Standing On Top

Chapter 14b

"So anyway," Jim went on. "We did the cover tune thing for about six months or so and then I started introducing some of the tunes I'd written over the years. When we saw how good we were at putting them together into a coherent form..."

"It's Jim who does that," Steph said. "He's the one that is able to take all of our lyrics and basic melodies and turn them into actual music."

Jim shrugged this off modestly. "I have a gift for that sort of thing," he said, "but everyone helps out. So anyway, once we started putting some of my tunes together, we decided to try some of Marcie's as well. And finally, one night after we'd perfected almost an entire set, we got Steph drunk and she actually put down a few tunes she'd come up with. Until that point, none of us even knew she was a songwriter."

"I didn't think I was very good," Stephanie said softly. "I still don't, although I'm forced to admit that the crowds seem to like my stuff... especially the girls."

"Oh yeah, especially the girls," Rick said with a knowing grin.

"Shut up, dickwad," Stephanie told him with a grin.

"We worked up a set of about fifteen original songs," Jim went on, "and then we started trying to get gigs at some of the local clubs. They weren't very interested in us at first. Most of them rejected us without even an audition. They said they didn't like the way we looked."

Jake simply nodded. It was a theme that was pervading the music industry ever since the rise of MTV and music videos.

"Eventually, however," Jim said. "This tiny little club out in the suburbs gave us a shot. We played there as an opener for three consecutive weekends and that was all it took. People loved us."

"You do have a unique sound," Jake said.

"By the end of that first summer, we were headlining at clubs all over Rhode Island. The next summer we were playing all over New England. It's to the point now that we pack the house everywhere we play."

"How much are you pulling in?" Jake asked.

"Seven-fifty a show," Jim said with a shrug. "It's not a fortune — certainly not enough to quit our teaching jobs for — but it's not bad either."

"We don't do it for the money anyway," Marcie said. "We do it because we love to play music for people. I'll never forget how scared I was the first time we went up on stage. I was trembling and shaking, terrified that I was going to screw up and that everyone would laugh at me."

"I can relate," Jake said. "My first time was exactly the same."

They all looked at him in disbelief for a moment, convinced he was just jerking them off.

"I'm not kidding," Jake said. "I was twenty years old when I walked onto that first stage at D Street West in Heritage, California, and I was terrified. So was Matt and Nerdly. But as soon as we started to play..."

"Yeah," said Marcie with a nostalgic smile. "That's when everything feels the best, isn't it?"

"Damn right," Jake said.

"Does it go away?" asked Stephanie. "The thrill of playing in front of an audience? You know, like when it becomes your actual job and you have to do it night after night?"

"There are a lot of things about going out on tour that tend to burn you out after awhile," Jake said. "Being in hotel rooms all the time, long drives on the bus, all the radio station interviews and autograph sessions, the lack of sleep, the not knowing where you are or what day of the week it is. But, for me, the one thing that has never lost its allure is going out on that stage and hearing people cheering for me. It doesn't matter how many shows in a row we've done, I still love the feeling of playing my guitar and singing for a crowd, the way it feels when the show is over and you know you've done a good job and everyone had a good time. That's magic for me and I think it always will be."

The five band members nodded solemnly at these words of wisdom. "That's good to know," Jim said.

"Yeah," agreed Marcie. "One of my greatest fears is that one day I'll wake up and not want to do this anymore."

"I've been through quite a lot since my first time," Jake said. "I've been arrested, beaten by cops and truck drivers, been accused of every kind of blasphemy there is, and even a few that there isn't, had demented fans threaten to kill my girlfriend, and I still haven't woke up with that feeling yet. Not even close."

"What about the story about you snorting coke out of that girl's ass crack?" asked Marcie. "Any truth to that?"

Jake chuckled and took another drink of his beer. "I'm still pleading the Fifth on that one," he said.

"Understandable," Stephanie said. "Although I'm sure it's a really cool story."

"You have no idea," Jake said. "So tell me something, have you guys ever thought about trying to get a recording contract? Based on what I've heard, your music is definitely marketable."

A look passed among the five members of the band — a cynical look that broke through the geek squad impression.

"We tried once," Jim said. "We paid a couple thousand bucks and put together a demo tape at one of the recording studios here in Boston. We sent it out to about two dozen agents and to all of the major recording studios, including National Records and Aristocrat Records. Most of them we never heard from again. Those we did hear from all rejected us on the ground that 'you don't have the look we're in the market for at this time'."

"In other words," Stephanie said, "we don't look good on camera so they don't care what our music sounds like."

Jake nodded, unsurprised. "Yeah," he said. "That's kind of the way the industry is gearing itself these days. It used to be they didn't give a shit what you looked like as long as you put out good music. Now, it's just the opposite. They don't give a shit what you sound like as long as you look good in the video."

Marcie shrugged, disinterestedly. "Who cares about making it big?" she asked. "I still enjoy teaching and I'm happy with my life. We get to jam together on weekends during the school year and we get to play live for people that appreciate us for what we are all summer. At least we know we're good, that we really are musicians."

"Well put," Jake said. "That really is the most important thing. But if you could get a recording contract going... if someone did agree to put out an album of your tunes, you wouldn't refuse it, would you?"

"What are you suggesting, Jake?" asked Jim.

"I have some pretty good connections in the industry," Jake said. "If there was ever a band that deserved to be heard from coast to coast, you are it. If you have any of those demo tapes still floating around, I'd be willing to let a few people listen to them and see what happens."

They all looked at him as if he were setting them up for a practical joke.

"I'm sincere," Jake assured him. "I can't guarantee anything, but maybe I can get you heard by the right people. I don't like to brag, but I can make a phone call to most of the talent agents in Hollywood and they'll listen to me. I can ask for a meeting with the CEO of National Records and he'll grant it. He may not like me very much — he and I have butted heads many times over the years — but he'll listen to me. And if he hears something that he thinks will make money for him, he'll jump all over it."

"Do you really think they'll like us?" Stephanie asked.

"I really think they will," Jake said. "The question is, do you want to move beyond New England? I'm certainly not one to romanticize the life I lead. It has a lot of good points — the most important one being that I'm rich — but there are a lot of bad parts as well."

Jim answered for them. "Mr. Kingsley," he said, "if someone were to offer us a recording contract, we would not turn it down."

Jake nodded. "Very well then," he said. "Do you still have a demo tape?"

"We do," Jim said.

"Do you have a piece of paper?" he asked next.

Marcie immediately got up and went to a locker, where she kept her purse. She rummaged around in it for a few moments and finally produced a notepad and a pen. Jake wrote down his home address and the telephone number for Pauline's office.

"Send your tape and any information you can put together about yourselves here," he told them, handing Marcie the paper. "Get newspaper clippings about your shows, reviews, anything you can to support the fact that you're talented musicians. Put together a resume that includes bios on all of you and tells how much money you're paid for a show and the names and addresses of every club you've played in over the past year. If you could get some letters of recommendation from some of the club owners, so much the better. Get that stuff to me as soon as you can and I'll see what I can do."

The band was pleased. They all thanked him profusely, Marcie and Stephanie even going so far as to give him hugs.

Jake wished them a fond farewell and then made his leave. When he returned to the club floor he found that Helen was no longer sitting at their table. While he was puzzling this out, one of the waitresses came over to him and told him where she was.

"She got sick," she said. "Cindy helped her to the ladies room. They haven't come back out yet."

"Oh... great," Jake said. "Do you think you could go in there and check on them for me?"

"Anything for you, Jake," she said, her eyes telling him that by anything, she meant anything.

He gave her his patented Jake Kingsley shy smile, the one that seemed to say: I get you and I appreciate the offer, but right now is not a real good time. She responded to it with a smile of her own — a keep me in mind smile — and headed off to the bathroom on her mission.

Cindy and the other waitress brought Helen out of the bathroom a few minutes later, holding onto her one on either side to keep her from falling. Helen was barely conscious, maintaining just enough coherence to keep putting one foot in front of the other.

"Thank you, ladies," Jake said with a sigh. "I can take it from here."

He took it from there, putting Helen's left arm around his neck and half dragging her through the crowd and out the door. As they went, she kept trying to kiss him. He kept his face turned away because her breath smelled very strongly of vomitus. He haled a cab and stuffed her inside. Within two minutes, she was sound asleep and snoring.

He had to physically pick her up and carry her into the hotel when they arrived. As he was opening the door to their suite, she suddenly woke up and began to hiccup wetly. Jake barely got her to the bathroom before she started to erupt with great volumes of alcohol-scented emesis.

"It's gonna be a long night," Jake sighed as he patiently held her hair out of her face and kept her from falling over.

When the retching finally trailed off, Jake managed to get her to her feet, get her undressed, and mostly cleaned up. Before he could get her into bed, however, she had another episode of violent vomiting. As soon as it was over, she passed out again, this time with her head in the toilet bowl. Jake considered just leaving her there — after all, she was pre-positioned for the next round — but in the end he couldn't quite bring himself to do it. He dragged her back to the bedroom and put her in bed, careful to lay her on her side to keep her from following in the footsteps of Bon Scott, John Bonham, and Jimmy Hendrix.

She woke up three more times during the night, although by the third she was reduced to nothing more than dry heaves. Finally, she fell into a slumber so deep it could almost qualify as comatose.

The next morning she was so sick she could barely get out of bed. The very mention of food was enough to make her gorge rise. She a vague memory of the end of the Brainwash show, but no recollection whatsoever of Jake leaving her at the table so he could go meet the band, how she got back to the hotel, how she ended up naked in bed, or her many trips to the toilet to purge her stomach of the poison she'd ingested.

She took a long soak in the room's bathtub and then dressed listlessly, falling back asleep while Jake packed her suitcases for her.

It was as they were in the first class lounge waiting for their flight to be called that she began to tremble.

"Jake," she told him, "I'm afraid to get on that plane."

"I know," he said, patting her leg. "I'll be with you. We'll be okay."

And, of course, they were. The 747 took off normally and leveled out at 35,000 feet. It flew normally for five hours and forty-eight minutes. It then touched down normally at LAX, only five minutes behind schedule. Helen sat in barely controlled terror the entire flight. Every bump of turbulence, every bank of every course change, every change in altitude, made her jump and look around wildly and then look out the window at the two engines on the right wing.

"Are you going to be okay?" Jake asked her at one point.

"I don't know," she admitted. "That flight yesterday scared me, Jake. I feel like we're riding in a broken down box of bolts that's going to break apart any second." She shook her head and sighed. "I'm not sure I'm ever going to climb on one of these things again."

San Juan Capistrano, California

July 1, 1989

Jake pulled his BMW into the circular driveway in front of Matt's house. A uniformed valet, hired especially for the occasion of Matt's get-out-of-jail party, rushed over and opened the passenger door, allowing Helen to step out. Once she was out, he made a dash to Jake's door but Jake beat him to the punch, getting out on his own before he could get there. The valet seemed a bit disappointed by this, as if etiquette as he understood it had been broken.

"How are you doing tonight, Mr. Kingsley?" the valet enquired.

"I'm hanging in here," Jake told him.

"Very good, sir. I like your car."

"Take good care of it for me, huh?" Jake responded. "I'd hate to see what Matt would do to you if you scratched a guest's car."

"I'll treat it like it was my own," the valet promised. He got behind the wheel, closed the door, and a moment later, he was gone.

They started toward the front door of the mansion. Even from sixty feet away, through solid walls and windows of double-pane glass, Jake could hear the thumping of bass from Matt's stereo system, could hear the babble of dozens of semi-drunken conversations. Matt had promised the party of the year for the occasion of his release from jail and it seemed like he was delivering it.

The door was opened by a uniformed butler (not Charles, the normal butler; he had other duties tonight) and Helen and Jake were escorted through the house and into the main entertainment room, the source of the music and the conversations. Jake saw well over sixty people down here, all dressed in the most casual wear possible, per the invitation's specification. He saw Bermuda shorts, Hawaiian shirts, blue jeans, light summer dresses, tank tops, and tube tops. Jake himself was wearing a pair of khaki shorts and his favorite Corona T-shirt. Helen was sporting denim shorts, sandals, and a pink spaghetti strap top that showed a lot of cleavage.

The butler picked up a microphone that was mounted on a stand on a small podium just inside the room. He clicked it on and a slight hum emitted from a speaker next to the podium. At the sound, the conversation level decreased and many of the guests turned to look.

"May I present," the butler said formally, "Jake Kingsley, lead singer of the band Intemperance, and his guest for the evening, Helen Brody, pilot and certified flight instructor."

"Wassup, everyone?" Jake said with a wave. A few wassups were thrown back at him and the conversation level picked right back up.

Jake and Helen waded into the room, an environment thick with cigarette and marijuana smoke and the odor of alcoholic beverages. Several of Matt's courtesy bowls — the very objects that had almost sent him to a real prison on drug trafficking charges — were open and in use at several of the tables.

Jake knew most of the people present at the party, at least on a passing basis. There were veteran members of Intemperance's road crew, friends of Matt's from the various clubs he patronized, a few musicians (including Matt's bud from Cabo San Lucas, Sammy Hagar) — and a gaggle of porn actresses who were friends of Kim. There were also a dozen or so people that Jake recognized as counselors and other staff members from GGCI, Matt's home away from home these past four and a half weeks.

Jake greeted those who crossed his path as he made his way to the back of the room. He shook a few hands, received a few hugs, and he and Helen were even propositioned for a threesome by one of the porn stars. Finally, they made their way to Matt, who was standing near the sound system, smoking a cigarette and drinking from a large glass of beer. Standing on one side of him was Kim, who was dressed in Daisy Duke shorts and a brief halter top that hid little of her artificially enhanced charms. On Matt's other side was Laurie Jenkins, the kitchen staff member and waitress from GGCI whom Matt had promised a threesome with he and Kim at the party tonight. Laurie was in a short denim skirt that showed off her best feature — her legs — very well.

"Jake," Matt said, shaking his hand. "Glad you could make it, brother."

"Wouldn't miss it for the world," Jake told him.

Matt greeted Helen with a hug and a comment about how nice her titties looked in that top.

"Thanks, Matt," she said. "I wore it with you in mind."

Kim gave both Helen and Jake a hug of her own and then introduced Laurie to Helen, calling her a "very special guest." Laurie blushed deeply with embarrassment and arousal.

"Are the rest of the guys here?" Jake asked Matt.

"Yep," Matt said. "You were the last one. Coop and Nerdly are in the kitchen making some sort of fruit punch. Freakboy is around somewhere — probably up in my bedroom sniffin' my fuckin' underwear. And Darren is out in the back, talking to one of Kim's porno actress friends."

"We prefer the term, 'adult film star'," Kim said lightly.

"Oh yeah," Matt said. "Sorry, babe."

"Hey, Matt!" one of the GGCI people shouted from across the room. "This keg is running dry! You got another one ready to go?"

"Does Gumby have a rubber dick?" Matt yelled back. He turned to Jake and Helen. "I'd better go take care of this keg situation. See you in a few."

"Right," said Jake. "We'll go get a drink."

They walked across the room to the bar, where two smartly uniformed bartenders were on duty. Jake ordered his usual, a rum and coke. Helen ordered a plain diet coke. Since that night when they'd watched Brainwash in Boston, Helen had not touched so much as a drop of alcohol. The hangover she'd suffered as a result of that night had laid her low for two days and had even lingered to some degree for a third. The very idea of drinking was still enough to make her queasy. The smell of booze was enough to make her gag. If Jake had been drinking, she would not kiss him until he brushed his teeth.

In many ways, Helen was not the same as she'd been before the trip to Boston. She didn't laugh as much, wasn't quite as affectionate as she'd once been, and she definitely had not gotten over her fear of commercial aviation.

"Never again," she'd told him on multiple occasions since their 747 had touched down at LAX. "I am never getting on an airliner again as long as live."

"That's kind of a rash statement," Jake had tried to explain to her. "What about when we need to go somewhere?"

"If I can't get there in my own plane, I'm not going," she said stubbornly. "I lived through one fuck-up by those incompetent airline mechanics. I'm not putting my life in their hands again."

The fuck-up she was referring to was the preliminary cause report that had been issued the week before regarding the incident on their DC-10 (an incident which had only been reported as a blurb in the Boston newspaper the next day). Though the full and official report was still months in the future, the findings so far indicated that a simple maintenance oversight had been responsible for the loss of the number three engine. One of the mechanics who had done a routine maintenance regiment on that engine the day before the flight had apparently installed a fuel control diaphragm backwards, resulting in nearly five times a much fuel entering the combustion chamber as the engine was designed to handle. This influx of fuel had caused the explosion and fire and resulted in what the NTSB politely and euphemistically termed "a loss of function of the engine".

"You see that?" Helen asked when she read the report, her voice once again flirting with hysteria. "Some numbnuts mechanic, probably stoned out of his mind, put one little piece in backwards and it almost brought us down."

"We didn't almost go down," Jake tried to remind her. "They put the fire out within a few seconds and we had two other engines to fall back on."

"What if that engine had gone out just as we were doing that post-takeoff bank to clear the residential area?" Helen asked. "What would have happened then?"

Jake did have to admit that she had somewhat of a point there. They were both now enrolled in the multi-engine and pressurization modules at a Los Angeles flight school and both had learned that such noise abatement turns immediately after takeoff were considered to be the most dangerous threats to an airliner these days. The problem was that the aircraft was still moving at a comparatively slow rate of speed — less than eighty knots above stall speed, generally — and putting it into a twenty degree bank at such a speed decreased the stall speed even more. If a fully loaded jetliner were to lose an engine in the middle of such a turn — something that their flight had missed doing by less than a minute — there was a good chance that the pilot would not be able to recover in time and the aircraft would "collide with terrain" as the NTSB reports liked to say. It was true that such an incident was not as likely in a DC-10, which had three engines, than it was in a 737, with only two, but it was not, by any means, outside the realm of reasonable possibility.

"My point, Jake," she told him, "is that the mistake he made was the equivalent of you or I forgetting to turn the oven off after taking our food out of it. A very small oversight, something that anyone can do. And this fuel diaphragm thing is only one of maybe a million little oversights that an aircraft mechanic can make. Throw in air traffic control oversights and pilot oversights and it's a wonder that these fucking planes aren't dropping out of the sky two or three times a day." She shook her head. "Sorry, but I'm through. I'm not getting in any aircraft where I don't know who is flying it and who worked on it — and the less complex the fucking thing is, the better."

Jake thought that she would come around on this point of view at some point, but so far, that point was nowhere in sight. For the time being, if Jake wanted to travel somewhere outside the limited range of a propeller driven private aircraft, he would be traveling there alone.

Another thing that had changed about Helen — partly for the better, partly not — was her attitude toward Jennifer Johansen, the psycho stalker who wanted to cut her throat, bash in her teeth, and gouge out her eyeballs. As promised, Jake's people had installed a state of the art security system at her house, complete with cameras, security lights, and alarm receptors on every window and door. Helen used this security system faithfully and to the best of its ability, locking everything down and alarming the house at all times, whether she was home or not (twice now Jake had accidentally set off the alarm by walking outside to get something and forgetting the alarm was on.) Jake figured she was safe enough from everything but a full out surprise assault in the manner of Friday the 13^th, but the very fact that she now had to live like this had created a subtle, but very real sense of resentment toward Jake. She often made snide little remarks under her breath about how she was now living in a prison. Jake let these remarks roll off his back the best he could but they were starting to become more frequent and annoy him a little more with each repetition.

Tonight, the night of Matt's party, was actually the first night since returning from Boston that Helen seemed like the woman he had fallen in love with. She was actually smiling a lot and seemed almost relaxed. As they put down their first drinks of the night and chatted with Sammy Hagar and his wife about the first few months of the Bush administration, she was animated and lively, even getting in an extended discussion with Hagar about the up and coming NFL season.

"Are you gonna barf if I try to kiss you?" Jake asked her after someone snatched Sammy away from them and as they headed to the bar for a fresh round.

She smiled. "I don't know. Why don't you give it a try?"

He did. She didn't barf or even hiccup.

"I'm starting to get over it," she told him. "Not enough to pound down a beer or anything, but enough to tolerate your lips on me again."

"Tolerate?" he asked, raising his eyebrows.

She giggled. "You know what I mean," she said, giving a little punch on the shoulder.

"Yeah," he said. "I know what you mean." He kissed her again and then ordered their drinks.

"I'm sorry I've been such a... you know... a bitch lately," she told him as they waited for the bartender to construct them.

"It's okay," he told her, rubbing her back where her bare skin met her top. "You've been through a lot. It's not all glamour and fun dating a celebrity, is it?"

"No," she said. "I think that whole weekend made me realize that. First some psycho bitch draws a picture of me with my throat cut and then we almost die in a plane crash. And then, I come home to find that I'm living in a house that's wired up like Fort Knox." She shrugged. "It made me kind of wonder just what I'd gotten myself into."

"And did you figure it out?" he asked.

She nodded. "I think I did," she said. "Loving you has a price, Jake. I wasn't sure I was willing to pay the price for a little while."

"And now?" he asked.

"I guess they can keep billing me for now," she said.

They kissed again, a longer, sweeter kiss this time. Jake began to feel that maybe everything would be all right after all.

They took their drinks and made their way back over to Matt, who was whispering sweet nothings into Laurie's ear while Kim surreptitiously rubbed her breasts up and down Laurie's back. The young GGCI waitress was glassy-eyed and flushed, her nipples protruding through her top.

"Shouldn't we... you know... give them some privacy?" Helen asked doubtfully.

"Naw," Jake scoffed. "They're just warming her up."

Matt did indeed stop his flirtations when they approached (Kim didn't, she continued to rub herself against Laurie and took over the whisperings).

"So how long you two gonna be in this new flight school gig?" Matt asked them.

"The classroom portion is almost done," Helen told him, trying not to watch as Laurie and Kim shared a brief, yet lustful open-mouthed kiss right next to her. "We have... uh... another twenty-four hours of that."

"What happens then?" Matt asked, completely ignoring the women.

"We start building up hours with the instructor," Jake said. "That will be pretty much at our leisure. Since we're gonna hit the warehouse pretty soon I'll be lucky to get in six hours a week."

"And when you're done, you're gonna buy a twin-engine plane?" Matt asked.

"I've already got Jill looking into it for me," Jake said. He chuckled. "Much to her disgust."

"Yeah," Matt said with a grin, "them fuckin' accountants are all alike. Mine are still giving me shit about those hotel rooms I trashed over in Europe." He shook his head. "I swear to God, you pound a few holes in a few walls and they act like you pissed on the fuckin' Mona Lisa."

"You never did tell me why you tore holes in hotel walls, Matt," Helen said.

He shrugged. "It seemed like the thing to do at the time," he explained.

From out of nowhere, Steve Crow, their National Records A&R rep, suddenly appeared. Unlike everyone else at the party, Steve was dressed in his signature custom-tailored three piece suit, his dark sunglasses perched upon his nose.

"What the hell is he doing here?" Jake whispered as they saw him coming toward them.

"I invited him for comic relief," Matt whispered back. "Later on tonight, when he's drunk, me and a few of the guys are gonna grab him, carry him down to the beach, and throw him in the waves, suit and all."

"What if he drowns?" Helen asked, a little shocked.

"Then they'd have to get us a new A&R guy," Matt replied.

Crow arrived before Helen had a chance to find out if Matt was serious or not. He was grinning his usual grin and was as glad-handed as he normally was. He hardly seemed to notice that he was more than a little overdressed for the occasion.

"Jake, Matt, good to see you guys," he said, shaking with both of them.

"Always a pleasure," Jake said sourly.

Crow knew well that every member of Intemperance despised him with every fiber of their being, but he acted as if he didn't. "And Matt," he said, patting him on the shoulder. "It's good to see that incarceration didn't get the better of you. How bad was it?"

"You can't even begin to imagine," Matt told him. "I was locked up like a rat in a cage. I had to fight to survive every fuckin' day I was there."

"How horrible it must've been," Crow said, feigning sympathy.

"You have no idea," Matt said.

Since neither Jake nor Matt offered to introduce Crow to their girlfriends, Crow took the initiative and made the introductions himself. They both told him they were pleased to meet him.

"Pretty happenin' party you got going here, Matt," Crow said when this ritual was complete.

"Actually, it's pretty tame so far," Matt said. "I have some good entertainment planned for later though."

"Really?" Crow asked. "I can't wait."

"I think you'll find it very interesting," Jake told him.

"I'm sure I will," Crow said. "Listen, guys, I know you hate to talk business at a time like this..."

"We refuse to talk business at a time like this," Matt told him.

Crow laughed as if this were a joke. "Anyway," he said, "I just wanted to touch bases with you both and make sure you're planning to hit the warehouse within the next week or so. Now that you're out of prison, Matt, it's time to start putting together the next album in your contract period."

"The last album in our contract period," Matt said. "And yes, we are prepared to get to work very soon."

"Good... very good," Crow said. "Now that Book and Action are finally starting to fall off the charts, the public is ready for the next album. If we release it at the right time, there's no reason to think it won't sell every bit as well as Book did."

"You'll get your submissions on time, Crow," Jake told him. "We have several months to get them to you."

"I have the utmost faith in you boys," Crow said. "I just wanted to make sure that..."

"You'll get the shit on time," Matt said. "End of discussion."

Crow held up his hand in appeasement. "As I said," he said, "I have utmost faith in you." He turned to Jake. "And have you given any more consideration to including that song you did at the Valdez chick's wedding into the mix?"

"No," Jake said blandly. "That song will not be submitted for consideration."

"Oh come on, Jake," Crow said. "The public is practically drooling for that song. Even though it was a blatant breach of contract for you to perform live in such a setting, we'd be willing to forgive your transgression if you'd submit the song to us for inclusion on the next album."

"It ain't gonna happen," Jake repeated for perhaps the tenth time since he'd returned from Boston. Crow and the other National Records bigwigs had indeed threatened and postured about Jake performing The Start Of The Journey for Celia and Greg at the wedding (as well as for his performances of Molly Malone at the rehearsal). They had claimed breach of contract and had both insinuated and outright claimed that by singing that song in that forum that National had every right to revert them back to their original contract and apply it retroactively, thus putting the band millions of dollars into debt.

Jake told him now what he'd told him on every other occasion. "If you think you can actually get a judge and jury to agree with your ridiculous allegations, go for it. But as it stands now, that song I sang is not an Intemperance song in any way, shape, or form, and it will not be presented as such."

"You can make it an Intemperance song," Crow said. "Just gussy it up a little. Throw in some electric guitars, some drums, a nice bass beat, and some of Nerdly's piano, and you're in. People will eat it up."

"You haven't even heard the song, Crow," Matt said. "How do you know it doesn't suck ass?"

"People magazine said it made people cry at the ceremony!" Crow said. "If it made people cry, it doesn't suck ass!"

"If it made people cry, it ain't a fuckin' Intemperance song!" Matt countered. "Do we look like Elton fucking John here? We don't do crying shit."

Crow was not moved by this argument. "Just keep it in mind, Jake," he said. "And remember, all legal violations of your contract will be forgiven if you just submit this to us."

"They'll be forgiven anyway," Jake said, "because you don't have a leg to stand on. Now, if you'll excuse me, I think I'll go take a leak now. This conversation seems to have triggered my parasympathetic nervous system into action."

Matt laughed, clapping Jake on the shoulder. "Goddamn, Jake," he said. "You sounded just like Nerdly there."

Jake and Helen left Crow behind them, heading for the upstairs bathrooms (upstairs was off limits to all guests except the band and their significant others). They each took care of their personal business and then went back down, taking care to stay well clear of Crow.

"He's rather pushy, isn't he?" Helen asked.

"That's a polite way of putting it," Jake said.

An hour went by and the party got drunker — all except for Helen, who continued to drink nothing stronger than diet coke. She stayed on Jake's arm as he drifted from place to place, talking to everyone he met along the way, even the various porn actresses who seemed to enjoy describing some of their more lurid encounters on the set.

"Ron Jeremy?" said one such actress. "Talk about a fucking dick! I did one film with him and that was it for me. It felt like someone was sticking a goddamn baseball bat up my snatch when he fucked me. And then they had him stick it up my ass! Holy shit. I was bleeding every time I took a shit for almost a week after that one."

"That's uh... very interesting," Helen said.

"It's life in the business," she said. "You got some nice titties, hon. You ever think about giving a little performance of your own?"

Eventually they found Charlie, who had come stag to the party and who had turned down every offer of sex from the porn actresses.

"The groupies are bad enough," he told Jake as he wiped down his latest drink with one of his disinfectant wipes. "But these porn chicks? What a nightmare! Can you imagine what kind of germs they might have? Look at what happened to John Holmes."

"I suppose you got a good point there," Jake had to agree.

They talked to him for another ten minutes or so, listening to him go on and on about germs and tapeworms and salmonella poisoning and trichinosis. It was when he started asking questions about whether or not tongue kissing with another guy out of friendship was necessarily a definitive homosexual act that Jake decided he'd had about enough.

"Listen, Charlie," he said, "I think I'm gonna go score me another drink."

"But you still have half of that one left," Charlie pointed out.

"It'll be gone by the time I make it to the bar," Jake said. "Trust me on that."

"Oh... I see," Charlie said.

"And uh... if I were you, I would kind of avoid asking Matt or Coop about any of this tongue kissing with guys stuff. You know what I mean?"

"So they've never done it either?" Charlie asked.

"No," Jake said. "I'm pretty sure they haven't."

Jake turned to make his escape, Helen holding firmly onto his arm. Before he could get anywhere, however, there was a click and a hum as the microphone at the front of the room was turned on. He looked up and saw that Matt was preparing to speak. Standing next to him, sipping from a beer and smoking a cigarette, was Darren.

"Can I have everyone's attention for a couple?" Matt asked, his voice booming out of the microphone.

Everyone quieted down and gave Matt his or her attention.

"First of all," he said, "I'd like to thank all of you for coming tonight. This party was to celebrate my freedom after the hell I had to endure in that shitty-ass prison — no offense to those of you who work there — and having you all here has reminded me of how sweet it is to be free."

Applause at his words broke out from somewhere near the rear of the room and quickly spread. It held for a few seconds and then dropped off.

"So now that I'm out and free," Matt continued, "I just want to assure everyone that Intemperance will rock on and we'll be going to work on our next album in just a few days now. It will be recorded and released by November and it will be our best fucking album yet."

Another round of applause, this time with a few whistles thrown in for good measure.

"And the reason I know that this will be the best album ever," Matt said when it quieted down again, "is because the band that I originally put together, the quintessential fucking Intemperance, will be the one to put together this album, to record it, and to tour for it."

"What does he mean by that?" Charlie said nervously.

Before Jake could answer, Matt himself did. "What I mean by this," he said, "is that my main man here..." He put his arm around Darren's shoulders and pulled him close against him, "Darren Appleman, one of the founding fucking members of Intemperance, is back in action after recovering from a very nasty brush with botulism. He's fought hard and long, endured months and months of physical therapy, and now he's strong, healthy, and ready to get back to work. The original Intemperance is back, people. Let's hear it for Darren!"

Cheers erupted from the crowd, most of whom were drunk enough that they hardly realized what Matt was even talking about.

"What happens to me?" Charlie asked.

Once again, Matt answered before Jake could.

"Freakboy, you out there somewhere?" Matt asked. "You're still here, ain't ya? I'm sure you are. Well let me be the first to tell you, that you too get to return to your old job. The fuckin' Speedy-Lube awaits you. If you see me before your ass is gone, I'll be sure to write you a letter of reference."

Nervous laughter rippled through the room at this statement. Matt didn't seem to notice. "Party on, people!" he yelled into the mic. "Party on! Everything is right in the world tonight!"

With that, he and Darren left the stage, quickly disappearing into the crowd.

Jake looked over at Charlie and saw that he was near tears.

"Charlie?" he asked carefully.

"I'm out of the band?" Charlie asked slowly. "Just like that?"

Jake looked at him for a moment and then shook his head. "No," he told the bass player. "You're not. Don't worry. I think you're about the strangest motherfucker I've ever met in all my years, but I'm not letting you go that easily." He looked over in the direction of the largest gathering of people and finally caught a glimpse of Matt. He was drinking another drink and standing next to Darren.

"You ain't going anywhere," Jake said. "It ain't gonna be pretty, but I'm gonna fight for you."