Standing On Top

Chapter 16b

They finished up the basic composition of the song. It actually took about two hours to do. Jake was allowed to dictate how the intro would be performed, how the chorus to bridge section would be played, and how the final ending would occur. The other musicians played as Jake wanted them to play, with only Nerdly making a few minor suggestions that had to do with tempo changes and timing. Matt kept his comments to himself and played his guitar expertly, just as he always had.

"You see?" Nerdly asked them when they had finally finished, written down their changes on the music sheets, and successfully run through the piece twice. "It is possible to work together despite the recent clash of egos and hard feelings."

"Right," Matt said. "Now how about we start the next song? We still have three hours left in this session.

The next song they decided to work on was called My Life. Written by Matt a few months before — before all the shit had seriously started to hit the fan — it was an intelligent, well-constructed piece in which Matt pontificated about the lifestyle of a hard-partying rock star in first person perspective. In the verses, he talked about his expensive house and his expensive car and the fact that he could no longer drive his expensive car because the state had revoked his privilege to do so. He talked of getting wasted and having any woman he desired just because of who he was. He talked about being worshiped by fans and how he sometimes liked this and sometimes wanted to hit them. The chorus sections of the song all started with my life is... and then used a variety of other lines to illustrate that point. For instance, the first chorus, after Matt's house and car and life of luxury were described, was:

My life is lavish. Yes, I'm better than you

Money? No object. Got no bills overdue

Got more rooms in my house than I ever could use

Got servants, got limos, can afford substance abuse

And the second chorus, after the verse describing Matt's wild sexual abandon and constant womanizing, was:

My life is sleazy; can have any bitch I want

Models, groupies, porn stars; I've screwed Miss Vermont

The mile high club? Got a gold member's card

The bitches want me, I use 'em, and then I discard

In general, Jake liked the song. It was fairly classic Matt Tisdale work in lyrics and was actually a step forward for him in musical composition. The basic musical backing for the lyrics started with a medium tempo power riff on Matt's guitar and backing by the acoustic sound of Jake's. Unlike most of Matt's songs — and most Intemperance songs in general — the rhythm guitar would not be playing all the time. It was to be mostly silent during the verses and would kick in strongly in the spaces between the verses and the chorus and feature strongly in somewhat of a dueling format during the instrumental portion after the second verse.

"I like it, Matt," Jake told him after Matt led them through it the first time — singing into his own microphone and playing unaccompanied on his guitar — and then explained the basic backing philosophy he was after. "I think it'll pound out really good."

Matt didn't acknowledge the praise. "I'm gonna go through it again," he said instead. "Let's start working the drums and bass in for the basics and then we'll work on the acoustic and piano later."

"Right," Jake said. "You want me to start singing it?"

"No, not yet," Matt said. And with that, he hit the first riff again.

Things went fairly smoothly for the rest of that day and they departed the warehouse, not exactly on good terms, but at least without cursing at each other. The problems started up again early the next day when it came time to start working on the transitional portions of My Life — the part that involved Jake's rhythm guitar and Nerdly's piano. Every time Jake or Nerdly would suggest some way of putting their instruments into the song, Matt would automatically veto it.

"I don't want a fucking G to F switchover in this part," he would tell Jake. "I want a fucking D major to C major alternation, just like I fucking wrote it."

Or when Nerdly would suggest an enhancement of the basic piano rhythm Matt had laid down, he would bark: "We ain't doing no fucking flourishes in this song. Just play the goddamn notes like I told you to."

Matt seemed to think that Jake and Nerdly were trying to take over his song when, in reality, they were simply trying to do what they'd always done on every Intemperance piece dating back to the pre-D Street West days. They were offering simple suggestions based on their musical knowledge and talent — the sort of things that had always enhanced their music in the past and made it what it was. When Jake or Nerdly or even Coop tried to explain this to Matt, however, he wanted to hear nothing about it.

"This is my fucking song!" he would yell. "Just like Cut Me Loose was Jake's fucking song! We will play my song my way. Is that clear?"

It was clear. And after another wasted day of constant bickering and precious little progression at their task, the band was finally forced to come to a basic accord on the dispute.

"All right," Jake said toward the end of the day, "it's obvious that there's only one way we're going to get anything done around here and make our submission deadline."

"And what might that be?" Matt asked cynically. "Put you in complete and total charge?"

"No, not exactly," Jake said. "We put whoever wrote the song in complete and total charge."

Matt looked at him suspiciously. "What do you mean?"

"I mean we do six of your songs, six of mine," Jake told him. "The songs you wrote, you tell us how to play and we'll play that way. We won't offer any suggestions on anything. When we do my songs, the same thing holds true — with one exception."

"What exception is that?" Jake asked.

"Unlike you, I do like input from the rest of the band so I'll still take suggestions. I will have ultimate say-so on whether or not to accept those suggestions and what I say is what ultimately goes. Is that fair?"

"What about when the time comes to put our playlist together for the album?" Matt asked.

"We generally put ten songs on the album," Jake said. "I'll pick my best five and you pick your best five and that'll be the album."

"What about the order of play?" Matt asked.

"We'll cross that bridge when we come to it," Jake said. "Quite frankly, I'd be thrilled as hell to have that to worry about right now."

As much as Matt wanted to argue about this plan, he simply could not. He knew it was not the optimum way to put things together, but he was also a realist enough to know that, at this point in the game, it was the only way things were going to get done. "All right," he said with a nod. "Deal. And I expect every one of you traitorous motherfuckers to stick with it."

They all stuck with it. And, admittedly, the bickering and fighting had been reduced considerably, if not entirely eliminated. They worked out My Life to an uneasy perfection and had then gone to work on another of Jake's songs, a tune called Lines On The Map, a fairly poignant and typical Jake Kingsley multi-tempo piece that discussed the fact that there were more than 185 separate governments on the Earth and that perhaps this was partially the reason why there was so much war and why nothing made any sense.

It was when they started the next set of songs, one by Matt and one by Jake, that more problems cropped up. In this case, both of the primary songwriters were equally guilty of the strife. Since it had been agreed that each of them were in control of their own tunes, they both wanted to record a song that did not really fit the Intemperance signature sound.

Matt's song, Faces At Dawn — basically a hard-driving piece about the ravishes of liquor and drug abuse on the body — was composed by using a heavy palm-muted guitar progression. It was essentially the sort of piece Matt had been trying to push on them for years, ever since hearing the Master Of Puppets album by Metallica. Granted, he had become the master of the palm-muted technique, developing an entirely new style that, if the song were ever recorded, would spawn an entirely new generation of imitators. The problem was that a modified palm-muted piece was still a palm-muted piece, which meant it was too up-tempo to mix well with a piano, which meant it would not fit Intemperance's signature sound.

"Where does Nerdly's piano fit into all this?" Jake asked when Matt first introduced the piece to them.

"We'll put some in," Matt said. "We'll do tempo changes between the chorus and the verses that'll slow down enough for piano work and then the entire bridge can be nothing but piano and your acoustic guitar."

"But during the bulk of the song, no piano at all?" Nerdly asked.

"That's right, Nerdly," Matt said, glaring at him. "No fuckin' piano at all. Do you need to be in the fuckin' spotlight every goddamn second?"

Jake and Nerdly looked at each other with concern and then simply shrugged. They played the song the way Matt wanted it played and although it did not sound like an Intemperance signature song, even Jake had to admit it was a well done piece of music.

That led to Jake's next song, which was just the opposite. It was called I See You, and was about the struggle between the meek side and the strong side in one's personality, how they complimented each other, and how a person could not function if one buried one's strong side in favor of the meek. Jake had written it shortly after returning home from the international tour and he considered it one of the best pieces lyrically he'd ever composed. The problem with it was that it was too slow of a piece to go on an Intemperance album. Musically, it could only be played to the accompaniment of a finger-picked acoustic guitar, a few piano notes, and maybe some soft bass notes, during the verses and the chorus. There was no room at all in most of the tune for a distorted electric lead. Jake had filed the tune away in his unused file quite some time before with a vague notion of pulling it out again if he ever went solo. But when Matt forced them to do a tune with very little piano in it, it occurred to Jake that the old rules were pretty much dead. He dusted the song off and introduced it at a session as soon as they had Faces At Dawn down.

"What the fuck was that shit?" Matt demanded after Jake did the first run through of it. "How in the fuck are we supposed to translate something like that to an electric riff?"

"We're not," Jake told him. "The verses and the chorus will be acoustic guitar only. We'll put in a basic electric riff for the bridge intro and then an extended, double distortion solo before the final verse. We'll up-tempo the climatic verse to include some accompanying distorted lead in the background and then fade to black after the last lyric."

"You're out of your fuckin' mind!" Matt accused. "No electric in the verses or the chorus? That's fuckin' easy listening shit!"

Jake simply shrugged with a smile on his face. "Do you need to be in the fuckin' spotlight every goddamn second?" he asked.

They argued some more, with some of the other members even casting their doubts about whether a piece like this should be on an Intemperance album, but Jake held the trump card ultimately. They had already agreed to do things the way the songwriter wanted them done.

They worked the song out and gradually, as everyone heard more and more of it, they began to like it. Jake's guitar picking during the vocal portions was rich, melodic, and mesmerizing. Charlie's bass strings and Nerdly's piano were worked in to provide the perfect accompaniment, and Jake's voice seem particularly suited to the slow, mournful verses and chorus. Although Matt remained bitter that his lead guitar played only a small part of the song, he was musician enough to do his very best on the parts where he did play. His first notes kicked in after the second chorus, playing a nicely composed riff to back the bridge vocals. After the bridge, Jake switched his guitar over to distortion and took over the electric riff while Matt put down an impressive solo that started medium tempo and progressed to a fast, finger-tapping climax one minute and twenty-seven seconds later. Following this, the first portion of the climactic verse was sung with no accompaniment at all except for Jake's acoustic and then the final chorus went back to two heavily distorted electrics in unison that kept up the tempo to the final fade-out.

All in all, Jake was very pleased with the end results. I See You was still nothing like a typical Intemperance tune, but he thought it one of the best pieces of music he'd ever composed. And he realized something very fundamental while the composition was underway. He liked having final say over the engineering of his tunes. He liked not having to answer to anyone but himself.

The tune they were working on now was called Grandstand, another non-traditional piece by Matt, and, so far, the tune they were having the most problems with. Grandstand was not just another heavy-metal palm-muted piece, although it did contain some very hard-driving riffs throughout it, it was something almost entirely new in the spectrum of music. It was a fast tempo power chord dominated song with heavy drum and bass backbeat, little piano, and little rhythm guitar, but Matt wanted the lyrics sung in the style of a rap song.

"A fucking rap song?" had been Jake's first reaction.

"It's not a fucking rap song," Matt replied. "You just sing it like one."

And so he'd demonstrated, running through the basic tune for the first time and singing the lyrics, in machine-gun, hard-core rap style, while grinding out the guitar. Jake's first impression was that it sounded like shit and that this was some sort of one-upping maneuver in response to I See You. It was only after they continued to try putting the tune together that Jake realized Matt was entirely serious.

"Matt," Jake said the one time he'd tried to reason with him on this song, "There's no way in hell National is going to put this song on the album. They'll use their veto power on it. This is more than just a departure from formula, it's a completely new style of music unlike anything that's been done before."

Jake had expected another profanity laced argument but, to his surprise, he got a reply that was almost reasonable. "Didn't we say the same thing about I Am Time?" Matt asked Jake. "Remember? A harmonica in place of a lead guitar? Unprecedented! Absurd! But we fuckin' did it, didn't we? And it fuckin' sold almost seven million copies as a single, didn't it? In fact, it's still one of the most played songs on rock radio."

Jake had to admit that Matt had a point. He argued the issue no more and tried the best he could to sing the song as Matt meant it to be sung. The problem was, Jake had never really listened to rap music and had never picked up on the nuances of conveying the proper emotion with his voice in that style. He tried the best he could but he just couldn't pull it off. It would only sound like what it was — Jake Kingsley shouting out lyrics instead of singing them. It got to the point where Matt was accusing him of deliberate sabotage.

"All right," Matt said now as everyone took their places in front of their microphones. "Let's do a few run-throughs of Grandeur again and see how bad Jake can fuck it up this time."

"I think it'll be better this week," Jake said, not rising to Matt's bait.

"Oh?" Matt asked. "And why would you think that?"

"I had dinner with Bigg G after we left for the week on Thursday," Jake said. "He helped me a little bit with the whole rap thing. I also spent most of my flying time on the way back from Chicago listening to Bigg G's albums on the CD player. Of course, I couldn't play them that loud because they'd drown out the radios, but I think I'm starting to see how it should go."

Matt looked at him, seemingly wondering if Jake was fucking with him. Apparently he decided that he might not be. "All right then," he said. "Let's see what you got."

They ran through it. The opening consisted of both guitars playing the palm-muted power riff while the drums and bass settled into the beat. And then the guitars fell silent, leaving only the rap-style backbeat of the bass and drums. Jake began to sing. The lyrics were basically about wanna-be musicians who did not have enough talent to move beyond club gigs, about how they could get the barest taste of the big time but knew they would never reach it. The emotion of the lyrics — as Matt intended them to be sung — was that of contemptuous teasing, a taunting of those with lesser talent by those who had it all. Jake knew the lyrics by heart now and did not have to refer to a sheet. Though they did not come out of his mouth with perfection on this first run-through, it was clear to the other band members that he was trying. They sounded much better than the previous week.

Matt nodded slowly when they finished the first run-through. "Could be better," he said. "But it has been worse too. Let's do it again. A little more projection this time."

"Right," Jake said.

They went through it again and again. Slowly, as they moved toward their lunch break, Jake began enjoy the theme of the song more and more. And as his enjoyment of it went up, the emotion of his singing got better and better.

"Now we're fucking getting somewhere," Matt said as they shut everything off for lunch. "Once you start applying yourself, we progress. How about we just skip the first part next time and go right to you applying yourself?"

Jake didn't answer him. He simply put his guitar down and headed for the refrigerator to get a beer to drink with his sandwich.

Like always, Matt ate apart from everyone else. He didn't talk to anyone until it was time to pick up their instruments and go back to work. And then, all he had to say was, "Let's go through it again. Maybe we'll be able to start working on the intro and the ending today."

By Friday afternoon, they had almost perfected Grandeur, with only a few minor details — all under the command of Matt — to work out. Even though they were on an increasingly tight schedule — September 15 was fast approaching and they only had five songs ready to put on the demo tape — Jake was forcing them all to take a week off because of something he had in the works. After months of searching and researching, Jill had finally found him a piece of property near Christchurch, New Zealand that fit his requirements and was also for sale. But there was no way in hell he was going to buy something without looking at it first. As such, he and Jill boarded a 747 from the first class lounge of LAX on Friday night. At 9:35 PM, the big jet roared into the sky, heading non-stop to Auckland, where they would catch another flight to Christchurch.

"I still think this is a horrible idea," Jill told him as the stewardesses began taking their first post-take-off drink orders.

"I don't pay you to like my ideas," Jake replied. "I pay you to make them happen."

"And to advise you when I think you're making a mistake," she added. "You're already paying for loans on two aircraft and one primary residence. Now you want to add a land purchase loan and a construction loan on top of that?"

"I do," Jake said. "You told me I could swing it, didn't you?"

"As long as your income remains steady," she said. "Remember though, you're about to enter into a period of uncertainty in regard to your income."

"What's the worst that can happen?" Jake said. "Real estate is real estate, isn't it? If my income goes down and I can't afford the payments anymore, I can just sell the property, can't I?"

"Well... yes," Jill admitted. "But there's no guarantee you'll get a fair market value if you have to unload it in a hurry."

"There's no guarantee in anything, Jill," Jake told her. "I've learned that if nothing else."

Their first drink orders came. Jake had a double rum and coke, Jill a glass of white wine. By the time they finished and ordered another round, the aircraft had leveled off at cruising altitude. They settled in for the long, overnight flight.

"Pauline told me that the record company and the band aren't too happy about you flying around the world right now," Jill said.

"No, nobody's real happy with me right now," Jake agreed. "I see where they're coming from."

"Do you?"

"Oh yes," he said. "We're just starting to hit some kind of equilibrium in our production and I'm forcing us to take a week off."

"How bad are things between you and the rest of the band?"

"As bad as they've ever been," he admitted. "Matt is still bitter over us ousting Darren and is working as hard as he can to make everyone's life miserable. We're having creative problems because everything has turned into a power struggle."

"Do you think he'll get over it?"

Jake took a long drink of his rum and coke. "I don't know," he finally said. "Sometimes I'm afraid that this is going to be the last Intemperance album."

"And yet you're going ahead with this purchase anyway?"

He nodded. "Who knows when a chance like this might come around again?"

She had no reply for that. To her, Jake was acting on impulse, something that accountants hated with every fiber of their being.

"What about your girlfriend?" Jill asked. "I can't help but notice that she isn't with us."

"She's afraid to fly," Jake said.

Jill raised her eyebrows. "Isn't she a flight instructor?"

"She is. She's not afraid to fly her own aircraft, she's afraid to fly commercial. She's always been like that to some degree, but after that little mishap we had in Boston a few months ago, she is officially phobic."

"So she's never going to see this property you're buying?" Jill asked.

He looked at her. "I don't know," he said. "We haven't been getting along too well lately."

"No?"

"No," he said. "In fact, we've hardly talked at all this past week. Something has changed in her. She's not the same person I fell in love with. It feels almost like... well... like she's letting go."

"That's too bad," Jill said. "I've only met her a few times, but she seemed very nice, very... oh... down to Earth."

"Yeah," Jake said. "And I think maybe she wants to stay down there."

"Ahh," Jill said with a nod. "I see."

They talked no more about Jake's social life. Both of them seemed to find the subject depressing. They did talk a little about Jill's social life. She had been dating a mid-level auditor for one of Heritage's major firms for about a year now and was starting to think that maybe he would be proposing to her soon.

"Really?" Jake asked. "He'll ask you to enter into legally sanctioned co-habitation?"

"Huh?" she asked.

"Never mind," Jake said with a chuckle. "How do your parents feel about him?" Jake had met her boyfriend twice now. He seemed a nice enough guy even though he had admitted to Jake that he'd never heard an Intemperance song all the way through before — he was in favor of AM talk radio or the easy listening music that could be found down at the end of the FM dial. He was also not Japanese.

"They were a little leery of him at first," Jill admitted. "But he is an accountant, you know, so it's not like I would be marrying outside the faith."

Jake laughed. That was actually one of the funniest things he'd ever heard Jill say.

They drifted off to sleep soon after, both of them wrapped up in blankets and resting their heads on pillows. Jill tossed and turned most of the night, never sleeping for more than thirty minutes at a stretch. Jake, a much more experienced flyer, dropped into a deep slumber and didn't stir for more than seven hours.

They landed in Auckland at 10:45 AM, New Zealand time. Because they'd crossed the International Date Line, it was not Saturday morning but Sunday morning. Jill pontificated about how strange it was to have lost an entire day.

"Don't worry," Jake assured her. "You'll get it back when we go home."

They had lunch at the airport and finished up just in time to board their next flight. After another hour and twenty minutes in the air, they were in Christchurch. A man named John Williams — the real estate agent Jill had been dealing with — met them at the airport. He was a short, portly man in his mid-forties dressed in an impeccable three-piece suit. He shook hands with Jake, who he had never met or spoken to before, and with Jill, who he had also never met but had spoken to many times on the phone.

"Would you like to go to your hotel and get checked in before I take you to the property?" he asked.

"No," Jake said. "Let's go see it right now. There will be time for checking in later."

"Right," Williams said smartly. "Off we go then."

It was raining in Christchurch, a cold, drenching winter rain that could soak someone to the bone if they stood out in it for more than a minute. Williams apologized for the weather — as if he'd accidentally conjured it up himself.

"Not your fault," Jake told him. "I'm the one who came here in the winter."

"It is quite nice here in the summer months, however," Williams assured him. "It rarely gets above thirty degrees here even in the middle of January. In fact, it tends to stay around twenty-three to twenty-five."

"That's good to know," Jake said, although he had already known this from his own research (and had converted the average temperatures to Fahrenheit, a system he actually understood).

They climbed into Williams' Toyota 4Runner — Jill cramming herself into the cramped back seat — and hit the road, heading for the small port town of Lyttelton, which was just south of Christchurch, separated from it by a small range of mountains called the Port Hills. It was in the southern slopes of these hills that Williams had found twenty acres of undeveloped land for sale. It was land that the seller's family had held since New Zealand's colonization days.

They drove through the city of Christchurch and entered a roadway tunnel that was more than a mile long. Williams explained that the tunnel, which had been burrowed through the Port Hills, was the best way to get from Christchurch to Lyttelton, but that there were also two roads that led over the Port Hills as well, one of which formed the southern boundary of the property they were going to see."

"So this place is pretty isolated then," Jake asked as the tunnel's lights flashed by one by one.

"By American standards, it is very isolated, Mr. Kingsley," Williams told him.

When they emerged from the south end of the tunnel it was almost like they'd driven fifty or sixty years back in time. Lyttelton was a small town — its population somewhere around 2500 — and looked like a fishing village straight of early twentieth century New England. The buildings were old but mostly well cared for. The streets were clean, with little traffic. The rain and the mist only served to add character to Jake's first impression of the place.

"There's not much for amenities in Lyttelton," Williams told Jake. "There are no fast food places, only a few restaurants, no large grocery stores or drug stores or shopping malls, but, of course, if you want any of those things it's only a fifteen minute drive back to Christchurch."

"What about the harbor?" Jake asked. "Is it a major industrial port?"

"It is," Williams said. "It is the main harbor for this section of South Island and also the base for most of the commercial fishing fleet. Most of the people who live in Lyttelton are employed either by the port or the fishing industry. If you like fresh fish there is a wonderful fisherman's wharf down there where you can buy seafood right off the boats."

"I love fish," Jake said whimsically, taking it all in. "Matt would love this place."

"Hopefully he'll visit it someday," Jill said.

"Yeah, hopefully," Jake agreed.

It was another fifteen-minute drive to the property they had come to see. They left the township of Lyttelton behind and began to climb upward into the southern slopes of the Port Hills. The road was barely wide enough to qualify as two-lane and it was full of potholes and uneven pavement. They went through a wicked series of turns and switchbacks, none of which were protected by guardrails, and climbed to an elevation of around one thousand feet, or, as Williams put it, three hundred meters. They met no other traffic along the way.

"Most people use the tunnel," Williams explained when Jake mentioned this. "The only people who use the summit road are those who have some sort of business up in the hills. There are farms up here and cattle grazing ground and several regional parks. If you're going from Lyttelton to Christchurch, however, the tunnel gets you there in three minutes where this road takes almost thirty."

"I see," Jake said thoughtfully, looking nervously down at a three hundred foot drop just outside his window.

Presently, Williams arrived at the property. He left the main road and, after switching his 4Runner into four-wheel drive, took them about a hundred yards down a muddy track that led into a green forest of walnut trees. The road ended abruptly and he shut off the engine.

"This is as far as we can go on foot," he told them. "We're actually on the property now, but most of it is up above the trees. I have rain jackets and umbrellas if you want to go take a look, but I'm afraid your feet are going to get a bit muddy no matter what."

"I can live with the mud," Jake said, looking around in wonder at the sturdy walnut trees.

They got out and trudged uphill, their feet, as promised, squelching through thick mud. They finally emerged from the trees and came out onto a large clearing that was roughly six hundred feet by four hundred feet and nestled up against one of the upslopes of the hills. To the north, the hill rose up another five or six hundred feet. To the east, west, and south, however, there was nothing but spectacular view.

"Wow," Jake said in awe as he took it all in. He could see the entire town of Lyttelton and its harbor spread out before him like a map. He could see islands in the bay, fishing boats and a few ships heading out or in from the open ocean. It was like he was looking at a picture postcard, although the rain did somewhat dampen the view a bit.

"It would seem you like it?" Williams asked.

"I do," Jake said, taking his eyes from the view and looking at the clearing again. Right near the back would be the perfect place to put a house. "Tell me something though, why is your client letting this land go so cheaply? It would seem this is a premium location."

"It is," Williams agreed. "And he's not really letting it go cheaply by New Zealand standards. His asking price is the equivalent of two hundred thousand American dollars."

"That is cheap for a plot like this," Jake said. "Is there something wrong here? Something I'm not being told? Is it not zoned for a residential plot? Is it impossible to get water or electricity up here? There must be some catch."

"There is no catch, Mr. Kingsley," Williams said. "We do not have things like zoning laws here, especially not in places like this. A man is allowed to do whatever he wishes with his own land as long as he is not infringing upon the rights of others with it. My client is in need of money for reasons I need not go into and he has decided to sell off some of the land that has been in his family for generations. Two hundred thousand American dollars would be a small fortune for him. And as for basic services, there is copious groundwater here that could be tapped with a well. For sewage, you could put in a septic tank or maybe two. As for electricity, the power lines run alongside the summit road — perhaps you noticed them as we drove up?"

Jake had noticed them. "Why hasn't anyone else bought the land from him?" he asked. "I can't be the first one to realize how great of a plot this is."

"You're not," Williams said. "My client himself has pondered the idea of building here for years. The problem is, that nobody here has enough money to make anything of this plot. The purchase of the land is expensive by New Zealand standards and that is only the beginning. In order to build a house here, one would have to improve the entryway into an actual road, pay to have electricity run to the building site, pay to have the wells dug, and pay to have a septic system put in, all before construction on the foundation for the house could even begin. Nobody in this particular portion of New Zealand has that kind of money, Mr. Kingsley. But you do, do you not?"

"Yes," Jake said, taking in the view again. "I do." He turned to Jill, who was still admiring the view. "What do you think?" he asked her.

"You already know my views on this whole subject," she said.

"Yes, I do," Jake agreed. "But other than that, what do you think?"

"I think you need to consider what Mr. Williams just said about no one being able to afford the land."

"What do you mean?" Jake asked.

"Suppose you go forth with this plan," she said. "You pay two hundred thousand dollars for the land and probably another hundred thousand bringing in services and making it suitable for construction. Assuming you use local labor and materials, you could probably get your house built for somewhere around four hundred thousand."

"That all sounds about right," Jake said.

"So, basically, by the time you're ready to take up occupancy in the house, you'll be about seven hundred thousand dollars in. If something were to go wrong with your income stream at this point, that is the absolute minimum you would have to sell the property for in order to break even." She turned to Williams. "Mr. Williams, how difficult would it be for Jake to unload such a property at such a price if he had to do it in a hurry?"

It was clear that Williams did not really want to answer this question — after all, it could be detrimental to his sale — but he was ethical enough to be truthful. "It would be very difficult," he admitted. "There are precious few in the Christchurch area who could afford such an extravagance. And of those who could, it is doubtful that many would want to. You might be able to sell it to someone from North Island, someone from Wellington or Auckland who wishes a summer home near the Alps, but even that is doubtful. Your best prospect for a fair market value sale would be to someone similar to yourself, Mr. Kingsley — a wealthy foreigner who has developed a love for South Island. And finding such a person would undoubtedly take a few months, possibly even a year or more."

"I see," Jake said thoughtfully. "So, in other words, I would be hanging my ass out into the wind by moving forward on this."

Williams blinked. "Uh... I'm not exactly familiar with that expression, Mr. Kingsley, but if it means you would be taking a risk, then yes, that is correct."

Jake nodded. "Well, my ass has been hanging in that wind for most of the past ten years now," he said. "Might as well add a little more windburn to those cheeks. I want this land. Let's start the ball rolling today, shall we?"

"As you wish, Mr. Kingsley," Williams said with a smile while Jill hid a frown.