Different Circles

Chapter 4: Making Things Click

Santa Clarita, California

July 17, 1991

Laura came pretty close to just telling them all what they could do with their fifty dollars an hour by the time they broke for lunch the next day. No amount of money was worth this abuse, this questioning of her musical abilities.

They spent the first two hours working on The Struggle. While the tune was actually starting to grow on her a bit—it really was poignant when you considered the lyrics—she could not seem to make Celia and Kingsley happy with her rendition of the simple melody that was required.

“It’s coming out flat,” Kingsley told her bluntly. “You’re just mouthing the notes mechanically. You’re not putting any emotion into them.”

“I’ve never had any complaints about my phrasing before,” she insisted. “Especially on something as straightforward as this.”

“Well, you’re getting complaints now,” Kingsley told her. “It’s listless and flat. We can’t do anything with what you’re putting out.”

Her appeals to Celia did no good. Though she was kinder in her words than Kingsley, her opinion was no different. “I’m not feeling the expression I’m trying to convey with the tune,” she told Laura. “I’m hoping to start hearing some improvement as we go along, but we seem to be stuck in a rut here.”

“I have the notes down,” she insisted. “I don’t even have to look at the score anymore. It’s a three-chord melody for heaven’s sake. How am I supposed to phrase it any differently than I have been?”

“Phrasing is the signature of the musician,” Celia said. “It’s up to you to come up with the way to shape it.”

“Yeah,” Kingsley grunted. “And right now, that signature is being shaped by a daisy wheel printer in block letters. It’s mechanical and flat.”

They tried a few more times. The results were the same. She played the notes out perfectly, but they weren’t happy with them. And, in truth, part of her knew what they were talking about. It really was a listless rendition. She just couldn’t feel their music the way they wanted it to be felt. There was very little enthusiasm for her to put into it. That was hardly her fault, was it?

They then moved onto another tune, this one called Done With You, and things got even worse. It was an up-tempo tune and Kingsley’s electric guitar was the primary melodic instrument. It was not quite heavy metal, but it was a long way from jazz. Celia wanted her to provide fills throughout the tune with her sax and then, perhaps put in a solo.

“A solo?” she asked, surprised. “Who is going to compose it?”

“You are,” Celia told her simply.

“It is traditional for a musician to compose her own solo in rock and roll music,” Mary said.

“But ... I’m not a composer,” she protested.

“Neither am I,” Mary said, “but I’ve put together a nice little solo for Jake’s tune, Insignificance.”

She looked at her in surprise. “He has a violin solo in one of his songs?”

“Strange but true,” Kingsley told her. “She nailed it too.”

“It’s still a work in progress,” Mary said modestly. “I’ll play it for you if you think it’ll help.”

“Well ... I don’t know,” she said.

“How about we don’t worry about the solo just yet?” Kingsley suggested, his voice more than a little impatient. “We haven’t even tried her on the fills yet. Let’s work on those first.”

“Uh ... sure,” Laura said, still trying to picture how a violin would fit into one of Kingsley’s songs. What kind of atrocity were they putting together?

They ran through Done With You and Laura did not have a good opinion of it. True, it had a catchy beat, and Mary’s violin provided a flowing accompaniment over the top of the piano, and Celia’s voice carried the lyrics well, but that electric guitar noise! She couldn’t get over it. It jangled at her nerves just to hear it! And there was a synthesizer mixed in as well. How was she supposed to provide fills atop of all that?

“Okay,” Celia told her after they played the first two verses without her. “This is where we start plugging you in. You can see on the score where your fills go over the top. We want loud and strong, almost overwhelming to everything but Jake’s guitar and the backbeat. Jake, can you play the basic gist we’re shooting for here so she can hear it?”

“I can,” Kingsley said. He picked out a distorted electric version of the primary fill they wanted, his fingers pressing on the G and B strings, moving up and down through the fret boards.

The sound of it actually caused her to wince. Something that did not go unnoticed by Kingsley. “A problem, Ms. Best?” he asked her.

“No ... not at all,” she replied. “I’m just not used to that much distortion. It’s kind of ... rough.”

Kingsley nodded. “That’s why we want you to play the notes and not me,” he said. “Why don’t you give it a try. Work it up a few times and then we’ll try it with everyone in.”

She looked down at the score before her, back up at Celia, and then put the mouthpiece to her lips. She blew, working through the notes of the flourish at half speed. Even she could hear the flatness issuing forth.

“Not the sweetest sound I’ve ever heard,” Kingsley pointed out.

“It’s my first time playing it!” she barked back at him. “Give me a few run throughs before you start hating it.” She then blanched as she realized she had just yelled at a man who was not only her employer, but who had been known to beat women severely—it was said that he had even thrown one girl off a boat after raping her. “I’m ... uh ... I’m sorry,” she told him. “I’m just getting a little stressed, I think.”

“No problem,” Kingsley said, his voice calm. “And I accept your offer.”

“My offer?”

“I’ll give you a few run throughs before I start hating it. Sound good?”

She cast her eyes away from his, seething on the inside. That was when she first started thinking about just walking out.

She did not improve much on the piece as the morning went on. As with Struggle, she could play the notes without any problem but she just could not feel the music enough, could not appreciate it enough to phrase it in anything other than a mechanical fashion. She tried faking it, drawing out the notes a little here, varying the strength of them there, but it did not make Celia or Kingsley happy and, truth be told, it did not make her happy either. She knew they sounded flat. Could not deny it even to herself.

At one o’clock they broke for lunch. She was more than grateful for the interruption.

The catering company that KVA did business with brought in a tray full of sandwich makings and a variety of breads, a tub of potato salad, and an ice chest full of soda and fruit juices. Everyone went about fixing themselves plates and then they drifted over to various places to sit and eat. Talk was minimal during this, and what little there was had nothing to do with music or music production.

Laura made a small sandwich out of turkey meat and sourdough bread, spreading a little mayo, a little mustard, then throwing some lettuce and tomatoes on it. She then put a small dab of the potato salad on her plate next to it. She loved potato salad—loved anything made with potatoes really—but she knew that it would go straight to her hips and butt if she had more than a dab. Dave was always warning her not to plump up on him. He didn’t like fat women.

She went back to her seat in front of her microphone stand and began to pick at her food. She was really too stressed out to be hungry, but she knew she needed to put something in her stomach.

Celia came and sat next to her, in the chair normally reserved for Mary, but Mary was sitting next to her son over on the drum platform. They were laughing about something as if they had no care in the world. Was he telling her some tales about his drug fueled orgies, perhaps? Any mother who raised a son like Kingsley would probably be amused by such tales.

“How are you doing?” Celia asked her.

She shrugged. “I’m starting to feel like maybe this whole thing was a mistake,” she said.

Celia nodded thoughtfully. “Perhaps it was,” she allowed. “That all depends on you.”

“On me?”

“On you,” Celia said. “We all heard you play when you auditioned. You’re capable of amazing expression and phrasing with your instrument. You impressed us all greatly.”

“I’m very good at what I do,” she proclaimed firmly. “I’ve been playing this instrument since I was ten years old. I’ve been studying music theory almost as long and I’ve always worked on playing expressively.”

“No one is questioning your talent,” Celia said gently. “You’re just not displaying it when you play my tunes. And, unfortunately, that is exactly what you were hired to do.”

“I’m trying,” she insisted.

“That’s just the thing,” Celia said. “I don’t think you are—not really, anyway.”

“You heard me work more than two hours with you on The Struggle. How can you say I wasn’t trying?”

“You don’t like the song, do you?” Celia asked.

“I have nothing against it,” she said softly.

“Let’s be truthful, Laura,” Celia said. “You don’t like it much, and you like Done With You even less. Am I right?”

She shrugged. “The Struggle is starting to grow on me a little,” she said, “but you’re right, I don’t care for Done With You at all. It’s rock and roll music, with electric distorted guitars, and I just don’t care for the entire genre.”

“And, because of that, it’s hard to come up with proper phrasing because you don’t enjoy the underlying song?”

She took a deep breath. “Maybe,” she admitted. “Like I said, maybe I’m not the right girl for your little project here. The money is good, of course, but ... well ... it might be best if I just let you find someone else.”

“I don’t want someone else,” Celia told her. “I want you. I want you blowing that horn the way you did on Someone To Watch Over Me, the way you did on When the Saints Come Marching In. That talent will make my songs shine, will make people sing along with them when they hear them on the radio, make them buy the album in droves when it comes out. And, quite frankly, I don’t have anyone else. I want you to stay but I need you to find a way to get over your contempt for my music and start plugging in the way I’m sure you’re capable of.”

“But how?” Laura asked. “I can’t help the way I feel.”

“Perhaps not,” Celia said, “but you can open your mind a little, can’t you?”

“What do you mean?”

“You try to wrap your mind around the thought that maybe we don’t suck as much as you think we do, that maybe we really are capable of producing some palatable music you might actually enjoy.”

“Well...” she said doubtfully, not daring to articulate what was actually on her mind.

But Celia did not really need a full answer. “And we,” she continued, “will start working on a way to generate a little camaraderie, a little band cohesion with you. I think that is an important factor in mutual composition.”

“How are you going to do that?”

Celia smiled. “You’ll see after lunch,” she said.

She would answer no more questions about her plan. She simply went on eating her own sandwich and sipping from her diet Coke. Laura thought about asking her a few questions—primarily about how she had ended up being friends with such an unsavory character as Kingsley. She seemed to remember that a few years ago Kingsley had ended up getting in a fight with some of Celia’s band at the Grammy Awards. Obviously, they had gotten over whatever that issue had been about. Was it because Jake had come on to her, perhaps? That seemed a likely possibility. In the end, however, she kept her mouth shut. Did she really want to know any more about these people than she already did?

When the lunch break was over, both Ben and Ted went after the leftovers and began packing them up into Tupperware containers.

“You want in on the swag, Laura?” Ted asked her.

“The swag?” she asked.

“The rhythm section gets to keep the leftovers,” Ben told her. “That’s the rule they laid down when we signed on. Of course, you’re not the rhythm section, but I’m sure we can include you in the deal.”

“Hell to the yeah,” Ted said. “My goddamn refrigerator is already full. I haven’t had to buy groceries in a month.”

“Uh ... I’m okay,” she said. “You go ahead and keep the ... the swag.”

“Fair enough,” Ted said. They went back to packing up and soon, the food was neatly stowed away in ice chests that both had brought just for this purpose.

At promptly two o’clock, lunch was declared to be at an end and everyone returned to their seats.

“All right then,” Kingsley said, twirling a guitar pick in his fingers while his black Les Paul sat on his lap. “What next? Back to Done With You? Maybe try to make some headway?” He cast a sour glance at Laura as he said this—a look that implied he knew who was responsible for that lack of headway. Again, she almost wanted to call him out, say something nasty in reply, and, again, she remembered what kind of man she was dealing with. She kept quiet.

“I think,” Celia said, “that I want to try a little experiment.”

“What kind of experiment?” Kingsley asked.

“Well, it occurred to me that we need to have a little exercise in band cohesion here.”

“We have band cohesion,” Kingsley said. He then looked directly at Laura again. “For the most part anyway.”

Laura could hold her tongue no longer. “I’m sorry I don’t fit in with your little group here,” she told him. “I’ve tried, but this music you’re playing is just not ... not what I’m used to. Like I was just telling Celia, maybe this wasn’t such a good idea after all.”

“Maybe it wasn’t,” Jake agreed.

Laura opened her mouth to say something else—quite possibly something along the lines of Fine, I’ll just be on my way then, and you can stick your fifty dollars an hour up your derriere! —but Celia opened her mouth first.

“This is exactly what I’m talking about,” she said. “We need group cohesion, and the member who is feeling like she doesn’t belong here is Laura.”

“I don’t think I do belong here,” Laura said. “I’m not sure I’m ever going to feel like that.”

“It’s only been two days, Laura,” Ben told her. “You haven’t really given us much of a chance.”

“Nor have I been given much of a chance either,” she returned.

“Touché,” Celia said. “That’s why I want to try this little exercise—a kind of a jam session, if you will.”

“A jam session?” Kingsley said. “How is that going to help anything?”

“By helping us find common ground,” Celia said. She looked at Laura. “When you were doing When the Saints Come Marching In yesterday, everyone really liked it. Ted and Ben even chimed in with the rhythm. Everyone was tapping their feet. It was a piece that all of us liked and knew, right?”

“Well,” Kingsley said, “it’s not up there with Bohemian Rhapsody or Kashmir in my book, but it’s catchy and easy to play. It’s ... fun.”

“Right!” Celia said. “Making music is supposed to be fun. We need to learn how to have fun together.” She looked at Laura. “All of us.”

Laura wanted to keep stewing in her anger and perceived lack of respect, but she forced herself to put it aside for the moment. Maybe Celia was onto something here. True, Saints was no Rhapsody for the Alto or Romeo and Juliet, but it was fun and easy to play. Something to just tear up with for the sheer enjoyment of it. That was why she had chosen it to round out her audition. It was something she could play at a whim without having to think about it and something she enjoyed, that she could phrase with some soul.

She nodded her head slowly. “Okay,” she said softly. “How do we do this?”

“Alternating melodies,” Celia said. “Ben and Ted set the rhythm up, I’ll play accompaniment on my Fender and maybe sing if the mood strikes me, and then Mary, Cindy, Jake, and Laura all take turns throwing down the melody, one by one. Each of you do your best, make it sing! Make us feel it! You know what I’m saying?”

Kingsley was now smiling, his eyes looking at Celia with clear affection. Interesting. “I know what you’re saying,” he assured her.

“Let’s do it!” Mary said enthusiastically.

“I’m in!” said Cynthia.

They all looked to Laura. She offered them the first smile of her tenure with them. “Let’s do it,” she said. “Who’s going to start?”

“You are,” Celia told her. She turned to Ted. “Four count and let’s get it on.”

“Hell to the yeah,” Ted said, grinning. He tapped his sticks together four times and they began to play.

Since it was an unrehearsed piece, and no one had any sheet music to help them remember the notes or to set the tempo or the key, Laura let them go through a couple of reps first so she could plug into the groove they were setting. She picked it up by tapping her foot in time to it. When she felt she was locked in, she began to play in the key of C major, the way she had always played that particular piece.

The music came out of her horn and it had soul. There was no doubt about it. She even began to move her shoulders back and forth as she played. After the drivel they had been making her produce, it was a true pleasure to play something she enjoyed.

“That’s the shit!” Ted shouted at her at one point.

“Agreed,” said Celia, who was strumming away at her Fender. “Let’s try it with some vocals.”

“Sing it, C!” Kingsley called out.

“Oh, when the saints,” Celia belted out, “oh when the saints. Oh, when the saints go marching innnnnn. Oh yes, I want to be in that number, when the saints go marching in. Blow it, Laura!”

Laura blew it, belting out another round of the melody. This time around, she added some style and few fills of her own, putting some more soul into it.

“Hell to the yeah!” Ted cried again, adding a little drum fill of his own. This time around, however, it did not annoy her. It added to the piece and he had struck it out with improvised precision.

“Oh, when the saints, ” Celia continued. “Oh, when the saints. Oh, when the saints go marching in. Oh yes, I want to be in that number, when those saints go marching innnnnn. Hit it, Mary!”

Mary hit it, playing out the melody on her violin with an enthusiasm and style, moving her own shoulders to the rhythm. She too brought a sense of phrasing to the piece—a playful, happy outpouring of musical emotion. She went through it twice, on the second time adding a few of her own fills, drawing some of the notes out, chopping some of the others.

“Way to go, Mom,” Kingsley said with a smile, his own foot tapping on the ground before him.

Celia sang out the chorus again. This time she called out Cynthia. “Do it, Cindy!”

Cindy pounded on the piano keys of her stage instrument. Laura was impressed with her competency and her phrasing. The piano had a lot more room for adding fills to a piece and she took advantage of them well, almost erupting into a mini-solo as she closed out her turn.

“We’re smokin’ now,” Celia said, and then sang out the chorus yet again. This time, she called on Kingsley. “Jake! Let’s hear what you got!”

She winced a little in advance as Kingsley took his turn on the electric guitar, hitting the notes with distorted loudness, his fingers bending and pulling at the strings to elicit the music. So prepared was she to dislike it that it took her a moment to realize that it actually was not all that bad. She wasn’t a big fan of the blues, but she certainly liked it better than rock music, and Kingsley was putting the notes down in blues style with a distinct emotion to his phrasing. He too was having a good time with the piece. She could hear that in his expression, could see in the tapping of his foot, in the sure way his fingers moved across the fretboard of his guitar.

“That’s the way!” Celia yelled when he was done. “Sing it with me, Jake!”

They sang the next chorus in harmony, their voices mixing together surprisingly well. Kingsley did not scream even once, and he had a decent sounding tenor voice that mixed well with Celia’s contralto. They went through twice and then Celia called out her next command. “Mary and Laura together! Do it!”

She hesitated a moment—double with a violin? Absurd!—but when Mary began to play the notes she dutifully stepped in and played them with her. It actually sounded much better than she would have thought. True, it was not a traditional doubling of instruments, but it worked!

“That’s badass!” Ted encouraged from behind his drum set. “Bring up the volume some!”

“Yeah,” shouted Kingsley. “Really grind it!”

Laura and Mary looked at each other for a moment and shared a nod. As they entered the next rendition, Laura blew harder, putting more strength into her notes. Mary did the same, moving the bow across her strings with a little more force, drawing louder and more authoritative sound out of the instrument.

“All right!” Celia said after finishing the next chorus. “Jake and Cindy this time. Show us what you got!”

They showed what they had. Laura was again prepared for it to be hideous, and was again pleasantly surprised to hear that it wasn’t. Kingsley laid down a solid blues track that mixed in with the piano rendition of the melody. It could not quite harmonize on the level that a sax and a violin, or a sax and a guitar could, but that was actually its strength. The notes came out in harmony but their rendition was quite different and complimentary.

“That is sweet shit,” Ted said, adding another impressive drum fill.

“Okay,” Celia said. “Final time around. All of you together! In harmony for the finish!”

“And then take us down tempo for the final sequence,” Kingsley added.

They went through it, with all four melody instruments playing in unison to the back beat. It sounded good ... deep, Laura could not help but feel. This was music they were making, turning a simple, repetitive piece into something quite more than its base melody.

“Bring it down,” Kingsley instructed after going through it twice.

Ben and Ted obediently brought the tempo down and those on melody followed them, making the final rendition march out slowly, down to almost a stop until they all let the very last note draw out and fade away.

“Hell to the yeah!” Ted said yet again. “That was bitchin’!”

“Agreed,” said Kingsley.

“That was the barest beginning of band cohesion,” Celia told Laura. “Do you get it now?”

“I get it,” Laura said. “I really do, but I still don’t know if that’s going to help me phrase on your original pieces.”

“Then we’ll keep doing this until you start to feel them,” Celia told her. “What else can we do? What else do all of us know?”

“Probably not much,” Kingsley said sourly. He turned to Laura. “Are there any rock or pop songs that you know? Some Beatles maybe? Some Elton John? Some Journey perhaps?”

Laura shook her head. “No, none of that. How about you all? Do you know any jazz? Any Charlie Parker? Any Louis Armstrong?”

Kingsley raised his eyebrows a bit. “Not much,” he said, “but there is this one...” He fiddled with the pedals on the floor before him and then flipped a switch on his guitar. He gave a quick strum and the music came out clean instead of distorted. He played a few open chords and then gripped his fretboard and began to strum out a melody in F major. She recognized it immediately.

“You know What a Wonderful World,” she said, surprised.

“Since I was a kid,” he confirmed. “It was always a good, mellow piece to play around the old campfire.” He chuckled. “Especially when there were ladies present.”

“I see,” she said doubtfully.

“I’ll play the chords,” he told her. “You play the vocal parts on the sax. Let’s see if we can make some music together.”

“Jesus Christ,” Ted said. “You’re talking elevator music here, Jake.”

“Anything for the cause,” Jake said, continuing to strum. “Jump in any time here, Laura.”

“Right,” she said, surprised to find that she was actually impressed with Kingsley’s guitar playing. It was soft and sweet, exactly at the right tempo and phrasing for the piece. And that from a guitar that had been hammering out distorted notes just a few moments before. Who would’ve thought?

The melody came around to the beginning again and she jumped in, playing a soft, mournful expression of where the vocals would be if someone were singing. The weird drummer guy was right. It was elevator music, but good elevator music, the kind that made you happy when you heard it, that made you hum along.

“Nice,” Cynthia said, smiling.

“It is, isn’t it?” said Mary.

They worked their way through the entire song, through three verses, the bridge, and three repetitions of the one-line chorus. On the final rendition of the chorus section, Kingsley sang out the words in harmony with her sax—about how he speculated in his own mind how nice the planet he lived on actually was. His tenor voice expressed the line with perfect tone, perfect expression, and she found herself actually feeling a little shiver going down her spine.

He really can sing, she thought. Amazing! Why in God’s name is he wasting that talent singing the trash he puts out?

“Bring it home, Laura,” he told her after repeating the chorus twice. “Close us out.”

She did it, going through one more, slower tempo version of the final chorus and then improvising out a drawn-out outro to end it.

She was surprised when everyone applauded. She blushed nervously.

“What do you know?” Kingsley said, giving her a smile—the first one she’d seen him display. “We really can make music together.”

“I guess so,” she said, feeling the barest beginnings of a smile touching her mouth as well.

Real life is not a situation comedy or a weekly drama, where problems are encountered and solved to the happiness and prosperity of all in thirty minutes. Laura’s opinion of Jake Kingsley did not magically change at that moment in time, nor did Jake Kingsley’s opinion of Laura Best. She continued to think of him—and, by association and example, Celia Valdez—as a sellout who was in the business of making tripe compositions for the unsophisticated masses. She continued to dislike and, though she would not ever admit it to herself, fear Kingsley. And Jake did not magically warm to Laura in the moment either. He continued to think of her as an unjustifiably arrogant cold fish, and one who was probably not going to work out ultimately.

What that moment in time did accomplish, however, was to plant the initial seeds in everyone involved of how things could be, if only they worked at them a little. Laura saw that both Jake and Celia actually did possess some significant musical and vocal talents—a considerable amount actually, if those first flashes of insight she was witnessing were correct. And Jake and Celia both saw that Laura had the potential to not just fill in the missing pieces of Celia’s compositions, but to enhance and compliment them, perhaps brilliantly, if she could only learn to put her heart into them.

For her to learn to put her heart into them took a little longer.

They spent the rest of that first full day just trying to find a little more common ground. It wasn’t easy, but they dug up a little. There was When Johnny Comes Marching Home, which Ted pounded out brilliantly on the drums while Jake and Laura took turns playing the melody on their respective instruments. They played around a little with A Mad Russian’s Christmas, only because it was familiar to all of them, but abandoned that effort after only fifteen minutes or so because the complexities of it would have taken too long to learn properly (Jake would remember that effort in astonishment and envy five years in the future, when just such a rendition helped propel the band Trans-Siberian Orchestra to international fame). And then, to the embarrassment of Jake and Laura both, they found that they all knew Sweet Caroline, by Neil Diamond and, at the insistence of Mary and Cynthia, they laid it down, with Cynthia playing primary melody, and Jake strumming the chords out on his acoustic-electric and singing the lyrics while Laura and Celia added fill with the sax and the drop-D tuned strat, respectively.

“If anyone tells anyone what I sang here today,” Jake threatened after they put Sweet Caroline to bed, “I swear to God, I will kill you all in a painful manner.”

Ted, Ben, and even Laura all agreed to keep mum. None of them wanted it to be known they enjoyed themselves a little Sweet Caroline either.

The next time they got together to work on Celia’s tunes, it was a Saturday. Things started off pretty much the same as their first session together. They worked on The Struggle and then Done With You for the first part of the morning. Laura’s notes came out sounding listless and flat, just as they had before.

In frustration, Jake suggested that maybe they should give Laura a little break and work on something that did not include the sax in it until lunch. Everyone agreed except for Laura, who wanted to keep pushing on.

“Just kick back, relax a little, and watch us work,” Jake insisted to her. “We need to work on these other things anyway. After lunch, we’ll try again.”

She agreed. What else was there to do? She sat in her chair, her sax idle, while they worked on a tune called Why?, yet another sappy bad relationship tune from the woman who seemed to make them her signature.

As they played it out, however, Laura got another one of those flashes of insight into the talents of who she was working with.

It was a soft, mellow, melancholy piece, with no percussion at all and minimal bass. Celia strummed out the primary rhythm on her acoustic and her playing was sweet indeed. Mary played the melody with her violin while Cynthia added the occasional fill with the piano. The tune took great advantage of Celia’s voice. She sung of hopeless love that was unreturned, that was being utilized for the purpose of taking advantage of another, of the self-destructive impulse for the person being taken advantage of to continue on anyway.

Again, Laura could not relate to the theme of the piece, really. She was, of course, deliriously happy with her one and only relationship in life, but still... She really does have the most beautiful voice, she could not help but thinking. And she knows how to use it, too.

As they ran through the song three or four times, stopping here and there to make suggestions or to start over due to a minor error, Laura actually found herself humming along with it at times, actually starting to appreciate the depth of the lyrics—although not in any kind of self-reflective fashion.

Celia must have had some messed up relationships in her time to write with that kind of angst, she felt herself thinking, not with contempt or pity, but with respectful understanding.

Between two of the takes, Laura got a little more insight, not only to their talents, but also their professionalism and their composition technique.

“I really think that two-part vocal harmony on the first stanza of each verse and through the chorus repetitions would make it flow much better,” Celia said.

Kingsley thought that over for a moment and then nodded. “I think that would be sweet,” he said. “Do you want to try it with me?”

“No,” she said. “A tenor voice in harmony would not mix well for the expression I’m going for. This is a girly song and a male voice in it just wouldn’t ... you know...”

“Yeah ... I get you,” Kingsley said. He then looked over at Laura. “Do you sing at all, Laura?”

“Me? Heavens no,” she replied, with an honest declaration. “Not unless you want to scare cats away from your garbage cans at night.”

“A pity,” Kingsley said.

“We can just double track you in the studio,” Sharon suggested. “Lay down the first vocal track and then have you record another one while you listen to it. You could harmonize with yourself.”

This was something that Laura had never heard of before. “Harmonize with herself?” she asked. “Is that possible?”

Sharon nodded. “It’s a fairly common recording technique. It serves to accent the vocal style of the singer.”

“It’s usually used to make a weaker voice sound stronger,” Kingsley said. “Celia doesn’t need that kind of help.”

“I agree,” Celia said. “I want there to be two distinct voices on those stanzas and choruses, but both of them can’t be mine. It should be a mezzo-soprano or even a soprano singing with me. Something higher than me to distinguish the harmony, not hide it.”

“We don’t have anybody like that,” Kingsley said.

“Maybe Obie could suggest someone in studio?” the male Nerd put in.

“Are you kidding me?” said Kingsley. “We’re already into that guy for more than we can probably afford. Can you imagine what he would charge us for a backup singer, assuming he even has one we can use?”

“How about we go on a singer hunt?” suggested Mary. “You kids seem to have pretty good luck stumbling across just what you need.”

Celia shook her head. “We don’t have that kind of time,” she said. “We’re already struggling to put everything together as it is. We need to be ready to hit that studio and start putting down tracks by the end of September.”

“What about the harmony then?” asked Cynthia.

“It’ll keep,” said Kingsley. “The tune is solid as is and I think people are going to like it even without the vocal harmony thrown in.”

“True,” Celia said. “I guess two-part harmony is a luxury at this point in time.” She shrugged. “Maybe on the next album.”

They all agreed with this assessment and then ran through Why? a few more times. By then, it was time to break for lunch—it was Mexican food on this day, in honor of it being the end of the workweek, Kingsley said.

After lunch they tried again with Struggle. By now, the tune was very familiar to Laura. She knew the lyrics by heart and she knew the melody she was supposed to play. As much as she hated to admit it to herself, the song was actually growing on her quite a bit. She felt herself tapping her feet to the rhythm, not because it helped her keep time, but because her foot just wanted to tap. This time, when she blew out the melody, her fingers moved with a little more flare. She was able to picture how she wanted to express the music. In short, she started to figure out how to phrase it.

They ran all the way through, even through the bridge and Kingsley’s guitar solo, which, she was surprised to hear, was actually a skillful rendition that matched the emotion of the song quite well—some phrasing of his own.

When the tune ended, she found everyone looking at her.

“What?” she asked, self-consciously, bracing for another scathing round of criticism.

“That was almost un-shitty,” Kingsley told her.

“Right,” Celia said, smiling. “A definite improvement.”

“Though still with a lot of work to be done,” Kingsley added—of course.

They ran through it a few more times and she continued to evolve her phrasing with each repetition. It was still not her best effort—she knew that—but she was starting to sense that she might be able to get behind it after all, at least for this particular piece.

They then played Done With You. Her playing was as flat as ever, even to her ear. She just could not feel that song, could not express through her instrument what Celia wanted her to express.

“I’m sorry,” she told them, surprised to find that she really was sorry. “I just can’t get into it yet. Give me some more time.”

“We really don’t have any other choice,” Celia observed.

They knocked off for that day at four o’clock, an hour earlier than usual. Kingsley explained that this was customary on Saturdays, in honor of their one day weekend.

“Don’t worry though,” he assured her. “We’re still paying you for the extra hour.”

“Oh ... well, thank you,” she said, packing up her horn. “It’ll be nice to go home early and maybe start a little...”

“Oh, you don’t get to go home early,” he interrupted.

“I don’t?”

“You don’t,” he said. “You are required by the unwritten rules of the contract you signed to have some beers with us before you go.”

“It is tradition,” Celia said, patting her companionably on the back.

“Uh ... I’m not really much of a drinker,” she said.

Kingsley scoffed at her. “And you call yourself a musician?” he asked, opening up an ice chest that was sitting on the floor near the drum stand. Funny, she hadn’t noticed it until then. He pulled out a couple of bottles of beer and set them down on the stand. He used an opener to pop the tops off and handed her one. “Fire up,” he commanded.

She took the bottle. It was icy cold, dripping with nearly frozen water from the ice chest. It was a brand she had never heard of before—something called Moosehead. She took a sip to be polite, her plan to sip sparingly out of it until they released her, but as the beverage went down her throat, she found it tasted quite wonderful—as far as beer went anyway. She took a hefty swallow, feeling the soothing sensation on her stomach almost immediately.

“Not bad,” she said with a nod.

“It’s Canadian shit,” Kingsley told her. “If there’s one thing those hosers know how to do, it’s make a decent beer.”

Everyone else grabbed a beer as well—even Kingsley’s and Archer’s mothers. Ted, the drummer, went through two bottles in less than five minutes. It was obvious where that beer belly of his came from. As they drank, they talked of the session they had just had, of the week they had just put in.

“I think you’re coming along, Laura,” Mary told her.

“Right,” said Cynthia. “It’s still a little rough, that’s true, but we really made some improvement today.”

“Do you really think so?” Laura asked. By now, three quarters of the beer was in her stomach and she was starting to feel quite fine indeed.

“I do,” Cynthia said. “We could tell you were starting to feel The Struggle there.”

“I am starting to feel it,” she said. “It’s actually a fairly deep song.” She looked over at Celia, who was sitting next to Jake. “You seem to write a lot about lost love, about breaking up, about dysfunctional relationships.”

Celia nodded amicably. “We’ve all been through those, haven’t we?” she asked. “It’s an emotional subject that most people can relate to.”

“I really can’t,” she said. “That might be part of my problem getting into your tunes, feeling them.”

Jake looked at her with disbelief. “You’ve never had a bad relationship?” he asked.

She shook her head. “I’ve never really had a relationship—on a romantic level anyway—until the one I’m in now. Certainly nothing on the level of writing a song about.”

“Amazing,” Celia said. “I can’t even count the number of times I’ve had my heart broken, or had to break someone else’s, since I was fifteen years old or so. How did you manage such a feat?”

She shrugged a little. “I was kind of shy and withdrawn growing up. I never really dated at all until I met my fiancé eighteen months ago.”

“Ben mentioned you were engaged,” Celia said. “Congratulations.”

“Thank you,” she said.

“Tell us about him?”

“There’s not much to tell,” she said. “He’s a dentist, my dentist, actually. That’s how we met. He’s a little older than me, but that doesn’t matter. Love is ageless, right?”

“It can be,” Kingsley allowed.

“Have you set a date yet?” Celia asked. “I remember how frantic things were when Greg and I were getting close.”

“Well ... not yet,” she said. “There are a couple of hurdles that need to be overcome before we can start planning things on that level.”

“Hurdles?” Kingsley asked.

Another shrug. “It’s complicated, and kind of boring,” she said, giving her pat answer to enquiries of that sort. “We’re getting there.”

Kingsley nodded slowly, a cynical expression on his face, but he enquired no further. Neither did anyone else.

Pauline was sitting in her office the following Monday morning when the first phone call came in. Unsurprisingly, it was Joshua Flag, the artists and repertoire manager from Aristocrat Records—the A&R guy assigned to Veteran. Since he was in charge of a group that she managed, he had her direct line and was able to bypass the answering service she employed.

“What can I do for you, Josh?” Pauline asked him after enduring nearly five minutes of boring, unproductive preliminaries. She was sitting in her pajamas at her desk, had still not taken her shower for the day, and her coffee was getting cold.

“Well,” he said, his weasel-like, used car salesman voice firmly in gear, “I was mostly calling just to update you on how the boys are doing. They’ve been rehearsing up a storm in that warehouse and they’ll be ready to hit the road for the first scheduled date on September 30 in Boston.”

“I’m aware of that,” Pauline told him. “I do keep in touch with my band, you know. I spoke to them after their rehearsal on Friday.”

“Yes, yes, of course,” Joshua told her. “I just wanted to touch bases with you on that and let you know we’re still on track. And then there’s the whole Matt Tisdale thing.”

“You mean that he’s releasing his album at the end of the month?” she asked.

“Right,”

“You told me about that last week,” Pauline reminded him. “Is there any new information about it? Any new thoughts on how that might impact sales and airplay for Veteran?”

“Well ... no,” he said. “Our assessment of the situation remains the same. It is projected that the album is going to have minimal airplay and only sell to the hard-core Tisdale fans. He’s actually doing us a favor by putting his crap out first. It’ll bring Intemperance back into the current public consciousness. It can only help Veteran.”

“Yes,” Pauline said. “I seem to remember talking about this subject at length when it was first brought up.”

“Right,” Josh said. “Again, just touching bases here, making sure we’re all on the same page.”

“We’re all on the same page, Josh,” she said. “Is there anything else?”

“Uh ... well ... now that you mention it,” he said, as if it were an afterthought and nothing of consequence, “I’ve heard a rumor floating about that your brother and Celia Valdez are working on some sort of independent project.”

Pauline smiled. Thank you, Coop, she thought. Jake had called that one. There was no way Coop could possibly keep his mouth shut about that kind of news. Still, she had to play cool. “Wherever might you have heard something like that?” she asked Joshua.

“Nowhere in particular,” he said. “It’s just a little rumor that’s floating about. We here at Aristocrat just wanted to know if there was any truth to it.”

“I’m not really at liberty to say, one way or the other,” she told him.

“But you’re not denying it?” he asked.

“Nor am I confirming it,” she said. “What business is it of yours, anyway?”

“It’s not really our business, but ... you know ... if it’s true, maybe we could make it our business, depending on what kind of stuff Jake is working on.”

“Just Jake?” she asked. “What about Celia?”

She could almost hear the eye roll he had to be doing. “Celia doesn’t interest us much,” he said. “She’s a has-been. That contract we offered her last year was just something we were doing out of ... oh, kindness, I suppose. We weren’t really anticipating making much money from it.”

“Wow,” Pauline said. “Aristocrat Records doing something out of kindness? That kind of brings a tear to my eye, Josh.”

“We did have an expectation that a Celia Valdez solo album wouldn’t lose money for us,” he said. “That is not likely to be the case these days. Too much time has gone by since she was hot.”

“It’s only been two years since their last hit album,” Pauline said.

“An eternity in the popular music biz,” he said. “Anyway, we were talking about Jake. Has he come around and started producing some hard rock tunes in the Intemperance genre? If he has, we would certainly be interested in giving them a listen. He remains a huge, untapped resource you know. That contract offer we made him would still stand.”

“If this rumor were true and he and Celia were starting their own label, why in the world would he sign a contract with Aristocrat?”

“I would think that would be obvious,” Josh told her. “For financing and development of the project.”

“Correct me if I’m wrong,” she said, “as I am just a relative newcomer to the music business after all, but when one starts one’s own label, one necessarily has the financing for development of the project in place. That’s the whole idea of being independent, right?”

“Well, yes, of course,” Josh allowed, “but isn’t it always better to have someone like us footing the bill in advance?”

“Hmmm,” she said slowly. “I’m thinking the answer to that is no, when someone like you gets to keep eighty percent of the profit and retain rights to the music being produced. I can pretty much assure you that Jake and Celia are both done traveling down that road.”

“Then they are working on something?” Josh asked.

“Again, I neither confirm nor deny that information,” Pauline told him.

“Understood,” Josh said. “But if Jake is working on something and he insists on remaining independent, he is going to need a partnership with one of the labels in some form in order to get his project manufactured and distributed, not to mention promoted. Am I correct, or are you trying to imply that he raised enough capital to fund his own manufacturing facility as well?”

“I’m not trying to imply anything, Josh, but I would have to say that you’re correct, if Jake and Celia were working on such projects, they would need to partner with a label at some point.”

“Again, we don’t give a rat’s ass about Valdez,” he said. “But we would be very interested to hear what Jake is working on. A proper Jake Kingsley solo effort would bring in millions for our stockholders, even if we’re only getting royalties for the partnership instead of the sponsorship. If he wants to be independent, we can accept that, but we want in on the effort.”

“Assuming the tunes are something you approve of,” Pauline said.

“Well ... naturally we would want to evaluate the marketability of the project,” he said. “That’s why I’m asking you to let us have a little listen to what they’re doing. Have they made a demo tape yet?”

“There are no demo tapes,” Pauline said, truthfully even.

“Well, how about me and a couple of our artist development specialists go over to their studio and take a listen to them?” he suggested next.

“What makes you think there’s a studio?”

“Come now, Pauline,” he said, using the condescending tone that always infuriated her. “You, of all people, should know that information regarding limited liability companies such as KVA Records are matters of public record. There is a studio on Prospect Park Lane in Santa Clarita that is leased by KVA Records. The papers list the owners of KVA Records as Jake Kingsley, Pauline Kingsley, William and Sharon Archer, and Celia Valdez. You guys didn’t even bother setting up shell ownership to keep people off your trail.”

“You certainly seem to have a lot of information on KVA, Josh,” she said. “Could it be that this was perhaps not just a casual enquiry made at the end of a touching bases phone call?”

“It could be,” he said. “Are you still going to deny that you brother is working on something?”

“Officially, yes,” she said. “Unofficially, I’ll tell you a couple of tidbits that you’re going to need to mull over.”

“Do tell.”

“If Jake was working on something, any business deal he would make would be dependent on a few things. The first would be that you don’t get to pick and choose which project or which part of a project you decide to accept and promote. You would be paid a flat fee to manufacture and distribute whatever KVA wants you to manufacture and distribute, whether you think it worthy of the effort or not. You would then be offered a percentage of the royalties on the album for following through with promotion.”

“That is not how we do business with independents,” Josh said.

“Then I guess you wouldn’t be doing business with KVA Records,” she said. “The only way we would do business is if you agree to both Jake’s and Celia’s projects, at a royalty rate to be negotiated at the time of production, of course.”

“So, Jake is trying to drag Celia along on his coattails, huh?” Josh said. “What’s the deal there? Is he boning her?”

“He is not boning her,” Pauline assured him. They certainly did not want that rumor floating around. “He has confidence in her musical ability. You folks over here at Aristocrat have greatly underestimated her talent and capability, Josh. You’re sitting there talking about untapped resources and you passed up on a goddamn gold mine when you let her go.”

Josh scoffed at this. “You’re trying to tell me that some of the best and most experienced artist development talent in the nation are wrong about Valdez, but you and your brother are right?”

“That is exactly what I’m suggesting,” she said. “Like Jake always says, your so-called experts are completely out of touch with their target audience. You’re in the process of killing the music industry with your arrogance. You are dead wrong about Celia Valdez. As wrong as someone could be.”

Josh sighed into her ear. “Well ... I guess we could at least give her a listen as well. What could it hurt?”

“There will be no listening in the near future,” Pauline said. “If Jake and Celia are working on projects, they will not be heard by any record company representative until the tracks are all recorded and they have masters in hand. At that point, we’ll let someone hear them and then the negotiations may follow.”

“Again, Pauline, that is not how we do business.”

“I understand your position,” she told him. “That is, however, how we do business.”

The following Sunday, at precisely eight o’clock PM, a black stretch limousine pulled into Jake’s driveway and honked its horn. It was one of the limos from Buxfield, a family owned company that the members of Intemperance used to have an endorsement contract with. These days the contract was no more, since Intemperance was no more and Jake, their most photogenic advertising model, no longer wanted his picture floating about. All the same, he maintained a good relationship with the company and used them frequently at full price—particularly on Sunday nights.

“It sounds like my ride is here,” Jake told his parents, both of whom were sitting on the couch in the entertainment room, watching a movie on the VCR.

“Okay, honey,” his mother said. “Have fun.”

“I’m certainly going to try,” Jake replied.

“And don’t do anything I wouldn’t do,” said his father with a grin.

Jake returned the grin. “Can you give me a real quick list of what you wouldn’t do?” he asked him.

They shared a laugh at that and then Jake headed for the front door. He was dressed in his going out clothes—a pair of slacks, a button-up short sleeved shirt, and wing-tipped shoes that were polished to a high gleam. His hair was neatly combed and styled and his mustache was trimmed. He looked like a respectable businessman out for a night on the town.

“Have fun, Jake,” said Elsa, who was putting a few finishing touches on her nightly clean of the foyer. “And be careful.”

“I’m always careful, Elsa,” he told her. “You should know that.”

She smiled at him, then stepped close. “You have plenty of prophylactics, I trust.”

“A three-pack in my wallet,” he assured her.

“Excellent,” she said, her British accent particularly strong. “See that you use them, but throw the wrappers away, if you please.”

“I know the drill, Elsa,” he said.

“Yes,” she said, “yet I still find condom wrappers in your pants at least every other Monday morning.”

He gave her a one armed hug. “Why do you put up with me?” he asked her.

“Because you pay extremely well,” she said. “No other reason.”

He opened the door and stepped out into the late July twilight. The driver of the limo was Zeke, one of the longer termed employees of the service. He was standing near the rear door, holding it open.

“Good evening, Mr. Kingsley,” Zeke told him.

“That’s not my name, Zeke, remember,” he scolded. “On Sunday nights, I’m JD King. You can call me JD.”

Zeke flushed a little. “My apologies ... JD,” he said.

“That’s the way to say it,” Jake said, sitting down in the seat. JD King was the name he went by on Sundays when he went out on the town. It was the name that National Records had wanted to hang on him back when they had first signed, thinking Jake Kingsley was boring and not as marketable. Now, he embraced the name as his alter-celebrity persona. The challenge: to get laid on Sundays without revealing who he really was. Since many of the trysts in question ended up occurring in the limo itself, having the cooperation of the driver was necessary.

Zeke closed the door and then sat down in the driver’s seat. “Where to tonight, JD?” he asked.

“Let’s hit the Alturas Club over on the west side,” Jake said. “I haven’t been there in a while.”

“As you wish,” Zeke said. He dropped the car into gear and pulled away.

Before they were even out of the driveway, Jake was mixing himself a potent rum and coke from the bar before him. It would be his first drink of the day. Having his parents stay with him had cut down on his alcohol consumption considerably more than the drastic cut down he had already been undergoing. He still had a beer or a glass of wine at night after coming home from the studio, but gone were the drunken Sunday afternoons. He just didn’t want his parents to see him in the condition he tended to achieve when alone.

The first rum and coke was in his stomach before they even made it out of the neighborhood and down to the main street. Feeling the comforting warmth spreading throughout his body, and the pleasant relaxation of the pre-buzz, Jake quickly mixed up another, not even having to replace the ice as none of it had had much time to melt. He took a few sips out of the second drink and then flipped on the radio set into the panel next to the bar. He quickly tuned it to 98.5 on the FM dial, KRON, one of the local hard rock stations. Without surprise, he found they were playing Who Needs Love?, an Intemperance song from their first album.

As always when he heard one of their songs on the radio, he felt a flash of nostalgia for days gone by, for tour buses and gross intoxication, for endless groupies and endless battles with the evil empire that was National Records. Those had been the days.

“A good tune, JD,” Zeke told him through the open partition. “You guys really were the shit.”

“We were, weren’t we?” Jake returned.

“I hear you’re working on something new though,” Zeke said.

Jake looked at him in surprise. “Where did you hear that?” he asked.

“From Coop,” he said. “We still drive him around quite a bit—especially when he goes out on Saturday and Wednesday nights. He told me you and that Mexican chick had hooked up and were putting something together.”

“Wow,” Jake said appreciably. He had known that Coop had loose lips, of course—that had been the plan, after all—but he hadn’t known they were that loose. He was telling the limo drivers? Jesus Christ.

“I can’t wait to hear it,” Zeke said.

“It’s a ways from reaching the consumer still,” Jake told him, “but I’ll be sure you get a pre-release copy.”

“Signed?” Zeke asked hopefully.

“Signed,” Jake promised. He then took another sip—a sip that anyone else would have defined as a gulp.

Who Needs Love faded out and the voice of Steve “Boom Boom” Callahan, the night DJ, came on. “A little Intemp action for you here on your Sunday night cruise on the Chrone Bone, your station for all things that rock in the greater LA region. And speaking of Intemp, we got a little track here from Matt Tisdale’s upcoming album, Next Phase, which is due to hit the stores in about two more weeks.”

Jake’s attention perked up. Matt’s tune? He knew that the release was imminent, but he had yet to hear anything from the album. This must be a pre-release track that National had sent out in advance to generate interest in the album. Now he would get to hear what the man who had called him a murderer, who had declared he would never play with him again, had managed to come up with on his own. He reached over and turned up the volume a little.

“The tune we have here is called Into the Pain,” Boom Boom said. “It features Tisdale himself on lead guitar, of course, but also on the lead vocals. Give it a listen and tell us what you think. Here we go. Get ready for a ride on the new music train.”

The tune started with a long, drawn-out solo that ramped up from sedate into a screaming, finger-tapping maelstrom. That then evolved into a complex, palm muted riff that was joined by the pounding of drums and the hammering of a bass. Jake noted right away the lack of any overdubs or complex engineering to the tune. It was only those three instruments playing. It was almost as if Matt and his two bandmates were in a studio, playing out a live track into a microphone.

“That’s some heavy sounding shit, there,” Zeke said.

“That it is,” Jake agreed, letting his foot tap along to the rhythm, trying to get into it, trying to evaluate it on its merits and not on his personal feelings for the man who had produced it.

The song played on for nearly three minutes before any vocals were laid down, switching back and forth between the main riff and some hard jamming solos. Finally, Matt’s voice came forth, singing out a series of short verses about the harshness of life and how everything good led to disaster. The chorus was also short and simple, though expressive.

“Into the Pain! It’s inevitable!

“Into the Pain! It’ll suck your soul!

“Always know that whatever ground you gain...

“Will only lead you into the Pain.”

It was a brutally angry tune, of that there was no doubt, a marked change both musically and lyrically from what he had typically written for Intemperance. His voice work wasn’t bad—Matt could definitely carry a tune well—but it, like the instrumentation, was unsupported by any backup singing or vocal engineering. It was as if he were singing the song into a microphone at a club.

“Quite a long song,” Zeke commented about four and half minutes in.

“Yeah,” Jake said, still listening with the analytical ear—the best he could, anyway. For each set of two verses and two choruses that Matt sung out, he would then spend thirty or so seconds laying down blistering guitar work. There were variations on the main riff, secondary riffs, and seething, angry solos, most done by utilizing tempo changes—sometimes slower than the primary tempo, sometimes faster, often interspersed with pounding drum fills that added to the general blackness and mood.

Finally, after what Jake estimated to be more than seven minutes, the tune came to an end in a flurry of drumbeats and guitar notes that were allowed to fade naturally down behind one final scream of “Into the Pain!”

“Well now,” Boom Boom said when it was over, “that was certainly a hard rocker, wasn’t it? And I could’ve totally gone and had myself a little sit down in the restroom while it played, had I been so inclined. Anyway, that was Matt Tisdale’s new cut from his solo album, heard for the first, but surely not the last, time, here on KRON, your rockin’ LA station. And now, how about we mellow down just a bit and get our hearts back to normal. Here’s a little G&R for you.”

Jake turned the radio down as Sweet Child o’ Mine began to play. He looked over at Zeke. “What did you think of that?” he asked him.

“It sounded kind of rough,” Zeke said. “A little rougher than I really care for—and it was long, with lots of guitar and not much singing.”

“Yeah,” Jake said. “It definitely wasn’t pop music.”

“I don’t know,” Zeke said. “I like Matt and all, but I’m not sure it’s something I can get into. What about you? What did you think?”

“The guitar work was impressive,” he said. “I’ll give him that. The man knows how to play.”

“No argument there,” Zeke said.

“I can see a definite potential in that song, but he didn’t carry it out the way it should have been.”

“Carry it out? What do you mean?”

“There was no studio engineering or refinement on it,” Jake explained. “Not even minimally, like we used to do when we were laying down Intemperance tracks. Overdubs, level blending, maybe some double tracking of the vocals. Matt was always opposed to all those things, but we always managed to get them in there to some extent. It sounds to me like he didn’t allow any input from the sound people at all, that he basically just laid down the tracks as is and let them stand.”

“And that’s not good?” Zeke asked.

“Not if you’re trying to put out solid, palatable music that will appeal to more than one audience.”

“Interesting,” Zeke said, mostly because he really had no idea what Jake was talking about.

“He could have done much better,” Jake opined. “If he would’ve let the Nerdlys engineer that for him, he could’ve blown fucking Metallica out of the water. If that track is indicative of the entire album though, I think that Pauline’s information is correct. No one but a hard-core Matt fan is going to buy it and most of the radio stations aren’t going to play the cuts.”

“That’s too bad for Matt,” Zeke said carefully. He knew the score between Matt and the other former Intemperance members.

“Yeah, too bad for Matt,” Jake agreed, unable to help but a feel a sharp pang of petty satisfaction.

Even though it was Sunday night the Alturas Club, a trendy, upper-end nightclub, was fairly crowded with a variety of men and women, most between the ages of twenty-one and thirty. Jake waited in line like everyone else and paid his cover charge from a thick roll of twenty dollar bills he had pulled from an ATM machine earlier in the day.

Modern dance music was playing and couples were moving and grooving to it out on the large dance floor. Most of the cocktail tables were occupied currently, but there were a few spots open at the large bar that sat in a square in the center of the room. Jake grabbed a seat and ordered a rum and coke, tall, from a mid-thirties female bartender.

He paid her in cash and left a hefty tip, one that would insure she would make him another drink whenever he started to get low. He lit up a cigarette and then, drink in hand, turned around in his chair to scope out the room. Like always, it was a target rich environment. He noted three young women sitting at one of the cocktail tables drinking fruity looking concoctions with little umbrellas in them. All were wearing short skirts that showed off their legs and low cut tops that showed off their cleavage. Two were platinum blondes, one a brunette. He noted their existence and then continued to scope.

He was two drinks in when he finally decided to try an approach. The young brunette he had noted earlier was still sitting at the cocktail table but her two friends had gone out to dance. He set down his empty glass, put out his cigarette, and then walked over to her. She eyed him as he came closer, looking him up and down, her face remaining without expression. She certainly displayed no sign that she knew it was Jake Kingsley coming over to her.

“Hey there,” Jake greeted, putting a shy smile on his face.

“Hey,” she said, still with no expression, no tone in her voice.

“Care to dance a little?” he asked, waving his hand at the floor.

She hesitated a bit and then shrugged. “Sure,” she said. “Why not?”

She stood and took his hand, allowing him to lead her out onto the floor. The song currently playing was Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now), one of the staples played in clubs such as this. Though Jake did not have much appreciation for dance music in general, he did enjoy the simple, powerful beat of the tune. Without further conversation, he and the girl began to dance. She wasn’t bad, perhaps a bit less than enthusiastic. Jake, on the other hand, was a fantastic dancer and he knew it. He had no problem exploiting his natural sense of rhythm and showmanship for the cause of fornication.

“Nice moves,” his partner said appreciably after a particularly enthusiastic spin and shoulder dip maneuver.

“Thank you,” Jake told her. “I’m JD.”

“Darla,” she said, a small smile appearing on her face now.

They danced through that song and through the one after it, with Darla becoming a little more enthusiastic as they went. Still, Jake was not getting good vibes from her. She kept her distance from him, going out of her way to avoid touching anything but his hands, and even that was a rarity. So, when the second song ended, he thanked her for the dance and headed back to the bar, not even offering to buy her a drink. She did not seem disappointed.

He nursed another rum and coke, smoked another cigarette, and then drank a large glass of water to keep himself hydrated. He struck up a conversation with a cute brunette sitting next to him, but it only lasted until her boyfriend returned from wherever it was he had been. Jake took this in stride. The night was still young.

He danced a few times with a platinum blonde named Bobbi, and got enough vibes out of her that he asked her if he could buy her a drink. She smiled at him and told him that she was capable of buying her own drinks, thank you very much, and off she strolled.

“All right then,” Jake said to himself as she walked away. “Moving along.”

It was well after ten o’clock, and well after his seventh rum and coke, when he spotted the redhead. She was strolling around the perimeter of the dance floor, nursing a glass of white wine while she watched the dancers. She had on a slinky black miniskirt that was perhaps a bit shorter than propriety dictated. She was a bit on the chubby side, not obese by any means, but not model thin either. Her legs were nice, however, if perhaps a bit plump. And her face was cute, though her skin tone did not seem to contrast exactly with the shade of red that her hair was.

Jake decided to ask her to dance, not thinking it a bit odd that he had not been with a redhead since that fateful day in Cabo San Lucas when he’d cheated on Rachel, his girlfriend at the time, with one and had been caught, thus ending the relationship. There was just something about this girl that struck his fancy. Perhaps it was those huge mammaries she was displaying proudly. They would certainly feel nice if he managed to get his hands on them.

“Would you like to dance?” he asked her.

She did, in fact, like to dance. They went out on the floor and shook their booties to three straight songs. She was not shy about putting her body into contact with his and he felt those large breasts moving up and down his chest several times, her silky smooth legs sliding against his. She had no problem with him putting his hands on her waist as they moved to the beat of the music.

“You dance great!” she told him, visibly impressed with his moves.

“You’re not so bad yourself,” he returned.

“I’m Clarissa,” she said. “Clarissa Fowler.”

“JD King,” Gath told her, not missing a stride or a move. “It’s nice to meet you, Clarissa.”

“You as well.”

The song wound down and a slow song started. Jake decided not to chance it at the moment. “How about I buy you a drink, Clarissa?” he offered.

That brought a big smile to her face. “I thought you’d never ask,” she said.

They worked their way over to the bar and found an empty spot to sit down. Jake got a brief flash of her black panties as she maneuvered herself onto the stool—a flash he was pretty sure had been deliberate. Yes, Miss Clarissa was putting off some good vibes. Even in a place like this, it was a challenge to find a young, attractive woman who was willing to head off and have meaningless sex with a total stranger. But there were always a few in the crowd.

“What’ll it be?” the bartender asked.

“Rum and coke for me,” Jake said. “And for you?”

“Chardonnay,” she said.

“What kind would you like?” the bartender asked.

Before she could say anything, Jake answered for her. “The best you got,” he said.

The bartender raised her eyebrows a bit. “Uh ... that would be the ‘87 Inglenook Reserve,” she said. “It’s eighteen dollars a glass.”

“Sounds reasonable enough,” Jake said with a shrug. He then whipped out his roll of twenties and laid two of them down. “Fire us up.”

The roll of bills and the purchase of the most expensive wine had the desired effect on Clarissa. She beamed at him while the bartender retreated to prepare their order. “Thanks, JD,” she said. “You must have a pretty good job.”

He gave a shrug. “I do all right,” he assured her. “But tell me about you. What do you do?”

“Me? Nothing much. I work as a billing clerk over at Plano Healthcare.”

“That sounds kind of interesting,” he said.

She chuckled. “It’s not. I work in a tiny cubicle on a floor filled with a hundred other cubicles. I spend all day talking on the phone to people who really don’t want to talk to me.” She shrugged. “It’s a living.”

“Is that what you want to do with your life?” he asked. “Be a billing clerk in a cubicle farm?”

“No, of course not,” she said. “I’m taking classes at Harbor College, just one or two at a time for now. I want to be a vet tech.”

“A vet tech?”

“You know? Like a nurse for veterinarians. It’s not the most high paying job in the world, but I love animals, you know?”

Jake nodded respectfully. “Pursue your dreams,” he advised with complete sincerity. “It is worthwhile in the end.”

The bartender brought their drinks over and then picked up the two twenties. “Keep the change, hon,” Jake told her.

“Really?” she asked surprised.

“Really,” he confirmed. “Just make sure we don’t have empty glasses for long.”

“Absolutely,” she said, giving him a warm smile.

“Wow,” Clarissa said. “You just tipped her like eighteen bucks.”

Jake shrugged as if it were nothing. “It’s only money,” he said casually. He picked up his drink and held it out to her for a toast. “To following our dreams.”

She smiled again. “To following our dreams,” she repeated.

They clinked their glasses together and drank. Her expression turned very happy when she tasted the wine. “Wow,” she said. “This is very good stuff. Smooth as silk.”

Jake nodded. “The ‘87 Inglenook is pretty good—a decent example of what the Napa Valley can produce. It doesn’t really compare to French chardonnay, however. I have a couple of bottles of the ‘86 Chateau St. Claire from the vineyards in Chablis, France in my collection. Now that stuff is something you should try sometime—a nice smooth finish with just a hint of oak and citrus on the exhalation. It goes beautifully with pork and chicken dishes, or just to catch a buzz on the old balcony at sunset.”

“Wow,” she said. “It sounds like you know your wines.”

Another shrug. “I know what I like,” he said, his eyes looking her up and down and sending a definite message.

She smiled warmly back at him. The message was received.

After two drinks, they headed back out onto the dance floor and showed off their moves once again. This time, Jake grew a little bolder with his touches, as did Clarissa. By the third song in she was brazenly rubbing herself against him and her hands were flirting with boundary of his ass. His hands, in turn, were dipping down onto her bare legs on occasion, and straying up to the side swells of her breasts. This was the point where he knew he would have to pull a major screw-up to not get laid.

A slow dance came on—Open Arms, by Journey. This time he did not ask her to leave the dance floor with him. Instead, he opened his arms and she stepped into them. They swayed softly to the music, her lush body pressed against his, her head resting on his shoulder. He blew softly in her ear and she turned her face to his, the wanting look in her eyes. He put his lips to hers and they kissed, just long enough for the tip of her tongue to dart out and touch his.

“That was nice,” she breathed.

“Yes,” he agreed, pulling her a little closer, enjoying the feel of those soft boobs pressing into him. In his pants, Little Jake was starting to get very interested in the goings on.

Clarissa felt this as well. She did not shy away from it. Instead, she pushed herself more firmly against him. “I’m starting to think you like me,” she giggled.

“I do,” he said, his fingertips caressing her jawline, just below her ear. “Listen, do you maybe want to take a little ride with me?”

“A ride?” she said, an air of caution edging into her voice.

“I have my limousine out front,” he said.

“That’s your limousine?” she asked, having obviously seen it on her way in.

“It is,” he said. “We could take a little drive along the ocean maybe, have a few more drinks, get to know each other a little better, see what develops?”

She pushed back from him and looked into his eyes. “Tell me you’re not a serial killer trying to lure me away from here,” she demanded.

He chuckled. “I’m not a serial killer trying to lure you away from here,” he promised. “My intentions are honorable.” He looked her up and down, unabashedly. “Well ... mostly honorable.”

She continued to look into his eyes for a moment and then she smiled. “Let’s go,” she said.

They went.

Zeke saw them coming and rushed out to open the rear door for them. “Welcome back, Mr. King,” he greeted. “Where would you like to go?”

“How about a little drive down the PCH near Sunset Beach?” he suggested. True, the Hollywood Hills were a little more scenic at night, but experience had taught him that the winding, twisting road would often cause motion sickness in his prospect. Having one’s date start vomiting on the drive was a sure-fire way to bring an abrupt, and sometimes messy end to an otherwise pleasant evening.

“Very good, sir,” Zeke said.

They stepped into the back and settled in, Jake making sure the partition between the passenger and driver’s compartment was closed, Clarissa goggling at the bar and the television and the panel of knobs and switches that controlled everything.

Jake mixed himself another rum and coke and then poured Clarissa a glass of chilled 1991 Mondavi Sauvignon Blanc from the well-stocked wine refrigerator. She took it from him, toasted with him “to beauty”, and then looked out at the traffic passing around them.

“This is just so cool,” she said.

“I’m glad you’re having a good time,” Jake said, sliding a little closer to her.

She looked at him again. “What is it that you said you did for a living?” she asked.

“Nothing much,” he said. “I’m a partner in a business here in the LA area. We do well for ourselves.”

“What kind of business?” she asked.

“Nothing fascinating,” he said. “We’re kind of a support arm for the music industry.”

“The music industry?” she asked, her interest piqued. “Do you know any famous people?”

He shook his head. “No, not really,” he told her. “Like I said, we’re not part of the interesting branch of the music industry. What we do is really quite boring, actually, but it pays the bills.”

She looked around at the inside of the limo again. “And some,” she said.

Jake smiled and then flipped on the radio, which, per standard operating protocol that Zeke knew well, was now tuned to 93.7 FM, the easy listening station. Bread was on, playing I’d Like to Make it with You. Perfect.

He put his arm around Clarissa and she snuggled into him.

“This is like a dream,” she whispered.

“A dream come true,” he replied, and then put his lips to hers.

She was a good kisser. She tasted of white wine and her tongue slid expertly against his while her arms went around his neck. He let his hand slide down along the flank of her body, just barely touching her breast, and then moving across her hip and onto the bare silkiness of her thigh. He caressed her here, relishing the feel of female flesh against his fingertips.

They never saw the ocean at all. By the time Zeke got them to the Pacific Coast Highway, Clarissa’s top was down and Jake was suckling on her large nipples while his fingers slid up and down the damp crotch of her black panties. She, in turn, had unzipped his pants and was gripping his erection through the gap in his underwear, feeling the girth of it and liking what she felt.

“Do you want me to suck it?” she asked breathlessly.

“Uh ... sure, go for it,” he said, raising his hips up so she could pull his pants and underwear down and off.

His was not the first dick that had been in her mouth, he surmised as she swallowed him whole. She slurped up and down, down and up, unconsciously moving to the rhythm of the song If You Leave Me Now, by Chicago, which was playing on the radio.

“Oh yeah,” he groaned, his left hand running through her red hair, his right hand up under the back of her skirt and feeling the cheeks of her ass. “This is what it’s all about.”

Before long, her little black panties were on the floor of the limo and she was sitting on his lap, his erection in hand. He was a bit disappointed to find that the drapes did not match the carpet. While the hair on her head was a luxuriant shade of red, the neatly trimmed patch on her pubis was as black as night. He should have known. Her skin complexion just did not match that of a natural redhead.

Not that this was a deal breaker, by any means. Armpit hair, maybe a deal breaker. Leg hair, definitely a deal breaker, but a simple mismatch between pubes and top cover? Never. He pulled a condom out of his pants and, with one hand only, expertly opened the wrapper and applied the product, hardly missing stride in his kissing and breast suckling as he did so. He wasn’t sure if Clarissa even noticed that he had done it.

If she hadn’t, she certainly made no attempt to stop him when he lifted up on her hips and planted her atop his straining member.

“Ohhhh, fuck yeah!” she groaned as she sank down on him, taking him into her dripping wet passage.

“Agreed,” Jake panted as he began to move her up and down.

He gave her his best work, as he always did. Even if it was a cheap one night stand, there was no sense in leaving her with a bad impression of JD King. He let her ride him for a bit, until she was fully lustful and sweaty, and then he laid her down in the plush back seat and hammered into her in the missionary position, using every move he’d developed over the years to draw an orgasm out of her.

“Oh ... God ... God ... Godddddddddddd!” she screamed as she came.

In the front seat, Zeke, a veteran of such shenanigans in his limo, gave a knowing smile and a little thumbs up. He kept driving.

Jake then flipped her over and drove into her from behind, slamming in and out with enough force to actually rock the three ton limo on its springs. This drew another blissful orgasm from Clarissa, and forced Jake to have to struggle with his mental block to keep himself under control.

For the finale, he put her on her back again, her legs tight together and bent upward toward her shoulders while he hammered in and out. She managed to squeak out one more orgasm in this fashion before Jake let the mental block down and allowed him to blast off into the condom.

They cuddled together afterword, still naked from the waist down, finally able to see the darkness of the ocean for the first time.

“That was fucking incredible,” Clarissa told him.

“Yeah,” Jake said softly. “It was, wasn’t it?”

She looked over at him. “Are you for real?” she asked.

“For real?”

“This isn’t just a dream I’m having, right? Because it kind of feels like one of those things that’s too good to be true. I meet a rich, good looking guy in a club, he’s nice, he pays attention to me, and he gives me three fucking orgasms in his limousine while we drive along the ocean. Shit like that doesn’t really happen.”

He smiled and kissed her on the nose. “I assure you, this is not a dream,” he said. He then reached down and pulled the condom off his junk. He tied a careful knot in it and then tossed it into the garbage slot installed in the partition. He would, of course, keep a careful eye on that garbage slot until after Clarissa had exited the vehicle.

She watched this all with a careful eye and then turned to him. “Will I ever see you again?” she asked.

“You most certainly will,” he said lightly. “I enjoyed your company very much. And you’re a wonderful dancer.”

That brought a smile to her face.

“Now then,” Jake said. “Shall we take you home, or do you need to go back to the club to get your vehicle?”

“Uh ... home is good,” she said. “A friend of mine took me to the club tonight. She ... uh ... won’t think it strange that I found another ride home.”

“I see,” Jake said. “Why don’t we make ourselves presentable and then you can tell Zeke where you live.”

They made themselves presentable and then Jake lowered the partition with a switch.

“How are things back there, Mr. King?” Zeke asked, without the slightest hint of knowing in his tone or expression.

“Perfect, Zeke,” Jake told him. “Absolutely perfect. The young lady would like to go home now. Can you take us there?”

“I can,” he said. “Just tell me where home is.”

She named off her address. Zeke did not need to ask for any clarification on where that was. He simply turned in the direction of Santa Monica.

Clarissa looked at Zeke for a moment and then leaned close to Jake. “He wasn’t ... uh ... able to hear what was going on back here, right?”

“Of course not,” Jake assured her—lying through his teeth this time. “Limos are perfectly soundproofed. It’s like we were doing it in a bank vault.”

“Oh,” she said brightly. “That’s a relief.”

The trip to her home took just over thirty minutes. It was a shabby looking apartment complex just off Santa Monica Boulevard. Just before stepping out, she scratched her number on one of the drink napkins.

“You’ll call me?” she asked.

“You know I’ll call you,” he promised, folding the napkin and putting it in his shirt pocket.

They had another luxuriant kiss and then he walked her to her door. They had another at her doorway. He promised again that he would call her.

“I’ll be waiting,” she said, her face glowing as she stepped inside and shut the door.

He walked slowly back to the limo, lighting a cigarette as he went. Zeke was there, holding the door open for him.

“Thanks, Zeke,” he said, sitting down inside.

“Back home, JD?” Zeke asked, once he was strapped in.

“We can go back to Jake now,” Jake told him. “And, yes. Back home will be fine.”

“Very good, sir.”

They pulled out of the complex.

Jake helped himself to a glass of the opened wine. No sense letting it go to waste. As he sipped, he reached into his pocket and pulled out the napkin with Clarissa’s phone number written on. Without even a second glance, he tossed it into the garbage bin where it landed atop the used condom with the knot tied in it.