Chapter 21: Fools Rush In

Providence, Rhode Island

April 26, 2002

Jim and Marcie Scanlon were in their gray 2001 Audi A8 luxury sedan, driving from their rather nice domicile in Barrington on their way to the Beatrice Hotel in downtown Providence. Jim was behind the wheel, Marcie in the passenger seat. Both were dressed business casual for the meeting they were to attend with Jake Kingsley and Celia Valdez; a meeting of which they had no idea what it was to be about. They had just crossed the Washington Bridge that carried Interstate-195 over the Seekonk River, bringing them into the Providence city limits. It would only be another ten minutes before they would be downtown because the traffic was in their favor. It was just past five o’clock and most of the cars were heading the other way, out of Providence and into the suburbs.

“I still think this whole thing is overly mysterious,” Marcie said. “Why couldn’t they just tell us what the meeting is about? In fact, why did they have to fly all the way out here in the first place? What is so important that they couldn’t have told you what it is on the phone?”

“I don’t know,” Jim said (for about the twentieth time now) with a shrug. He was quite curious about what was going on himself—had been ever since Jake had arranged the meeting two days before—but now they were close to finding out.

“Hmmph,” Marcie grunted. She did not like being kept in the dark about things. It was a part of her personality that Jim had found annoying during their relationship, particularly when trying to plan and execute surprises for her.

“I’m still trying to wrap my brain around Jake and Laura being divorced and Jake being with Celia now. How friggin’ weird is that?”

“It’s hard to tell exactly what is going on with those three,” Marcie said. “I mean, we all know what was going on between them back when we were recording.”

Indeed, they had. Jake, Laura, and Celia had made no attempt to hide the fact that the three of them were involved with each other in a romantic and sexual way back then. They had never come out and admitted it, and no one had ever asked, but it had been more than obvious to all members of Brainwash and their spouses and probably even a few of the children. The three of them were a triple—or at least they had been until Celia started dating that pilot. “I just don’t understand how a man gets that friggin’ lucky in life,” Jim said longingly.

“Hush, you,” Marcie said, shaking her head in disapproval and irritation—and displaying a wee bit of hypocrisy on her part. After all, there had been a little experiment she had once participated in (and quite enjoyed, though she did not like to admit it) with Steph one drunken night long before. An experiment that Jim had encouraged the two women to undertake. A pity they had not let him watch.

Jim prudently did not mention her hypocrisy to her. He knew she did not like to talk about that incident (he also knew it was not an unhappy memory for her—quite the opposite, in fact). He drove on in silence through the streets of Providence, eventually coming into the downtown proper. He made his way to the valet entrance of the hotel and the two of them stepped out, letting the valet take charge of the car. Jim slipped him a five dollar bill for his trouble and would slip another one when it came time for retrieval of the vehicle. He had learned the ways of upper class living these past few years, having gone from floating checks at Walmart to tipping valet parking people properly.

“The Italian restaurant inside the lobby, right?” asked Marcie. As she was from a poor, rural community in Louisiana—and those roots often showed—she pronounced it ‘eye-talian’.

“It’s ‘it-alian’,” Jim said (for perhaps the hundredth time in their relationship), emphasizing the first syllable. “You don’t call the country ‘eye-tali’, do you?” He knew she did not. When pronouncing the country, she did it correctly, though with that cute Louisiana accent of hers.

“That’s how I was taught to say it,” she said.

“Yes,” he agreed, “by parents who gig frogs on the bayou and then serve them up for dinner.”

“Don’t you talk shit about my parents,” she warned, giving him the wifely stink eye.

“I’m not talking shit,” Jim said. “I’m speaking the truth. They literally do that. You told me about it. Your dad wanted to take me out frog gigging the first time we visited them.” He had declined the offer.

“That doesn’t make them bad people,” she said.

“I didn’t say they are bad people,” Jim said. “I actually quite like them. You know that. But they’re also simple people, uneducated. You are the first member of the entire family line going all the way back to when you all came over from France in the friggin’ seventeen hundreds to attend college, remember? And they taught you how to say Italian wrong.”

“Everyone says it that way in Louisiana,” she said.

“You were a teacher of English, hon,” Jim reminded her. “You know you’re talking out of your ass here. Just because everyone is saying it that way, doesn’t make it correct.”

“Just let me have ‘eye-talian’,” she told him. “It reminds me of home and simpler times. I promise I’ll say it correctly in front of any known ‘eye-talians’ so as not to offend.”

“There are quite likely to be known ‘eye-talians’ in this restaurant,” Jim said sternly. “It is, after all, an ‘eye-talian’ restaurant.”

“I will keep that in mind,” she promised.

Jim had been briefed on the concept of the hotel name and had been told what Jake and Celia’s respective a.k.a.’s were. “We’re here to meet with Glenn Sutter and Marie Vasquez,” he told the maitre d (who did indeed speak with an ‘eye-talian’ accent).

“Of course,” he said. “You must be Mr. and Mrs. Scanlon. Mr. Sutter and Ms. Vasquez told me to look out for you. If you will follow me, I’ll lead you to them.”

“Grazie,” Jim said, getting a smile from the man.

They were led through the moderately busy fancy-ass eatery to the very back corner, where Jake and Celia were sitting next to each other in an isolated booth. Both were sipping from glasses of red wine (Jim found this interesting. The KVA owners never negotiated anything while drinking alcohol). A fiasco bottle containing more of the beverage sat between two lit candles, marking the wine as chianti as surely as a DNA test. Jake and Celia looked up at their arrival. Both smiled. They stood and welcomed the couple warmly while the maitre d retreated back to his position. Jake shook hands with Jim and then hugged Marcie. Celia hugged them both, as was her habit.

“Welcome,” Jake told them. “Sit down. Have a glass of chianti. It’s really good shit.”

“It’s okay to drink at this meeting?” Jim asked.

“Absolutely,” Jake said. “We won’t be negotiating anything, just tossing a few ideas around for you to consider. And we have some news to share as well.”

“What kind of news?” Marcie asked.

“We’ll get to that in due time,” Jake said. “Let us pour some vino and toast to your success. Brainwash III just cleared quintuple Platinum last week and is still selling like hotcakes all across the free world.”

“That is good news,” Jim said, having a seat. He had known that they had been approaching that rather impressive mark, but this was the first confirmation of it. And their quarterly royalty checks had been quite nice as well. They had long since passed the mark of being millionaires and were now well into the land of being multi-millionaires.

They sat down and poured some wine. Jake toasted to their success and they all clinked their glasses together. The waiter then appeared (he also had an ‘eye-talian’ accent and Marcie held her tongue). He brought them a fragrant garlic bread with olive oil and vinegar to dip it in, and then let them know he would be back soon to take their orders. Everyone perused the menu for a few minutes. Jim settled on the veal parmesan, which he had never tried before. Marcie decided to check out the clams linguini—she had an affinity for clams—with the side of garlic pasta.

As they waited for the waiter to return, they caught up on each other’s lives for a bit. Both Jim and Marcie expressed genuine happiness that the two of them were still alive and well after the events of 9/11. They had gone through their own period of extreme worry about their bosses that fateful day once they had heard that two of the planes that had struck the towers had left from Boston at about the same time as Jake, Laura, Celia, and Pauline had been scheduled to head back to Los Angeles and that those planes in question had been en route to Los Angeles from Boston. They had tried to call Jake several times after all air traffic was grounded but his phone had gone directly to voicemail, which had seemed quite ominous. They had the Kingsleys’ home number, but both had been afraid to call it, lest the bad news they suspected would be confirmed and lest they reach a grieving family member or household employee. Someone would call them eventually to let them know what was going on.

Except that no one called them. That long, terrible day had stretched on and as they sat at home, watching the coverage, they received no word about the owners of the record label they were signed with. Finally, at 11:30 that night, Jim tried Jake’s cell phone again. This time, much to his relief, it rang in his ear and then Jake himself picked up. It seemed that they had overlooked the Scanlons and the rest of Brainwash when notifying friends and family that they were safe in Cleveland.

“We’re really sorry about not thinking about you all,” Jake apologized. “That was kind of a crazy day for us.”

“That’s the understatement of the century,” Celia said with a visible shudder.

“By the time we were allowed to communicate again, it honestly did not occur to any of us to call you. Our heads were pretty full by that point.” He told them the story of their ordeal that day, with frequent contributions by Celia. They had heard the superficial version on the phone, but never the detailed version.

“That is incredible,” Jim said after hearing it. “What was up with the guy who created the ruckus with his cell phone?”

“Apparently he was just a self-entitled asshole,” Jake said. “He had nothing to do with the attacks in any way. Just some Middle-Eastern guy who thought he could speak on his phone whenever he wanted to. He was on the flight home with us when they finally got us out of there.”

“He got some serious dirty looks from the other passengers though,” Celia said.

“I bet,” said Marcie.

Their food was served and they all dug in, sipping chianti throughout. Jake and Celia continued not to bring up whatever it was that they had come to discuss. It was only when the dinner plates were removed and their dessert orders were in that he finally broached the subject.

“So ... here’s the deal,” Jake said. “We were wondering if maybe you two and the rest of the band might be interested in a summer tour.”

“A summer tour?” Jim asked.

“Yeah,” Jake said. “A little stroll through some of the major cities while your kids are out of school.”

“This summer?” Marcie asked.

“This summer,” Celia confirmed.

“That’s only six weeks from now,” Marcie said.

“It would be a simple tour,” Jake said. “Very rudimentary. A ninety minute set with V-tach opening for you. They can rehearse their part in LA and then meet you for the dress rehearsals. The road crew would rehearse their part with you here in Providence.”

“Can we put together a tour in that little time?” Jim asked doubtfully. He was not opposed to such a thing—he, like all the other Brainwash members really missed their summer shows—but he knew that was not much time to put a quality performance together.

“Like I said,” Jake told him, “it will be a bare bones performance. Basic stage and lighting, no frills, no pyrotechnics. It’ll be just like you’re stepping up on the stage of the clubs you used to play and doing your set. You’ll just have to add another thirty minutes to the set you worked up for New Orleans.” That particular show had been cancelled in the wake of 9/11 so they had never performed it.

“Uh ... well ... the kids could stay with my mom and dad,” Jim said, “just like they used to when we went out around New England.”

“I think the other way around would work better,” Marcie said. “Having your mom and dad stay in our house with the kids. It has a pool, after all.”

“Yeah,” Jim said. “That does make sense. I’m sure they’d go for it.”

“It sounds like you two are up for this,” Celia said.

“I am,” Jim said enthusiastically. “I’d love to go out again. It’s been so long since we’ve played for an audience. I was bummed when they cancelled New Orleans on us.”

“I feel the same,” Marcie said. “As long as Mom and Dad Scanlon are onboard, you can count me in.”

“What about the rest of the band?” Jake asked.

“I can pretty much guarantee you that Steph will be in,” Jim said. “As for Jeremy and Rick ... well, I’ll have to give them a call and feel them out on it. I think there’s a good chance they’ll be up for it though. They miss performing just as much as we do.”

“Cool,” Jake said. “There’s a lot of money to be made if we can pull this off.”

“How much money?” Jim asked, his eyes shining now.

“Well,” Jake said, “I don’t have the figures here in front of me, especially since we have not even negotiated this thing with the bigs yet, but we’re talking up to sixty shows over an eighty day period of time, each one in a major arena with market value ticket prices of $120 for the cheap seats and $400 for the VIPs. Whoever we sign with will get half of that. KVA will take fifty percent of the other half, leaving you and V-tach to collect the rest. You and V-tach will split that fifty-fifty to divide among the individual band members.”

Jim’s head was spinning. He could not even begin to calculate how much they were talking here since the only variable he had been given was the ticket prices. “How much, on average, does each show pull in at those ticket prices?” he asked.

“Somewhere in the vicinity of four million dollars,” Jake told him. He was not good with math but he knew that particular statistic quite well. “That is revenue, you understand. You have to subtract the cost of arena rental and operations from that. That brings actual profit per show down to around three million or so.”

“Three million times sixty,” Jim said, doing the math in his head now that he had a number to work with. “That’s one hundred and eighty million dollars.”

“That’s right,” Jake said. “Brainwash’s cut of that will be substantial.”

“I am most definitely in,” Jim said with a smile. He would have to work out the actual amount that he and Marcie would get from that when he got home and had access to a calculator, but he knew it was going to be a good chunk of change.

“The rest of them will be in too,” said Marcie. “Once we throw those figures down, they will not say no.”

“Kind of what I figured,” Jake said. “Will you be able to let us know the answer by Sunday? We’re flying back to LA at three o’clock that day and if you’re all in, we’re going to hit the ground running with this thing.”

“I’ll call Steph, Rick, and Jeremy as soon as we get home,” Jim promised. After I do the actual math and figure out how much each of us is going to score in this deal. “I’m sure I’ll be able to tell you by tomorrow.”

“That would be even better,” Jake said.

Their desserts came and they began to enjoy them. Jake and Celia each had a snifter of cognac to help wash theirs down. Jim and Marcie went with decaf coffee. They had to drive home, after all. “Tell me something,” said Jim.

“I will if I can,” Jake said.

“Why did you have to fly all the way here from California to propose this to us?” he asked. “We could have just talked about this on the phone.”

Jake and Celia both smiled. “Funny you should ask that,” Jake said. “We do have another reason to be here and another favor to ask of the two of you.”

“What is it?” Marcie asked.

“Do you two have any plans for tomorrow?” Celia asked.

“Plans ... no,” Marcie said. “I was just going to lounge around the house in my sweatpants all day. We don’t do workups on Saturdays or Sundays.”

“I was thinking about taking the kids to the big regional park,” Jim said with a shrug. “It’s supposed to be a nice day.”

“So, maybe you two could join us for a little project?”

“I suppose,” Marcie said. “My mom is always happy to come over and babysit for the day. What kind of project are we talking?”

“We need a couple of witnesses,” Jake said.

“Witnesses?” Jim asked. “For what?”

“For our wedding, of course,” Jake told him. “We’ll be getting married tomorrow at two o’clock at the Providence city hall.”

Two mouths suddenly dropped open and four eyes suddenly got wide.

The historic Providence city hall was of Second Empire architecture and rose like a foreboding fortress over the streets of the old downtown. Jake, Celia, Jim, and Marcie arrived there at 12:30 PM, an hour and a half before their appointment in the Number 2 wedding room, the smallest of the three in the building. Jim, who drove everyone there in the couple’s Audi, found a place to park two blocks away and they made the hike to the main entrance of the structure. Per Jake and Celia’s plan, all were dressed in jeans and t-shirts, their hair combed but not styled, sneakers on their feet, no makeup on the women’s faces.

They found the room where marriage licenses were issued. The staff was out for lunch when they arrived but they were first in line when the two clerks returned at one o’clock and were the first to go to the open desk. The clerk helping them was a female in her early thirties, more than a little chubby with a bad hairdo and thick glasses but with a pretty face. Her name was Jessica. Her eyes got quite wide as she saw who had just stepped up to her counter.

“You’re ... you’re...” she stammered as she stared at Celia in awe.

“Celia Valdez,” Celia said. “Nice to meet you, Jessica.”

“And I’m Jake Kingsley,” Jake said politely. “We’d like to be issued a marriage license, if you please.”

She looked over at Jake, finally recognizing him. Her eyes got even wider. “A ... a ... marriage license?” she asked, astounded.

“Yes,” Jake said simply. “That is what you do here, isn’t it?”

She finally pulled herself together. “Uh ... yes, right!” she said. “Marriage licenses. That is what I do. So ... you two are going to get married?”

“We are,” Celia confirmed. “In this very building in one hour. That is why we are here at your counter. As I’m sure you are aware, the retired traffic court judge we hired to officiate this thing requires the document to perform the ceremony.”

Jake and Celia had filled out the paperwork before they had even made the trip east, printing the blank forms from the City of Providence’s website from the comfort of their own home (it was a great time to be alive). They had their California driver’s licenses, their birth certificates, Celia’s documentation of American citizenship, Jake’s divorce papers, and their social security cards at the ready. Jessica looked through everything and filled out some paperwork of her own. She found no reason why Jacob Glenn Kingsley and Celia Marie Valdez could not be legally bound in matrimony in the state of Rhode Island. She stamped and signed their papers, handed them over, and congratulated the couple on their upcoming union.

“Thank you very much,” Jake said politely once they had the document in hand.

“Have a nice day,” Celia said.

The two of them walked away and disappeared. By this point, there were three other couples in the queue waiting for their own applications to be processed. Marge, the fifty-year old clerk she worked with, was working at her own counter processing yet another couple.

“I gotta run to the bathroom real quick, Marge,” Jessica told her colleague. “Be right back.”

“Whatever,” Marge grunted. She was a disgruntled bureaucrat who had stopped enjoying what she did many years before. Seeing happy young couples starting their lives together day after day after day only reminded her that she was old and alone in life, having divorced long before. And dealing with those who brought final divorce papers to her for filing was even worse. It reminded her that love did not exist and that everyone, especially her, was doomed to die alone.

Jessica did not go to the bathroom. Instead, she went to the break room and grabbed her phone book out of her purse. She then sat down at a desk that had a telephone on it. She rifled through the numbers in the book until she found the cell phone number for Anita Gibbons, who was an entertainment reporter for the Providence Journal, which had been the city’s primary newspaper since 1829. Anita had made contact with her years before, letting her know that if she tipped her off about anyone famous or notorious applying for a license in her department—and if that tipping was worthy of a story in the entertainment section—there would be a fifty dollar bill in it for her. Jessica had provided her with a dozen such tips (plus another eight that had been deemed unworthy of print—after all, who gave a shit if a city councilman was getting married?) over the years. She enjoyed the money and did not turn it down but she really did it for the feeling that she was contributing to the news. She was ‘an anonymous source in the Providence city hall’ and she relished such credit.

Anita answered her phone on the third ring.

“Anita,” Jessica said. “Jessica Barlow here.”

“Uh ... yes,” Anita said, obviously with no instant recall of who Jessica Barlow was. But she did know that she had given her cell phone number to the woman, so she was a contact of some kind. “Jessica. Remind me again how I know you.”

“From Providence city hall,” Jessica told her (slightly put off that the reporter did not remember her—after all, they had had a glass of wine together once eight years ago). “The department of marriages.”

That rang a bell. “Oh yes, Jessica!” Anita said brightly. “It’s good to hear from you. What’s up?”

“I got a hot one for you,” Jessica said. “The hottest one ever.”

“Do tell,” Anita said, her tone implying that she would be the judge of that.

“I just issued a marriage license to Jake Kingsley and Celia Valdez.”

This definitely got Anita’s attention. “The Jake Kingsley and the Celia Valdez?”

“That is correct. I filled out their paperwork and processed their application myself.”

“How long ago?” Anita asked.

“Not even five minutes. They’re still here in the building. They told me they would be getting married here at two o’clock.”

“Incredible,” Anita said. “Why here in Providence? What are they even doing here?”

“I have no idea,” Jessica said. “They didn’t tell me that part. But it was them. I saw their IDs, their birth certificates, their socials, Jake’s divorce papers, the whole deal. I have no doubt in my mind that it is them.”

“And they said they’ll be doing it today? At two o’clock?”

“That’s what they said,” she confirmed.

“I need to get down there with a photographer,” Anita said. “What are they wearing?”

“They’re dressed like slobs,” Jessica said, more than a little judgement in her voice. Most couples arriving to get married here were at least dressed up a little bit. Many showed up in full-on tuxedos and wedding dresses and dragging a slew of guests along with them. “Both are wearing faded jeans and t-shirts and tennis shoes. It doesn’t even look like Jake shaved today (he, in fact, had not, and this was quite deliberate). Celia didn’t have any makeup on. Not even lipstick.”

“Interesting,” Anita mumbled thoughtfully. “All right. Thanks for the tip. I’ll be down there as quick as I can. I’ll swing by your counter before I leave to drop a little envelope off for you if this is true.”

“Remember, you didn’t hear this from me,” Jessica reminded her. Telling the reporter this was not just against the rules of the city, it was actually against the law. If she was discovered to be the source of the information she would be summarily fired and likely fined a considerable amount of money.

“You know I would never compromise a source,” Anita said, clearly offended by the suggestion.

“I know,” Jessica said. “I have to get back to work.”

“Okay. See you in a bit.”

The retired traffic court judge was named Brent Riley and he was a portly, stern man in his late fifties. He was African-American with graying hair and he was wearing a business suit. Jake thought he had a pretty good gig going by using his legal status under Rhode Island civil law to perform weddings in the Providence city hall (the city’s website had provided a helpful link to the judge’s scheduling website). Judge Riley was charging them $500 for the privilege of utilizing him for this task. How many times a week did he do this? More than three or four would certainly make it worth the man’s while. And if he could knock out a few of them in a single day, that would be quite a score to add to his pension.

Chapel 2 was the smallest of the three in the building. It could accommodate thirty guests for the ceremony. It only had to accommodate two on this day. Jake, Celia, Jim, and Marcie were all led inside. Jim and Marcie, aside from being the witnesses, would also be the wedding photographers, each utilizing one of those new fancy digital cameras that had recently made the scene in society. There was a distinct Christian theme to the room despite the alleged separation of church and state that was supposed to exist. This was Rhode Island after all, where the old world’s shadows hung heavy in the air.

The ceremony was brief and to the point. Brent talked to the witnesses briefly, establishing their identity. He looked at their identification and wrote down their driver’s license numbers. He obviously recognized his famous clients but said nothing about this. It seemed quite clear to all that he disapproved of them.

“Do you, Celia Marie Valdez,” he asked, “take this man, Jacob Glenn Kingsley to be your lawfully wedded husband?”

“I do,” she said with a happy smile.

“And do you, Jacob Glenn Kingsley, take this woman, Celia Marie Valdez to be your lawfully wedded wife?”

“I do,” he said, smiling as well.

“Very well,” he said. “Do you have any vows to say?”

“We do not,” Celia said.

The judge seemed a bit taken aback at first, then he shrugged. After all, they were pagans at best, Satanists at worst. “All right then,” he said. “By the power vested in me by the state of Rhode Island and under the eyes of almighty God, I pronounce you man and wife. You may kiss the bride, Jake.”

Jake kissed the bride. The kiss involved a little bit of tongue play, much to the judge’s disconcert.

Once this was pronounced, Jake put a combination wedding and engagement ring on Celia’s finger. He had bought it the previous week in a jewelry shop in San Luis Obispo for eighteen thousand dollars. It was very similar to Laura’s ring—which she still habitually wore. It was a ring that Celia Valdez-Kingsley (as her name would soon be changed to) would wear on that finger for the rest of her life.

The now-married couple and their witnesses left the ceremony room a few minutes later after the Scanlons snapped a few more pictures. The judge refused to pose with himself standing between them. They were disappointed (he had a considerable stick up his ass, they realized, and he would get no gratuity from them), but unoffended. Jim and Marcie would both send all the pictures to the Kingsleys and Jake would make sure that they found their way to the entertainment media by one means or another. They really wanted this whole thing to look like an impulsive, likely foolish, spur-of-the-moment thing to the enquiring minds who wanted to know. A marriage that was entered into in haste, destined to be acrimonious and short-lived, though one that would (hopefully) produce a legitimate offspring of the two of them.

When they entered the main lobby of city hall, Jake smiled as he saw what could only be a media team waiting for them. Newspaper people, Jake surmised at a single glance. It was only a dumpy looking short woman with dirty blonde hair and a big nose (someone who would not look good on camera, as would be required first and foremost for a video news reporter), and an effeminate, skinny man with a professional still camera in hand standing next to her. The moment they spotted the group, they headed straight for them. The woman took up position right in front of them, effectively blocking their forward momentum.

“Jake, Celia,” the woman said, “Anita Gibbons from the Providence Journal. Mind if I have a quick word with you?” Behind her, the photographer was already snapping away, his flash exploding in their eyeballs.

“We’re kind of in a hurry,” Jake said.

“Just a few questions if you don’t mind,” she said. “I’m told that the two of you just got married here. Is that true?”