Standing On Top

Chapter 10c

"You know something, Nerdly," Matt said. "All kidding aside, I have to tell you, that bitch of yours is all right. She's a good sport."

"Uh... thanks," Nerdly said. "I like her a lot. She's got a good ear for music."

"How's her titties?" Matt asked. "It's hard to tell with those baggy clothes she always wears. She got a premo rack, or what?"

"The specification of Sharon's breasts are not your concern," Nerdly said.

"Oh come on, Nerdly," Coop said. "Give it up. Was she a virgin when you tapped into her, or what?"

"Doesn't that hurt?" Charlie asked. "I've never popped a cherry before. I like my chicks loose and ready."

"I don't think my sex life with Sharon is a suitable topic for conversation," Nerdly told them.

"Get the fuck out of here with that shit," Matt scoffed. "I've watched you lick a bitch's asshole out while another bitch sucked your schlong from behind. I've had a contest with you about how many bitches we could bang in one night. And now that you're scoring some regular pussy you don't want to give up the details?"

"That's right," Nerdly said self-righteously. "Those were women of loose and non-existent virtue. Sharon is a lady, and a gentleman does not reveal details about his affairs with ladies."

Matt rolled his eyes and shook his head. "That's it," he said. "I knew it would happen at some point, and I guess we're here now. Nerdly's gone faggot."

"I have not," Nerdly said. "I have never once engaged in homosexual activities."

"It's a state of mind, Nerdly, not an actual butt reaming," Matt said. "And you've definitely got the faggot state of mind going on right now."

"What exactly makes a person a real faggot?" Charlie suddenly asked.

"What?" Coop asked.

"Well," Charlie said, "if you just sucked a dick one time to see what it was all about and didn't like it, does that make you a faggot?"

Matt was looking at him with renewed hostility. "Why the fuck are you asking this shit, freak boy? Are you telling us you've sucked a dick before?"

"No," he said. "I've never sucked a dick. I was just wondering at what point you officially become a faggot. Is it the first time a dick passes your lips, or is it if you decide to do it again, or is when you..."

"I'll tell you when you become a faggot," Matt said. "It's the first time you ever wonder what it might be like to have some other dude's schlong in your mouth! You start thinking about shit like that, you're a fuckin' faggot! Now someone better change this conversation topic real soon before I either barf or kick freak boy's ass."

Nerdly immediately took up this particular challenge. He blurted out, "Sharon's going with us when we go out on tour."

Everyone stopped and slowly turned to stare at the diminutive piano player. He stared back at them, a challenging look on his face.

"Sharon's doing what?" Jake asked.

"She's coming on tour with us," Nerdly said. He looked at Matt nervously. "That's assuming that Matt's current legal entanglement doesn't prevent us from embarking on this adventure."

"You asked a bitch out on tour with us?" Matt said. "Are you high or something?"

"No, I am quite sober," Nerdly said. "I made the decision to ask her after much soul searching and contemplation of the dilemma I was facing."

"What dilemma is that?" Jake asked.

"Surely you must know what I'm talking about, Jake," Nerdly said. "You have to be engaged in the same dilemma yourself regarding Helen. Maybe you too, Matt. You and Kim have been seeing quite a bit of each other lately, haven't you?"

"Boning a bitch a couple of times a week and taking a bitch out on the road with you are two different things, Nerdly," Matt said.

"Sharon and I are doing more than just engaging in sexual intercourse," Nerdly said. "We're a couple now. Couples share things with each other; they strive to stay together if possible. I asked her to go with me because I knew that if she didn't... well... it would be the end of us."

"You think your relationship wouldn't survive a four month separation?" Jake asked.

"It's not just the separation," Nerdly said. "If I were a soldier deploying to South Korea or some other active destination, I don't think it would be a problem. I'm not a soldier though. I'm a famous musician who will be touring some of the most exotic cities in the world. There will be women dying to have sexual relations with me and I'm only human. If Sharon were not with me, I would give into the temptation of meaningless fornication. You know what I'm talking about, don't you, Jake? Didn't you go through this on our first tour?"

He was talking about Angelina, of course, who Jake had been seeing and moderately in love with when they'd left for their first cross-country tour. He had stepped onto the bus in Los Angeles and had never seen or talked to Angelina again because the temptation Nerdly was talking about had gotten to him on the very first tour date in

Bangor, Maine. The last he'd heard, Angelina was a crack cocaine addicted prostitute doing time in the Los Angeles County jail. It was not a part of his life that Jake was particularly proud of. "Yeah," Jake said sourly. "I know what you're talking about."

"I learned from your mistake, Jake," Nerdly said. "Forgive me for bringing it up and reminding you of it, but I didn't want to repeat it. I grew up a nerd, with women having no interest in me. Now that I'm a rock star, the most beautiful women in the world all want to have relations with me. I wouldn't be able to resist the temptation if I were alone out on tour. And Sharon would never be able to maintain a relationship with me if I faltered in that way. It's just how her basic persona is set up. I agonized over the dilemma for weeks and I'm afraid I wasn't the most pleasant person to be around during that time. I didn't know what to do."

"So that's why you were being such a fuckin' bitch?" Matt asked. "Because you didn't want to leave your snatch here in LA while you went on tour?"

"Correct," Nerdly said. "I must say that I actually contemplated resigning my position with the band to keep from going on this tour."

"You were gonna quit the band for a bitch?" Matt asked, thoroughly appalled at this blasphemous uttering.

"That's when I realized how much I really cared about Sharon," Nerdly said. "And that's when the simple, yet practical, solution hit me. If Sharon is out on tour with me, I will not have to worry about the women of loose virtue who will be in constant pursuit of my affections because I would have Sharon to... well... take care of my base needs. If you know what I mean."

"So if you have Mrs. Nerdly to fuck out on the road, you ain't gonna want to fuck any groupies?" Matt asked, still trying to comprehend this queer logic.

"Exactly," Nerdly said.

"That's got to be the most twisted fucking thing I've ever heard," Matt said, shaking his head in dubious wonder.

"How does Sharon feel about all this?" Jake asked. "She's right in the middle of her master's degree, isn't she? Is she willing to drop everything and spend four months crawling all around the world with you?"

"It's only a semester off," Nerdly said. "She was quite happy when I asked her, actually. She said yes even before I finished asking her the question. In truth, I think the same dilemma was causing insomnia and stress related disorder in her as well."

"What about National?" Coop asked. "What did they have to say about it?"

"Basically, they remained true to form," Nerdly said. "They agreed as long as I paid for her portion of the trip and as long as we tried not to let it be known that Sharon was out there with me. It goes against the image they're trying to foment for us."

"So you already set it up?" Jake asked.

"Indeed," Nerdly said. "I've got Bailey and Crow doing the calculations and putting Sharon into the reservation and booking system. I tried to get them to employ her as a sound technician — she's already better then most of those tone-deaf morons they have employed — but they wouldn't agree to that."

"Well," Jake said, unsure how to feel about all of this. "I guess... uh... congratulations are in order, right, Nerdly?"

"It would seem so," Nerdly said.

"What's gonna happen if you and the bitch find out you can't stand each other out there?" Matt asked.

Nerdly shook his head. "No chance of that," he said. "This is going to be my best tour ever."

The rehearsals went on and gradually they started to dial in the show they would be presenting to their foreign fans. As they worked together nearly forty hours per week over the next thirteen days, the bickering and arguing tapered off and was replaced by the camaraderie they'd enjoyed in the past. Nerdly, in particular, seemed like his old self. He was now actually looking forward to the coming tour and visiting all of the historical sites with Sharon. They spent their evenings looking over brochures from a travel agency and booking tours they planned to go on during the waiting periods in Japan and Europe.

Jake didn't get to see very much of Helen during this time. He was busy with tour production and learning various phrases in six different languages. Helen was busy teaching ground school and taking beginner pilots up in the new plane. At night, both were usually too tired for either of them to make the thirty-minute drive to each other's residence. They did make a point of getting together each weekend, however. They played golf (Helen always beat him) and went surfing and usually rounded out the evening with a gourmet meal prepared by Elsa and a rousing round of enthusiastic sex in Jake's bedroom (or his hot tub, or on his pool table). If Helen had any worries about what was to become of them when he left for the tour, she didn't articulate them. She seemed to just take things a day at a time.

Matt took things a day at a time as well. If he was worried about his legal troubles and the possibility that he might end up doing a stretch in prison, he never articulated it and did not let it hamper his work. His Maserati had been sprung from police impound but he didn't drive it or any other vehicle. He stayed in his apartment in Los Angeles and rode in the back of limousines whenever he needed to go somewhere. Kim was starting production of a new movie — it was called Mississippi Yearning — so they were only able to get together on the odd Saturday or Sunday. They tended to stay at Matt's place or at Kim's place since Matt could not be seen publicly drinking alcohol.

On December 5, Matt and Perceville Maywood were back in the Orange County Superior Court room of Judge Waters for the evidentiary hearing regarding the cocaine and marijuana found in his house. The hearing was brief and to the point. Deputy DA Sparks presented his argument that the search of the "courtesy bowls" in Matt's residence was a reasonable thing to do, even though the officers were in the house to search for a person. He cited multiple cases to back up his position, most of which had to do with the "plain view" doctrine.

Perceville then countered with his argument, that the sheriff's deputies had permission to search for a person in Matt's residence, but not to go searching through small sealed containers lying around on the furniture, regardless of what those containers resembled.

"Just because Officer Worthington feels that small silver bowls of that type typically are used to store cocaine," Perceville argued, "does not give him carte blanche to start opening them up. Using that logic, it could be argued that when Officer Worthington sees Mr. Tisdale's filing cabinet sitting in the corner of the office, it's okay for him to start digging through it and reading Mr. Tisdale's private files because he's heard that criminals keep records of their wrongdoing in filing cabinets."

Perceville then submitted his own case briefs on the subject, most of which also had to do with the plain view doctrine, although his were cases in which that particular doctrine was found not to apply. He had done his research well (or at least his paralegals had). Two of the cases were almost identical to the situation Matt was facing. In the first, police responding to a domestic dispute call had spied a wooden box with a marijuana leaf on it sitting on a shelf in the living room. Without asking for permission, one of the officers had opened it and found half an ounce of marijuana and a considerable amount of hashish. In the second case, a police officer performing a routine traffic stop spotted a small zippered case in the glove compartment of the suspect's car when he'd reached in to get his registration. The officer demanded that the suspect hand the case over. He opened it and found two grams of cocaine, a mirror, a razor blade, and a gold plated straw.

In both of these cases, the prosecution argued that the plain view doctrine applied since the containers that were opened were of the sort typically associated with drugs. And in both cases, appellate courts had ruled that just because a sealed container looked like something that might contain illicit substances, that did not constitute the illicit substance in question being in plain view. The evidence in both of these cases was disallowed.

Upon being presented with these briefs, Judge Waters had little difficulty making a decision.

"My ruling is that the opening of the silver bowls in Mr. Tisdale's residence by Officer Worthington constitutes an illegal search and seizure," she said from her bench. "Since the finding of the cocaine and the marijuana in these bowls is the sole basis for the search warrant of Mr. Tisdale's house, any evidence gathered from that search is therefore tainted and unusable under the fruit of the poisonous tree doctrine."

She banged her gavel and just like that, the most damning of the charges against Matt became unsupportable.

"Yes!" Matt said outside the courtroom, slamming Perceville on the back hard enough to drive some of the wind from his lungs. "You're a bad-ass motherfucker, even if you do like to suck hairy ass."

Perceville did not respond to the second part of Matt's comment. By now, he was quite used to such insults. "You're not out of the woods yet, Matt," he told him. "You still have the DUI, the reckless driving charges, the evasion of the police charges, the resisting arrest charges, and the assault on a peace officer charges."

"I ain't worried about that shit," Matt told him. "I have the utmost faith in you, Tinkerbelle."

A new preliminary hearing was held the following day and Matt's bravado was shaken a bit when Judge Waters found there was sufficient probable cause to bring Matt to trial on all of the remaining charges.

"So what happens now?" Matt asked him when it was over.

"Now, I start sending my investigators out to start digging for info that will help muddy the waters a little. If I can get something to cast a little doubt on the validity of some of these charges, the prosecutor might drop them or at least try to get you to plea to a lesser charge."

"I see," Matt said, nodding wisely. "Well, get on the motherfucker then. We're supposed to go out on tour next month."

Perceville's investigators got on the motherfucker. They interviewed anyone who might even remotely be able to cast aspersions on the DA's case. They talked to Kim, to Matt's household staff, to Matt's neighbors. They dug up any information they could on the officers involved in the altercation or in Matt's booking. It wasn't long until they had just enough to muddy the waters.

Kim, two of Matt's household staff, and Matt's next-door neighbor — a real estate developer who often smoked marijuana and snorted cocaine with Matt — had all witnessed the confrontation in front of Matt's house. All were willing to testify that the Orange County sheriff's deputies had been the aggressive ones, that they had yelled out conflicting orders while pointing guns at Matt and Kim, that they had then rushed over and started manhandling both of them. It wasn't exactly the whole truth and nothing but the truth, but it was just enough to conceivably offer a defense to the assaulting a peace officer and resisting arrest charges.

The investigators also discovered that every one of the deputies involved in the fight had been accused multiple times of use of excessive force. This was not unusual, of course. Any cop who has worked the streets more than two months has excessive force complaints in his record. Two of the deputies involved, however, had actually been disciplined in the past for excessive force. Granted, the disciplines were nothing more than simple written reprimands, but it was something that would go a long way toward casting doubt in the mind of your average dumbshit juror.

On December 19, after having the weekend to mull it over, Deputy DA Sparks called Perceville Maywood and offered a plea bargain.

"What are the terms?" Matt asked when he was told about it.

"You plea guilty to the DUI charge, the reckless driving charge, and one count each of assaulting a peace officer and resisting arrest. You'll do ninety days in jail and be on probation for one year. You agree to take an anger management class and an alcohol awareness class."

"Ninety days in jail?" Matt said. "Fuck that shit. I don't want to do no fucking time."

"I've arranged that you be allowed to serve your time in the Gallahad Gardens Correctional Institute," Perceville told him. "It's a private correction facility in Newport Beach. You'd have to pay pretty good money to be incarcerated there, but it's much better than the Orange County Correctional Center, which is where you'd otherwise end up."

"I don't want to go to jail at all," Matt said. "And I don't want this to fuck up our tour plans."

"This is the best I can do, Matt," Perceville told him. "Considering that you were looking at three to four years in state prison initially, I'd think you'd be grateful for this plea."

"What if we go to trial?" Matt asked.

"Then it's a crapshoot," Perceville told him. "I might be able to cast enough reasonable doubt on a jury to get you acquitted of some or all of the charges, but I might not. Juries are made up mostly of morons and they're unpredictable. There's a very good chance you could be found guilty on all charges."

"And what would happen if I was?"

"Your sentencing would then be up to the judge. He would more than likely give you a year in the county jail, which would translate into six actual months if you exhibited good behavior."

Matt frowned. "That don't sound too fucking cool," he said.

"Indeed it does not," Perceville said. "My advice to you is to take this deal. I will ask them to defer sentencing until early May and to allow you to leave the country since your livelihood demands it."

"Will they agree to that?" Matt asked.

He nodded. "They'll agree to it."

"All right," Matt said. "I guess I'll take it."

"Good man," Perceville said. "I'll get in touch with the DA immediately."

By December 23, the last business day before the Christmas holiday period, it was all over but the sentencing. The DA's office agreed to all of the terms of the plea bargain, as did Matt. Judge Waters, who was quite sick of having the scrungy musician and his pompous lawyer in her courtroom, agreed to the plea deal as well, including the out of country provision and the delayed sentencing provision. The California DMV, once they had a guilty plea in the criminal justice system, was then allowed to act on the charges as they related to Matt's driving privileges. Matt's driver's license was suspended for eighteen months.

Kim Kowalski, meanwhile, had been going through her own legal quagmire as a result of that night. Her lawyer was not of the same caliber as Perceville Maywood, but he did have the benefit of Perceville's investigators' statements from the next door neighbor and the household staff. She was eventually offered a plea bargain in which she pled guilty to one count of resisting arrest and one count of battery on a peace officer. She was placed on one year of probation and given no jail time at all.

"A fuckin' happy ending," Matt said, raising a beer in the Flamingo Club for the first time since being arrested. "I love happy endings."

"So the tour is on?" Kim asked him, raising her Long Island Ice Tea in return.

"The tour is on," he said.

She nodded and finished her drink. They left early that night and spent two hours having sex in Matt's living room.

The next morning Jake, Helen, Nerdly, Sharon, and Pauline boarded a commercial airliner at LAX so they could fly to Heritage for Christmas with their families. This would be the first time that Helen and Sharon were introduced to their respective partner's parents and both of the women were a little nervous at the prospect.

"Nothing to be worried about," Jake told Helen as they cruised thirty-five thousand feet above the Central Valley. They were sitting in the first row of the first class section. "My parents are pretty normal people."

"Then what happened to you?" she asked him.

He chuckled, shaking his head a little. "Are we using derogatory humor to detract from our feelings of anxiety?" he asked.

"Are we imitating Nerdly?" she shot right back.

"Wow," he said. "I guess I was. Sometimes it creeps up on you unexpected."

They sat in silence for a few minutes, Jake staring out the window at the landscape below, Helen sipping from a cup of coffee.

"Do you think they'll like me?" Helen finally asked.

"They liked Mindy Snow," Jake told her. "And you're much nicer than she was."

This didn't seem to make her feel much better. It only seemed to shift her anxiety in a different direction. "You and Mindy... uh... broke up right before you went out on tour, didn't you?" she asked.

"Yeah," Jake said. "We did."

"And that other woman you were dating... that first one you told me about..."

"Angie," Jake said.

"Right. Angie. You broke up with her right before you went out on tour too, didn't you?"

"Well... there was never an official break up there," Jake said. "But... yeah. I never saw her again after we left on tour."

She nodded thoughtfully and took a small sip of her coffee. "Jake... this is probably not the time to bring this up, since it's Christmas and I'm going to meet your parents and all, but... well..."

"You're worried about what's going to become of us when I go out on tour."

"You have to admit, it's a valid worry. Your relationships don't tend to survive the experience."

"That's true," Jake said. "They don't."

"I know that we've been just sort of... you know... going along with this thing we have between us. And I know I told you back in the beginning, back in Omaha, that I was just in it for the sex and that I wasn't holding you to any sort of commitment or anything, but... well... I've really grown to like you a lot, Jake."

"I know," he said. "And I've grown to be quite fond of you as well."

"This is really hard for me, Jake. I'm not really sure how to even say what's on my mind." She took a deep breath. "You've told me what kinds of things go on when you're out on tour. The things with the groupies?"

He nodded. "Yes. There are a lot of groupies at every stop."

"Are you going to... you know... have sex with them while you're out there?" she asked. "I'm not here telling you not to or anything... but..." She shook her head in frustration. "I'm not sure how I'll feel about it if I know you're out there... doing those things while I'm here. I mean, maybe we could agree to see other people while you're gone. I've heard that can work and that people can get back together afterward."

"Is that what you want?" he asked.

"I would agree to it," she said. "There's really nothing I could do to stop you. I'm just... just not sure if I would want to be with you anymore once you came back. I don't know this for sure, Jake, but I'm trying to be honest."

"I know what you're saying," Jake told her. "And I don't blame you for feeling that way."

"So... what are we going to do? I won't ask you to be celibate while you're out there. I couldn't ask that of you. I know how hard it would be and even if you did it... you'd resent me and I'd always worry that you were really screwing your brains out and just telling me you weren't. And then there's..."

"Helen," he said, stopping her. "There is a solution to this problem."

"There is?" she asked. "What is it?"

He took a deep breath and looked in her eyes. "What would you think about coming with us when we go?"

Her mouth dropped open in surprise. Whatever she had been expecting to hear out of this conversation, that certainly hadn't been on her list of possibilities.