Chapter 16: Going to California

Los Angeles, California

July 19, 1999

It was Monday morning and Jake’s Avanti touched down at Whiteman Airport at 8:35 AM. Onboard were Jake, Laura, Celia, and Stephanie Zool. All of the members of Brainwash had secured housing somewhere in San Luis Obispo County in anticipation of hitting the new studio outside of Atascadero when it was ready for business in the first week of August. Jim and Marcie had found a rental house near the mission in San Luis Obispo city. Jeremy and his wife and children had found one just a few blocks away from the Scanlons. Rick and his wife had found one in Paso Robles and she had already secured a gig at one of the local hospitals as a telemetry nurse. Stephanie had found a quaint little condo for rent on the beach in Morro Bay.

Currently, however, they were working up the tunes for the next CD in the KVA studio building in Santa Clarita as it would be another eight to ten months before the rehearsal building in Atascadero would be ready. As such, all of the actual Brainwash musicians except Steph were staying in hotels in the San Fernando valley for now. Steph was very fond of her temporary home and wanted to sleep there every night and listen to the ocean. And she enjoyed making the daily airborne commutes with Jake, unlike the other four, who seemed to have a superstitious dread of being rock musicians flying in a small plane all the time.

Jake parked at the general aviation terminal and shut down the engines. Parked out in front of the building was a white limousine. Everyone got out of the plane and gathered near the cargo compartment. This was a bit of a somber occasion. Celia was leaving today for her European tour. The band’s equipment was already in Liverpool, having been delivered there by ship and arriving the week before. Laura was going with her on the flight to London and would stay with her through the first two shows in Liverpool and the three that followed in Manchester. Jake, however, had a lot of work to do and could not accompany his two women on this trip. He was hoping to hop over to Frankfurt in mid-September to see her for a few days on the Germany leg of the tour. After all, he and Laura had promised to keep her from crossing the line during her travels.

Stephanie watched as Celia and Laura loaded their travel bags into the trunk of the limo. Once they were secure, Jake and his wife embraced and shared a long kiss with each other. They told each other “I love you” and Laura promised to call when she could. Jake then went to Celia and the same thing happened. The two of them embraced quite intimately and exchanged a long, deep kiss on the lips with each other. Jake told her he loved her and would miss her. Celia told him the same.

Stephanie observed this parting without too much surprise or embarrassment. It had become quite clear to all of the Brainwash members during their visit to Casa Kingsley the previous month just what was going on between the Kingsleys and Celia Valdez. They never out and out admitted they were in a romantic relationship with each other, but they made no real efforts to hide it either. They all knew that Celia was not really sleeping on the couch in Caydee’s room. If she was not sleeping there, or on the living room sofa, or in Jake’s office, that only left one possibility. In truth, it was not really even the sleeping arrangements that had clued the Brainwash crew in. It was the way they acted around each other. It was quite clear that the three of them were in love with each other. They talked to each other like lovers. They were affectionate with each other like lovers. Several times Steph had seen Laura and Celia cuddled up together on the couch while watching television, usually with Celia stroking and playing with Laura’s red hair. And on another occasion, Steph had walked out to the edge of the cliff to listen to the ocean and look at the stars and had found Jake and Celia alone in the hot tub out there, both of them obviously in the nude, and with Jake’s arm around Celia’s shoulders as they sipped from glasses of wine.

“Hey, Steph. What’s up?” Jake had greeted casually, making no move to remove himself from the intimate embrace of a woman who was not his wife.

“Uh ... nothing,” Steph had stammered back. “Just came out to look at the stars.”

“It is a nice night for it,” Celia said, her voice soft and content as she rested her cheek on Jake’s shoulder.

“Where’s Laura?” Steph could not help but ask.

“She had a headache and decided to turn in early,” Jake said. “You know how it is?”

“Uh ... yeah. I know how it is,” she replied.

She retreated back into the house shortly after that. It had been just a little too weird of a deal for her.

And now, as she watched Jake and Celia kiss each other goodbye, she could plainly see that their tongues were in each other’s mouths. And Laura was just standing there, watching without shock, surprise, anger, or even a hint of jealousy.

“I love you, C,” Jake told the beautiful Venezuelan singer once the kiss ended. “I’ll be out to visit as soon as I can.”

“You’d better,” she told him, giving him one more brief kiss on the lips. “And I love you too, Rev.”

Jake chuckled hearing her call him that. Stephanie knew the origins of this new nickname of Jake’s. There had been quite a hullabaloo over the past few weeks after pictures emerged in the media of Jake officiating over the wedding of KVA’s accountant in Reno. These pictures had first appeared in the Reno Gazette, which then put them out on the AP wire where they were picked up nationwide. Accompanying the pictures was an article explaining that the notorious Jake Kingsley had somehow arranged to be ordained as a minister in the state of Nevada so he could perform the ceremony.

THE REVEREND JAKE KINGSLEY? had been the headline in the Los Angeles Times when the story broke. There was no mention of the fact that a layperson becoming ordained for the specific purpose of officiating a wedding was a practice that dated back years and was actually quite common, particularly on the west coast. A large section of society was greatly offended by Jake’s audacity and the legal apparatus that had allowed such a blatant and blasphemous charade. There were some who suggested that Jake should be arrested for impersonating a clergyman. There were many more who advanced the opinion that Jae Luc and Jill Yamashito (Jill had chosen to keep her surname intact and Jae was okay with that) were not actually legally married, and were certainly not married in the eyes of God.

The Intemperance and Jake Kingsley fans, on the other hand, found the entire thing amusing. They started referring to Jake as “The Reverend” when discussing him in much the same way that Rush fans referred to Neil Peart as “The Professor”. And that was when Celia started calling Jake “Rev”. As far as Steph could tell, she was the only one who called him this and it was quite clearly a term of endearment, similar to Laura calling him “sweetie” or Jake calling Laura “hon” or Laura calling Celia “love”.

Finally, Celia and Laura climbed into the limousine and closed the door. The vehicle drove off a minute later, heading for LAX and the ten o’clock flight to Heathrow. Jake watched it sadly until it disappeared around the corner of the terminal building. When he turned back around to face Stephanie, he was wiping at his eyes.

“You okay?” Steph asked carefully.

He nodded. “We’ve spent a lot of time apart these past few years, but I always hate saying that initial goodbye.”

“It must be tough,” she said sympathetically.

“It is,” he agreed with a sigh. “But it’s the life we choose.”

They walked to the hangar where Jake’s truck was parked. Fifteen minutes later, they were at the KVA office. It was time to start another day of workups.

Jake left Stephanie in Los Angeles after the day wrapped up. He would not be flying back in the morning as there was other business (exciting business, really) to take care of at the new studio. KVA’s first soundboard would be arriving and hooked up to power at the facility. It was the latest in digital sound mixing technology, the AudioMaster 12K Deluxe, a model that was two generations more advanced than what Obie had at Blake Studios. Nerdly was as eager to see it for the first time as he had been to see Kelvin emerge into the world from Sharon’s womb. Jake was looking forward to it as well (though not quite up there with meeting your child for the first time level). And so, Jake left Brainwash with instructions to keep working up the tunes they had decided on for the next CD (there were fourteen of them, and they needed to pare down at least two). Steph would spend the night in Jim and Marcie’s suite at the Hilton Hotel. Jake promised to come pick her up at the end of the day if the Scanlons would be so kind as to drop her at the airport after tomorrow’s rehearsal.

He flew home alone and landed at SLO Regional at 5:45 PM. Twenty minutes later, he walked through the garage entrance and into the kitchen, where Elsa was standing by with all the fixings for hamburgers at the ready. He could smell that tater tots were cooking in the oven. Sitting on the kitchen island was a plate of formed raw burger patties.

“Da-dee!” greeted Caydee, who was hanging out and “helping” Elsa make dinner.

“Caydee-girl!” he returned as she rushed over to him.

He picked her up and gave her hugs and kisses. She then looked at him sadly. “Ma-mee, See-ya bye-bye?” she asked.

“Mommy and Celia are bye-bye,” he said with a sad nod. “Mommy will be home in a little more than a week.”

“Week?” she asked, not quite understanding that concept.

“A week is seven sleeps,” he told her, converting the number into Caydee units of measurement. “And then another three sleeps after that.”

“Awww,” she said, pouting a little. “See-ya home too?”

“Celia will be gone a little longer,” Jake said. “She has to go make music for lots of people in the world. That’s her job and it takes her away from the people who love her sometimes.”

“Make moo-zik Da-dee’s job too?” she asked, looking a little worried.

“It is Daddy’s job too,” Jake agreed. “Mommy’s too, for that matter. But Mommy and Daddy will not leave our little girl behind if we have to go make music for the people in the world. Not while our little Caydee needs us to be with her.”

“Pom-miss?” Caydee asked.

“Promise,” he assured her.

“Uv-eww, Dad-ee,” she told him with a smile and kiss on his nose.

“Love you too, Caydee-girl,” he told her.

“How much?” she asked.

“Sixteen,” he assured her.

“That a lot,” she said with a giggle. She could only count to eight after all, so sixteen was pretty much infinity to her.

“It sure is,” he said.

“Da-dee make boogers now?” she asked next. “Caydee hung-gee.”

“Elsa and Meghan hungry too,” Elsa said. “I’ve already got the grill warmed up for you. If you would just be so kind as to go operate it?”

“I’m on it,” Jake said, hanging his keys on the hook. “Just let me wash up.”

After dinner, Meghan went to her room and Elsa finished her final cleanup before heading back to her quarters. Jake and Caydee watched an episode of the Powerpuff Girls, which was currently her favorite show (Jake enjoyed it as well in an odd sort of way). It was then time for Caydee’s bath. After getting her clean, washing her hair with no-tears shampoo, drying her off and getting her jammies on, they went back to the living room for guitar, harmonica, and sing time. Caydee was getting pretty good at playing Losing My Religion, though she still thought the lyrics involved peeing in the corner, peeing in the spa, and losing all her pigeons. Jake was too amused by her version to try to correct her. Once the instruments were put away, it was reading time. He tucked her into bed and then read Owl Moon to her. It was a story about a father and daughter looking for owls one full moon night and finding a great horned owl. Jake had been saving this one for just such the occasion of he having to handle the bedtime story duty and Caydee, who loved looking at the sea birds around their home (as well as the bugs) was quite taken with it.

“Da-dee, Caydee see owl?” she asked.

“Well ... they do live around here,” Jake said. He had caught glimpses of them from time to time, usually while driving at night. “And we have lots of trees on our property. Maybe the next full moon we’ll see if we can find one.”

“Yayyy!” she said happily. “When pho-moo?”

“I’m not sure off the top of my head,” he told her, “but I’ll check the calendar and get back to you.”

“Kay,” she said, her eyes now starting to droop a bit.

He kissed her goodnight, told her he loved her, and then turned out her lights. She was asleep before he made it back to the entertainment room. By now, Elsa was back in her quarters and Meghan was in for the night. He had the place pretty much to himself. It was a little bit depressing.

He poured a scotch on the rocks and then sat down to watch an episode or two of COPS. Just as he was settled in, his cell phone, which was plugged into a charger on the table, made a short chirping noise that he had never heard before. Laura had just gotten the both of them new devices three days before when their old ones got to the point that the battery would die halfway through a typical day. It was the latest in cell phone tech, not a flip phone, digital, only a short, stubby little antenna, and it had a screen that could display five lines of information. That screen was now lit up. He picked up the device and looked at it. On that screen was a message. It said it came from Meghan.

Me up w KD in AM? it read.

What the fuck? Jake wondered. What does this even mean? And did it really come from Meghan? Or was it some strange glitch with the new phone?

He set the phone back down and then got up from his seat. He walked to Meghan’s room and knocked lightly on her door. She opened it a moment later. She was wearing her usual night outfit and her hair was down and in disarray. “What’s up?” she asked him.

“I just got some weird thing on my phone that said it was from you,” he told her. “Did you try to call me?”

“I texted you,” she said.

“Texted me?” Jake had never heard this term before.

“Yeah,” she said. “It’s a new thing they’re putting on phone plans. Laura told me that your new phones have it, so I sent you a text.”

“That was a text?” he asked. “What does it mean? It looks like gibberish to me.”

“I was just confirming that you need me to get Caydee up in the morning,” she said.

“That’s what that said?” he asked.

She rolled her eyes at him. “It’s shorthand,” she explained. “It’s not easy to type in text on a phone keyboard, so you shorten everything.”

“Why didn’t you just come into the entertainment room and ask me?” he wanted to know.

“I was comfortable and didn’t want to get up,” she said with a shrug.

“So ... you sent me a text from one room to another?”

“That’s right,” she said. “Pretty cool, huh? What will they come up with next?”

“What is so cool about it?” Jake asked.

“It’s a new way to communicate simple things from one person to another,” she said.

Jake was still not getting the point. “But you’re taking the time to type information into a phone that will then be sent to another phone. If both of us have phones, why not just call?”

“Because texting is easier for little things,” she things. “You don’t have to actually talk to the person. There are no preliminaries or idle chit-chat. The message is conveyed and responded to. Short and sweet.”

“Hmm,” Jake said, pondering that for a moment. Maybe she had something there. Maybe he could start communicating with the suits at National in this manner. “Anyway, the answer is yes. I have to be out at the studio by seven, so I’ll be leaving here around six-thirty.”

“Okay,” she said. “Sounds good.”

“Be sure to reassure Caydee that I’ll be back in the afternoon,” Jake told her. “She’s a little sad about Laura and Celia being gone and she was worried that I would go off to make moo-zik too. Tell her she can fly high in the sky with me when I go to LA to pick up Steph.”

“Okay,” she said. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“I’ll probably be home around three or so,” he said. “Good night.”

“Good night,” she said and closed the door.

Jake turned and walked back toward the entertainment room. Texting, he thought, shaking his head a little. Just another fad. No way it will catch on.

The winery property that KVA had purchased was now obviously a construction project in progress. Several different contractors were working on several different things simultaneously. There were two portable toilets set up near the winery building along with a portable construction trailer. These were for the outside and inside crews that were doing the actual modifications to the building. Meanwhile, a fencing contractor from Atascadero was about halfway through with putting up an ornate iron bar security fence that enclosed the approach road and enveloped the buildings themselves, leaving the actual vineyards open. A gate and a guard booth had been installed fifty yards from where the access road left Highway 101. KVA had contracted for 24/7/365 unarmed security staffing with the same company that provided armed security at the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant. There was always one guard staffing the booth and controlling access to the property while at least one other guard provided backup and foot patrol of the property. A small trailer was currently serving as the security office but would eventually be replaced by a permanent structure that would be constructed once the studio was fully operational.

Jake pulled his BMW up to the booth at 6:55 AM. The guard inside was in his mid-twenties. He was wearing a tan uniform that had a badge and patches on the shoulder. He greeted Jake politely and, even though he knew who Jake was and knew that he was one of the owners of the property, asked to see Jake’s pass. This was standard operating procedure for the facility. No one entered without showing an access pass or having a driver’s license that matched a name on the expected visitors list. This included all construction contractors, electrical contractors, delivery people, fence contractors, and the owners and musicians that would be recording or engineering here. Jake handed him his pass, which was stored in a little flap on his sun visor, and the guard scanned the barcode on it. On his computer screen, Jake’s picture appeared and the system let the guard know he was currently authorized to enter the property at any time of day or night.

“I’ll open the gate for you, Mr. Kingsley,” the guard told him, handing the pass back.

“Call me Jake,” Jake replied.

“Jake it is,” the guard said.

The iron gate swung open and Jake drove through. It promptly closed behind him. He continued up the access road and parked in what had once been the visitor parking lot for people touring and tasting at the winery. He saw that the Nerdlys’ Honda Civic was already there. That was unsurprising. None of the construction crews were on the site yet. Their workday began at 8:00 AM and ended at 4:00 PM.

The main entrance of the former winery was secured with a heavy steel door similar to those on Jake and Laura’s home. They were reinforced by steel beams and latched closed in much the same way as a bank vault. If anyone was ever going to break into the building, it was not going to be through the doors. Jake used his pass to swipe in a computer locking mechanism. The information on the magnetic strip was read, the computer controlling the lock checked with the main computer, and it was determined that Jake had authorization to enter. There was a clanking noise and the three steel bars withdrew from the steel beam, allowing Jake to pull the door open with the handle. Had the computers or the power been down, Jake could have entered a PIN into a small keyboard powered by a lithium battery to manually disengage the lock.

He stepped inside the building and beheld a cluttered floor full of construction materials, boxes of electrical equipment, ladders, and bins full of tools. According to OSHA, he was supposed to be wearing a construction helmet, but he did not think anyone was going to call him out on that. Most of the non-load bearing walls had been removed and the entire bottom floor was being rebuilt. The bottom floor is where the studios would be located—three of them would be built but only two would be equipped and rendered functional at this stage of the project. To the right rear of the level was Studio A, which the crew had put the finishing touches on just the week before. Studio B, which would occupy the middle part of the floor, was just now starting its construction. Beams for the walls had been put up, but that was about all. It was not scheduled to be ready for equipping for another three months, minimum. Studio C, which would remain unequipped, was still nothing but a drawing on the master blueprints. Upstairs, where five separate bedrooms, a kitchen, and an entertainment/dining room were planned, was still completely untouched.

The door that guarded the entrance to Studio A was not as secure as the main doors, but it was still formidable. It was also soundproofed. Access through it was controlled the same way as the main door, either through swiping an access card or punching in a PIN. Jake swiped and heard the clank of the lock disengaging. He opened the door and stepped inside the control room for the studio. It was mostly empty right now since the primary piece of equipment that made it a control room—the AudioMaster 12K mixing console—was not here yet. There were several office chairs in the room, however, and Nerdly and Sharon were each sitting in one, both of them drinking something from the Starbucks near their new home in the hills of San Luis Obispo city. They had just closed escrow and moved in the week before.

“Welcome, Jake,” Nerdly said excitedly. “Isn’t it a beautiful studio?”

“I can’t wait to start working in it,” Sharon added.

The two of them had been in here multiple times before, overseeing the fine details of the construction (and making quite the nuisances of themselves to the construction crews and engineers). It had been they who had signed off that the studio was operational. Jake, however, had not been in the building since they had closed escrow on it. He looked around in approval. It really was a nice studio. There was a large live room that could hold an entire ten-piece band, including their drum set. There were three smaller isolation booths where individual vocalists or instrumentalists could record their tracks while the rest of the band played in the live room. There was also a machine room where all the computer equipment and power amps would be housed. All except the machine room had large, soundproof windows that looked into the control room. Everything had already been wired up and the computers and external storage had been installed the week before. There was a halon fire suppression system in the machine room and in the control room itself. Jake, Laura, Celia, the Nerdlys, and everyone else who would be working regularly in the studio had been required by Cal-OSHA to take a training class in the operation and dangers of that particular system.

“It looks just like we planned,” Jake said after taking a good gander at everything. “What time are they delivering the console?”

“It should be here any time now,” Nerdly said.

“And the electricians are coming in at eight to wire it up?” Jake asked.

“That is the plan,” Nerdly confirmed.

“All right then,” Jake said, nodding. “Hopefully we’ll have everything up and running by next week and we can get start laying down tracks for Brainwash III on schedule.”

“I see no reason why that should not come to pass,” Nerdly said.

Jake poked around the studio for another five minutes or so, familiarizing himself with the doors, the escape routes (there was an emergency exit to the outside in the rear) and then looking over the banks of computers, amps, and storage devices in the machine room. He found the emergency buttons that activated the halon dispensers and the abort buttons that could be used if the system tried to release automatically due to a false alarm. There was a very complex system of fans and ventilation ducts to keep the computers and equipment cool when they were operating, but all of that was currently turned off as the computers themselves were currently powered down. Jake, who had seen all of the invoices for studio equipment, knew that the machine room contained more than one hundred thousand dollars worth of high-end equipment. There would be another three hundred and fifty thousand worth in the control room itself once the project was complete. That was why the insurance company had insisted upon the halon system, the fencing, the 24/7 security force, and the additional well which supplied a 15,000-gallon cistern that was dedicated solely for providing a water source for fire engines. Jake understood their point of view.

At 7:15, the door to the studio clanked again and then slowly opened. A Hispanic man stood there. He had used a single-use access pass given to him by the gate guard to gain entrance. His English was spotty, but he was able to communicate that he and his amigo had brought the equipment that had been purchased and were ready to bring it inside.

“By all means, my good man,” Nerdly told him, smiling widely.

“This is so exciting,” Sharon added, nearly bouncing with joy.

The AudioMaster 12K did not come in a single box. There was the main mixing board itself, which was about eight feet by three feet and weighed nearly three hundred pounds. And then there were three sixteen-inch computer monitors each in their own box. And then there was another large box with all the cabling and hardware. Other boxes contained speakers and the cabling for those. In all, Jose and Enrico, the two delivery people, brought in sixteen separate boxes and set them on the control room floor. Jake tipped them each fifty dollars for their efforts and they went away smiling, dropping their single use access pass with the guard on the way out.

“All right,” Nerdly said once they were gone. “Let’s start opening things up.” He handed out box cutters and they got to work. Nerdly attacked the largest box—the one with the actual mixing board in it—personally, slicing it carefully down the seam like he was performing a C-section. He opened up the box and pulled off a few layers of packaging material. He then cut into the plastic the component was wrapped in. He looked down on it in awe. “It’s beautiful,” he said worshipfully.

Mrs. Nerdly was just as impressed. She stopped what she was doing to come over and gaze upon their new possession. She was rendered speechless, could only reach out her hand and caress it gently with her fingertips.

Jake thought it was very cool looking. It was, by far, the most complex mixing board he had ever seen. There were seventy-two separate sliders on the near end of the board. There were hundreds of LED lights on the top end. There were dozens upon dozens of meter readouts, all of them blank at the moment since they were digital and there was no power to the machine. There were three places where the computer monitors would mount and open areas where keyboards and computer mice would rest. On the back were almost a hundred input and output jacks of varying size and function.

“Let’s pick it up and put it on the mount,” Nerdly said, nodding toward the mounting frame in the center of the room. It had been custom ordered and installed just for this particular piece of equipment. The power connections and the other hardwiring would all be attached on the floor immediately beneath it.

“No fuckin’ way,” Jake said. “That thing weighs three hundred pounds.”

“You and I could lift that easily,” Nerdly said. “And Sharon can guide us for the mount.”

“No!” Jake said sternly. “That is a two hundred- and fifty-thousand-dollar piece of equipment. We have electricians who are being paid to install the thing arriving in another thirty minutes. If they drop the thing, it’s on them. If we drop the thing, it’s on us.”

“Well ... I guess that makes sense,” Nerdly said reluctantly. “I just wanted to see what it looks like on the mount.”

“We’ll see that soon enough,” Jake told him. “Now let’s get all these boxes open so the techies can find what they need.”

The electronics technicians arrived exactly on time. They were a team of three who contracted with AudioMaster and were familiar with the equipment. They politely asked that Jake, Sharon, and Bill stand back and stay out of their way. They even suggested that maybe stepping out of the room would not be a bad idea.

“I will remain here during the installation,” Nerdly told them firmly. “I wish to supervise each step.”

“We need no supervision,” said Kenny, the leader of the trio. “But you’re welcome to watch us work if you do it from over there by that window and you do it silently.”