mind, his mother would insist upon the very best.

Jake was installed in the guest room that did not have its own bathroom. Celia and Pauline were given the two rooms that did have the connecting bathroom. Nerdly and Sharon were given their own room over in Stan and Cindy’s house—a house that Jake promised to come over and tour soon.

By the time he was settled in and unpacked, it was time for the late lunch Mary and Tom had prepared. The Archers all returned to Tom and Mary’s to partake in the food festivities as well. Finally, the formal dining room table got to see some action as everyone sat down and tore into the fajita platter full of marinated chicken breast, homemade pinto beans, Spanish rice, tomatoes, lettuce, and freshly grated cheddar cheese.

Jake ate gratefully, sipping out of a glass of iced tea after turning down the offer of a beer. Celia, Sharon and Pauline each had a glass of white wine. Nerdly, Stan, Tom, and Mary all went with the beer.

“This is great, guys,” Jake told his parents after putting away his third taco and sopping up his second helping of beans.

“I agree,” said Celia, who was just finishing her second taco. “It’s nice to have a down to Earth meal once in a while.”

“Don’t you have servants in your home to make homemade food for you?” asked Mary. She was quite fascinated with the fact that Celia Valdez—the Celia Valdez—was taking lunch with her family just like she was a real person.

“We do,” Celia confirmed. “We have a live-in chef who follows us to whatever house we’re staying in—LA or Palm Springs.” She blushed a little. “Madre de Dios, that sounds a little pretentious of me, doesn’t it?”

Jake gave her a smile and waved his hand in a see-saw motion. “Yeah, that was pretty much an elitist statement if I’ve ever heard one,” he told her.

“Jake!” Mary said, aghast at his rudeness.

But Celia was chuckling at his words. “It’s okay, Mary,” she told her. “Jake and I have been working pretty closely together these last few months. We’ve both been granted put-down privileges.”

“And we’re not afraid to use them,” Jake added.

“They use them quite often on me as well,” Bill said, perhaps a bit huffily.

Mary looked at her son and the beautiful, married Venezuelan singer he had brought home to meet her. Her mother instincts were firing very strongly as she looked at the clear affection each displayed in their eyes. She wondered again just why Celia was here. “Well now,” she said dismissively, “I don’t think you were being pretentious at all. You were simply stating a fact. One should never feel ashamed for the success one has achieved in life.”

“Well said, Mary,” Celia told her, holding up her wine glass in salute. “In any case, I was complimenting your meal. Our chef is wonderful—don’t get me wrong—but he only makes gourmet dishes. He would die before he would make a fajita platter, and I am not talking figuratively here. My mouth started watering the moment I smelled the chicken cooking. And it tastes as delicious as it smells.”

“Hear, hear,” Jake said, hefting his own iced tea glass in salute. “I have Elsa who cooks for me, and she does make things like tacos and meatloaf, but there is nothing that compares with your own mom’s cooking, am I right?”

“Fuckin’ A,” said Pauline, causing all four parents in the room to stare disapprovingly at her. Now it was she who blushed. “Uh ... sorry,” she said. “I think I’ve been hanging out with Jake too much lately.”

“Oh sure,” Jake said, rolling his eyes. “Blame your profanity on me.”

“You say that all the time!” Pauline told him.

“Not at the freakin’ dinner table in front of our parents and their guests, I don’t,” he countered.

“He does have a point there, Pauline,” Nerdly put in.

“Oh, shut your ass, Bill,” she told him. “How about another hit of this wine, Dad?”

Amused at her discomfort, Tom poured her another glass of chardonnay. She quickly drank a quarter of it down.

“Anyway,” Mary said, “I appreciate your praise of my cooking. I’m happy everyone likes it.”

“I chopped up the tomatoes and grated the cheese,” Tom put in.

“And a fine job you did, Dad,” Jake said. He looked at Pauline for a moment and the two of them passed a silent message back and forth. Pauline gave a small nod at him. It was a good time to bring up their request.

“What’s up?” asked Mary, who had picked up on the exchange quite easily.

“Well,” Jake said, “there’s a reason that we all came out here to see you.”

“A reason?” asked Tom.

“Well, I really wanted to see you all and check out your pads, that’s the real reason, of course. But we also have a bit of an ulterior motive. I can see you and mom wondering why we brought Celia here. She’s a part of this ulterior motive.”

“Really?” Mary said slowly, all sorts of strange possibilities running through her mind. Were Jake and Celia involved with each other? Was Celia going to announce a divorce soon? Was she, perhaps, pregnant? Did they maybe not know who the father was?

Jake caught the jist of her thoughts through sheer familiarity with her expressions and thought patterns. He chuckled aloud. “It is nothing like what you’re thinking, Mom,” he assured her.

She looked at him sharply. “How would you know what I’m thinking?” she asked, a tinge of guilt in her tone.

“What was she thinking?” asked Celia.

Pauline handled this one. “She was thinking that you and Jake are ... you know ... doing the naughty with each other and we came here to break the news.”

Mary was appalled by her daughter’s words. “Pauline Marie Kingsley!” she shouted. “How dare you accuse me of something like that! I was thinking no such thing!”

“Really now?” Pauline asked, amused.

“Me and Jake?” Celia said with a gasp. “Madre de Dios, no. I’m a happily married woman, Mrs. Kingsley.”

“Mary,” Mary said, blushing furiously. “Call me Mary, please.”

“Mary,” Celia corrected. “I’m not sure how we might have given that impression, but believe me, Jake and I are nothing but friends and partners in the record company we’re trying to get going. I assure you that our relationship is platonic.”

“I assure you as well, Mom,” Jake said, giving a little glance at Celia. Did she really have to protest that firmly?

“I assure you that is not what I was thinking,” Mary told them, though her eyes were cast downward as she said it. “Can we talk about something else now?”

“Absolutely,” Jake said. “How about the real reason we’re here?”

“What is the reason?” Tom asked.

Jake looked at Pauline and then at Celia. They both gave him the nod. He turned back to the parents. “We need the help of the ladies,” he said.

“The ladies?” Mary said. “You mean ... uh...”

“You and Cindy,” Jake clarified. “We’ve hit a wall in our music composition and we would like to ask you to help us over it.”

“Our help?” asked Cynthia. “What could we do?”

“You’re both retired professional musicians,” Jake said. “We’d like you both to help us get our albums into production.”

“By playing music for you?” Mary asked.

“Yes,” Celia said. “That’s exactly what we’re asking.”

The two mothers looked at each other. They looked back at Jake. “I’m not sure we would be much help to you, honey,” Mary said. “We’re musicians who specialize in classical music. You’re a rock and roll musician, Jake. And Celia, you’re a popular musician. Don’t you think it would be better to get ... well ... musicians who are younger and more adept at playing the style of music you compose?”

“Exactly,” said Cynthia. “And you have William here, don’t you? He plays the piano better than I do—he always has. Not only that, but he’s used to playing your style of music.”

“Well,” Jake said, “let’s address those concerns one at a time, shall we?”

“That would be the proper format,” Bill said.

“Right,” Jake said. “As for what kind of musicians you are, that does not matter as much as the fact that we need a violin player and a piano player to help us with our tunes. Do you remember when we composed the song for Bill and Sharon’s wedding?”

“Of course,” Mary said.

“I remember it quite fondly,” said Cynthia. “I particular liked it when we jellied after doing the song.”

“Jellied?” Pauline asked, confused.

“Jammed, Mom,” Nerdly corrected. “You jammed, not jellied.”

“Oh ... jammed, right,” Cynthia said. “An interesting term.”

“Semantics aside,” Jake said, “you ladies were badass. I remember thinking at the time that I’d love to do some original material with the two of you someday. That day has come. We need your help.”

“Surely there are other violinists in Los Angeles you can use,” Mary said.

“And, as I said, William plays much better than me,” Cynthia repeated.

“Not much better,” Bill told her, “only a little better. You are a premium pianist, Mom.”

“Well, thank you, but...”

“Let’s go back to the other musicians thing,” Jake interrupted. “It’s not as easy as you seem to think to secure a professional level violinist or pianist for the length of time we’ll be needing them.”

“It’s not?” asked Tom. “LA is the music capital of the world. I would think it would be teeming with musicians of all categories.”

“It is,” Jake said, “but remember the key phrase here: Professional level. We don’t want some hacker playing the violin or the piano on our tunes. Most of the musicians at the level of skill we require are already working under contract of some sort for either the record companies or some studio that produces soundtrack music or one of the orchestras in one of the cities. We had a hell of time just finding a bass player and a drummer so we could work up our tunes in their basic format.”

“Couldn’t you just ask to borrow one for a while from one of the record companies?” asked Stanley. “My understanding from talking to Bill is that you’re going to have to use one of those companies to distribute your music once it’s recorded anyway, right?”

“Right,” Pauline said. “We don’t have the financing available to actually make our own product. We’ll have to contract with a record company for manufacturing and distribution.”

“Then wouldn’t it behoove them to lend you some musicians to get your albums done?” Stan enquired.

“Perhaps it would,” Jake said, “but we don’t want to do that. We don’t want any publicity or knowledge about this album leaking out to the music industry until we have master tapes in hand and are ready to negotiate terms with them. We don’t want them knowing how our progress is going. It will hurt our negotiations later.”

“And,” added Celia, “it would open us up to interference from them and advanced publicity leaks to the entertainment media. If they didn’t like what they were hearing in the early stages of our efforts, all it would take would be a few negative reports about our music leaked to a few reporters and people would end up hating our music before they even heard it.”

“We’ve already got enough cards stacked against us,” Pauline said. “Celia is considered a has-been and it would delight the entertainment media to report that she’s making horrible music. Jake is trying to switch genres from what he is associated with and he is going to be following in the footsteps of two former Intemperance members’ projects—Matt’s upcoming heavy metal album and Coop’s upcoming super-group album. Both of them are recorded and pending release. The media would love nothing more than to report that Jake’s music, compared to Matt Tisdale and Veteran, sucks ass.” She blushed again. “Sorry, another term I picked up from brother dear.”

“One that I can also refrain from using at the parental dinner table,” Jake said with a smile.

“Anyway,” Pauline continued, “that’s the reason we can’t use actual professional musicians. For our bass player we were able to find a guy who teaches guitar at a local community college. For our drummer, we found a former professional drum player who has an impressive resume but he’s been working as a paramedic for the last ten years.”

“He’s also more than a little messed up in the head,” Jake added.

“A premium drummer though,” Nerdly said.

“Yeah, he can pound them all right,” Celia put in.

“So that,” Jake concluded, “in a nutshell, is why we need the two of you. We’ve gone as far as we can go with just me and Celia playing guitars and using our two hired guns.”

“What about William?” asked Cynthia. “You still haven’t explained why you need me as a pianist when you have him.”

“Several reasons,” Celia said. “Bill and Sharon are our primary engineers and mixers. They are in charge of the sound of our tunes and how it plays out. Also, Bill is our synthesizer player.”

“One of the first things I bought when we became a limited liability company was a Korg M1 digital synthesizer,” Bill said proudly. “It is a premium and versatile musical instrument capable of producing a variety of aesthetically pleasing compositions.”

“Yeah,” Jake said. “Bill would marry that freakin’ thing if he didn’t already have Sharon.”

“True,” Sharon said. “I hesitate at times to even leave him alone with it.”

“You have no reason to be jealous of a musical instrument,” Bill told his wife. “It does not have the ability to satisfy me sexually.”

“All right,” Jake said. “I’m putting the conversation back on track now.”

“Bless you,” Mary and Cynthia said in unison.

“My point is,” said Jake, “that Bill has already got his hands full keeping on top of the engineering of the tunes and the playing of the synthesizer. Having him play the piano on top of all that is too much for him. We need an independent pianist who can play at a professional level and take direction from a composer. That’s you, Cindy.”

“Well, I’m flattered, naturally,” Cynthia said, “but ... well, I’m just not sure about this. Would I have to go to Los Angeles?”

“You would,” Jake confirmed. “That’s where our studio is and where our backing musicians are.”

“How long are we talking about, Jake?” asked Mary. “I have the high school orchestra to conduct. I can’t do that from Los Angeles.”

“It’s summer now, Mom,” Pauline said. “School doesn’t start back up until September, right?”

“Well ... right,” she said, “but ... well, that’s only eight weeks away. Didn’t you tell me it takes months to record an album?”

“We’re not recording the album right now, Mary,” Celia said. “We’re just trying to get the tunes put together in a basic format.”

“So ... you’ll use other musicians for the violin and piano parts when you actually record?” Mary asked.

“Well ... not exactly,” Jake said. “We were hoping to use you for the recordings too, but that’s a few steps ahead of where we are now. When we get to that point, we can work around your school schedule. We’ll fly you in on the weekends or on days you’re not otherwise busy and just concentrate on your particular pieces of the songs while you’re with us.”

“What do you mean?” Mary asked, confused. “How would you just work on my parts?”

“It’s easy,” Jake said. “When a song is recorded it’s not done with all the musicians playing together. Each instrument and each vocalization are recorded independently and then mixed together on a final recording. By the time we would have you come into the studio we would already know exactly what we would want you to play and would have already recorded our tracks for you to overlay your contribution onto. We’ll have the sheet music all printed out for you and all you’ll have to do is lay it down until we get it right.”

“Really?” she said, her eyes showing clear interest in the process.

“What about me?” asked Cynthia. “Would the same apply to me?”

“You would be a little more involved,” Bill told her. “The piano parts are much more extensive and part of the base melody of the songs, particularly in a few of Celia’s efforts. You would have to spend more time in the studio with us during the initial laydown of the basic tracks.”

Cynthia seemed to like this idea. “You mean ... I would get to hang out in a recording studio with you? That I would be involved in the actual making of the album?”

“Two albums,” Celia said. “One by me and one by Jake.”

“That sounds like fun,” she said.

“It’s actually kind of tedious,” Jake admitted. “We’ll get on each other’s nerves and you’ll be so sick of the tunes by the time we’re done that you’ll swear you never want to play them again. At that end of it all, however, when you hear what the final master sounds like ... well, that’s a very special moment.”

“I’m in,” Cynthia said. “It’ll be wonderful to spend so much time with William and Sharon.”

Jake chuckled a little. “I’m glad to hear that, Cindy, but wait until you’ve heard Bill and Sharon tell you for the hundredth time to play this piece again, or to make that piece a little louder, or this section a little off-timed for effect. Tell me then how wonderful it is.”

“Hey now,” Bill said. “Our job is to achieve perfection in our audio reproduction. One should not criticize the harshness of one’s taskmaster when perfection is at stake.”

“One does not criticize,” Jake countered, “but one can have one’s nerves frayed a bit by said taskmaster.”

Bill thought this over and then nodded. “I suppose that’s a fair statement,” he allowed.

Mary, however, was still having her doubts. “This all sounds like an awful lot of work,” she said. “Exactly how long would we need to stay in Los Angeles?”

“Well,” Jake said, “I promise to get you back home before school starts.”

“That’s eight weeks,” Mary said. “You want me to leave my home and my husband for two months?”

“You can stay at my place, Mom,” Jake told her. “Dad too. You’ll have your own bedroom downstairs, a pool to swim in, a hot tub to hot tub in, access to my wine collection, and Elsa will take care of your meals and the cleaning—well, except on the weekends. She gets those off. I’ll pay for everything. I’ll even pay to have someone look after your place while you’re gone.”

Tom and Mary looked at each for a moment. “What do you think?” Mary asked him.

He shrugged. “I’ll leave it up to you, since you’re the one who will be doing the work, but I’m up for a little stay in LA if you are.”

Mary sighed. “I just don’t know,” she said. “I want to help you out, of course.”

“I wouldn’t have asked if we didn’t really need your help, Mom,” Jake said.

“I know, honey,” she said. “It’s just that eight weeks is a long time to be away from our home. And ... well, what about your privacy during all this? Are you sure you want to have your parents living with you? I mean ... I’ve heard of some of the things you get up to, Jake.”

“Some of the things I get up to?” Jake asked, partially amused, partially ashamed.

“Well, you’re a rich rock star,” his mother said. “You like to ... you know ... party and stuff like that. I’m not sure I would want to be witness to some of the things you might do.”

“I assure you, Mom,” Jake told her, “I will do nothing to embarrass myself or make you uncomfortable while you are under my roof. There will be no orgies, no sniffing cocaine out of butt cracks, and no vomitus episodes of gross intoxication.”

“At least not while you’re there,” Pauline said with a chuckle.

“Exactly,” Jake confirmed with a smile. “I’ll send you off on a day trip to Catalina or something if I want to do all that.”

That brought a smile to Mary’s face, but she still was not quite convinced. “Can I think it over for a bit?” she asked.

“Absolutely,” Jake said.

“Okay,” she said. “I’ll have an answer for you before you leave.”

The loose plan was for everyone to make the walk over to the Archers’ house after lunch so Jake and Celia could get the grand tour over there. Jake had a few requests first.

“Dad,” he asked, “do you still have that old acoustic guitar of yours?”

“That old Yamaha?” Tom said with a nostalgic smile. “Yeah. It’s up in the attic with a bunch of other stuff we haven’t found a place for yet.”

“I think we should hang it up in the entertainment room,” Mary opined. “That and that old Les Paul and those two Fenders he used to play.”

“That was my next question,” Jake said. “Do you still have any of those electrics laying around? And the amp and the cords?”

“All of those are up there in the attic,” Tom assured him. “Why do you ask?”

Mary turned to Celia. “Jake used to play those instruments much more than Tom ever did,” she told her. “Tom only picked them up every once in a while after he got into law school.”

Usually when you two decided to burn a little, Jake could not help but think, though he did not say this. Instead, he said: “I was thinking maybe we could go grab the acoustic and the Les Paul and the amp and take them over to Stan and Cindy’s with us.”

“What for?” Mary asked.

“Well,” Jake said, “I assume that Cindy has her Baby Grand over there somewhere, right?”

“Of course,” Cindy said. “It’s the centerpiece of our formal living room. I still play it several times a week.”

“Outstanding,” Jake said. “I was thinking maybe mom could grab a fiddle as well and maybe we could sit down and play a little music together over there.”

“Play some music?” Mary asked, her eyes showing definite interest.

“Right,” Jake said. “Celia and I could pound out the melodies and rhythms we’re working on and you two could jump in with the violin and the piano so we can see how they sound together.”

“Well ... I still haven’t decided if I’m up to this whole thing, Jake,” Mary said.

“Understood,” Jake assured her. “But maybe this will help you make the decision.”

“Well...”

“Oh, come on, Mary,” Cynthia said. “I think it’ll be fun.”

“Yes,” said Celia. “I would love to play with you. Imagine, jamming with the former lead violinist for a symphony. What an honor! Please, Mary? Let’s just try it for a little?”

This served to push Mary over the edge. The thought that a successful recording star felt it would be an honor to play with her was too much to resist. “I’ll go grab my rehearsal instrument,” she said. “Tom, you and Jake go grab those guitars from the attic.”

“Yes, dear,” Tom said with a smile.

Thirty minutes later, the entire troop of them were sitting in the formal living room on the bottom floor of Stan and Cindy’s two-story house. The tour of the home had been brief, taking less than five minutes, as the musicians among them were eager to get to playing. The formal living room was the biggest room in the house, just inside the main entrance. It was done up in earth tone Berber carpeting and, instead of being filled with antique furniture that no one was allowed to sit on, it featured, as the centerpiece, a 1954 Steinway baby grand piano that had been recently appraised (for insurance purposes) as being worth thirty-seven thousand dollars. Arrayed around the piano and its bench were a series of comfortable, tasteful chairs and an oak coffee table. Jake, Celia, and Tom spent a few minutes plugging in the small Marshall amplifier and hooking up the 1970 Les Paul to it.

Jake felt a strong sense of nostalgia as he held the sunburst patterned Les Paul in his hands for the first time in many years. This was the first electric guitar he had ever played in his life, the instrument he had used to form the beginnings of his eventual mastery of one of the most important tools of his trade. The Marshall amp he had plugged it into was where he had begun to learn the intricacies of electric distortion levels that were the signature of rock and roll music. He remembered playing the Les Paul for hours upon hours, experimenting with feedback and reverb and distortion, trying to nail down the exact sound of various songs he had learned to like. It was this instrument and this amp with which he had first learned to duplicate Jimmy Page’s riff from Whole Lotta Love, Tony Iommi’s riffs on Paranoid and War Pigs, and, of course, Ritchie Blackmore’s most common first riff ever learned by new guitarists: Smoke on the Water.

The instrument now was showing its age. The paint was faded and chipped in a few places (Jake knew that many of those chips were from him). It was covered with a layer of dust. Still, after wiping it down and plugging it in, after turning on the Marshall amp, he heard the gratifying hum of connection coming out of the speaker. He twirled the volume and tone controls and then flipped the switch for the dual Humbucker pickups to the setting that would allow simple clean output. He adjusted the reverb and the vibrato on the amp to zero and then turned up the volume to five, just enough to mix with the sound of Celia on the acoustic and Cynthia on the baby grand.

He gave the strings a strum on the open chord. The sound was flat, flatter even than the proverbial pancake. It was extremely offensive to the professional musician ear.

“Jesus Christ, Dad,” Jake said with a wince. “When was the last time you tuned this thing?”

Tom looked more than a little guilty. “Uh ... well ... probably around 1984 or so.”

Jake looked at his father sternly. “Goddamn Reagan was still in his first term then,” he told him. He shook his head. “This shit is not all right.”

“Sorry,” Tom said, visibly ashamed.

“Uh ... I’m afraid this one is in about the same shape,” Celia said. She had the Yamaha acoustic six-string in her hands.

“Oh ... well, that one I’ve tuned more recently,” Tom assured them.

“Yeah? When?” Jake asked.

“Well ... I distinctly remember playing it one night while we were watching a news report on the Challenger investigation. And I had recently tuned it then.”

“So ... that would be 1986 then?” Jake said. “Reagan’s second term?”

“Has it been that long since the Challenger explosion?” Tom said, shaking his head now. “Wow, how time passes.”

“Yeah,” Jake said. He looked at Mary, who was sitting in one of the chairs, her rehearsal violin (which meant it was only a two-thousand-dollar instrument) sitting in her lap. “Mom, can we borrow your tuning fork for a few?”

“Of course,” she said, reaching in her case and pulling it out.

It took a while, since the strings on both guitars were badly in need of being changed in addition to being out of tune, but eventually Jake and Celia were able to get the instruments into passable tune for what they were trying to accomplish.

“All right then,” Jake said, looking at Celia. “What should we try first?”

“How about you run through Insignificance with Mary?” Celia suggested. “It’s a simple piece—well, you know what I mean—that will help us kind of get plugged in.”

Jake thought this through for a moment and then nodded. Insignificance was one of his tunes, an original he had penned shortly after returning from exile in New Zealand. It was a lively ballad musically, strong on acoustic guitar, but with lyrics that were dark when analyzed—lyrics that described the essential meaninglessness of life no matter what one managed to accomplish during it.

“All right,” he said, giving the Les Paul a strum and then grabbing a C-chord. “Let me play the chorus for you first, so you can get a feel for the melody.”

“Sounds good,” Mary said, fingering the handle of her bow.

Jake began to fingerpick out the chorus. It was a gentle, almost hypnotic melody. He ran through it three times and then added his voice to the fourth.

“Insignificance,

Just a speck in time and space

Insignificance

One day we’re gone without a trace

Insignificance,

We fight so hard to leave our mark

Insignificance

In the end, we’re all nothing but a spark”

“I like the melody, Jake,” Mary told him.

“Thanks, Mom.”

“And your voice sounds ... well ... richer.”

“I quit smoking cigarettes,” he told her, and then, with a guilty shrug, “for the most part anyway. It’s increased my range and timbre considerably.”

“Well, I’m certainly glad to hear that,” she said, delighted. “Such a nasty habit.”

“Yeah, I’ll agree with that,” Jake told her. “Anyway, what I’m hoping for on this tune is a subtle, constant accompaniment with your violin during the vocal portions and then some accent enhancement over the guitar chords during the chorus breaks and the bridge.”

She nodded thoughtfully. “Give me some specifics on the composition,” she told him.

“It’s in the key of C-major,” Jake told her.

“Obviously,” she said, giving him a little eye roll.

Jake nodded. “It’s a four, constant throughout at ninety per minute. The primary instruments will be the acoustic guitar and the violin. When we mix, there may be some subtle bass dubbed in, but that is still to be determined. There will be no percussion at all.”

“Okay,” she said. “That sounds easy enough. Abafando during the vocalization parts and accentato on the changeovers.”

“Uh ... right,” Jake said. Unlike his mother, he had not had a formal musical education other than a semester at community college. He knew the concepts inside and out, but was a bit weak on the official terminology. “That’s pretty much what I said, right?”

Mary smiled. “Right,” she said. “Is there anything else?”

“I think that’s the long and short of it,” Jake told her. “Except for the solo, of course.”

Mary’s eyes widened. “The solo?”

“Naturally,” Jake said. “There needs to be a nice, melodic violin solo between the bridge and the final chorus. It will be one of the highlights of the song.”

“It will?”

“It will,” he confirmed. “I’ve actually composed the basics of the melody with the thought of that violin solo in mind. It’s going to be awesome. I can just feel it.”

Mary smiled, warming to the thought. “Well ... I suppose I could do that,” she said. “I’ve done more than my share of solos with the symphony. As long as the notes are properly placed on that page and I’m allowed to rehearse it up to the point that...” She looked up to see her son shaking his head at her. “What?”

“You have to compose your own solo, Mom,” he said.

“I have to compose it?”

“It’s tradition,” Jake told her. “In rock and roll music the musician composes his or her own solo. You’re the one most familiar with your instrument and what it can do. Matt always composed his own guitar solos for Intemperance songs, even if they were my tunes. And Nerdly always composed his own piano solos as well.”

“Please don’t call him Nerdly, Jake,” Cynthia said with a wince.

“Uh ... sorry, Cindy,” Jake said. He turned back to his mother. “Anyway, that’s the way things work with rock music.”

“But Jake,” Mary said, “I’m not a composer. I play music that others have written. I do it very well, but as for coming up with something on my own ... well ... I just don’t know.”

“You’ll do fine, Mom,” Jake assured her. “Remember when we jammed at Bill and Sharon’s wedding? You came up with that on your own and you freakin’ rocked it once you got into the feel of it. You’ll rock this as well.”

“Well ... that was kind of fun,” she said, “but...”

“Let’s not worry about the solo just yet,” Bill said. “Remember, Mary, that you haven’t actually agreed to do this yet?”

“Uh ... well, yeah,” she said. “That is true.”

“So, this discussion about violin solos might be putting the confirmation of our hypothesis ahead of our empirical and repeatable evidence, correct?”

“Uh...” Mary said, looking over at Jake.

“Putting our cart before our horse,” Jake translated for her.

“Oh,” she said brightly, “I see. Yes, I suppose we would be doing that.”

“How about for this moment in time,” Bill suggested, “we just concentrate on the basic composition of the piece and worry about the solo if and when you decide to commit to the project?”

“Well put, Bill,” Jake told him.

“All right,” Mary said. “I find you make a good argument.” She looked at her son. “Why don’t you run through the whole tune for me and we’ll go from there?”

“An outstanding idea,” Jake said.

He began to play. His mother and Cynthia listened.

Once they started, all five of the musicians, as well as Sharon, the sound technician extraordinaire, quickly lost focus on everything else around them. They ran through Insignificance for the better part of an hour. Jake played it all the way through on the clean output of the Les Paul and then Mary slowly, hesitantly began to accompany as instructed on her violin. She played softly as Jake sang, and then stronger, with more emphasis on the notes, during the changeovers, utilizing the basic notation of the tune that Jake had quickly penned out for her on a piece of scrap paper. They left out the solo for now, although everyone could tell that it was high on Mary’s mind. Everyone agreed that they were definitely onto something.

They then moved onto one of Celia’s songs, a piece that would require both piano and violin. It was called This Just Can’t Go On. It was one of the tunes Celia had sung for Jake during their drunken jam session prior to the Grammy Awards ceremony several years ago, the time they had truly bonded together as musicians. It was planned to be one of the more radio friendly songs on her upcoming album.

“Okay,” Celia told the ladies after she and Jake ran through the basic acoustic version. “I know we don’t have the bass or the drums here, but we’re going for a four at one hundred ten per minute with a few tempo changes down to ninety. Our key is G-major. Everyone got that?”

They got it.

“What I’m looking for here,” Celia explained, “is the piano to be the primary melodic instrument with my guitar as the rhythm accompaniment and the violin and Jake’s distorted guitar as the fills.” She picked out the primary rhythm again and then named off the chords in order. “Cynthia, can you duplicate that?”

“Well, not at one-ten at first,” she said. “Let me run through it at half speed until I get the feel.”

“By all means,” Celia said. “Do you need me to write it down for you?”

“No,” she said. “Compared to Beethoven and Bach, it’s actually quite simplistic.”

Celia looked at Jake, an amused smile on her face. “I think I’ve just been musically insulted,” she said.

Jake chuckled but Cynthia was appalled with herself. “Oh my God, Celia,” she gushed. “I didn’t mean to ... I mean, what I meant was...”

“It’s okay, Cynthia,” Celia assured her. “I took no offense. Rock and popular music is simplistic compared to classical.”

“We understand that, Mom,” Bill assured her. “Now go ahead and run through it.”

It took her a few minutes, but she was soon able to play the melody reliably at half speed. Celia strummed out the accompaniment at the same rate while Mary slowly began to add the fills where Jake indicated they should be.

“I think we got it,” Celia said. “Now let’s kick it up tempo to one-ten and I’ll start the vocalization.”

It was a little rough at first, but soon they were harmonizing fairly well. Celia, continuing to strum her part, sang out the lyrics, avoiding the bridge section for now since that was where the tempo change came in. The lyrics were fairly simplistic and straightforward—it was a song about breaking up, in the same tone as Jake’s own Point of Futility—but Celia’s beautiful contralto voice carried them well, projecting the emotion of the end of a relationship to the listener.

“Such a sad song,” Cynthia remarked at one point. “This one and Jake’s both.”

“There’s a lot of sadness in life,” Jake replied. “It’s an easy subject to write about.”

“That’s pretty deep, son,” Mary said.

Jake shrugged. “Shall we go through it again?”

They went through it again, and then a few more times. They then moved on to another song, this one from Jake. It was called The Easy Way, a tune he had penned a few years before and had really liked but, because it had not fit the Intemperance formula, had never fully developed.

“Okay,” Jake explained, “this one is going to feature a distorted drop-D tuned guitar as the primary melodic instrument with an underlying synthesizer track from Bill and his Korg. It is going to need some violin accompaniment and some piano fills. We’re talking G-major here at ninety to start and then we’ll go up tempo to one-twenty.”

“Let’s hear it,” Mary said. She was now fully into the jam session.

“Right,” said Cynthia. “I’m ready to get down.”

Jake introduced the song to them and they began to play around with it. Perhaps twenty minutes went by before anyone noticed that Tom and Pauline were no longer with them. And even when they did notice, they did not stop playing.

It was not that Pauline and Tom did not enjoy music. Both were lifelong lovers of the art and both spent much of their leisure time listening to a wide variety of compositions and genres. And it wasn’t that they did not enjoy watching the composition process take place. On the contrary, both had been fascinated with the interaction between the musicians and the bare beginnings of the evolution of the tunes. It was the repetitiveness of the process that got to them.

After hearing them go over This Just Can’t Go On for the twentieth or so time, and after coming to the realization that the five of them seemed to have every intention of running through every single song in both Jake and Celia’s inventory, Tom turned to his daughter.

“Do you want to go back over to our place and grab a beer or something?” he whispered to her.

“I thought you’d never ask,” Pauline replied.

They quietly got up and left the Archer domicile, heading back across the property to the Kingsley structure. Once inside, Tom pulled a couple of green Steinlager bottles out of the refrigerator and popped them open with a wine opener that hung from a hook.

“To family bands,” he said, raising his bottle to Pauline.

“Family bands,” she returned, clinking her bottle to his.

They took a drink and then Pauline looked at him, a sly smile on her face.

“What?” he asked.

“You got any pot?” she asked him.

His eyebrows raised slowly. “Pot?”

“You know? Weed, smoke, buds? I could go for a hit or two about now. How about you?”

Tom was blushing now. “Uh ... well ... wow, this is a bit awkward, isn’t it?”

“A bit,” Pauline admitted. “But let’s look at it rationally here. Jake and I have both known all of our lives that you and Mom like to get high on occasion. You’ve never actually done it in front of us, but you never really went to great lengths to hide it either.”

“True,” Tom said slowly, “but...”

“And I’m sure that you and Mom know that Jake and I have been known to flame a bowl on occasion, right?”

“Well ... with Jake there are actual pictures of it in the American Watcher, so, yes with him. You, however, well, I did kind of assume that you probably did it on occasion, but still, it’s not the sort of thing parents do with their children.”

“Why not?” she asked. “We drink beer together, don’t we? We’ve actually gotten quite hammered together more than once.”

“Again, true, but pot is something else entirely.”

“Yes, it is,” Pauline agreed. “So ... what’s the deal? You got any, or what?”

Tom looked at her for a moment and then took a drink of his beer. He swallowed it and then let out a great exhalation of breath. Finally, he shrugged. “Oh, what the hell?” he said. “I’ll have to check, but I think I just might have a little sitting in the back of a drawer somewhere.”

Pauline chuckled. “I thought that maybe you might,” she said. “Go get it. Let’s burn one, Dad.”

He left the room. He returned a few minutes later carrying a wooden cigar box that had been manufactured back in 1968 and had served as his stash box since 1970. Pauline smiled as she saw it. It was the same box she had pilfered from on dozens of occasions back in the early to mid-seventies, her high school days. She had always been careful only to take a few pinches out of it and to place it exactly back in its perpetual hiding place: the far corner of the top shelf of their closet. She had never found the box empty. She had never been caught.

Tom set the box down on the coffee table and opened the lid. Inside was the same small tray that had always been there. Next to it were a few packs of rolling papers, a disposable lighter, a small pair of scissors, and a plastic bag that held a respectable amount of green buds. He pulled the bag out and opened it.

“Wow, Dad,” Pauline said as she got a whiff of the odor. “That’s some top-shelf shit you got there.”

Tom nodded wisely. “If you’re going to do something, you do it right,” he told her.

“A good philosophy,” she agreed.

He set the tray down on the table and then pulled a medium sized bud out of the bag. Pauline could tell by the moisture of the bud that this was not weed that had been sitting forgotten for years. It was stuff that had been harvested in the past two months. He pulled a paper from the pack and then picked up the scissors and quickly cut the bud up into tiny pieces. He then rolled a nice, tight, fat joint. He handed it to his daughter along with the lighter. “Would you like to do the honors?”

“I’d love to,” she said, putting it in her mouth and sparking up. She took a tremendous hit and then passed it over to her father. He took it in his hand, hesitated for the briefest of seconds, and then, with another shrug, put it to his lips and inhaled.

They only took three hits apiece, not even half of the joint, before both felt they had reached therapeutic intoxication level. At that point, Tom dropped the joint into an ashtray and closed up his stashbox.

“Pretty good shit, Dad,” Pauline said appreciatively. “Where do you get it?”

“Let’s just say I know a gentleman who is willing to part with some from time to time,” he told her.

“Oooh, very mysterious,” she said. “Is it anybody I know?”

Tom smiled. “Perhaps,” he said. He would say no further on the subject, although Pauline had a strong suspicion that her uncle Phil—her mother’s younger brother—was the source. Uncle Phil owned and operated a skateboard shop in Heritage and had always seemed to be just a bit more well-off than his marginal business could explain.

“Let’s turn on some music,” Pauline suggested.

“Sounds good,” Tom said, nodding slowly, his eyelids at half-staff.

“Do you have any Pink Floyd?”

“I do not,” Tom told her. “I never really got into them.”

“Really? You don’t like Pink Floyd? Have you ever listened to them while you were high?”

“Not that I can remember,” he admitted.

“You have got to try it sometime,” she said. “I’ll get you a copy of Dark Side of the Moon and you’ll have to listen to it while you’re baked.”

“I’m willing to make the experiment,” he said. “In the meantime, however, how about a little Sergeant Pepper?”

Pauline thought that over for a moment and then nodded, a nostalgic smile on her face. “Throw it on,” she told him.

Tom went to his music collection and thumbed through the albums for a moment until he found the colorful cover of the Beatles’ eighth album. He carefully removed the vinyl from the cover and set it upon the turntable. He threw a few switches, turned a few knobs, adjusted the equalizer just a bit, and then gently set the arm of player down on the first track of side one. A moment later, the distinctive sound of an orchestra tuning up began to issue from the speakers.

“I haven’t heard this in years,” Pauline said. “Not since I lived here, I think.”

“It’s a classic,” Tom said, taking his seat again as the opening song began to play.

“You and Mom used to listen to this all the time,” she said. She gave a knowing look. “Usually at night, after me and Jake were settled in for the evening.”

“What can I say?” he said with a smile. “Your mother and I were very fond of this one.”

They listened in silence to track one and track two, both of them just enjoying the musical composition with their hallucinogenic enhanced minds. It wasn’t until track three—Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds—that Tom spoke again.

“Tell me, Pauline,” he said, his tone a little more serious now. “How is Jake doing these days?”

“Jake?” she said with a shrug. “He’s doing fine. He’s working hard—he and Celia and Bill and Sharon put in at least eight hours a day, six days a week.”

“That’s good to hear,” Tom said. “He certainly looks better than the last time I saw him. But how is he doing? You know what I’m talking about?”

“Ahhh,” she said. “You mean the drinking, the drugs, the self-destruction.”

He nodded. “You didn’t tell me much about what you found when you went to New Zealand to talk to him, but ... well ... I got the strong impression that things were not very good there.”

She sighed, taking a sip of her beer. “No, things were not very good there. He was in pretty bad shape, actually. The breakup of Intemperance, particularly the acid and the hatred that Matt was spewing both publicly and privately, really threw him for a loop. On top of that, there was his breakup with Helen. That was still pretty fresh as well.”

Tom nodded. “I really liked Helen,” he said. “I thought she was good for Jake.”

“She was,” Pauline said. “They were good for each other. They truly did love each other too. It was just that Helen couldn’t take the celebrity lifestyle.”

“You can hardly blame her,” Tom said. “That crazy woman showed up at her house and obviously intended to torture her and kill her. That would tend to put a doubt or two into one’s head, wouldn’t you say?”

That crazy woman he was referring to was Jenny Johansen, a twenty-eight-year-old woman from Los Angeles who had become obsessed with Jake at least as far back as his romantic relationship with Rachel—his girlfriend before Helen—but who had become incensed and over the top once his relationship with Helen became public knowledge. Her obsession had come to a peak one day when she had gone to Helen’s house with a bag containing a pistol, a pair of handcuffs, a roll of duct tape, four butcher knives, and a portable blow torch. Fortunately for Helen, Johansen had sent several letters to Jake beforehand explicitly threatening her and Jake had arranged to have a state-of-the-art security system installed in Helen’s house. Johansen had triggered that system and was arrested by Ventura County sheriff’s deputies before she could attempt to put her plan in motion. Since she had not actually tried to kill Helen, and since she had not actually broken into Helen’s property, she could not be charged with those crimes. Instead, she had pled guilty to a firearms charge and ordered to submit to a year of psychiatric evaluation. Permanent restraining orders were in place forbidding Johansen from being within five hundred yards of Helen, Jake, or any of their family members. Though a restraining order is nothing more than a piece of paper, Jake had heard no further from Johansen since her plea and neither, as far as could be determined, had Helen.

“Yeah,” Pauline agreed. “I can’t say I blame her at all. She just wasn’t cut out for the public life. All she wanted to do was teach people to fly airplanes and live anonymously on her little plot of land out in Ventura County. Her goals were incompatible with Jake’s.”

“That’s the way it goes sometimes,” Tom said sadly. “Still ... a shame. Anyway, we were talking about New Zealand.”

“Yeah ... New Zealand,” Pauline said. “You should see Jake’s house there sometime. It really is nice. Sits up on a hill overlooking a little coastal town.”

“I would love to see it someday, but you were telling me about Jake?”

“Uh...” she hesitated.

“I’d like the truth, Paulie,” he said, using her childhood nickname. “Not what you think I want to hear, not what you think you need to say to protect him. I need to know how he was and how he is.”

“All right,” she said with a sigh of resignation. “No bullshit. He was drinking pretty heavily over there.”

Tom raised his eyebrows a bit. “Heavier than he was drinking out on the road?”

“Much,” she said. “Out on the road was nothing. I mean, they got drunk and snorted some coke and smoked some weed after their shows, but there was always another show to do, always another long trip on the bus. They were working and the partying was just part of the experience. You know what I’m saying?”

“I think so,” Tom said. “It certainly seemed like they were having a good time.”

“Yeah,” Pauline snorted. “About thirty-nine thousand dollars worth of good time on their last full tour, according to Jill anyway.”

Tom gave a little whistle. “Thirty-nine thousand dollars worth of booze?”

“Well ... that includes the pot and cocaine as well, although the alcohol was the majority of that particular entertainment expense.”

“Wow,” Tom said. He didn’t know whether to be impressed or appalled.

“Anyway, my point is that the road drinking is nothing. It’s just the road. Over in New Zealand, however, Jake didn’t have anything else to keep him occupied. He had nothing to do, was depressed, was lonely, and ... well ... he pretty much spent all day, every day drunk. He stopped exercising. He didn’t compose much. He was heading straight down a road to destruction. If Jill and I hadn’t gone out there ... well ... I don’t think he would’ve made it another year. He either would have drunk himself to death or he would have ended up crashing his motorcycle or getting stabbed by some jealous boyfriend of a girl he was sleeping with.”

“Jesus,” Tom said. “I didn’t realize it was that bad.”

“Have you seen his new tattoo?” Pauline asked him.

“No,” Tom said. “I didn’t know he had a new tattoo. This is the first time I’ve seen him since he came home, remember?”

“It’s a map of the South Island of New Zealand,” she said. “It’s up on his arm. It’s beautiful art, really. It shows all the rivers, the snow on the mountains, even the islands offshore.”

“Uh ... okay,” Tom said. “I’ll have to take a look at it.”

“He has no memory of getting that tattoo,” she told him.

“Really?”

“Really,” she confirmed. “Apparently he was in a state of blackout in some waterfront bar and started bragging about how much he loved South Island. The locals questioned his devotion to their locale. In order to prove how much he loved the place, he made them wake up the best tat artist in town and put the map on his arm. All of this information came to him secondhand, the next day. He has no recollection of any of it.”

“I see,” Tom said slowly.

“That was his state of mind, his lifestyle when Jill and I found him. We were able to bring him around with a little plain talk.”

“What kind of plain talk?”

“Well, if there is one thing that Jake hates more than anything, it’s being exploited. We pointed out that National Records would like nothing better than for him to have a well-publicized death so they could cash in on it by releasing tribute albums and unpublished material and whatever else they could think of to honor and profit from the great Jake Kingsley.”

“And he didn’t like that thought?”

“He was appalled at the very notion,” she said with a smile. “That was what flipped the switch over in his head. He started to get his shit together right at the very moment. It was very gratifying, really. Not often in life do things actually work out like that.”

“That’s when he agreed to come home?”

“Not right at that second,” she said. “That was the kick in the ass. The deciding factor is when he came up with the idea for KVA Records—the joining of forces between Jake and Celia with funding from me, Jake, Bill, and Celia’s husband. That was what got him home. And that is what we’ve been working on ever since.”

“I see,” Tom said. “That brings me back to my original question. How is Jake now?”

Pauline smiled thoughtfully. “I think he’s ... well ... doing kind of okay currently.”

“Kind of okay? What does that mean?”

“He’s cleaned himself up quite a bit now that he has something to occupy him, a goal to set his sights on. He hasn’t stopped drinking, but he’s slowed it way down ... for the most part anyway.”

“For the most part?” Tom asked. “Can you clarify?”

“Well ... you have to understand that this is information I get from Elsa, his live-in housekeeper, with a little bit of corroboration from Jill, who sees his expense reports. And I don’t get this information directly from Elsa, I kind of have to finagle it out of her in an indirect fashion. She is very loyal to him, you understand, and she would not appreciate it if she realized that the little tidbits she’s shared were being discussed with Jake’s father or with anyone else.”

“I understand,” he assured her. “I’m not planning to confront Jake with anything you tell me. I’m just worried about him. I worry about him much more than I’ve ever worried about you.”

She smiled warmly. “I always was the good child, wasn’t I?”

“Relatively, anyway,” he said.

“I’ll take a relatively. Anyway, he doesn’t drink during the day at all anymore, at least not on Monday through Saturday, when they work on their music. He is, however, in the habit of coming home from a day at the studio and having a beer or two or three, or maybe a bottle of wine, but he stops there and he doesn’t get wasted on worknights. He gets himself to bed by eleven at the latest and gets up promptly at six-thirty so he can go run five miles in Griffith Park and then get to the studio by nine.”

“He does that every day?” Tom asked.

“Pretty much,” she confirmed. “You didn’t see how much he had plumped up over in New Zealand, but it was considerable. He was borderline obese. I almost didn’t recognize him when I first saw him at the airport there. Once he got back in the exercise routine, however, he dropped at least twenty pounds in a matter of a few months. In addition to the running, he’s hitting the weights again too. He’s not quite back down to what he was in his early twenties, of course, but he’s pretty fit again.”

“That’s good to know,” he said. “And he said he stopped smoking too?”

She gave a sideways glance. “He’s stopped smoking a pack a day,” she said. “He hasn’t given them up entirely. The smoking is like the drinking. He does them together. When he comes home and has his beer or his wine, he lights up and smokes a few. When he’s working and sober, he doesn’t.”

“Well ... baby steps, I guess.”

“He’s getting there,” she said. “That brings us to Sundays though.”

“Sundays?”

“Sundays,” she said with a sigh. “The one day of the week they always take off. Jake calls it ‘the day of rest’. He kind of reverts back to the old ways on Sundays. He sleeps in until late morning, gets up, has a little breakfast, and then starts drinking the hard stuff by noon or so. He gets himself good and drunk and then takes a nap after dinner until around nine o’clock or so. He then usually goes out to a club and finds himself ... well ... you know ... a little companionship for the night.”

“Ahh,” Tom said. “I see.”

“Needless to say,” Pauline said, “he ties another one on while he’s doing that. He tends to roll in around one or so, always alone. He never brings women back to his place. He told me once he only picks women who are willing to take him to their place.”

“He told you this?” he said, surprised.

“It was a Sunday when he passed on this little bit of trivia,” she confirmed. “He was drunk at the time.”

“I see,” Tom said, scratching his head. “Do you think his drinking is under control then?”

She shrugged. “Under control is a phrase that can come in and out of application. Right now, yes, I think he’s got things under control. He’s found a rhythm that includes drinking on his terms without giving it up completely and without venturing into self-destruction. What’s going to happen when they’re done with this project and he starts to have more free time on his hands ... I don’t know. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see and take that one as it comes.”

Tom nodded. “What about the drugs?” he asked. “How much of a problem is that?”

“There is some good news there,” Pauline said. “Drugs are not a problem with Jake at all. He smokes some pot now and then, although I don’t think he has had any in at least a month now. And as for the coke, I honestly don’t think he’s had so much as a sniff of it since before he left for New Zealand. Coke is very much a social thing and a road thing for Jake. He’s never really had a problem with it at all, unlike Matt, who snorts the shit up like he needs it to live.”

“That’s a relief,” Tom said. He gave his daughter a meaningful look. “That thing with the groupie and the butt crack. Did that really happen?”

She chuckled. “I’m ... uh ... gonna have to refuse to answer that one on the grounds of attorney-client confidentiality,” she told him.

Tom smiled, receiving the message quite well. It was a true story. He had always rather suspected it was. The male part of him could not help but feel a little twinge of envy for his son. True, he worried to death about him, but the life of a rock star was certainly an entertaining one—in multiple ways.

“I withdraw the question,” he told her.

“Very well,” Pauline said. “Those sitting in judgement will disregard that question and draw no inference from my answer.”

They shared a laugh at this. Nothing like a little lawyer humor between two active members of the bar.

“Well,” Tom said, “I’ll say that you’ve set my mind at ease a bit—just a bit.”

“Glad to hear it.”

“I do have just one more question though.”

“What is that?” Pauline asked him.

“What’s the deal between Jake and Celia?”

Pauline looked at her father meaningfully. “Interesting,” she said. “You were able to pick up on it after just meeting her a few hours ago.”

He nodded. “It’s hard to miss—especially when you see them playing music together. I picked up a definite chemistry going on there.”

“It’s there all right,” Pauline said. “I can see it, Bill and Sharon can see it, even Jill the accountant can see it. I’m forced to wonder if Greg can see it as well, although he’s been kind of unofficially banned from showing up at the studio when they’re playing.”

“Banned from the studio?” Tom asked, surprised. “What is that about?”

“He means well, but he has a strong personality and he kind of gets in the way if he shows up. He has no musical knowledge whatsoever, but he starts making suggestions about how they should do this, or how they should change that. He kind of feels that since he put up a quarter of the money for KVA Records, he should have some input into the product. Celia had a talk with him about a month ago. She didn’t say what she told him, but he stopped showing up after that.”

“Interesting,” he said. He gave his daughter the serious look again. “You don’t think that Jake and Celia are actually ... you know...”

She shook her head. “No,” she said firmly. “Nothing like that. For one thing, they’re never really alone together—they only see each other in the studio when Bill and Sharon and the band are there as well. For another, I don’t think that either of them would do anything even if they had opportunity. Celia genuinely loves Greg and I don’t think she would cheat on him. Jake is genuinely a friend of Greg’s. They’ve been known to hang out together, play golf together, go out and have beers together. Jake may be oversexed and may sometimes display poor judgement—particularly when he’s drinking—but he would never sleep with a friend’s wife.”

“I would hope not,” Tom said.

“Having said that, however, there is something strong between those two, something that is plain to see for anyone who cares to see it.”

Tom nodded. “I guess that’s just one more wait and see item, isn’t it?”

“I guess it is,” Pauline agreed.

Mary Kingsley had planned to make chicken-fried steak and mashed potatoes and gravy for dinner—one of her specialty items. Unfortunately, the musicians became so enthralled by their playing that they did not return to the Kingsley house until well after five o’clock in the afternoon. Making enough of that particular entrée for nine people would take at least two hours. She apologized profusely for losing track of the time, but Jake and Celia deflected her apology, stating that it was their fault. After a minor argument was resolved on whose fault it actually was, Celia offered to take everyone out for dinner instead, her treat.

“Let’s go to the nicest place we can get into wearing these clothes,” she told Tom and Mary and Stan and Cynthia. “Money is no object. I have a platinum credit card with no limit that my husband’s accounting firm pays off every month.”

Though they were hesitant to take advantage of her generosity, Pauline finally convinced them by saying: “Her old man has money falling out of his asshole. Trust me, we’re not going to break him.”

And so they headed back down to Cypress and had a very nice dinner at the Hilltop Inn, a landmark restaurant, known for its generous portions and high quality, that had been in business atop the hill just outside of town for more than fifty years.

The food was wonderful, the wine equally good. Four bottles of top shelf Merlot from the Napa Valley were opened during the course of the dinner. Everyone had their share except Jake. He sipped water instead, explaining that he had to fly tomorrow and, though he was well outside the eight hours from bottle to throttle rule, he did not want to take any chances.

It was as they were enjoying their desert that Mary Kingsley gave them her decision.

“Count me in,” she told them. “If you want my fiddle on your albums, I’ll give it to you.”

“Yay!” Celia said happily. She had really enjoyed playing with the mothers and was already envisioning how she would use them on several of her songs.

“That’s awesome, Mom,” Jake said, just as happily. He got up and gave her a hug.

They all finished dessert and then Celia paid the check. It was three hundred and sixty-three dollars, to which she added a seventy-five-dollar tip. Everyone thanked her for her generosity and then they piled back in the cars and headed back up the hill—Jake driving the Landcruiser, a slightly impaired Mary driving her husband’s Chevy sedan.

Back at Kingsley Manor, there was a little socializing but soon people started drifting off to bed, one by one. Mary begged off first, followed by Pauline. Then the Archers all went back to the Archer homestead as a group, leaving only Jake, Tom, and Celia standing. At this point, Jake finally broke down and asked for a beer.

“Well, of course,” Tom said. “You know where they’re kept. Are you still within your eight-hour window?”

“Well within it,” Jake assured him. “We’re not taking off until ten in the morning. I can drink all the way up until two in the morning.”

Tom looked up at him a little sharply. He saw his son staring back at him in an amused fashion, as if he knew exactly what his father had been thinking.

“Not that I really intend to do that, of course,” Jake said with a smile.

“Of course,” Tom said.

“Can I get you a beer as well?”

“Uh ... sure, I’ll drink one with you,” Tom said.

Jake nodded and then turned to Celia. “How about you, C?” he asked. “Need one more for the road?”

“I’m good,” Celia said. “I’m kind of tired and I think I’m going to hit the bed, just as soon as I get up the energy to lift mi grande pompis off this couch.”

Jake scoffed at her. “Tu grande pompis?” he said. “A typical woman, fishing for compliments. You know very well tu pompis es magnifico.”

Celia giggled. “Not bad,” she told him. “You managed to sound flirty there and use the proper sentence structure.”

“Gracias,” Jake said. He looked at his father again. “Celia’s trying to teach me a little Spanish in our spare time. As you can tell, we don’t have much spare time.”

“I see,” Tom said. “What exactly is a pompis?”

While Celia explained it, Jake made his way to the bar and opened up two bottles of Steinlager out of the refrigerator. When he returned, Celia was still sitting there. He sat on the couch next to her, though at a friendly enough distance. He took a large drink out of his beer, obviously savoring the experience.

“So, Dad,” Jake said. “You were talking earlier about these trails down in the canyon?”

Tom nodded. “Oh yes,” he said. “There’s the primary trail that runs all the way from Gibbons Lake in the High Sierra to Cypress. It’s called the Northwestern Trail and it’s an offshoot of the Pacific Crest Trail, which runs all along the crest of the mountains from Canada to Mexico. The Northwestern runs along our canyon rim just a half a mile down from the edge of our property.”

“Really?” Jake said, interested.

“There are a dozen or so other trails interspersed around here as well,” Tom said. “The canyon is a very popular hiking area. There’s Stevenson Trail, which leads down to the bottom of the canyon—that’s quite a hike, I’m here to tell you, especially coming back up—and then there’s the Cross Circuit trail, which comes off the Northwestern and leads to a really steep granite cliff that drops all the way down to the river level.”

“And you’re familiar with all these trails?” Jake asked him.

“I’m getting there,” Tom told him. “I have a USGS map of the area. It shows all the trails and the elevations. I’ve marked up all the trails your mother and I have hiked. You’ll really have to give some of them a try sometime.”

“That’s actually why I was asking,” Jake said. “I want to get up early tomorrow and take a run before breakfast. Are those trails suitable for running, or are they just for hiking?”

“The main trails like the Northwestern and the Cross Circuit are good for running,” he said. “I see people doing it all the time. It is pretty hilly though, and the terrain can be uneven. You’ll have to take care not to break an ankle down there.”

Celia suddenly perked up a bit. “Trail running, huh?” she said. “That sounds like a good workout.”

“That’s why I do it,” Jake said. “Running in Griffith Park is great cardio—and it’s up above the worst of the smog. I thought I’d try Dad’s trails and push myself a bit.”

“Can I come along?” Celia asked him.

Jake gave her an amused look. “Are you sure you’re going to feel up to a six-thirty run after drinking all that wine?”

“Probably not,” she admitted. “But I should do it anyway. I need to burn off all the calories that wine provided me.”

“It is actually safer not to go alone,” Tom told them. “The trails can be dangerous. They’re very remote for California. There are cliffs, rattlesnakes, mountain lions, and ankle breaking terrain. It’s best to have a buddy who can go for help if something bad happens.”

“All right then,” Jake said. “I guess it’s a date. You want to join us, Dad?”

He laughed. “When you want to hike in that canyon on a day when I haven’t spent the previous one smoking weed with my daughter and drinking beer and wine with everyone else, I’ll take you up on it. As for running there, you’re on your own under all circumstances. I’m too old for that shit.”

“Wimp,” Jake said, not unkindly.

“Guilty as charged,” Tom said.

“You think I could take a look at that map of yours though?” Jake asked him. “It’s probably a good idea for us to know where we’re going, right?”

“Yeah,” Tom agreed. “That would be a really good idea. Hang tight for a second. I’ll go get it.”

He disappeared down the hallway for several minutes. When he returned, he held a folded paper map with the logo of the United States Geological Survey on it. He sat down on the couch between Celia and Jake and unfolded the map on the coffee table before them. The map was an extremely detailed snapshot of the surrounding three hundred square miles of terrain. Just off to the right from the center was the region around the property they now sat upon. The area to the right of the property was marked up with highlighter ink on many of the trails. Most of the highlights were yellow. A few were red. Fewer more were blue. Tom put his finger on the lines and explained his color-coding scheme.

“Blue are the main trails,” he said. “This one here is the Northwestern and here is the Cross Circuit. The yellow ones are side trails that we’ve explored and are familiar with. Look right here.” He tapped one of the yellow ones. “This one is the trail you can pick up just a quarter mile north of here on the canyon ledge, just a bit off our property. It leads down to the Northwestern...” He trailed his finger along it until it intersected with a blue squiggle, “ ... right here. You hang a left there and you can go for about a mile and then pick up another upward trail to get back to the canyon ledge and the main road back here. Or, you can hang a right, or a downhill, if you prefer, and it will take you down to the Cross Circuit about three hundred vertical feet further down into the canyon. If you hang a right there, it will take you along a reasonably horizontal stretch for about a mile and a half or so, and then you’ll start to climb back up to a high ridge on the canyon wall just to the south of us. That’s where that cliff I was talking about is—very majestic scenery there, though you have to be careful. Anyway, from there, you can continue along the Cross Circuit until you get to this trail here...” He tapped another yellow squiggle, “ ... which will take you back up the main Northwestern, at which point you can hang a right and come back to the main access trail to the north of us.”

Jake followed all of this quite easily. He was a good map reader. Celia, however, looked confused.

“Are these trail intersections marked with signs or anything?” she asked.

“They are not,” Tom told her, “but the trails themselves are fairly prominent. It’s hard to mistake them for something else.”

“If you insist,” she said doubtfully. She pointed to one of the red squiggles. “What are the red ones?” she asked.

He gave her a smile. “Trails that are too steep or too dangerous for Mary and I,” he explained. “You two might want to avoid them as well.”

Jake slept well in his parents’ guest bedroom, despite the fact that it was an unfamiliar bed in an unfamiliar place. The life of a traveling musician had adapted him well to grabbing sleep anytime, anywhere that opportunity presented itself. He was awakened at 6:15 by the alarm clock radio’s insistent beeping. He shut it off and then, as had become his habit, got immediately out of bed. Experience had taught him that failing to do this would often result in a drift back into slumber and the missing of the workout.

He stretched out a bit, shaking off the sleep, and then opened his suitcase and pulled out his running clothes. He donned them and then put on his battered running shoes and grabbed his water bottle. Only then did he emerge from the bedroom and into the bathroom to take care of a few morning necessities.

It was 6:25 when he walked into the kitchen. He more than half expected Celia to be a no-show, but there she was, filling up a water bottle of her own in the sink. She was dressed in a loose white T-shirt and a pair of baggy red shorts that fell to mid-thigh. Her hair was tied back in a loose ponytail. Though it was not the most alluring outfit Jake had ever seen, she still managed to look good in it. Her legs were a sight to behold, long and tanned and well-muscled. Her breasts were confined in a black sports brassiere that could be plainly seen beneath the white of her shirt, but they still retained their basic aesthetically pleasing shape and bounce. Jake felt his usual tug of frustrated attraction as he took her in.

“Good morning,” he greeted.

“Is it?” she asked, looking at him and giving him her smile.

“Well, it’s certainly morning anyway,” he said. “You ready to do this thing?”

“I suppose,” she said. “Are you sure we won’t get lost out there?”

“Not at all,” he admitted. “I do want to take another look at my dad’s map before we head out.”

“I think that would be a wonderful idea,” she said.

Jake filled his water bottle up and then they both went over to the kitchen nook table, where Tom had left the map for them. They spread it open and Jake began to peruse it, quickly orienting himself to their present location and then looking to see where they wanted to go and how he should get them there.

“How energetic are you feeling?” he asked.

She thought it over for a moment and then gave him the little see-saw with her hand. “Moderately energetic,” she said. “I think maybe I had one glass of wine too many.”

Jake chuckled. “That can happen,” he said. “I was thinking of doing that route my dad suggested, the one that leads to that cliff.” He put his finger on the map. “It looks like we head north from the ledge, hang a right at this trail here, go downhill into the canyon, and then hang a right at the main trail and then a left at this connector here. We take another right at this trail and it’ll lead us to the cliff. That seem about right?”

“Uh ... yeah, if you say so,” she said.

“I say so,” he said. “The whole second half of this run is uphill, but it looks like a gradual uphill with only a few steep climbs.”

“All right then,” she said. “Let’s do it.”

“Let’s do it,” he agreed.

Though it was July, the air at this altitude, at this time of the day, had a slight bite to it as a steady wind blew through the canyon. The sun was low in the east and the sky was a brilliant shade of blue that was virtually unseen in Los Angeles. All in all, it was a beautiful morning.

They stretched out for a few minutes, limbering themselves up for exercise, and then Jake led them off, moving at a steady pace that was a little slower than what he usually set when he was alone. Soon, they reached the trailhead and started down into the canyon. The exertion started to work on them almost immediately.

“I thought it would be easy going downhill,” Celia said.

“Not when it’s steep like this,” Jake said. “You expend a lot of energy keeping yourself balanced in this kind of terrain.”

The trail was narrow, full of rocks, holes, and covered by needles from the evergreen trees that grew with moderate density around them. It twisted and turned back and forth through the clusters of trees, always going downhill. Just as they were really starting to get warmed up, they reached the main trail.

“We hang a right here,” Jake said. “This will take us down to the Cross Circuit trail that leads to the cliff.”

“Sounds good,” Celia said, wiping a little sweat from her brow.

This trail was wider, better maintained, not as steep, and featured frequent glimpses down into the canyon. Jake picked up the pace a bit and Celia matched him easily. They spoke little as they made their way downward. After another half a mile or so, they reached an intersection with another trail, this one a little narrower.

“Here’s the Cross Circuit,” Jake said. “We turn right here and go until we reach the cliff.”

“I’ll have to trust you on that,” Celia said. “I am thoroughly disoriented.”

Though Tom had described this portion of the trail as horizontal, they quickly found that that was a relative term. Over the next mile, though their mean elevation remained more or less steady, the path moved up and down over a series of forty to sixty foot undulations in the terrain. Jake was used to running in these conditions. Celia was not. Her pace slowed a bit and she began to pant quite audibly on the rises.

“Doing okay?” Jake asked her at one point.

She gave him a thumbs up but no verbal reply.

And then they came to the uphill portion. It was not steeply uphill, but it was relentlessly uphill, with no downhill or even horizontal sections for momentary relief. Jake pushed himself into it, feeling his heart hammering in his chest, his breath tearing in and out of his lungs. His legs began to burn with the exertion. He was pretty sure he could have made it to the top at this pace, but Celia had to slow to a walk about halfway up.

“Sorry,” she panted, wiping perspiration from her face. “I couldn’t run anymore. Not ... not used to this.”

“No problem,” Jake said, slowing to a walk to stay beside her. “This is a bit of an ass-kicker.”

They trudged onward, still breathing heavy, but no longer breathless.

“It’s funny,” Celia said. “I run on the treadmill for my normal workout. I set it at a pace that’s faster than what we were doing and with more of an incline and I can keep that pace up for forty-five minutes. But here...” She shook her head, “ ... I just can’t hang.”

“It’s real terrain,” Jake told her. “Real terrain is always going to be harder than artificial runs.”

“I see why you run in Griffith Park now,” she said.

The trail angled to the right, away from the drop-off into the canyon and into a dense cluster of trees. The grade grew a bit steeper. They pushed on, now hikers instead of runners. Both of them drank frequently from their water bottles. Eventually the trail cut back to the left. After a final rise it emerged from the trees and, just like that, the vista of the canyon opened up before them.

“Nice,” Jake said appreciatively, as he took in the view.

“Hermoso,” whispered Celia.

“That means, good, right?” Jake asked her.

“It means ‘beautiful’,” she confirmed.

And indeed it was. The trail was now hugging the very ledge of a sheer granite cliff, offering an unobstructed view of the canyon. They could see the Heritage River some eight hundred feet below, a roiling bed of Sierra Nevada meltwater making its way down toward the valley and its eventual storage in Lake Heritage behind the Eastside Dam. The surface was dotted with whitewater rapids and long stretches of placid blue. The banks were narrow widths of craggy rock that pushed up against the steep walls.

“Dad was right,” Jake said. “The view is worth the effort of getting here.”

“Agreed,” Celia said, still taking it in.

“Why don’t we rest here for a few?” Jake suggested. “Get our breath back before final push back up to the top.”

“I thought you’d never ask,” she told him.

Places to sit down were somewhat limited, but they finally found a moderate sized boulder that had come down from higher up and was now sitting just to the right of the trail. They both planted their botines on it, their legs stretched out before them. The fit was a bit cozy. Their hips and legs were touching. Jake felt a little thrill at the contact.

They sat in silence for a bit, taking in the view, listening to the breeze blowing through the trees above them, letting their bodies repay the oxygen debts they had incurred, occasionally sipping from their water.

“Are you ready for today?” Celia finally asked.

“The meeting?” Jake asked. They were scheduled to meet with Oren Blake II—an influential and controversial country music singer and songwriter—at the recording studio he owned in Coos Bay, Oregon. The subject of the meeting was to discuss the possibility of Jake and Celia renting some studio time from him so they could get their music recorded. The problem was that Blake was rumored to be very particular about who he allowed to use his studio.

“The meeting,” she confirmed. “I’m a little nervous about it. If this hidalgo doesn’t sell us some time, we’re going to be forced to go to National or one of the other companies to get our recordings done. You know what that means.”

“Yeah,” Jake said. He did indeed know what that meant. “It means we’ll be letting National or whoever have access to our efforts before we’re ready for release—something that is bad—and that we’ll probably have to offer them additional royalties on sales once we’re in production since they’re unlikely to simply rent us the time at a flat rate—something that is worse.”

“Or, they could just flat out turn us down,” she said. “Something I wouldn’t put past those corporate putas. Neither of us exactly left our contracts on good terms.”

“That would be a worst-case scenario,” Jake had to agree. “That would force us to utilize a second-rate studio somewhere, something like that little place we did our initial demo recording in back in the day. All those places are still analog, as far as I know. Not only would an analog master not sound as good, but it would also take us longer to mix and we’d still have to pay some place to convert it over to digital for us.”

“All of which would eat further into our capital,” Celia added. “And we’re already over budget. Pretty soon we’re going to start eating into our production funds.”

“Yeah,” Jake sighed. They had just had a meeting with Jill the previous week and she had laid all this out for them in her usually sterile and immaculately organized manner.

“I’m worried about all this, Jake,” she said softly. “We get one shot at this. We have just enough money to put out one album apiece. We’ll need to sell enough of those albums to not only cover the costs of production, manufacturing, and distribution, but also to make enough profit for follow-up albums.”

“That was the understanding going in,” Jake said. “Why are you getting cold feet now?”

She took a deep breath and another sip of water before answering him. She looked at him meaningfully, some shame in her eyes. “I’m not sure my stuff is good enough,” she confessed.

“Your tunes are great, C,” he told her. “Once we get the mothers working with us, we’ll dial them in tighter than a...” He paused, making the decision not to say what Matt would have added at the end of that phrase, “ ... well, you know what I mean. They’ll be tight.”

She nodded. “I think the music will come out good,” she said. “If that was the only consideration, I wouldn’t be so worried. It’s not the only consideration though. You know that as well as I do.”

He did. They could put out absolutely groundbreaking, colossal albums full of high quality, commercially viable tunes and still fail in their endeavor because of circumstances and decisions that were outside of their control. There were a dozen things that could go wrong. The record companies could refuse to contract with them for distribution. They could agree to contract for distribution but not aggressively promote the albums because some peon in the marketing department might think the effort a money loser. Even if the albums were promoted, radio stations could refuse to play any of the tunes if program managers didn’t like the idea of a Celia Valdez or a Jake Kingsley solo album. Or, the most distressing thought, fans, the people who bought albums, might hear the songs on the radio and not want to buy the albums because Celia was considered a has-been and Jake was switching to a genre that was quite different from the Intemperance sound that had made him famous.

“Yes, I do know that,” he told her. “And there’s nothing we can do about it right now. All bridges to cross later.”

“It’s not just a simple matter of putting our music down and then sending it off into the world,” she said. “We have to think about how it is going to promoted. With me, they’re going to refer to me as ‘the former singer for the teen pop band La Diferencia’. With you, they’re going to constantly compare your guitar work with Matt’s.”

“Yeah,” Jake said sourly. Though his acoustic guitar skills were without reproach and considered among the best out there, and, though he could play a distorted electric extremely well, he was following in the footsteps of Matt Tisdale, perhaps the best electric guitar player to put his licks down on vinyl since Eddie Van Halen. “That discussion and issue have serious possibilities of overriding the music I’m making. It could be that no one will actually listen to the song, they’ll just bag on my guitar riffs and especially my solos, no matter how good they are.”

“All factors that could lead to failure,” Celia said. She looked at him meaningfully. “This stuff is keeping me awake at night, Jake. I can’t get my head to shut down.”

Jake put his arm around her shoulders and pulled her against him. She accepted the embrace willingly, her hot, perspiring body pressing against him, her damp hair touching his neck. “It’s a scary thing we’re doing here, C,” he told her. “Sometimes I wonder how this is all going to turn out myself. Failure is an option, there is no denying that, but so is success. I think that success is the more likely scenario.”

“And what facts do you have to base that judgement upon?” she asked him.

“Absolutely none,” he told her.

This got a laugh from her. She looked up him, her head still resting on his shoulder. “Thanks, Jake,” she said. “You have a way of making me feel better.”

“Anytime,” he said.

And then, acting on an impulse brought on by the feel of her body against his, he put his finger under her chin and lifted gently, so her head came up. He leaned in and kissed her softly on the lips. She kissed him back, letting it linger for two seconds, then four. It was not a kiss of passion, but it was not a chaste, sisterly kiss either.

When their lips parted, she stared into his eyes. He could see a plethora of emotions at work there, undoubtedly a mirror of what she saw in his eyes. It was not the first time they had kissed—the first had been during the rehearsal ceremony for her wedding, the second after he’d flown her to Palm Spring one day—but it was the first one initiated by Jake.

“What was that for?” she asked quietly.

“For good luck,” he told her.

“That’s a nice way to wish someone luck,” she said, smiling, her face flushed more than the recent exercise could account for.

“I thought so as well,” he said.

They sat there for a few more minutes, his arm still around her, her head still nestled into his shoulder. They did not kiss any more, but the memory of it hung between them quite heavily.

Finally, Jake released her and stood up.

“Well,” he said, “shall we push on up the hill and get ourselves back to the house?”

“I guess we’d better,” she said, standing up as well.

“I’m thinking it’s about twenty minutes or so back. After that, we’ll have a little breakfast and then go see a man about a studio.”

She nodded and they headed up the trail. Both of them had the energy to run now.