Chapter 12: Occam’s Razor is Dull

Oakland, California

May 21, 1993

Jam-On Productions Studios sat on Martin Luther King Junior Way, just a little north of 18^th Street, in one of the worst neighborhoods in Oakland—a city that was quite notorious for bad neighborhoods. The single-story building was very much like a fortress. It had no windows and the doors were reinforced steel similar to that on a bank vault. The entire property was surrounded by a twelve foot high chain link fence topped with razor wire. Security cameras peered out from every corner of the building.

Inside the building, however, all was clean, sterile, and professional. There were two complete studios that a host of independent rap and hip-hop artists from all over the west coast paid premium dollar to record, mix, and master their music in for distribution.

Gordon Paladay, i.e. Bigg G, had rented three hundred hours of studio time from Jam-On for the price of six hundred dollars an hour. On this day in late May, he was one hundred and ninety-six hours into that allotment and running more or less on schedule.

Jake Kingsley sat on a stool in the isolation room of Studio B, a pair of cans on his ears, his Yamaha acoustic guitar in his hands. He and the Nerdlys had flown up two days before so Jake could record his part of the song Step In, Gordon’s experimental piece he planned as his second release on the new album. Gordon had put the three of them up in a hotel in Jack London Square and had paid all of their travel expenses. Other than that, however, neither Jake nor the Nerdlys were asking for any kind of compensation for their efforts.

“All right, Jake,” said the voice of High-Top, the young engineer who was running the sound board for this session (Jake did not know his real name, and suspected that Gordon didn’t either). “We’re going to do take twelve of Step In, starting with the bridge melody. The band will pick up from the start of the second chorus section and you just fall in with them.”

Jake did not answer verbally, as no one would have heard him. Instead, he raised his left hand up and gave a big thumbs-up.

“All right,” High-Top said. “Let’s do it. Fire when ready, brothers.”

Outside, in the main studio, the drummer and the bass player began to play. The DJ began to twist his turntables back and forth, eliciting the secondary melody. Gordon himself, who was closed into the second isolation room, began to sing out the lyrics of the second chorus. Jake took a moment to orient himself to his place in the tune and then began to play, his left fingers pushing on the fret board, his right hand strumming the strings.

“Can’t you step into his mind, try to see what he been through?” sang Gordon, his voice a rich baritone that sounded vastly different than it did when he was simply rapping.

“Can’t you leave your hate behind, what if that was happening to you?

“Won’t you step into his mind, find a way to see him through?”

“Step into his mind ... yes, step into his mind.”

The bridge of the song started and Jake changed both the tempo and the melody to fit it. He began to strum out the chords while Gordon sang out a rapid-fire series of lyrics that was edging back into the land of straight rap. He sang of brothers in jail and sisters on the welfare, about kids joining gangs and ending up in the morgue, about those who try to save themselves and are called Uncle Tom, about rich motherfuckers who forgot where they come from, about how we should just step into each other’s minds, and try to see things from their different points of view.

Jake enjoyed the song a lot, both the melody and harsh realism of the lyrics. Working with Gordon on the tune had been a lot of fun and had increased his musical respect for the rapper considerably. He played his guitar with all the emotion and feeling that the song deserved, making it all the way through the bridge section and then onto a brief acoustic guitar solo backed by only the DJ. It was just as he began the transition back to the primary melody that High-Top’s voice interrupted.

“All right, homeys,” he said. “Let’s pull it in right here.”

The musicians all stopped, bringing a jangling halt to the music playing in Jake’s headphones.

“What’s the word?” asked Gordon from his booth. “It sounded pretty tight to me.”

“It was,” High-Top said. “That was a great job, Jake. Nerdly and I both think we’ll be able to use the whole take right up to where the solo ended, but as you started the transition back, you edged out of tempo a bit.”

Jake looked at the window into the studio and mouthed “How much?” in exaggerated speech, so they could read his lips.

“Just a little,” High-Top told him. “About as little as a white guy’s dick in the locker room, if you can relate to that shit.”

Jake chuckled and held his thumb and index finger about an inch apart.

“Maybe not even that much,” High-Top told him. “Truth be told, I probably would’ve let it go, but Mr. Nerdly here winced, and G told me that when Mr. Nerdly winces, that means another take is in order.”

Jake nodded and then mimed the act of strumming his guitar.

“That’s right,” High-Top told him. “We’ll do it again. This time picking up from the beginning of the solo. Sound good?”

Jake gave him the thumbs up. A minute later, they did it again.

By some miracle of fate and the Gods of Music (and the fact that the Nerdlys were just advisers in the process and did not actually have veto power), they managed to successfully record all of Jake’s guitar parts in the tune to the satisfaction of High-Top by four o’clock that afternoon without anyone directing any actual violence toward Bill or Sharon. In truth, the Jam-On team seemed somewhat impressed by their anal retentiveness and their ear for music. Particularly as it related to recording acoustic instruments.

“All right then,” Gordon said as Jake emerged from the isolation room, guitar in hand. “Damn good playing in there, Jake.”

“Thanks,” Jake told him. “I’m glad we were able to finish it up today.”

“Will you be able to come back for the overdubs and for any final tweaks before we mix?” Gordon asked.

“You bet your ass,” Jake assured him. “Just tell me when you need me and I’ll fly up.”

“Once we’ve laid down the rest of the tracks for Step we’ll be done with the basics,” Gordon said. “Hopefully that won’t take more than few days or so. After that, I’ll give you a call and we’ll work on polishing Step whenever is convenient for you. I’m thinking we should be able to pound out any additionals from you in one day.”

“Sounds reasonable,” Jake said. “And don’t worry much about my schedule. Celia and I are going to start hitting the rehearsal studio soon to start putting our new material together, but we won’t be as tight as we were for the first albums. Struggle and Down are both still selling pretty well and getting a lot of airplay, so there’s no real rush.”

“I feel you, my man,” Gordon told him. “And I appreciate all you’ve done for me. Step is going to be badass and your guitar playing is what’s gonna put that bad in that ass. Now ... how about we go out and celebrate this collaboration? Drinks are on me.”

“I’d love to, G,” Jake said, “but I really need to get home. There’s a seven o’clock out of Oakland to LAX and I want to be on it.”

“What’s the rush?”

“I talked to Laura on the phone last night,” he said, “and ... well ... she said she had something important she needs to talk to me about. She wouldn’t say what it was, just that she needed to speak to me in person as soon as possible. She sounded a little weird, not herself.”

“No shit?” Gordon asked.

“No shit,” he confirmed. “I found that when someone says something like that to you, you should go find out what’s up as soon as you can.”

Gordon nodded his head. “I can appreciate that shit,” he said. “All right then. We’ll get you to your hotel so you can grab your stuff and then get you off to the airport.”

“Thanks, G,” Jake said.

“What about you two though?” the rapper asked Bill and Sharon. “Do y’all need to go rushing back tonight?”

“Uh ... well ... no, not really,” Nerdly said. “We have no previously arranged commitments until Jake and Celia begin their rehearsal projects.”

“Then how about y’all come out and party with me tonight?” he asked them. “Drinks on me. I know a premium club over on MacArthur Avenue and MLK that we can close down. I’ll send a limo for Neesh and we’ll get hammered in style.”

“MacArthur and MLK,” Nerdly said slowly. “That’s a ... well ... kind of a rough neighborhood, isn’t it?”

“Y’all will undoubtedly be the only whities in the club,” Gordon said. “Is that a problem?”

“Uh ... will we be safe?” Sharon asked.

“Maybe not if you strolled in there on your own,” Gordon said, “but you’ll be with me. I’m known there and I carry some weight. Nobody will bother you. I guarantee it.”

“Well...” Nerdly said, looking at his wife for a moment. She shrugged. “I guess we’ll go then.”

“Beautiful,” Gordon said. “And trust me when I say, the brothers there are going to love you.”

“You think so?” Bill asked.

“I fuckin’ know so,” Gordon said. “All you gotta do is start talking about your theories on space and time and the evolution of the sand flea and all that shit that you normally talk about. They’re gonna eat that shit up, homey.”

“Are you sure?” Nerdly ask.

“I guarantee it,” Gordon assured him.

The United Airlines 737 touched down at LAX at 8:23 that same evening. Jake, sitting in the first-class section, was one of the first to exit the plane. He walked to the baggage carousel and stood near the one assigned to his flight, waiting for his luggage to drop out. Other people from his flight and their loved ones gathered with him. Soon enough, someone recognized him.

“Hey,” a young man in his early twenties spoke up. “Ain’t you Jake Kingsley?”

“That’s me,” Jake confirmed, suppressing a sigh. Ever since that rag, the Watcher, had printed his current look, people were recognizing him more and more. As he had told Laura, the free ride had come to an end. Even though he’d shaved off the mustache and kept the hair cut short, it didn’t matter. The clean-shaven look hadn’t been in place for a week before some paparazzi asshole had snapped a shot of him and put it on a magazine cover.

“Dude,” the dude told him, “it’s like, so cool running into you here in the airport. Were you flying on my flight?”

No, Jake wanted to tell him, I just like to hang out near baggage carousels in the airport for the fuck of it. Instead, he said: “If you just came in from Oakland I was.”

The dude seemed completely awed by this. “That’s just so ... so ... fuckin’ cool,” he said. “I guess you were sitting up in first class?”

“I was,” Jake confirmed.

“Yeah, I guess that makes sense. I was back in the back, in the middle seat, you know. I can’t afford that first class shit.”

Jake shrugged. “Maybe someday you will,” he said.

“I doubt it,” the dude told him. “My parents paid for this ticket. I’m coming down to check into rehab tomorrow. Meth, you know? I been clean for like three days now.”

“That’s uh ... good to hear,” Jake told him, spotting a guitar case coming down the ramp onto the carousel. It was black and had a green ID tag on it. It was his case. His suitcase was not behind it or in front of it, however. Naturally. “Excuse me, one of my bags is coming by.”

Jake stepped up to the carousel. The dude stepped right up with him. As the guitar case came by, Jake grabbed it and set it next to his feet.

“Dude,” the dude said, “is that like your guitar?”

Jake briefly considered telling him no, that he just liked to carry his shirts and underwear in a guitar shaped suitcase, but instead, he simply affirmed that it was, indeed, his guitar.

“Is it the one you played on your album cover?” the dude wanted to know.

“It is not,” he said. “That one on the album cover does not actually exist. It was airbrushed in by the technical people for the shot.”

“No shit?” the dude asked, seemingly unsure whether to be in awe of this information or disillusioned by it.

“No shit,” Jake told him with a straight face. “In fact, that’s not really even me in the shot.”

“It’s not?”

“Nope, I’m too busy a guy to be posing for album cover photos, you know what I mean? It’s actually a body double with an airbrushed guitar in hands and then they airbrushed in an old photo of my face on him.”

“Wow,” the dude said, marveling at this.

“The stool is real though,” Jake told him. “Though it wasn’t really a brown stool. They had to change the color in the studio.”

“Man,” the dude whispered, shaking his head. “Those dudes can do some serious shit, huh?”

“They can,” Jake agreed, spying his suitcase finally dropping down.

“Hey,” the dude said. “How about you take out that guitar and play a little something for us?”

“I’d love to,” Jake told him, “but I can’t. It’s a contract thing, you know?”

“But I thought you went independent,” the dude said. “That’s what everyone is saying.”

“I did go independent,” he said. “And those are the worst kind of contracts to try to work under.”

“The independent contracts?” the dude asked, confused.

“That’s right,” Jake said. “Very oppressive. Back in the day, I could just pull my six-string out in front of any old baggage carousel in the northern hemisphere and start playing—and often I did—but under this independent contract...” He shook his head sadly. “No airport or other public transport guitar playing in the Pacific or Eastern African time zones is allowed, except on Fridays between six and nine PM Greenwich mean time, unless it’s Ramadan, of course, then I can’t even play during those hours unless I’ve been fasting.”

“That’s fucked up, dude,” the dude said, quite righteously.

Jake shrugged. “It’s the life I choose, my man,” he told him. He then reached out and snagged his suitcase as it came by. “Well, nice talking to you, partner. Good luck in rehab.” He held out his right hand to him.

“Uh ... sure,” the dude said, shaking with him. “Nice talking to you too.”

A moment later, Jake was making his way to the terminal exit, guitar and suitcase in hand, making a mental note to wash his hands at first opportunity. He was rather proud of himself for the impromptu strategy of bullshit he had just employed. Because of it, the dude had forgotten to ask for an autograph. And because no autograph had been signed, no one else had noticed that he was Jake Kingsley. He was escaping relatively unscathed. He would have to expand upon the technique in the future. Besides, it had been kind of fun.

A limousine was waiting for him out in the arrivals section. The driver put his baggage in the trunk and Jake sat down in the back for the thirty minute drive home. He resisted the urge to mix up a tall rum and coke during the trip. Whatever Laura wanted to talk about, it was probably something he wanted to face with complete sobriety.

It was 9:40 PM when Jake opened the front door of his house and carried his baggage inside. The house was quiet and sparkling clean, with most of the lights turned down. Elsa, having heard him enter, came through the kitchen and met him just as he was leaving the foyer. She was wearing her standard uniform of jeans and a button-up shirt, though usually, by this time of night, she would have changed into her night clothes and holed up in her room.

“Hey, Elsa,” Jake greeted. “I see the house is still standing.”

“For now,” she allowed. “How was your flight?”

“Quicker than I could have done it myself, but not nearly as fun,” he told her.

“Did you finish your recording for Mr. G?”

“I finished the basic track I was responsible for. I’ll probably have to fly back up soon to do some overdubs though.”

“I hope Mr. G is appropriately grateful for your assistance,” Elsa said.

“He is,” Jake said. “He was taking Bill and Sharon out to a ghetto bar to celebrate when I left.”

A look of alarm appeared on Elsa’s face. “A ghetto bar in Oakland?” she asked. “They’ll be killed!”

“I don’t think so,” Jake said. “Nerdly’s got quite a bit of street cred, you know.”

“William? Street cred?”

Jake shrugged. “G’s with him anyway. They’ll be safe.”

“I suppose,” she said doubtfully. “Anyway, go ahead and leave that suitcase right there. I’ll get it unpacked for you and wash the clothing.”

“Thanks, Elsa,” he said, setting it down. “How’s Laura been?”

“A little mopey these last two days,” she told him. “She didn’t want anything for dinner tonight and she went upstairs early. She didn’t even have the glass of wine she’s accustomed to.”

“Really?” Jake said slowly, not liking the sound of that a bit. His mind had developed several possibilities for what Laura wanted to talk about, and this news about her abstention from alcohol fed directly into one of the more alarming ones.

“Really,” Elsa said, picking up the suitcase. She looked up her employer. “There is nothing I should not witness in this suitcase, correct?”

“I wouldn’t do that to you, Elsa,” he told her. “I keep my lingerie and my sex toys in the guitar case.”

“Very good,” Elsa said. “I’ve trained you well.”

“You have,” he said. “Well, I’m going to head up. Laura has something she needs to talk to me about.”

Elsa nodded. “I hope it’s good news,” she told him.

“Me too,” he agreed.

He went to the music room to drop off the guitar and then walked up to the master bedroom. Laura was still awake when he entered. She was supine upon the bed, wearing nothing but a long white t-shirt with a cartoon cat playing a saxophone on it. SAX KITTEN was printed in playful script beneath. The hem of the shirt was well up on her upper thighs and he cast an appreciative look at her smooth legs. Her thighs were just a bit apart, letting him catch the barest impression of copper at their junction. The jiggle in her chest told him that she was not wearing a bra.

“Hey, babe,” he greeted, hoping that no matter what she wanted to talk about (even if it was THAT!) he would be able to sink into her flesh at the conclusion of the discussion. After all, it had been nearly three days since he’d been laid.

“Hi, sweetie,” she returned, giving him her smile. “Welcome home.”

She sat up and scooted to the edge of the bed (an action that rucked the hem of her shirt up even higher) and then stood to embrace him. They shared a warm kiss and a long embrace, longer than normal for such a situation. Laura just did not want to let go of him.

“What’s the matter, hon?” Jake asked softly, his hand rubbing her back.

“I ... I got some news the other day,” she said, her face buried in his shoulder.

“Okay...” he said slowly. “Is it good news or ... or bad news?”

She took a deep breath against him. “A little bit of both,” she said. “Depending on how you look at it.”

Jake swallowed slowly, feeling a little burst of adrenaline going through him. You will be calm and cool through this, he told himself, and you will deal with this situation as a rational, sober adult. “Okay,” he said softly. “How about you tell me what this news is?”

“I will in a minute,” she said, her arms still around him, her hands scratching lightly at his back. “How was your flight?”

“The flight was good,” he said, pulling himself back a little, so her face had to come out of his shoulder. “What’s the news, Laura?”

She sighed. “I don’t quite know how to tell you.”

“Just go ahead and say it,” he said. “I kind of have a feeling I already know what you’re about to tell me.”

Her eyes opened a little wider and she stared at his face. “You do?” she asked, surprised. “How did you hear about it?”

“Uh ... well, I’m pretty good at reading between the lines,” he said.

“Reading between the lines?” she asked. “What does that mean?”

“It means that I’m able to take a limited amount of information and draw conclusions that are usually correct from that information. You’ve heard of Occam’s Razor?”

“Occam’s Razor?” she said, her look of confusion growing. “What the hell are you talking about, Jake?”

“Uh ... well ... Occam’s Razor is a principle of logic that states that when faced with...”

“I know what Occam’s Razor is,” Laura said, exasperated now. “And Occam has nothing to do with what I’m talking about.”

“He doesn’t?”

“I don’t see how he possibly could. You could not possibly have enough information to make an Occam’s Razor type of conclusion in this circumstance.”

“I couldn’t?”

“No!” she said. “No one knows about Z and Dexter yet. I only got the phone call two days ago. The cover story about exhaustion is still holding and, other than their manager, I’m the only one who really knows about it. There is no way you could have heard this news hanging out with Gordon in Oakland.”

Jake took another step back from her, releasing the embrace. He looked in her eyes, truly seeing them for the first time since walking in the room. “What are you talking about, Laura?” he asked.

“Z and Dexter had a major blowup after their concert in Harrisburg on Monday night,” she said. “Dexter resigned from the band and is flying home. He says this time it’s truly over and he will never play with Z again.”

Jake chewed his lip a little. “Z, Dexter ... are you talking about ... what are you talking about?”

“The Bobby Z tour!” she said. “Tim Flicks, their manager, called me up two days ago and told me about the breakup. They had to cancel all the dates for the next month because they don’t have a sax player now. But they need to get back on the road as soon as possible or they’re going to lose a lot of money and possibly be in danger of contract breach. They want me to fly out to Pittsburgh tomorrow and start rehearsing up to replace Dexter on the horn and finish out the tour with them.”

Jake was astounded, too surprised that the news he had thought he was going to hear was not what she had shared to even consider the implications of what she had actually laid on him. “That ... that’s your news?” he asked.

“Yes, that’s my news!” she said.

“Jesus Christ,” he said. “That is not what I thought you were going to tell me at all.”

“Obviously,” she said. “What did you think I was going to tell you?”

“Uh ... well ... I kind of thought that maybe you were ... you know ... pregnant.”

“Pregnant?” she barked, letting out a little laugh. “Me? Where did you get that from?”

“Well, you said you had something important to talk to me about, that you couldn’t talk about it on the phone, and then Elsa said you were kind of mopey the last two days and that you didn’t have your glass of wine tonight and ... well ... you know?”

“Wow,” she said, shaking her head. “Talk about jumping to a conclusion. I skip a glass of wine and your mind goes right to the pregnancy thing? I don’t drink that much, do I?”

“No, not at all,” he said, feeling a tremendous amount of relief that she was not pregnant, but also maybe feeling just a hint of disappointment as well? And was that disappointment because she was not with child or was it because of her actual news? “It’s just ... I don’t know. Forget I even went there.”

“Forgetting it,” she said. “Now then ... what do you think about the real reason I wanted to talk to you? About me leaving and going out on the road with Z and his band?”

He looked at her, trying to read what she wanted to hear from him in her eyes. They were sending extremely mixed messages, however, and he was unable to interpret. He took a deep breath and then slowly blew it out. “Is going out on the road something you want to do?”

She nodded slowly. “I used to love playing in front of an audience when I was in the jazz band with Ben,” she said. “That was one of the best times of my life, truth be told. I’d really love to do it again, to play for larger audiences, with true professionals.”

“Then you should do it,” Jake told her.

“But ... what about us?” she asked.

“What about us?”

“I’ll be gone for five or six months,” she said. “I’ll be traveling all over the country, staying in cheap motels, riding on buses...”

“I’m familiar with life on the road, hon,” he reminded her. “It’s really one of those ‘best of times, worst of times’ things. I think you should do it if it is something you want to do. I’m not going to stop loving you because you’re gone for a few months.”

“Are you sure?” she said quietly.

He leaned forward and kissed her lightly on the nose. “I’m sure,” he told her. “And besides, I can fly out to see you every now and again while you’re out there. Remember, I’m rich. I can afford shit like that.”

She nodded slowly. “I ... well ... I have some other concerns as well.”

“Such as?”

A few chews of her lip, a few deep breaths, and then: “I’m not sure I’m good enough to do this,” she said.

“That’s absurd,” he scoffed.

“It’s not!” she insisted. “This is Bobby Z we’re talking about here, one of the best smooth jazz artists in the world! I’m just a teacher who likes to play around with the sax!”

“No,” Jake corrected. “You’re a professional sax player who used to be teacher. And you’re damn good at what you do. You’re a big part of why Celia’s album is selling like wildfire right now. You’re a big part of why South Island Blur is getting airplay right now.”

“They’re just playing that song because they know you and I are getting it on,” she said.

“That may be why they started playing it, but it’s not why the song is moving up the charts. That soprano sax you laid down for the melody is badass, just like everything else you did on Celia’s album. I know that, Celia knows that, and Bobby fucking Z knows that shit too. That’s why he picked you to lay down those overdubs, and that’s why he’s asking you to go out on tour with him.”

“But...”

“No buts,” Jake insisted. “We can talk about what the separation might mean for us if you want—after all, you won’t be around to help us lay down the next two albums if you’re out on tour—but don’t you dare stand there and tell yourself that you’re not good enough to play with Bobby Z. You are good enough. You wouldn’t have been asked otherwise.”

She took another deep breath and then gave him her smile. “Thanks, Jake,” she said. “That means a lot coming from you.”

“Yes,” he told her. “It does.”

That earned him a giggle and an embrace. He lifted her face up and then kissed her; a long, luxuriant kiss that involved tongues.

“Wow,” she breathed when it broke. “What was that for?”

“That was to put you in the mood for letting me up under that nightie of yours,” he said.

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah,” he said. “How did I do?”

“I’m definitely leaning in that direction,” she said. “But shouldn’t we talk about this road thing a little more first?”

Jake shook his head. He ran his hands down to the bottom of her long t-shirt and then slid them slowly up the back of her thighs until he was touching the bare cheeks of her buttocks. “I haven’t been inside of you in three days now. Let’s talk after.”

“But...”

“No buts,” he said again, pulling her close to him, so his strengthening erection was pushing onto her belly. “After.”

“Mmm,” she moaned, grinding herself into him a little, her nipples hardening before his very eyes. “I think that after will work.”

Their lips came together again. They made their way to the bed. She never did take off the SAX KITTEN shirt, but it did not really get in the way.

And when they were done, after their breathing returned to normal and the sweat dried on their skin, they talked about it.

The next afternoon, in the quaint little thirteen thousand square foot mansion that Greg Oldfellow kept so he had a place to stay when he or Celia needed to be in Los Angeles for extended periods of time, another discussion of significance was taking place.

“So ... what do you think?” Celia asked her husband, a small amount of nervousness in her tone as she pondered the ramifications of the discussion. She was wearing a pair of tattered sweatpants and a tank top with no brassiere beneath. Her feet were bare and her hair was not done. She had no intention of changing out of her sleepwear today since she was not going out.

Greg, who was wearing slacks and a dress shirt even though he had no plans to go out either, was looking at a sheaf of papers in front of him. He had just gone through all of them, reading carefully and absorbing every word. “It’s ... well ... an interesting concept,” he told her.

“An interesting concept?” she asked. “That’s what you’re calling it?”

“That’s what it is,” Greg insisted. “Nothing is written in stone, right? There is no reason why there has to be a follow-through with this thing if the timing isn’t at its best.”

“The timing?” she asked, feeling a flush in her face. “You would disregard a gift like this because you don’t think the timing is right? That’s insane, Greg!”