Chapter 3: Weaknesses in the Armor

Santa Barbara, California

October 22, 2000

Jake was now in one of the regular surgical rooms on the third floor of Cottage Hospital. It was one week since Jenny Johansen had shot him in the Alpha Beta feminine hygiene aisle. All of the tubes and drains had been taken out. He still had a bandage covering his actual incision site and healing scars with sutures in the side of his chest where the chest tube and the drains had been, but all of the IV lines except the one in his neck had been removed as well and he was no longer getting intravenous antibiotics or intravenous pain medication. The end of his hospital stay was now in sight.

It was mid-afternoon, just past three o’clock, and Celia had gone back to the hotel for the day taking Caydee with her as the little girl could not possibly be expected to stay in the room all day like Laura did. Celia and Caydee enjoyed hanging out together after doing the morning visitation. They would go to the park, the beach, the pier, or make use of the hotel’s indoor heated pool. Usually, Laura would arrive back at the hotel just after Caydee went to bed.

On this particular day, Jake had additional visitors other than his wife. Matt Tisdale and Kim Kowalski had driven up from San Juan Capistrano to check in and see how Jake was doing. They had known that Jake had been shot ever since about an hour after it had happened, and Jake had called Matt on the phone to assure him that he was all right and brief him on the real story two days later, but Matt possessed just enough social grace to know that a personal visit was the polite thing to do, and so, here he was, paying his respect to the man who might possibly help him get out of his final debt.

“You look like shit, brother,” were Matt’s first words upon seeing Jake.

“You should have seen me a few days ago,” Jake replied. “At least they’re letting me shave and shower now.”

“Yes, thank God for that,” Laura said dramatically.

Matt was dressed in jeans and a pullover sweater. It read Faith, Hope, and Destiny in bold letters across the chest. Below that, in smaller script one had to strain a bit to read, was the line: More Than Just Stripper Names. He was carrying a gift bag in his right hand.

“I like the sweater, Matt,” Jake told him.

“It was birthday gift from Kim,” Matt said. “It’s one of my favorites.”

“I saw it in the shop and just knew it was perfect for him,” Kim said with a smile.

She was dressed a little more conservatively. She wore jeans and a pair of Uggs on her feet. Her sweater was cashmere, a mix of fall colors, and molded to her breasts quite alluringly. It did not contain any words of wisdom on its surface.

Matt shook Jake’s hand and Kim hugged him and kissed him on the cheek. Laura hugged Kim with her normal affection and then gave a significantly more chaste hug to Matt. Everyone then settled into the bedside visitor’s chairs.

“Let me see your scars, dude,” Matt said.

Jake dutifully pulled up his hospital gown, baring his torso for their inspection. Matt looked at the incision, the bullet hole itself, and the sutured chest tube and drain holes. He nodded in admiration. “That’s gnarly, Jake. Especially the bullet hole. Did it hurt getting shot?”

“Not at first,” Jake said, pulling the gown back down. “It felt like someone had just punched me in the chest. Didn’t knock me off my feet like you see in the movies. I was able to stay upright and grab that bitch’s gun hand so she couldn’t fire again. I held onto it until Laura came up and bashed her in the head.”

“With your fist?” asked Kim. The feminine hygiene spray being used as a weapon had not made its way into the media’s reporting of the event to this point.

“With a can of coochie spray,” Laura said.

Kim, who as a former pornographic actress was intimately familiar with coochie spray, nodded respectfully. “Morning in Springtime?” she asked, naming off the most popular brand names of that particular product.

“That’s right,” Laura confirmed. “The jumbo can.”

“Good work,” she said.

“She beat her senseless with that thing,” Jake said. “Kept her down for the count until the cops got there.”

“That’s fuckin’ badass, Teach,” Matt said, clear, unexaggerated respect in his voice.

“I was quite full of adrenaline at the time,” Laura said. “Some woman had just pointed a gun at me and Jake had just pushed me out of the way and took the bullet instead. And then he was fighting with her, trying to keep her from taking another shot at me. He told me to run away but I didn’t even consider it. I just went into battle mode I guess.”

“I guess you did,” Kim said, wondering if Matt would step in front of a bullet for her—and if she would brain a psycho with a can of coochie spray if Matt was struggling with said armed psycho. She liked to think the answer to both questions was yes, but she hoped the theory would never be put to the test.

“How long until you bust out of here?” Matt asked.

“The doc says I should be able to go home tomorrow,” Jake said.

“That’s fuckin’ awesome,” Matt said. He reached down and brought up the gift bag. “Here. We brought you some shit.”

“What kind of shit?” Jake asked.

“Shit I’m pretty sure you want but that they’re not fuckin’ giving you in this place,” Matt told him. “I remember when I was in the hospital. The doctors and nurses are a bunch of fuckin’ cockblockers.”

Jake opened the bag, took a look inside, and smiled. Inside was a bottle of Captain Morgan spiced rum and two one liter bottles of Coca-Cola. “Nice,” Jake said, appreciating the thought behind it. He had somewhat lost his taste for the Captain a few years back, preferring more expensive and higher quality rum, but any port in a storm was welcome. “Thanks, Matt. Thanks, Kim,” he told them. “I’ll have myself a little cocktail tonight after the last rounds by the mid-shift. I’ll just have them bring me a pitcher full of ice and an extra one of those paper cups.”

“Slam a little after you take your pain pill,” Matt suggested. “It helps get rid of that crappy feeling and enhances the alcohol buzz.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Jake promised.

“Look a little further,” Matt said. “That’s not all that’s in there.”

Jake looked a little further. At the very bottom of the bag, tucked in behind the rum bottle, was a box with the words Hoyle Playing Cards – Poker Sized on it. Jake picked up the box. He could tell immediately from the weight and give of the box that it did not contain playing cards. He opened it and found a one-hitter pipe, a disposable lighter, and a little baggie of premium marijuana buds.

“I figured they’re not letting you burn in this place,” Matt said. “The bud is Blue Mystic indica from one of the indoor grow houses that produce shit for the medicinal pot shops. Not as good as Humboldt greenbud of course, but still really good shit. The best thing about it is that it doesn’t have much of a smell. You take it in the shitter with you, hold your hit long enough that you absorb it all, and no one knows you’re even doing the shit. Especially if you suck on a few breath mints after you’re done. I put a tin of those fuckin’ things in there too.”

“Wow,” said Jake, who had no intention of actually smoking out in the hospital but, like with the booze, greatly appreciated the sentiment anyway, “you’re bringing me back to my high school days.”

“I know,” Matt said with a smile. “Sometimes it’s fun to have to sneak around to do shit, isn’t it?”

Jake thought back to the early days of the relationship between he, Laura, and Celia and smiled nostalgically. “I can only agree with that,” he said.

They spoke of neutral things for a few minutes, the conversation passing around between the four of them. Laura shared some stories about Caydee’s antics, which were interesting to Kim but not Matt. Matt talked about how he had dropped some psychedelic mushrooms for the first time since high school last week, just to see if they were still as fuckin’ cool as they had been back in the day (apparently they were not). Kim talked about a new genre of porn her company was getting into: self-submitted amateur porn, in which normal, everyday couples would record themselves getting it on and submit the video to her subscription website, their only compensation being a free month’s worth of access to the site.

“And ordinary couples are doing this?” Laura asked, surprised. She could not imagine even recording what she and Jake did in the bedroom (or on the plane, or in the hot tub, or on the beach), let alone submitting that recording for all the world to see.

“We get more than thirty submissions a day,” Kim said. “We have to put most of them in a queue because we can’t process that many and don’t have the storage room on the servers for them all.”

“Amazing,” Jake said, a little intrigued. He had a complimentary permanent subscription to Kim’s website but he had not perused it since before they had left to go out on tour. He made a mental note to take a little gander at the amateur section when he got home. “Are these people ... you know ... attractive?”

“A lot of them are,” Kim said, “but a lot of them aren’t.”

“Lots of old couples and fat fucks send in their shit,” Matt said, shaking his head. “Dykes too. And I’m talking real dykes, not hot ones. Some of it is just fucking disgusting.”

“What do you do with those ones?” Jake asked.

“We post them just like all the others,” Kim said. “There’s a demand for that kind of porn, believe it or not. One thing I’ve learned over the years is that everyone has their own little kinks. Apparently some people just get off on watching people fuck and the fact that the fuckers look old and ugly and fat like normal people you see walking around on the street adds to the realism factor.”

“Wow,” Jake said. “The human mind is a fascinating thing.”

“Well ... the human libido is anyway,” Kim said. “Since we started posting the amateur videos two months ago and putting little teaser copies of some of them on the various free sites out there, paid subscriptions to the website have gone up twenty-eight percent. At thirty bucks a month for each of those subscriptions, that’s a good return on investment, especially since we paid no actual money to make, produce, or even acquire the videos that are driving the increase.”

“That is a good return on investment,” Jake said, the business-oriented part of him quite impressed.

“That’s the idea,” Kim said.

Laura—who still retained a tiny bit of her prudish Mormon upbringing—was a bit uncomfortable talking about pornography. She decided to change the subject. “How is Jim doing?” she asked, referring to the Matt’s personal paramedic who had been his sidekick for several years now.

“Still living in my pad,” Matt said. “I kind of like having him and his football around. Gives me piece of mind.”

“I kind of like having him around too,” Kim said with a sexy smile.

“Oh?” Laura said, not quite picking up what she was laying down. “Because he can save Matt’s life if something happens to him?”

“Uh ... yeah, that too,” Kim said.

Laura blushed as she suddenly realized what the former porn star was talking about. This was not much better than the pornography discussion. She looked over at Matt, who had no expression on his face. Did he really not mind his paramedic doing... that with his girlfriend? But then she remembered that she had not minded Celia doing that with her husband (and wished with all of her heart that they would start doing that again) and chided herself for being a hypocrite.

“Jim’s a good guy,” Matt said fondly. “We hardly even notice he’s there most of the time. He uses the gym in the house to work out a few times a week because his doctor has been nagging him about his blood pressure and gaining weight and drinking and all that shit. But, he cleans up his messes as he goes along, helps out around the house when Chuckie and the rest have their days off, and never has people over except for groupies he’s fucking every now and then. He even did the shrooms with me last week. He didn’t like them very much. Kind of freaked him out a little.”

Jake, who had never done psychedelic mushrooms or any other potent hallucinogen, could not really relate, but he nodded wisely anyway. “That shit can happen, I hear,” he said.

“Yeah,” Matt said, “it really sucks ass when your high turns on you. That’s what happened to me in fuckin’ Rotterdam when I ate those fuckin’ pot brownies. That was not a good time. At least not until we got fuckin’ Gahn to eat like four of the things and he ended up in the fuckin’ hospital.”

Jake, who had been told that story in the past, chuckled a little at the thought of Greg Gahn, the hypocritical Mormon road manager with a taste for cocaine getting fried to the gills on edibles. “I wish I could have seen that,” he said.

“Me too,” Matt said. “Anyway, speaking of Jimbo, he was really excited at the thought of hitting the road again on an Intemperance reunion tour. I know you got shot by that crazy-ass psycho bitch and ended up here just a few hours after I first brought it up to you, but have you had any chance to think it over?”

“I’ve had all kinds of time to do all kinds of thinking since you brought that up to me,” Jake told him. “I have given it a lot of thought once I came to the conclusion that I’ll probably live a few more years. I also talked it over with Nerdly when he and Sharon came to visit me a few days ago.”

“What’s the word then?” Matt asked, an uncharacteristically nervous look on his face.

“I’m willing to give it a try,” he said. “Nerdly too. We haven’t talked to Coop or Charlie about it yet. Both of them came up to visit me on Tuesday—Charlie was dressed in what looked like a fuckin’ hazmat suit he was so afraid of hospital germs—but I didn’t mention anything about it then.”

“How come?” Matt asked.

“It wasn’t the right time,” Jake said. “At that point I still wasn’t sure if Nerdly was onboard and I still didn’t know if Laura here was down with it either.”

Matt looked over at Laura in confusion and then back at Jake. “If Teach wasn’t down with it?” he asked. “What does that have to do with anything? We don’t have any fuckin’ saxophone in our shit. Why would we need a sax player?”

Jake shook his head a little. Matt was still, after all he had been through and done, fundamentally Matt. “We do not need a saxophone player,” he explained carefully, “but Laura is my wife. Husbands are supposed to talk things over with their wives before they agree to them—especially major life decisions like going out on a months-long tour across the United States and Canada.”

Matt’s brow wrinkled in confusion. “What the fuck for?” he asked.

“It’s one of those mutual respect things,” Laura told him, rolling her eyes.

“Mutual respect,” Matt said slowly, pondering that concept and obviously not grasping it.

“It’s like when I let you know that I fucked Jim before you got home and have to take a shower before you fuck me,” Kim explained. “Or ... like how we both make sure a rubber is used if we fuck someone else.”

This, Matt could relate to. “Ohhhh,” he said. “I get it. Mutual respect. I didn’t know that shit extended to going out on tour though. I never had to clear going out with Kim.”

“We’re not married though, Mattie,” Kim said. “Jake and Laura are.”

Matt shook his head. “Now I know why we’re not,” he said.

“Right,” Jake said with a shake of his own head. “Everybody chooses their own rhythm to groove to, right?”

“Right,” Matt said, on firmer ground here. “And so ... the fact that Teach let you bone Celia Valdez right in front of her for three years and didn’t throw a bitch-fit about it gives her the right to have a say about if you get to tour or not. Is that how it works?”

Laura blushed furiously at his words. Kim just smiled, her mind thinking fondly of the beautiful Venezuelan singer naked and sweaty and full of lust. Kim was, after all, more than a little incidentally bisexual in nature. Jake blushed a little himself. “Uh ... yeah,” he said, desperate to change the subject now. “That’s kind of how it works.”

“Even if you’re not boning her anymore?” Matt asked.

“Even if we’re not boning her anymore,” Jake confirmed.

“Damn,” Matt whispered. “Marriage is some complicated shit.”

The media were aware that Laura Kingsley and Celia Valdez were both staying in the Ritz-Carlton on the waterfront. They even knew that Caydee Kingsley was staying there with them since two days before. As such, there was a constant group of photographers, videographers, and reporters hanging out near the entrance. They had picked up on the routine. They knew that Laura would leave the hotel at 8:00 AM each morning with Celia and Caydee following behind in Celia’s Mercedes. At around 12:30 or so, Celia and Caydee would return. Laura would generally return at around 8:00 PM, sometimes a little later. And they knew the three ladies were going to Cottage Hospital to visit Jake, because there was another group of photographers, videographers, and reporters who hung out in front of the hospital.

There were several safe places to be inside the hotel property; places where no reporters could accost them. The hotel pool, for instance, was a safe place. Though there were other hotel guests present whenever Celia took Caydee to go swim, most of them were upper-middle class or upper-class types and, though they stared and pointed, most did not approach and talk. And the hotel security was able to reliably keep trolls out of there. The top-floor restaurant was another safe place. Only hotel guests who had rented a standard suite or above could access that particular eatery. The same rule applied. The other guests pointed and whispered but kept their distance and the staff was nothing but polite and subservient. This was much better than the lobby restaurant and bar combo, which was open to the general public and would likely be crawling with paparazzi and trolls at any given time.

Celia absolutely treasured the time she was spending with Caydee while Laura remained in the hospital with Jake. During her relationship with the married couple, she had spent huge amounts of time with the little girl and loved her dearly. Caydee loved her as well, thinking of her as a second mother. She had no concept that what her mommy and daddy used to do with “See-Ya” was wrong in the eyes of society, she just knew that the cool lady who smelled like vanilla liked to hug her and kiss her and play with her and take her swimming and that Mommy and Daddy always seemed happier when she was around.

But hanging out with Caydee these past few days was doing something else to Celia. It was reinforcing the powerful maternal feelings that had been growing in her for the past year or so. Being a part-time mommy to the little girl was reminding her quite strongly that she wanted a child of her own, wanted to grow one in her belly and then deliver it and be a true mommy instead of a second mommy. She wanted to pass on her genetic code to the next generation and then shape the raising of the recipient into adulthood. She wanted this with every fiber of her being.

But she was missing the most important part of the equation. She needed a man to be a part of that process. You wouldn’t think that someone as beautiful and desirable and famous as Celia Valdez would have trouble finding a man to call her own, but it was surprisingly difficult for her, so difficult, in fact, that she had not really even tried. She was not one to simply pick up some random good-looking guy and have him impregnate her and then toss him aside. She needed to have a relationship with a someone—male or female—before she could even have simple no-strings sex with them; that was the first thing. And even if she did find a man she could develop a relationship with on that level, she would need much more than just the “okay, I will fuck you” connection. She would need a partner in life, someone she actually loved and who loved her. Her upbringing and her family ties cried out for her to start her family in the traditional way: Find someone to love, make sure he loves me, get married, and then have a baby. She did not even know how to begin something like that.

There had been times she had even thought about reconciling with Greg Oldfellow. Despite all he had put her through, she still had feelings for him. She had genuinely loved him during the good parts of their marriage and knew that he loved her. He was reasonably good in bed—though he could not hold a candle to the Teach and Jake combo she had enjoyed the past three years—and she knew that he would be open to reconciliation. Word from mutual friends was that Greg had still not been in any kind of serious relationship since their separation and that he satisfied his sexual urges by taking high-roller trips to Vegas once every two or three months. Though there were many pretty young women who would jump at the chance to be with Greg, he was not casting any bait for them. He was currently in post-production for his latest film—the sequel to So Others May Live—and living in Los Angeles. She knew that if she called him up and asked him to have dinner with her, he would jump at the chance.

She could not bring herself to do it. There were several reasons to stay away from Greg, not the least of which was that he had brought down pain and humiliation on her by giving in to Mindy Snow and getting her pregnant. True, it had all been a devious plot by Mindy because she wanted to get pregnant with Greg Oldfellow’s child, but it took two to tango, as they say, and Greg had willingly tangoed with her. No, she could never get back together with the handsome actor, even if it was an easy path to motherhood. In the first place, she would never be able to trust him. Though he had never been a serial cheater, he did have a big problem keeping his chorizo in his pants under certain circumstances. And aside from the trust issue, the media would have a field day with it and would no doubt portray her as a long-suffering wife being set up to be cheated on again.

“Come on, Caydee girl, let’s get out of these wet suits and take a shower,” Celia told her now. They had just returned to the suite from the swimming pool after spending the better part of two hours there. Caydee could swim like a fish ever since being taught the skill by Tif, the airheaded singer, when they had been out on tour.

“Yay!” Caydee cried in delight. “Shower like a big girl!”

“You know it,” Celia said with a smile.

“Caydee go peep first,” she said, using her word for urination. She was mostly (but not quite) potty trained now.

“You go ahead and go peep,” Celia told her. “I’ll get the shower started.”

Caydee stripped off her one piece bathing suit and her swim diaper. Now naked, she sat down on the portable potty chair that Meghan had brought up with her. She squirmed around a little and then settled in. A moment later, Celia heard the tinkling of urine hitting the inside the container. “Caydee go peep!” the little girl said excitedly. “Go peep in potty!”

“You really are a big girl!” Celia praised.

After emptying the potty chair into the toilet and flushing it away, Celia checked the temperature of the shower water with her hand. She adjusted it a bit, making it warmer, and then stripped off her own bathing suit, leaving her naked as well. The two of them entered the shower and closed the glass door behind them. Celia kneeled down so she was on Caydee’s level and then squirted some body wash into a washcloth and scrubbed her clean. She then put a dollop of no-tears shampoo on the mop of copper colored hair and they worked together to scrub it all in.

“All right,” Celia said. “It’s rinse time!”

“Rinse time!” Caydee yelled, delighted. Rinse time was her favorite part of the shower.

She stood directly under the spray and turned back and forth, letting it hit her everywhere. It rinsed away the soap from her hair and her body. She then lifted up her arms to let it get her armpits. She puffed out her little butt to let it rinse there.

“All clean!” she announced when everything was rinsed away.

“All clean!” Celia agreed. “Now start drying off while See-Ya takes her shower.”

“Okay!” Caydee said. She opened the door and stepped out, grabbing one of the towels that Celia had put in a pile on the stand next to the shower.

Celia grabbed another washrag and squirted some body wash on it. She scrubbed herself clean, washing her face, her armpits, her breasts, her stomach, her long legs, and then her groin. She felt a little thrill as the washcloth touched her girlie parts but drove it down. It wasn’t like she could start paddling her pink canoe while Caydee was just on the other side of the door. Still, she was extraordinarily horny—she had not had sex of any kind except the solo kind since that last tour date in Toronto more than two months ago—and thought maybe a few touches might be in order once she went to bed. Hanging out with Jake and Teach for the past week had definitely stirred up those old wantings in her. And Teach certainly did not help the matter when she walked around in her long t-shirt before bed.

After rinsing off the soap, Celia looked down at the pink canoe in question. Though she had shaved her armpits and legs the previous night, knowing she would putting on her swim suit and appearing in public in it, she had not touched things up in that area in a few days now. Stubble had appeared. She debated using her razor to clean things up but decided that was also something she did not want to do while Caydee was just on the other side of the glass door. It wasn’t like anyone but Caydee was going to be seeing it anyway.

She shampooed and then conditioned her hair and then, after a final rinse under the spray, turned off the water. Dripping, she stepped out and grabbed a towel of her own. Caydee was now pretty much dried off except for her hair. Celia handed her another towel and told her to start drying it.

“Okay,” Caydee said, amicably enough.

Once Celia was dry and had a towel wrapped around her own wet hair, she told Caydee it was time to go get some clean clothes.

“Clean close,” Caydee agreed. “Can me wear my greendress?” Her green dress was one that Meghan had bought for her in a Vancouver shopping mall while on the Canadian leg of the tour. Caydee had fallen in love with it and wanted to wear it as much as possible. She pronounced it as one word: greendress instead of green dress, and it really did look pretty on her, complimenting her hair rather nicely. It was, in fact, the only dress Meghan and Teach could get her to wear.

“You wore greendress yesterday, remember?” asked Celia. “It hasn’t been washed yet.”

“Awww,” Caydee pouted.

“Sorry, little one,” Celia told her. “How about your jeans and your green shirt though? You’ll look very pretty in that outfit too.”

“Okayyy,” she said with a sigh.

“All right, let’s do it.”

They left the master bathroom and went into the master bedroom, where Teach and Caydee slept each night. Now that she was potty trained (mostly), Caydee had graduated from sleeping in cribs, both at home and on the road. At home she had been given a brand new big-girl bed that did not have bars to keep her in (not that those bars had stopped her the last few months of their use, Caydee had gotten quite adept at climbing out on her own). Here in the hotel suite, she slept with her mommy in a Mommy and Daddy bed (as she called it). Celia opened her suitcase and dug out a fresh pair of pull-ups, her elastic band jeans, and her long-sleeved snap-up blouse. She handed all the clothing over to Caydee and told her to get dressed. Caydee was pretty good at dressing herself now so Celia left the room and walked naked into the main sitting area of the suite where her own fold-out bed was neatly made. Her suitcase was sitting next to it. She pulled out a pair of fresh panties and a clean bra and put them on. She then pulled on a pair of her own jeans and a button-up maroon blouse.

The two girls then spent another fifteen minutes blow-drying and brushing out their respective hair. Celia operated the blow dryer for Caydee and had to help her with the brushing process to some degree.

“What do you think, Caydee girl?” Celia asked when this was done. “Down and sexy, or practical ponytails?”

“Down and sexy,” Caydee said after a moment’s thought.

“Down and sexy it is,” Celia said with smile. They did not put their hairs into ponytails.

They put on their shoes and socks and then left the suite. Since they were already on the top floor, they did not have to ride the elevator to get to the private dining room and bar combo. It was just past six o’clock on a Sunday evening so the room was fairly well populated with guests. Celia had no trouble scoring a table for two though.

“Right this way, Ms. Vasquez,” the maître d’ told her, using her hotel name. He knew, of course, who she really was and who the little girl with her really was but he made no allusion to this.

They were given a booth with a nice view of the lights in the harbor, Caydee sitting in a booster seat (she had graduated from high-chairs even before graduating from the cribs). Celia ordered eggplant parmesan and a house salad with vinaigrette. Caydee ordered chicken strips and French fries with ranch dressing on the side. Celia drank water with her meal, not wanting to be seen drinking wine when her only companion was a little girl. Caydee drank milk with her meal. The food was quite good and both ate every scrap that was offered to them and then shared a piece of cheesecake for dessert. Celia signed for the bill and added a generous tip, both of which would go on the tab of Lynn Dolan, in whose name the suite was rented in.