Different Circles

Chapter 3: The Supporting Cast

Posted: 04.11.2022, 14:19:08

Santa Clarita, California

July 15, 1991

The headquarters (and the only physical building) of KVA Records was located in a nondescript single-story office building in the midst of hundreds in a newly developed Santa Clarita business park. The buildings were all black and gray with large tinted windows and spacious parking lots. They had all been constructed in the last two years with the intention that family doctors and dentists, personal injury lawyers, chiropractors, low-end accountants, and minor league architecture firms would be the target tenants.

Unfortunately for the real estate developers who had planned and built the complexes, the economy had taken a sharp downturn shortly after the wildly successful conclusion of the Persian Gulf War. Fully ninety-five percent of the more than one million square feet of office space in the complex stood unoccupied and with no prospects in sight. KVA Records, the lessees of three thousand square feet of rear building space at 2501 Prospect Park Lane, did not mind this at all. They had been able to sign a two-year lease on their offices for the absurdly low price of twelve dollars per square foot per year. The owners were so desperate for tenants that they had even thrown in the required sound-proofing of the studio portion of the office for ten percent less than cost.

It was ten minutes to nine o’clock in the morning when Jake pulled his BMW into a parking spot in front of the office. Already parked in their accustomed spots were a silver 1991 Mercedes S-class, and a lovingly cared for gray 1985 Honda Civic. That meant that Celia and the Nerdlys were already present and accounted for. This was typical. There was not a battered 1982 Toyota pickup or a 1988 Honda Accord currently parked in the lot, however. That meant that Ted Duncan and Ben Ping, their hired drummer and bass player, respectively, were not here yet. This too was typical. Ben always showed up exactly at nine o’clock, which was starting time. Ted tended to come rolling in at least five minutes late, sometimes as much as twenty.

Sitting next to Jake, in the passenger seat, was his mother. She was dressed in a pair of tan slacks and a white button-up blouse. Her hair was loosely tied back in a ponytail. She sipped from an insulated mug of Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee that Elsa had prepared for her to take on the road. Today would be her fifth session in the studio and she was still enjoying the novelty of working with her son and his friends and learning the ins and outs of how their music was put together.

The two of them stepped out of the car and walked to the main office door. It was made of reinforced glass and was secured by an electronic lock. KVA STUDIOS LLC was printed in simple white text at eye level. He punched in the code—it was 40191, the date they had moved into the building—and the lock disengaged. He opened the door for his mother and they entered an empty reception area. There was no furniture here, no water cooler, no telephone. There was no need for a receptionist at KVA currently and no money to spare to hire one even if such a position was needed.

At the back of the reception area was another door that had no words printed on it at all. They walked through this door and into a hallway. Opposite the reception area door was a restroom that contained a simple shower area. Left from the reception area door, the hallway led to a conference room in which a simple wooden table and eight simple chairs had been placed. Here, a phone sat upon the table and, in the corner, was an IBM computer that, at the insistence of Nerdly, was hooked into a separate phone line and connected to something called CompuServe, the purpose and usefulness of which only Nerdly himself understood. Jake ignored the empty conference room and turned right instead. Here, the hallway ended in a heavy soundproof door. Beyond this door was the actual studio part of KVA Records. This door was of steel construction and was equipped with two deadbolt locks, a security bar, and was wired to a remotely monitored security system. No one gave a shit if a burglar made it into the front part of the building, but the heart and soul—not to mention a good portion of invested money from the partners—was behind the studio door.

Jake disengaged the locks with a key and they went inside. The studio was fifty feet by twenty, windowless, and featured cheap industrial gray tile flooring. The walls were bare of pictures or other decorations. The studio chairs were identical to the conference room chairs, which was to say that they were cheap office supply chairs designed for maybe two years of useful service. The recording equipment in the room was not commercial quality. It consisted of an analog sound board hooked to three amplifiers and a bank of cassette player/recorders. There was a platform just in front of the soundboard, made of treated plywood. It held Ted’s ten-piece drum set. Sitting to the left of the drum platform was Nerdly’s pride and joy: the Korg M1 digital synthesizer. To the right of it was a Yamaha electronic stage piano on a stand. Scattered haphazardly to the sides of the platform were a variety of guitar cases, extra microphone stands, extra amplifiers, and extra chairs. In racks installed on the walls were the guitars. There were seven of them. Ben’s Brogan bass hung in the center. To the left of it were Jake’s guitars: a black Les Paul that was his primary weapon, a Marshall acoustic-electric, and a Brogan Les Paul knock-off that was drop-D tuned for some of the heavier of Jake’s songs. To the right of the bass were Celia’s guitars: A Fender Grand Concert acoustic, a Brogan acoustic-electric, and a drop-D tuned Fender Stratocaster that she did not play on any of her tunes, but that she used to back-up Jake on a few of his.

Celia was sitting in a chair near her microphone stand, sipping out of a cup of coffee and leafing through a sheaf of musical scores on her stand. She held a pencil on her right hand and was scratching a few notes here and there. Sharon was at the soundboard, making notations on the switches and dials and making a few notes of her own. Nerdly was sitting in a chair behind the Korg, looking at a diagram in the manual. Cynthia was sitting in a chair behind the Yamaha piano, frowning at it. She had never played an electronic piano before and was still getting used to it.

“Good morning, everyone!” Mary greeted as she entered the room. Jake echoed the sentiment. Everyone in the room gave his or her version of a return greeting.

Mary went over to a shelf next to the guitars and opened up the case that contained her rehearsal violin. She spent a few minutes putting rosin on her bow and then carried the instrument and her tuning fork over to the chair next to Cynthia and her piano. She began to go to work, making sure her strings were in proper tune.

Jake walked over to his seat next to Celia’s, but he did not sit down. “How’s it going, C?” he enquired.

“So far, so good,” she replied.

“What do you want to work on first today?” he asked. They alternated whose songs they worked on day by day and today it was Celia’s turn.

“The Struggle,” she said. “It’s going to be my first release and I’m still not liking the way it’s coming out.”

Jake nodded in understanding. The tune was solid as a rock, with good melody, deep, meaningful lyrics, and a nice hook in the chorus, but Celia was right. The way they were putting it together just didn’t sound quite right. “We’ll get it dialed,” he told her.

“Eventually,” she sighed.

Now that he knew what song they were going to work on first, he knew which guitar to grab. He walked over to the rack and pulled down the Les Paul, which he slung over his right shoulder. He carried it over to his chair and sat down. Just in front of his chair were two effects pedals he could use to change the basic sound of the instrument before it came out of the amplifier in the rear of the room. His guitar cord was sitting next to his seat but he didn’t plug in just yet. First, he picked up his tuning fork from the music stand in front of him and went to work on his strings. They were not terribly out of tune, since this was a daily ritual, and only a minor adjustment to the G-string and the E-string were required.

Just as Jake and Mary finished up with their tuning, the studio door opened and Ben Ping walked in. Ben was Chinese, born in the city of Cixi, on the eastern coast of the country. His family emigrated to San Francisco in 1960, when Ben was only three years old. He was brought up in American schools with American friends and American values. Though his parents had always wanted him to be a doctor or an engineer at the very least, young Ben’s life-path was altered when he was fourteen years old and picked up a guitar for the first time. He fell in love with the instrument almost immediately and discovered he had a significant aptitude for it. Soon, he found himself falling in with the musician crowd, playing in various bands through his high school years, learning to smoke marijuana and go to keggers, learning to grow his hair long, and forgetting how to produce and turn in quality school work. He retained just enough of a cultural reverence for education to successfully graduate, but his final grades and GPA precluded him from getting into any institute of higher learning that was not a community college.

That was okay with Ben, if not his parents. He got a job in a low-end restaurant as a busboy and then gradually worked his way up to a waiter at a higher end chain restaurant. This allowed him to move out of his parents’ house in South San Francisco and into a studio apartment in the City, where he spent much of his non-working time pursuing his musical interests with various bands that were getting together in the Bay Area. At some point along the way he came to the realization that he was pretty good with the guitar, but not great, so he made himself a little hotter of a commodity by switching to the bass, an instrument he had a little more aptitude for as it fit well with his engineering oriented mind. The band hookups came easier after this. Guitar players were a dime a dozen, but bands were always looking for a good bass player because, since it was not quite as glamorous of an instrument, there weren’t as many people playing it.

Though he was good with his instrument—Jake rated him as better than Darren had been, but still well short of Charlie’s skills—his big break never came. The closest he ever came to fame was that he had once played with a band called True, whose drummer claimed that he had once played in a band with a guy who had learned his guitar skills from a then un-discovered Neal Schon of Journey fame. It was a story that had never been verified, but he had liked to believe it was true.

After a few years of playing hundred-dollar gigs on his nights off, he decided that maybe it was time to establish a fallback position in case he did not ultimately end up being a famous recording star. He started taking classes at City College of San Francisco, focusing on general education and music. A little more mature in those days, he took his college education seriously enough to accumulate a 4.0 GPA by the time he maxed out all he could take at that level. This was enough to allow him admission to UCLA for the completion of his Bachelor of Arts in Music. And so, he packed up his meager belongings and made the move to the southern part of the state. After graduation, he picked up a teaching credential and was hired as a guitar teacher at Los Angeles Harbor College, a campus of the LA Community College district. It was not the most lucrative position in the world, but he enjoyed teaching young people the art of the guitar and it fulfilled him.

Until meeting Jake and Celia two months before, he had pretty much given up on his dream of being a recording star, but that had not kept him from playing in bands when he could. He had been playing bass for a group called Black Dog—a Led Zepplin tribute band—in a little club in the valley when Jake, Nerdly, and Sharon had wandered in one Saturday night after yet another frustrating session at their studio. The lack of a rhythm section at that point in their development had been hampering them quite badly, leaving them unable to progress much beyond the basic melodies of their tunes.

Black Dog was merely okay at what they were striving to do. The guitar player was never going to be mistaken for Jimmy Page and their singer did not have even a third of the range of Robert Plant, but they were able to put out palatable imitations that served to provide some nostalgic entertainment while one sipped on one’s drink and ate greasy bar food.

It was during their rendition of Rock and Roll when Jake began paying more than superficial attention to them. It was the drummer he pondered first. The guy was pretty good, he realized. He was not just keeping the beat, but was also hitting all the flourishes that Jon Bonham had put into the same performance, and he was hitting them exactly as they had appeared on the album. And then he noticed the bass player. He too was laying down the exact rhythm required for the tune, keeping the other musicians in time, just like a good bass player was supposed to.

Life is just not fair, Jake thought at the time. We can’t find a goddamn rhythm section to save our lives, and these fucking hackers up there managed to pull in a decent one.

He shook his head, went back to sipping from his beer, and watched as Black Dog finished up Rock and Roll and went onto the number that would close out their set: Kashmir. Again, Jake paid primary attention to the bass player and the drummer and, just as the singer began declaring he was on his way, a simple thought occurred to him. Why don’t we see if we can steal these guys from them?

He mentioned his idea to the Nerdlys, both of whom had to agree that, for their purposes, the two musicians just might be what they were looking for. They both had some concerns though.

“Isn’t it a bit unethical to steal musicians away from an established band?” Sharon had asked.

Jake simply shrugged. “It’s an unethical world,” he said. “If they want to come of their own free will, what’s it to us?”

Nerdlys concern was more practical. “We know nothing about these people,” he said. “How do we know their level of commitment? Their personalities? They may be incompatible with our basic level of camaraderie.”

Again, Jake shrugged it off. “They gotta be more compatible than what we got now,” he said.

Nerdly had to agree that this was a valid point.

And so, the three of them hung around after the set was done. Soon enough, the band began to filter out, one by one. The singer and guitar player both headed directly for a group of women hanging around at the bar. The drummer, on the other hand, came out and started working to disassemble his set. He was a big guy with a beer belly and a balding head. His face was haggard and drawn, as if he were in perpetual pain. Jake guessed his age at around fifty, although he soon found out that Ted Duncan was only forty-one.

“Hey there,” Jake greeted from the edge of the stage.

“Hey,” Duncan grunted back, not even glancing in Jake’s direction.

“That was a good set you put on,” Jake told him. “You seem to know your way around the drums.”

“Thanks,” he said plainly, continuing to unscrew wingnuts on his snare drum.

“My name is Jake Kingsley,” Jake said. “Maybe you’ve heard of me?”

That got Duncan’s attention. He turned and looked at Jake, his eyes focusing on his face. He obviously did not like what he saw. “Jake Kingsley, huh?” he said. “And my name is Jon Bonham. Nice to meet you, Jake.” With that, he went back to work.

“I really am Jake Kingsley,” Jake insisted. “I just cut my hair and grew a mustache.”

“Of course you did,” Duncan said. “Look partner, I don’t mean to be rude or anything, but I need to get this stuff taken apart and back in my truck. I have to work a shift at six in the morning and I really need to get some sleep, you know what I mean?”

“I understand,” Jake said, “but I thought that maybe I could talk to you for a minute or two. You see, I’m putting together a solo album and it just so happens that I need...”

Duncan turned back to him and gave him a dangerous glare. “Goodbye, Jake, or whatever your name is. I’ve been about as polite as I’m going to be.”

The exchange had caught the eye of one of the club’s bouncers, a large Hispanic man with tattoos that looked like they had been put there by the best goddamn tat artist in San Quentin Prison. He came over and stood next to Jake, uncomfortably close to him. “Is there a problem here?”

“No,” Jake said, holding up his hands. “No problem at all. I was just leaving.”

He walked back over to the bar, where Sharon and Nerdly were waiting.

“That did not look like it went well,” Nerdly observed.

“He doesn’t believe I’m Jake Kingsley,” Jake said.

“Unsurprising,” Nerdly said. “Your current style of grooming precludes immediate recognition. Maybe I should go try?”

Jake shook his head. “I’m not sure that’s a good idea. Here comes the bass player. Let me go talk to him instead.”

And so he had met Ben Ping. Ben took a little convincing, but soon he realized that he really was dealing with Jake Kingsley and that Kingsley really was offering him an audition to play bass for him and Celia Valdez in their rehearsal studio.

“I’ll have to leave Black Dog,” he said.

Jake nodded. “Is that a problem?”

“No, no problem at all, but I also have a full-time job as a music professor at LA Harbor. That might be a problem. They kind of like me to show up for work.”

Jake was actually impressed that the guy was a music teacher. “I see how they might like that,” he said. “Do you teach summer classes?”

“No.”

“It’s May 16^th right now,” Jake said. “How much more of the semester is left?”

“Only two weeks,” Ben said, “but I’ll need to be back in the classroom on September 3.”

“So, you’ll be available for the entire summer?”

“Well ... yes, but that can’t possibly be enough time to get two albums recorded.”

“We’re not trying to record right now,” Jake explained. “We’re just trying to put the tunes together and we’re somewhat hampered by the fact that we have no rhythm section. All I’m asking for right now is a competent bass player and a competent drummer who can help us out until it is time to hit the studio. We’ll cross the bridge of what musicians will actually record with us when we come to it. The summer should be enough for us to get things in gear.”

“I see,” Ben said. “I guess I’ll have to say that I’m in. I’ve been an Intemperance fan since you released Descent Into Nothing. It would be an honor to play with you.”

“Assuming you pass the audition,” Jake qualified.

“Naturally,” Ben said. He did not seem the least bit nervous about the prospect of playing for Jake.

Jake nodded over in the direction of the drummer. “What’s his story?” he asked. “He seems like he knows what he’s doing.”

Ben nodded. “I’ve only known him since I hooked up with Black Dog, but he’s a good drummer. He says he used to do sessions back in the day. Claims he did some studio work for Graham Nash, Sammy Hagar, Don Henley, and a few others. He’s working these days as a paramedic over in Pomona.”

“A paramedic, huh?” Jake said. “That’s interesting.”

“He’s kind of fucked up in the head, if you ask me,” Ben opined. “I think maybe he’s been doing the paramedic thing a little too long, that maybe he isn’t so good at forgetting about the shit he sees in that job.”

“Really?”

Ben nodded. “Really. He’ll tell you stories that’ll have you almost puking ... or almost crying. He’s pretty emotional.”

“But a good drummer?”

“Probably the best I’ve ever played with. He could do a lot better than this tribute band, but he seems to have lost his ambition over the years.”

“Well,” Jake said, “maybe I can get it back for him. You think you can convince him to audition for us as well?”

Ben nodded. “I’ll see what I can do.”

And he had. It took a little convincing, but both Ben and Ted came to KVA’s studio two days later and showed what they had. Jake, Nerdly, and Celia had all been impressed by both of them and had made them an offer on the spot.

“Fifty bucks an hour,” Jake told them. “We’ll work six days a week, for the most part, with Sundays off, all through the summer. Lunches will be on us. Saturday night beers will be on us as well.”

Ben had no problem accepting the offer. He was free and clear through the summer months. Ted, on the other hand, had a full-time job with Southern Medical Services and would have to put it aside in order to accept the offer. He didn’t agonize over it long. Fifty dollars an hour was nearly four times as much he was making as a medic. He applied for a leave of absence and it was granted. On May 29^th, two days after the community college district started its summer break, Ben and Ted both reported for duty. Ted was ten minutes late for his first shift.

“Good morning,” Ben greeted now, as he entered the studio for the day’s work. He was dressed in a pair of blue jeans and a cotton pullover shirt with a picture of a bicycle on it. His hair was shoulder length and he sported a Fu Manchu goatee. He had a dangling earring in his left ear and a wedding ring on his left hand. His wife, Lisa, was a former student of his. She was now in the college’s nursing program and pregnant with their first child.

The group offered their good mornings back to him. He walked over to the rack and pulled down his bass, carrying it over to his chair on the far side of Celia’s position. He began to tune.

“We’re going to be working on The Struggle to start the day,” Celia told him.

“Sounds good,” he said with a nod. He still couldn’t believe he had actually gotten this gig, that he was really playing with Jake Kingsley and Celia Valdez. And though they had already told him they would likely be getting another bass player for the actual recording process, he was hopeful that he could impress them enough that they would keep him on for that stage of the album. True, it would mean he would have to take some sort of leave of absence from the college, but it would be worth it. He would be a recording star! His dream come true! And he could tell by the tunes they were working on that both Jake’s and Celia’s albums had high potential. The music was solid, even if it wasn’t of the genre that each were associated with.

It was ten minutes after nine when the door opened again and Ted Duncan walked in. He had the harried look on his face that was his signature when arriving late for work—which he pretty much did every morning. He was dressed in a pair of khaki cargo pants and sandals, his shirt a faded and tattered souvenir from the 1983 US Festival that was about a size and a half too small for him and served to accent his beer belly in a most unattractive manner.

“Hey, guys,” he greeted, putting the proper tone of apology in his voice. “Sorry I’m late. The damn traffic coming into the valley was pretty bad this morning.”

“Yeah,” Jake grunted. Traffic was Ted’s most frequent excuse for his tardiness, followed a close second by car trouble with his old pickup. No one mentioned that fact that all of them had taken the same route into Santa Clarita from LA proper and had found the traffic to be its normal congested but predictable self. After all, most of the morning commuters were heading into LA, not out of it. “Why don’t you grab your sticks and we’ll get started on the sound check. We’ll be working on The Struggle for the first part of the morning.”

“The Struggle, right,” Ted said, heading over to his drum set. He had a seat and pulled out a pair of sticks from the holder on his bass drum. “Good tune.”

Now that everyone was here and had tuned the instrument he or she was going to be using, they started the ritual of the sound check. Sharon fired up the sound board while Nerdly turned on the speakers and the amps. Everyone plugged in, except for Ted, who played strictly acoustic in the intimate confines of the rehearsal studio (and had to keep his beats somewhat light, at that), and Mary, who played into a microphone set in front of her seat. In deference to everyone’s hearing, the speakers and amps were not set to a performance volume. Instead, they were adjusted to just have enough output so the music could be heard well. Sharon and Nerdly then had everyone play a little piece so the input levels could be adjusted. After this, the vocal mics belonging to Jake and Celia were sound checked as well. Since Jake had convinced the Nerdlys shortly after the acquisition of the rhythm section that perfection was not really needed for this phase of the production, and since they were used to doing this every morning before getting started, the process only took about twenty minutes to accomplish. Five of those minutes were taken up by Ted, who launched into one of his paramedic stories.

“I ever tell you about the time we had this guy with a chain link support pole through his chest?” he suddenly blurted, just as Mary was checking her mic.

“Uh ... no,” Jake said. “I don’t think we heard that one. Maybe after...”

“It was over in The Ranch,” Ted said. “You know, that ritzy-ass section of Pomona near the park? It was on Village Loop, which runs along the green belt there, and the road is kind of winding through these small hills. This college age dude and his girlfriend were flying down that road in the middle of the night—drunk you know—and he lost it on one of the curves. Fuckin’ car went up an embankment and goes airborne—just like something out of goddamn Dukes of Hazzard, I’m telling you—and comes down straddling this chain link fence around a water pump station. They land perfectly parallel with the fence and sever the top support pole with the front end. That broken pole went right through the goddamn windshield and through the chest of the dude driving.” He shook his head. “That was some shit to see.”

“I ... uh ... I bet,” Jake said.

“It killed him?” Cynthia asked, her eyes wide.

“Eventually,” Ted said, “but not right away. He was still talking and screaming when we got there, a goddamn three-inch aluminum pole going in through his sternum and out right between his shoulder blades and then through his seat and into the back seat. He wasn’t even bleeding. His girlfriend—talk about freaking right the fuck out—she didn’t have a scratch on her but we had to transport her for hysteria.”

“I can imagine,” Celia said, both fascinated and appalled.

“So, anyway, we had to get the fire guys to cut that pole down so we could get him out of the car. It was still attached to the fence, you know, and it was sticking through the seats in the rear. They got in there with a power saw and cut both ends. Man, that must’ve hurt like hell. That kid was screaming while they did it, sparks flying everywhere. I had to get in there with him and start a line and light him up with some morphine just to get him through it. And then, once they had him cut free, you could fuckin’ see right through from one end of the pole to the other. It was freaky, dudes. One of the freakiest things I’ve ever seen. You could’ve put a water hose in that thing and it would’ve squirted out the other side.”

Everyone looked at each other for a moment, this image in their heads.

“Once we got him out of there,” Ted continued, “we took him over to the trauma center. He stayed awake through all that. They took him into surgery right away, but once they took that thing out, he crashed and died in about two minutes. The surgeon said his aorta was ripped, along with a couple of the major branches off it. The pole itself was keeping him from bleeding out, but as soon as they removed it: El gusho.”

“Wow,” Jake said after a few moments of horrified silence passed. “That’s ... an interesting story.”

“Quite gruesome,” Mary said. “Whatever in the world prompted you to tell us that?”

“Your violin,” Ted said, pointing at it.

“My violin?”

He nodded solemnly. “Yeah. You see, there was a violin in the car. Apparently, the girlfriend played it. Whenever I see you tuning it up, it always reminds me of that call. I had a therapist tell me once that I should talk about these things instead of obsessing over them.”

“Uh ... right,” Jake said. “Good advice, I suppose. So ... you’re better now?”

Ted nodded amicably. “I’m cool,” he said.

“All right then. How about we finish the sound check?”

They finished the sound check without further incident. They then began to play.

They went through The Struggle three times—which was to say they started it from the beginning eight times but only finished it three because the mothers were still not completely familiar with their parts. It was a soft-rock song with Mary providing the melody with her violin while Celia and Cynthia laid down the accompaniment to the rhythm set by Ben and Ted. Jake used his Les Paul on mild distortion to provide fills. He also had a fairly tame, easy listening type of guitar solo between the bridge and the final verse. Neither Celia or Jake was happy with the way it was coming out.

“It’s the violin,” Celia said after they finished the third run-through. “It just doesn’t ... sound right.”

Jake nodded. “I think you’re right.”

Mary was a bit taken aback. “What was wrong with it?” she asked. “I’m hitting the notes well, just like they’re written. Is it my phrasing?”

Jake and Celia were both shaking their heads before she even finished. “It’s not you, Mary,” Celia assured her. “You’re playing beautifully. It’s just that the timbre of the violin doesn’t match the feeling I’m trying to project here. It doesn’t convey the mood of the piece properly. I don’t think the violin is the right instrument for the melody.”

Mary nodded thoughtfully. “Now that you mention it, it doesn’t seem to quite be what is needed there. What did you have in mind?”

“I tried using the guitar to pick out the melodic notes before we recruited the two of you,” Jake said. “That didn’t sound right either. It was too harsh, too ... oh ... hard rock I guess.”

“I think an alto sax would sound better,” Celia suggested. “Not only that, it would free up Jake’s guitar for the fills and Mary’s violin for the accompaniment. A sax was actually what I envisioned when I first thought about putting the piece together as a recording.”

“Does anyone here actually know how to play the sax?” asked Sharon.

The two rhythm section members shook their heads, as did the two mothers. Nerdly joined the chorus of no’s. Jake gave a little shrug. “My dad used to have an alto sax in his collection when I was a kid and I played around with it a little. I never took to it much though.”

“But you’ve played one before?” Celia asked.

“That was close to twenty years ago, C. I was just a kid screwing around. I sure as hell don’t remember how to do scales on the thing now.”

“What about your old man?” asked Ted. “It was his instrument, wasn’t it? Can he play the thing?”

All eyes turned to Mary, who was shaking her head slowly. “Tom plays a pretty mean blues guitar, but he was never any good with the sax. He bought it in a secondhand store back in the early fifties, when he was still trying to make it as a musician. He thought it would increase his marketability if he could lay down some brass. He was never very good with it. He could play the notes, but he could never put ... you know ... any soul in it. He stopped playing it years before Pauline and Jake were even born. I’m not even sure where the thing is now. I don’t remember seeing it when we moved.”

Jake, who knew he had accidentally broken the instrument one day while pretending to be a hard rock marching band member, looked at the floor and said nothing.

“Well ... I guess we’re going to have to get ourselves a saxophonist, aren’t we?” Celia said.

“Just for one song?” Sharon asked. “Pauline and Greg are not going to like that.”

“It’s not just for one song,” Celia said. “I can use a sax as the primary melodic instrument in at least three of my songs, and I can envision using it for fills and solos in two or three of the others. This is actually something I’ve been meaning to bring up for some time.”

“Where in the hell are we going to find a professional level sax player?” Jake asked. “We’ve had a hard enough time just finding a rhythm section and our violin and piano players.”

Ben, who was typically the quietest, most reserved member of the group, suddenly spoke up. “Maybe I can help,” he said.

“How so?” Jake asked him. “Do you know a professional level saxophonist?”

“I used to,” he said. “Back when I was working on my graduate degree at UCLA, I played bass in the school’s jazz band. There was a girl who played the sax with us, and she was pretty good at it—a natural, if you know what I mean.”

“Is she a professional musician now?” Jake asked. “If she is, that runs us right back into our primary problem. Pros are usually committed elsewhere, or forbidden by contracts to play with someone like us.”

“She’s not a professional—or at least she wasn’t the last time I was in touch with her. She was an English major and she was working on her teaching credential. I always told her she was wasting her talent going into teaching. She had what it took to be a professional studio musician at the very least.”

“Intriguing,” Nerdly said thoughtfully.

“Agreed,” Jake said. He gave a meaningful look to Ben. “Were you and she ... you know ... tuning each other’s instruments?”

“Jake!” Mary barked at him.

“Well, sorry,” Jake said. “It’s something we need to know though. I don’t want to hire this girl if there’s going to be some ex-girlfriend drama going on between her and Ben. We’re having enough trouble keeping productivity up as it is.”

“Laura and I were only friends,” Ben assured him. “I haven’t even talked to her in almost two years. I have no idea if she’s even still playing or, if she is, if she would be willing to come play with us. I don’t even know if the phone number I have for her is current. This could all be for nothing—probably is, in fact.”

“Fair enough,” Jake said. “Go ahead and give it a try when you get home. See if she’s willing to come and audition for us.”

“Will do,” Ben promised.

“In the meantime,” Jake said, “how about we get back to work? What do you want to work on next, C?”

Laura Best was home when the phone rang that night. She sat on the couch in the $1200 a month Burbank apartment she shared with her best friend—Phil Genkins—dressed in a pair of tattered sweat pants and a long white T-shirt that hid every curve of her petite body. Her copper colored hair was down around her shoulders as she watched reruns of Cheers on one of the cable channels.

Laura, who was three months past her twenty-sixth birthday, was alone tonight. Phil was out with one of his many boyfriends and likely would not be home until well after midnight. And David Boulder, DDS, her fiancé (and her dentist—that was how they had met), had been unable to stop by tonight after the practice he was a partner in closed for the day. This was all very typical. Phil went out almost every night after his shifts as a singing waiter in an Italian restaurant, and Dave could usually only stop by on the weekends or the very occasional weeknight. His most frequent visits were during his lunch hour, since her apartment was only a mile from his office.

Sometimes she was forced to wonder just how committed to their relationship and eventual marriage Dave really was. She did not have much experience with love. Raised by a strict Mormon family, the youngest out of two brothers and two sisters, dating and socializing with the opposite sex had been something that was heavily regulated and supervised during her teen years. She hadn’t kissed a boy for the first time until she was in her first year of college. And she hadn’t gone all the way with one until her junior year at UCLA—and that had been a frightening and painful experience, one she would be happy to forget, if possible. Though she was no longer an active member of the Church of Latter Day Saints—which was to say she no longer attended services and she no longer gave ten percent of her meager teacher’s salary to them—she managed to graduate college with the basic prudishness of her upbringing still relatively intact—at least until she started dating Dave. He was the first man she had had sex with more than once, the first whose penis she had put in her mouth, and the first she had slept in a bed with—though that, like his visits, was an extremely rare occasion as well.

Phil certainly had a more interesting social life than she did. He would often bring his boyfriends home and disappear into his bedroom with them for an hour or two, though he rarely bothered to introduce them to her. That was fine with her. Though she was accepting of Phil’s lifestyle—the lack of sexual tension between the two of them was a major part of why they were such good friends—she had no desire to get to know his conquests on anything other than a superficial level.

When the phone rang, she stared at it for a moment, debating whether or not to simply let the machine get it. It usually wasn’t for her, and if it was, it was usually her mother or her sister Elizabeth, the only two members of her family who still spoke to her since she’d moved in with Phil three years before. And if it was Mom or Liz, they would only try to tell her what a sinner she was, and how she could obtain forgiveness and reinstatement into the church if she would only go see the Bishop and confess her sins. As to what those sins might be, her family was not exactly clear. They knew that Phil was gay—which they definitely did not approve of, of course—but they also assumed that any male and female living together had to be up to some kind of sexual impropriety as well. As of yet, none of her family knew about Dave. They certainly would not approve of that relationship.

She was so bored that she decided that even her family or one of Phil’s desperate boyfriends was better company for a few minutes than her own. She slid to the other end of the couch and picked up the receiver.

“Hello?” she enquired.

“Hi,” a slightly familiar voice said in her ear. “Is this Laura? Laura Best?”

“Yes, it is,” she said. “Who is this?”

“Hi, Laura,” the voice said brightly. “This is Ben Ping—from the UCLA jazz band?”

“Ben!” she said happily. “My Lord, it’s been quite a while, hasn’t it?”

“It has,” he agreed. “I was afraid the number I have for you wouldn’t be good anymore.”

“I’m still here,” she said.

“Still living with old Phil, the singing waiter?”

She laughed. “Going on three years now,” confirmed.

“That’s awesome,” Ben told him. “Is he still doing that gig?”

“Fridays through Wednesdays, five until closing time,” she confirmed. “He’s pretty good at it. He brings home as much in tips as I do from teaching my seventh graders.”

“Ahh, so you did manage to land a teaching job, huh?”

“I did,” she said. “I’m with the LA school district, teaching English at George Washington Carver middle school.”

“Where is that at?” asked Ben.

“South city, on McKinley Avenue.”

“Hmm,” Ben said. “Kind of a rough neighborhood, isn’t it?”

“That it is,” she said. “It’s good for me, I suppose. I’m learning how to speak ghetto with some fluency.”

“Sounds like fun,” he said.

“It really isn’t, but it’s a job. It pays the bills.”

“That’s what it’s all about, isn’t it?” he asked.

“Indeed,” she said. “How are you doing? Last I talked to you, you were going to teach guitar at one of the JCs, right?”

“Right,” he said. “And that’s my primary gig these days. I got married last year and we’re expecting our first in about six months.”

“That’s awesome!” she said, genuinely happy for him. “I’m glad things are going well for you. I’m engaged to be married myself.”

“Congratulations,” Ben said. “Who’s the lucky guy?”

She giggled a little. “He’s my dentist,” she said. “Can you believe that?”

“You’re engaged to your dentist?”

“Yeah, isn’t it funny? I picked his practice out of the phone book about a year and a half ago and, well ... we kind of hit it off. He asked me out after he got done filling a cavity and we’ve been together ever since.”

“That’s a true love story if I’ve ever heard one,” Ben told her. “Have you set a date yet?”

She frowned. “Not yet, but we’re getting there. There are a few things that have to happen first before we can start moving down the actual planning road.”

“I see,” Ben said, perhaps a little slowly. “Anyway, I suppose you’re wondering why I called?”

Actually, she hadn’t been wondering that, she had just been enjoying the novelty of non-confrontational conversation with an old friend. But now that he mentioned it, she supposed there must be a reason for the communication. “Sure,” she said. “What’s up?”

“Are you still blowing the horn?” he asked.

“Not in any kind of organized fashion,” she said. “I do take it out to the park and play for the fun of it once a week or so.”

“So, you’re still in practice then?” he asked.

“I am,” she said. “I love my sax. It’s the only thing that keeps me sane sometimes.”

“Yeah, you were always pretty good with that horn. That’s the reason I called, to see if you want to get in on a paying gig—a pretty good one.”

“What kind of gig?” she asked, remembering her jazz band days quite fondly. It had been her favorite part of going to school.

“It’s kind of a long story, but I got hooked up with Celia Valdez. Do you remember her?”

“Celia Valdez?” Laura said, her face wrinkling a little. “The I Love to Dance chick from that Mexican band?”

“One and the same,” Ben confirmed, “although they’re from Venezuela, not Mexico. She and Jake Kingsley from Intemperance—I know you’ve heard of him, right?”

“Right,” she said, her sour expression getting even sourer. “The guy who sniffs coke out of girls’ butts.”

Ben chuckled. “Well ... I don’t think he does much of that these days, at least not that I’ve seen. Anyway, Jake and Celia and Nerdly—that’s Bill Archer, the pianist from Intemperance—went in together and started their own record company called KVA Records. They’re both putting together solo albums and they found me playing in a club and offered me the gig as their bass player to help put their tunes together before they hit the studio. I’ve been doing that for a couple of months now while I’m on summer break. Today, while we were rehearsing up one of Celia’s tunes, it came up that we need a competent saxophonist on three or four of her songs. Good horn blowers who aren’t already committed somewhere are kind of hard to come by on short notice, and that made me think of you.”

“Hmm,” she said softly, her initial burst of enthusiasm at the mention of a possible gig having drained completely away. “I’m sorry, but I don’t think that that sounds like something I would be interested in.”

“Why not?” he asked.

She took a breath and let it out. “Well, to be truthful, I’m kind of a music snob. I love classical music and jazz and not much else. I have no use for popular music and I absolutely abhor rock and roll music with all the noisy guitars and the screaming vocals. I really don’t think I could play something like that.”

“We’re not really playing heavy metal or formula pop,” Ben told her. “Celia’s got some good tunes going. I like them a lot, actually. They’re more in the genre of ballads and soft rock, particularly the tunes you would be playing on. I was a little skeptical about what she might’ve come up with too, and then I started playing with her and my respect for her went up considerably. She’s a good musician. So is Jake, for that matter.”

“Are you saying that Jake Kingsley is playing in Celia’s band too?”

“He’s doing the electric guitar work primarily,” Ben said. “We’re kind of a throw-together operation at this point. Jake and Nerdly’s mothers are part of the band as well.”

“Their mothers?” she asked, feeling a little icky at that thought, not to mention that the zero respect she was feeling for the project took a sudden dive into the negative.

“It sounds odd, but it’s really not,” Ben said. “Both are retired professional musicians who played for more than twenty years with the Heritage Philharmonic Symphony. Mary—that’s Jake’s mom—plays the violin like a dream. And Cynthia—Nerdly’s mom—is the pianist. Celia plays acoustic guitar mostly and Nerdly plays the synthesizer.”

Laura heard his words, but they were not having much effect. She couldn’t get over the thought of Jake Kingsley being one of the band members. All she knew of him was from the popular press sensationalizing him over the past decade as Intemperance took the rock music scene by storm. She knew he was a greasy looking, long-haired freak who was notorious for womanizing, abusing drugs, and beating up on the women he dated. She had never listened to an Intemperance song voluntarily and, on the rare occasions when she had been in a situation where one was playing and she could not turn it off—in a club with Dave or Phil, when at a party, or, in her younger days, in the college dorms—she had never even attempted to appreciate the musical or lyrical quality of the piece because it was nothing but annoying noise to her.

“I’m sorry,” she said again, shaking her head. “I just don’t think this is for me.”

“They pay us fifty dollars an hour for the gig,” Ben said.

The shaking of the head stopped instantly. “Fifty dollars an hour?” she asked, thinking she had to have misheard.

“Fifty dollars an hour,” he repeated. “Plus, lunches are catered and paid for, and we have after work beers on Saturday nights. Not only that, but there’s a pretty good chance that we’ll get picked up as the studio musicians once they start the actual recording. They haven’t promised us this, or even mentioned it, really, but they’re not out looking for other musicians and they’ll have the same problem recruiting competent professionals. If that happens, the gig will go on for another six months or so. That could add up to a pretty good chunk of change.”

“Fifty dollars an hour,” she said again, trying to wrap her brain around that. That was far above union scale for session musicians, far above what her hourly salary as a teacher worked out to—particularly when you added in all the correcting of papers she did on her own time. “How many hours a week would they need me?”

“We work six days a week, eight hours a day, typically,” Ben explained. “We alternate days working on Jake’s and Celia’s tunes, so, assuming you don’t need to come in on the days we’re working on Jake’s stuff—he doesn’t have any saxophone parts as of yet—we’re talking three days a week, so that would be twenty-four hours at fifty an hour.”

“Wow,” she whispered, doing some quick mental arithmetic and liking the sum that appeared quite a bit. “I’m starting to warm to this idea.”

“I thought maybe you would,” Ben said. She could hear the smile in his voice.

She did still have her initial worry, however. “How is Jake Kingsley and that piano player though. They’re not going to ... you know ... rape me or anything, are they?”

This caused another chuckle. “I think you’ve been reading too many American Watchers in the supermarket line,” he said. “Jake is actually a nice guy, very professional, very competent as a musician. He’s a great boss. And Nerdly ... well ... he takes a little getting used to, but not in a bad way. And his wife is always with him, so I don’t think he’s going to rape you either.”

“Well ... I guess I can at least meet them,” she said. “When can we set that up?”

“Are you doing anything tomorrow morning?” Ben asked.

She was not.

Laura arrived at KVA promptly at ten o’clock the next morning, her cased saxophone in hand. The band had just finished tuning and completing their sound check, including the installation of a new microphone stand and chair for the sax. Ben led her into the studio, where all the players, as well as Pauline and Jill, were present.

Jake’s first thought upon seeing her come through the door was that she was very cute. Her body was small and petite, perhaps five foot three inches and maybe a hundred and twenty-five pounds if the saxophone were weighed with her. She was dressed in a beige pantsuit and a green sleeved blouse. Though the clothing was loose upon her, it could not hide her feminine curves, which were nicely proportioned in an aesthetically pleasing way. Her hair was her most prominent feature. It was copper colored and spilled loosely down her shoulders. Her skin tone was pale and she had a smattering of freckles across her nose and cheeks. Her face, however, was without expression. She did not smile as she was introduced to everyone.

“And this is Jake Kingsley,” Ben introduced when it was his turn.

“Nice to meet you, Laura,” Jake said, holding out his right hand to shake with her.

She made no move to shake at first. She was just looking at his face. “You’re Jake Kingsley?” she asked, a bit of surprise in her voice.

“Last I checked,” he confirmed.

“You don’t look like ... you know ... like you do in the papers.”

He shrugged. “I almost look respectable this way, huh?”

“Yes,” she said, nodding.

Jake raised his eyebrows a bit. “All right then,” he said. “Are you going to shake with me? Because holding my hand here like this is going to turn awkward in a couple seconds.”

“Oh ... yes,” she said. She reached out and gave a soft squeeze to the offered hand and then quickly released it. She did not tell him it was nice to meet him. Jake saw her rubbing the hand on her pants as she moved on to the next person.

Okay, Jake thought. She’s pleasant.

Celia was introduced next. Laura did not smile for her either, nor did she tell her she was happy to meet her. She did not wipe her hand on her pants after shaking with her, but one could feel the lack of musical respect radiating off of her in waves.

“I’m looking forward to hearing you play,” Celia told her. “If you sound good and can mix well with us, I’ve got at least four tunes I can use you on.”

“Well, I’ve never played your type of music before—in truth, I don’t even listen to it—but I think I can probably adapt my style down to the pop music genre without too much trouble.”

Celia cast a glance at Jake and then turned back to Laura. “I see,” she said slowly. “I hope you’re as good as your confidence suggests.”

“I’m pretty sure I am,” Laura said.

She was then introduced to Pauline and Jill.

“I’m the manager of these folks,” Pauline told her, “and Jill here is our accountant and money manager. If the musicians here like you and you agree to work with us, we’ll get you dialed in under a contract and take care of the employment paperwork.”

“A contract, huh?” Laura said.

“We’re big fans of them,” Pauline told her. “They prevent misunderstandings.”

Laura nodded slowly and then looked around. “Is that everyone?”

“That’s everyone,” Ben told her.

“Okay. Should I take out my horn and get started?”

“By all means,” Celia said.

She opened her case and pulled out her sax. It was a Yamaha, though Jake did not know enough about them to know which particular model it was. He did know enough to glean that it was not a beginner instrument, but a professional level one that had probably cost well over a thousand dollars new. The brass was polished, without so much as a fingerprint marring its surface.

“I’m assuming you’re already tuned,” Celia said, “but you’re probably going to want to warm up a bit, right?”

“Correct,” Laura said.

“Why don’t you have a seat right there,” Celia told her, pointing to the chair that had been set up for her. “We have a microphone for you and Sharon is going to want to do a sound check. If you just go through some scales a few times, you can warm up and she can get the levels right.”

Laura looked at the chair and then at Sharon, who was sitting at the mixing board. “You’re going to mic me for the audition?”

“It’s kind of killing two birds with one stone,” Jake said. He waved his hand to the chair. “If you will?”

Laura shrugged, as if to say how quaint, and then took a seat. She adjusted herself and then the microphone stand and then the microphone itself until everything was where she wanted it. Finally, she looked up. “Are we ready?”

“We’re ready,” Sharon said. “Go ahead and start warming up.”

Jake’s first impression of Laura Best was, so far, not a good one. Other than the fact that she was quite attractive, she seemed a cold fish, humorless, and condescending in a situation where she had no right or call to be so. She was a teacher who was judging the musical abilities of professionals? She had the gall to look down upon them for making music that was popular?

That impression began to shift a little, however, when she started to warm up. She was only playing scales, a simple warm-up exercise to go through the notes of each musical scale the instrument was capable of producing, but he could tell just by the way she did it, by the way those notes came out of the business end of that alto sax, that she really had cause to be arrogant. She started with C major, playing the notes of C, D, E, F, G, A, B, C from bottom to top and then back down again. She then switched to G major, and then D major, playing up to down, down to up. And it was music they were hearing. Not a hacker pushing buttons like a trained monkey who had memorized a diagram, but like a musician.

Jake and Celia glanced at each other again, sharing a look and then a slight nod. They were both starting to develop a little respect.

In all, Laura went through twelve separate major scales several times while Sharon played with the switches and dials on her board and the rest of them listened. The notes sounded sweeter with each repetition. Finally, Laura declared that she and her instrument were both warm and Sharon declared that the sound of the sax was at the optimum for what they were trying to accomplish.

“All right,” Celia said, her voice a little warmer now. “Let’s hear what you got.”

“What do you want me to play?” Laura asked her.

“Whatever you want,” Celia told her. “We’ll listen to you play a little and then maybe we’ll try having you mix in with us.”

Laura nodded, her face remaining expressionless. She shifted her instrument a little and then said: “I’m going to play Rhapsody for Alto Saxophone. It’s one of the first pieces I learned back when I started playing and it’s always been one of my favorites.”

Jake had never heard of it before. Neither had Celia. Mary and Cynthia, however, both lit up with pleasant recognition. “A beautiful piece,” Mary said.

“Absolutely,” said Cynthia.

“You know it?” Laura asked the mothers. She seemed surprised.

“Of course, we know it,” Mary said, somewhat taken aback. “We were symphony musicians, remember? We’ve done the accompaniment for Rhapsody for Alto many times.”

Laura looked at them as if she thought they might be lying for a moment—as if the Heritage Symphony could not possibly be sophisticated enough to have played something like that—then shrugged. “Okay then,” she said. “Tell me how I do.”

She played a melodic, sweet sounding piece that started slow and then gradually built in intensity. Any doubts that Jake had about her ability to actually play her instrument disappeared by the time she was halfway done. She was not Charlie Parker by any means, but the notes coming out of her horn were perfectly rendered, wonderfully phrased, and they had soul. He could hear her appreciation for the music issuing into the air around them, could sense her emotion by the way she put out the sound.

“That was wonderful,” Celia said happily when she was done.

“Agreed,” said Jake. “You seem to know your stuff, Laura.”

“I do,” she said. “Shall I do another?”

“By all means,” Celia invited.

She played something a little more familiar to both Jake and Celia. It was Someone To Watch Over Me. Again, she rendered it beautifully, with phrasing that drew out the emotion of the piece in a way that actually moved Jake a bit. After finishing this, she launched directly into a little more up-tempo jazz by belting out When the Saints Come Marching In. This one got everyone’s feet tapping on the floor and even prompted Ted to start playing out the rhythm with her on his snare drum, which, in turn, caused Ben to start setting the rhythm with his bass as well—acts that she tolerated but did not seem to be happy with.

“Excellent!” Celia said when she finished with that.

“Hell to the yeah,” said Ted. “I like her. Can we keep her?”

Everyone had a chuckle at that except Laura. She actually seemed a little alarmed at his words.

“You are definitely talented, Miss Laura,” Jake told her.

“Thank you,” she said softly, with no actual gratitude in her voice. It was like she was saying naturally, instead of thank you.

“Now then,” Jake said, “how about we see how you do with our stuff?” He turned to Celia. “The Struggle?”

She nodded. “The Struggle,” she confirmed.

Laura’s first impression of the motley collection of so-called musicians was not a great one either. They were the King of Raunch and the deposed Queen of Pop daring to judge her musical abilities. It was all she could do to keep from simply walking out. Was twelve hundred dollars a week really work debasing herself? Especially since they were apparently not going to pay her under the table, as she’d assumed would be the case, and taxes were going to be taken out. Unfortunately, she was a simple teacher with a simple teacher’s salary trying to pay rent and pay for gasoline in the Los Angeles region and, as such, she was stuck firmly in the rut of living paycheck to paycheck and being chronically behind on her credit card payments. She really could use that money.

She knew she played beautifully on her audition pieces and when they showed her the so-called song they wanted her to play melody for, she almost yawned. It was a simple, repetitive three chord melody that was about as challenging and technical as the scales she had done for warm-up.

“We’ll run through it once the way we’ve been rehearsing it,” Celia told her as everyone picked up their respective instruments and took their places. “That’s with Mary playing melody on the violin. We know it doesn’t sound right, that the timbre is not what we’re going for, but it’ll let you hear the gist of what we’re shooting for.”

“Okay,” she said with a shrug, slightly insulted that they thought she couldn’t just read the sheet music they had given her and play from that. In truth, she was actually surprised that they even had sheet music and that their songs were notated out at all. She had been picturing a session like a punk rock band would have, with everyone simply playing in their own keys at a random tempo and improvising as they went.

The group began to play, with Mary laying down the melody. Laura had to admit that Kingsley’s mother was actually pretty good with her instrument. And then Celia began to sing. She really did have a nice voice, a well-honed contralto that conveyed the dark emotion of the lyrics quite well. Though Laura could not relate to the theme of the song—she had never had a romantic relationship go sour and die as she was currently in the first such relationship of her life (and it was going very well, thank you very much)—she could picture the angst that Celia was projecting. All in all, for a cheesy pop song, it wasn’t that bad. She had been anticipating some kind of heavy metal atrocity—and she still assumed that such a piece would eventually rear its head.

They ended the song after the second verse, just before what the sheet showed would be a guitar solo. She was grateful. She did not approve of the distorted electric fills that Kingsley had been laying down and she just knew that his guitar solo would start to edge into that heavy metal genre. Kingsley was undoubtedly capable of nothing else. In truth, she thought the song would be a lot cleaner without Kingsley’s guitar in it at all. Celia’s acoustic and the piano playing from Archer’s mother and her sax would carry the tune quite nicely. Perhaps she would suggest that after they started working together.

“All right,” Celia said. “That’s kind of what we’re after for the melody. How do you want to plug yourself in? Do you want to practice it up a few times solo, maybe at half tempo?”

“Uh ... yeah,” she said, surprised that Celia knew to suggest something like that. “I have found that is the best way to learn a new piece, to let my fingers get used to the sequence.”

“That’s how we usually do it,” Jake said.

“Interesting,” she said. “Anyway, it is a very simple melody. It shouldn’t take me long to build up a little muscle memory.”

“It’s a good thing I wrote it simple, I guess,” Celia said.

“Yes,” said Laura, completely missing the sarcasm.

She put her mouth to her horn and positioned her fingers for the key of B major. She began to play the notes of the melody, starting at sixty beats per minute—half of the piece’s tempo. She ran through it once and then again, her fingers pressing the keys, raising and lowering the pads over the holes, varying the pitch coming out of the instrument in the exact fashion written on the sheet she was reading from. It was child’s play, almost literally, and within a few minutes she had the melody down. She brought the tempo up to the full 120, running through it a few more times. When she finally paused to take few deep breaths, she saw that Celia and Kingsley were both frowning at her.

“Is something wrong?” she asked.

“No,” Celia said carefully, “probably not. You’re just getting used to the piece so your phrasing isn’t quite there yet.”

“Yeah,” Kingsley agreed. “It’s a little flat sounding at the moment. I’m sure it’ll get better after we run through the opening verses a few times.”

“Flat sounding?” she asked incredulously. “Are you kidding?”

“I wouldn’t kid about something like that,” Kingsley told her. “Like I said though, you’re just starting out with it. The phrasing will come.”

She had to grit her teeth against an angry reply. This perverted drug addict with tattoos on his arms was questioning her phrasing? Where did he get off? What did he know about the saxophone? Still, they were going to be paying her that twelve hundred a week. No sense getting herself fired before she was even hired. “Okay,” she said. “I’ll see if I can juice it up a bit.”

Kingsley nodded, an amicable enough gesture, but she wanted to slap that arrogant expression off his face. Flat? What did he know about flat?

“You ready to try it with the other instruments chiming in?” Celia asked her.

“Yes,” she said. “Let’s give it a go.”

“Full tempo or half?” Kingsley asked her.

“I’m ready for full,” she said confidently.

“Let’s do it then,” Kingsley said, picking up his guitar. “Ted, give us a four count when everyone is ready.”

“You got it, boss,” Ted said.

They started the song. She played the melody while the piano and Celia’s acoustic accompanied her and the bass and drums set the rhythm. It was rough and a bit hesitant, but she thought she was putting down decent phrasing and she did not miss a single note. Celia sang out the lyrics through the first verse and the chorus and then they ran through the second. Again, they stopped before they arrived at Kingsley’s guitar solo.

“How was that?” she asked when the last feedback whine and stray string strike faded out.

“Not bad for a beginning, I suppose,” Celia said. “Your technical skill is good. I’m sure the phrasing will improve as we work.”

Again, with the phrasing? Laura thought angrily. Seriously? “So ... do I get the gig?” she asked.

Kingsley was looking doubtfully at her—how dare he? she thought—but he kept quiet. Celia had no particular expression on her face, but she was the one to answer. “You get the gig,” she told her. “We’re actually going to be working on Jake’s tunes today, but if you’re up to starting tomorrow, we’ll put in a full day.”

She nodded, already thinking of how she was going to spend that first paycheck. Do they pay every week? she wondered. “That sounds good,” she said.

“All right then,” Kingsley said. “Thanks for coming in and welcome to the band. Pauline and Jill will take you to the office and go over the paperwork with you. We’ll see you at nine in the morning.”

“Nine o’clock,” she said. She did not thank them for giving her the job. After all, it was she that was doing them a favor, right?

As soon as the studio door closed, they had an impromptu meeting about their new saxophonist.

“I don’t like her,” Jake said.

“She is going to take some getting used to,” Celia allowed, “but she plays beautifully and she’s technically competent. She is exactly what I need.”

“She played beautifully when she was putting out the music she liked,” Jake said. “Her output took a serious turn to the shitty as soon as she started playing Struggle.”

“There was a marked difference in phrasing when she was playing the melody,” Mary said, “but don’t you think that it’s just unfamiliarity with the piece, like Celia suggested?”

“I don’t,” Jake said. “I can give a bit of a pass on the unfamiliarity aspect, but that’s not what I was hearing. When she was playing that alto sax thing, that was a technically complex piece of music and she played it perfectly and managed to put soul into it. When she was playing Someone To Watch Over Me, she almost brought a tear to my eye. When she was playing Struggle, however, which, as she so delicately pointed out, is very simplistic in comparison, her notes were listless and flat. She wasn’t even trying. She doesn’t like our music and because of that, I don’t think she is going to be able to impart any soul to it. We might as well use Nerdly’s synthesizer to make artificial sax notes.”

“That would not be the optimum solution to the dilemma,” Nerdly said.

“I wasn’t really suggesting that, Bill,” Jake told him. “Just making a point.”

“Oh ... I see,” Bill said.

“I think she’ll fall into line,” Ben said. “I used to play with her, remember? She may not be taking this seriously right now, but she’ll warm up to what we’re doing here. She is a professional level horn blower, I promise. The rest of us in the jazz band used to tell her all the time that she had a good shot at making it as a studio musician at the very least. She’s that good.”

“I could hear that when she did her audition pieces,” Jake said. “We’re just going to need her to put that expertise and talent to use on Celia’s stuff. I’m not sure she’s capable of that. She seems to hold our music in contempt and she is not going to give her all to something she’s contemptuous of.”

“And she definitely took an instant dislike to you in particular, Jake,” Sharon said. “Did you see the looks she was giving you whenever you spoke to her?”

“I saw them,” he confirmed. “Not sure what I did to earn them, but that was beyond your normal stink eye by a factor of five.”

“Maybe even six,” Nerdly suggested.

“Why would she dislike Jake so much?” Mary asked. “He did nothing to bring that on.”

“Well ... actually,” Ben said, “she already had a big case of dislike for Jake before she even walked in here. It’s a combination of your ... you know ... your reputation and the fact that you make heavy metal music. She doesn’t approve of either.”

Jake shook his head. “I swear to God,” he said. “You sniff cocaine out of a girl’s butt crack one time, and you’re condemned for life.”

“I thought you said you didn’t do that, Jake,” Mary said.

“Of course I didn’t, Mom,” Jake assured her. “Just making another point.” He turned back to Ben. “She does realize that she’s going to have to work closely with me if she wants this gig, right?”

“I think she’s starting to realize that,” Ben said. “Like I said, give her a little time. She really is a nice person. This is all just new to her.”

Jake gave another shrug. “I’ve made my feelings known,” he said. “I don’t like her and I don’t think she’s going to be able to work with us. It’s not my decision to make though. It’s Celia’s tunes she’s going to be working on. It’s her call.”

Everyone looked over at her. She gave a soft smile. “I’ll give her a chance,” she said. “Right now, she’s all we got, right?”

They all had to agree with that.

Laura was still fuming about the whole phrasing thing when she got home just before noon. Flat? she kept thinking. No one had ever referred to any music she produced as flat since her fifth grade music teacher during her first year of playing the instrument. How dare they? Those unsophisticated pop icons. They sell a few million records to the unschooled and unsophisticated masses and they think they’re maestros or something. But still, she had a well-paying gig in hand. That was at least something to be grateful for. She had filled out a W4 form and everything and they really were going to pay her fifty dollars an hour for twenty-four hours a week of playing their drivel for them. Maybe she was selling out, but at least she was getting a good price for it.

No sooner had she gotten into the house and put her horn away than she heard a key turning in the lock on her apartment door. Since Phil was asleep in his bedroom, she knew her visitor could only be Dave making one of his lunchtime visits. Though she knew what he was here for—it was what he always came over for during lunch—her mood improved considerably. Her fiancé was here! And she had news to share with him.

The door opened and Dr. David Boulder DDS came strolling in as if he owned the place. He was a short, stocky man with the beginnings of middle age swell developing in his abdomen. This was primarily because he was just entering middle age. He had just turned forty-seven a month before and his face showed his age quite well, with a few tracks of crow’s feet around his eyes and a noticeable sagging in his chin. His hair was speckled with gray and his hairline was receding quite dramatically. Laura didn’t care, not about the age difference and not about the hairline or his looks. He was her man and she loved him with all her heart.

“Hi, doc!” she greeted happily, trotting over to him and putting her arms around him.

“Hey, Red,” he greeted back, calling her the term of endearment he’d assigned at the beginning of their relationship. He put his arms around her and pulled her close, angling his face down to kiss her. A moment later, his tongue was in her mouth, swirling with hers.

“Mmmm,” she said with breathlessness that was quite feigned when the kiss broke. “I guess someone is a little hungry for lunch, right?”

“You know it, baby,” Dave told her, his hands going down and getting a good squeeze of her butt. “Let’s go dine, shall we?”

She giggled and tried to pull out of his embrace. “We’ll dine in a minute,” she said. “First, I need to tell you something.”

“Tell me later,” he said, refusing to let go of her. “Is Phil around?”

“He’s sleeping,” she said.

“Damn,” he said. “I was hoping to do it on the couch. Oh well, let’s go hit the bedroom.”

“I got a gig playing my sax,” she told him as he dragged her toward her bedroom.

“That’s nice,” he said. “I can’t wait to hear you play.” His hand cupped her left breast through her shirt. “Goddamn, I love these little titties of yours.”

“Dave,” she said, exasperated as he shut the door behind them. They were in her room now, standing at the foot of her neatly made bed. “They’re going to pay me twelve hundred dollars a week for this gig. Can you believe that?”

He whistled appreciably but did not unhand her. “That’s pretty good money,” he said. He took her hand and put it on his crotch. She could feel the swelling of his member throbbing beneath his dental scrubs. “Can you feel how happy I am for you?”

“I feel something,” she said with a giggle.

“Why don’t you taste it?” he asked, his fingers going to the drawstring on his scrubs and giving a pull. The tie came undone and the scrubs fell to the floor, leaving him standing in a pair of white briefs that were bulging out quite alarmingly.

With a mental sigh, she resigned herself to what was to come. He was in the mood and he wasn’t going to listen to anything she said until his lust was slaked. Might as well get it over with, she thought. Then we’ll talk.

She sank to her knees before him and pulled his briefs down to his ankles, letting his drill bit spring free. It was swollen and throbbing, four and a half solid inches, ready for action. She took it in her mouth and began to slurp and suck on it softly. This was not an act she particularly enjoyed, but it gave him pleasure so she did it willingly and often. She only hoped he didn’t want to finish in her mouth today. She did not really enjoy the taste or consistency of his semen.

He put his left hand in her hair and then drove his right hand down into her blouse, forcing two of the buttons to pop before he was able to squirm down under her bra and cup her breast. He began to squeeze the nipple between his thumb and index finger. She moaned around his cock, not because it felt good—it actually kind of hurt—but because she knew it was expected of her.

“Damn, I love your tits,” Dave panted. “Yeah, baby. Suck that dick. You really know how to give head.”

“Mmm hmm,” she hummed, her right hand going to the base of it and starting a slow, jacking motion. If he meant to come in her mouth, this would make short work of him.

But he didn’t want to come in her mouth today. After only a few strokes, he pulled his hand out of her bra and pulled her up by her armpits. “Get those pants off, baby,” he told her. “I want to bury myself in the fire!”

She kicked off her shoes and then unbuttoned her pants. She pushed them and her panties down and stepped out of them, baring her untrimmed nest of copper colored pubic hair to his lustful gaze. Though she preferred to keep herself trimmed down there, Dave liked a natural hairy bush on his women and seemed to have a particular fetish for the color of hers. It was but a small price to pay for love.

“Oh yeah, baby,” he said, nearly drooling at the sight of her pubes—the fire of which he spoke. “Go get a rubber and let’s do this thing.”

“Right,” she said, stepping over to the nightstand beside the bed. In the drawer was a large box of condoms from the drugstore—a fifty pack that she had bought a few months ago and that was now nearly half empty. It was her responsibility to supply the rubbers for their noontime trysts. For obvious reasons, he could not keep them at his place.

She pulled one out, tore it open, and expertly applied it to his member. She then reached over to the same nightstand and squirted some of the body lotion from a large bottle into her hands. She rubbed some of the lotion into her vagina—it was always dry, as she seemed to have some medical issue that prevented her from lubricating naturally—and then smeared the rest over his encased penis.

“How do you want to do it?” she asked him, still talking breathlessly, though she was not the least bit breathless.

“I want you from behind,” he said. “Get up on the bed.”

She got up on the bed, positioning herself on her hands and knees. She felt his hands gripping her waist and then, in one strong stroke, he was inside her and thrusting. She felt a dim sort of pleasure from the act, a pleasant friction that gave her a little warmth, but that was about all. Before the lubrication even started to dry, she felt his rhythm become erratic, heard his breathing become a frantic pant. That was her cue. She began to moan loudly and thrust herself back at him. Just as he began to spasm, she cried out loudly and jerked her butt back and forth a few times.

“Oh God, yesss!” she cried, as if ecstasy had overwhelmed her. It hadn’t. She had never actually had a real orgasm before, was half convinced that, for women anyway, they were nothing but a myth.

Dave spasmed a few more times, made a few articulations of his own, and then slowed his pace down to a stop. She felt him remove himself from her body. A moment later, he was standing on the floor again, the used condom in his hand, his fingers tying a knot in it. He carried it to the bathroom attached to her room. A moment later, she heard the sound of the toilet flushing.

By the time he came back, his now flaccid penis flopping with each step he took, she was lying on the bed on her back. Dave then kept his part of the bargain. He climbed in next to her and cuddled up against her.

“That was great, baby,” he whispered to her, kissing her on the forehead. “It sounds like you had a nice come.”

“It was awesome,” she assured him. “One of the best.”

“I aim to please,” he said slyly, his fingers twirling through her hair.

“And you do,” she said, stroking his leg, enjoying the warmth and the closeness of his body. “Don’t you think it’s been long enough now that we can do it without those rubbers? I’m on the pill, you know. I won’t get pregnant.”

“I know you’re on the pill, baby,” he told her. “That’s not the issue. We’ve been over this.”

“I know we’ve been over it,” she said.

“It’s for your protection, not mine. I told you, I have no idea who that bitch has slept with. She might’ve passed something on to me.”

That bitch was Barbara Boulder, the woman he was still technically married to—thus the factor that was putting a bit of a kink into setting a date for their own wedding. She was a lying, cheating whore of a woman who was doing her best to delay the divorce and keep Dave from seeing his kids—both of whom were in their late teens and approaching high school graduation. He couldn’t officially divorce her until both kids were out of high school and his practice was completely paid off. And so, they had to keep things on the down-low between them, lest her lawyers try to use the relationship against Dave in the upcoming divorce proceedings. It was a horror story the likes of which she had never conceived of and her heart cried for him on a daily basis. But still...

“It’s been two years since you’ve had sex with her, right?” she asked. “That’s what you always tell me. Isn’t that long enough for anything you might’ve picked up from her to be out of your system?”

“Not HIV,” he said solemnly. “I’m telling you, that bitch has slept with drug addicts. She has no standards whatsoever. That shit can stay in your body for years before you have symptoms.”

“But you’ve been tested, right?” she asked.

“Of course I’ve been tested,” he said. “That doesn’t mean anything. The virus can stay dormant and not show up in a test for up to five years.”

“I read that you’ll test positive within three months with the technology they have today,” she countered.

“That’s not true,” he said firmly. “I’m a doctor, remember. Don’t trust what you read in those magazines. I know what I’m talking about.”

She nodded slowly. “I guess you’re right,” she said. After all, he was a doctor, right? And what reason would he have for deceiving her about this?

“Anyway,” he said, “you said you got some kind of music thing? What’s that all about?”

“Well,” she said, quickly forgetting about the condom discussion, “I’m almost ashamed to even tell you about it, but it pays so good, I just have to.”

“You said twelve hundred a week? Did I hear you right?”

“You did,” she said. “Fifty dollars an hour and twenty-four hours a week.”

He gave her a look of concern. “That’s an awful lot of money, Red. Are you sure playing the saxophone is what you’re being hired for?”

She slapped at his shoulder. “Oh, you!” she said. “Of course that’s what I’m being hired for.”

“What’s the catch?” he asked. “You said you were ashamed.”

She gave a sideways smile. “I’m kind of selling out by taking it,” she said. “Do you know who Celia Valdez is?”

He shook his head. “Never heard of her.”

“She’s a pop singer from Venezuela. She used to be the singer for that cheesy group La Diferencia.”

He shook his head again. “Never heard of them either.”

“She’s married to Greg Oldfellow, the actor?”

“I’ve heard of him,” Dave allowed. “He was in that horrible flick about elephants in Seattle. One of the biggest bombs of all time. I don’t know anything about his wife though. I’m not a celebrity follower.”

“Well ... she’s married to him. She’s the one who sings that song I Love to Dance.”

That rang a bell with him. “Oh yes,” he said. “They play that one from time to time on the music feed we play on the overhead at the practice.” He made a sour face. “Absolute drivel, just like most of that music.”

“It is absolute drivel,” she said. “That’s the part I’m ashamed of. She’s working on a solo album and I’m going to be playing sax for her.”

“No kidding?” he said. “How’d you meet up with her?”

She told the story of Ben from her UCLA jazz band days and how he had called her out of the blue. This part of the story seemed to alarm him a bit.

“He still had your number?” he asked. “What’s up with that?”

“We were bandmates,” she said dismissively. “We all had each other’s number. He’s married and has a kid on the way.”

“Men have been known to cheat on their wives,” he said—with a complete lack of any sense of irony, no less.

She did not pick up on the irony either. “Ben is not like that. He’s a nice guy and he’s not my type anyway. You don’t have to worry about that.”

“I suppose,” he grunted.

“Anyway,” she continued. “The gig is just to help her work up the songs right now. If it works out, however, they might ask me to play on the recording itself.”

“Won’t that interfere with your job?” he asked.

“The recording gig pays better,” she said. “A lot better. I would be willing to ask for a leave of absence if they offered me the recording gig.”

“Would they grant something like that?”

She shrugged. “I guess I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it. Right now, I’m still trying to figure out how to dumb down my playing for her.”

“Is it really that bad?” he asked.

“Well ... the one thing we worked on at the audition was simple ... not very technical at all, but ... well ... I guess it was okay, for a pop song anyway. It was little like some of the stuff we used to play in jazz band ... in a way, anyway.” Another shrug. “I don’t know. I’m a snob when it comes to music. You know that.”

“I do,” said, looking at the clock next to the bed. “Well ... keep me updated on how it goes. And stay away from this Ben guy. No one gets to play in the fire but me.”

She leaned over and kissed him. “My fire is only for you,” she assured him.

A minute later he was up and climbing into her shower for a quick rinse. He couldn’t go back to the practice smelling of fire now, could he?

It occurred to her as she watched his steam distorted image through the shower door that she had gone out of her way not to mention anything about Kingsley. Dave certainly didn’t need to know that she would be spending twenty-four hours a week with someone as notorious as that.