Standing On Top

Chapter 12b

He left the two kids in the pool and went back upstairs to his bedroom, where he brushed his teeth and combed his hair a little bit. By the time he made it back down to the lower level of the house, Jill, his accountant, and Pauline were waiting for him in what passed as his office. Jill had flown down from Heritage last night and she and Pauline had spent the day going over his financial picture, auditing each other, and putting things into easily digestible reports for his perusal. It would be the first such report for him this year, as he'd had to skip the usual mid-January meeting because of the tour.

Jill was dressed, as always when engaged in business, in a dark colored business dress. Her thick glasses were perched authoritatively on her face and her hair was in a tight bun. Pauline was dressed professionally as well, but her attire was much more flattering and fashionable, accenting her feminine charms instead of concealing them.

Jake greeted the two women and offered them drinks. They both declined. They sat down at his desk and both of them opened briefcases and began to pull documents from them. Jake stifled a yawn and spent a few moments telling them about his visit to Matt at the GGCI. He kept the details as PG-13 as he could in deference to Jill's prudish sensibilities.

"You're not making this up?" Pauline asked when he was done with the narrative.

"Not a single word," Jake assured her.

She shook her head in disbelief and consternation. "He's not going to learn a thing from this whole debacle," she said. "He's not being punished at all. He's staying in a luxury hotel with maid service."

Jake simply shrugged. "What can you do?" he asked. "Matt is Matt. He goes through his life just lucking into everything and never managing to get hurt from his mistakes."

"I find this whole thing appalling," Jill said. "A jail where they let you have beer? Where you can have... you know... in your room whenever you want to? Where you have room service? And he gets to do his time there just because he has money? He could've killed someone when he ran from those police and this is how they punish him?"

"I know," Jake said. "Life in America, right? Why don't we change the subject now? You two have been shut up in Pauline's office all the livelong day. What did you find out about me? Am I still rich?"

"Despite all of your attempts to whittle your money away on trivial pursuits," Jill said, "yes, you're still rich." She shook her head at him. "I can't believe you spent sixty-four thousand dollars for a car, Jake. A car! You can buy a house on ten acres of property in some parts of California for sixty-four thousand dollars."

"Ten acres of property doesn't go from zero to sixty in 3.8 seconds," Jake said, as if that explained everything.

"A car is a means of getting from one place to another," Jill told him. "I own a Honda Accord — a reliable, safe, fuel efficient vehicle that does the primary job of a car quite well. I bought it used when it was a year old so that the original owner was the one to eat the biggest chunk of depreciation. For this car, I paid eleven thousand dollars."

"Yes," Jake said, "but you're an accountant — a member of the most boring group of people on Earth. You're expected to be cheap and worry about things like who eats the first year's depreciation and how many miles per gallon you get. I'm a rich rock star who has an image to maintain. If people found out I was driving a Honda Accord — hell, if they found out I'd even been within ten feet of a Honda Accord — I would never sell another album as long as I lived."

Strangely, this seemed to make sense to Jill. "Oh," she said. "So you're saying that the money you spend on your automobile has a direct effect on the number of albums your band sells?"

"Uh... yeah," Jake said. "In a way, yes."

She nodded. "I wonder if I could find a way to make that car a write-off then."

"You do what you do," he told her. "That's why I pay you as much as I do. Just remember, if I get audited, your name is on the line too."

"Well, of course," she said. "In any case, despite your lavish spending habits while you were abroad on that last tour..."

"Hey now," Jake said. "I never once dressed as a broad on that last tour."

Pauline chuckled but Jill didn't get the joke. "Excuse me?" she said.

"Never mind, my twin," Jake told her. "Please continue."

"Right," she said, still puzzling over it. "So, despite your spending of eighty-three thousand, six hundred and twelve dollars and seventeen cents of your own money while abroad, the tour ultimately did just as expected to your primary revenue stream."

"So album sales went up?" Jake asked.

"Correct," Jill said. "Pauline has the exact figure with her."

Pauline referenced one of the papers before her. "International sales of every Intemperance album went through the roof in every country that you visited. If you look at this graph here..."

"I don't really want to look at the graph," Jake said with a shake of his head. "Just give me the condensed version."

"Right," Pauline said. "In New Zealand and Australia, it started about three weeks before your arrival with increased sales of It's In The Book and In Action. These sales slowly went up as the time for the dates appeared and then shot up suddenly after your appearances there. Following this, there was a second wave that consisted of massive sales of every other Intemperance album in reverse chronological order."

"So," Jake said, "they started to buy the live album and our studio piece when the concerts were announced, bought them like mad after our shows, and then started buying up the older stuff one by one."

"Exactly," Pauline said. "It's the same pattern in every country you visited, although it was most dramatic in Japan and Taiwan. In all, during the course of your tour and continuing through the first of this month, Intemperance has sold a combined total of seven million studio albums and two million copies of In Action internationally. And this trend, though dying down a bit, is still going on today."

"So we're raking in a buttload on foreign sales," Jake summarized.

"Exactly how I would have put it," Jill said.

"These figures do not include domestic sales," Pauline said. "Now with the studio albums, you're still enjoying a steady stream of sales but nothing dramatic. In Action, however, is selling like hotcakes all across the country. It's been out for less than six months now and it's coming up on triple platinum domestically. People love it. And though Crow would never admit it, one of the main reasons for the high sales is the three previously unrecorded tunes you put on there. The radio stations are playing all three of them to death, especially This Life We Live and Life Of Toil. Both of those have been the most requested tunes in the nation for twelve straight weeks now."

"What about the video of In Action?" Jake asked. "How's that doing?"

"Pretty well," Pauline said. "I think we're being hamstrung a little by the fact that people can just go into a store and rent the video, but sales have topped nine hundred thousand as of this morning."

"Sweet," Jake said.

"And that," Jill said, "coupled with the endorsement fee you got from Gibson Guitars at the start of the tour, minus the money you've spent of late on things like airplanes and loans to flight schools and cars and living the good life abroad, has pushed your net worth into the vicinity of $3.4 million. I have the exact figure here if you're..."

"No, that's cool," Jake said. "So I'm still a rich bastard, right?"

"Well... you're rich, Jake," Jill told him. "That is true, but you're not quite as rich as you seem to think you are."

"What do you mean?" Jake asked her.

"Not all of that net worth is immediately liquid, you understand? A good chunk of it is in this house you own and in your other assets like your vehicles, your furnishings, your car, and your musical instrument collection. That Les Paul guitar you have, for instance, is worth nearly thirty thousand dollars alone. At least that's what it's insured for. Your wine collection is worth seventy-two thousand dollars."

"I understand," Jake said. "What's my house worth these days?"

"The house is now appraised at $1.1 million, but that is just a sterile figure based on comparable sales in the neighborhood. In reality, you could easily get a million and a half, maybe even as much as $1.7 million simply because this is Jake Kingsley's house. The fact that you own it and lived in it increases its value."

"So you're saying that one point five million of that three point four of my net worth is this house alone?" Jake asked.

"No," she said. "The figure I used to represent the value of your house in your total net worth is not what the house is worth, but how much equity you have in it. If you were to liquefy this particular asset, you would still have to pay the bank what you owe them. The equity is the difference between what you owe and how much you could sell the house for."

"I know what equity is," Jake said, irritated. "I'm not a complete idiot on financial matters."

"I'm sorry," Jill said. "I wasn't trying to be insulting."

"It's okay," Jake said. "So how much equity do I have in the house?"

"It's a considerable amount," she told him. "You originally purchased it for $850.000. You put down twenty percent and financed the rest, which was $683,235 — that includes the closing costs, of course."

"Of course," Jake said.

"Per your instructions, I've been paying double the required amount on the mortgage each month. That was a good move. The extra $4400.50 I pay each month goes directly to reducing the principal. So, in the twenty-six months since escrow closed, those extra payments reduced the principal by $114,413. The regular mortgage payments are, unfortunately, going mostly to interest at this stage of the game, but they reduced the principal another $11,212."

Jake's head was starting to spin from all the figures being thrown at him. "Okay, so what's the bottom line?" he asked.

"The bottom line is that the remaining principal on your loan is $557,610. That is how much you would have to pay the bank if you sold the house. Since the house is worth approximately $1.5 million, that means you have $942,390 in equity."

"So, you're saying like a quarter of my net worth is represented by this house?"

"Twenty-eight percent, actually," Jill said, "but, in general, yes, that's the point I'm trying to make. In addition to the twenty-eight percent for the house, another eight percent is represented by your personal belongings — your car, your airplane, your guitars, your clothes, the paintings on your wall, your wine collection — anything that you actually own that is not part of the house if it were sold. It all adds up to roughly $272,000."

"I have $272,000 worth of shit?" Jake asked, surprised at the amount.

"That is correct," she said. "So what we're looking at is that a full thirty-six percent of your net worth is composed of real estate and personal property. This means that $1,224,000 of that $3.4 million I mentioned is money that cannot be spent at all because it resides in property. The only way to tap into it is to sell the property in question. And of the $2.8 million that remains, $1.1 million of it is invested in the stock market."

"$1.1 million?" Jake asked. "I thought I only authorized you to invest thirty percent of my free and clear income there."

"Jake," Pauline said, "that is how much she invests. She's picked some very good stocks for you. You're getting well over a twenty percent return on that investment."

"Really?" Jake asked.

"Don't you pay attention when I go over your investment portfolio with you?" Jill asked him, exasperated.

"Well... yeah... but... you know."

"I've got you heavily invested in Microsoft, Intel, IBM, and several other technology stocks that have gone through the roof since the start of this personal computer craze. Of course, the bulk of the stock investments are in the S&P 500, which is a relatively safe investment with good long term return potential, otherwise your overall stock return would have been closer to forty percent."

"Wow," Jake said. He was only vaguely aware of what the S&P 500 actually was. "Am I paying you enough?"

"We'll get to that later," Jill said. "So you have $1.1 million invested in stocks and growing quite nicely there, thank you very much. Another $500,000 is tied up in various tax shelters I've set up for you — the windmill project, some overseas investment, monthly support obligations to those charities you picked for me, donation obligations to the Heritage Philharmonic and the CSUH and the Heritage Community College music departments. The rest of your money, which equals about $1.2 million, currently, is your actual spending money. I keep it mostly in treasury bills, treasury notes, and certificates of deposit for safe holding. I keep $100,000 in your personal bank account and replenish it from the CDs as you spend. I also keep another account open to pay for all of your monthly obligations. These obligations are your mortgage, Elsa's salary, my salary, your household grocery and alcohol budget, the loan payments and other recurring expenses involving your airplane, your car insurance, your health insurance, your property tax, your utilities, your gardening and pool service, and various other recurring debts. As of this moment, the monthly outgoing amount from this account is $21,200."

Jake whistled. "That is a lot," he admitted.

"It's $254,000 a year," Jill told him. "And yes, it is a lot. Like with your personal spending account, I replenish the recurring obligations account once a month from the CDs and adjust the amount as you acquire new obligations."

"Okay," Jake said, not quite sure where she was going with this.

He soon found out. "My point to this whole discussion is to talk about your personal spending," Jill said. "Now that you have a breakdown of your outgoing obligations and where your money is actually stored, I'm hoping that maybe you'll think twice before making some of these purchases you make."

"You mean like the car?" Jake asked.

"The car, the luxury hotels abroad, the first class air travel all over the European continent, the sixteen thousand dollars worth of French wine, the twenty thousand dollar check you wrote to Helen's father for that down payment on a new plane, the eighteen thousand dollar Lear Jet charters. These are the things that are going to get you into trouble, Jake. You're eating pretty heavily into your liquid assets. Do you know how much you spent out of your personal account last year?"

"No," Jake said, "but I'm sure you do."

"I do," she said. "You spent $212,567 during the course of last year. And you didn't even buy a car that year. You add together the $254,000 paid out from the recurring obligations account, and we're talking... $466,567."

"How much money did I make, though?" Jake asked.

She sighed. They had had this discussion before. "You know the answer to that," she said. "You signed your tax forms, after all. After taxes were paid, you made $1,233,000."

"So I made $1.2 million and I spent almost half a million. Doesn't that leave me with about seven hundred grand left over?"

"Yes, Jake," she said. "It does."

"So I'm not spending more than I make, right?"

"Not yet, you're not," she said. "But you're moving in that direction. Your personal spending goes up every year. So far this year, you've already spent more than $145,000 and it's only May. You keep going at this rate and you're sure to break three hundred thousand by the end of the year."

"But I'm also going to pull in about a million and a half of free and clear profit, right?"

Jill lowered her head to the desk for a few moments and took a deep breath. She always got frustrated by Jake's flippant attitude about money. "Look, Jake," she said when she finally brought her head back up, "I understand that right now you're making much more money than you're spending. But the trend I'm looking at here is that eventually your spending will surpass your yearly income. This will happen even faster if — God forbid — you have a year where you don't have a successful album or where you don't go out on tour. If something like that occurs, your income will be drastically reduced but your spending will not. At that point you'll be in a negative spiral and I'll be forced to start selling off the T-bills, the T-notes, and the CDs before they mature. If it keeps up, I'll be forced to start selling off stocks — something I would really hate to do with the market the way it is right now. You're living a lifestyle that you simply cannot maintain forever."

"So what is your suggestion?" Jake asked. "Buy Honda Accords? Fire Elsa? Get rid of my airplane?"

"You don't have to go quite that far," she said. "You just need to learn not to be so extravagant in your spending. You're not as rich as you think you are. You're spending money like someone who has twenty million in net worth. Just try to avoid buying multiple big ticket items in one tax year. Wait a year between major purchases."

Jake nodded, feeling like he did when the dentist told him to floss more or the doctor told him not to smoke and drink so much — things he had no intention of actually changing. He gave Jill the same answer he gave the dentist and the doctor. "I'll see what I can do, doc."

"Doc?" she said.

"I mean Jill," he corrected with a grin. "I'll try to change my evil ways. One question though."

"What's that?"

"What if my income were to significantly increase? Would you feel better about me spending like mad?"

"I'm sure I would," she said. "Are you expecting your income to significantly increase?"

"The next album we release will fulfill our contractual obligations to National. After that, we're wide open to renegotiation."

"That is true," Pauline had to agree.

"And the terms of your next contract will be better?" Jill asked.

"As long as we finish up on top," Jake said, "there will be a bidding war over who gets to sign us next."

"Interesting," Jill said. "I'll adjust my nagging accordingly when that happens."

"Thanks," Jake said. "Oh, and there's one other thing you can do for me."

"What's that?"

"Can you do some research on the ins and outs of Americans buying property in New Zealand?"

"New Zealand?" she asked. "We were just talking about fiscal responsibility and now you want to buy land in New Zealand."

"I liked it there," Jake said. "I want to own a summer place eventually. See what's available in the Christchurch area on the South Island, something just outside the city itself, up in the hills, near the airport if possible. And if there's a view of either the city or the ocean or both, so much the better."

"You're serious about this?" Jill asked.

"I've never been more serious," he said. "Real estate's an investment, isn't it?"

"Well... yes, but..."

"I'm not gonna buy it this year," he said. "I just want to know if it's possible and, if so, what the base prices for land and dwelling are."

"All right," she said with a sigh. "I'll see what I can find out."

"And how about a five hundred dollar a month raise for you?" he suggested next. "I think you deserve it."

"Well... I'm not going to argue with you on that one."

"Done," he said. "Pencil it in, effective immediately and retroactive to the first of the year."

She smiled. "Thanks, Jake."

"No need to thank me," he said. "You earned it."

"Any more financial stuff to go over with him?" Pauline asked next.

"Usually we give him a breakdown of his portfolio, how it performed over the last quarter, and what the projections are for the next quarter," Jill said. "After that, we give him our audit results on each other."

"All of that stock stuff is like Latin to me," Jake said. "Why don't we skip that part?"

"What about the audit results?" Jill asked.

"Pauline," Jake said, turning to her, "Is Jill screwing me in any way?"

"No," she said. "She's not."

"And Jill, is Pauline screwing me in any way?"

"No," Jill said with a little shake of the head. "She's not."

"Is National doing anything funny with the revenue stream?" he asked next.

"No," Jill said, "they seem to be abiding to the letter of the contract. The random audits we do keep them honest."

"Very good," Jake said. "And now here's the hard part. Are the two of you conspiring with each other to screw me and siphon my funds into Swiss accounts for your own use and pleasure?"

Jill looked shocked at the very suggestion. Pauline, however, simply gave another chuckle. "No, Jake," she said. "We're not doing that."

"Well all right then," Jake said. "I guess that covers the audit, doesn't it?"

"I guess so," Pauline said. "Now I have a few things I need to talk to you about."

"Lay 'em on me, sis," he said. "But make it fast. Dinner is in twenty minutes."

"Right," she said. "The first thing is your plan to appear in Celia Valdez's wedding."

"What about it?"

"It's no longer a secret. Someone tipped the LA Times' entertainment department that Jake Kingsley will be at Martha's Vineyard on June 15 and he will sing a song he composed especially for the occasion."

"Who told them?" Jake asked.

"Well... didn't you tell me at one point that only Greg Oldfellow and Celia herself knew about it?"

"Yes, that was my understanding."

"Draw your own conclusions, but I'm thinking it must've been one of them."

"Hmm," Jake said thoughtfully. "I wonder why they would do something like that."

"I don't know," Pauline said. "We are starting to get some fallout from several directions on this one. I'm starting to get calls from the usual gaggle of columnists asking me to confirm or deny the rumor. So far, I've done neither. I wanted to wait for your input first."

"Keep no-commenting for now," Jake told her. "I'll talk to Celia soon and see what her take on this is."

"Sounds good, but you'd better do it quick. They're getting antsy. The other direction I'm getting feedback from is Crow and Doolittle and their merry men. They asked me for the same confirmation or denial and I told them I don't know anything. They then told me to tell you that any live performance without their permission could be construed as a breach of contract."

"What's our legal standing on this?" Jake asked.

"It's kind of in a gray area," she said. "If you were to go up there and perform copywrited material — either your own or someone else's — you would indeed be in breach of contract. However, since you're planning on performing a song you wrote for the occasion... well... that's not copywrited material, nor is it owned by National as long as you haven't actually submitted it to them in recorded form. You could make a case that such a performance — as long as you weren't paid for it — would not constitute a breach of contract."

"You could make a case?" Jake asked. "Would it be a defensible position?"

"It's hard to tell," she said. "There's really no precedent set for this particular situation. I'll tell you what I think would happen though."

"What's that?"

"I think they'll bluster and threaten and try to intimidate if you go forth with the performance at the wedding, but in the end, they'll conclude that it's really not an issue worth fighting over and drop it."

"That's kind of what I think too," Jake said. "I'm going to do it. I've already got most of the song perfected."

"What's it called?" Pauline asked.

"The Start Of The Journey," he told her.

"The journey being marriage?"

"You guessed it," he said. "It's a soft, gentle, ballad piece set up to sound best with just my voice and my acoustic guitar. It's very un-Intemperance-like, both in music and lyrics."

"It sounds nice," Pauline said. "And I wouldn't worry too much about National's reaction. If you do a good job and the press likes your song, they won't push very hard because the media will make them out to be a bunch of crybaby control freaks."

"They are a bunch of crybaby control freaks," Jake said.

"True, but they don't want the public realizing that."

"Good point," he said.

"Next item," she said. "This one's a little stickier."

"How sticky?" he asked.

"It's Darren," she said. "I went and visited him pretty regularly while you guys were out on tour."

"Is he getting worse?" Jake asked.

"No," she said. "He's getting better."

"Really?" Jake asked.

"He's put on weight and it looks like he might've slowed down on the painkillers and the valium and the muscle relaxers he's been popping. He's been showing up regularly for his physical therapy appointments and he seems to be regaining some of his strength."

"No shit," Jake said. "What got him into gear?"

"He wants his job back," she said.

"Oh," Jake said slowly. "I see."

She nodded. "I know how you feel about it. Charlie's kind of strange, but..."

"He's more than strange," Jake said. "He's a fruitcake to the tenth degree."

"Right," she said, "but, as you've pointed out many times, he's a better bass player than Darren and he's more reliable. Quite frankly, I'm concerned about Darren returning to the band. He's shown us time and time again that he has a problem with the drugs. He can get himself clean for awhile — God knows he's done that more than once — but he always tends to relapse, usually at the worst possible time."

"Yeah," Jake said. "I know."

"He's hoping to be strong enough by the time Matt gets out of jail to go to his release party. At that point he plans to announce that he's ready to return to the band. Coop and Matt will both support him as long as he's physically able to stand up to the rigors of rehearsal and performance. What we need to figure out, is where Bill stands on this issue and where you and I stand on it."

"I'm in favor of keeping Charlie," Jake said.

"I figured that's what you would say," she said. "That's pretty much how I feel as well."

"So what are we going to do?" Jake wanted to know.

"I don't know yet," she said. "It's nothing we need to lose sleep over just yet. Maybe he won't have enough strength when the time comes. Maybe Matt will surprise us and want to keep Charlie too. Maybe Coop will."

"I doubt it," Jake said.

"Me too, but let's just put that on the wait-and-see list for now. We'll deal with the situation when we have to."

"All right," Jake said. "Anything else?"

"Just these," she said, reaching into her briefcase and pulling out a large brown envelope that was bulging with its contents. She set it down on the desk before him. "Four months worth of fan mail. About three hundred letters in all."

"Cool," Jake said, taking it and setting it atop his computer monitor. Reading fan mail was one of the pleasures of his job. He had always made it a point to read each and every letter sent to him, although he rarely had the time to personally answer more than one out of fifty. "This will give me something to do over the next few days. Help build my ego up."

"Like it really needs that," Pauline said with a grin.

"Not nice, sis," he told her. "Not nice at all." He looked at the clock on the wall. "It's almost dinner time. Anyone up for a pre-dinner cocktail?"

"I'm up for it," Pauline said.

"Me too," Jill agreed. Though she was almost a complete teetotaler at home, she tended to imbibe when visiting Los Angeles and her most lucrative client. After all, when in Rome...

Elsa had prepared for them an extra-spicy batch of Louisiana jambalaya. She served it with freshly baked French bread, lots of napkins, and icy cold bottles of Rolling Rock beer. Jake and his two guests dug in heartily, each of them eating no less than two bowls of the fragrant stew that was a combination of chicken, spicy sausage, shrimp, rice, and various vegetables.

"This is wonderful," Jill proclaimed, wiping a sheen of sweat that had formed on her forehead because of the jambalaya's bite. "I can't believe I've never tried this before."

"Keep drinking the beer," suggested Pauline, who was sweating just as badly. "It keeps your mouth from actually combusting."

They kept drinking the beer. Elsa came through at one point to refresh their bread and beer supply. Seeing her, Jake was reminded of a promise he'd made to her grandchildren.

"Hey, Pauline," he said. "You spend more time over at National than I do."

"True," she agreed. "What about it?"

"What do you know about Bigg-G?"

"The rapper?" she said with a shrug. "Not a lot. What do want to know?"

"I promised Gerald and Delilah I'd try to get some autographs for them. I heard he was working on his next album these days. Is that true?"

"It is true," she said. "I've never met him myself so I don't know a lot about him. You know who does, though?"

"Who?"

"Bill," she said. "They're buddies."

Jake looked at her in disbelief. "Nerdly is buddies with a rapper?" he asked.

She nodded. "The two of them are like this," she said, holding her index and middle finger crossed.

"Jesus," Jake said. "Isn't that like the final sign of the apocalypse?"

"It may very well be," Pauline said with a laugh.

"How do they know each other?" Jake asked.

"How else?" she asked. "Bill and Sharon are at the studio every day working with anyone who happens to be recording anything. Bigg-G is recording right now and Bill has been helping him set his sound levels and mix the final tracks."

"No shit?"

"No shit," she confirmed. "You should call Bill and see what he can set up for you."

"I think I'll do that," Jake said, still trying to picture Nerdly and Bigg-G hanging out.

After dinner, the two women climbed back into a limo, both of them more than a little tipsy. Jill would be going back to the Hollywood Hilton, where Jake always put her up when she was in town. Another limo would pick her up in the morning to take her to the airport and her first class flight back to Heritage. Pauline would go to her own home where her plans were to have a few more drinks and then maybe call up Steve Gordon, a golf pro she'd met a few months before while taking lessons. Steve was dumb, a horrible conversationalist, and terribly conceited, but he was also extremely attractive, pretty good in bed, and he almost always came over when she called and then left immediately after the deed was done. That was what Pauline was looking for in a relationship these days.

Jake watched the limo disappear and then went back into the house. He made a trip to his wine cellar and, after some internal debate, selected a bottle of 1978 Cabernet Sauvignon from his collection. He wiped the dust off the bottle and then carried it back upstairs to his office. He opened it with a corkscrew he kept in his desk and poured a healthy amount into a wine glass he'd snagged from the kitchen on the way through. He had a sip, smiling at the smoothness of the seventy-five dollar a bottle vintage, lit a cigarette, and then reached in the large envelop and began going through his fan mail.

Contrary to popular belief, most famous musicians did not employ secretaries or assistants to open their fan mail for them. The process of reading what people thought about you — whether it was good or bad — was not really a chore, it was a pleasure. And so it was with relish that Jake dug in and opened the first letter.

It was a brief one, from a male fan in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The letter was signed Tim Cordoza. Tim started off by telling Jake how much he loved the way Jake played and the way he sang. He then asked a few questions about Jake's musical and vocal training. He ended the letter by telling Jake to keep rocking. In all, pretty typical of correspondence. Had Jake been in a different mood, he might have penned a brief reply to Tim Cordoza, just a quick note with enough details in it so Cordoza would know it was not a form letter. Instead, he wanted to get on with some more letter reading so he dropped it in the trash. Sometimes he felt bad about throwing his fans' letters away after reading them, but, in reality, there was nothing else to do with them. If he stored them, he would quickly amass thousands and they would be cluttering up his office.

He pulled another envelope out and opened it up. He began to read. It was pretty much the same theme as the first, although with a lot more misspellings and bad grammar. That too was fairly typical. Though many of Jake's fans were college students and college educated professionals, many were also high school students, high school drop-outs, and blue collar workers. Jake interpreted the writing the best he could, figured out that the overwhelming theme was positive, and dropped the letter and its envelope into the trash.

He continued to read, sipping wine and smoking cigarettes all the while. About six letters in, he came across another that was fairly typical. It was someone named Robert and he had pegged Jake as somewhat of an intelligent person based on the lyrics he composed and the interviews he gave. As such, Robert attempted to impress Jake by using words that were both obscure and complex. Instead of simply saying, "the blending of your lyrics and music is inspiring", he wrote, "the complex and cosmopolitan amalgamation of your artisan musing and your musical ensemble leads one to believe in the orchestration of genetic superiority in certain genres of human aptitude."

"Thanks, Robert," Jake said, filing that one away as praise and then dropping the letter and envelope into the trash.

The eighth letter he opened was one he actually answered. It was from a young fan named Jeff in Indianapolis. Jeff was a freshman college student and he had been an Intemperance fan ever since his first year of high school. He liked the music that Matt composed, but he felt that Jake's composition and lyrical skills were far superior. He expounded for a few paragraphs about how one of the pleasures of his life was buying a new Intemperance album and then listening to each Jake Kingsley penned track over and over until he was able to figure out just what the lyrics meant. He then went on to explain his interpretation of several of Jake's songs. For the most part, he was right on target. He knew that Descent Into Nothing was about being forced to grow up fast. He knew that Point Of Futility was about feeling a relationship slip away. He knew that I Found Myself Again was about life on the road. His question, however, was about one of the unrecorded live tracks found on In Action — This Life We Live. He knew the song was generally about the downside of being a celebrity figure in modern life, but there was one bit of lyrics he didn't quite understand.

"In the first bridge of the song," he wrote, "you speak of 'women you can take but you can't kiss, they're everything you've dreamed, but was the dream like this?' What exactly are you referring to there? I'm usually quite adept at ferreting out the meaning of each of your lines, but this one eludes me."

Jake chuckled and pulled a sheet of paper out of his desk (it had the Intemperance logo on it and was headed with FROM THE DESK OF JAKE KINGSLEY). He started with 'Dear Jeff" and then wrote a few quick paragraphs about how nice it was to hear from someone who actually understood what he wrote about. He then gave him a brief and truthful explanation about what 'women you can take but you can't kiss' actually meant. That, of course, served to illustrate what the second part of the verse he'd asked about meant as well. He closed the letter by thanking Jeff for writing and then signing his name to the paper. He folded it up and put it in a pre-stamped envelope he pulled from another desk drawer. He quickly scrawled Jeff's name and address on the front and then dropped the letter into his outgoing mail tray. He then threw Jeff's letter into the trash and opened up another one.

As he worked his way through first one and then another bottle of wine, he read more then sixty letters in all. Most were positive, but not all. There were, like always, a few from religious fanatics, right wing pro-government fanatics, and women's lib types who assumed that since Jake sang Matt's lyrics that he had penned them as well. He read each of these like he did all his mail but answered none of them. There were also quite a few from women who had strong feelings for him. Some were brief and to the point — "I want to fuck you, Jake. Just give me a time and a place and I'll be there to do it" — and others were more poignant, with the writer going on and on about how his music spoke to them and aroused them and how the mere sight of his picture caused wet panties.

A few of the female letters contained Polaroid pictures of the woman purporting to be the author of the piece. Some of these pictures were everyday shots of a smiling girl, others were a bit on the risqué side, with lingerie or lots of cleavage, others still were out and out pornographic in nature. One shot in this batch was of a cute, college age girl with brunette hair and large breasts. She was lying back on a bed with a dildo inserted inside of her and a wanting expression on her face. On the bottom of the picture she wrote, "I was looking at your picture on an album cover when my girlfriend took this shot."

A few of these pictures he saved in a special part of his lower desk drawer. He was a man, after all.

And then there were the letters that caused uneasiness in him when he read them. These were letters from women who did not just want to fuck Jake, but who proclaimed they were in love with him, that they wanted to be a part of his life, that they were the perfect woman if he would just give them a chance. He always made a point of never answering any of these ones.

When the second bottle of wine was but a memory he was tired and ready for bed. He decided it was time to call it a night and maybe read some more of these tomorrow night when he got back from a date he had planned with Helen. He looked over at his latest cigarette in the ashtray and saw that it was still only about half smoked.

"Maybe just one more," he said, reaching into the bag and pulling one out at random.

He took a quick drag of his smoke and then opened the envelope. He could tell immediately by the tight, spiky handwriting on the letter that this one was from a female. He started to read. As he went through the letter he became more and more uneasy with each sentence that passed.

Dearest dearest Jake, love of my life, it started.

It's me again, Jenny, the woman destined to be your soulmate. I've written you twice before, as I'm sure you're aware, but I must have put the wrong address on my letters since your replies have never made it back to me. I guess that's just our intertwined fate working against us. Life has a way of doing that, doesn't it?

My last letter, as you'll recall, was of a congratulatory nature. That was when you broke up with that awful slut Rachel. You'll remember I warned you that she was no good for you, that she was simply using you for your money and to get publicity for that sleazy restaurant her slutty mother owns. Sometimes I think it was my psychic powers that sent that redheaded slut to you down in Mexico. Although I wasn't happy when I saw those pictures of you kissing her, or when I read that you had spent several hours with her in your hotel room, I felt better when I finally realized that you wouldn't have actually done anything with her in there. The whole thing had to have been part of our plot to give you a plausible reason to make Rachel leave you.

As I said in my second letter, it all worked out for the best and it seemed that our time was coming soon.

But now... now now now! Instead of floating into my embrace as is written in the stars and in the Almanac of Life... it seems a new seductress is trying to pull you from our destiny together. This Helen slut that you've been keeping company with of late is forcing me to question the promise you made to me in my dream that one night — the promise I wrote you about in my first letter. Whatever in the world are you doing with her, Jake? I see pictures of her on every magazine, in every newspaper, even when I turn on my television set. God, you can't imagine how much I hate the sight of her face. I've had dreams about her as well, you know. Dreams in which I stabbed her over and over again in that ugly, slutty face, where I burned her flesh right off her body!

You have to get rid of her, Jake! The more I see the two of you together, the harder it is to keep telling myself that you're keeping yourself pure for me like you promised in my dream. You MUST get rid of her immediately or I will not be able to take responsibility for her safety.

Your loving and faithful soulmate,

Jenny Johansen

"Wow," Jake said, his blood feeling more than a little cold. Women becoming obsessed with him were nothing new, of course. He had received more than his share of disturbing letters over the years — letters in which women proclaimed they would die if they couldn't have him, that he would die if they couldn't have him, but this... this was something else entirely. This woman was beyond obsessed. This woman sounded downright dangerous, and not just to him, but to Helen.

You must get rid of her immediately or I will not be able to take responsibility for her safety.

Was that a threat? Or was it more paranoid delusion like the ones in which she'd written to him before (Jake had never received any previous letters from this woman, he certainly would have remembered them), or like the dreams in which Jake promised himself to her. But those weren't the only dreams Jenny had had, were they?

Dreams in which I stabbed her over and over again in that ugly, slutty face, where I burned her flesh right off her body!

Jake looked at the date on the letter. It had been written only four days ago. The postmark on the envelope confirmed this. He looked at the address. It was a Los Angeles address and postmark. She lived within twenty miles of him, within sixty miles of Helen. And both of their addresses had long since become a part of the public record.

For the first time since becoming a celebrity so many years ago, Jake found himself afraid of the consequences of the life he'd chosen.