Snowblind

Chapter 1: Confession

Coos Bay, Oregon

June 28, 1994

Dinner this Thursday evening was taco salad, prepared by Jim and Marcie—or at least it was the Scanlon family version of taco salad. A bowl of ground turkey meat spiced with taco seasoning. A large salad bowl filled with chopped iceberg and romaine lettuce in which garbanzo beans, kidney beans, chopped green chilis, and shredded cheddar cheese had been added. Three family sized bags of Doritos nacho cheese chips. Last, but certainly not least, bowls containing freshly made guacamole, sour cream, and chipotle salsa. The idea was to take a plate, crunch up some of the nacho cheese chips across the bottom of it, put a healthy serving of salad atop this, put a healthy serving of the meat atop that, and then add in some guac, some sour cream, some salsa, and mix the entire concoction up before eating it.

It was absolutely delicious. Jake himself had two large helpings. Laura, who sat beside him at the large family dining room table in the rental house, had three small helpings.

“That was incredible, Marcie,” Jake told the thirty-two-year-old mother who had been the primary engineer of the meal. “I had my doubts when you first told me what you were making, but it was delicious.”

“And filling,” added Laura, who had just had to restrain herself from belching at the table.

“Yes,” said Sharon, who was rubbing her belly, which was now noticeably swollen with her second trimester pregnancy. “My little passenger certainly appreciated it. He’s kicking up a storm in there.”

“It is unlikely that it is genuine fetal motion you are perceiving,” Nerdly told her.

“It’s the baby,” Sharon insisted. “I know it is.”

“You are only eighteen weeks and five days gestation currently,” Nerdly said. “Statistically, primigravida women such as yourself do not begin to feel actual fetal movement until well into the twenty-third or twenty-fourth week. It is most likely gas or some other form of hormonal-related gastrointestinal upset you are experiencing.”

“Seriously, Nerdly?” asked Stephanie Zool, who was sitting just to the right of Sharon. “She tells you that she feels the baby moving and you go all scientific on her?”

“My statistics are valid,” Nerdly told her. “Why would I not point out the fallacy of her perception?”

“Because she says it’s your baby kicking her and that makes her happy,” Steph said. “You shouldn’t be pissing on her perception; you should be encouraging it.”

“But that would be dishonest,” Nerdly said, genuinely confused by her words.

“It’s okay, Steph,” Sharon said with a smile. “Bill is Bill and his honesty in spouting off such things is part of why I love him. I knew what I was getting myself into when I agreed to marry him.”

“That’s sweet,” said Jenny White, Jeremy the bass player’s wife. She was a chubby little woman with auburn hair and large breasts. Pleasant natured and a born nurturer, she was in charge of the pack of children that had invaded the house, part of the baggage brought by their parents. For this task, KVA Records was paying her four hundred and fifty dollars a week, a bit more than she had been making selling appliances at the Providence Sears store.

“Besides,” Sharon said. “I still know it’s the baby kicking me.”

“My old lady told me she felt the baby kicking well before the second trimester started,” said Rick Jackson, who, at forty years of age, was the oldest member of Brainwash. “And she’s a nurse, so she should know what she’s talking about.”

“Having an education in a medical science does not necessarily qualify one to judge whether a perceived sensation in one’s own body is factual or not,” Nerdly told him. “What is required is empirical and repeatable evidence that suggests the hypothesis is correct.”

“Uh ... yeah,” said Rick, a puzzled look on his face. “I suppose that makes sense.”

“I will always remember the first time I felt little Meghan kicking,” said Marcie. “I was in bed, at night, and Jim and I had just finished ... you know?”

“Finished what?” asked Nerdly.

“Uh ... practicing up for when it was time to make little Alex,” Jim said.

“Oh, I see,” said Nerdly. “You had just engaged in legally sanctioned sexual relations.”

“Uh ... yeah,” Marcie said. “A good way of putting it. Anyway, we were laying there and I was drifting off to sleep, and then I felt this fluttering inside of me. It would start and then stop, start and then stop. It was subtle, but it was definitely Meghan getting a workout in.”

“Exactly!” Sharon said triumphantly. “That is what I’m feeling right now. A fluttering in my uterus. And it started right after I finished eating.”

“How far along were you when this phenomenon occurred, Marcie?” Nerdly asked her.

“I was just starting the second trimester,” she said. “I remember because it was right after that surge of hormones hit that made me ... you know ... want to have those legally sanctioned relations all the time.”

“Yes, of course,” Nerdly said. “Sharon is in the midst of that phase right now. She calls upon me to engage in intercourse with her at least once a night of late.”

“Bill,” Sharon hissed at him. “You don’t have to tell them that.”

“It’s true though,” he said. “And quite an interesting biological response as well. I mean, when you think about it, the surge of hormones that triggers increased sexual desire actually serves no purpose since the female in question is already pregnant. What is the point of it?”

“Some things,” Jake suggested, “you should just not question or seek a point to. Having your wife suddenly want to...” He looked over at the children’s table that sat near the doorway to the kitchen. Meghan and Alex, the Scanlon children, were sitting with Jeffrey and Jessica, the White children. The two older children seemed to be monitoring the conversation. He chose his words carefully. “ ... to, uh ... engage in that sort of activity more than the usual amount would be one of those things, wouldn’t you say?”

“Perhaps,” Nerdly agreed. “In any case, I have to assume, Marcie, that the sensation you are describing was probably not the fetal Meghan since it would have been too early in the pregnancy. You were probably just feeling post-orgasmic tremors in your uterus.”

“That’s assuming that there was an orgasm to trigger such a post-orgasmic event,” Stephanie said with a smile.

“Hey now,” said Jim. “Just because I’m a hetero doesn’t mean I can’t ring the bell.”

“What bell were you ringing, Daddy?” asked Meghan from the kids’ table. “Do you still have it?”

“He still has it,” Marcie said as the adults all laughed at Meghan’s words.

“Can we play with the bell?” asked Alex.

“Unfortunately, no,” Jim said. “When you’re older though... much older ... you’ll find your own bell to play with.”

Alex and Meghan declared this to be unfair, but Jenny was able to distract them by telling them it was time to start the cleanup. Rule Number 1 was still in effect in the house and everyone, even the children, were expected to do their part to keep it from being violated. The four kids started with their own plates, carrying them over to dump them in the garbage before carrying them to the sink and depositing them inside. They then went about the task of cleaning their table off with wet disinfectant wipes from a box that sat on the counter.

Jake and Laura’s job tonight was helping to rinse the dishes and put them into the dishwasher. Before they could start doing that, however, there was a problem with the garbage can. It was full and needed to be taken out.

“I’ll do it,” said Jim.

“No no, sit down,” Jake told him. “You helped cook the dinner. You don’t have any cleaning duties.”

“All I did was open cans and boxes and bags,” Jim said. “Marcie did all the actual cooking.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Jake said. “Go sit your ass down. I’ll take out the garbage.”

“You said ‘ass’!” Jessica shouted out delightfully. “Put a quarter in the swear jar!”

“Shit,” Jake muttered, reaching into his pocket, where he had taken to carrying a roll of quarters with him. They now officially had a swear jar. Jenny had set it up after hearing the typical conversations that took place among the musicians and witnessing their inability to restrain themselves when the children were present. The going rate was a quarter per swear for typical profane utterings, a dollar when the F-bomb was dropped. There was at least five dollars worth of quarters and perhaps ten in folding currency in that jar from Jake alone.

“Two quarters!” Alex said with glee. “You said ‘shit’ too!”

“Two quarters, going in,” Jake said, pulling them out of his pocket and dropping them in.

“You know, Jake,” said Jenny, her mother’s gaze of disapproval upon him, “the idea of the swear jar is not to collect money for investment purposes, but to dissuade profanity.”

“Really?” he said with a smile. “Now you tell me.”

“Can I just drop a ten-dollar bill in there at the beginning of each week and talk like normal?” asked Steph, who had dropped at least as much currency into the jar as Jake.

“You may not,” Jenny said sternly.

“Well, that sucks butt,” Steph told her, just barely keeping on the right side of the swear line with that one.

Jake chuckled once more and then grabbed hold of the black Hefty garbage bag inside of the trash can. He pulled it out, struggling a little and having to brace the can with his feet, but it finally came free. He twisted it closed and then walked through the kitchen to the side door that led outside.

It was only six days past the summer solstice and, as such, the sun was still well above the western horizon even though it was past seven o’clock. The sky was cloudless and a brilliant blue. A slight onshore breeze was blowing and the sounds of waves crashing to shore at the base of their cliff could be heard.

Jake carried the bag of refuse over to the plastic can that had been issued to the house by the County of Coos for weekly garbage collection. He opened the lid and dropped it inside. He shut the lid again and then walked over to the driveway where he stood facing the ocean. He stood there for a moment, enjoying the breeze on his face, the smell of the salt, the sound of the waves, the relative serenity of the environment outside of the house.

Brainwash and families had been living in the house with Jake, Laura, and the Nerdlys for a week now. It was an interesting experience, to say the least. Having children around was definitely a change in the usual dynamic of communal living. One had to watch what one said these days or risk having to feed the swear jar. One stepped on toys in the hallway. One walked across scattered beach sand in the entryways. One had to listen to complaints that there wasn’t anything to eat around here. One had to wait one’s turn to use the bathroom, especially if one wanted to use one of the downstairs ones. The Scanlon and the White children were starting to grow a little on Jake—they were all reasonably well-mannered and engaging—but he was always the first to volunteer to take out the garbage, or make a run to the store, or anything else that let him step out into the quiet and calm of the outside for a few minutes.

So far, Project Brainwash was on time and only slightly over budget. KVA had flown the entire bunch of musicians and family members from Boston to Los Angeles on June 7^th, put them all up in the Hilton Hotel in Santa Clarita, and provided them with rental cars (including a rental minivan for Jenny to drive the children around in). There, the band, the Nerdlys, and Jake had spent two and a half weeks working eight-hour days in the KVA rehearsal studio, picking out the fifteen songs they were going to work up, and then culling that down to the ten that would appear on the album.

This turned out to a little more difficult of a task than Jake had been anticipating. It was not because Brainwash had to struggle to find suitable tunes to work-up, it was because they had too many to choose from.

“How many songs to you have in your repertoire?” Jake asked them on one of the first days, after listening to them name off several dozen possible pieces to work on.

“Sixty-eight that we have composed and worked-up enough over the years to be played live in front of an audience,” Jim told him.

“Sixty-eight?” Jake asked incredulously. “You mean ... like ... ten times six, plus eight? That kind of sixty-eight?”

“That’s right,” Steph said. “Of course, at least twenty or thirty of those we haven’t done in a few years. I’m thinking we should stick with our classics and the newer stuff.”

“That’s incredible,” Jake said. “And they’re all as good as what we’ve been hearing from you?”

Marcie laughed. “That statement is open to debate,” she said. “I, myself, have more than a handful that I’m not particularly proud of these days.”

“Yeah, me too,” said Steph.

“Not me,” said Jim. “All my tunes are freakin’ masterpieces.”

“Oh really?” Marcie challenged. “Even Lock and Load?”

“What’s wrong with Lock and Load?” Jim asked with a smile that implied he knew exactly why Marcie objected to it.

“You know very well that Steph and I both hate that song,” Marcie said. She turned to Jake. “He wrote it back when he was playing with Courage. It’s a misogynistic rant about bagging groupies and then leaving them behind.”

“It’s a realistic portrayal of the life of a traveling musician,” Jim insisted. “I’m sure Jake can relate.”

“Groupies?” Jake asked. “You mean those mythical women of loose morals who come backstage after the show hoping to engage in meaningless fornication with a band member?”

“Mythical?” Steph asked, raising her eyebrows.

“Yeah, mythical,” Jake said. “I personally don’t think they really exist.”

Those were still the early days and it took a few moments for them to realize he was joking—and that he was also changing the subject.

“In any case,” Jake told them. “Having sixty-eight songs to choose from is incredible. You must’ve been very prolific writers and composers.”

“Yeah,” Marcie agreed. “There is a chemistry between us that makes it easy for us to work up a new song.”

“True that,” Steph agreed. “We’ve been playing together almost ten years now.”

And so the first few days had mostly been composed of Brainwash going through a good chunk of their repertoire, song by song, so Jake and the Nerdlys could help them pick out the very best. And while Marcie and Steph had been right—there were quite a few clinkers in the inventory—most of the songs were impressive pieces that, with a little work, would sound amazing on a CD.

“I think we’ve associated ourselves with a goddamn gold mine,” Jake told Pauline one day during the weekly business meeting. “They have sixty-eight songs in their inventory, at least forty of which are recording quality in composition and lyrics. We pull off this first album with them and there are at least four more that can be done even if they never write another song from this point forward.”

“That’s good to know,” Pauline said. “But let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves. How about we just concentrate on making this first Brainwash album everything it can be.”

“That’s the plan, sis,” he assured her. “That’s the plan.”

In the end they settled on sixteen of the very best Brainwash originals to work up. After another week in the studio rehearsing those sixteen over and over until everyone was sick of them, it was time to head north and get to work.

That had been a week ago. They’d made the move to Coos Bay on the 21^st of June. Nerdly and Sharon drove their new car—it was a 1993 Honda Civic, which had replaced their 1985 Honda Civic—up there while Jim and Marcie drove Jake’s Beemer up. Steph, Rick, Jeremy, and Jenny, along with the four children, were all flown from Van Nuys to North Bend on a private jet paid for by KVA. And Jake and Laura made the trip in Jake’s plane, heading out the day before so they would be there first.

Since then, everyone had pretty much settled in. Jake and Laura were staying in the master suite up on the third floor. Bill and Sharon were in the secondary suite on the second. Jim and Marcie were in the smaller bedroom with its own bath, while Steph was staying in the tiny, bathless room at the end of the second-floor hall. All of the children were installed in the bunk-bed room where Ted and Ben used to sleep. Jeremy and Jenny were in the small room just next to the bunk room. Rick, the drummer, was given the tiny room just off the kitchen, though if and when his wife and children came to visit, Jake planned to give him the master suite for the visit and he and Laura would move in with Obie and Pauline until the visit was over.

As far as the recording process went, they were only just beginning. So far, Brainwash had spent five full days in the Blake Studios building under the direction of the Nerdlys. Not much had been accomplished as of yet. The first day had been almost entirely taken up with just setting up the instruments and getting the basic sound arrangements dialed in. The second through fifth days had been occupied with just getting the order of operations set and starting on the rhythm tracks for the first song: Look at Me, Jim’s declaration that he was somebody. The band from Providence was quite unaccustomed to the glacial pace that was being set.

“It’ll get a little faster,” Jake promised them just before dinner this very evening, when Jim and Marcie had asked him if he really thought they were going to be done before school started up again in September. “As you and the Nerdlys—or, as we affectionately call them during this process: The Spawns of Satan—get to know each other a little better, as you start to see how they like things done and they start to see how you respond to direction, and as I start hounding their asses about not being so freaking anal about everything, the pace will pick up. One way or another, we’ll be done by the end of the summer break. We have to be. That’s all the studio time we have.”

“I suppose,” Marcie said, “but I have to ask. Is it really that important that the bass tracks and the drums are exactly perfect for each bar? I mean, I usually can’t hear any difference between one take and the next, especially when they’re complaining about the timing.”

“I know it seems like you’re in hell right now,” Jake assured her, “and you are, make no mistake about that, but know that it really is for a higher purpose. When you hear your master CD for the first time, you’re going to understand why we do things this way.”

“If you say so,” Marcie said.

“I say so,” Jake assured her.

Jake took one last breath of the fresh sea air. His moment of serenity thanks to garbage disposal was now at an end. He turned and headed back in to finish the cleanup.

The time immediately after dinner cleanup was leisure time in the house—as long as one did not wish to go out into the hot tub out on the deck. Though there had been no official announcement of the policy, and no one had proposed a new rule, it had somehow been written in stone that the after dinner cleanup period was when the children got to invade the hot tub. All four of them were out there now, with Jenny and Marcie supervising as they splashed and yelled and bordered on disturbing the peace.

“You sure you two know what you’re getting yourself into with this whole having a child thing?” Jim asked the Nerdlys as a particularly loud screech penetrated through the closed sliding glass door.

Jim was sitting on the couch next to Jake and Laura. Stephanie and the Nerdlys were sitting in the easy chairs. All except Mrs. Nerdly were sipping from a bottle of chilled white wine that Jake had opened. On the television, the news was playing. The lead story of the night was, as always, about OJ Simpson, who had, just eleven days ago, been charged with the murder of his wife and taken into custody after a nationally televised slow-speed chase across LA.

“We’re kind of committed to the project at this point,” said Sharon, giving her protruding belly a little rub.

“Precisely,” said Nerdly. “Although I will say that had I been exposed to the sheer noise and off-key manor of multiple children, the discussion whether or not to attempt reproduction might have gone differently.”

“Kids are noisy and a general pain in the ass,” Jim said, “but they’re worth every miserable second.”

“I love listening to them talk to each other,” Jake said. “They’re very amusing. Even if they do take over the goddamn hot tub every night.”

“I’m sorry, Jake,” Jim said apologetically. “I didn’t know it was inconveniencing you. I’ll tell Marcie and Jenny to not let them...”

“No,” Jake interrupted. “You just let this be their time out there. They’re having a blast. And I notice the nightly soak and scream seems to tire them out for bedtime.”

“Well ... yes, it does do that,” Jim said. “But I don’t want to kick you out of your own hot tub every night. We’re the guests here. We should be working around your schedule.”

“Bullshit,” Jake said.

“A quarter in the swear jar,” Laura said with a smile.

“That’s only when the kids can hear it,” Jake countered. “That’s the unwritten rule.”

“I suppose,” she said with a sigh, patting his leg affectionately.

“Anyway,” Jake said, “you’re not the guests here. You’re the talent. You are the reason we are all here. Stop thinking of yourselves as a burden. You’re here to get your music heard and make us all some money. Those kids can play all they want in that hot tub and scream as loud as they want. They’re part of the package, okay?”

“Okay,” Jim said. “Thanks, Jake.”

“Besides,” Jake said. “It’s doing Laura and I some good to have this kind of exposure to little ones. We might be wanting to have some of our own at some point.”

“Right,” Laura said. “We should know what we’re getting ourselves into.”

“I still can’t get over how beautiful that ring of yours is, Laura,” said Steph. “Was his proposal a romantic one?”

“Oh ... yes, very romantic,” Laura said, giving the ring in question a little twirl with the fingers of her right hand. “It was right out there in the hot tub, as a matter of fact.”

“Out there?” Jim said. “On the deck of this house?”

“That’s right,” Laura said. “This house is where Jake and I first got together, where we fell in love. And that hot tub is where we had our first kiss.”

“Awww,” Steph crooned. “That is romantic.”

“He asked me right at sunset,” Laura said. “Just as the sun dipped into the water out there on the horizon.”

“That is so sweet,” Steph said. “And you said yes right away?”

“Uh ... well ... he kind of caught me off guard,” Laura said. “I honestly hadn’t been expecting him to ask me to marry him. I was really just blown away at first.”

“And we had a few things to talk over first,” Jake said with a dismissive shrug. “Logistics and stuff like that. You know how logical and structured women can be.”

“Uh ... right,” Steph said, raising her eyebrows a bit.

“She did say yes though ... eventually,” Jake said.

“That’s right,” Laura said, holding up her ring for everyone to see. “We’re planning a destination wedding. Hopefully around Christmas. Celia will be off-tour then.”

“Celia Valdez?” Jim asked. As of yet, none of the members of Brainwash had met her, though she was one of their bosses.

“That’s right,” Laura said. “She’s the reason that Jake and I met in the first place. And she’s been a really good friend and mentor to me ever since. She’s going to be my maid of honor.”

“That’s really cool,” Jim said, seemingly in awe that he was talking to someone who was going to have Celia Valdez as her maid of honor. The band was still trying to get used to the fact that they were actually living with and working for celebrities.

The subject of Jake’s proposal and the upcoming wedding passed on by as the musicians began talking about music and the making of it once again. Jake was grateful. Whenever the issue of his proposal and how Laura had answered him that fateful night came up, it always made him feel a little awkward. Not because what she had told him had been shocking—though it had been—and not because he was ashamed of or upset with what Laura had done—he was not—but because attempting to explain the issue to anyone was simply out of the question. It was a very private thing, something that no one who was not directly involved needed to know about. Laura had told him that Celia knew her secret (which meant a better-than-even chance that Greg knew as well), and Jake now knew, and, of course, Bobby Z and his band and a few of the roadies and security guys knew, but aside from that, Laura’s experimentation with alternate sexual practices (as Nerdly would have termed it, had he known about them) was being kept well under wraps.

Which was not to say that Jake didn’t think about what she had told him, what she had described to him, endlessly.

He was thinking about that conversation now, in fact, as Jim and Steph took turns narrating their story of the first gig that Brainwash had ever played.

“I want to say yes, Jake,” she had told him that night after he proposed. “I really do. I love you and I’d love to be your wife. Oh my God ... I can’t believe this is happening!”

“Uh ... I’m not sure here,” Jake said. “Did you just say yes?”

She sighed. “I didn’t,” she said. “I said I want to say yes.”

“But ... but you can’t?”

“Oh wow,” she said, shaking her head a little. “Before I answer you ... well ... there’s something I need to tell you first.”

“What is it?” he asked. This had definitely become a bit awkward.

“Well, it’s about something that I ... that I did out on tour. It might change the way you feel about me.”

“Something you did out on tour?” What the hell are we talking about here?

“I should have told you a long time ago, but I didn’t know you were going to propose to me. Oh my God, what a mess!”

“What is it, hon?” he asked. “What did you do?”

“I ... I ... well ... it’s complicated,” she said, her face now looking miserable, as if she were about to start crying.

“Complicated,” Jake repeated slowly. “Are you trying to tell me that you ... were ... uh ... unfaithful to me out on the road?” Like I have any place judging her for that, his mind reminded him.

“No!” she barked immediately. “I wasn’t unfaithful. I didn’t cheat on you ... well ... not in the strict sense of the word anyway.”

“That’s not exactly a clear and concise answer,” Jake told her.

“No,” she said with a sigh. “It really isn’t. This is kind of hard to spit out, Jake.”

“So it seems. How about you just start at the beginning and tell me what’s going on?”

She nodded. “All right,” she said. “Here goes. I was really ... you know ... lonely out on the road. Lonely and sexually frustrated. I really missed having sex with you, Jake. I missed it a lot.”

“Yeah,” Jake said. “I was in the same boat back here, remember?” Except for that one night in Portland, that overly-helpful part of his mind reminded him.

“I know you were,” she said. “And I’m not trying to justify anything ... not really anyway. I’m just trying to give you an idea of my state of mind. I was horny all the time. I got into ... you know ... pleasuring myself as kind of a release valve, but even that didn’t seem to relieve the pressure after a while. You can only ... uh ... paddle the pink canoe so much, right?”

“Paddle the pink canoe?” Jake asked, grinning. “I’ve never heard it called that before.”

“That was Celia’s term for it,” Laura said. “She had a few others too.”

“Celia?” Jake asked. “What does she have to do with this?”

“I told her about ... about what I’m about to tell you,” she said. “It was that night we went shopping together and got drunk, remember?”

“I remember,” Jake said instantly. The same night that Greg reported Celia developing a sudden interest in... Holy shit! What are we talking about here?

“I needed to talk to someone about this, Jake. The guilt and the shame were getting to me. And Celia was there, and she listened to me, gave me good advice even ... like the advice that I should tell you what I’m about to tell you.”

“Okay,” Jake said. “You certainly have my attention now. You were horny and paddling the pink canoe was no longer doing it for you. Then what?”

“Well ... as the horniness grew, I began to have some ... well ... some impure thoughts about Squiggle.”

“Squiggle?” Jake said, his brow furrowing a bit. “You mean the trombone player?”

“Yeah,” she said. “There was a little bit of chemistry between us, I won’t deny that. And Squiggle let it be known ... you know ... that if I wanted to do anything with him ... he would be up for it.”

“He hit on you?” Jake said. I knew there was something between the those two! I fucking knew it!

“Not in any overt way,” Laura said. “And we never touched each other, Jake. Squiggle and I did not do anything ... you know ... physical with each other. I was just trying to explain my state of mind. I was afraid that if I didn’t get my ... my horniness under control, that I might start thinking about doing something with him. And I didn’t want that, Jake. I didn’t want it then and I don’t want it now.”

“Okay,” Jake said. “So, you didn’t get it on with Squiggle?”

“No,” she said. “Absolutely not. Nor did I get it on with any other member of the band or the road crew or any other male while I was out on the road. I want you to know that, Jake.”

“Okay,” Jake said. “I believe you.” And he did, but he was still unsure just where she was heading with this story.

“Having said that,” Laura said softly. “I did find a way to take care of that horniness. I just kind of stumbled across it one night. That’s what I need to tell you about.”

“I’m still listening.”

“It was after the show in La Paz,” she said. “I’d just finished my shower and I went back into the dressing room to grab a little something to eat, take a few hits of some pot, and have a glass of wine. Normal routine stuff. Ron had brought back some groupies for those band members who wanted them. Z, like always, had a couple of good-looking guys for himself. Squiggle was sitting out the groupies that night. Sally and Homer and Groove each had some slut they were planning to take back to the hotel. Anyway, as we’re sitting there, eating and smoking and drinking, Homer and his groupie start groping each other there on the couch. He actually slid his hands up under her shirt and started playing with her boobies, you know, pinching them and stuff.”

“Uh huh,” Jake said, picturing the scene quite well.

“Ordinarily, when someone started doing stuff like that, I would just turn my head and ignore it. Life on the road as part of a traveling band, right?”

“Right,” Jake agreed.

“But this time ... I found myself watching them. I remembered how nice it felt when you played with my tits and pinched them like that. And then I started thinking about how nice it felt when your tongue was on me ... especially ... you know ... down there.”

“That is a good place for a tongue to be,” Jake said.

“The horniness was getting out of control. I was getting wet inside my panties just sitting there, watching them and thinking about what I wanted to do with you. But I couldn’t do it with you because you weren’t there. And then ... well ... I happened to glance over at Squiggle and saw he was looking at me with a smile. I knew he didn’t have a groupie that night. I knew that if I were to ask him to my room after we got back to the hotel, he’d join me. And for the briefest moment, Jake, I actually found myself considering this. Not because I wanted to cheat on you, but because I needed some relief! Can you understand that?”

Jake nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “I can understand it.”

“Anyway, I finally looked away from them and got myself under control. We went back to the hotel a little later. It was a pretty nice place in downtown La Paz. Our accommodations were a lot better in South America than they were up here. We all went to our rooms. When I got up to mine ... well ... I thought about laying down on the bed and going to town on myself. I was still wet, still horny, still needed to come, but ... I knew it wouldn’t be enough. My fingers just weren’t doing it for me anymore.”

“What did you do?” asked Jake.

“I decided to have a couple of drinks,” she said. “Most of the time there was a mini-bar in the room and Aristocrat had that deal where they pay for our drinks—Pauline negotiated that one for us. This room, however, did not have a mini-bar. So ... I went downstairs to get a few drinks in the hotel bar. The same deal was in play. I could just sign for my drinks down there and Aristocrat would pay for them.”

“I never had anything like that when I was out on the road,” Jake said sourly.

“Talk to Paulie the next time you go out,” she suggested. “Anyway, there wasn’t much going on in the bar. Only a few people there. I sat down at one end and the bartender comes over. She was a woman, maybe forty years old or so, spoke good English. She was very nice and ... she had a pretty face.”

“Really?” Jake said.

“Yeah, really,” Laura said with a sigh. “Anyway, we got to talking as I drank a couple of gin and tonics. She didn’t know who I was until I told her that I was Bobby Z’s sax player. And then she became really excited. She loved Bobby Z but hadn’t been able to go to the concert. I told her a few tales of the road and then mentioned that I was your girlfriend. She got excited about that as well. She loved Intemperance, she said. And she had just bought your last CD.”

“International fame,” Jake said. “You gotta love that. Anyway ... she was pretty?”

“Yeah,” Laura said with a sigh. “She was pretty. And she let me know after about the third gin and tonic that she was also a lesbian.”

Jake looked at her pointedly. “Are you trying to tell me that you and she ... that you...”

Laura nodded slowly. “She was my relief valve,” she said. “We started talking about ... you know ... how it was being away from a loved one. I told her about how horny I’d been, and about how I felt like I was going to explode or do something I regretted if I didn’t get some relief. And ... and ... she offered to help me get that relief.”

Jake felt mixed emotions at this revelation. Laura had had sex with another woman! The thought was intriguing, the visualization quite erotic ... but she had also had sex with someone other than him! Shouldn’t that be upsetting information? But it wasn’t a man, another part of him insisted. It wasn’t the same kind of betrayal.

“Jake?” Laura whispered. “Are you still with me?”

“I’m still with you,” he said, his mind spinning. “Are you ... bisexual, Laura?”

“No ... not really anyway,” she said. “Until that moment, I’d never really considered having any kind of ... you know ... relations with another woman, not seriously anyway. I mean, we all think about it every now and then, and the thought had never really grossed me out or anything, but ... I’ve always primarily been attracted to men.”

“Did you ... like do everything with her?” Jake asked.

Laura shook her head. “I didn’t do anything at all to her,” she said. “I didn’t even kiss her. That was the deal.”

“The deal?”

“She told me that she was off shift at 11:00,” she said. “She said if I wanted some relief, she would be happy to come up to my room and give me some. I was ... interested. The thought of having her ... you know ... go down there and do her thing was exciting. But I had no interest in ... uh ... returning the favor. I told her this, figuring that would be a deal breaker, but I just couldn’t picture myself putting my mouth ... there.”

“But it wasn’t a deal breaker?”

She shook her head. “It wasn’t. She said it would be an honor to suck an orgasm or two out of my pussy and that she expected nothing in return. She said she wouldn’t even take her clothes off if I didn’t want her to. I still wasn’t sure about the whole deal, but after another drink, all those little self-doubts went away. When eleven o’clock rolled around and the relief bartender took over, I invited her up to my room.”

“Wow,” Jake said.

“Yeah,” she said. “She accepted the invitation. We went upstairs and ... well ... she did it to me.”

“She ate your pussy out?” Jake asked, just to be clear.

“She ate my pussy out,” Laura confirmed. “Right there on the hotel bed. I was a little awkward at first, but she kind of took charge of the situation. She took off my pants and my panties, laid me down, and went to work. It didn’t take much to get that first orgasm out of me. I was on a hair trigger and the ... the naughtiness of the situation combined with the fact that it was a woman doing this combined with how flippin’ horny I was ... well, it only took me a minute or two to blast off. But she didn’t stop there. She kept licking me and sucking my clit and pretty soon, I came again. And then one more time after that.”

Jake was unsurprised to find that his manhood was now standing tall beneath the water. He reached down and gave it a stroke or two and then looked back up at Laura, seeing that her nipples were hard. “You enjoyed it?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said without hesitation, her eyes shining in a way he was familiar with. “I enjoyed it a lot. I also felt guilty about it. But another part of me knew that I wouldn’t be thinking about doing anything with Squiggle for a while, so it must’ve been a good thing, right?”

“A valid rationalization, I suppose,” Jake said.

“Yeah,” she said. “She left a few minutes after that, leaving me still laying on the bed with my pants off and my shirt still on. Like I said, she never kissed me, and I never touched anything on her except ... well ... I did grab the back of her head when I was coming. Anyway, I never saw her again.”

“And that was enough to get you through the rest of the tour?”

Laura shook her head. “No,” she said softly. “It wasn’t enough. She wasn’t the only one.”

“She ... she wasn’t?”

“She was only the first,” Laura said. “Once I figured out that this was a good way to relieve my sexual tension ... well ... I used it whenever the pressure started to build too much. On those nights, when things were getting to the point where I was starting to think about ... you know ... Squiggle, I would ask Ron to bring me back a lesbian woman when he brought the rest of the groupies.”

“You put in a request?” Jake asked, astonished.

She smiled a little. “Yeah, I did,” she said. “I’m here to tell you, that was awkward as hell the first time I did it. I felt like a teenager trying to buy condoms in the drug store the first time I asked Ron for that. But he didn’t even blink an eye, just asked me if I wanted a bull-dyke kind of lesbian or a lipstick lesbian. I didn’t even know what those things meant at the time—not really anyway—but he explained it to me.”

“And which did you take?” Jake asked. He was still trying to figure out how he felt about all this, but he was also still sporting an impressive erection from hearing the tale.

“I tried both as the experiment went along,” she said with a little giggle. “I started with the bull-dyke types since it seemed like having a masculine looking woman eating my pussy wouldn’t seem so ... oh ... you know ... gay. But after the first couple of times, I switched to the lipstick lesbians. It turns out that, for me anyway, if you’re going to go down that road, you might as well have someone soft and cuddly licking you. It gave me more of a thrill having a feminine woman going downtown—even it was gayer.”

“How many times did you do this?” Jake asked, picturing it as a nightly thing, as it had been back in his road days.

“Not terribly often,” she said. “Once every week and a half or so on average, though sometimes twice a week and sometimes I would go three weeks without it. In all, there were ten of them, including the bartender that first time.”

“Exactly ten?”

“Exactly ten,” she said. “I remember each and every one of them very well.”

“I see,” Jake said softly.

“Well ... now you know my secret. Do you hate me?”

“What? No, of course I don’t hate you, Laura. I’m just trying to wrap my mind around all of this. It’s quite a story.”

“I want you to know that I never stopped loving you during this, Jake. I did what I did, and maybe it was wrong, but I did it so that I wouldn’t be tempted to do something worse. Can you understand that?”

“Yeah,” Jake said, thinking of that night in Portland again. “I understand it very well.”

“Anyway, when you asked me to marry you just now ... well ... I couldn’t answer you without having you know what had happened ... about the women on the road. And if you want to take back your question ... I’ll understand.”

“I think ... I think I need to think about this for a bit,” Jake told her.

She nodded slowly. “Okay,” she said softly.

“It’s a lot to process.”

“I understand,” she said.

“While I’m thinking about it though ... is it okay if we still fuck?”

“Uh ... yeah, sure,” she said. “As a matter of fact, I could use a good fuck right about now.”

“All right then,” Jake said. “Here or in the house?”

She smiled. “Both.”

They fucked in the hot tub for a bit, long enough to pull an orgasm out of Laura and to put Jake on the brink. They then went in the house and got into bed.

“So ... your recent aversion to having me go down on you,” Jake said. “Does it have to do with your experiences with these women?”

“Yes,” she said. “I’m sorry. I know how much you like to do that to me—and I’ve always loved having you do it—it’s just that after having those women do it ... I guess I became obsessed with having an actual dick. Whenever you would lick me it reminded me of what I’d done. And when I was reminded of what I’d done, I’d start to feel guilty.”

“Makes sense,” Jake said. “But now that you’ve told me...” He was looking down at her swollen and wet lips like a man contemplating a turkey dinner on Thanksgiving.

She smiled. “Why don’t we make the experiment?” she offered.

He feasted on her that night, drawing three orgasms out of her, back-to-back. She did not try to push him away this time. And when he climbed atop her and put himself inside of her body, she was as enthusiastic as she’d ever been.

After, as they lay side by side, both naked, the covers askew, the sweat on their skin still drying, Jake turned to her.

“You said you remember all ten of them?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said. “I will remember them for the rest of my life.”

“Do you know their names?” he asked.

“Names?” she asked, confused.

“Right,” Jake said. “What were their names?”

“Uh ... I don’t know,” she said. “I’m sure I was told every one of their names at some point, but ... well ... I don’t remember them now. They were just groupies ... oh, and one bartender.”

Jake smiled. He had heard what he needed to hear. “I see,” he said. “In any case, that question I asked you earlier ... it’s still valid.”

“The question?” she asked, with no idea what he was talking about. He’d asked a lot of questions since they’d climbed into that hot tub earlier.

“The big question,” he said. “The one about ... about you marrying me. I’d still like you to do that if you’re up for it.”

“Really, Jake?” she asked. “Even after knowing what I’ve done?”

“I understand, hon,” he told her. “Really, I do. And I don’t consider what you’ve done to be cheating. In truth, it’s actually kind of sexy to think about it.”

“I don’t plan to do it again, Jake!” she told him forcefully.

He shrugged. “A topic for another day. In any case, what do you say? Wanna get married?”

She smiled. “Sure,” she said. “I’d love to.”

Minneapolis, Minnesota

June 30, 1994

The sold-out show finished up at 10:03 PM, Central Daylight Time, three minutes behind schedule. Celia Valdez and her band—Coop on drums, Charlie Meyer on bass, Steven O’Hara (known as Little Stevie) on lead guitar, Liz Watertown on piano and secondary vocals, Natalie Popanova on violin, and, of course, Dexter Price on saxophone—linked arms at the front of the stage and took their bows. The seven of them then walked off the stage to the left, waving one last time at the still-cheering, standing ovation giving crowd, as the house lights came up.

They were escorted through the backstage area, where the roadies were already getting to work on tearing down the entire set so it could be packed into three big-rigs for the trip to Chicago, where they would then reassemble everything for tomorrow night’s show. Head of tour security, Dan Baldovino, a soft-spoken but efficient man of forty-three who had once been a Los Angeles police officer, handed each of them their all-access backstage passes to hang around their necks and then led them down a flight of stairs and through an underground tunnel to the clubhouse/locker room area of the auditorium.

“Good show, guys,” he told them. “The caterers have the usual spread set up for you in the main room. We went with the rotisserie chicken and the macaroni salad for the mains tonight, and, for Charlie, we have some vegan lasagna that actually looks pretty good.”

“Someone checked to make sure it’s thoroughly cooked?” asked Charlie, who, aside from being a vegetarian—not because he was morally opposed to eating animal products, but because he was afraid of contracting tapeworms or some other type of nematode—was also a germaphobe.

“Absolutely,” Dan said with a nod. “Larry knows to give specific directions to the caterers we deal with. You should know that by now.” After all, they had this same conversation pretty much every night.

“When it comes to microbes,” Charlie told him, “you always have to make sure.”

“A good philosophy,” Dan said, deadpan and straight faced. He opened the door to the room for them. “Enjoy the spread, everyone. And for those of you who put in requests, I’ve got the boys working on it right now.”

Celia rolled her eyes a bit at his words. She did not particularly approve of the whole request and delivery process that Dan, as head of security, was responsible for, but she knew it was a time-honored part of being a traveling musician. Trying to put a stop to it would be futile and would quite possibly destroy the band dynamic and cohesion they were enjoying, so her stance was to just look the other way and ignore as long as nothing overt actually occurred here in the venue before her eyes. Besides, she was not a hypocrite. Back in her La Diferencia days she had been known to put in a request or two herself.

They entered the main clubhouse. It was a moderate sized area, specifically designed and set up for the purpose for which it was now being used. There were a variety of couches and chairs arrayed around the perimeter of the room. In the center were catering tables upon which aluminum tins of food and tubs of beer and other liquids upon ice were resting. A small, but well-stocked liquor bar had been set up next to one of the tables as well. For those who enjoyed that sort of thing, there were a few cigar boxes that contained high-grade marijuana, rolling papers, and a water bong. There was no cocaine available, however. Celia had drawn the line there. If someone wanted to sniff some of the white powder, that was their business, but they needed to score it on their own, and not do it in front of her.

Larry Candid, the tour manager that Aristocrat Records had assigned to keep things rolling along, was waiting for them in the room. He, like any tour manager worth his salt, was an aggressive, two-faced snake, but one with superb organization and leadership skills. His main focus, his prime-directive, was to make sure that the show went on every night and he would lie, cheat, steal, maim, and possibly even kill to make sure that happened.

“Great show, great show,” he told everyone as they trooped into the room. Larry said this to them every night, regardless of how their show had actually gone, and Celia suspected that he did not even see most of the shows since he was usually back in the dressing area, directing this or that, making phone calls, or doing paperwork.

“Thanks, Larry,” Celia told him, walking immediately over to one of the drink tubs and pulling out a bottle of Gatorade. She opened it and drank half of it down without taking it from her lips. The venue had been muggy tonight and she had been sweating more than usual. Her skin was damp and sticky and her blouse was sticking to her. Large sweat stains had formed in her armpits and on her back. Even her hair was damp. She could not wait to get into the shower. But first, she needed to get some water and electrolytes and food into her.

Most of the other bandmembers had the same idea. Gatorade bottles were opened, consumed, and then tossed into the trash. Only then did the beer, wine, and liquor start seeing some action. Celia left the hard stuff alone for now. Instead, she grabbed another Gatorade and then went over and picked up a paper plate and started to put food on it. She would eat and hydrate a little more and then, once fully cooled off, she would go take her shower. Then she would have a nice glass of chilled white wine.

As Celia sat down to eat, Larry came over and sat next to her. Larry was not one to just shoot the shit, she knew, so he undoubtedly had some business to talk.

“What’s up, Larry?” she asked, knowing that he was fan of just getting to the point.

“Just wanted to run something by you,” he said. “You already know that both Chicago shows sold out weeks ago.”

“I do remember you telling me that,” she said from around a mouthful of garlic infused chicken breast.

“Well, the word that your shows are worth going to, coupled with the ongoing success of the album, are getting around. We release tickets for sale a month in advance of the venues in question. For the past week now, every one of those venues has sold out within twelve hours of release.”

“Twelve hours, huh?” she said, impressed and proud of herself.

“Twelve hours,” he said. “And the word on the street is that the scalpers are charging up to a hundred and fifty dollars apiece for the general admission section tickets and up to three hundred bones for reserved.”

“That’s insane,” she said, shaking her head. “What are we charging for those tickets?”

“Twenty-five dollars for GA, forty for the reserved,” he said sadly.

“Madre de Dios,” she said. “I guess being a ticket scalper is where it’s at, huh?”

“It’s interesting that you should say that,” Larry said. “Because that’s exactly what I want to discuss with you.”

“How much the scalpers are charging?”

“Yes,” he said. “You see, I was talking to the home office a couple of hours ago, right before you and the band took the stage. They made a very interesting suggestion.”

“Did they now?” Celia asked carefully. Experience had told her that when Aristocrat made a suggestion, it was usually something she was not going to like or agree with.

“Yes,” he said. “Now, hear me out before you say no.”

“Uh huh,” she said, putting her stern face on.

“It’s like this ... you’ve heard that the Eagles are on the road now, right?”

“Yes,” she said. “Everyone knows that.” And not just in the music industry. The Eagles reunion and the release of their latest album, Hell Freezes Over, had been big news for the past five months. After an acrimonious breakup in 1980, the popular band had put aside their differences (or at least buried them for the time being), managed to record some new material, had gone out on tour, and were now selling out venues to legions of nostalgic baby-boomers across the country.

“Have you heard what Henley and Frey and the boys have done with ticket pricing?” Larry asked next.

“No,” she said. “I’ve been a little too busy with my own music to pay attention to what other artists are doing.”

“It’s very lucrative, very engaging,” Larry prompted.

“Explain,” she said, knowing that the tour manager did not usually use words such as ‘lucrative’ or ‘engaging’. Thus, he was spitting out a spiel that had been fed to him by the Aristocrat suits.

“It seems that when the Eagles found out what scalpers would be charging for their shows, someone asked the question: ‘Why are we letting these lowlife scalpers snatch up all the tickets and then resell them for hundreds, sometimes even thousands of dollars, while we, the band and the record company that produced the music, are losing money on the tour?’”

“Okay,” Celia said slowly.

“The answer to that question,” Larry said, “is that there really is no reason besides tradition and custom. It has always been assumed that the purpose of the tour is to promote an album release so therefore it is in the industry’s best interest to charge as little as feasible for concert tickets in order to pack the venues. The tour doesn’t have to make money, although some still do—this one, for instance, and the Intemperance tours as well—because that is not its purpose. Promotion is the purpose.”

“That has always been my understanding, Larry,” Celia said. “Are you saying the Eagles are doing something different?”

“They are,” he said. “You see, they have realized a fundamental fact of life. Their live performances are in extremely high demand and they are a limited commodity. For every city the Eagles play in, there are an average of twenty thousand tickets available per show. But there are hundreds of thousands of people who want those tickets and are willing to pay top dollar for them. Why should the scalpers make all the money off of that supply and demand imbalance? Why shouldn’t we be the ones raking it in? That’s what the Eagles asked themselves.”

“Are you saying they are scalping their own tickets?” Celia asked.

“Not exactly,” Larry said. “They are simply following the rules of capitalism and charging what the market will support for them.”

“They’re not charging twenty-five for GA and forty for reserved?” she asked.

“They are not,” Larry said. “In the first place, there are no general admission tickets at an Eagles show. All seats are assigned and reserved. The price is being set depending on the location of the seat.”

“What do you mean?” she asked. This was a foreign concept to her, at least as far as concert seating went. In most venues they played in, the bleacher sections were reserved and the open floor area in front of the stage was the general admission area.

“The bleacher seats in the rear, for instance, are priced at a hundred dollars each,” Larry said.

“A hundred dollars?” Celia asked, wide-eyed. “For the bleachers?”

“That’s right,” Larry said. “You cannot get your hands on an Eagles ticket for the Hell Freezes Over tour for under a hundred dollars. And if you want to sit on the side bleachers, closer to the stage, you’re talking a hundred and fifty. And if you want to sit on the floor in the rear area behind the soundboard, one hundred and seventy. And the first twenty rows, in front of the soundboard ... those are two hundred dollars a pop.”

“That is insane!” Celia said. “The band itself is charging that much?”

“They are,” he said. “Like I said, if people are willing to pay that for the tickets, why should the scalpers get to keep all the money?”

“Are people paying that?” she asked.

“Every show sells out within eight hours of ticket release,” Larry said.

“At those prices?”

“At those prices. People grumble about it, of course. They accuse the band of profiteering, of selling out, of being greedy bastards, of every other kind of atrocity, but they’re snatching up those tickets the moment they come on sale. And even with that, the tickets are still being scalped on the black market. The nosebleed seats are being resold for three and four hundred. The front section tickets are being resold for five to eight hundred.”

“Five to eight hundred?” she asked, incredulous. It was hard to believe that anyone would be willing to pay that much just to watch a two-hour concert—even if it was the reunited Eagles.

“Like I’ve been saying, the demand is high for these shows. Ticket sales is a vast, untapped revenue source, at least when we’re talking about a popular act.” He looked at her. “An act such as yourself.”

She looked at him pointedly. “Is that what this is all about?” she asked. “You want to raise the ticket prices?”

“That is the suggestion of the home office,” Larry said. “Now, of course, we won’t be able to charge as much as the Eagles are charging—your fan base is not the baby-boomers with their limitless funds—but we can certainly do better than twenty-five and forty a ticket.”

“What are they suggesting?” she asked.

“Well, we’re committed to the venues we’ve already sold tickets for,” Larry said, “but we can put the tour on hold for a few weeks beyond that and restructure everything. Instead of GA areas, we would have to rent seat setups for the floor and assign numbers for them. Once that is done, they are suggesting fifty dollars for the rear bleachers, seventy-five for the side bleachers, one hundred for the rear floor seats, and one hundred and fifty for the seats forward of the sound board.”

“Madres de Dios,” she whispered. “That’s a lot of money.”

“It is,” Larry agreed. “And it’s still only about half of what the scalpers are charging. People are willing to pay that much, Celia. Why shouldn’t we be the ones to profit from it?”

“It just seems ... wrong,” she said.

Larry shrugged. He did not really have much of a concept of what was right and what was wrong. “I was just told to offer up the suggestion to you,” he said. “They don’t need a decision right now. They want you to talk it over with Pauline and Jake, see what they think about the idea.”

“Okay,” she said, nodding slowly. “I’ll call Paulie in the morning before we leave for Chicago.”

Two hours later, Celia was in her room on the top floor of the Hyatt Regency hotel just north of Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. It was just past midnight, but she was still not sleepy. She was acclimated to a swing-shift type of schedule these days and sleep was not as hard to come by since she and the band did not have to ride the bus between venues. They typically checked out of their hotels around eleven o’clock in the morning and boarded their plane just after noon for the flight to whatever city was next. Tomorrow would be no exception. Celia would go to bed around two in the morning and sleep until nine-thirty or ten. She would have a room service breakfast and then head downstairs to the bus at eleven.

She had just got off the phone with Greg a few minutes ago. They made a point to talk to each other several times a week. Their relationship was still a bit on the touchy side and she still did not quite know where it was heading, but the dark anger and mistrust in him had cooled down considerably.

She had told Greg about Aristocrat’s suggestion to increase ticket prices. Greg, of course, was all in favor of the idea—she never thought for a moment that he wouldn’t be—but he listened patiently to her doubts about the scheme and even expressed understanding of her reluctance.

She thought about him now, as she sat at the writing desk, a glass of chilled chardonnay before her. Did she miss him? It was hard to be sure. She certainly missed the regular sex she got from him, but was that the same as missing him?

Before she could follow this thought too far, the phone began to ring. She looked at it for a moment, a smile coming to her face. There was only one person who would be calling her at just past midnight. She picked up the handset and put it to her ear.

“Tell me you have something long and cylindrical for me,” she said into the mouthpiece.

A female voice chuckled in her ear. “You know it, hon,” said Suzie Granderson, the pilot-in-command of their chartered aircraft. Celia and Suzie had become friends over the past two months of the tour. The lesbian flyer was a very interesting person with a quirky personality and a commanding presence that was quite intriguing. The two of them liked to get together a few nights a week in Celia’s room and ‘shoot the shit’, as Suzie liked to term it.

“Come on up,” Celia told her. “I’m in room sixteen-twenty. There’s a really nice balcony that looks out toward the airport.”

“Be there in less than five,” Suzie promised.

It actually only took about two minutes before there was a gentle knock on the hotel room door. Celia, now dressed in a pair of tattered sweatpants and a pullover t-shirt, padded over in her bare feet and opened it.

“Hey, Fly Girl,” she greeted as the pilot stepped into the room.

Suzie was wearing a pair of jeans and a tank top that showed off her well-muscled arms. She had a tattoo of a pair of air force wings on her right bicep. Her hair was short, almost militarily so, but her face was feminine and kind of cute. “Hey, band geek,” she returned, holding up her hand, which held two Cuban cigars—the long cylindrical objects of which Celia had spoken.

Their standard greeting ritual complete, they made their way out to the balcony of the room, where a small table and two chairs sat. Celia had already moved her ice-filled wine bucket and her wineglass out there. Suzie, who did not drink alcohol for the obvious reason, had brought a tall glass of iced tea with her.

“Nice view,” Suzie said, looking out at the city lights and the airport where, despite the late hour, there was still considerable arrival and departure traffic. “My room is down on the seventh and looks out over the air conditioning units.”

“There’s a lot to be said for air conditioning units,” Celia said, sitting down.

Suzie chuckled a little and then sat down across from her. She unwrapped the cigars and then quickly prepped them with a cutting tool she carried. She handed one to Celia and put the other in her own mouth. She then produced a lighter, which she fired up and held under the tip of Celia’s stogey.

Celia puffed away until ignition was accomplished and then took a slow, steady drag, enjoying the harsh flavor of the Cuban tobacco.

“Very nice,” she said after blowing the smoke out over the balcony ledge. “How did you get your hands on Cuban cigars in Minneapolis?”

“It’s not too hard to do,” she said. “They sell them in Canada and we’re not very far from Canada.”

“You flew into Canada and bought some?” Celia asked.

“No, they’re black market, of course,” she said. “I have my connections here in the twin cities. I was based out of Chicago a couple of years ago and MSP was a regular stop.”

“I see,” she said, taking another puff while Suzie fired up her own cylinder.

They sat and puffed and sipped and talked of inconsequential things for a few minutes before the talk turned to tour gossip. This was a favorite thing for them to discuss since there was a considerable amount of it.

“What’s the deal with Little Stevie and Liz?” Suzie asked. “Word in the cockpit is that the two of them are bonding on more than a musical level.”

Celia nodded her head. “It certainly seems like something is going on there,” she said. “They seem to be very close to each other, and neither one of them ever puts in any requests with Dan anymore.”

Suzie chuckled a little, shaking her head. “I still can’t get over that whole request thing. It really is interesting flying you people around.”

“I can’t say that I approve of the request ritual,” Celia told her, “but it is tradition. In any case, Stevie and Liz were regular requesters when we started out, but the last three weeks ... nothing.”

“She’s like twice his age, isn’t she?”

“Pretty close,” Celia confirmed. “She is certainly biologically old enough to be his mother.”

“Hmm,” Suzie said. “Does Little Stevie have mommy issues, maybe?”

“Maybe. And maybe Liz has some nurturing urges. It really sounds like her ex-husband was kind of a cabron.”

“But he was at least her age?”

“That’s my understanding,” Celia said.

“Very interesting dynamic,” the pilot said, taking a sip from her tea.

“And speaking of interesting dynamics, it looks like Mark and Natalie are breaking some ground on international relations?”

“Yeah,” Suzie said, “he’s boning her all right. In fact, they’re probably doing it as we speak.”

“She is pretty,” Celia said. “And he’s not a bad looking guy himself—seems a little square though.”

“He’s a nice kid,” she said. “And a good pilot too. He’ll go far in his career. Pretty soon he’ll be working for Southwest or United or one of the other carriers.”

“Is there any ... you know ... ethical issues with him getting it on with one of his passengers?” she asked, her voice casual, off-handed, but her mind acutely interested in the answer.

Suzie shook her head. “Not as far as I’m concerned,” she said. “As long as they maintain the proper relationship with each other once we step aboard the aircraft, they can lube each other’s parts all they want when we’re off duty. I don’t imagine that the whiteshirts in management would particularly care for their relationship, but I’m not going to tell them about it. What happens on the mission stays on the mission, as long as nothing is compromising the mission.”

Celia smiled. “We have a similar saying in our business,” she said.

“I would think you would have to,” Suzie told her, dipping her ash into the ashtray.

“And what about you, Ms. Fly Girl?” Celia asked her next. “Any romantic entanglements you’d like to confess to? Are there such things as pilot groupies?”

“No entanglements currently,” Suzie told her. “We move around too much for me to get into any. And while there are pilot groupies out there—we call them buckle bunnies, or crew-pie—it’s not necessarily easy for someone of my sexual orientation to hook up with one. Most of them are looking to score with the boys, not the girls.”

“That’s a shame,” Celia said. “How do you handle the pressure when you’re on assignments like this?”

She laughed a little. “The same way you’re handling it, I imagine,” she said. “By performing my own maintenance at regular intervals.”

Celia chuckled. “Yes, I’m familiar with that technique—depressingly so. There does come a point where even that fails to relieve the pressure.”

“True,” Suzie said. “I guess the hope is that I’ll stumble across a little crew-pie who is into the softer things in life before I get to that point.” She shrugged. “It can happen. It has before.”

“Interesting,” Celia said with a smile as she pictured a soft, feminine groupie putting her face between Suzie’s naked legs on a hotel room bed.

“And what about you?” Suzie asked her, her eyes showing keen interest. “What do you do when the pressure gets to be too much and the old self-maintenance routine isn’t doing it for you anymore? Do you put in a request?”

“I’m a married woman,” she said. “I just have to wait until Greg finally gets on a plane and flies out to take care of his marital obligations.”

“And when will that be?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” she said sourly. “He’s still working on film promos for So Others May Live.”

“That was a good flick,” Suzie said. “I really enjoyed it. Most of the flying scenes were actually pretty accurate.”

“I’ll let him know you liked it,” Celia promised. “Anyway, he’s also starting to get offers for roles in other projects now. He’s got two auditions this week and one the next. He’s also got about six scripts to review for interest. I was hoping he would be able to meet me in Chicago since it’s a two-night engagement followed by two days off, but ... well, it’s not going to happen.”

“That’s too bad,” Suzie commiserated. She even sounded sincere.

“That it is,” Celia agreed. “That it is.”

Their talk turned to other things as they sipped their drinks and smoked their cigars. When the stogies were down to the nubs, they went back inside and closed the door to let the air conditioner do its work.

“Well, I guess I’ll head back to my room now,” Suzie said. “Thanks for letting me share your balcony.”

“Absolutely,” Celia said. “Thanks for the smoke.”

“Anytime. See you at the airport.”

“I’ll be there,” Celia told her.

The pilot went out the door and it closed behind her. Celia continued to stare at it for a few moments and then sighed. She then turned off all the lights and made her way to the suite’s bedroom. She took off all her clothes and piled them into the hamper bag. Now naked, she went to the bathroom and urinated then brushed her teeth to get the cigar taste out of her mouth.

Once these tasks were complete, she climbed under the covers and turned out the bedroom light.

Her sex was wet and she knew that she would not be able to get to sleep until she ‘performed some self-maintenance’, as Suzie had termed it.

She went to work on herself. Usually when she performed this act, it was Jake she thought of, of the things they had done to each other in that Portland hotel room that one fateful night, of the things she’d like to do to him if they ever ended up naked in bed together again. She had long since ceased feeling guilty for these fantasies (though the guilt from the actual act itself was still a very real thing).

Tonight, however, a different image popped into her mind as she started to play. She started thinking about Laura, and about the bartender in La Paz she had told her about, and about the other nameless lesbian smooth jazz groupies that had followed. It was a blackly exciting, deliciously naughty image—a female face between those feminine legs, a girly tongue licking girly parts. How would it feel to have a woman eat her out? Would she be better at it than a man? Better than Greg, who was pretty good at the act? Better than Jake, who was outstanding at it?

And then, almost before she realized it, she found herself thinking of Suzie, wishing that Suzie were here, right now, in this very bed, and that it was Suzie’s experienced tongue down there, licking at her, sucking at her clit.

Her breathing began to pick up and soon a powerful orgasm washed over her as she contemplated this image.

She slept quite well that night.