Standing On Top

Chapter 3b

Michelle Rourke became a media sensation over the next week. Her article was reprinted in several mainstream publications and she herself was the most-requested guest on the talk show circuit. She appeared on several of these shows, telling her tale in television acceptable language, always seeming to be the shy, nervous, unassuming little Catholic girl with a horrific story to convey. She always managed to get a dig in about the evils of rock and roll music and how the recent rating system imposed by the PMRC did not go nearly far enough.

"Music such as that produced by Jake Kingsley and Intemperance is nothing but evil personified," she told an NBC talk show early in the week. "It is horribly corrupting upon the youth of America and it should be banned from sale like the pornography that it is."

Pauline released Jake's official statement to the media at a brief press conference held outside the National Records Building. Jake Kingsley denies ever hitting a woman, ever raping a woman, and ever abusing a woman in any way. He acknowledged that a relationship had indeed taken place between himself and Michelle Borrows (now Rourke), and that it lasted approximately fifteen months, but that everything else about the article was a complete falsehood. It was obvious that very few people believed his denials.

Reporters mobbed him on Wednesday afternoon when he arrived at the National Records building for a meeting called by Steve Crow. They shoved microphones in his face, snapped pictures of him, and demanded over and over that he tell them how many times he'd hit her, if he had ever tried to contact after throwing her in the river, if his high-priced lawyers were the reason he was never arrested for the offense.

"No comment," he said, over and over as he linebacked his way through the crowd and into the building.

By the time he made it into Crow's office on the twelfth floor he was fuming and wishing for a drink. He glared at Crow as he walked in, his eyes shooting daggers at the A&R rep.

"Are you okay, Jake?" Crow asked, a bit nervously.

"How in the hell did those reporters know I was going to be showing up for a meeting here today?" he asked. "Did you tell them?"

Crow managed to do a credible job of looking surprised. "Reporters?" he asked. "Are there reporters downstairs? I have no idea who might've told them."

"Yeah right," Jake said, knowing that arguing the point with Crow would be a waste of time. "You got any beer in this place?"

"Uh... sure," said Crow, who knew that Jake, as well as the rest of the band, typically eschewed any form of intoxicating substances when they were in a meeting with the record company. He rang his secretary and told her to bring a Corona with a lime for Mr. Kingsley.

Jake drank it down while Matt, Bill, and Pauline came into the office one by one. All of them eyed the bottle in Jake's hand but said nothing. All of them had been subjected to reporter mobbing when they'd arrived as well. Crow offered the rest of them drinks and cocaine. All turned him down. Jake declined the offer of a second beer. That would have to wait for the limo drive back to his house.

"So what the fuck, Steve?" Matt asked when the meeting was called to order. "You made us burn a jam session so we could come meet with you. What's got your cock ring on so tight this time?"

Crow blinked a little. He was still not quite used to Matt's unique method of terming things. "Actually," he said, "I brought you here to share some good news with you. I've talked to Mr. Doolittle at length over the past few days and we've finally decided to grant one of the song requests you've been pushing so hard for ever since your first album."

"Oh?" said Jake. "And what might that be?"

"We want you to record It's In The Book for the next album. In fact, we strongly recommend that you make that particular tune the title cut of the album."

The three musicians and their manager all shared a knowing look with each other. It's In The Book, written by Jake back in the D Street West days, was a song that National had consistently vetoed and refused to accept as an Intemperance song on the grounds that it was too controversial since the subject matter was the negative passages in the bible. It was also the song that Michelle Rourke alluded to in her article — the one that finally gave her the courage to break up with Jake and bring Jesus back into her heart. Though there was no way Crow could know for sure that It's In The Book was, in fact, the song she mentioned — she hadn't named it after all — it didn't take a rocket scientist to figure it out. Michelle had mentioned an anti-biblical piece and It's In The Book was an anti-biblical piece — one of the few tunes in which the record company had actually guessed correctly about the meaning of the lyrics.

"Wow," Jake said, lighting a cigarette and dropping the match into Crow's pencil holder. "And what made you decide, just now, to finally allow us to record this song?"

"Yeah," said Matt. "I'm sure it has nothing to do with that article penned by that bible thumper bitch."

"Look, guys," Crow said. "I'm not gonna blow smoke up your ass. Now that that article is out in print people will want to hear the song that finally made the little Catholic girl go back to Jesus. If we put it on the next album, use it as the title cut, and, most importantly, don't release it as a single, the album will sell like mad. It will probably go platinum in the first week."

"Uh huh," Jake said. "And how will people know that It's In The Book is the song Michelle was talking about?"

"We'll let it slip to the media about a month in advance of the album release," Crow said.

"No," Jake said. "Absolutely not. Maybe it's time that song was allowed to find it's way into the garbage bin. We've matured since then. We have a lot of better tunes developing now."

"Jake," Crow said, "let's be reasonable here. Didn't you always say that It's In The Book was one of the best tunes you ever wrote? You said that when we were putting together Balance and that was only a year ago."

"Look, Crow," Matt said. "I think it's a rockin' ass tune too. It was always one of my favorites that Jake did, but we don't want you using it as nothing but exploitation to sell albums. You go telling everyone that the tune is the one that convinced the bible-thumper bitch to break up with Jake no one will give a faggot's rimjob about what the true meaning of the song is."

"Who gives a shit what the true meaning of the song is?" Crow nearly screamed. "If you do what I say your next album will go platinum in a week! A week! Don't you understand what that means? Don't you realize what kind of royalty checks you would be looking at in the quarter that followed the release?"

"Our next album will go platinum no matter what," Jake said. "We don't do this for the shock value, as much as you like to think that we do. We do it because it's our music and we're proud of it. The money is nice, don't get me wrong on that, but we're not willing to sacrifice our integrity for money like you are."

"Try it once," Crow fumed. "You might like it."

The meeting was effectively over at this point. Under the old contract Crow and National Records could have forced Jake and Matt and the others to record It's In The Book because it was material that had been submitted on a demo to them and therefore their property. Although the song was still National's property the current contract gave the band (and the record company) veto power over any tune. There was no way Crow could compel them to record any song they did not wish to.

Los Angeles, California

February 18, 1987

7:30 PM

"Shall we commence with our pre-Grammy award party tradition?" Matt asked, breaking out two fat joints as the limousine pulled away from his Malibu beach house.

"Fuckin' A," Coop said, whipping out a Zippo lighter with the Intemperance logo stenciled upon it. "Let's burn them bad boys."

Janice Boxer, their publicity manager, and Steve Crow both rolled their eyes upward and shook their heads. It seemed that the band had not matured much since their last trip to the prestigious Hollywood party.

"Jake," Janice said, trying to appeal to his sense of decorum. "Do you really think that smoking weed on the way to the party is a good idea? Think of the impression your young lady friend will be making if she comes out reeking of cannabis."

"It's okay," Rachel said quietly, fussing with the hem of her skirt. "I don't mind."

Janice gave her an ugly look but let the subject lie. Coop and Matt each fired up a joint and began to pass them in opposite directions.

Jake took a large hit when the first one came his way and then patted Rachel on the leg. "You don't have to smoke any," he told her. "It can make you real uncomfortable in social situations if you're not used to it."

"No, it's okay," she said, plucking the joint from his fingers. "I've kinda gotten to like it."

"Well all right then," Jake said as she took a medium sized hit and held it in.

Rachel was looking particularly lovely on this night. After more than a week of sampling different dresses from more than two dozen dressmakers she had finally selected a maroon, sequined formal dress designed by Gianni Versace for the pre-Grammy party and a red strapless dress designed by Sergio Valenti for the awards ceremony itself. The Versace was backless and sleeveless, displaying an ample amount of her impressive cleavage — a cleavage made more alluring by the custom-designed push-up bra she wore beneath it. Her hair and make-up had been expertly applied by none other than Deloris Riolo — the band's hairdresser — who had been ecstatic to have an actual girl to work on for once instead of a scrungy musician.

The word that Jake was dating Rachel had already been leaked out to the media — probably by the Grammy committee, who had issued her invitation, or perhaps by an employee of one of the dressmaker companies. Reporters, once armed with Rachel's name and age, had quickly ferreted her address, telephone number, and employer out of whatever sources they maintained and had been hounding her ever since. They gathered in groups before her apartment, snapping pictures of her and shouting questions whenever she appeared. They showed up at Brannigan's, coming inside and demanding to know how she had met Jake, how long they had been dating, and, of course, how many times he had beaten and raped her. They had been up at the UCLA campus, interviewing her fellow students, her professors, the cafeteria workers, wanting to know if she ever showed up with mysterious bruises upon her, with black eyes, with broken bones. Did she ever start crying for no particular reason?

Rachel, understandably overwhelmed by all the attention, had been somewhat of a nervous wreck the past two weeks. The only statement she'd issued to them had been in the first days of the harassment when she'd proclaimed that, yes, she was dating Jake Kingsley, and that no, he had never beaten her or raped her. Her standard response since then had been the phrase that Jake and Pauline had drilled into her: No comment.

This did not stop them from tracking down Jo Ann, Rachel's mother, and Maureen, Rachel's roommate. To Jo Ann they asked how she could condone her only daughter going out with a perverted, violent, and satanic rock musician who had once snorted cocaine out of a girl's butt crack and thrown another girl into the Sacramento River for breaking up with him.

"I have seen no evidence that Jake is even remotely like the person you are describing," Jo Ann had stated for the record. "He has shown her nothing but kindness and has treated her like the lady she was raised to be for as long as I'm known him."

To Maureen, they asked if Rachel had ever come home bleeding or crying or if she'd ever had to take her to the hospital after one of her dates with Jake.

"She usually seems pretty happy when she comes home from a date with him," Maureen had responded. "In fact, I've never seen her as giddy before."

"So sometimes she doesn't come home happy?" one of the reporters asked. "Can you elaborate on those times?"

The intrusions did not end with harassing his girlfriend and her family and friends. On February 3 Jake put down $175,000 on his new house and entered a thirty-day escrow. The very next day there were articles in all the Los Angeles newspapers describing the house Jake was buying, including pictures of it. They published the address, how much he was paying for it, and his close of escrow date.

"How in the hell did they get all this information so fast?" Jake asked Pauline when the reporters began calling her later that day, asking for a statement in regards to some of the reactions Jake's future neighbors were having to the news.

"It's all public record," Pauline replied. "In a place like Los Angeles County I'm sure that every records clerk who works in real estate transactions, marriage licensing, death certificates, and a few other departments have arrangements to get little envelopes full of money from reporters whenever something interesting — like Jake Kingsley buying a house — comes drifting through their files."

The reaction of those future neighbors was quite similar to what it had been back in 1969 when the first black family purchased a house in the neighborhood. Neighbors began picketing out in front of the house, carrying signs that read things like: THIS IS A FAMILY NEIGHBORHOOD or DEATH METAL HAS NO PLACE IN MY BACKYARD or NO SATANIC RAPISTS HERE! The actual homeowner's association itself used the law firm they had on retainer to file for an injunction forbidding Jake from closing escrow on the house or to at least extend the escrow period while the legalities of the situation were worked out. The very shaky grounds for this were an obscure section of the CC&R for the neighborhood, which proclaimed that no house could be sold to a sexual deviant or someone with a felonious criminal record.

"It doesn't have a hope in hell of succeeding," Jake's father and sister both assured him. "That section of the CC&R are part of the leftovers from the forties when the neighborhood was first built. It's the part Congress struck down in the Fair Housing Act of 1968, the part they used to use to keep out blacks and Asians and Jews."

The homeowner's association, knowing that their legal argument would most likely fail, simultaneously tried a different tactic, this time without the advise of their attorney. They contacted the bank that was financing Jake's loan and threatened to organize a boycott against them unless they refused funding. They contacted the cardiac surgeon who was selling the house and threatened him with a similar boycott unless he pulled out of the deal. Before either of these entities had a chance to respond to these threats Pauline issued one of her own on her brother's behalf. She sent a letter to the bank and the surgeon explaining that if they were to withhold funding or try to pull out of the deal without just cause now that it was in escrow they would be guilty of violations of the Fair Housing Act. In the case of the bank they would be subjected to stiff financial penalties. In the case of the doctor, he would subject to monetary fines and potential criminal charges under federal law. She sent another letter to the homeowner's association itself informing them that their threats of boycotts to lending institutions and homeowners in order to foment discrimination against a home buyer constituted the most grave violations of the Fair Housing Act and that every signatory whose name appeared on their letter was subject to immediate arrest and trial under federal law if Mr. Kingsley, the bank, or the cardiac surgeon decided to press charges. When a quick consultation with their attorney informed them that Ms. Kingsley, attorney-at-law, was entirely correct in her assessment of their actions, they immediately dropped plans for a boycott and simply continued picketing and waiting for the official court decision on the matter.

And now Jake and Rachel were about to go right into the teeth of the lion. Hundreds of entertainment reporters would be present at the party they were attending and Jake had been forced to warn Rachel that they would try anything, do anything to elicit some kind of damning statement from her, up to an including sending an undercover reporter to befriend her and get her talking while her lips were loosened with alcohol.

"Are you ready for this?" he asked her as they pulled onto the Hollywood strip and headed for the Hollywood Hilton Hotel.

She was quite stoned, a goofy smile showing on her face. "Oh yes," she said. "Bring 'em on."

"That's the fuckin' spirit," Matt said, popping one of the roaches into his mouth and swallowing it. "If you have to say anything tell them how good Jake munches out your bearded clam. They'll be in awe of his skills and they won't be able to print it because it's too graphic."

Rachel, not realizing that Matt was entirely serious, burst out laughing at his advice. "You are one of a kind, Matt," she said. "Anyone ever told you that?"

"No," he said, downing the last of his Jack Daniels and Coke. "I've never heard that before."

They pulled up in front of the hotel and the driver opened the door for them. Once again they exited the limo in a billowing cloud of marijuana smoke and entered the building reeking of it. The reporters outside shouted questions at them, most having to do with the Michelle Rourke accusations. Jake did not even acknowledge their existence.

He could not avoid them inside the party however. It was less than ten minutes after their arrival, as they were still sipping on their first drink, that Allison Stone, a reporter for the Los Angeles Times entertainment department, intercepted them as they were making their way across the room.

"Jake, Ms. Madison, do you mind if I ask you a few questions?"

"As long as your questions don't have anything to do with Michelle Rourke or her article," Jake replied.

Her face contorted a bit but she quickly got it under control. "I guess I can live with that," she said. She held her hand out to Rachel and introduced herself.

"I read your article all the time," Rachel told her. "It's very nice to meet you."

"Well thank you," she said. "If it's okay with you two, I'd just like to get some clarification on the details of your relationship."

"The details?" Rachel said, paling a bit as she imagined having to explain her blowjob experience.

"Uh... she means how we met and how long we've been going out and all that," Jake said.

"Oh... of course," Rachel responded. "I can do that."

They started with a brief biography of Rachel's life, mostly confirming information that was already out there — the spelling of her name, her date of birth, where she went to school, her major, where she worked. From there they went into the details of meeting Jake for the first time and the development of their romantic relationship from there. Rachel answered the questions as honestly and completely as she could, her answers well spoken and articulate. She told Allison that she had been attracted to Jake from the beginning but that he hadn't asked her out until after she'd broken things off with her previous boyfriend.

"So this all must seem kind of Cinderella-like to you," Allison said. "A normal, every day college student who suddenly find herself dating a famous musician and going to the Grammy Awards with him."

"It is quite the experience," she confirmed. "Sometimes I have to pinch myself to make sure this isn't all some elaborate dream I'm having."

Allison smiled. "You're on record as stating you do not believe the allegations made against Jake in the Catholic Monthly article that came out last month."

"I thought I told you not to go there," Jake said.

"I'm just confirming information that's already out there," Allison said.

"Jake tells me that article is a complete fabrication," Rachel said. "And I believe him, not just because he says so, but because I've been dating him now for a month and a half and I've seen no evidence whatsoever that he is capable of behaving that way."

"Good enough," she said, scrolling a note on her pad to go with the recording she was making of the conversation. "How about you, Jake? Were you attracted to Rachel from the start?"

Jake went over the story of their romance from his point-of-view, pretty much staying exactly aligned with her version. And, being the reporter that she was, she slowly edged the conversation back over to the Michelle Rourke article by approaching the subject from the flank instead of head on.

"I understand you're having a lot of trouble with the homeowners who live in the neighborhood where you're buying your house," she said. "How are things going on that front?"

"Just the way they should in America," Jake said. "They're free to shout and yell and hold signs up all they want and I'm free to move in there when escrow closes on March 2."

"So you are going forth with the transaction despite the clear disapproval of your neighbors?"

"That's correct. I've already started packing up things in my condo."

"Do you believe that there would have been all of this clamor regarding your new house if the Catholic Monthly article had not come out?"

"No," he said. "I don't."

"And in regards to that article," she said next. "If the allegations against you are untrue, as you claim, why aren't you suing the publication for libel?"

"Okay, end of interview," Jake said. "I told you not to go there."

"Jake, be reasonable," she said. "You have to talk about the article at some point. Michelle Rourke has accused you of being an abusive rapist. You can't just keep saying 'no comment' whenever you're asked about it."

"No comment," Jake said with a smile. "Come on, Rachel. Let's go mingle a bit, shall we?"

They walked off, leaving Allison to quickly scratch out a few more notes on her pad. It wasn't more than a minute before another reporter — this one from Entertainment Weekly — accosted them and began to ask the exact same questions.

In all it took more than an hour before the reporters stopped intercepting them and firing questions at the couple. They talked to each one but Jake prefaced each interview with a standard disclaimer that the conversation would come to a complete and sudden end if the subject of the Michelle Rourke article was brought up, either directly or indirectly. A few refused outright to restrict their questioning on that subject — after all, that was pretty much the only reason to interview the scrungy singer in the first place — and Jake refused to answer anything of these people. All of the rest agreed to the condition and asked questions about the relationship between Jake and Rachel, what Jake thought of his chances of actually winning one of the coveted gramophones, and what Jake's thoughts were on his stiffest competition for the awards, namely Steve Winwood and La Diferencia. Eventually, however, they always tried to work in the Rachel Rourke thing, some directly, some from the flank like Allison Stone. His response was always the same. He would immediately end the interview and excuse himself.

"Let's get another drink and then I'll introduce you to Celia and Eduardo Valdez," Jake suggested when a full fifteen minutes had gone by without an interception.

"Okay," Rachel said a little nervously. "Are you sure they won't mind?"

"I'm sure," he said.

They went to the bar and got two rum and cokes and then Jake led her through the crowded room to where the brother and sister from the famous pop band were standing amid a throng of reporters and other hanger-ons. As they came closer Jake noticed that several of the event's security force began to edge closer as well, their eyes watching Jake carefully. It seemed they had been briefed on what had happened the last time the two bands had been in the same room together.

Celia was wearing a conservative, light blue dress that fell to just below her knees. It displayed a small amount of her cleavage and covered her shoulders and most of her upper arms. She wore flats upon her feet, no doubt to keep from drawing attention to her height, which was just a hair under six feet tall. She smiled warmly as she saw Jake come up to her. Eduardo shot him a wary look and seemed to send a message with his eyes — don't fuck with us. The security guards tensed up as Jake and Rachel made it to within speaking distance.

"Jake Kingsley," Celia said, holding out her hand for a shake. "I kind of missed you here last year. We had a date to get rejected together, remember?"

Jake laughed, shaking with her. He caught a whiff of her perfume, which was the same intoxicating vanilla scent she'd had on at their first meeting. "We decided to take a year off from rejection," Jake said. "Besides, after that black eye Miguel gave me I didn't really want to show my face around here anyway." That had been during the fight that had taken place in the limo queue after the 1985 Grammies. Matt had insulted Celia in true Matt fashion and Eduardo, her brother, and Miguel, her family friend and bass player, had attacked him for it. Jake had been trying to pull Matt away from the scuffle when Miguel had swung a roundhouse at Matt, only to miss and hit Jake's face instead.

"He is genuinely sorry for hitting you, Jake," Celia said. "If you see him I'm sure he'll apologize to you."

"I'm over it," Jake said. "Like I said, it wasn't the first time I've been punched because of Matt's mouth and it won't be the last." He looked at Eduardo and held out his hand. "It's nice to see you again too," he said. "No hard feelings from last time?"

Eduardo nodded slowly. "No hard feelings," he said, shaking Jake's hand. "Although I cannot say the same for your friend the guitar player. It would probably be best if he and I didn't come within thirty feet of each other. He and Miguel as well, for that matter."

"I can't guarantee that," Jake said, "but I'll certainly mention it the next time I run into him." He turned to Rachel and put his hand on her back, gently bringing her forward. "Celia, Eduardo, this is Rachel Madison. I'm sure you've read that the two of us our dating. She really wanted to meet you guys. It seems she's quite the La Diferencia fan."

"Nice to meet you, Rachel," Celia said, putting out her hand and shaking with her. "It's nice to hear you appreciate our music."

"I love it," Rachel said, her eyes wide. "I have all of your albums. I listen to them in my car all the time."

Eduardo shook with her next. "That's a very lovely dress you have on by the way," he said. "Senor Versace should be proud."

"Thank you," Rachel said, smiling.

"Rachel has the major hots for you, Eduardo," Jake told him. "Particularly when you sport the goatee."

"Jake!" Rachel cried, blushing furiously. "You didn't have to tell him that!"

The three musicians chuckled. "Don't worry about it, Rachel," Celia told her. "Eduardo is hot. If he weren't my brother I'd be all over him."

"And if you weren't Jake's girlfriend I'd be chasing you all over the ballroom," Eduardo said. "You're one of the sexiest women here."

Her blush increased and she became more than a little tongue-tied. After a few minutes, however, she got over the affliction and entered into a giggling conversation with Eduardo about life in Venezuela and his early days in the band.

"I think he's going to steal my girlfriend," Jake said jokingly to Celia.

"Well, you know what they say about us Latin types," She responded.

"No, the only Latin word I learned from you was cabron, remember? I do try to use it in conversation as often as possible."

"It is a very versatile word," she confirmed, "although it's not generally used in polite company."

"I'm not often in polite company," Jake said, making her laugh.

"So what do you think our chances are this year?" Celia asked. "The competition is not all that stiff. Our single Lovers In Love sold more copies than any other single this year and your album Balance Of Power sold more than any other album. You're still at number one on the charts, in fact."

"Well, we both know that sales figures are not what gets someone a Grammy," Jake said. "If that were true we'd both have several of them."

"Yes, it does all seem to be at the whim of the recording industry, doesn't it?" she asked.

"It's all rigged," Jake said. "I figured that out long before I was ever a professional musician. I did have opportunity to listen to some of the deep cuts on your albums though."

"Oh?"

"Yes," he said. "Rachel had them in her car and I borrowed them. I didn't know that you were a songwriter as well as a singer and guitarist."

"I have to fight to get any of my songs recorded," she said. "They throw them to me as bones to keep me happy and then use them for filler on the albums."

"That's too bad," he said. "The first one I heard was Carabobo. Your guitar work on that one is amazing. And the lyrics are deep and moving. I can't imagine why they didn't want to release that as a single."

"I barely got that one on the album at all," she said. "They said the lyrics were too dark, that the subject was not part of the La Diferencia formula."

"They do always seem to think they know what's right," Jake said. "If I were producing your records I would be encouraging you to write more. Exactly what war are you talking about in the song anyway? Is it something Venezuelan?"

She seemed pleased that he knew the song was about war. "It's about the Battle of Carabobo," she said. "It was during our War of Independence from Spain in the early 1800s. The Battle of Carabobo was the turning point, when our army destroyed the Spanish land forces and insured that we win the war and be free. We celebrate the day of the battle — June 24 — as a national holiday."

"It's a very deep song," Jake said. "They really should give you guys a little more artistic license over your material."

"Like they give you?" she asked. "I heard you were able to renegotiate your contract with National Records and gain a lot of musical freedom, as well as a lot more money. Is that true?"

"I can't even tell you 'no comment' on that one," he whispered to her. She took the comment for what he'd intended — an affirmation.

"I'd love to be able to do nothing but our songs," she said. "Some of the stuff they have us recording for the next album is... well..."

"Not good?" he asked.

"It's not that it's not good," she said. "It's just that I think it's starting to get kind of stale. It all sounds like the same songs we've already done. The rhythms are all the same two-chord melodies with lots of synthesizers and not enough guitar work. It's a formula that's worked so far — obviously — but our fans are growing up now and becoming more musically sophisticated. Music itself is undergoing a transformation too. I really want to mature with the genre and I have dozens of ideas for new songs but our A&R guy doesn't want to even hear them. I only got one song on the album we're recording now. The rest are from the songwriting team. "

"We work in a sleazy and blind industry," Jake said. "They'll gladly kill the goose that lays the golden egg and then tell themselves that the goose was going to die of natural causes anyway. All they look to is the next quarter and how many albums we'll sell using whatever formula worked for the first album. They have a hard time going beyond that."

"So what's the solution?" she asked. "Keep going down the chute until they're not interested in you anymore and then show up for a reunion tour in twenty years?"

"If that's the road you want to travel, yes," Jake said. "Myself, I believe in getting control of my own musical destiny by any means possible. I don't want to be a where-are-they-now segment on MTV in twenty years. I want people to still know my name twenty years from now."

Celia nodded, her green eyes appraising him as she thought over this little bit of wisdom. "Well put," she said.

The 29^th annual Grammy Awards were held on February 24^th, a Tuesday night. Intemperance was up for Record Of The Year, Song Of The Year, Album Of The Year, and Best Recording By A Duo Or Group. La Diferencia was up for these four awards as well. Neither band was awarded a single Grammy. Neither band was terribly surprised or disappointed by their failure.

After the ceremony was over Rachel went back to Jake's condo and they had sex for the first time. She undressed from her outfit in his bathroom and entered the bedroom completely naked. Jake relished his first look at her petite body. Her curves were in all the right places, her breasts were riding high and firm upon her chest, and her pubic area was framed by a neatly trimmed nest of blonde, curly hair only half a shade darker than the hair on her head.

She seemed a bit nervous as she came to his bed but this nervousness faded and was replaced by excitement as she put her naked body against his and they began to kiss the passionate exchanges of lovers. He kissed her everywhere, working his way down to her breasts and suckling her for the better part of ten minutes. From there, he went lower, down across her hips to her legs. He kissed her inner thighs and began to move upward again, licking and nibbling at the increasingly soft flesh.

Her musk was strong and fresh as he put his mouth between those widely spread legs and began to lick at her vaginal lips. When he began plunging his tongue in and out of her the sounds she had been making changed from utterances that sounded suspiciously contrived to deep, spontaneous moans of passion and lust. He began to lick at her swollen clitoris while plunging two fingers in and out of her tight vagina. Her moans became louder and her pelvis began to rise and fall on the bed. When he began sucking the clitoris, treating it like a small nipple, she screamed out her pleasure and began to buck up and down. Her orgasm blasted out of her with a force Jake had not expected. She nearly strangled him with her legs as she shouted out obscenities. Jake had no idea that he was the first man to ever lick her down there for more than two minutes, the first man to ever lick her clitoris at all, and that the orgasm he'd sucked from her body was the first she'd ever had that had been produced by anything other than her own fingers.

"Oh my God, Jake," she panted when he raised his face from between her legs. "That was... that was... God."

"I'm glad you liked it," he said mildly, planting a little kiss right in the middle of her blonde bush.

"Come up and do it to me now," she said. "I'm ready."

"Not yet," he said. "I haven't finished my dinner yet."

"Huh?" she asked. "You mean... you want to do that... again?"

He licked his lips. "Yeah," he said, putting his head back down. It was another twenty minutes and three orgasms before he brought it back up.

She held her legs widely open as he brought himself up into the standard missionary mounting position. Her hands were everywhere, touching his stomach, his chest, his thighs, his penis. "Come on," she said. "Do it to me, Jake! Fuck me!"

"I intend to," he said, leaning over toward the nightstand next to the bed and pulling open the drawer.

"What are you doing?" she asked, feeling his ass cheeks now.

"Just getting a rubber," he said.

"A rubber? You don't need one of those. I'm on the pill."

"I know," he said, giving his standard answer. "It's more for your protection than mine."

"Huh?" she said, confused.

"I have a clean bill of health," he said, "but I have been with... you know... some women of questionable standards in the past. It would just make me feel better if we used protection."

"Oh... I see," she said, her face falling a little.

He pulled a condom from the drawer and quickly removed it from its packaging. He rolled it expertly into place. He then leaned down and kissed her. "Don't be mad," he said. "It's just a condom."

"I'm not mad," she told him, kissing him back.

He put himself inside of her and began to move, thrusting in and out of her tightness, utilizing every move he'd ever come up with to give her pleasure. And pleasure was just what she got. She came three more times — each more powerful than the one before — before he let himself go and sprayed his semen into the reservoir tip of the unlubricated condom.

"Wow, Jake," she said, her body covered with sweat, her pale skin flushed. "I've never had sex like that before."

"Then you've never had sex," Jake told her with a smile. He stood up.

"Where are you going?" she asked. "Don't you want to snuggle with me?"

"I'll be right back," he said, "and then we'll snuggle all night if you want."

Before she could say anything else he stepped into the bathroom and shut the door behind him. He removed the condom carefully and tied a knot in the end of it, keeping anything from spilling out. He dropped it in the toilet, urinated, and then flushed everything away. He then took a washrag from a drawer next to the sink, wet it, and cleansed all of the lingering semen from his penis, even going so far as to squeeze it and make sure every last drop had come out.

He hardly even thought about what he was doing, the precautions against having any of his sperm get into his partner's body — either by accident or design — was so ingrained in him by this point in his life.

He went back to the bedroom and crawled under the covers, putting his naked body next to Rachel's. He went almost immediately to sleep. Rachel lay awake most of the night, staring at the ceiling, occasionally tossing and turning. She had never spent the night in a man's bed before and was not used to it.

On March 2 the escrow on Jake's new house closed and he was given the keys. When he arrived there just before noon he found several dozen picketers from the homeowner's association holding up signs and several news crews who were covering the event.

"Jesus fucking Christ," he mumbled as they filmed him stepping out of his Corvette and as the picketers began to chant "Live somewhere else, live somewhere else!" at the top of their lungs.

He ignored them as best he could and used the keys to enter the house that was now officially his, that had been recorded in the Los Angeles County hall of records as belonging to Jake Kingsley. Soon the mortgage payments would begin to arrive at the offices of Yamashito, Yamashito, and Yamashito and Jill would pay the Third Bank of Orange County $4,400.50 per month plus $3375 ever three months for property taxes plus a yearly homeowners insurance premium of $950 out of his accounts.

Jake's furniture and other belonging from his condo arrived in a moving truck less than an hour later. As the team of movers began to bring things inside his every possession was filmed and documented by the news crews outside. By the time they'd finished up two of the reporters even tried to interview the movers themselves to question them about some of the more personal items they might have seen amidst Jake Kingsley's possessions. As they'd been instructed by both Jake and the owner of their company (a man who'd moved Jake twice before and who had collected nearly twice his normal rate for this particular job) they kept their friggin mouths shut, saying nothing but "no comment" whenever they were asked. When they left Jake tipped each of them one hundred dollars.

Rachel arrived shortly after four o'clock. Her classes at UCLA were done for the day and, thanks to the increased business her mother's restaurant was doing now that it was famous, she no longer had to work as a waitress very often. She too had to run the gauntlet of reporters and protestors in order to get inside. She was very nearly in tears as she sat down at Jake's dining room table and swallowed the stiff drink he'd made for her.

"One of those assholes out there called me 'the wife of the anti-Christ!" she said. "They don't even know me! How can they stand out in front of your house and yell at your guests like that, Jake? Can't you call the cops on them?"

"It wouldn't do any good," Jake said. "They're not breaking the law. They're standing on a public sidewalk and exercising their First Amendment rights to free speech and assembly. If they're still doing it after ten o'clock tonight, I can call the cops on them for disturbing the peace, but they're pretty much free to picket all they want until then."

"It's just not right," she said. "Sometimes the First Amendment lets people get away with too much."

"Well, that's what the bible thumpers were saying about me in Cincinnati," he said. "I'm sure they'll go away eventually."

He was right. Jake and Rachel spent the next three hours putting away dishes and silverware and clothes and a hundred other belongings. Jake explained to her about the new furniture he was going to buy to go with his new house and showed her where we was going to put it. He offered to let her help with the interior design and soon she was throwing around suggestions as well.

They forgot about the protestors outside and, at around six o'clock, they decided to break in the new bedroom with a lengthy sex session upon his bed.

"Do me from behind again," Rachel said breathlessly as he stripped her of her clothing. "I really liked it that way."

"I'm here to please," Jake said, pulling a condom from his supply and rolling it down his erection.

Later, Jake cooked dinner for her, using his new barbeque to broil up a couple of New York steaks. By the time the dinner mess was cleaned up all of the protestors and all of the reporters were gone. Peace had returned to the neighborhood it seemed.

Rachel stayed the night with him and they had another extended sex session before dropping off to sleep around eleven o'clock. The next morning Jake went outside in his robe to see if the newspaper service he'd arranged for had dropped off a copy of the LA Times. They had, but that was not the only object that had been dropped off.

A large wooden cross had been erected directly in the middle of his front lawn. It stood more than ten feet high, the crosspiece about seven feet from end to end. Written on the left arm of the cross piece, in red paint, was the word: JESUS. On the right side of the crosspiece was the word: SAVES! Written in vertical letters down the upright portion of the cross were the words: REPENT SINNER! JOHN 3:16.

Jake was beyond outraged. He called the police to report the vandalism to his house. It took almost two hours before two black and whites arrived in his driveway. Two patrol officers and their lieutenant — all of them well over the age of forty — stepped out and examined the cross blankly. They then came in and took a report from Jake, asking questions in monotone voices that did not succeed in belaying an almost childlike amusement at his predicament.

"So what is going to be done about this?" Jake asked.

The lieutenant shrugged disinterestedly. "Not much, I'd imagine. There's no actual damage to your house, you know. I don't see any need to even classify this as anything other than simple vandalism really, and even that might not fly if we did, somehow, manage to catch the people responsible."

"Simple vandalism?" Jake asked. "They put a cross on my front yard. When that happened to a black family over in Westwood a couple of months ago the FBI got involved in it."

"That's a little different, Mr. Kingsley," the lieutenant said. "That was a hate crime. The people who did that lit that cross on fire in order to intimidate a black family for moving into a white neighborhood."

"How is that different?" Jake asked. "Some bible thumping hypocrites put a cross in my yard to try to intimidate me for moving into a neighborhood where they don't think I belong."

"Well... you're white," he responded. "You're not even Jewish." He looked at him. "Are you?"

"No, I'm not Jewish," Jake said.

"And they didn't burn the cross, they simply placed it in your yard."

"They even used cement," one of the cops added, as if that made everything okay.

"So you're saying that if they would have lit the cross on fire, it would've been a crime, but since they only put biblical crap on it, it's okay?"

"No need to degrade the bible," the lieutenant said harshly. "As I said, they were probably just trying to suggest to you that maybe you should repent. From what I've heard you've got a lot to repent for."

"What I do or do not need to repent for is irrelevant to this discussion," Jake said. "They put a cross on my front yard!"

The lieutenant stood up. "We've taken a report on that," he said. "I don't see how there's anything else we can do for you, Mr. Kingsley. If I were you I'd look up that passage in the bible — assuming you even own a copy — and take to heart what it says. Jesus died for your sins and you're making a mockery of that sacrifice with that music you make. I can't say I blame those folks for trying to point out what you represent to them."

The cops left, driving off in their cars, leaving an incensed Jake in their wake.

"Are you okay, hon?" Rachel asked, her fingers caressing his shoulders.

"Yeah," he said. "I need to make a phone call."

He went to the phone and dialed Matt's number from memory.

"Wassup, homey?" Matt asked. "How was your first night in the new pad?"

"It was okay," he said. "Listen, I've been thinking."

"Yeah? About what?"

"What do you think about doing It's In The Book on the next album after all?"