Different Circles

Chapter 5: Tight Quarters

Coos Bay, Oregon

September 24, 1991

In the bedroom of the hillside house overlooking the Pacific Ocean, Jake’s digital alarm clock clicked over to 6:30 AM and the radio began to play. The device in question sat on the oak dresser eleven feet from the bed. The radio was tuned to 88.7 on the FM dial, which was the local Catholic station that played nothing but Christian oriented music. The volume was turned up to nearly the loudest setting.

“A pleasant morning to all the righteous out there,” intoned the soft-spoken disc jockey to the nearly three hundred current listeners in the greater Coos Bay region of Oregon’s southern coast. “That was Amy Grant with Father’s Eyes—a true classic if ever there was one. And now, to get you up and moving for your day, we have Sandi Patty and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir with their rendition of What A Friend We Have in Jesus. Enjoy.”

“Oh, fuck no,” Jake said, quickly pulling the covers off and rolling to his feet. He nearly sprinted across the room and hit the off button on the alarm clock before the Mormons of the Tabernacle Choir could even hit their first high note. The strategic positioning of the alarm clock, the radio dial, and the volume setting had done their magic. Jake was awake and out of bed. Once these two things were accomplished, there would be no chance of him drifting back off.

He yawned deeply, rubbed his eyes and then stretched a little. Though his head was still fuzzy from the sudden sleep to awake transition, he did not feel badly. He had gone to bed at eleven last night after only two glasses of wine, so there was no hangover, no straining bladder, no headache. There simply was not enough time to do any serious drinking now that the recording process was in motion.

The ragtag group of musicians with no name, official or unofficial, and their sound team, had packed up and come to Coos Bay one week before and were staying as a group in a rented house. Though the house, which was costing KVA Records LLC eleven hundred dollars a week, had six bedrooms, five bathrooms and nearly 4500 square feet of living space, it was still quite crowded with nine permanent residents and eventually, though it hadn’t happened yet, four transient ones.

Nobody had to share bedrooms currently. Jake had the largest of the secondary bedrooms—the only one other than the master with its own attached bathroom. Celia had the master suite on the third floor because Greg was planning to pop in and out for a few days with some frequency during their stay. The Nerdlys had the secondary bedroom next to Jake’s—one without its own shower but they had refused to take Jake’s room when it was offered on the grounds that he was one of “the talent” and therefore their reason for being there in the first place. Cindy and Stan, the Nerdly parental units, had a smaller bedroom tucked away at the very end of the second floor hall. Laura had a tiny room that was tucked away in the rear of the first floor, just off the kitchen. Ted and Ben each had tiny little rooms located off the main entertainment room. Ted’s room had bunk beds in it, and the plan was to have the drummer and the bassist bunk together in Ted’s room when Mary came to play her pieces, or when Pauline came to take care of business (she was actually flying in this afternoon for her first visit). Phil Genkins, Laura’s roommate from Los Angeles and the latest part-time member of the band, would also be coming and going with some frequency later in the process, but Laura said he could stay in her room with her. This, of course, raised a few eyebrows among everyone—mostly the elder Archers—because everyone knew that Laura was engaged to her dentist. When she reminded everyone, however, that Phil was quite gay, the eyebrows came back down among everyone except Ted, who was a self-proclaimed homophobe.

Yes, Jake thought, things are going to get interesting as this little project floats along.

The morning air in the bedroom was brisk and damp, as Jake enjoyed sleeping with the window open so he could hear the sound of the waves rolling into shore a hundred and thirty feet below the cliffside the house sat upon. He shivered a bit and then shut the window, taking a moment to look out of it. His bedroom did not directly face the ocean, so he had to crane his head a bit if he wanted to see it. Sunrise had yet to occur, but the sky was starting to brighten with its approach. The stars were out, and could be seen, so that meant there was no marine layer this morning. That was good. He did not particularly like running in the damp morning fog that occasionally rolled in.

He turned away from the window and walked to his bathroom. After taking care of his morning business and washing up, he came back out into the bedroom and put on his loose fitting shorts and a sleeveless shirt. He donned his running socks and his battered running shoes and then made his way out of the room. The hallway was dark and the doors around him were all closed. From behind the door at the end of the hall, he could hear the rhythmic drone of Stan snoring.

He walked downstairs and made a left into the large kitchen area. Here, the light was on and Celia was standing at the sink wearing a pair of running shorts of her own, as well as a baggy T-shirt with a frog on it. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail. She was filling her water bottle up. She looked over when she heard Jake enter and gave him a smile and a good morning.

“Good morning,” he returned, flashing a brief smile of his own. “How’s the tide?” The status of that tide would determine their running route, as there were places that were inaccessible to them when it was high.

“I haven’t looked,” she said. “My eyes aren’t even all the way open yet.”

Jake picked up a tide table that sat atop the refrigerator. He looked at it, found the day’s date and nodded. “It’s incoming, but we’re only two hours past low. High tide won’t be until just after ten.”

“We should be good for the beach then, right?”

“Right,” he confirmed. Both of them liked the route that took them along the beach for part of the way instead of the one that stuck entirely to the road. It was a better workout as well.

Jake filled up his own water bottle and they made their way out of the kitchen, through the dark entertainment room—they could hear the amazingly loud snores of Ted coming from behind his closed door, snores that were often interrupted by the jarring silence of sleep apnea, which he had proudly proclaimed to everyone he suffered from—and into the foyer. They walked out the front door and closed the door behind them. Jake opened a small lockbox installed next to the door by punching in a code. Inside was a key to the house. He used it to lock the door back up and then returned it to the box. They then walked down to the large circular driveway, where Jake’s BMW, Celia’s Mercedes, and a large white 1982 Ford van that KVA had purchased locally for its mass transportation needs, were parked.

They stretched out for a few minutes—Jake, as always, taking a moment or two to admire Celia’s magnifico pompis as she bent over to loosen up her hamstrings—and then walked out to the small, winding road that ran along this section of the coast. They could see the breakers rolling onto the small strip of exposed rocky shoreline below. Both of them were shivering slightly in the cool air.

“Shall we do this thing?” Celia asked.

“Let’s hit it,” Jake said.

They headed south down the road, going for a little more than a quarter of a mile, passing other ocean view houses, most of which were rentals, all of which were smaller and more modest than the one they were staying in. A narrow access trail intersected the road and they turned right. It was a steep, uneven trail full of switchbacks and liberally sprinkled with loose rocks. They treaded carefully here, not just because of the risk of a rolled ankle, but because if one fell in the right manner on this portion, one might find himself or herself tumbling over the cliff.

They reached the bottom without incident and were now on a strip of sand beach strewn with driftwood and sea kelp. During some of the higher tides, the water would come all the way up to the bottom of the trail, thus their need to carefully check the charts before heading out. At the moment, however, the breakers were rolling in twenty or so yards away. They jogged over to just outside the average breaker zone and turned to the south, quickly settling into a pace of about a nine-minute mile.

They spoke very little as they made their way two miles down the beach, their feet pounding into the sand, their path weaving back and forth depending on the terrain they were following. They curved along into a cove that was surrounded by even more towering cliffs. It was here that their tidal information became particularly important. During every high tide in this part of the cove, the water cut off both the north and south entrances and there were no trails out from within the cove itself. Though they probably would not drown if they found themselves here at the wrong time, they would certainly find themselves sitting on some rocks for six or seven hours until the water retreated enough to let them back out.

“This place is just so beautiful,” Celia remarked as they worked their way around rocky tidal pools and clumps of kelp. Tiny beach crabs scuttled to get out of their way. “I can see why Obie likes living here.”

“It beats the hell out of LA,” Jake had to agree. “No smog, very little traffic, not many earthquakes, just the occasional tsunami rolling in because of earthquakes somewhere else.”

“Not a bad deal,” Celia opined, “as long as your house is up out of the tsunami zone.”

“I’d like to find a place like this, but in California, within easy flight time of LA for when we’re working. Something to think about when our fortunes come rolling in.”

“You really think they’re going to?” she asked.

“I really do,” he assured her. “We’re underway now and our shit sounds good—or at least it will once the Nerdlys get their little hands on it. We only have the tedium of the recording and mixing process now.”

“And the negotiations with the labels for manufacturing, distribution, and promotion,” she reminded.

“They’re going to be fighting with each other over who gets to sign us once we present our masters to them,” Jake predicted. “Now that we got Laura playing her best and Phil on board, things are all falling into place.”

And indeed they were. It had been very touch and go with Laura for a bit, but gradually she warmed to the group, both musically and, perhaps more important, personally. And they had warmed to her as well. That band cohesion they were seeking did not appear magically overnight, but in small phases that nobody seemed to notice until they were well along. It had started with smiles. She actually had one, and it was a very pretty smile at that. They first started seeing it around the second week with her, just occasional flashes when someone noted that she was actually playing better, or when someone made a joke during the lunch breaks or during the setups. The smiles then came more frequently, became more animated and spontaneous, easier to appear.

Around that same time, they noticed her starting to converse more with them. Instead of sitting by herself during lunch, she would join in with the group, even occasionally add something to the conversation. And then, as that developed, they discovered she possessed a sense of humor as well, a dry, deliciously quick wit that caught one completely by surprise when it was displayed—the kind of thing that made one stare at her for a moment and think: Did she really just say that?

As the camaraderie and friendship developed between the pretty, square saxophonist and the rest of the band, her musical expression improved as well. Though she still proclaimed disdain with extreme prejudice for all things rock and heavy metal and most popular music, she did admit to them at one point that the music they were making with her seemed to transcend her preexisting stereotypes.

“Transcends your preexisting stereotypes?” Jake asked when she’d laid that one on them.

“It means,” she explained, utilizing that usually hidden wit of hers, “that you don’t suck quite as much as I thought you were going to.”

Everyone had looked at her in astonishment for a moment, and then burst out laughing.

“Did you really just say that?” Celia had to ask, shaking her head in amusement.

“No offense intended, of course,” she said, a smile on her own face.

“Of course,” Jake returned with a chuckle.

Whatever her personal opinions of their compositions, her phrasing got better with each repetition of each tune, until the music coming out of her instrument was just dripping with soul, was coming forth with all the talent that she had displayed when playing her favorites for them at her audition. Ben had been right all along. She was good enough to play professionally and make a decent living with her horn, and now that she was onboard with them, they were happy to have her as part of the team.

It was during this period of enlightenment that she suggested they give her roommate, Phil, a try as well. That had been during a Saturday afternoon beer bash when both Jake and Celia were complaining about their lack of suitable backup singers. True, they could double track themselves in the studio, and, true, Jake could sing some backup for Celia and Celia could sing some backup for Jake, but there were certain combinations of voices that certain of both of their tunes needed. In short, they needed someone who could sing soprano or mezzo-soprano for female backing on Celia’s Why? and Tell Me About Love, and someone who could sing baritone for male backing on Jake’s Hit the Highway and Can’t Keep Me Down.

It was the mention of the baritone that led Laura to speak up.

“My roommate, Phil is a baritone,” she said. “He’s a pretty good singer, too. He works over at Operetta While You Eat as a singing waiter.”

Everyone looked at her, perhaps wondering if this was yet another display of that dry wit. It was not.

“Operetta While You Eat?” Jake asked incredulously.

“It’s not as cheesy as it sounds,” she assured him. “The food is pretty good, and they make the waiters audition for the parts. It’s a good way for vocalists trying to break into the industry to pay the bills while they’re on their way up. Phil is actually classically trained.”

“No kidding?” Jake said, pondering that.

And so, they’d given him an audition and found that Laura was right. He really could sing, and he understood about things like keeping time and staying in key. He hesitated not in the least to take them up on their offer of fifty dollars an hour, once or twice a week, and to possibly make some trips up to Oregon once things really got rolling.

“I’m sure Laura has told you all,” he said to them after accepting the offer, “but I just want to disclose my sexual orientation to you all right now. I am gay. Hopefully you can all live with that.”

Laura had not actually told them that, but Jake didn’t give a rat’s ass if the man liked to fuck chickens while watching clown porn, as long as he could sing. Celia was actually somewhat delighted with the disclosure—she had a fondness in her heart for gay men since her brother, Eduardo, was one of them (though her family did not know this). Only Ted seemed to have an issue with the disclosure.

“Gay?” he asked. “You mean ... like you have sex with men kind of gay, or you’re just a happy motherfucker?”

“The former,” Phil told him.

“I see,” Ted replied, his face turning into a scowl.

“Is there a problem with that, Ted?” Jake asked.

“No, no problemo,” Ted assured them. He then turned his gaze upon Phil. “I just want it to be known that I am not gay, so don’t be hitting on me.”

Phil looked his morbidly obese body up and down for a moment, taking in the fat rolls and the triple chin, and then nodded. “I will try to control myself,” he promised.

“You do that,” Ted said.

After Phil had left the audition, Laura confided something to Jake. “He was kind of hoping that you might be gay, or at least bi,” she told him.

“Really?” Jake asked.

“Oh yeah,” she said. “He has the major hots for you. Always has.”

Jake nodded thoughtfully, unoffended. As a decent looking male celebrity living in Los Angeles for nearly a decade now, he was regularly hit on by gay men wherever he went. It was just part of the life. “Hmmph,” he said. “You should have told me that before you brought him here. I probably could’ve got him for thirty dollars an hour with a little flirting.”

“Probably,” she agreed. “But you know what the tradeoff would’ve had to have been, right?”

He looked at her in astonishment for a moment and then laughed. She had popped off another one.

There was one boundary, however, that Laura did not break down. She would discuss nothing about her personal life with her fiancé. She had let everyone know that she had a fiancé, that he was older than her by a considerable margin, that he was her dentist, and that no date for the nuptials had been set, but other than that, she was mute. She deflected any and all questions about her lack of an engagement ring, about if her fiancé would like to meet them all, about any plans she might have with him on her day off, or about whatever the mysterious “it’s complicated” might be. Even Phil did not know much about the good doctor, although he was able to confirm a few strong suspicions.

“I’ve met him a few times,” he told Jake once during a Jake day, when Laura wasn’t in the studio. “He usually comes over during lunchtime to boff her and then leaves right after. Every once in a while, once every two months or so, she’ll go away somewhere with him for the weekend. I’ve never once heard her tell me she was going over to his place and, unless she’s going away on a trip with him, she never spends the night away from home.”

“Interesting,” Jake said. “Married, I assume?”

“Obviously,” Phil said. “He has a goddamn wedding ring on his finger when he shows up at our place for his nooners.”

“That’s a pretty reliable sign,” Celia, who had been listening in, could not help but observe.

Phil simply shrugged. “It’s her business, and she’s made it clear to me that she doesn’t want me sticking my nose into it. I love her to death—she’s the sister I never had—but I’m not going to push her for information or judge her. I’ll just be there for her when this finally comes crashing down.”

“That’s sweet, Phil,” Celia beamed at him, patting him on the thigh.

Phil smiled at her and then went back to taking surreptitious glances at Jake’s juicy ass, pondering what it would be like to get his hands on it.

Now, as Jake and Celia reached the furthest inset of the cove and began to turn back toward the southern exit of it, Celia said: “I’ve forgotten how monotonous the recording process is. Over and over and over again with the same thing.”

“And we’ve only just begun,” Jake said. They were, in fact, still working on the first drum and bass tracks for the first song—Celia’s Playing Those Games—and they hadn’t even gotten past the first chorus yet.

“And the Nerdlys,” she said, shaking her head. “Madre de Dios, I love them and respect them, but I just might have to kill them before this is all said and done.”

Jake laughed. “You haven’t even begun to appreciate how annoying they can be,” he told her. “Wait until we start mixing.”

She groaned.

They ran on, exiting out of the cove and then going another half a mile, onto a broader beach that was part of Sunset Bay State Park. Here, was the most difficult part of their run. It was a set of steep switchback stairs that climbed two hundred and eighty feet back up to the main road. They mounted them and conversation quickly became impossible as they huffed and puffed and their legs burned with the exertion. By the time they made it to the top, the sun was now visible in the eastern sky and they were both dripping with sweat.

“That part is a killer,” Celia panted as they took up position on the left side of the road and headed back north.

“At least it’s mostly downhill from here out,” Jake said, panting as well.

And it was. Two and a half miles later, which they accomplished with an easy seven and a half minute mile pace, they were back at the rental house, both of them feeling the satisfaction of yet another day’s run being over and done with.

They walked up and down the road a few times to let themselves cool down and then went back in. They would have a little breakfast, take their showers, and then start getting ready to hit the studio.

Another day in Coos Bay had begun.

Everyone in the house except for Stan piled into the white van at 8:45 that morning. Ted got behind the wheel. He had been designated their driver since it was part of his profession to drive similar vehicles. On the way, he made a point to tell them another of his stories. This was quickly becoming a morning routine.

“I was working the night shift, you know, and around two thirty we got this call for a single car accident over on North White, just off the Ten. This dude was in a Mazda Rx7 and must’ve come off the ramp at well over a hundred miles an hour, lost it at the bottom, and spun into this oak tree on the roadside. Hit that fucker with his passenger side and destroyed that car. It was gnarly shit, dudes. We couldn’t even tell what the car was until we found a piece of the bumper. The dude himself got ejected from the vehicle and had to have hit something, maybe the tree, because he was on the ground about twenty feet away, smashed as flat as a fuckin’ pancake, deader than shit, his goddamn skull broken open. Didn’t even have to put the monitor on him to declare his ass.”

“Jesus Christ,” Celia whispered, unconsciously giving the sign of the cross.

“That wasn’t the weird part though,” Ted continued.

“It wasn’t?” asked Jake, encouragement in his tone. Ted’s stories were actually growing on him in some bizarre, morbid fashion.

“Naw,” Ted said. “The weird part is what we found later. You see, we start looking around the area after I pronounce him, shining our flashlights here and there, just to make sure there wasn’t someone else in the car with him—sometimes that shit’ll happen, especially with newer crews who get focused on the one patient and don’t think to consider if there’s more than one. Anyway, there wasn’t nobody else in the car, but about twenty yards away or so, one of the fire guys finds the dead guy’s brain. It’s just sitting there on the fuckin’ pavement, perfectly intact, like something out of an anatomy class or something. It flew out of his head in one piece and just landed there.”

“It had to have been ejected from the broken skull in a relatively stable parabolic arc in order to have landed intact,” Nerdly observed.

“Uh ... right,” Ted said. “My thoughts exactly.

“That is a disgusting story,” Cynthia declared.

“That ain’t no shit,” Ted agreed. “Of course, us medics, with our gallows humor, we can’t leave that shit alone. The first thing my partner says—old Jimmy Cann, a good medic, ex-Vietnam guy, he ended up killing himself a few years later, ate his fuckin’ gun, you know—anyway, he says: ‘That guy must’ve lost his fuckin’ mind, huh?’”

Cynthia, Celia, Laura, and Sharon were all appalled by this. Jake, Nerdly and Ben actually found it pretty funny. Out of political correctness, however, they kept their smiles to themselves.

“All right,” Jake said to Ted. “You know I gotta ask. What made you remember that story?”

“Drivin’ this van,” Ted said solemnly. “It’s the same year as the rig we were drivin’ on that call. I’ll never forget the old 82-973.” He looked back at Jake, who was sitting in the seat behind Celia. “It was the one where the heater would only blow on high.”

“That sucks,” Jake said.

“Yep,” Ted agreed. “It’s a sucky world sometimes.”

They made it to Blake Studios at two minutes to nine and all eight of them trooped in through the security and made their way to Studio B, which was theirs for the duration. Troy Stinson, a recent graduate of the master’s program in audio engineering at the Berklee College of Music in Boston, one of the most prestigious music schools in the United States, was waiting for them in the control room. He was twenty-six years old, looked like he was fourteen due to a severe baby face, and had been assigned by Obie to be the Nerdlys’ protégé for the duration of the recording and mixing process. Troy was an eerily smart guy, long on knowledge and with a good ear for music, but short on actual experience at his new profession. He was typical of the engineers that Obie employed.

With Troy was Alicia Hernandez, the twenty-four year old audio technician who had been assigned to work on the project as the Nerdlys’ assistant. She was a chubby, short woman with tremendous breasts and a pretty face. Though short on experience as well, she was a whiz with the digital software of the studio and had a good ear for the sound characteristics of the studio and the isolation rooms attached to it. She also made a pretty good pot of coffee.

Everyone said their good mornings and then all but Laura hit the coffee station in the corner of the room, annihilating Alicia’s first pot. She was used to this by now and quickly went about constructing another one.

They spent about thirty minutes drinking their coffee and talking over the plan for the day. The plan was not all that complicated: they were going to continue laying down the bass and the drum tracks for Playing Those Games. Nobody was naïve enough to think that they were going to finish them today, not with the Nerdlys in charge.

Once the coffee was done, everyone pulled their instruments and headphones out of the storage room in the rear of the studio. Jake was working with the Brogan drop-D tuned guitar for this one. Celia was not playing any guitar at all on this track, as there was no need for a rhythm track. Laura was not involved in the piece either—in truth, there was really no reason for her to be involved at all while they were only laying down the rhythm tracks, even when they moved on to pieces that did feature the sax—but Jake and Celia had made the decision to keep her in the studio with them for all sessions, both so she could learn the process of recording and so they could maintain that camaraderie with her. True, this decision was costing them money, but what the hell? It was only money. It wasn’t like Pauline, Jill, and Greg—the financial Nazis who nitpicked every expense—actually knew that Laura wasn’t really needed.

In the center of the primary studio room, Ted’s drum set was assembled with a total of six microphones arrayed in strategic positions. Two hung from overhead and had been painstakingly positioned by the Nerdlys over a period of nearly two hours on their first day. There was a kick mic on the bass drum, one on each of the snares, and another on the tom drum. All of these were wired into the sound board and then into the recorder itself. The drums would be the only instrument that was actually heard in the studio for this session, as it was pretty much impossible to silently play percussion. Everyone else’s instruments would be heard only in the headphones to avoid having their output bleed over into the drum mics.

Sitting well back behind Ted, but within easy sightline of him, was Ben, who sat in a studio chair. His bass was in his lap, the output from it being recorded as well. This required his amplifier to be enclosed in one of the isolation rooms and then microphoned from there, with the output going through the soundboard and into the headphone sets. The decision to record the bass and the drums together had only been made after another agonizingly long and technical debate between the Nerdlys regarding the advantages and disadvantages of doing the rhythm instruments separately or together. Doing them together meant that whenever either one of them screwed up, or just didn’t play to the Nerdlys’ satisfaction for the take, the process needed to be stopped and restarted. Doing them separately would have taken longer, but would have meant that only an imperfection in the instrument being recorded would necessitate a stop.

Jake was just to the left of Ben, his Brogan wired into a set of effects pedals and an amplifier that was locked in a foam insulated isolation box, and microphoned in there. He was not being recorded, but Ben and Ted both needed to hear his notes to keep themselves tuned into what they were doing. He would play along with the tune but if he screwed up, the tune would go as long as his screwup did not cause either Ben or Ted to screw up in turn.

Cindy was to the rear of the studio. Since her electronic piano was digital, it was easy to wire her into the soundboard and keep the output from her instrument from permeating the room and interfering with the drum mics. Of all the musicians in the room, she was having the most difficult time adapting to this method of playing. She had never recorded before and listening to the music coming through the headphones instead of just hearing it through the air was foreign and distracting to her. That was why they had started with Playing Those Games. Her part in the tune was minimal. She played the opening melody during the first verse and then had only a few fill parts once Jake came in with his guitar and the tempo picked up. The hope was this would help her get used to the process.

Celia was closed into the other isolation room. She would hear the output of all the other instruments in her headphones and sing the lyrics to the song into her microphone. Again, she was not being recorded currently, was just there to provide her part of the song and keep the rhythm section locked in.

Laura, with nothing to do, sat in the control room with the Nerdlys, Troy, and Alicia, listening to everything through her own headphones and thinking to herself how complicated this all was. It was certainly a bit more than just trooping into the studio and laying down the tunes.

The first thing the Nerdlys did was sound check every single microphone and instrument individually, starting with the ones that were being recorded. Ted hit every drum in his set multiple times, one by one and then in succession, following Sharon’s directions as he heard her voice in his ears. They then moved onto Ben and his bass, having him adjust volumes on his instrument itself, having Alicia adjust volumes and levels on his amp, while she herself adjusted things on the soundboard while staring at the computer screen with its lines, graphs and dots. Just to get Ted and Ben dialed in to where they wanted them took the better part of forty minutes to accomplish.

They were not so anal with the rest of the instruments, but they were the Nerdlys, after all, and musical imperfection, even if it was not being recorded, offended them. Getting Jake’s guitar, Cindy’s piano, and Celia’s voice output at levels that complemented each other, and, most importantly, did not override the output of the instruments that did matter, took another twenty minutes.

“All right,” Sharon said at last. “Looks like we’re copacetic. You guys want to run through the piece once to plug yourselves in before we get started?”

They did. Cindy started them out, playing out the melody at eighty beats per minute on the piano. No one else chimed in just yet. She went through it three times and then Celia began to sing, her voice soft, mournful as she went through the first verse. When she got to the hook line at the beginning of the chorus: I’m so tired of ... playing those games ... everyone jumped in at once. The beat came up to 120, pounded out by Ted and supported by Ben. Jake began to hammer out the primary riff with classic rock and roll distortion. Celia sang the second verse out with more strength, with more anger and emotion.

They had not originally planned to perform Games (as they called it) in this fashion. As Celia had originally composed it, it was to be a ballad, sticking to the piano as the primary melodic instrument and keeping the tempo at 80 throughout. Mary would have played a secondary melody while Jake would have done nothing but provide a few fills on the in-betweens. Slowly, however, as they rehearsed it up, they all came to realize that it just wasn’t working that way. It was an angry, heartfelt tune and the slow beat of it mixed with the mellow, almost orchestral melody of the instruments contrasted a little too much with the emotion.

It was Jake who suggested maybe stepping things up a bit. That had been during one of his session days after they’d worked on Can’t Keep Me Down, the hardest rocking tune in his current inventory, a tune that featured the very drop-D guitar he was using combined with Celia on her acoustic-electric to back him—the only tune he had, really, that even approached the Intemperance genre (though it was still quite a bit shy of that level). Down (as they called it) was an angry tune as well, one that Jake had written after they put KVA together. It was a declaration of liberation for him, a rant in three verses and a bridge stating, in no uncertain terms, that he was going to live life as he wanted to live it, control his own destiny, and not let anyone fuck him over—though he did not actually say this in those words. It was Celia’s comments about how his guitar work fit nicely with the emotion of the piece that turned on the little light bulb above Jake’s head.

“What if we played Games like that?” he suddenly asked her.

“Games?” she returned, giving him a look of confusion. “You mean with the distorted drop-D?”

“Why not?” he asked, already pondering what it would sound like in his head. “Throw out the piano, throw out the violin—sorry, Mom, sorry Cindy—and just hammer that melody out as a distorted rock and roll riff with some pounding drums and a solid bass line.”

“I don’t play rock and roll music, Jake,” she said.

“Is there a law that says you can’t?” he returned, liking the idea more and more by the second.

She thought it over for a moment, obviously still doubtful, but she was open minded. “We would have to go considerably up tempo.”

“Naturally,” Jake said. “Probably one twenty or so.” He fiddled with his guitar a little bit and then suddenly struck out the melody as a rock and roll riff. He went through it three or four times, each repetition getting a little stronger. “What do you think?” he asked, once he stopped.

“It’s uh ... really loud, Jake,” Mary told him.

“I’m not sure I care for that,” agreed Cindy.

Jake grinned at Celia. “The mothers hate it,” he said. “You know what that means, right?”

“What?” she asked.

“It’s means we’re on to something here.”

“Jake,” Mary said. “That’s not very nice.”

He ignored her. “What’s your first impression, C?” he asked her.

“It did sound angry,” she admitted, “just like what I’m trying to convey.”

“Let’s try it again,” he suggested. “This time, Ted and Ben need to hop in.”

“Jake, it’s your day,” Celia said. “We need to work on Highway next.”

“Screw whose day it is,” Jake scoffed. “We’re dealing with inspiration here.” He stood up from his chair. “Come and sit down. Sing into my mic.”

She did, reaching over and adjusting it to her level.

“All right,” Jake said. “Let’s try this thing. You down with this, boys?”

“Hell to the yeah,” Ted agreed.

“Where are we starting?” Ben asked.

“First verse and see how far we can take it,” Jake said. “I’ll start with the riff and you chime in after. Once we hit it a few times, you jump in, C.”

They did it, and it wasn’t spectacular that first time—in fact, it was kind of jangled and jarring. But it was enough to see that they really were onto something. To the chagrin of the mothers, they spent the next three hours working on it, playing with the riff a little here and there, and coming to the conclusion that the best way to intro the tune was to play out the first verse as originally intended, with Cindy on the piano and Mary laying down a sweet secondary melody atop it. And then, once that verse was done, they would kick into gear.

By this time, in the studio, while they were trying to actually lay down the tracks, they had fine-tuned and adjusted Games into what they all believed was going to be a tune that changed the public’s musical opinion of Celia quite drastically once it was given some airplay. It was going to give her some rock and roll street cred. Even the mothers had learned to like the beat of it and they tapped their feet along as they listened to Jake’s guitar and Celia’s angry verses in their headphones. The only one who didn’t really care for the song was Laura, but that was okay because there was no saxophone in it. And even she sometimes caught herself tapping along to the rhythm, though she would not admit this to anyone, anywhere, even under torture.

The tempo dropped down to ninety while Celia sang out the bridge. After that, it kicked back up again and Jake laid down a blistering guitar solo, the likes of which he had never composed before. He had no complex solos in his own tunes, knowing that trying to get too intricate would only serve to open him for negative comparisons to Matt Tisdale. As such, he had left solos completely out of most of his work and when they were there, such as in the outro to Down, he made them deliberately simple, as if to say: I know I’m no Tisdale, so I’m not even going to try.

On Celia’s tune, however, he let it all hang out. His fingers moved up and down the fretboard while he hammered on the strings with his pick. He showcased his virtuosity quite well and was more than a little proud of the composition, although he knew, without reservation, that he was still not up to Matt Tisdale level. He also knew that the comparison game would not matter much here. They had no intention of crediting Jake Kingsley as Celia’s guitar player when the album was released.

After the solo wound down there was one more verse and then the outro, which consisted of a few more repetitions of the riff combined with some complex drumming by Ted and then a final close out. In the groove, they managed to make it all the way through the song without anyone making anything more than a minor error.

If only they could do that in the actual recording process.

“Nice one, guys,” Sharon said from the control room. “Now ... is everyone ready to start laying some track?”

They were ready. It was time for the tedium to truly begin.

They managed to make it all the way through the first two verses of Games by lunchtime—a minor miracle. The catering service that Jake had hired for them then brought in their daily caloric intake. Today it was hamburgers, a pot of chili, and a large garden salad. Soft drinks and iced tea were included as well.

“Good fuckin’ grub,” exclaimed Ted as he worked on his second double cheeseburger and his third bowl of chili.”

“Only the best for our musicians,” Jake said, carefully keeping his eyes off of Ted so he wouldn’t have to ponder the juice running down his chin and onto his neck.

“You know what this reminds me of,” Ted said. “I was working over on the south side one shift and we got this call for...”

“Ted!” Jake said warningly, holding up his hand.

“What?”

“Not while we’re eating,” Jake reminded. “Remember Rule Number 3?”

“Oh ... oh, yeah, sure,” Ted said. “But this isn’t a gross story or anything, it’s actually kind of...”

“Gross is in the eye of the beholder, Ted,” Jake said. “Rule Number 3.”

“Rule Number 3,” Ted agreed sadly. He went back to eating.

After lunch, they got back to it. It was time to work on the bridge section of Games, the part just prior to the solo. They bogged down immediately and entered what seemed to be a hopeless purgatory of one or the other of the Nerdlys intoning: “Let’s just run that through again, from the top.”

Just after two o’clock, they took a break. Jake wandered over to the cafeteria area to get something cool to drink. There he found his sister and Stan, who had driven her here from the airport, sitting at one of the tables nibbling on some of the cheesecake they served.

“Hey, Paulie,” he greeted, going over to her and giving her a big hug.

“What’s up, little bro?” she returned. “How goes the session?”

“Like a stream eroding a rock,” he said with a shrug. “It’s the life we choose, huh?”

“I suppose so,” she said.

“How was the flight in?” he asked her.

“The flight from LA to Portland was fine,” she said. “That little puddle jumper they flew me in from Portland to here though, that was a bit disconcerting.”

“It was a Jetstream 31, wasn’t it?” Jake asked.

“How the fuck should I know?” she asked, then blushed. “Sorry, Stan.”

“I’m just the chauffeur,” Stan said with a smile.

“That’s a safe plane,” Jake said. “It’s more than three times the size of mine, and my plane doesn’t scare you.”

“That’s because I know you are flying it,” she said. “I trust you. You know who flies those little twin prop jobs, right? The guys who don’t have enough time in yet to fly the real planes.”

Jake gave her a sad, nostalgic smile.

“What?” she asked.

“You just reminded me of someone I used to know there for a minute,” he said. “Anyway, I’m glad you made it here alive. What’s up?”

“What’s up with what?” she asked.

“You said you had some business to discuss,” he reminded her.

“Oh ... that,” she said dismissively. “It’s nothing terribly important. I just wanted to come check up on how things are going out here, and I’ve got a few things to talk over with Obie about how the expenses are being tracked and handled.”

“Anything I need to be concerned with?”

She shook her head. “In truth,” she said, “I just needed to get out of LA for a few days. A little trip to the Oregon coast seemed like just the thing.”

“Fair enough,” Jake said. “How are things going with Veteran? I hear their song on the radio quite a bit.”

Veteran’s debut album had been released on the same day Jake and the others had entered Blake Studios. Their first song being promoted, Borrowed Time, was receiving heavy airplay all across the nation.

“Aristocrat is promoting the shit out of that album,” she said. “It’s selling like hotcakes. More than fifty thousand sold so far. The tour convoy has already left for Boston. Coop and the boys fly there on Sunday for their first tour date.”

This brought another nostalgic smile to Jake’s face. “I envy them,” he said, thinking of groupies and beer and pot and coke and endless fatigue and abraded genitals and, most of all, the unequaled thrill of playing live in front of thousands of people every night, of hearing those cheers.

She smiled. “I’m sure you do,” she said. “Don’t worry though. You’ll get to experience all that again at some point.”

“Not in the near future,” he said. The simple fact of the matter was that neither Jake nor Celia could afford to tour to promote their albums once they were released. They were already considerably over budget on production alone. Their albums would have to stand on their own.

“You never know what the future might bring,” she said.

“I suppose,” Jake said.

“Have you read the reviews for Veteran’s album?” Pauline asked next.

“I haven’t read anything but the back of a shampoo bottle while I sit on the toilet in a week,” he said.

“Uh ... I see,” she said. “Interesting share there. Anyway, Veteran’s album is loved by those reviewers who think New Kids On the Block are the next coming of Mozart, but universally derided by those publications that actually have musical knowledge, like Spinning Rock and Rolling Stone. They’re being called things like ‘cheesy, recycled pop rock’ and ‘formulistic drivel produced for the unwashed masses’.”

Jake nodded. “I wish I could say I disagreed,” he said.

Pauline simply shrugged. “Hey,” she said. “The unwashed masses have a lot of money in their pockets, apparently. As long as they keep buying those albums, me and the boys are going to rake it in.”

“And that’s what it’s all about, huh?” Jake asked, frowning.

Pauline patted his shoulder. “No,” she said. “That’s not what it’s all about, but that’s what a lot of it’s about, right?”

Jake had to concede that point.

Stan had been placed in charge of procuring groceries and other supplies for the household. Though he was not known for his cooking, several members of the group were, and they rotated daily cooking duty amongst themselves. Jake, Cindy, Ben, and, surprisingly, Ted, were all exceptional food preparers and whoever’s turn it was to cook that night would give Stan a list of ingredients to buy at the store for that evening’s prep.

On this night, it was Jake’s turn. He made chicken enchiladas, Spanish rice, and refried beans, lovingly constructing each enchilada by hand and then covering the two pans full with his homemade white sauce.

“Pretty good shit, bro,” Pauline complimented as they ate at the large formal dining room table at seven o’clock that evening.

“Thanks,” he said modestly. “It’s just something I threw together.”

After the dinner dishes were all cleared away and after the group teamed up to clean everything up—Rule Number 1 was that the house will be completely cleaned by bedtime, no exceptions, and everyone will help—everyone dispersed to do their own things until bedtime. Ted and Ben went to the entertainment room to shoot some pool. Pauline and Celia opened a bottle of wine and retreated to the balcony to drink it while discussing woman things. The Nerdlys settled in front of the computer to open up CompuServe and do whatever it was they did there. The elder Archers went up to their bedroom to watch television—or so they said. Jake went upstairs and changed into his bathing suit and covered himself with a robe. He then came downstairs, grabbed a bottle of beer, and headed out onto the balcony himself.

The balcony ran the length of the rear of the house, sitting atop the pilings that kept it level on the cliffside over the ocean. On one end, where Celia and Pauline were sitting, were a few outdoor tables and chairs and a gas powered barbeque grill. On the other end, where the best view of the ocean could be found, was a large, ten-person hot tub. Jake opened it up and released a cloud of chlorine scented steam into the damp air. He turned on the lights and the jets, dropped his robe on a chair next to the tub, then mounted the steps and climbed in.

“Ahhh, yeah,” he moaned, feeling the soothing, one hundred and two degree water caressing him. He settled himself all the way in, until only his head was sticking out, and enjoyed a few drinks of his beer. If only he could have a smoke to go along with it. Alas, since he would be singing soon, he did not want to damage his voice. He had not had so much as a single drag off a single cigarette in more than a week now.

He listened to the sounds of the jets and the fainter sounds of the ocean waves crashing below, letting his mind drift pleasantly, thinking of nothing in particular. After perhaps ten minutes of this, just as his beer was starting to approach critical emptiness, he heard the balcony door open up.

“Oh ... hey, Jake,” a female voice said, surprised.

It was Laura. He looked over his shoulder and saw she was wearing a robe of her own and had a glass of white wine in her hand.

“Hey, Laura,” he greeted. “Come to join me?”

“Uh ... well ... I didn’t know anyone else was out here,” she said doubtfully.

“I like to have a little soak at night,” he told her. “It relaxes the muscles, gets you unwound for sleep.”

“That’s uh ... kind of what I was thinking,” she said. “We have a hot tub at the apartment complex, but I never use it.”

“Yeah,” Jake said. “I’m not a big fan of public hot tubs either.” He waved to the other side. “Hop on in. The water’s fine.”

She seemed very hesitant to do this. “I ... uh ... I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t want to disturb you. I can just wait until you’re done.”

“You’re not disturbing me,” he assured her. “And I think there’s enough room to squeeze you in.”

“Well...”

“I don’t bite,” he assured her. “Especially not if you grab me another beer before you hop in?”

She hesitantly smiled. “Okay,” she said at last, setting her wine glass down. “I’ll be right back.”

She disappeared back into the house and was gone so long that Jake began to suspect she was not really coming back. Though she had warmed up to him considerably since they had first met—and he to her—she was still almost painfully shy at times. Getting into a hot tub with him was probably well outside of her comfort zone. After perhaps five minutes, however, the door opened again and she came out, cold bottle of beer in hand.

“Sorry I took so long,” she said. “I couldn’t find the beer opener.”

Jake raised his eyebrows a bit. “Wasn’t there one on the other end of the corkscrew you used to open that wine?” he asked.

A look of comical embarrassment formed on her face. “Well ... shit,” she said, shaking her head. “I guess that didn’t occur to me.”

Jake laughed. “Thanks for undergoing the search anyway,” he told her.

“No problem,” she said. “If you need one for the future—one that doesn’t have a corkscrew on the other end—it’s in the back of that little doodad drawer two below where the silverware is kept.”

“Noted,” Jake told her.

She handed the beer over and then took off her robe. Jake had been happily anticipating seeing her in her swimwear, hoping that she would be sporting a string bikini or something similar. Alas, she was wearing a staunchly conservative one piece that barely even revealed her cleavage. Not that she didn’t look appealing in it. On the contrary, he got a good look at the swell of her breasts—which were quite nice indeed—and the smoothness of her bare legs, which were nothing to scoff at either.

She noted his gaze upon her and blushed, quickly dropping her robe to the chair and nearly plunging into the water to hide herself. Waves went splashing back and forth from her entry.

“Nice dive,” Jake commented, holding his fresh beer up into the air to keep from getting water in it.

“Sorry,” she said. “I was starting to feel a little cold.”

Jake nodded as if he believed her and then settled back into the water.

They sat in silence for a few minutes, Laura sipping from her wine, Jake drinking from his beer and staring out over the ocean, where the light from a lighthouse could be seen rhythmically flashing out its signal. Just before the silence became uncomfortable, Laura finally broke it.

“This really does feel good,” she said. “I might have to make this a nightly routine.”

“I’ve had a hot tub everywhere I’ve lived since we signed our first contract and National Records put me up in a condo in LA. I never get tired of it.”

“No?”

“No,” he said. “Whenever I get tired, or sore, or depressed, or angry, I can always come out and soak for a bit, have a little something to drink, and I always walk away feeling better. It’s therapeutic, as Nerdly would say.”

“Hmm,” she said. “Something to put on the wish list, I guess. I can’t even afford to live in a house on what they pay me as a teacher, let alone buy a hot tub to go with it.”

“It is a travesty what they pay teachers,” Jake agreed. “You think you’re going to stay in that gig for the rest of your life?”

“It’s a steady job,” she said with a shrug. “I keep meaning to go back to school and get my masters so I can teach at a higher level—you know, at a JC or even one of the state colleges. The pay is better. I just can’t seem to find the time or the motivation.”

“Maybe after you’re married?” he asked, fishing a little.

She did not take the bait. “Maybe,” she said.

“Have you ever thought about playing music professionally?” he asked her next.

“Well ... of course I’ve thought about it,” she said. “I would love to be paid for playing my sax full time.”

“That’s kind of what you got going right now,” Jake reminded her.

“Well ... yeah, of course,” she said. “And I really appreciate what you are paying me to do it too. But this gig won’t last forever. I wouldn’t even know where to begin looking for a permanent gig.”

“I’ll tell you something,” Jake said. “You’ve got what it takes to be a studio musician at the very least. You play very well. And this gig you’ve got going for us will look really good on your resume when it’s all said and done.”

“You think so?” she asked, her tone telling him she did not believe that for a minute.

“I know so,” he said. “I understand our music is not quite your cup of tea, but you’ve risen to the occasion quite well—a few early bumps in the road aside—and being able to say you’re the saxophonist on Celia Valdez’s top ten album will impress the shit out of the guys who are looking for competent professional musicians to do sessions in the studios. Particularly if you use Celia, the Nerdlys, and me as your references.”

“But I like classical and jazz,” she reminded him. “If I was going to play professionally, that is what I would want to play. I can’t help but wonder if ... oh ... I don’t know. Never mind.”

“No no,” Jake said. “Finish your thought.”

She took a deep breath and another sip of her wine. She then looked at him. “It’s like this,” she said. “I’ve come to realize that you and Celia, despite being rock and pop musicians, really are good at what you do. You are professional musicians and I was wrong about you when I pre-judged you.”

“That’s nice of you to say,” he said. “But?”

“But I’m not sure I’m doing my reputation any good by being a part of this,” she said. “It’s still rock and pop. The people I would want to play professionally with are the same as I was. They hold your music in contempt. I think they would consider me a sellout for playing with you all.”

Jake laughed, shaking his head.

“What?” she asked.

“I think you’re making the mistake of viewing the entire world through your own prism,” he told her.

“What do you mean?”

“A professional level musician is a professional level musician,” he said. “That’s why I enlisted my mom to play with me. That’s why I enlisted Cindy. I knew they could rise to the occasion because they’re good at what they do, even if they don’t like heavy metal and hard rock music. They can and they do produce. Any talent scouts who would hire you for jazz or classical work, first of all, they probably don’t dislike rock music as much as you think they do—you’re just assuming that because that’s the way you think—but even if they did, that wouldn’t matter to them. They would just want to know that you can play and you can play well. Knowing that any professional recording artist thought enough of you to have you play on their album would be a tremendous boost to your marketability, regardless of what their personal opinion of that music might be.”

She shook her head a little. “I have a hard time believing that,” she said.

“That’s because you’re not in the business,” he said. “I’ve been in this game for nearly ten years now, Laura. I was a primary member of a group that sold tens of millions of albums and continues to sell them today. Our Greatest Hits album just hit the shelves and it’s already sold more than a hundred thousand copies. I have worked closely with the recording industry all of this time. I’ve fought with them, been in meetings with them, rolled around in the goddamn gutter with them on occasion, and I’ve beaten them at their own game. You may think I’m just a dumb rock star, but I know how this business works. I know it inside and out. I don’t give false flattery. When I say you have what it takes, I mean that. When I say that your association with me and Celia is going to do nothing but boost your career, I mean that too. It’s true. You can take that to the bank. The only question is whether or not you have the courage to follow through when the time comes.”

She was looking at him closely now, obviously wanting to be angry at his words, but with a certain amount of respect in her gaze as well. “Maybe I will,” she said at last.

“I will be disappointed in you if you don’t,” he said. “Follow your dreams. Take your chances. Use the weapons you’ve been given. Play all of the cards you’ve been dealt. That’s how you make it in this business. That’s what I’ve always done and look at me now. Out in the real world, I couldn’t get a job teaching, like you, because I don’t have a college degree. I can’t be a doctor or a lawyer like my dad and my sister, or an architect or an engineer. I might be able to get a gig driving a garbage truck, or maybe working on the docks unloading ships, but that’s probably about the best I could hope for.

“Instead, I live in a mansion overlooking LA. I have another mansion in New Zealand.” He brought his right shoulder out of the water and turned it toward her, tapping the red dot on his tattoo. “That’s it right there, as a matter of fact. Anyway, my point is that I followed my dreams and I used the talent that God or whoever gave to me and I’m a rich bastard now. Follow those dreams. It’s what we’re here on this planet to do, I think.”

She considered his words, nodding slowly. “You’re smarter than you seem,” she said, almost in wonder.

He chuckled. “I’ll take that as a compliment,” he told her.

“Oh ... I didn’t mean it like that,” she blurted. “What I meant was...”

“I know what you meant, hon,” he assured her. “No offense taken. Listen, I have an idea.”

“What’s that?”

“I noticed you brought a whole collection of CDs and a CD player with you. You like to listen to music at night before you go to bed?”

“I do,” she said. “I usually put a little something on and mellow out to it until I get sleepy. Why do you ask?”

“I do the same,” he said. “And I brought a good chunk of my CD collection as well. How about we have a little challenge?”

“What kind of challenge?”

“We’re going to be here in this town for months. How about a week by week challenge? Starting tonight, I give you a CD from my collection, something I think is a great example of the genre I enjoy—namely rock and roll. You listen to the CD every night and see if it grows on you at all, see if you can start to appreciate the musical quality of the album and the band. In turn, you give me something from your collection and I’ll do the same. Let’s see if we can enlighten each other.”

She made a sour face. “Are you going to give me heavy metal music?” she asked. “I’m not sure I can do that.”

“No heavy metal,” he assured her, “at least not at first. I think I have just the CD to start this out.”

“Hmm. And I can pick anything I want as well, and you have to listen to it?”

“That’s the challenge,” he said. “The goal, however, is not to bore me or make me disgusted or prove how musically unsophisticated I am. The goal is to find something that the other person will like. Do you understand?”

She nodded. “I do,” she said.

“And I’d stay away from the classical side for me,” he advised. “Remember, I grew up with a symphony musician for a mother. I already like classical just fine.”

Another look of surprise. “You do?”

“Strange but true,” he said. “Hit me with the jazz. I’ll listen and do my best to appreciate it. You do the same.”

Her smile widened. “Deal,” she said, holding out her dripping wet hand.

He took it in his and gave it a shake.

Later that night, they met at the bottom of the stairs, just before each headed off to their respective bedrooms. He held in his hands a copy of Journey’s eighth studio album: Frontiers, which, while not the best rock and roll album of all time (or even the best Journey album of all time), was something that he thought Laura might actually learn to like due to the blues progression guitar work of Neal Schon and the absolutely stunning vocals of Steve Perry.

“Interesting cover,” she said, looking at it.

“Never judge a CD by its cover,” he told her. “What do you have for me?”

She handed over a plastic case. He took it and looked at the cover. There was a mishmash of multicolored, seemingly senseless images arrayed across it. He did not judge it based on this. The title was Time Out, by something called the Dave Brubeck Quartet. Jake had never heard of it before.

“Hard core jazz?” he asked.

“It’s actually of the genre known as cool jazz,” she said. “A little lighter in tone than traditional jazz.”

“And you think I’ll like it?” he asked. “That was the challenge, remember?”

She nodded. “If this doesn’t grow on you,” she said, “I’ll be forced to question your very musicianship.”

“Fair enough,” he said.

“And this?” she asked, holding up Frontiers.

“I’ll give you permission to skip over the track Back Talk,” he said. “But other than that, the same deal. I really think it’ll grow on you.”

“All right then,” she said with a smile. “Let’s get to listening.”

They went to their respective rooms and they got to listening.

Celia and Jake came stumbling in after their run at 7:35 the next morning. Both were damp, partially from the sweat of their exertions, but mostly from the marine layer fog that had rolled in in the wee hours. They set their water bottles down next to the sink and greeted Cindy, who was dressed in her pajamas making a large pan full of scrambled eggs with potatoes and crumbled sausage in it.

“That smells wonderful, Cindy,” Celia told her. “Is there anything I can do to help?”

“You can wash your hands and start making some toast,” Cindy suggested.

“I’m on it,” Celia responding, using a phrase she had picked up from Jake.

“I’m gonna go hit the shower before everyone else has the same idea,” Jake said. As the maker of yesterday’s breakfast, he was exempt from having to help with this one.

While he disappeared upstairs, Celia washed her hands at the sink and then started popping slices of bread into the toaster four at a time. When they popped out, she replaced them with more and then, while waiting for that batch to toast, went about spreading butter on the first pieces. She kept this up until she had eighteen pieces of toast prepped and arranged on a large plate.

By that time, the others had begun to drift in, drawn by the smell of cooking and brewed coffee. Stan sat at the table and opened the Portland newspaper that he had arranged to have delivered every morning. Cindy rattled off a few groceries that would be needed for her dinner tonight—it was going to be beef Florentine with steamed broccoli—and he dutifully wrote them down. Ted and Ben came staggering in next, the former in a pair of tattered sweat pants and a Led Zepplin t-shirt, the latter already showered and dressed in his jeans and polo shirt. Laura followed soon after. She too was already dressed and ready for the day.

“You look a little tired, Ben,” Celia remarked to the bassist. He had visible bags under his eyes.

“Yeah,” Ben said sourly. “You try sleeping with a guy that snores loud enough to cause seismic readings to register.

“I told you,” Ted said, “I got the sleep apnea. I can’t help it.”

“I know,” Ben said. “That’s what kept me awake. As soon as I started getting used to the snoring, when my mind started thinking of it as white noise, you’d suddenly stop breathing and that would wake me up. A couple of times I thought you’d died.”

“It is a pretty bad disease,” Ted said, pride in his voice.

“Have you seen a doctor for this?” Celia asked him.

“Doctors don’t know shit,” Ted scoffed. “Ask any medic. A bunch of morons, all of them.”

“I guess that would be a no,” Laura said, pouring herself a glass of juice.

“How long is Pauline going to stay here?” Ben asked—her presence was, of course, the reason why he had to sleep with Ted.

“A couple of days,” Celia said. “Sorry. I wish there was another way.”

“Maybe you could say you’re gay and Laura will let you sleep with her,” Ted suggested.

“That could work,” Laura said brightly. “Of course, I’d have to see proof of gayness first. How about you make out with Ted there?”

Celia looked at the redheaded saxophonist and grinned. That dry wit again.

Pauline came in next. She was still wearing a pair of silk pajamas, her hair in disarray, her course directly toward the coffee pot.

“Good morning,” Celia greeted. “How did you sleep?”

“Not bad,” Pauline said, pouring herself a cup. “I did what Jake suggested and left the window open. It got cold in there but the sound of the ocean was so soothing.”

“Yeah,” Ben grunted. “Unlike other noises one might hear in the night.”

Pauline chose to ignore this. “How long until breakfast?” she asked. “It smells incredible.”

“About another five minutes or so,” Cindy said.

Pauline nodded. “I’ll grab my shower after we eat. I have a ten o’clock meeting with Obie down at the studio. Stan, will you be able to drive me?”

“Of course,” he said. “I’ll wait for you there and we can hit the grocery store on the way back.”

“Sounds good,” she said. “Where can I take a shower?”

Ben nodded over toward the guest bathroom in the hallway. “That’s the one Ted and I use,” he said.

“I need to hit that bad boy right after breakfast though,” Ted said. “If I don’t, we’ll be late for the session.”

“I can wait, I suppose,” Pauline said.

“Or you can use the shower in my room,” Celia suggested. “I’m gonna hit it right after we eat, but I’ll call down to you and you can hop in when I’m done.”

“Okay,” Pauline said. “Sounds good.”

“Oh, what’s up with that crap?” Ted demanded. “She gets to use the master shower? The walk-in glass job with the pulsating head and the self-contained heater?”

“Uh ... Ted,” Ben said. “She’s one of the owners of the record company we work for, and the manager of all of us, remember?”

“That’s right,” Laura said. “I believe she’s the one who makes sure that we actually get paid.”

“Oh ... yeah,” Ted said. He smiled at her. “Sorry. Shower wherever you want, boss lady.”

“Thank you, Ted,” she replied.

Jake came back down just as breakfast was being served. He was now dressed in a pair of jeans and a T-shirt he’d picked up at one of the local souvenir shops. It had a picture of a lighthouse on it and the name of the town emblazoned below it.

“So, what did you think of Frontiers?” Jake asked Laura as they sat down at the table.

“It wasn’t that bad,” she told him. “The vocalist has an amazing voice and the music itself, while not exactly my thing, was put together pretty well.”

“Remember,” Jake told her, “you have to listen to it every night for a week.”

“I understand,” she said.

“What are you two talking about?” Celia asked, curious.

“A little challenge that Laura and I have going with each other,” Jake said. “We’re each going to listen to a CD that the other picked out for a week and see if we can get into it. The goal is to find something the other person will like.”

“Interesting,” Celia said thoughtfully, not referring to the challenge itself, but the interaction between Laura and Jake. It seemed that some sort of bond was forming between them. Who would have thought? She was surprised to feel a sharp little dig of jealousy as she pondered this development. Where in the hell did that come from? she had to wonder.

“What CD did you give her?” asked Ted from around a mouthful of food.

“Frontiers, by Journey,” Jake said.

Ted nodded thoughtfully. “Not bad,” he said. “I would’ve gone with a little Steely Dan though. Maybe Can’t Buy a Thrill?”

Jake looked at the drummer respectfully. “I actually have that one on my list,” he said.

“That album is fuckin’ tight,” Ted said.

“Ted,” said Cindy, “can you please try to remember Rule Number 5?” Rule 5 was: Please try to restrain yourself from using expletives above the level of “shit” while in the presence of anyone’s parent. It was undoubtedly the most ignored rule of them all, and not just by Ted.

“Sorry, Mrs. A,” he said. “Sometimes they just slip out, you know?”

“Maybe we should get a swear jar,” Celia suggested.

“Naw,” Jake said. “Ted would end up owing us money by the time we were done with the albums.”

“What did you think of Time Out?” Laura asked Jake.

“Time Out?” Ted asked, happily. “You hit him with the Brewster, Laura? Goddamn! That’s going for the old jugular right there.”

“You’re familiar with Dave Brubeck?” Laura asked him.

“Hell to the yeah!” Ted said. “That is a sweet fuh ... uh ... freakin’ cut of vinyl there. I used to play that back in my session days just for the fun of it. The Brewster can lay down some serious cool.”

“Agree,” said Ben. “We used to play Take Five and Pick Up Sticks back when we were in the jazz band. Remember, Laura?”

“I remember,” she said. “It’s one of my favorite jazz albums. That’s why I gave it to Jake.” She looked at him. “So?”

“I liked it,” Jake said. “The music flowed quite nicely. The arrangement was well thought out and meshed together in a manner I hope to emulate. And the engineering, such as it was, was actually astonishing considering the live to tape studio technique it had to have been recorded under. I’m really looking forward to hearing it again tonight.”

“It’ll grow on you,” Laura told him with a smile. “I promise.”

“Things have a way of doing that,” Jake said, returning her smile with one of his own, a definite flirty tease in his eyes. He obviously meant that statement in more than the literal sense.

Laura picked up on this. Her blush was quite easy to see thanks to her fair skin. She did not look the least bit embarrassed, however. She actually giggled—the first time any of them had ever heard such as sound emit from her mouth.

Celia felt that little stab of jealousy again and forced herself to push it deep. What the hell? she thought again, mentally shaking her head at herself.

They ate their breakfasts and then went about the ritual of cleaning up. With nine of them pitching in, it didn’t take long. Celia then went upstairs to take her shower and get ready for the long, grinding day of retake after retake. She was hoping they would at least finish up Games today and move on to setting up for Struggle, which they planned to do next, but she knew her hopes were probably in vain.

As she soaped and rinsed herself under the spray in the oversized shower, she found herself pondering that little connection that seemed to be developing between Jake and Laura again. On the surface, it seemed like just friendliness, the formation of a bond between two musicians who were learning to respect each other. But was that all there was? The fact that the two of them had been in the hot tub together while she had been talking to Pauline the night before had not escaped her notice. What was that all about? And why was she even thinking about this? If there was some sort of quasi-romantic chemistry forming between those two, what business was it of hers? None, of course. She was a happily married woman. True, she had some feelings for Jake—always had since that night they’d played together in his house—but that was just simple affection and respect. It was nothing that should be causing twinges of jealousy in her. Right? Of course right!

And then she thought of Jake and the way he had looked when he had climbed into the hot tub last night, of him shirtless, his cute pompis in those swimming shorts. She felt a strong wave of sudden lust wash over her. She then thought about when he kissed her on that trail behind his father’s house, about how his arm had felt around her, about how his lips had felt touching hers. Without even realizing how it had happened, she found herself with her fingers between her legs, touching herself. Her nipples hardened and she began to rub them with her other hand, alternating from one to the other, twisting and turning them on a layer of slippery soap.

“Madre de Dios,” she muttered, her breathing suddenly heavier. “What am I doing?”

A dumb question, of course. The real question was: did she want to stop doing it?

She found that she did not. She closed her eyes and began to rub herself in earnest, her fingers making a V around her clitoris, pinching it and squeezing it, making herself feel good. In her mind, Jake was before her, his shirt off, his lips on hers. Her hands were his hands and they were touching her just the way she liked to be touched.

She began to pant and the orgasm exploded out of her in less than two minutes, making her see spots before her eyes, making her knees weak to the point that she almost fell down. As it faded slowly away, so did the images of Jake, leaving behind a vague feeling of shame at what she had been thinking about.

A harmless fantasy, she told herself when she finally stepped out of the shower and began to towel off. Everyone has them. It’s nothing that I would ever, in a million years, actually do. Right? Of course right. That was why they called them fantasies.

I wonder, she thought, as she dried the water from her skin, moving the towel with the mechanical precision of a daily routine, if Jake ever thinks of me when he’s in the shower and touching himself. The very thought of that was enough to send another shiver of lust through her.

“For God’s sake,” she said aloud, banishing the thought. It went with a considerable amount of reluctance. “I need Greg to come visit in a bad way.”

She tossed the wet towel into the hamper and then grabbed a dry one, which she wrapped around herself and secured. She then went to the door of the bedroom and cracked it open.

“Paulie!” she yelled down the stairs. “The shower’s free!”

“Okay,” Pauline’s voice came drifting up. “Be right there.”

She settled herself in behind the mirror and used yet another towel to start drying her hair. The door opened behind her and Pauline came in, a handful of clothes, towels, and toiletries in her arms.

“Thanks for letting me use your shower, C,” she said, closing the door again with her foot.

“No problem,” she replied.

“Are you okay?” Pauline suddenly asked her.

“Uh ... yes,” she said. “Why do you ask?”

“You look kind of flushed,” Pauline said.

Oops, Celia thought, embarrassed. “Uh ... it’s probably from the hot water,” she said. “I like my showers steamy.” She flushed again. That had certainly not come out as intended.

“Yeah,” Pauline said wistfully. “Nothing like a good steamy shower, all right.”

“That wasn’t really what I meant,” Celia said, her eyes looking everywhere but Pauline’s face.

Pauline chuckled. “I’m sure it wasn’t,” she said. “Guess I’d better climb in.”

The shower was around a broad partition wall from where Celia was working on her hair, so she did not actually see Pauline undress and climb in, but she heard it. She paid no attention, simply went back to toweling. When it was as dry as she could get it by towel alone, she picked up the blow dryer on the stand before her and turned it on. For the next four or five minutes, she blew hot air over her long hair, evaporating away as much of the water as she could. She then shut the machine off and set it down, picking up a brush. She would brush for a bit to smooth things out and then probably have to hit it with the dryer for a few more minutes. Guys really did have it easy when it came to hair maintenance.

As she brushed, she could hear that the shower was still running, but she heard something else as well. Pauline was singing as she showered. The talk of Journey’s Frontiers album must have inspired her, because the tune she was belting out was Send Her My Love, one of the ballads on the album.

Celia smiled as she heard this. Pauline actually had a pretty voice. That was unsurprising, really. She was Jake’s sister, after all, and shared the same genetics as he. Hadn’t Jake told her once that his dad had been known to belt out a tune or two in his time? And, though Mary didn’t sing, she certainly had the musical genes in her as well.

Pauline got to the bridge of the song, the part about how he was calling out her name and dreaming. She hit the notes pretty good, and her vocal range was actually quite suited for covering a Steve Perry production. She sounds like a soprano, Celia thought, as she started humming along with the tune herself. Wasn’t that funny? A soprano was exactly what she needed to accompany her on several of her tunes, yet they didn’t have one. And there was Pauline in there, singing out a Journey song in exactly the range that...

The brush suddenly came to a halt in her hand, mid-stroke. In exactly the range that I need!

“Madres de Dios!” she said, thoughts of naked Jake, of jealousy, of how she was going to rape Greg when he got here, of the sneaking suspicion that she had just been caught masturbating, all flowing right out of her consciousness. Pauline could sing!

She got up and nearly ran into the shower area. Pauline was behind the door, a pink blur of femininity seen through the steamy glass. She was still singing. Celia went to the shower door and ripped it open.

Pauline squealed in alarm, the song dying instantly on her lips. “Jesus Christ, Celia!” she barked at her once she identified her intruder. “What the fuck?”

“You can sing!” Celia said. “Madres de Dios, you can sing, Paulie!”

“What?”

“I heard you singing in the shower,” Celia said. “You’re a soprano!”

“I’m a what? What the fuck are you talking about?”

“Sing for me,” Celia said. “Sing ... oh... Magic Man, by Heart. Everyone knows that one, right?”

Pauline was astonished. “Celia, I’m standing naked in a shower and you want me to sing Magic Man? What the hell is going on?”

“Ann Wilson is a soprano and so are you,” she said. “Sing it for me. I want to hear how you do it.”

“I was just singing in the shower, C,” Pauline said. “I always do that. Was it bothering you? Is this some kind of weird Venezuelan ritual or something?”

“No,” she said. “Just do it. Please?”

Pauline sighed, the shower water still cascading down her naked body. “Can I at least close the door and rinse off while I do it?”

“Oh, sure,” Celia said. “Sorry to burst in on you like that, but inspiration needs to be followed immediately.”

“What inspiration?”

“I’ll tell you in a few minutes,” Celia said, stepping back and closing the shower door. “Now sing.”

Pauline sang. It was uninspired and forced.

“No!” Celia cried at her. “Sing it with soul! Sing it like you fucking mean it!”

Pauline started over, intoning about that cold late night, so long ago, when she was not so strong, you know. This time it was better. By the time she got to the first chorus, she was really into it. Her voice was not going to knock Ann Wilson off the map, that was for sure, but it was pretty and she could carry a tune. How insane was the idea she was having?

“That’s beautiful, Paulie!” Celia encouraged. “You can sing!”

“Well, in the shower anyway,” Pauline said. “I’m about done in here. Can I come out now?”

“Yes,” Celia told her. “Please do.”

The water shut off and Pauline stepped out, grabbing the towel from the rack. She looked at Celia, who was still standing there—in nothing but a towel. “Uh ... is this like a lesbian thing?” she asked. “Because if it is, I’ve never done anything like that before, though, to tell you the truth, I have thought about it on a few...”

“No,” Celia said, chuckling. “It’s not a lesbian thing. I heard you singing in there and realized you were a soprano and I...”

“Celia, I don’t know what the hell a soprano even is, other than it has something to do with opera, right?”

“It’s the highest of the female singing voices,” Celia explained. “Between middle C and high C, loosely.”

“I don’t know what that means either,” Pauline said, exasperated.

“I’m a contralto. My range is lower in pitch than yours. A soprano complements a contralto quite nicely in duets, and vice versa. I need a soprano to double with me on several of my tracks, and here you are!”

Pauline nearly dropped her towel. “You’re saying you want me to sing with you?” she asked. “On the album?”

“That is exactly what I’m saying,” Celia said. “Tell me you’ll do it!”

“C, I’m not a singer,” she said. “All I know about putting voice on musical tracks is that it’s much more complicated than it appears. I sing in the shower. I sing in my car. I sing while I’m doing housework. I do all this for the sheer enjoyment of singing, but I do not sing into microphones.”

“We can work with you,” Celia promised. “Jake and I both can teach you what you need to know. You can do this, Pauline! I know you can!”

She looked at her and took a deep breath. “Well, can we maybe run this by Jake? See what he has to say about it?”

“Absolutely,” she said. “Let’s do it right now.”

“Okay,” Pauline said, slowly. “But maybe we should get dressed first?”

“Oh...” Celia said, realizing that she was still in a towel and that Pauline was still buck naked. “I guess maybe that would be a good idea.”

“Is this some kind of a joke?” Jake asked when they told him the idea fifteen minutes later.

“No joke,” Celia said. “She has a pretty soprano voice. Haven’t you heard it before?”

“Well ... sure,” Jake said. “I used to hear her singing in the shower all the time when we were growing up, as I’m sure she used to hear me, but...”

“Why didn’t you tell me about it?” Celia demanded. “We’ve been looking for a soprano all this time and you didn’t tell me your goddamn sister was one?”

“She’s not a singer,” Jake said, exasperated at her anger. “She has a good voice, that is true, but she has no vocal training whatsoever.”

“I tried telling her that,” Pauline said.

“We can train her,” Celia insisted. She turned to Pauline. “Sing for us, Paulie!” she barked. “Do ... oh, Dancing Queen this time. That’s a soprano piece.”

“Celia, really...” Pauline said.

“Dancing Queen?” said Ted, who was sitting on the couch near them. “That’s some cheesy-ass shit right there, isn’t it?”

“Shut up, Ted,” Celia barked. “Sing, Paulie. Fucking sing!”

“Hey,” said Ted with a chuckle. “Remember Rule Number 5.”

Pauline sighed and began to sing, obviously acutely embarrassed about it, but she put some soul into it. They listened to her intone through the first two verses and choruses. It wasn’t bad, Jake had to agree with that, but it was far from professional.

“You see?” Celia said, patting Pauline on the shoulder affectionately.

“I see,” Jake said with a nod. He turned to his sister. “Paulie, what key is Dancing Queen played in?”

Pauline shook her head. “I have no idea,” she said.

“Uh huh,” Jake said. “And if I told you it was in the key of A major, would that mean anything to you?”

She shook her head again. “Not a goddamn thing,” she admitted.

“Jake...” Celia started.

“Hold on,” Jake interrupted. He turned back to his sister. “And if I told you that you were singing that song in the wrong key, that you, in fact, moved between several different keys while singing it, would you know how to correct that problem?”

“No,” Pauline said. “I don’t even know what a key is.”

Celia rolled her eyes. “The key is the scale of notes that the...”

“It doesn’t matter!” Pauline barked at her. “I don’t know what the scale is either. I know what notes are, at least I think I do, but that’s as far as it goes. I’m not a musician, Celia. I don’t think I can do this. I’m sorry.”

“I think you can,” Celia insisted. “I know you can. Let Jake and I work with you a bit and we’ll get you singing like a pro.”

“Celia, really, I...”

“I need you, Paulie,” Celia insisted. “I really need you. If it doesn’t work out then it doesn’t work out, but can you at least try? For me?”

Pauline sighed. “All right,” she said. “I’ll try.”

Celia smiled. She then turned to Jake. “And you,” she said. “Will you help me work with her? Will you help shape that voice and give her enough training so we can pull this off?”

Jake gave a sigh of his own. “For you?” he asked.

“For me,” she confirmed.

He nodded his head. “I’ll give it a shot,” he said. He turned to Pauline. “It’ll actually be kind of fun to get to boss you around for once.”

Pauline pointed her finger at him. “You boss me around and I fuckin’ walk!” she threatened.

“Hey now,” Ted said from the couch. “That’s another Rule 5 violation there.”