Chapter 17: Out of the Blue

Coos Bay, Oregon

December 18, 1993

It was 6:30 AM and Jake, dressed in his running shorts, running shoes, and a white T-shirt, came downstairs from the secondary bedroom he was staying in. They were in the same house they’d rented before, the one up on the cliffside overlooking the ocean. The owners had been happy to let them occupy it for the premium price they were paying during what was usually the slowest of seasons for the Oregon coast vacation rental market. This time around Jake and Celia—since both were going to be sleeping alone for the duration of the recording process—had insisted that the Nerdlys take the master suite and the elder Nerdlys, Cindy and Stan, take the secondary suite. Jake was in one of the upstairs secondaries and Celia was in the other one. Coop and Charlie were sharing the bunk bed room (Coop had not been very keen on this arrangement, but he’d reluctantly accepted it) while Pauline stayed in the downstairs single room. Dexter had one of the downstairs bedrooms to himself—and he complained endlessly about the accommodations—while Stan and Cindy had one of the others. Tom and Mary, who had just flown in yesterday after Christmas break started for the school where Mary conducted, were in the last of the bedrooms upstairs, the tiny one intended for a single guest.

There was a light on in the kitchen and Jake figured it was Celia, who occasionally liked to join him on his morning runs, though not with the same regularity she had their first time around, especially not lately. His mood improved a bit at the thought of C hitting the trail with him. Maybe she would finally open up about what was bothering her so much.

When he went into the room, however, he found it was not the beautiful Venezuelan singer puttering about, but his beautiful, glowing sister, who was making some sort of concoction on the stove. Pauline was now well into her third trimester of pregnancy—her due date was January 24—and it showed. She was wearing a large maternity pullover shirt and a pair of black sweat shorts. Her stomach bulged out impressively, as did her breasts, which had grown considerably along with the baby. Her hair was in disarray and she wore no shoes or socks upon her feet.

“Well now,” Jake greeted as he carried his water bottle over to the sink to fill it, “look who’s all barefoot and pregnant in here.”

“Shut your ass,” Pauline grunted at him. “That’s all I need, is for one of those rags to hear you say something like that.”

Jake chuckled. Pauline’s pregnancy, and the fact that Oren Blake II was the father of record, was now public knowledge and the entertainment magazines and shows were having themselves a good time with it, especially since the two had announced no plans for marriage or even living together and Obie was currently out on tour, promoting his latest album. Despite the fact that he was on record as having planned the tour so he could have a month off starting the week before she was due and stretching for three weeks after, despite the fact that Pauline was on record as saying she fully supported Obie’s career and his need to tour, not a day went by when there was not some sort of report implying that Pauline had been abandoned and the couple were not speaking to each other.

“Hopefully they don’t have hidden microphones in here,” Jake remarked as he turned on the sink.

“I wouldn’t put it past them,” she said sourly as she watched a pot full of boiling water with pasta shells in it.

Jake shrugged and then turned his attention to what she was doing. “You’re up early,” he said. “Hungry?”

“Fucking starving,” she said. “Apparently the clump wanted to eat.”

Jake smiled a little at her reference. They knew the baby inside of her uterus was a little girl, and both Pauline and Obie loved her fiercely already. They had even given her a name: Tabitha Marie, and they were already referring to her as ‘Tabby’ on occasion. But she was still, while in utero, called ‘the clump’ by her mother more than anything else—always with the utmost affection. This stemmed from that first primary care visit she’d had way back in the beginning—back before she had even told Obie about their little gift from God—when the doctor had described her condition as ‘a clump of rapidly replicating cells in your uterus’.

“The clump wanted macaroni and cheese at six-thirty in the morning?” Jake asked.

“Not just macaroni and cheese,” Pauline said, picking up a small, flat can with a picture of a smiling fish upon it. “Macaroni and cheese with tuna.”

“Macaroni and cheese ... with tuna? You mean ... like mixed into it?”

She nodded, a sour expression on her face. “Yeah,” she said. “With tuna. I woke up about twenty minutes ago drooling at the thought of it. The funny thing is, I don’t even like tuna. I think it’s fucking disgusting—at least I always thought that before, when I didn’t have a clump hijacking my body fluids and putting in orders for what kind of goddamned nutrients it wants.”

“Wow,” Jake said. “Pregnancy is some weird shit.” He meant this with sincerity. Until his sister got herself knocked up, he had never been around a pregnant woman on any kind of familiar basis. The experience was certainly eye-opening and mind expanding.

“Pathetic, isn’t it?” she asked, giving her pasta another stir. “Hand me the milk and a stick of butter, will you?”

He opened the refrigerator and pulled out the requested items. “Has C been down here?” he asked as he handed them over.

Pauline shook her head. “I don’t think I’d expect her this morning,” she said. “She was up pretty late last night.”

“Really?” Jake asked. “Later than the rest of us?”

It had been a bit of a reunion last night as the Kingsley parents had arrived to spend Christmas break with their family and friends—and to get as much of Mary’s violin tracks recorded as they could. Celia had seemed particularly happy to see them. She had been more than a little down in the dumps during this foray into the Pacific Northwest, primarily because it had kept her from seeing Greg. Jake and Celia and the others had traveled up to start recording just two weeks before Greg had returned from his first trip to Alaska. Greg had been unable to join them in Oregon, however, because his presence was needed in Hollywood where the studio portion of So Others May Live was undergoing principal photography six days a week, eight to ten hours a day without break. And now that the studio photography had finished, he was on his way back to Alaska for another two months, at least, so they could film the on-location winter scenes that were planned for the film.

And so, Celia had taken the opportunity of the reunion to imbibe in some intoxication therapy last night. She, Jake, and Jake’s parents had gone out on the balcony after dinner and spent some time having a little informal jam session. Jake had played his old Fender while Celia played her beloved twelve-string and Mary accompanied on her violin. Even Tom took a few turns with either Jake’s or Celia’s guitar. They had played and sung some of the classics—Proud Mary, Yesterday, Can’t Take My Eyes Off You, Highway Star (Jake and Celia did that one together), Mister Bojangles (Tom did an impressive rendition of that one, singing it, and playing the guitar quite well), to name a few—while Cindy and Stan had watched and sang along on occasion and all of them drank wine or beer or both. Celia had been swilling down the fermented grapes and the fermented grain faster and in higher volume than everyone else, becoming quite hammered by the time the little party broke up around 11:00 PM—though her singing and playing never faltered even a little. Jake himself had been one of the first to call it a night. He had not been drinking much of late and he had gotten up early to fly to Portland and pick up his parents from Hillsboro and fly them to South Bend (the regular airline service was once again down to only two flights a week), so the combination had made him quite sleepy.

“I got up to grab a little snack just after midnight,” Pauline told him, “and she was still out there on the balcony, all by herself, just strumming her guitar and drinking wine. I was going to go out and talk to her, then I saw she was smoking a cigarette. I’ve never seen her do that before. I had no idea she smoked.”

“She only does it when she’s stressed,” Jake said thoughtfully. “I’ve only seen her smoke a few times since I’ve known her.”

“Nobody else here smokes,” Pauline said. “You’re the closest thing we have to a smoker, right?”

“I haven’t had one in ... God ... probably four months now,” Jake said. “And that one made me dizzy and I almost threw up.”

“That means she bought a pack of smokes somewhere,” Pauline said, shaking her head. “Something is definitely up with that girl, something more than just Greg not coming to see her, don’t you think?”

He nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “I think you’re right.”

“Maybe you should have a talk with her?” Pauline suggested.

Jake shook his head. “If she wants to talk to me, she’ll talk to me. Until then, I’ll just let it go. She’s still singing and playing well in the studio, so whatever is going on with her is not affecting her performance. Until that starts to happen, this falls under the umbrella of ‘none of my business’.”

“I suppose,” Pauline said, picking up her pot and pouring it into the strainer in the sink. A cloud of steam billowed up into the air around her.

“Anyway,” Jake said, walking back to the refrigerator, “I’m gonna hit the trail.” He checked the tide chart and saw that it was low tide right now. Good. He would be able to run on the beach. “Enjoy your macaroni and tuna,” he said, picking up his bottle.

“I can’t wait to put it my mouth,” she assured him.

“Words I’m sure that Obie would love to hear you say,” Jake told her.

She rolled her eyes and shook her head at his crude joke. “Just when I start to think you’re beginning to mature,” she said.

He smiled and gave her a little pat on the belly. “Feed the clump,” he told her. “I’ll be back in an hour or so.”

“Break a leg,” she replied as she poured the pasta back into the pan.

He walked out of the kitchen and into the darkened living room. The sliding glass door that led to the balcony where last night’s festivities had taken place was closed, but the curtain that was usually pulled shut to cover it was still standing wide open and the outside light that provided illumination was still shining brightly, casting an eerie glow over the room. Jake saw through the glass that Rule Number 1 had been broken. Wine bottles and wine glasses, beer bottles and beer steins were sitting on the tables. He also saw that a significant marine layer had come ashore sometime during the early morning hours. Everything looked wet and drippy out there, with condensation plainly showing on the furniture, the glass debris, and even the balcony railing.

“Well ... shit,” Jake muttered, walking to the door. If the fog was too thick out there, he would have to cancel his run. The reduced visibility would make the trails down to the beach and, especially, the run on the roadway, a little too dangerous for his tastes.

He walked to the door and opened it to see how bad it really was without the window glare interfering. The fog was quite thick indeed, it’s damp chill instantly biting into his face and arms. But the fog only caught his attention for a moment. He looked over to where Celia had been sitting last night, in one of the wooden framed deck chairs. On the table next to it were four empty beer bottles, one empty wine bottle, another wine bottle still half full of red wine, and an empty wine glass. Next to the empties was an ashtray with six or seven soggy cigarette butts sitting in it. Next to that was a red and white package of cigarettes—also quite soggy—and a disposable lighter. Behind the table, leaning against the wall of the house, was Celia’s twelve-string guitar. It, like everything else out here, was covered with condensation.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Jake muttered, stepping out onto the balcony and grabbing the three-thousand-dollar instrument, strongly suspecting it was already far too late.

Water dripped off of it as he picked it up, pattering to the deck. It was soaked. Moisture covered the entire instrument—which was bad—and was even inside the chamber—which was worse. He quickly carried it inside the house and back to the kitchen, where Pauline was now stirring the can of tuna into her mixture of pasta and powdered cheese sauce.

“Back so soon?” she asked him lightly, and then saw what he was carrying. “Why do you have Celia’s guitar?”

“She left it outside,” he said. “And the marine layer rolled in. It’s soaking wet!”

“Oh ... and that’s bad, right?” Pauline asked.

“That’s bad,” he confirmed. “It probably destroyed the instrument. The water soaks into the wood, especially inside the chamber, and as it dries it’ll warp.” He opened a drawer and pulled out a couple of kitchen towels.

“Shit,” Pauline said. “She loves that guitar. She must’ve been really drunk to have left it out there.”

“She is going to be very upset with herself,” Jake said, starting to wipe at the outside. Within a few seconds the first rag was already close to saturation and he had to switch to the next. He finished drying the outside as best he could and then looked inside. There was actually enough water in the chamber for it to slosh a bit. He shook his head. “Jesus fucking Christ,” he said again.

Celia was indeed very upset with herself. She came downstairs just before eight o’clock, freshly showered and groomed, but looking like death warmed over all the same. Her eyes were bloodshot and her skin was pale. She walked slowly, almost wincing with each step she took. She smelled primarily like a freshly bathed woman—fruity shampoo, toothpaste, and vanilla body wash—but beneath that was the faint undercurrent of stale alcohol and old cigarette smoke seeping from her pores. She made a sour face as she caught a whiff of the bacon and sausage that Mary was preparing for the communal breakfast.

Jake took her into the living room and showed her what had become of her guitar. He had tried to save it by removing all the strings, wiping out the inside as best he could with kitchen rags and then turning a portable hair dryer on it to try to get the water to evaporate from it without damage, but his efforts had been in vain. The body of the instrument had bulged out in several places, bulged inward in others. Even worse was the neck. It was now warped inward into an uneven C shape and twisted considerably out of alignment. No one would ever be able to put strings on it and get it into anything resembling proper tuning again.

“Madres de Dios,” she said, shaking her head, tears running down her face. “I can’t believe I left it out there!”

“Things happen, C,” Jake told her, putting his arm around her and pulling her against him. “I tried to keep it from warping but ... it was too late.”

“Mi padre gave me that guitar,” she said, her voice distraught. “He bought it for me for Christmas the year before we signed with Aristocrat. He couldn’t afford it, Jake, but he bought it for me anyway. I loved this guitar. It always sounded so sweet when I played it. And it always makes me think of papa when I hold it, makes it seem like he’s here with me.”

“I’m sorry,” Jake said again as she buried her head in his shoulder and cried, wetting his shirt with her tears.

“How am I going to tell him what happened to it?” she asked into his shoulder. “How am I going to tell him I was drunk and feeling sorry for myself and left it out in the rain? Madre de Dios!”

“I’m sure he’ll understand,” Jake said, although this sounded weak even to him.

“Oh my God,” she said. “This is just jodidamente perfecto!”

Jake had picked up enough Spanish from her to know that that meant ‘fucking perfect’. “I know,” he told her soothingly, his hand rubbing up and down her back. “It’s like losing a piece of your padre. But I’m sure he’ll understand. When it comes down to it, it’s just a thing. You’re still here and he’s still there, right?”

“It’s not just that,” she said. “I need that guitar! I need a twelve-string for Riding and for Faith and for the intro to Going. We were going to work on those tunes this week! I can’t duplicate those with a six string. How am I going to do them?”

“We’ll get you another guitar,” Jake told her. “I bet that music store in Portland has a few—you know, the one I took Laura to for the soprano sax?”

“I can’t replace my papa’s guitar!” she said.

“The show must go on,” Jake told her soothingly. “Your papa will understand that.”

The loss of Celia’s guitar caused the entire group to change their recording plans for the day. Their intention had been to work on Celia’s song, Riding Up Front, a clever reference to where she sat when she flew in Jake’s plane used as a metaphor for facing one’s fears in life. Riding featured Mary on the secondary melody with her violin and Celia laying down the primary melody with her twelve-string. There had been high hopes of getting Mary’s tracks down and then, perhaps, to start working on some of Celia’s while they were in the groove, but now they had no twelve-string for her to play.

“Maybe I should just stay here for the session today,” Celia suggested when they discussed the matter over breakfast (which she did little more than pick at).

“Stay here?” Jake asked. “We’re not going to get much done that way.”

“We’re not going to get much done now that I’ve destroyed my guitar,” she countered. “Besides, I’m feeling like someone who died two days ago and just doesn’t know it yet. I’ll go back to bed and get some more sleep and you and everyone else can start working on getting Mary’s tracks down on Free.” Free was Jake’s tune, Free to Choose, an examination of the aspects of making informed and sometimes not-so-informed choices in life that lead to lasting consequences down the road. It featured Jake’s acoustic as the primary melody with Mary’s electric violin playing a mildly distorted secondary and a solo.

“That won’t work,” Jake said. “Not without you there. We only have the rhythm prerecorded, remember? I would need someone on the distorted electric to back me.”

“I don’t think I’m ready to just jump right into Free anyway,” Mary said. “I’d really prefer to get into rhythm with my Lupot before going distorted.”

Celia sighed. “I really don’t feel up to going into the studio today,” she said. “Isn’t there something else you can work on without me?”

Jake gave her an apologetic smile. “Sorry, C,” he told her. “We need you. The show must go on, remember? Neither snow, nor lack of sleep, nor vicious hangover shall keep you from your appointed rounds.”

Another sigh, a deeper one this time, but she finally nodded. “All right,” she said. “The show must go on.”

“I think we should work on Ocean View first,” Jake said, referring to one of his tunes. It was the hardest rocking cut he planned for his second album, a song about his desire to own a huge chunk of land on a plateau overlooking the ocean and live his life in solitude there, away from the hustle, bustle, and smoggy air of LA. It featured two drop-d distorted guitars and a steadily progressing tempo and intensity that led to a grinding solo and a heavy metal style finish. It was a tune that was the closest in genre to Intemperance than anything else he’d done or was planning to do so far.

“Ocean View?” Celia said. “That doesn’t have Mary in it at all. I thought our goal was to get as many of her tracks down as we could while she’s with us for the break.”

“And that is still the goal,” Jake said, “but I’m sure Mom wants to just watch for a bit at first, get back into the rhythm of the studio. Right, Mom?”

“Uh ... right,” she said, quickly picking up on what Jake was laying down. “That sounds like a good idea.”

“You see?” Jake said. “We work on Ocean for the first part of the day to get Mom back in the swing of things. And I really want to try out our little idea.”

“What’s your little idea?” asked Mary.

“Instead of recording each guitar track individually, like we normally do,” Jake explained, “we thought it might help to record both at once, the way we do the rhythm tracks.”

“What is the advantage of that?” asked Tom.

Celia, to everyone’s surprise, fielded this one. “We thought it might better capture the camaraderie that flows between Jake and I on the tune,” she said.

“Camaraderie?” Mary asked.

“That’s right,” Celia said, her face getting a little more animation in it as she spoke of this. “You see, it’s not quite a dueling guitars kind of riff we’re laying down, but we’re definitely playing off of each other as the intensity builds up. It’s kind of a moment by moment thing as we’re playing, each of us responding in real time to what the other is doing. If we record individually, we kind of lose that to some degree and we think it would make the tune sound more mechanical, more manufactured. Does that make sense?”

Mary, Cindy, Bill, and Dexter all nodded quickly. It made perfect sense to them. Charlie and Coop agreed as well. Sharon, Tom, and Stan, however, had no idea what Celia was talking about. Tom actually became a little uncomfortable with the conversation once the beautiful and obviously troubled singer started talking about ‘intensity’ and ‘playing off of each other’ in regards to his son, who was involved in a romantic relationship with a woman he cared very much for. Just how much playing off of each other were they talking about?

“Of course,” said Jake, “whenever you decide to record two tracks at one time, you at least double the likelihood of having to stop and do a retake. I think we can pull it off though. We really click on that tune once we get into it, don’t we C?”

“We do,” she said, a slight smile on her face—the first sober smile anyone had seen her offer in more than a week now.

“Let’s open up the day with Ocean View,” Jake said again. “It’ll be fun, it’ll get you in the groove and take your mind off your hangover and your guitar, and it’ll help Mom get back into the swing of things.”

“All right,” Celia said, pushing a little bit of her scrambled eggs around once again, but making no move to put any in her mouth. “I find you make a good argument, Jake.”

Since the primary rhythm tracks for all songs on both upcoming albums had already been recorded, Coop and Charlie had the day off. They would, in fact, have most of the next month off unless they were needed to come in and do some rerecording in the event that one of the tunes was changed—something that happened frequently enough this time around that neither Jake nor Celia wanted to send the bassist and the drummer home until it was time for the overdubs as they’d done to Ben and Ted.

Since they would be playing Ocean View to the prerecorded rhythm laid down by Coop and Charlie weeks ago, and since both Jake and Celia would be playing electric instruments which had their amps enclosed and microphoned in isolation boxes, and since there were no other musicians or instruments that needed to be played in order to capture the primary riffs, there was no need to use the isolation booths. A microphone stand was set up in the center of the main studio and Jake took position there, sitting on one of the stools with his Brogan Les Paul knockoff in hand. Celia had no microphone or need of one (Charlie and Pauline would be Jake’s backup singers on the tune’s choruses, but they were a long way away from needing them at this point). She took up position directly in front of Jake, so they could see each other. She too sat on a stool. Her weapon of choice for her part of the tune was a purple Fender Stratocaster tuned to drop-d and running through a set of effects pedals that would allow her to change the level of distortion as the riff progressed.

“All right,” said Sharon from her position at the soundboard. They had just finished the lengthy sound check process. “Should we do the run-through?”

Jake and Celia both gave a thumbs up.

“All right, everyone,” Sharon said into her mounted microphone. “Quiet in the studio, please.”

Mary, Dexter, Cindy, and Nerdly were all clustered around the sound board with her. They all acknowledged her command silently.

“Cueing up the rhythm tracks for Ocean View,” she said. She fiddled with controls and the computer mouse for a few moments and then looked over at Jake, pointing a finger at him.

Jake nodded and then began to play. The tune opened with his guitar only, playing out the primary riff, only moderately distorted and at a tempo of ninety without any rhythm backing as of yet. He ran through the first rep and then, as it recycled, he began to sing.

With the first verse complete, Sharon pushed a button on her panel and the recorded tracks of bass and drum sounded in everyone’s headphones, picking up just where they were needed. At the same time, Celia began to play her guitar, duplicating Jake’s riff but deliberately playing it slightly out of synch with him.

Jake sang out the second verse, increasing the strength of his voice, projecting a little more power as he spoke of a big empty hillside, of the sparking blue of the ocean, of the solitude he desired. He brought them through the first chorus, Celia keeping up her slightly out of synch harmony, and then, for the third verse, they picked up the tempo and increased the distortion. As they powered through this part, heading for the bridge section, they looked at each other, smiles of satisfaction on their faces. They were nailing the tune and they both knew it.

At the sound board, everyone watched them and tapped or nodded to the heavy rhythm. Though the tune was not exactly Tom’s or Mary’s or Stan’s or Cindy’s cup of tea, they could all appreciate the energy and the power of it, could easily pick up the meaning of Jake’s lyrics. He hated LA and wanted to get away from it, to live on the ocean and be able to look out and see nothing but the ocean and empty land that belonged to him.

They transitioned into the bridge section and powered through it. Jake then laid down an impressive guitar solo while Celia continued to grind out the primary riff, now with heavy distortion and at the tempo of 120. They maintained this tempo during the transition out of the solo and then Jake sang out the last verse, his voice now projecting powerfully, forcefully, at almost a scream while both guitars went back to playing their heaviest version of the riff yet. From there, they went into the outro, which featured another guitar solo and then, finally, a grinding finale of drums and guitar that cut off suddenly instead of being prepped for a fade to black in the post-production.

“All right!” Jake said with a smile once the instruments were silenced. “That was badass, C!” He stood from his stool and walked over to her, holding his right hand up in the air, palm toward her.

She slapped a high-five on him and gave him a genuine Celia smile. She did not say anything, however, because he probably would not have heard her with his cans on his ears.

“I’d call that a good run-through,” Sharon said. “A little off initially on the timing of the rhythm cut-in, but that was probably more me than you two.”

Jake shrugged. He hadn’t noticed any timing issues, but then he wasn’t a Nerdly.

“Shall we try it for real now?” Sharon asked them.

Jake sat back down and gave her a thumbs up. Celia gave one as well.

“All right then,” Sharon said. “Ocean View by Jake Kingsley, basic guitar tracks, take one. I’m cued up over here. Play when ready.”

They played when ready. Jake did not even make it to the first vocals before Sharon stopped him and made him start take two.

The tedium had begun once again.

“Thanks, Jake,” Celia told him in the cafeteria a little past 1:00 PM. They had just broken for lunch after managing to lay down acceptable guitar tracks for Ocean View all the way through the second verse. They were now sitting at one of the tables, Jake with a turkey sandwich and a Sprite before him, Celia with small salad she’d made at the salad bar. She was actually eating some of it too.

“Thanks for what?” Jake asked her.

“For making me come in here today instead of letting me stay back at the house with Coop and Charlie and the dads, feeling sorry for myself.”

“You’re welcome,” he said. “I didn’t think hanging with Charlie for the day was going to improve your mood much.”

“No, I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t have,” she agreed. “And getting me to play Ocean View with you ... that was pretty ingenious. You know that playing the hard stuff always gets my blood moving.”