Chapter 19: Y2K

Port Hills, New Zealand

December 31, 1999

Cadence Elizabeth Kingsley, beloved daughter of Jake and Laura Kingsley, had turned two years old thirty days before—or twenty-nine if you accounted for the day they had gained when the family crossed the International Date Line. And, just like someone had flipped a switch inside of her, the terrible twos had started three days later. There were now times when her parents wondered if choosing to reproduce had been such a great idea after all.

At 7:30 PM on this New Year’s Eve of New Year’s Eves, just four and a half hours before they would find out if human civilization as they knew it was going to come to an abrupt end, Caydee threw what Jake and Laura classified as a category-4 fit (their scale topped out at category-5). The particular subject of this fit was in regard to her evening routine, which had been pretty much the same for her entire existence. Now, for whatever reason, she was advocating for a change in that routine.

“No baf!” she screamed at the top of her voice. “Git-are-sing first!”

“That is not how we do things, Caydee,” Laura told her patiently, though with an edge creeping into her voice. “You take your bath and then Daddy will do guitar and sing with you. After that, I’ll put you to bed and read you a story.”

“No baf!” she insisted again. “Git-are-sing now!”

“No!” Laura said firmly. “We do things the way we always do them.”

“Fuck it!” Caydee cried. “Don’t want baf first! Daddy sing NOW!”

“Cadence Elizabeth Kingsley,” Jake said firmly, stepping in. “You do not talk to your mother that way. If you do not stop this right now and go take your bath, you will have no guitar-sing at all tonight.”

“Not fair!” Caydee yelled. She then began to cry and kick her feet madly to protest the oppressive regime she was ruled by.

Laura and Jake looked at each other. Jake got up and picked the kicking, screaming toddler up by one of her arms and one of her legs. “All right,” he said. “That’s it. You don’t even get the bath tonight now.”

“Want my baf!” she screamed. “Want my baf!”

“No,” Jake said simply. He carried her, kicking and screaming, to her bedroom and deposited her without ceremony in her crib. “Early bedtime tonight,” he told her. “If you can stop this fit and behave like a reasonable human being again, I’ll at least change you into your jammies. Until then, you can just sleep in your clothes.”

“No! NO NO!!” she screamed as Jake turned off the light and left the room. “Want my baf! Want git-are-sing! Want my harmika! Want my story! Want my jammies!”

He did not respond. They had found that the best way to respond to these episodes without resorting to child abuse was to remain unemotional and simply isolate her in her room.

When he returned to the entertainment room of the house he had had built ten years before, Gordon and Neesh Paladay, who were sitting on the couch next to Celia, were looking a little shocked by what they had just witnessed. And with good reason. The two them had recently had what Neesh like to call “an oopsie” and she was now three months pregnant herself. Though Jake and Laura had told them about the fits and apparent demon possession of the terrible twos, this had been their first face to face encounter with the phenomenon.

“Holy shee-it,” Gordon said in amazed awe. “I ain’t never seen no child act like that before.”

“All that over taking her bath first?” Neesh said. “And she’s still doing it!” Which she was. They could clearly hear her screaming and crying and shaking the bars of the crib and yelling about bafs and git-are’s and harmikas and stories.

“Yeah, that’s your basic cat-4 fit there,” Jake said, picking up his wine glass and having a sip. “The irrational fixation on some minor detail, the kicking and screaming, the extended draw-out of the fit once she’s in her room. She should wind down soon.”

“Really?” Neesh asked.

“Absolutely,” Jake said. “Someone just needs to go in that room now, shake some holy water on her, and yell out ‘the power of Christ compels you!’ a few times and she’ll be good. We keep a vial of it in the refrigerator just for such occasions.”

“I don’t believe that’s a joke,” Neesh said.

“Don’t worry,” Laura said, taking a sip of her own wine. “So far she’s never been able to carry one on for more than twenty minutes or so.”

“See what you got to look forward to?” Jake asked with a smile.

“Is it too late to back out of this shit?” G asked his wife.

“About three months too late,” she told him.

“Damn,” he said, shaking his head.

The Kingsley family, the Paladays, and Celia, who was on tour break between the European and South American legs, had flown into New Zealand two days before. The plan was to ride out the changeover from the 1990s to the 2000s in the pleasant summer of the South Island and then fly back home on January 4^th—assuming, of course, that Y2K did not destroy modern civilization. None of them were really worried about that. The Best family had been invited to come as well, but had declined. Laura’s brother Joey was convinced that society was going to collapse when the year turned and had packed supplies and all of his guns and planned to take his family and head into the mountains when it happened. The Nerdlys had been invited as well. They were not afraid of Y2K in the least—Nerdly had, in fact, been reassuring them for years now that absolutely nothing was going to come of it (especially since there were armies of programmers rewriting code in all infrastructure computers to account for the problem)—but they still did not want to subject Kelvin to a thirteen-hour airplane flight.

After about fifteen minutes, Caydee’s crying and yelling wound down and silence returned. A few minutes after that, she began to call from the room.

“Mommy, Daddy,” she said. “Ree-za-ball hoom-bean gin. Ree-za-ball hoom-bean!”

“Okay,” Neesh said with a smile. “Now that is cute.”

“Yeah,” Jake said, standing up. “She still has a lot of cuteness in her. That’s why we don’t kill her.”

“It’s an evolutionary protective mechanism, I’m sure,” Laura said.

Jake went back into her room and turned on the light. She was giving him the puppy dog eyes. “Ree-za-ball hoom-bean, Daddy,” she said. “Take my baf now?”

“Nope,” he told her firmly. “You lost bath time and guitar-sing and story time because of the way you were behaving.”

He could see that she was about to launch into another fit, but he was able to head it off at the pass this time.

“And if you start behaving that way again,” he warned, “you’ll lose it for tomorrow as well.”

She thought this over and then wound down. But she did try to get the last shot in. “Not fair,” she declared.

“Actually, it’s perfectly fair, Caydee girl,” he told her. “You have to learn that your actions have consequences. You can’t go through life throwing a fit when you don’t get something your way. If Mommy and Daddy and Meghan were to allow that behavior to go unpunished, you would grow up to be a most unpleasant person who is ill-prepared for real life.”

“No baf?” she asked.

“No bath,” he confirmed. “But if you apologize for acting like you needed an exorcism, I’ll change you into your jammies.”

“I sow-wee, Daddy,” she said.

“Apology accepted,” he told her. He then removed her from the crib, stripped off her clothes, changed her diaper, and put her back in the crib. He kissed her on the forehead. “Good night, Caydee girl. Daddy loves you. One more sleep and it’ll be a whole new century.” Not technically true, of course—the new century would not begin until 2001—but Caydee did not understand the concept of new years and centuries anyway.

“Love you too, Daddy,” she said.

He turned out the lights, left the door open, and then returned to the entertainment room.

“That was my first category-4 experience,” Celia said, looking a little shellshocked by the experience. “It was kind of frightening.”

“What does a category-5 look like?” Gordon wanted to know.

“Similar to a category-4,” Laura explained, “but louder, with more kicking and screaming, and she’ll actually say things like ‘I hate you’ in the middle of it.”

“That’s vicious,” Neesh said.

Jake shrugged. “That’s parenthood,” he said. “The pediatrician tells us it’s a phase they go through. She’s starting to test the boundaries; see how much control she can acquire in the household and by what means she can acquire it. The important thing is not to drop down to her level and engage with her and, most importantly, to never give in to the fit. After a while she’ll figure out that manipulation on that level does not produce positive effects for her and she’ll stop doing it.”

“Makes sense,” G said thoughtfully.

“Anyway,” Jake said, “now that we’ve exorcised the demon for the night, I’m ready to try a nice glass of some twenty-five-year-old single-malt Scotch I recently acquired.”

Gordon chuckled and shook his head at the ribbing. Two days before they left for the trip, G had made the three-hour drive from Malibu to Oceano to hand-deliver a $9600 case of Glenlivet’s finest to Jake, the payoff for a bet they had made two and a half years before. G had wanted to give the case to Jake in LA, since they knew they were going to be flying out of LAX for New Zealand anyway, but Jake had refused. The terms of the wager had been that the loser had to personally hand-deliver the Scotch to the winner. And Jake had not even offered to crack open one of the bottles upon delivery. Instead, he told G they would have to wait until New Year’s Eve for the first taste.

“You won that shit fair and square, homey,” G told him now. “I salute you. Now crack one open. I can’t wait to see what this swill tastes like.”

Jake had brought two bottles with him on the trip. He went to the bar and broke the seal on one of them and then poured healthy glasses of it for everyone except Neesh. He put no ice on it. It would be a sin to drink Glenlivet 25-year-old single malt in any manner other than neat.

“To The Song,” Jake toasted, referring to the subject of the bet he had won. As of the previous Sunday, it was now at the number one position on the Billboard chart and had been in the Top 5 for the past six weeks. All demographics except the over-54 crowd loved the tune and could not get enough of it. It was being touted as the most meaningful, thought-provoking piece that Jake had ever written. There were many theories about what The Song was about. Most thought it was a dark political piece regarding the rise in terrorism and the artificial swelling of the American economic picture. Others thought it was a cynical look at the declining moral character of the American people due to the decline of family values over the last generation. Other more cynical interpreters believed it to a declaration that Jake would forever remain loyal and proud of his Satanic, butt-crack sniffing, foreign transgender enslaving ways.

“The Song,” everyone repeated in unison, holding up their glasses. They drank.

The scotch was indeed smooth as silk. Jake was not sure it was worth $800 a bottle, but it was pretty damn good hooch.

“Nice,” G said appreciatively.

“Agreed,” said Celia.

“I could definitely get used to this,” said Laura.

Neesh simply shrugged. “Mine just tastes like fancy water with a lemon slice in it.”

Everyone had a little laugh about that. They then had a discussion about whether one little taste would harm the growing fetus in her uterus. They reached the conclusion that it probably would not, so she took a little slug out of G’s glass.

“Oh yeah,” she said, a contented smile on her face. “This is the good shit all right.”

They made idle chitchat for a few minutes and then Gordon suggested that a good Cuban cigar would complement the scotch quite well. Jake agreed and allowed that he just happened to have a box of such things that he had brought from home. Celia and Laura—who both liked to take a few tokes on the old Havana when the mood struck them—declined the offer so Jake and G went out onto the deck by themselves.

The deck faced south and the sun had just set in the southwest a few minutes before. There was still a bit of twilight showing but the stars were now appearing out of it one by one. Down below, the lights of the port town Lyttleton were glowing. Out in the harbor beyond, a few boats could be seen moving about, their navigation lights glowing. The two men settled into the deck chairs next to the hot tub, set their glasses down on the granite table, and then prepped and lit their cigars.

“I really do dig this pad of yours, Jake,” G told him. “It takes a fuck of a long time to get to this place, but it’s worth it once you’re on site.”

“Yeah,” Jake said. “I only wish we could spend more time here. When I first bought the land and had the house built, I was envisioning spending every northern hemisphere winter here. Things didn’t work out that way. I’m just too busy back home making music. This is only the third time we’ve been here since I came home from my exile when it was first built. It sits empty for years at a time. Jill keeps harassing me to put it on the market, but I just can’t do that. I love this place. Even though I’m rarely here, this is my second home.”

“I wouldn’t get rid of it,” G said. “Ain’t no law says you have to visit your second home a certain amount of times. If you can afford to keep it, then fuckin’ keep it.”

“That’s my thought on the matter,” Jake said. “It costs me about fifteen hundred bucks a month to keep it maintained when we’re not here, plus the mortgage payments. Jill bitches like hell about all that expense, but really, it’s nothing to me. I’ve had her paying double mortgage payments ever since the start, so the place will be paid off in another six years anyway. And who knows, once we get my tour done we might have a chance to spend more time south of the equator. Celia says she’s ready to take a big break from making music after her tour wraps up, and I won’t be ready to put anything new together for a while either.”

“You see?” G said. “All the more reason to keep the place.” He looked at Jake slyly. “I still can’t believe you’re banging Celia ... and that Teach is okay with it. Homey, that’s the fuckin’ coup of the century as far as I’m concerned. You gotta tell me how you pulled that shit off.”

Jake shrugged. “It just kind of happened,” he said. “It just so happens that Laura and Celia are both bisexual. We’ve all worked closely with each other for years and we all have romantic feelings for each other as well as sexual feelings. It helps that neither one of them are the jealous type.”

“So, it’s not just about sex then?” G asked.

“Not at all,” Jake said. “There are feelings involved with all of us. There’s a connection. You know how having sex with Neesh is different than if you’re just banging some groupie out on the road?”

“Yeah,” G said, easily able to relate to this. “Neesh is my lady. I love her. I know her fuckin’ name. And I know she loves me. Gettin’ it on with her is sublime. Doing a groupie is just a more advanced method of jacking off.”

“Exactly,” Jake said, although he had not done a groupie in many years—certainly not since he and Laura had become a couple. “And that’s the way it is with both Celia and Laura. I love both of them. Sex with either or both of them is sublime. And, most importantly, they love each other. Sex between the two of them—whether I’m involved or not—is also sublime.”

“That’s mind-blowing shit there, homey,” G said. “Too bad my old lady ain’t into that sort of thing.”

Jake had to fight to keep his expression neutral. “Well...” he said carefully, “have you ever ... you know ... asked her if she might be into that sort of thing?”

“Don’t need to ask her,” G said firmly. “I know she’s not down with stickin’ her face in the valley. All that would happen if I brought it up would be that she’d get pissed off at me.” He shook his head. “No way I’m going there.”

“That’s a shame,” Jake said, deciding to let it drop.

“What’s Celia’s ex think about all this?” G asked next. “You and he are homies, right?”

“As far as I know, he knows nothing about it,” Jake said. “And, while we were fairly good friends back when C was married to him, we don’t really hang out anymore—for obvious reasons.”

“He always seemed like he had a pretty good stick up his ass,” G opined. “Don’t you think he wonders why you don’t hang with him anymore?”

“Maybe,” Jake allowed. “We did get together a few times after their divorce. Played some golf together at his resort up in Oregon. I let him crash at my pad for a few days during the whole media circus around Mindy Snow having her kid. But ever since Celia became involved with us on the level she is now involved, I haven’t seen him or talked to him. Hopefully he just figures it’s part of that deal where a couple divorces and their friends pick a side. I have no desire to hurt the guy. He’s decent in his own way and he was a good friend.”

“I understand,” G said. “I’d rather lay some pipe with Celia Valdez than hang out with Greg Oldfellow. I think you chose well.”

Jake chuckled. “I think so too,” he agreed.

G looked at him seriously. “You gotta tell me, homey, what’s it like touching them titties of hers?”

Jake returned the serious look. “It’s like shaking hands with God,” he said sincerely.

“Damn,” G whispered. “That’s about what I figured.”

“Anyway,” Jake said, “I want to thank you again for lending me your musicians for my tour.” Now that the Brainwash CD was finished, mixed, mastered, and an MD&P contract had been signed with National Records, Jake was starting to put together his upcoming tour. No touring contract had been signed as of yet—requests for proposals had been sent to all of the Big 4 record companies and they were waiting on bids—but Jake had finally managed to put together most of a band to accompany him on said tour. Since Gordon was not going to be touring or working on new material until after his child was born, James Whitlock, one of G’s bass players, and Lucky Powell, one of G’s drummers, had agreed to sign on with Jake Kingsley to play bass and percussion on the tour.

“No problem, homey,” Gordon said. “It’s not like I’m gonna be needing their services until at least next September. They’re looking forward to working with you on this. They always liked playing with you when we collaborated.”

“I really dug playing with them too,” Jake said. “This is gonna be a good time.”

“You gonna start working it up as soon as we get home?”

“That’s the plan,” Jake said. “I got Steph Zool to play guitar for me. That’s gonna be wild.”

“An interesting cast of characters you’re putting together,” G said. “A couple of hip-hop niggers playing rhythm and a dyke playing lead guitar.”

“Steph can shred,” Jake said respectfully. “She’s up there with me and Matt when it comes to talent on the instrument. And she can sing too. She’ll be my contralto backup singer. I just need to find a soprano now.”

“Your sis don’t wanna hit the road with you?” G asked. He knew that Pauline had been his soprano backup singer on all of his solo CDs as well as at the TSF.

“No,” Jake said. “She laughed in my face when I suggested it.”

“That’s too bad,” G said. “What about your tenor backup?”

“I got Doug Foreman for my keyboard player,” Jake reminded him. Doug Foreman was the former singer and keyboardist for the rock group Jordan, which had been popular in the early to late 1980s. Animosity and ego clashes had led to the group’s dissolution back in 1989, though their music was still frequently played on classic rock stations. When the market-price ticket sales business model kicked in a few years before, National, who owned the rights to all of Jordan’s material, had offered a considerable amount of money to the members if they would reunite and hit the road. All of the other bandmembers agreed, but Doug Foreman, the voice of the band, refused, citing too much bad blood. And so National searched around and found a tenor singer who could imitate Doug Foreman and found another musician who could play keyboards like him. They sent this new version of Jordon out on a pretty much endless tour but, since it was perceived as an artificial Jordon because Doug Foreman had been replaced, the market would only support fifty to sixty dollar ticket prices and they were forced to play in smaller venues like casinos and old 5000-seat arenas. Naturally, the National suits held a bit of a grudge against Doug Foreman for this—they had no doubt that they could have pulled in $75 cheap seats and $120 VIPs in major venues had Doug played ball—so they had forbidden him from performing any Jordon material for profit as long as they held the rights to it (which they would for another twelve years). And so, when Jake contacted Doug a month before—he and Nerdly were acquaintances as Nerdly had helped Jordon mix their last album before the breakup—and offered him a tour gig, Doug jumped at it.

“How is it working with him?” G asked.

Jake shrugged. “I don’t know yet. We haven’t actually started. I’ve only met the guy in person a few times, and that was to negotiate the deal and sign him. He seems all right. Nerdly says he has a good work ethic, is not a hard-core alky or drug addict, and he was pretty happy to get the gig.”

“I can understand why,” Gordon said. “Since National cut him off at the knees he’s probably got no fuckin’ income except for residual royalties from the Jordon albums. That can’t amount to very much after more than ten years since their last hit.”

“That’s what motivates most of the musicians on these nostalgia tours the industry has going these days,” Jake said. “Everyone thinks that best-selling musicians are rich. But if they’re not continuing to produce hit albums like me, you, Matt, and Celia, they’re living mostly off their savings—assuming they have any. That’s pretty much the boat that Doug is in. The hard feelings must’ve been pretty deep for him to turn down the Jordon reunion.”

“Yeah, I’m thinking so,” G agreed. “What are you paying him?”

“A hundred dollars an hour,” Jake said. “That’s double the rate I pay the other musicians for rehearsal and touring performances.” He shrugged. “It’s worth it as long as he performs as advertised. He’s a touring caliber career musician who can sing, and he’s a fuckin’ master on the keyboards. I would’ve gone as high as a two bills an hour to bring him in, but he jumped at it when I offered a hundred.”

“That ain’t exactly chump change,” G said. “Hopefully he’s worth it. You don’t think he’ll mind working with a couple of brothers and a dyke?”

“I let him know the composition of the band,” Jake said. “He didn’t seem to have any problem with it.”

“Jordon was one of those bands accused of Satanism and backmasking back in the day, weren’t they?”

“They were,” Jake said with a nod. “And that’s actually kind of funny in a way. Doug is a devout Catholic. He’s been married to the same woman for twenty years now. They have a whole litter of kids at home. He made me put into his contract that we’ll provide allowance and transport for him to attend mass on Sundays in whatever city we happen to be in. He also made it clear that he wants no part of the whole groupie and request scene. Says he knows it goes on and he is not there to judge others, but that he will be staying away from the rest of the band during that part of the shows.”

“Really?” Gordon asked, raising his eyebrows. “You don’t think that’s just an act?”

“He seemed pretty sincere about it,” Jake said.

Gordon shook his head sadly. “He sounds like some kind of fuckin’ freak, you ask me.”

“I’m telling you,” Neesh insisted, “there is no way I would ever suggest bringing another woman into our bedroom. Gordon is definitely not into that sort of thing.”

“Are you sure?” Celia asked. She had just helped herself to another slug of scotch and was feeling a little tipsy now. “In my experience, most guys really like the idea of two women in bed with them at the same time.”

“I’m sure the thought is appealing to him,” Neesh said, “but not if one of those women is his wife. He’s done staked his claim on my pussy. He would not even entertain the idea of anyone else touching it, not even a woman.”

“Have you ever even brought it up?” Laura asked. “Even jokingly?”

“No,” she said firmly. “And I never will. There are some things you just know. If I brought up the subject he would automatically start wondering where it was coming from. And that would lead to questions I don’t want to answer. No way. The whole thing would just piss him off. I’m never going there.”

“That’s a shame,” Celia said lightly. She then let it drop.

“Anyway, it’s nice to get away from the grind for a while,” Neesh said, changing the subject. “All those sixty and seventy hour weeks at the office were getting to me.”

“I’m surprised you were able to get time off over the New Year,” Laura said. “You’ve only been there three years.”

Neesh gave a smile. “It helps that I’m the only person of color working there that don’t empty the trash cans or sweep the floor,” she said. “And it also helps that I’m Bigg G’s wife. I’ve never once played the race card or the celebrity card with them, not even in innuendo, but they all walk around me like they’re on eggshells, afraid I’m gonna file some lawsuit against them or something if they treat me like they treat every other new lawyer in the place. So ... when I ask for time off, they give it to me. When I ask to be put on a certain case, they put me on it. And when I told them I would be going out on extended maternity leave starting in March and going through November, they said: ‘Here’s the forms. Please sign on the line.’”

“But you still have to work those sixty and seventy hour weeks?” Celia asked.

“Oh yeah,” she said. “That’s expected. The eggshell syndrome don’t carry that far. Besides, I don’t really want to be treated differently like that. I want to prove to them that I got what it takes to do the job. If I’m working twenty hours less than anyone else, that isn’t the way to make my point.”

“That makes sense,” Celia had to agree.

“When do you go back to the grind?” Neesh asked the singer. “You’ll be heading for your homeland pretty soon, right?”

“We’re flying to Buenos Aires on January 20,” she said. “We’ll play there for five shows starting the 22^nd. After that, we’ll head to Santiago for another four in the first week of February. We won’t work our way up to Venezuela until late March, but I insisted that we do two shows in Barquisimeto in addition to the three in Caracas.”

“That’ll be something, playing in your hometown,” Neesh said.

“I can’t wait,” she said. “It’s something I’ve dreamed of my whole life.”

The door opened and Gordon and Jake came back inside, the two of them smelling strongly of cigar smoke. “Hey,” said Jake, “you should go step out on the deck for a bit and look to the south. The Aurora Australis is putting on a performance.”

And so, everyone poured fresh drinks and then went outside to the deck. They looked out to the south and watched the intermittent green flashes and swirls caused by charged particles from the sun interacting with the Earth’s magnetic field over the south pole region. It was a strangely beautiful and inspiring sight to see.

“This is trippy shit,” G said, his arm around his wife’s shoulders. “I bet this would be really cool with some good ganja.”

“Great minds think alike,” Laura said. “I’ll go get some.”

Everyone except Neesh took a few hits from Laura’s pipe. They then settled in to watch the show.

“Maybe this is our omen,” suggested G, not very seriously. “God is trying to tell us that this Y2K shit is about to wipe us all out.”

“Or,” countered Jake, letting his inner Nerdly out, “it could just be visual proof that Earth’s atmosphere and magnetic field are protecting us from solar radiation, thus making complex life on the planet possible.”

“It could be that too, I suppose,” G agreed with a chuckle.

“You really think Y2K will turn out to be nothing?” asked Neesh. “I mean, they’ve been hyping it up for the past five years. Now we’re only a few hours away.”

“Yeah,” said G, “and somehow I agreed to come to the place on Earth where it will hit first.”

This was the truth. Though New Zealand standard time was not the very first time zone west of the International Date Line, it was the first that contained modern cities with large populations dependent on computer technology. The cities of Auckland, Wellington, and Christchurch would be the first large metropolitan regions to flip from December 31, 1999 to January 1, 2000. As such, the eyes of the world were watching them carefully.

“We get to be the first to know,” Jake said. “And Nerdly says nothing is going to happen. When it comes to science, I’ll trust Nerdly any day of the week.”