Snowblind

Chapter 9: Setting the Stage

Chicago, Illinois

May 21, 1995

The primary staging location for the cast and crew of Us and Them was the Chicago Police Department’s 4^th District station on East 103^rd Street in the heart of the southside, the same station that Greg had deployed out of during his ride-a-long period of preproduction. It was a simple single-story brick building that had been constructed in the early 1950s and had long since become outdated for the size and the call volume of the district it covered. In the back parking lot of the station, a parking lot that was already too small by far, the movie studio trailers had been parked. There were six of them in all, powered by a generator truck that sat in the middle of the formation and constantly spewed out diesel exhaust into the air. Several times a day the catering trucks and the limousines would invade as well. The cops who worked out of the station—they tended to be the younger members of the force, as District 4 was a rookie assignment for patrol officers and a first supervisory position for newly promoted sergeants and lieutenants—were greatly inconvenienced by all of this, particularly when it came to parking, but they remained good natured and polite about it. After all, they were making a movie out of their station, a movie starring Greg Oldfellow and Mindy Snow. How freaking cool was that?

At nine-thirty in the morning, Greg Oldfellow walked into the combination wardrobe and makeup trailer to start his day’s work. Today they would be filming a variety of patrol scenes both inside of the car and outside in rented tenement apartments and on the streets around the station. Mindy was already in the makeup chair when he entered. She was wearing a white robe to cover her upper body and a pair of tan dress slacks with tennis shoes on her legs and feet. Her hair had been pulled up into a bun that would have complied with CPD regulations for female uniformed officers. This had been one of the suggestions of Sergeant Mackle, their technical advisor, who had told them that if a reporter were actually riding along for more than a month in the manner that Lyndsay was doing in the film, the cops escorting her would have insisted upon such a hairstyle and that she wear a bullet-proof vest. Fletcher had balked at this initially, stating that the viewers wanted to see Mindy’s hair down and the swell of her tits in the scenes they were doing, but Mindy herself had pushed for the modifications to the wardrobe and makeup, stating that realism trumped tits any day, and, besides, the viewers were going to get a very good eyeful of her naked tits not just once, but twice in later scenes.

“Good morning,” Mindy greeted as Greg entered the room. Julie, the thirty-something year old makeup artist assigned to Mindy was currently brushing blush onto her cheeks.

“Good morning,” Greg returned. He was wearing a pair of dress slacks and a button-up Pierre Cardan long sleeved shirt. His makeup artist was Bradley Stout, a late-forties, flamboyantly gay man who fussed and fretted dramatically but was considered one of the best in the business. Also, there was little chance of Greg initiating an affair with him, a factor that may or may not have gone into Fletcher’s decision to assign him to Greg. Bradley was wearing a pair of tight, custom-fit jeans and a salmon colored shirt. His hair was done up just so and his little doorknocker beard (he enjoyed calling it “my target”) was neatly trimmed.

“It’s about time you got here,” Bradley said in disapproval. “I really wish you would make more of an effort to be punctual, Greg.”

Greg looked at his watch. “It’s nine-thirty,” he told him. “That is what time I’m supposed to report for makeup and wardrobe.”

“That is merely the official time,” Bradley insisted. “It is, however, understood that one should show up at least ten minutes early for the pre-makeup briefing.”

“The pre-makeup briefing?” Greg asked. He had never heard this term used before.

“That is correct,” Bradley said. “The briefing in which we discuss the scenes you will be shooting today and the proper application of makeup for what is being planned.”

“Fletcher sends one of his assistants over with a set of directions for that each morning, doesn’t he?”

“Of course he does,” Bradley said. “And it is then my responsibility to go over the proper use and care of the application with you.”

“I’m aware of what scenes I’m shooting when I walk in here,” Greg told him, starting to get annoyed now. “That information is given to me the night before by Fletcher himself.”

“Nevertheless,” Bradley said, “it is customary to arrive ten minutes earlier than required so that we can make sure we’re on the same page.”

“I have never heard of this custom,” Greg said. “I’ve been doing this acting thing for a few years now and I’ve always shown up at the time requested.”

“But now you are working with me,” Bradley said. “And when you’re working with me, the standard is ten minutes early. Please see that you adhere to that from here on out.”

Greg opened his mouth to light into him, to say something that Jake would likely have applauded, but then closed it again. This was one of those pick your battles kind of situations, he decided. If this prima donna cosmetologist wanted him to show up ten minutes early so they could discuss the day’s scenes, well ... why not?

“All right, Bradley,” he said with a sigh. “Ten minutes early from here on out.”

“Very good,” Bradley said with a smile. “Now go get changed. We’ll have to hold the briefing while I get started.”

“Sounds good,” Greg said.

He stepped into the wardrobe room and shut the door behind him. There were three cubby holes in the room, one for him, one for Mindy, and one for Lewis Stone, who played Boot, Haverty’s partner. In Greg’s and Lewis’ holes were authentic Chicago PD uniforms consisting of dark blue pants and light blue summer shirts complete with five-pointed star shaped badges (the cops always called them “stars”, never “badges”, according to Sergeant Mackle). In all three holes were authentic CPD issued Kevlar ballistic vests. Greg and Lewis would wear theirs under their uniform shirts. Mindy would wear hers over her shirts. All three actors had discovered how uncomfortable the vests were in the muggy late spring of the Midwest.

Greg unbuttoned his dress shirt and pulled it off, leaving him only in a plain white t-shirt above the waist. He hung up the dress shirt in his cubby and then pulled out the white robe he used for the makeup sessions. He left the t-shirt on, as it would go under his wardrobe uniform. And, since he was doing no shirtless scenes today, there was no need to put the pancake makeup all over his torso.

He put the robe on and walked back out into the main makeup area. He settled into his seat and Bradley delivered his pre-makeup briefing, explaining the scenes that Greg already knew he would be filming today and how that corresponded with the makeup and hairstyle he would be utilizing.

“Sounds good, Bradley,” Greg told him when the briefing was over. “Good talk.”

Bradley, satisfied that he was an essential production partner with a stake in how the project came out, then went to work on him, starting with his hair. He combed it out until it was as smooth as silk and then arranged it into a style that looked random and careless, to go along with the characterization of Frank Haverty, but was actually a meticulously planned and executed masterpiece. Once the hair was to his liking, he sprayed about a quarter of a can of maximum hold hairspray on it to cement it into place. He then began to work on Greg’s face, which, while quite handsome in person, would look pale and drawn on camera without a layer of pancake to darken it up.

“Hey, Greg,” Mindy said as Julie finished up her face area and began working on her neck. “I was wondering if you’ve heard from your agent today?”

“Johnny?” Greg said. “No. I haven’t talked to him in a few days now. Why do you ask?”

“Uh ... well ... there’s a little something coming down the pipeline,” she said, seemingly embarrassed. “Something about you and me.”

“You and me?” he asked. “What do you mean?”

“Well ... mostly me,” she said. “It has to do with my ex-boyfriend.”

“Which ex-boyfriend?” he asked. A fair question, he thought. She’d had a few, all of them extensively reported on in the entertainment media. “Are you talking about Jake?”

“No, not Jake,” she said. “My most recent ex-boyfriend. Raphael, the personal trainer. The one I broke up with just before coming to Chicago.”

“Your Michelangelo carving. What does he have to do with me?”

“Well ... it seems that he ... oh ... that he didn’t take the breakup very well. Can you imagine? I paid his rent for three months at a very high-end condo just outside of Hollywood, and I gave him ten grand to live on, and that came with the understanding that he would keep his mouth shut about personal details.”

Greg looked into the mirror before him, using it to take in Mindy’s reflection on the other side of the room. Her eyes would not meet his. Both Bradley and Julie impassively continued to work, behaving as they weren’t hearing a single thing being said. “What are we talking about here, Mindy?” he asked her.

“I got a call from Georgette this morning,” she said. Georgette was her long-time agent and manager who had been with her since the days she was a teenager on The Slow Lane. “She tells me that reporters from Entertainment Reports contacted her to see if I wanted to give a statement to them for the record.”

“Why would you want to do that?” Greg asked. ER, as it was called, was perhaps the most malicious and cruel of the gossip media that hounded celebrities.

She sighed. “It seems that Raphael has recorded a tell-all interview with them that will air on the show’s Friday night broadcast. It’s a tell-all about what it was like to live with Mindy Snow, including why we broke up.”

“I see,” Greg said. “That is unfortunate, of course. One never wishes to be a point of discussion on that smear show. I still do not see what this has to do with me.”

“Well ... Raphael apparently told them that the reason he and I broke up was because I’ve ... I’ve always had a crush on you and that I’ve been trying for years to get close to you and now that I’ve landed a starring role opposite of you ... well ... I kicked him to the curb so I could ... you know ... go for it with you.”

Greg blinked slowly. He took a deep breath and then let it out. Meanwhile, Julie and Bradley kept right on powdering and puffing as if nothing was happening. “Why,” Greg finally asked, “would he say something like that? It’s not true, is it?”

“No, not really,” Mindy said.

“Not really? What does that mean?”

“He’s distorting something I said to him,” she said. “I bet those assholes at ER are paying him twenty or thirty grand for this shit and feeding his lines to him.”

“You are undoubtedly correct,” Greg said. “But what did you say to him that started this?”

“He’s not just talking about me having a crush on you,” Mindy said. “He’s talking about our sex life, about how I treated him at home, about some of the shit I used to say to him. All of it is a gross exaggeration at best, an out and out misrepresentation at worst.”

“I have no doubt about that either,” Greg said. “But my wife is probably going to be contacted about this as well, wouldn’t you think?”

“I’d be amazed if they hadn’t already done it,” Mindy said.

“I would like to be able to present some facts to Celia when I talk to her. Please tell me just what it is that you said to this Rafael creature that prompted him to say you broke up with him because of me.”

Mindy sighed again. “Well ... I did tell him a few times that I thought you were attractive. You are attractive, Greg, and I was just pointing out a fact.”

“And ... from that he comes up with you broke up with him because of me?”

“Well ... that and the fact that I jumped on this role when I found out you were going to be the star of the project. He did ask me about that once, why I suddenly became interested in the part once you were cast. The same thing you asked me.”

“And what did you tell him?”

“Nothing!” she said. “I just said that I had always wanted to work with you and the opportunity had come to do it. He seemed like he accepted that at the time. We went on with our lives for weeks after that and everything was just like normal.”

“But then you broke up with him,” Greg said.

“Well ... yeah,” she said. “I wasn’t going to drag his dumb ass across the country with me while I worked on the project. His time had come. He knew when we first hooked up that it was a limited-term relationship. Or, at least he should have known that. He couldn’t possibly have thought that I was going to marry a fucking personal trainer who can’t think his way out of a paper bag, right?”

“I’ve never met the man,” Greg said. “Therefore, I cannot speculate on what he may or may not have thought, but he does sound like a man you would not want to ask to do physics equations for you, correct?”

“Uh ... correct,” she said.

“In any case, that is neither here nor there. I trust you are planning to refute his accusation that you broke up with him because of a crush on me?”

“Georgette issued a brief statement to the ER reporter denying that particular accusation as well as most of the others.”

“Then I guess that is all there is to be done,” Greg said. “I’ll instruct Johnny to refuse comment on the issue completely other than to report that you and I hardly knew each other at all until being cast together and that we enjoy a strictly professional relationship now. I’ll suggest to Celia that she instruct Pauline Kingsley to make no comment on the matter either.”

Mindy nodded. “That sounds good, Greg. Exactly what I would have suggested.” She finally met his eyes in the mirror. “I’m sorry about all this.”

Greg shrugged. “Things happen,” he said. “As Jake always says, it’s part of the life we choose.”

“I suppose,” she said humbly.

Silence returned to the makeup room, broken only when Lewis came in to get into his wardrobe for the day. As a dark-skinned, short-haired man, Lewis did not need the layers of skin-darkening makeup or the tussling of his locks. Mindy and Greg greeted him warmly and they talked of the upcoming scenes for a few minutes before Lewis disappeared into the wardrobe area to get dressed.

Once he was gone, Greg took another glance at Mindy in the mirror. Her eyes were once again cast downward as Julie worked on her neck area. To facilitate this, her robe had been pulled down a bit and he could see the tops of her breasts. They were very appetizing to look at.

Did she really say she had a crush on me? he wondered. The idea did not seem ridiculous in the least. Nor was it really that offensive.

If fact, he was actually a bit flattered that it might be true.

It was the next morning, in the rehearsal studio in Santa Clarita, that Jake heard about the upcoming ER report. It was Celia who delivered the news to him as they sat down for the tuning of their instruments prior to the soundcheck. She did not just come out and say what was wrong with her, but Jake could tell something was bothering her because she was using more Spanish phrases than normal.

“What’s the deal, C?” Jake finally asked her. He was sitting next to Natalie (who had decided to join them for the production of the next CDs after Mark promised he would remain committed to her) and holding his black Les Paul in his hands. It was his day today and they were going to start by working on one of his hard-driving tunes.

“What’s the deal with what?” she asked shortly. She held her white Stratocaster in her hands as the tune required her to play distorted chords as backup.

“Oh, come on,” Jake chided. “I’ve known you long enough to know when something’s put a bug up your ass.”

“A bug up my ass?” she asked. “That’s rather crude, Jake.”

“Perhaps,” he allowed. “So, what kind of bug is it? Give it up.”

She sighed. “It’s that fucking puta!” she blurted.

“What fucking puta?” he asked.

“You never did tell me what that word means,” said Natalie as she tweaked her tuning knob a quarter turn.

Celia ignored her. “Mindy Snow,” she spat. “What other fucking puta would I be talking about?”

“Ahhh,” Jake said. “The queen of putas. What did she do now?”

“I got a call from Pauline yesterday,” Celia said. “Apparently Mindy’s ex-boyfriend is doing a tell-all interview on Entertainment Reports this Friday.”

“Which ex-boyfriend?” Jake asked. “She’s had a few.” Including me, he did not feel the need to point out.

“The most recent one,” Celia said. “The personal trainer who looks like he stepped out of a Greek God painting.”

Jake nodded. He had seen media reports of the man here and there in his travels and he thought that an accurate description. “What does that have to do with you?” he asked.

“Apparently he is alleging that the reason Mindy broke up with him is that she has always had a crush on Greg and wanted Adonis—or whatever the hell his name is—out of the way now that she managed to land a role with Greg.”

Jake raised his eyebrows a bit. “Really? Does Greg know about this?”

“He does now,” she said. “He called me last night to tell me what’s going on. Of course, by then, I already knew about it from Pauline, but he thought he should talk to me about it. He says that Mindy hit him with this shit yesterday morning during their makeup session. Mindy claims it isn’t true, that this loser of hers took a comment that she made once about Greg being attractive out of context and he’s just doing this interview because they’re paying him and so he can get back at her for breaking up.”

“Wow,” Liz said from her piano. “It kind of sounds like we wandered into the middle of a soap opera here.”

“No me digas! Jueputa!” Celia agreed sourly. “Anyway, Greg says Mindy seemed embarrassed by the whole thing.”

“Mindy, embarrassed?” Jake said with a harsh laugh. “That’ll be the day.”

“He said she seemed quite sincere,” Celia said.

“She’s a very good actress,” Jake said. “She can seem like anything she wants to seem like. I found that shit out the hard way.”

“He sure did,” said Coop, who was sitting on his drum chair, twirling a stick in his hand. “She played Jake like an accordion, bending and squeezing him every fuckin’ way.”

“Yeah,” Jake muttered.

“Didn’t you say she was really good in bed though?” asked Charlie. Now that he was allegedly heterosexual again, he tended to actively bring up and heartily participate in pussy stories—even when it was not really appropriate.

“Uh...” Jake stammered, looking over at Laura, who was frowning at the sudden turn of conversation, “well ... the fact of the matter is—”

“Oh, fuck yeah she was good!” Coop said enthusiastically. “She would get down and stinky at the drop of a fuckin’ hat! Jake used to tell us all about the shit they did when he was railing her. He said she was fuckin’ premo in the sack. What we call an NTN bitch.”

“NTN?” asked Sharon.

“Nothin’ too nasty,” Coop clarified. “You gotta love an NTN slut. Jake, remember that time you told us about how you nailed her while she was sitting on the railing of the balcony of your condo?”

“Uh ... yeah, Coop,” Jake said, blushing. “I remember that.”

“And this other time,” Coop went on, “she dressed up in the outfit she used to wear on the fucking Slow Lane and did her hair all up in that same style from the show so he could plow her while—”

“I think we all get the idea, Coop,” Jake said firmly.

“She dressed up in the outfit from the Slow Lane for you?” Laura asked, her teeth clenched tightly.

“Uh ... well ... yeah, but...”

“I always noticed that Jake would come in limping after spending the night with Mindy,” Nerdly put in. “And sometimes he would have bruises on his arms or scratches on his back or handfuls of hair missing from his head. I must say that I suspected her of being physically abusive toward you, Jake, but male social norms of the time prohibited me from enquiring.”

“Uh ... she wasn’t abusive, Nerdly,” Jake assured him. “She was just ... you know...”

“Down and stinky?” Laura asked, her eyes shooting daggers at her husband.

“That’s a good way of putting it, I suppose,” he said. “Enough about me and Mindy though. We were talking about Greg and Mindy, right?”

“Right,” Celia said, the sour look still on her face, though there was also a hint of amusement there now. “Greg assures me that he believes Mindy is sincere in her embarrassment. He says she has been nothing but professional since they started working together.”

“And do you believe him?” Jake asked.

“I believe Greg,” she said. “But I don’t trust that puta. I don’t trust her at all. She is self-serving and doesn’t care about anyone but herself. I think she’s up to something.”

Jake nodded. “She’s always up to something,” he said. “Tell Greg to keep watching his ass.”

“What could she possibly be up to?” Laura asked.

Jake shook his head. “Only Mindy knows the answer to that.”

“Anyway,” Celia said, “Greg is having Johnny release a statement that says there is nothing but a professional relationship between he and Mindy. Pauline is releasing a statement from me saying that I take no stock in reports by a disgruntled ex-boyfriend and remain supportive of Greg. That is the only acknowledgement of this fiasco we will provide. Hopefully, after the other media shows and the tabloid rags have their say about it, things will go back to normal.”

“Hopefully,” Jake said.

“Didn’t you tell me that Greg and Mindy will be required to film a scene depicting nudity and simulated sexual activity?” Nerdly asked.

Celia sighed again. “Two of them actually,” she said slowly. “Thank you for reminding me, Bill.”

“You’re welcome,” Nerdly said. “I was just wondering whether the coming sexual depictions might have the effect of adding increased combustible material and oxidizer to the conflagration.”

“What?” Celia asked.

“Fuel to the fire,” Jake translated.

“Oh ... of course,” she said, shaking her head a little. “I’m really trying not to think too much about that, Bill. I have to trust that Greg will behave professionally even if Mindy does not.”

“Interesting,” Bill said. “I’m sure that seems a sound and reasonable course of action currently, but what about when...”

“Bill,” Sharon said, covering his mouth with her hand to shut him up. “Maybe it’s time to get on with the sound check?”

“Oh ... of course,” he said once his wife’s hand was removed. “Is everyone done tuning?”

Everyone was done tuning. They stopped talking of Greg and Mindy and Jake and getting down and stinky and went to work dialing in their audio for the day’s work. This took about thirty minutes to complete. By the time they were done, everyone was back in the music mode where they belonged.

“All right,” Jake told everyone. “We’re going to work on Dark Matter for the first part of the day. Is everyone up for that?”

“Fuckin’ A,” said Coop. “I’m liking where you’re going with this tune.”

“Me too,” said Charlie. “It rocks. Reminds me of the Intemperance days—well, you know, the good parts of those days.”

“Does it?” Jake asked, feeling a certain amount of trepidation at these words. Dark (as they would soon be calling it) was indeed a hard rocking tune as he envisioned it and was directing the other musicians to perform it. Like all of his songs, the basic melody and lyrics had been composed using only an acoustic guitar, but when it had come time to start working it up, it had seemed only natural to translate that melody into a distorted three-chord riff backed by a second distorted drop-D tuned guitar. And today he planned to have Liz start throwing in some basic fills with her piano to evolve the composition a little further. That was the formula that had made Intemperance so successful, that had actually spawned an entirely new genre of rock music. And it was a genre he had vowed to leave behind when he went solo.

The tune just sounds good played that way, he told himself. Besides, it’s fun to do hard rock. It gets the adrenaline rolling. The listeners are going to love it.

“All right,” he told the musicians. “We worked on the basic distorted melody and the beat last week. Charlie, Coop, are you two fairly comfortable with the basics?”

“I’m down with it,” said Coop. “The basics anyway.”

“Me too,” said Charlie. “It’s not as repetitive as a pop beat, that’s for sure, but it’s not overly complex either.”

Jake nodded. “I’ll probably want to throw in some tempo changes for the intro and the bridge section as we work it up more.”

“Awesome, dude!” Coop said enthusiastically. He loved challenging drumming; and having multiple tempo changes and flourishes was sweeter than a hit of the finest green in his opinion.

“I thought you’d like that,” Jake said, smiling.

“Damn right I will,” Coop said.

“Me too,” Charlie said. “It really is like the old Intemp days, isn’t it?”

Jake glanced at him, that uneasy feeling coming back a bit. “Yeah,” he said slowly. “I guess it is ... in a way, you know.” He looked over at Celia. “How about you, C. You feel comfortable with the rhythm?”

She gave him a little smile. “It’s a little harder than I’m used to—all of you keep your ‘that’s what she said’ jokes to yourself, thank you very much—but nothing I can’t handle.”

Jake smiled at her. “‘That’s what she said’ staying internal,” he said. He looked over at the piano and the quickly-approaching-middle-age woman sitting behind it. “Liz, I want to start having you throw some piano fills into the tune. Mostly on the changeovers for now, though I’ll likely want to see if we can have you do a section of primary melody in there somewhere, probably for the intro—kind of like in Playing Those Games, you know?”

Liz looked very doubtful at this. “I’ll see what I can do, Jake,” she promised. “I have to be honest though, this tune is a little higher and heavier on the rock music scale than anything I’ve done before.”

“Understood,” Jake said, nodding. “You’ll get the feel of it. You’re a professional with a good ear.”

“If you say so,” she said, not quite appeased.

Jake thought of giving her a little more encouragement, then decided against it. “All right,” he said. “Let’s get it on. I’ll open with the primary riff. Rhythm section, pick me up after the first rep. Celia, you jump in after the second rep, and then I’ll start putting down the lyrics. We’ll run through it a few times until we can make it to where the bridge will be and then shut it down. Liz, you just listen for now, plug yourself in the best you can, try to get in the groove, and then start thinking about where and how you could throw in those fills.”

Everyone gave their agreement with this plan.

“Let’s do it then,” Jake said, gripping his guitar and putting his pick in his fingers.

They did it. Everyone except Jake had their music scores in front of them to make it easier to follow along. Jake ground out the main riff. Coop and Charlie hammered the backbeat. Celia played the distorted rhythm. They ran through the first two reps and then Jake began to sing the lyrics he’d written. It was an intelligent, thoughtful tune using the concept of dark matter, the theoretical unseen matter that made up the majority of the mass of the universe and served, among other things, to help bind galaxies together (Nerdly had told Jake about dark matter one stoned night long ago and the subject had fascinated Jake ever since), as an analogy for the human need for socialization and companionship.

It was a rough draft of the tune, that was for sure. There were several instances of missed bars, missed timing, tempo slips, and sour notes as fingers that had not developed muscle memory quite yet fretted out unfamiliar chords. But, all in all, it came out sounding more or less like music—a coordinated effort of multiple instruments.

“Not bad,” Jake said with a shrug after the first run-through. “Maybe not Grammy material just yet, but we’re working on it.”

“Sorry about the sour notes on the changeovers,” Celia said. “My fingers just aren’t used to it yet.”

“It’ll come with repetition,” Jake said. “Let’s do it again.”

They did it again, and then again, and then two more times, getting a little better, a little smoother with each run-through, making it sound more and more like professionally produced music instead of a high school band in a basement. As they worked, Nerdly and Sharon played around with the board, communicating with each other all the while, both of them frequently making notes on their copies of the score. They both seemed to be getting into the tune quite nicely. Laura and Natalie simply watched from the sidelines; their instruments idle since they weren’t going to be used for this particular tune. Natalie seemed to be enjoying the song. She was smiling and nodding her head to the beat, her shoulders shrugging in time. Laura also seemed to at least have an appreciation for what they were trying to do. Her foot tapped to the beat, her expression thoughtful. Only Liz seemed to be having issues. Her foot stayed still, her shoulders immobile, a slight frown upon her face.

Jake noticed this. “What do you think, Liz?” he asked her. “Is it starting to grow on you? Starting to feel the groove?”

“Well ... maybe a little,” she said, almost as if was a question.

“Any thoughts for those fills?” Jake asked. “At this point, if you feel inspired, you should just jump right in and throw them down.”

“Uh ... well ... I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t feel particularly inspired, honestly. If you could maybe give me an idea what it is you’re looking for?”

Jake’s brow went up a bit. “Just your basic fill,” he told her. “A little flourish of piano notes playing on top of the melody to enhance the flow of the tune.”

“I know what a fill is,” she said. “I’m just ... not really sure what you’re looking for in these particular fills. Maybe if ... Laura could play out one, or maybe Nat, and I could see what you’re after.”

Jake frowned a little. “The sax or the violin wouldn’t quite match the tone we’re shooting for here,” he said. “I’m not sure that would be helpful.”

“Oh...” she said. “I see. Well, maybe if ... I don’t know...”

“How about if I show you what he’s looking for?” Nerdly suddenly suggested.

Liz looked up at him. “You?”

Nerdly nodded. “I do have some experience playing the piano, you know.”

“Yes, of course I know that,” she said.

“And I’ve played with Jake for years. I think I have a pretty good idea of what he has in mind. May I?”

“Uh ... yeah, sure,” Liz said, standing up from her instrument and backing away.

Nerdly walked over to her seat and sat down. He cracked his knuckles and put them on the keys. He then began to play scales, getting the feel of her instrument, plugging himself into it. Jake smiled as he heard his old friend play. Though Nerdly had played synthesizer on their previous albums, those had mostly been overdubs and secondary melodies and fills and most of his time had been spent on engineering and mixing. He had done no piano work at all since the last Intemperance album more than five years ago. And it was as if he had never taken a break. Even though he was only playing scales, it was clear he was far superior a pianist than Liz—as good as she was—could ever hope to be.

“You still got it, Nerdly,” Jake told him when he finished his warmup.

“Fuckin’ A,” Coop said, grinning, a nostalgic look on his face.

“I do still play on a regular basis at home,” Nerdly told them. “Piano is my first love—sorry, Sharon, but it’s true—and I use it to relax, usually with the classics.”

“The classics?” Coop asked. “You mean like Jerry Lee Lewis, Elton John, shit like that?”

“Chopin, Beethoven, and Mozart actually,” Nerdly corrected. “Although I will admit a fondness for the work of Elton John as well.”

“He’s pretty good,” said Charlie, “even if he is a fucking faggot.”

Everyone paused a moment to look at Charlie inquisitively.

“What?” he asked when he noticed their eyes upon him.

Jake shook his head a little. “Nothing,” he said. “All right. You in the groove here, Nerdly? You want us to run through it a few times again?”

“That will not be necessary,” Bill said. “Go ahead and perform the composition. I’ll lay down some fills that I think might be complimentary to the melody.”

Jake smiled, thinking how good it was to have Nerdly pounding the keys again. It was almost like...

He looked at the assembled band for a moment. There was Charlie on the bass, Coop on the drums, Nerdly on the piano, himself with a guitar in his hand and a microphone in front of his mouth. It really was almost like old times. Quite literally. Four of the five members of Intemperance were here with instruments in hand and about to start working up a new hard-rock tune. The only one missing was Matt.

This is heavy, he thought. Really heavy.

He took a deep breath. Heavy, perhaps, but it was also their job, how they made their living, and this promised to be a good tune. “Let’s do it,” he said. “Dark, from the top of the first verse. Everyone ready?”

Everyone was ready. They began once again, and this time, Nerdly threw in some piano just where it was needed. And it sounded very good indeed.

“Hell yeah!” Jake said enthusiastically between his verses.

“That’s the shit, Nerdly!” yelled out Coop as he drummed away.

They ran all the way through the first two verses and then started over, doing it again. Nerdly played out his parts with a little more confidence, a little more flair. They paused for a few moments so Sharon could jot down the notes they were using for the fills on the score and then began to do it again. For more than an hour they worked it up, Jake and Nerdly making suggestions about transitions and timing, about strengths and flow. Coop and Charlie made suggestions on tempo shifts and Coop started to add some drum fills. They talked enthusiastically about all these things between each take of the tune. Celia watched all of this in amazement and played her parts of the rhythm professionally and well, but no one asked her opinion of anything and she did not offer it. The other musicians in the room, Laura, Liz, Nat, simply sat in their chairs and watched, all three feeling decidedly like they weren’t even in the room. Even Sharon seemed to have been forgotten.

“I have an idea for the bridge transition,” Jake said shortly into the second hour of this.

“Yeah?” asked Coop.

“Let’s hear it,” said Nerdly.

“We go down-tempo to about eighty,” Jake said. “The lead guitar will switch to random fills. Nerdly, you’ll take over the primary melody on the piano and I’ll play out a secondary melody clean on my guitar.”

Nerdly and Celia looked at him strangely. “You will play out the secondary melody clean?” Nerdly asked. “Wouldn’t that be Celia’s job? She’s the rhythm guitarist.”

“And how would you play out the melody clean if you’re also doing random lead fills?” Celia asked, speaking for the first time in more than forty minutes.

Jake shook his head, resisting the urge to hit himself in the forehead. “My bad,” he said. “I kind of forgot I was the lead there for a minute.” Because when we do tunes like this, I’m always the rhythm guitarist and Matt is the lead. Jesus. Forgot where I was there for a bit. “Anyway, that’s my thought. C, you think you can drop tempo and switch to a clean sound?”

“I could,” she said slowly, “but I don’t have a pedal set for that currently. I could do it manually by lowering the output on my preamp, I suppose, but then we’d have to soundcheck it and then soundcheck it again to put it back.”

“Don’t you think that’s a little too much for this point in the game?” asked Sharon.

“Yeah ... I suppose,” Jake allowed.

“I think you’re right,” Nerdly said, “In any case, I was just trying to show Liz what Jake was after. Did I do that sufficiently, Liz?”

Liz nodded her head. “I see what he’s after all right,” she said.

“Perfect,” Nerdly told her. “I will relinquish your instrument to you then. Should we go over this a little more with Liz playing the fills?”

But Liz was shaking her head now. “I can’t duplicate what you were doing there, Bill. I can’t even come close.”

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“I’ve never tried to mix my instrument into a hard rock tune before,” Liz said. “You made your career doing that. I may be able to play the notes of the tune, but there is no way I can phrase like you were just doing.”

“What are you saying, Liz?” Jake asked.

“I think Bill should be the pianist on this cut,” she said. “The tune will come out much better if he does it.”

“I can’t be the pianist,” Bill protested. “I’m the sound engineer.”

“What does that have to do with anything?” Celia asked. “You played synthesizer for us on multiple cuts and still were able to engineer the sound.”

“That is true,” Bill said, “but this is different.”

“How is it different?” Jake asked.

“Okay,” Nerdly said. “Maybe it isn’t different. But I have no desire to step in and take Liz’s job from her. She is the pianist of this group. She should play the part.”

Everyone looked over at Liz. She seemed a little embarrassed to be the center of attention, but she held her ground. “I know I’m the pianist, Bill,” she told him. “And I know I’m good with my instrument. I also know you’re better, particularly with the genre that Dark is in. You should play the piano on the tune. It’s not going to hurt my feelings.”

“Well...” Bill said slowly, “if you insist.”

“I insist,” Liz insisted.

“I’ll do it then,” Bill said. It was quite clear to everyone that this decision made him very happy.

Two days later the band took a break from the workups so that Jake could fly to the San Francisco Bay area for a week to lay down his guitar and vocal tracks for I Signed That Line, the duet that he and Gordon had composed. G and his boys had been in Jam-On Productions’ studio for the past month now, trying to get the latest Bigg G CD recorded so it could be mixed, mastered, and readied for manufacturing and distribution before G and Neesh’s wedding in July. G wanted to have time for an extended honeymoon with his bride before hitting the road for the promotional tour that would follow the release.

Laura came with Jake since Neesh was going to be there as well. Instead of flying first-class commercial, they climbed into Jake’s plane for the trip. It had been a while since he’d been behind the controls and this seemed a good opportunity to log a few more hours. And there was another reason to fly themselves as well. They could check on the progress of their new home.

“We’ll be out of the class C airspace any second here,” Jake told Laura as they flew twenty-five hundred feet above the coastline of San Luis Obispo County just south of the Oceano Airport. This was the minimum transition altitude through the Class C airspace bubble around Santa Maria Airport to the south of them. Once clear of the bubble, there was a ten-mile gap of comparatively unregulated Class E airspace before the next bubble, the one surrounding San Luis Obispo Regional began. The oceanfront property that Jake had bought was within that gap.

It was a beautiful day for flying, with bright blue sky, few clouds, a light onshore wind at eight knots, and visibility of well over twenty miles. The bright blue of the Pacific Ocean contrasted with the brown sand and scrub of the coastal hills and the green of the inland landscape. Jake looked at his navigation display for a moment, compared his position to the visual references outside, and concluded he was now free of the Class C.

“All right,” he told his wife with a smile. “It’s time to go down, baby.”

“I love going down,” she replied with a giggle.

He throttled down and pushed the nose forward a bit, letting their altitude drop at a rate of a thousand feet per minute—a fairly steep dive for this particular aircraft. He pulled out of the descent at twelve hundred feet, the lowest he could legally fly here, and then engaged the flaps to fifteen degrees and throttled up until they were traveling at a mere one hundred knots above the waves a hundred yards offshore. He used his yoke and rudder to follow the meanderings of the coastline so he could maintain that distance.

“There it is,” Jake said a minute later.

The dunes to their right gave way to the elevated plateau of their lot. The house was almost finished now. From the outside, it looked as if it was finished. It was a single-story structure that sat back from the cliffside by forty feet. It was painted light gray with forest green trim, roofed in plain cement tiles, and was the very definition of unpretentious. In fact, one would hardly notice it was there at all unless one was paying attention; and one would probably be unimpressed even if one did notice it. And that was exactly the way Jake liked it. The inside of the structure, however, contained more than eight thousand square feet of living space, including a huge master bedroom, a smaller master bedroom for guests, four secondary bedrooms, six bathrooms, an entertainment room that looked out over the ocean, and a soundproofed music composition room. A separate structure of eighteen hundred square feet would serve as the servant’s quarters.

“It looks like we could move in today if we wanted to,” Laura said as they passed by it.

“Another four weeks,” Jake said. He could see a crew of workers installing the redwood deck on the ocean side of the house. And though he could not see them, he knew that inside the house there were craftsmen hard at work installing cabinetry. Next week, the granite kitchen island and the bathroom tiles would be installed. The week after that, the appliances would begin to arrive.

“I can’t wait,” Laura said with enthusiasm. “It’ll be so nice to hear the ocean every night, to wake up every morning and have coffee out on the deck, to not have a bunch of snooty neighbors turning their noses up at us.”

“I couldn’t have said it better, hon,” Jake told her, reaching out to caress her cheek.

The house slowly disappeared behind them. Jake took a look around outside, scanned his instruments once more, and then throttled up his engines once again. As they started to climb, he retracted the flaps so they could put on the speed.

“Thanks for taking me by it,” Laura said, putting her hand on his leg and giving it a squeeze. “I’m all excited now.”

“Me too,” he said. “I can’t wait for Elsa to see it. Maybe I should take a day to fly her out for a tour when we get back.”

“That’s a good idea,” she said. “She seems to be getting a little nervous about the move as the day gets closer.”

Jake nodded. He had noticed this as well. Jake’s plan was to put his current home on the market as soon as the move was made and buy a luxury condo somewhere in downtown LA for those times (he hoped they would be few) when had to stay in the city. Elsa had agreed to move to Oceano with him and remain his housekeeper, but it had been a hard decision for her. Her family lived in Orange County, including her beloved grandchildren, and the driving time between she and they would be three and a half hours minimum, assuming good traffic conditions (and that was quite an assumption in southern California). Not an arduous trek by any means, but not a trip to the grocery store either. Jake finally convinced her by sweetening the pot a bit. He gave her a significant raise in salary and bought her a brand-new Toyota Four-Runner. He also promised that any members of her family were welcome to stay in the new home whenever they wanted and for as long as they wanted.

“I think that once she gets a tour of the place,” Jake said, “once she sees the new kitchen, sees the guest house that will be all hers, smells and hears the ocean just outside, she’ll start to feel better about leaving LA.”

“I bet you’re right,” Laura said. “And Gerald and Delilah will be home from school next week. Maybe they can come with us?”

“Sure,” Jake said, nodding. “I think that’s a great idea. I’ll run it by her when we get home.”

Jake continued his climb until he reached seventy-five hundred feet. He checked in with the local ATC and punched up his autopilot to take over navigation of the route he had programmed. He then asked LA Center to initiate flight following.

Once everything was copacetic, Laura began to move her hand a little higher on his leg, up toward the junction.

“How about a blowjob?” she asked him.

“We’ve tried it in here before,” he reminded her. “There’s not enough room between my yoke and my stick.”

“Oh yeah,” she said, frowning. “Well ... how about a handjob then?”

He nodded. “That sounds good. There’s some Kleenex packs in the seat pocket.”

A limousine took them from Hayward Executive Airport in the east bay to the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in San Francisco where Gordon—or G-Spot Records LLC, the label he owned—had booked them a suite. Gordon and Neesh were in the suite next door. The rest of the musicians and the sound team all had their own rooms a few floors below.

Their suite was on the top floor of the hotel and enjoyed a panoramic view of the bay, including the Golden Gate Bridge and Alcatraz Island. Jake had been in accommodations such as this often enough that he was hardly impressed anymore. Laura, on the other hand, had not and she spent a few minutes gawking at everything.

After settling in, Jake gave G a call to let him know they had arrived. G suggested that they meet in the hotel’s Club Lounge for a few drinks and an early dinner.

“Sounds good,” Jake told him. “Meet you there.”

The Club Lounge was a rather swanky place and, even though Jake and Laura and G and Neesh were well dressed when they entered, they caused more than a few raised eyebrows, disapproving looks, and whispered comments as they were seated near the picture window. Jake’s long hair and G and Neesh’s African-American appearance were not common sights to the tighty-whitey businessmen in suits who inhabited the place. All were aware of this and ignored it, except for G, who made a point of saying, “What up, homey?” to one particularly tight looking whitey they passed. The man did not return the greeting but immediately found something else to look at.

The staff in the lounge, by contrast, treated the quartet with nothing but politeness and servility. They ordered drinks—a martini for Jake, single malt scotch for G, a ninety-dollar bottle of chardonnay from the Napa Valley for the ladies—and then perused the appetizer menu while they waited for them.

“How about some escargot?” Neesh suggested.

“You wanna eat some fuckin’ snails, girl, you go right ahead,” her fiancé told her. “Just don’t be kissing on me until after you brush your teeth.”

“I’m up for some of this goose liver pate,” Jake said.

“Oooh, that sounds good,” Laura agreed.

G was shaking his head now. “I’m going for these potato skins with the bacon and sour cream. You know? Some shit that’s not disgusting.”

“You ever thought about how they make sour cream?” Jake asked him. “They let milk rot. Sour cream.”

“Still better than fuckin’ snails,” he countered.

Jake looked around and saw that the tighty whities were still shooting disapproving glances at them and whispering. He turned back to G. “Before we leave, we need to bring the whole crew in here. Can you imagine what these assholes will do if ten brothers come in here at once?”

G grinned. “I’ll have ‘em put on all their black shit before they come in,” he said. “Purple suits, medallions, earrings, white fedoras. These fuckin’ suits will think the uprising just started.”

“They’ll probably run screaming out into the streets,” Neesh said with a giggle.

“Clutching their briefcases,” said Jake.

They laughed over this for a few minutes and then got down to some drinking. Before their appetizers even came, all of them had two drinks in their stomachs and were starting to feel good.

“How’s the recording going?” Jake asked.

“On schedule,” Gordon told him. “Maybe even a little bit ahead of schedule. All the basics have been laid down except for Signed, obviously. Once we get the tracks for Signed down and you go back to LA, we’ll be able to start the overdubs on everything else.”

Jake nodded. “You’ll need me back for the guitar and vocal overdubs on Signed at some point, right?”

“That’s right,” G said. “Probably in about two weeks or so. That work for you?”

“Yeah, no problem,” Jake said. “We’re coming along pretty good working up the next batch of tunes for both me and Celia. We’re scheduled to go into the studio in Coos Bay on July 5, so as long as you hit me up before then, it’ll be cool.”

“You’re not going to miss our wedding, are you?” Neesh asked. Their date was July 15 in Half Moon Bay, a beachfront town northwest of G’s hometown of East Palo Alto. Jake and Nerdly were both groomsmen.

“We wouldn’t miss it for the world,” Jake assured her. “We’ll shut down production for the weekend and be there on the 14^th for the rehearsal. I already got the jet chartered and everything.”

“Too bad you’re gonna miss the bachelor party,” G said.

“That is too bad,” Jake agreed with real regret. Ricky, G’s best man, had rented the entire top two floors of Harrah’s Hotel and casino in South Lake Tahoe for two full days and three nights for the occasion.

“And you’re going to miss my bachelorette party,” Neesh pouted to Laura. Her maid of honor—a wild and crazy woman she had been friends with since grammar school—was going the more traditional route of Las Vegas, financed, of course, with G’s money, which meant high-roller status.

“I’m sorry I can’t go,” Laura told her, sounding sincere enough although she had privately confided to Jake that the thought of a wild weekend with Neesh and her friends was actually kind of terrifying to her.

“It’s a shame, Teach,” Neesh told her. “There’s gonna be some serious-ass girl time going on down there in Sin City.”

Jake noted that for some reason this statement made Laura blush deeply.

“I can imagine,” Laura said.

“I bet you can,” Neesh told her with a giggle.

“Anyway,” Gordon said, “I’m hoping we’ll only need you for one session for your guitar and vocal overdubs. Two at the absolute most.”

“Just tell me when,” Jake assured him.

“Will do, homey,” G said.

The server brought their appetizers to them and set them down. They all ordered more drinks and dug in, tearing through everything by the time the drinks arrived. They then ordered dinner, all of them going with seafood, which was the specialty of the house. They talked of normal things for a bit—the OJ trial was still high on the list of conversation topics—and then Gordon worked the thread back around to music again.

“Last time we talked,” he told Jake, “you said you didn’t want to be credited for the guitar work on Signed.”

“That’s right,” Jake said. “Just put me down as co-writer of the lyrics and music and one of the vocalists for the cut and I’m happy enough.”

“But you fuckin’ shred on that tune like no tomorrow,” G protested. “You need to be credited for that shit.”

Jake shook his head. “I’d rather not be,” he said. “All that would happen is that people would start the comparison game between me and Matt, and I wouldn’t measure up. It would take attention away from the actual tune. That’s why I don’t credit myself as the lead guitarist on my CDs or Celia’s CDs.”

“That’s bullshit, homey,” Gordon protested. “You ain’t got nothing to be ashamed of when it comes to playing that guitar. Fuck what people think about it.”

“It’s not as good as Matt would play it,” Jake insisted. “I know this to be true and I accept that, just like I know Matt can’t play an acoustic as well as I do or sing as well as I do.”

“That might be true, but you ain’t no slouch at it either,” G said. “And besides, Tisdale takes credit for his singing on his CDs, don’t he?”

“He does,” Jake agreed. “And reviewers and fans constantly tell him that he’s not as good at it as I am.”

“But he doesn’t let that stop him, does he?”

“No,” Jake had to admit.

“And you shouldn’t let that stop you,” Gordon insisted.

“I don’t know,” Jake said. “I just don’t think I’m ready to go there yet.”

Gordon looked at Jake seriously. “Check it, homey,” he said. “I have an ulterior motive here. I’m not just concerned about you getting credit for your shit.”

“Oh?” Jake asked.

“I have an idea about how to pull in some serious coin once I start touring, but it kind of depends on people knowing that it’s you putting down the riff and the solo on Signed.”

“Really?” Jake said. “What’s the idea?”

“You told me that you ain’t planning to tour when your next CD comes out, right?”

“That’s right,” Jake said. “Celia will go out again. We haven’t even opened negotiations yet, but Aristocrat has already promised a fully financed Celia Valdez tour if we sign with them for MD&P. But I don’t see there being a Jake Kingsley tour at any point in the future unless I agree to do some Intemp material, which I won’t.”

“And your Brainwash peeps,” Gordon said. “They’re selling CDs like a motherfucker still. You won’t be putting them back in the studio for at least another nine months, right?”

“That’s right,” Jake said. “No sense putting out new Brainwash while we’re still cashing in on the old Brainwash. Where you going with this, G?”

“Well ... I been thinking about this whole new thing with tour revenue being an untapped source of income for the artists and the labels.”

“It is quite lucrative,” Jake said. “I told you how much we made on Celia’s tour by utilizing the strategy.”

G nodded seriously. “You said you pulled in more than six mil in profits, right?”

“Six point four for KVA Records alone,” Jake said. “Are you planning to follow the trend?”

“I am,” Gordon said. “I’m hot commodity still because, unlike most rappers and hip-hop artists, I’ve kept up with the trend, evolved with my audience, keep putting out music that’s relevant, and doing experimental shit, like having a whitey motherfucker play acoustic guitar for me and, with this next album, having that same whitey motherfucker doing a duet with me.”

“All true,” Jake said.

“I’m thinking that as things stand right now, I could charge pretty much what Celia was charging for concert tickets and people will buy them. And since I’m a brother, they won’t even accuse me of being a sellout. They just expect that shit from a brother; you dig?”

“I dig,” Jake said with a nod.

“Anyway, my plan is to release Signed for the first song for promotion when the CD is released. I think it’s going to cross all demographics, at least among the fifteen to thirty-fives. Male and females are going to love it. Whites, blacks, beaners, even Asians are going to love it. And by the time we hit the road and start touring, demand for tickets should be pretty high, wouldn’t you think?”

“That all sounds reasonable enough,” Jake agreed. “I still don’t see what it has to do with me taking credit for the guitar tracks though.”

“I’m getting to that,” G said. “You see, I’m about to make you a business proposition.”

Jake raised his eyebrows a bit. “A business proposition? You mean beyond the scope of the agreement we already have in place regarding Signed?” Though they were friends and trusted each other, to avoid any misunderstandings they had taken the time to spell out and sign a contract regarding compensation to Jake for participating in the composition and recording of I Signed That Line (this was ironic indeed, since the song was, in fact, about what happened when one signed a contract with a record company). Jake was entitled to two percent royalties on all sales of the CD Livin’ It, on which Signed appeared. In addition, he was entitled to fifty percent royalties on any sales of rights for the tune, though G would retain the rights as to whether to grant those rights or not.

“Beyond that scope, yes,” G agreed. “You see, I was thinking that maybe if you ain’t got nothing else going on in September and October, maybe even November, you might be inclined to hang out with me out on the road for a bit.”

“Go on tour with you?” Jake asked, astonished.

“Maybe not for every show,” G said. “This is all negotiable. I’m just saying that you fly out and travel with us for a week here, a week there, and come up on stage with me during the sets. We do Signed and Step Inside at different parts of the show and the fuckin’ audience will go insane, homey.”

“You want me to step up on your stage during a rap concert?” Jake asked, just for clarification.

“Fuck yeah, I do,” G said. “It’ll be the shit, homey!”

“Would he be safe doing that?” asked Laura nervously.

“Of course he’d be safe,” G said. “He’s with me. He’s got street cred from playing Step Inside with me and he’ll have even more once my fans start to hear Signed playing on the radio. Not only that, when word gets out that Jake Kingsley might be up on stage on any given night, we’ll have the crossover fans buying up them tickets as well. You see, that’s kind of the jist of my idea. We don’t ever promise that you’ll be at one of the shows. We don’t advertise when you’re going to be there. We don’t even mention it at all, matter of fact. We just let word of mouth and word of media spread the news that Jake Kingsley might just show up at Bigg G’s show and lay down some Step and some Signed, and demand for the tickets will go up. I’ll be able to charge seventy-five for the nosebleed seats, two hundred for the floor levels, probably a buck and a quarter for the lower-level bleachers. And you can bet your ass I’ll make it worth your while, homey. I’ll give you a fixed percentage of every show that you play in, right off the top.”

“Interesting,” Jake said, pondering this.

“The only thing is,” G said, “is that if we’re gonna do this, you have to play the guitar licks on Signed. That’s part of the deal.”

“Why?” Jake asked. “Can’t James play it? He plays the acoustic for Step when you’re out on tour, doesn’t he?”

“He does,” G said. “And he’ll play the distorted electric for Signed on any nights that you’re not there to do it for him, but he’s a bass player at heart, and a rap music bass player at that. He can do a decent imitation of you, Jake, but he can’t lay it down like you do, especially not on Signed. If you’re out there with me, it’ll have to be you. I have to insist on that shit.”

“I see,” Jake said slowly. “And if I’m going to get up on stage and play the distorted electric on Signed, I need to take credit for it on the CD cover. Is that what you’re saying?”

“That’s what I’m saying,” G said. “I want it known far and wide that you’re the guitarist on the tune long before we hit the road. I want DJs announcing that shit on the radio when they spin the tune. That will help drive the demand when word of mouth starts passing that you might show up as a special guest at one of my shows.”

Jake nodded. “I suppose that makes sense,” he said.

“So, what do you think?” G asked.

Jake looked over at his wife. “What do you think about all this?” he asked.

“What do I think?” she asked. “I don’t know what I should think. This is all business stuff that’s way over my head. I’m just a sax player who used to be a teacher.”

“I meant about me going out on the road,” Jake said. He turned to G again. “Can she come with me if I agree to this?”

“Fuckin’ A,” Gordon said. “The more the merrier.”

“Assuming you want to go,” Jake said to her.

“Uh ... sure,” she said. “I’ve never toured with a rap show before. Should be interesting.”

“All right then,” G said. “You got your old lady’s permission then. Are you in?”

Jake looked at the rapper and smiled. “Maybe,” he said. “I do have a couple questions though. Didn’t you tell me that you’re not going to take credit for the piano parts on Signed?”

“That’s right,” Gordon said slowly. They had decided during the workup process that I Signed That Line would use the original piano melody that Gordon had composed for the verses as the intro, the outro, and on the slower tempo first portion of the bridge.

“How are you planning to play those piano parts up on stage?” Jake asked.

“I haven’t thought that all the way through just yet,” G admitted. “Maybe use the guitar to play it? Maybe the turntables?”

Jake shook his head. “You know as well as I do that once that piano becomes part of the tune, subbing another instrument for those sections would be a cheap imitation and lazy as well. Audiences don’t like it if you play the tune live in a manner that is different than what they hear on the radio. You need to take credit for the piano pieces just like I need to take credit for the guitar parts.”

G’s eyes were a little wider now. “That ain’t the same thing,” he said. “I’m a rapper.”

“You’re a musician,” Jake countered. “And if I’m going to be credited with the guitar parts on the CD cover, and if I’m going to step up onstage with my Les Paul and grind out those riffs, then you’re going to take credit on the CD for the piano parts and you’re going to have a motherfuckin’ Yamaha electric piano up there onstage and you’re going to fucking play it.”

“I don’t know about this shit, Jake,” G said. “Can’t we just...”

“It’s the right thing to do and you know it, G,” Jake insisted.

Gordon sighed. “Yeah, I suppose I do,” he said softly.

“Well, all right then,” Jake said with a smile. “I think we have a deal. Shall we drink on it?”

They drank on it.

After dinner, the four of them decided to go someplace where everyone did not have a stick up their ass. Gordon said he knew just the place. It was a little club just across the Bay Bridge in Oakland, on Macarthur, two blocks west of Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. The four of them climbed out of the limousine and G led them into the front door, where a large bouncer was checking IDs and vetting the customers. Seeing who the latest guests were, he let them inside without even collecting the cover charge.

The Purple Lounge, as the establishment was known, was quite full of customers. They lined the bar, sat at the cocktail tables, crowded around the pool tables, shook their booties out on the dance floor. Jake could not help but notice that he and Laura were the only two people in the place who were not African-American.

They had a good time there, staying until well after ten o’clock. They drank at the bar for a while, talking to the other patrons, most of whom were delighted when they found out that Jake knew the proper way to shake hands with them. G made a point to mention to anyone who asked that he was in town to record his latest CD and that his brother Jake was here because he was collaborating on one of the tunes, contributing both vocals and some serious-ass guitar licks.

“Just like in Step Inside?” many of the patrons asked.

“Even better,” G would tell them. “We’re talking full-on heavy metal fuckin’ guitar here.”

“You doin’ a heavy metal song?” he would be asked.

“Half heavy metal, half rap,” G would say. “Wait ‘til you hear it, homey. It’ll blow you away.”

Most of the crowd seemed enthusiastic about hearing it. No one called G a sellout. Jake thought about mentioning that G would be playing piano on the tune but decided, probably wisely, that he had had too much alcohol to judge whether or not this was a good idea.

Eventually they moved over to a vacant pool table and played some eight ball, Jake and Laura against G and Neesh. Since Jake and G both had pool tables in their respective homes and frequently used them for recreation, all four were pretty good at the sport. A crowd gathered around them and Jake was amused to see that bets were being placed on the outcomes of their games. At first the betting was heavy in G and Neesh’s favor, with Jake and Laura getting as high as four to one odds. But after a few games the odds dropped down to even as it was realized that the rocker and his petite little redheaded wife could actually shoot some stick.

They arrived back at the Ritz-Carlton just after eleven o’clock that night. Since they planned to hit the studio at nine o’clock the next morning, both couples said their goodnights, exchanged hugs and handshakes, and retired to their suites.

Laura was drunk and quite horny. She all but attacked Jake once they were alone, stripping his clothes off of him and sucking him enthusiastically on the sitting room couch and then, after dropping her pants and underwear, climbing into his lap and riding him while she kissed his mouth and nibbled on his ears. Before he had a chance to release inside of her, she dragged him to the bedroom and put his face between her legs, not letting him up until he’d pulled two toe-curling orgasms from her. Only then was he able to climb atop her in the missionary position and grind into her until he achieved his own release.

After, they lay curled together on the bed, the sweat drying from their skin, Laura’s head resting on his chest, his arm around her back while his fingers played idly with her hair.

“I’m really glad I married a man who is good in bed,” she told him sleepily.

“So am I,” he said with a laugh. He stroked her bare skin a little. “You seemed particularly in the mood tonight.”

“Yeah,” she sighed. “I really was. I guess it was the alcohol.”

“Or maybe it was Neesh?” he suggested lightly.

He felt her body stiffen against him as he said this, felt her fingers clutch at him reflexively. He had just blurted that out without a thought, but it seemed obvious that he had struck a nerve with her.

“What ... what do you mean by that?” she asked softly, her voice nervous.

“I didn’t mean much,” he said. “It’s just that I can’t help but notice that whenever you hang out with Neesh, or even Celia these days, it seems to get you in quite a rambunctious mood.”

“Really?” she said, the nervousness increasing. “I ... uh ... never really noticed that.”

“Laura,” he said, putting his fingers under her chin and lifting up so they were eye to eye, “you’re not a very good liar.”

She nibbled her lip a little and actually seemed near tears for a moment. “No,” she finally said. “I’m really not.”

“You developed a little taste for the softer things in life when you were out on tour, didn’t you?” he asked.

She nodded her head. “Yeah,” she said. “I guess I did.”

“Neesh kind of turns you on, does she?”

A sigh. “Yeah, she kind of does.”

“A pity she’s not into that sort of thing, huh? And that she’s G’s woman. She is kind of hot.”

“Uh ... yeah,” Laura said, her voice sounding a little strange. “It’s a pity. And besides, I’m a married woman. I couldn’t do anything like that anyway. It wouldn’t be right.”

“Well, it wouldn’t be right with Neesh,” he agreed, “but what about some other girl, someone who wasn’t Neesh?”

She looked up at him. “You’re joking, right?”

“I don’t joke about this kind of thing,” he assured her. “What is it that you want to do, hon? Do you just want some chick to eat your pussy out like you did out on the road, or are we talking a little bit more here?”

“You can’t be serious,” Laura said.

“Sure I can,” he said. “We’re just having an intellectual exercise here. Tell me, what is it you’d like to do?”

She nibbled her lip again. “I ... well ... I think I’d like to try ... you know ... everything.”

“Everything?”

She nodded. “Everything. I want to suck another woman’s boobs. I want to kiss her, feel her tongue in my mouth. And ... and ... I think I’d even like putting my mouth ... you know ... down there.” She hesitated for a moment. “If she were clean, that is.”

“Clean is preferable,” Jake agreed, feeling himself stiffen up a little at the turn the conversation had taken, at the mental image his wife had just put into his head.

“Are you saying you would ... you know ... be okay with that?” Laura asked.

“I would be,” he said. “To tell you the truth, the thought is actually kind of hot.”

“It is?”

He took her hand and slid it down to his manhood, letting her feel how hot he found the topic of conversation.

“Wow,” she said, amazed. “This really does turn you on.”

“It does,” he said. “I would, however, have a request of you if you were going to do such a thing.”

“And what would that be?” she asked carefully.

“That you don’t hide it from me. If you are going to do this, it needs to be out in the open.”

“Well ... of course,” she said. “But ... but...”

“But what?”

“Is that it? That’s the only rule? You don’t want to ... you know ... watch? Or get in on the fun?”

He laughed. “I’m a guy, hon. If you want me to watch or join in, I’m not going to say no, but I’m not making that a condition or anything. If you meet someone you like and the circumstances are right, and she’s clean and all that ... you go for it. Just make sure I’m notified and that you tell me about it.”

“Really?” she asked.

“Really,” he confirmed.

“Wow,” she said. “I knew there was a reason I loved you.”

He laughed again. “Hopefully, that’s not the only reason.”

Her hand was still on his schlong, and it had stiffened up quite nicely by this point. She started to stroke it up and down. “How about another round?” she asked him.

“Let’s do it,” he said.

They did it. And it was very good.

After, as they were once more in each other’s arms, basking in the afterglow, she looked up at him once more.

“I’m not sure that I would really want to have you ... do anything with another woman if ... you know ... the opportunity came up for me to be with someone.”

“I understand,” Jake said. “I wouldn’t really be keen on you doing something with another man.”

“Now that’s just gross,” she said sourly. “Anyway, I’m not ready to have you doing that ... but ... well ... if there was another woman and she and I were ... you know ... doing what two women do ... I do think it would be kind of hot to have you ... watching us.”

“Really?” he asked, feeling a little thrill shoot through him.

“Really,” she said.

“You’re not joking?”

“I don’t joke about things like that,” she assured him with a smile.