Chapter 19: Shake it Up

Los Angeles, California

January 16, 1994

The dinner meeting was held at Jake’s house on the very day that he, Celia, and the Nerdlys flew back to Santa Monica in Jake’s plane, master CD copies for both new albums in hand. They had finished well ahead of schedule, both with the recording process itself and with the mixing and mastering. After returning from their two-day excursion to Portland, Jake and Celia, by unspoken consent, had driven themselves, their band members, and their engineering team into overdrive, asking them to work twelve hour days, six days a week, and to step up all aspects of production while doing so. Part of this was because they wanted to get the projects done and out into the world. A bigger part, however, was that the constant workload kept them from having to think too much about what had happened between them that one snowy night.

It was a plan that worked quite well. Though some nerves and tempers had been frayed on occasion, Jake and Celia kept their hands off of each other and they did not speak, even when alone with each other, about their transgression. Though neither would ever be able to forget it had ever happened—Jake, in fact, took the memory out quite often, usually when alone in his bed at night—no one else in the group seemed to have the least bit of suspicion that the two singers had done anything but platonically share a two-room suite together for a few nights out of necessity.

And now, on their first day home, the Nerdlys, along with Pauline and Obie, sat at Jake’s dining room table at six o’clock that evening, Jake with them while Elsa was in the kitchen working on the dinner portion of the meeting. She was making chicken parmesan with garlic bread and the entire house smelled incredible. Jake, Sharon, and Nerdly were all sipping from glasses of a 1989 Inglenook Merlot that Jake had pulled from his collection. Pauline, who was now exactly one week from her due date and quite enormous in the stomach and boobs (although she remained remarkably trim everywhere else) was drinking a glass of iced herbal tea. Obie, who had just started his tour break paternity leave two days before, was drinking some of Jake’s Jamaican Blue coffee. Though he longed for a nice scotch on the rocks with every fiber of his being, he had made a vow to remain sober until the birth so he could drive her to the hospital when the time came.

The doorbell rang. Jake’s nerves ramped up a few notches at the sound of it. It could only be Celia and Greg ringing it, the two of them here to attend the meeting and have a little dinner. It would be the first time that Jake had been face to face with the actor, the first time he had even spoken to him, since he had left for Alaska the first time some months ago. A lot had happened since then, most notably that Greg had cheated on Celia and then (stupidly, Jake still thought) confessed it to her, and that Jake himself had spent a long, wonderful night naked and in bed with Greg’s wife. Greg and Celia themselves had only been reunited since the incident for a few hours. The potential for awkwardness was extremely high.

“Jake!” Elsa called from the kitchen. “Get the door, please. I’m right in the middle of breading these cutlets and I have egg all over my hands.”

“I’m on it, Elsa,” he called back. He stood from his seat at the table, took a deep breath, and then walked to the front door.

He opened the door slowly and there, standing out on his front porch, was one of America’s favorite couples. The dress code for meetings at Jake’s house was understood to be casual comfortable—it always had been, always would be—and Celia was adhering to it nicely. She had on a pair of loose-fitting designer jeans and a simple button-up blouse covered by a light sweater. Greg, on the other hand, had a different idea of what casual comfortable meant. He was wearing a pair of dress slacks and a long-sleeved Pierre Cardin dress shirt buttoned to the collar. A fashionable sport coat rounded out the outfit. Both of them smiled when they saw Jake standing there.

“Hey, guys,” Jake greeted, putting a smile on his own face—a smile that felt decidedly forced. “Welcome. Come on in.”

They stepped inside and Jake shut the door behind them. When he turned around, he saw that Greg was holding out his right hand.

“It’s good to see you again, Jake,” the actor told him with what seemed genuine sincerity.

“You too, Greg,” Jake returned, putting out his own right hand and shaking with him. To his surprise, Greg pulled him into a bro-hug and patted him firmly on the back. Jake returned the gesture out of reflex.

“I brought us a little something to go with dinner,” Greg said, holding out two identical bottles of white wine. “It’s an eighty-nine Sauvignon Blanc from the Piqure Pretentieuse vineyards in the southern Bordeaux region.”

“Very nice,” Jake said appreciably. He had heard of the vineyard but had never purchased any wine from it. It was reputed to produce some of the best white wine in Europe but Jake had a hard time believing that it could possibly be worth the price. He took the bottles and found they were already chilled.

“They’d better be very nice,” Greg said, “for six hundred dollars a bottle.”

Jake whistled. “That’s a lot of coin for a bunch of smashed grapes,” he said. “Thanks for bringing them. I’ll have Elsa keep them chilled and open them just before dinner.”

“It smells incredible in here,” Greg commented.

“Elsa makes a chicken parm that is close to orgasmic,” Jake assured him.

“I can’t wait,” Greg said.

With that, Jake turned to Celia, who was offering her friendly smile of greeting. She held out her arms to him, inviting their usual hug they shared when encountering each other. Still feeling awkward, but—ironically enough—knowing it would seem odd to Greg if he didn’t hug her, he stepped into her embrace and put his arms around her, giving her about as chaste a hug as he could possibly manage. Even so, she still felt really good in his arms and his mind flashed back to that night, the night he’d held her in a much closer embrace and his manhood had been buried to the hilt inside of her body. He released her before the surge of blood heading south could do much more than get started.

“It’s been forever, hasn’t it, C?” Jake asked.

“Yes,” she said with a chuckle. “Almost three hours now since we landed in Santa Monica.”

Jake led them through the house and into the dining room, where everyone else was still sitting. He watched as the greetings were exchanged among the group. Pauline and Sharon both shook Greg’s hand and then hugged Celia. Nerdly and Obie both hugged Greg and then Celia. They all told each other how happy they were to see each other. As this went on, Jake watched the couple carefully. They seemed genuinely happy to see their friends and business associates and there did not seem to be any palpable conflict between the two of them at the moment. So far, so good. The true test, however, was going to be when they all sat down and started talking.

Jake poured each of them a healthy glass of the merlot he’d opened and they sat down at the table, sitting next to each other just across from Jake and Pauline. Jake proposed a toast “to the masters”, and everyone had a drink to that. That done, the conversation began to move around the table, the topics mostly catching up related. Greg told them about the progress of So Others May Live, which was now well into post-production.

“When will it premier?” asked Pauline.

“Memorial Day weekend is when it will open nationwide in the theaters,” Greg told them. “Of course, there will be a black-tie, invitation-only premier the weekend before at the Hollywood Hilton. I’m hoping that all of you will be able to attend.”

“I can’t wait,” Pauline said. “I’ll have a four-month old baby to bring into the theater to scream and cry and disturb everyone.”

Greg looked at her sharply for a moment and then figured out she was kidding. He chuckled a little and then began talking about the gala premier again.

Jake watched carefully as the conversation traveled about the table. Celia did not participate much. She smiled and nodded when it seemed appropriate to do so, answered any questions that were thrown her way, but otherwise just looked politely at whoever was speaking and kept to herself. She also showed no marital affection to her husband—no touching of his hand, no patting of his leg, no smiling at his words. Very interesting indeed.

Finally, the inane preliminaries wrapped up and they started to talk business.

“Ten o’clock tomorrow we start making the rounds,” Pauline told them. “All four of the bigs are expecting us—National at ten o’clock, Aristocrat at eleven-thirty, Capitol at one-thirty, and Warner Brothers at two-thirty. We give them copies of the masters and have them submit bids for MD&P by close of business hours on Wednesday.”

“I’m surprised you were able to get so many appointments for tomorrow,” Nerdly said.

“Why are you surprised about that?” Pauline asked.

“Well, it is a federal holiday,” he said. “It’s Martin Luther King Jr. Day. I would have thought that some, if not all of the major labels would be shut down in honor.”

“Honor?” Jake scoffed. “Are you kidding me right now, Nerdly? Those fuckin’ suits don’t honor anyone or anything, especially not when there’s money to be made.”

“A cynical, yet accurate description,” Pauline said. “Not a single suit I talked to on Friday had any problem with the meetings being held on MLK day. I’m pretty sure that most of them don’t even know that tomorrow is MLK day.”

“At least the traffic should be decent,” Obie observed.

“As long as we stay away from the parade route,” Sharon said.

“We’ll stay well clear of it,” Jake said.

“Okay then,” Pauline said, her hands rubbing her belly. “Now that we’ve had the obligatory politically correct discussion about a martyred civil rights leader and the celebration of his birthday, how about we get back to the business at hand? Since Obie won’t be bidding this time around, our little arrangement with Aristocrat for releasing Dex to us puts us in a decent bargaining position as long as the big four don’t actually collaborate with each other.”

“Something I would not put past them,” Jake said.

Pauline shrugged. “I wouldn’t either, but I think their own greed and sleaziness precludes that possibility. Quite simply, they know that both albums are going to sell well and be money makers, or at least they will once they hear the masters. You’ve both gone multi-platinum with your previous releases and they’re all going to want a piece of a future multi-platinum. Since they all know that Aristocrat has the right to match the lowest bid, there’s a good chance that the other three will all try to lowball them and name a royalty figure Aristocrat won’t want to match. In sense, playing the Dexter card was the best thing we could have done.”

“What kind of royalty rate do you think you’ll be able to secure?” asked Greg.

“We’re hoping for something in the vicinity of twenty-five percent,” Jake said.

Greg whistled. “Twenty-five, huh? That would be sweet.”

“Indeed it would,” Pauline said. “We are, however, prepared to go as high as thirty.”

“What if they don’t offer thirty?” Greg asked. “What if the lowest bid is thirty-five?”

“Never happen,” Obie said confidently. “If the lowest bid was thirty-five, that would be as good as a signed confession that the suits at the big four are in cahoots with each other and agreed to highball y’all.”

“And if they did something like that,” Pauline explained, “all bets are off. The deal we made with Aristocrat would be off the table. We would be inclined to go with Obie again for thirty-three or so and then let him open negotiations with them like we did for the first albums.”

“Is that a legally defensible position to take?” asked Nerdly.

Pauline shrugged. “If Aristocrat decided to file suit for breach of contract against us, the burden of proof would be on us to establish that corroboration actually took place, and, quite honestly, I’m not sure how we would be able to meet that burden. However, I truly don’t think things would come to that. Remember, there is no advantage for the other three of the big four to cooperate with Aristocrat in any collusion deal, and there is a lot for them to lose. They want to sign Jake and especially Celia because they know they’re going to be moneymakers for whoever does sign them. That’s why I think they’ll try to lowball Aristocrat and bid down in the twenty-five percent range.”

“That sounds like a sound hypothesis,” Nerdly said with a nod.

“Then we agree that our hard ceiling is thirty percent?” asked Celia, contributing to the discussion for the first time.

“That’s correct,” Pauline said. “Not a single dime more than thirty percent of wholesale rate. If all bids are higher than that, we walk.”

After dinner, Jake asked Obie and Greg if they wanted to join him for a little cognac and a cigar out on the deck. Greg was all for it. Obie, on the other hand, refused, since he couldn’t have the cognac and since a cigar wouldn’t taste right without either cognac or scotch to sip with it.

“Oh ... I see,” Jake said, feeling nervous at the thought of being alone with Greg. “Well ... how about you, Nerdly? Care to join us?”

Nerdly wrinkled his face in disgust. “You know that simply smelling those cigars sets off my asthma,” he said. “And now you’re actually asking me to smoke one? Are you attempting to unlawfully profit from a surreptitious life insurance policy you’ve taken out on me?”

Greg chuckled at this and clapped Jake on the back. “He’s on to your plot, Jake,” he told him.

“I guess so,” Jake said sourly.

“Looks like it’s you and me,” Greg said. “Lead the way.”

Suppressing a sigh, Jake led him over to the bar, where he first poured two healthy snifters of his best cognac and then opened his humidor to pull out two of his finest illegally obtained Cuban cigars. He then led the actor out onto the deck, where the sun had now set and the city lights of LA were shining brightly in the brisk air.

They sat in the chairs and prepped their cigars before firing them up with a lighter Jake kept out here just for that purpose. They puffed away for a few minutes, sipping from their snifters every now and then. Just as Jake was starting to feel that the silence was awkward, Greg asked him how Laura was doing these days.

“She’s in Santiago, Chile,” Jake told him. “They’re doing three shows there and then moving on to La Paz in Bolivia for six shows.”

“Are they flying her from venue to venue, or is she riding on that horrid tour bus?”

“The band is flying,” he said. “The roadies and the equipment are moving by truck and bus. She says that she’d almost rather travel by ground though. Some of those aircraft they fly her on are pretty primitive by American standards.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah,” he said, taking a long puff. “She told me she got in one plane to fly between cities in Peru and as they’re bouncing and banging along through a pass in the mountains, she looked out at the wing and saw that part of the flap assembly was being held together with duct tape.”

“Duct tape?” Greg asked, astonished.

“Ain’t that some shit?” Jake asked.

“Indeed,” he said, shaking his head. “When does she come home?”

“The tour will finish up in Sau Paulo on March 15,” Jake said. “She should be home by March 17.”

“That will be a happy day for you, huh?”

“You have no idea,” Jake said.

“Actually, I do,” Greg said. “I just went through a similar separation, remember?”

“Oh ... yeah, I guess you did,” Jake said awkwardly. How about we turn this conversation in another direction? he thought.

Before he could do that, however, Greg exponentially upped the level of awkwardness. “Celia told me what happened that night in Portland,” he said.

Jake’s hand tightened on his cognac glass. She fucking told him? his mind screamed angrily, with disbelief. She told him what happened in Portland? What the fuck happened to ‘we’ll never speak of this again, even to each other’?

“Uh...” Jake stammered, unsure what to say. “She ... uh ... she told you?”

“That’s right,” Greg said seriously, twirling his cognac around and around. “She said you two got stranded there when your plane was broke and had to share a suite and that ... she was upset with me ... and ... and she had a few drinks, and then she ... she told you about what happened between me and that makeup girl.”

Jake licked his lips slowly and then gave his own cognac a little swirl. “Yeah...” he said slowly. “That did happen.” He swallowed slowly. “Did she ... uh ... tell you anything else?”

“Anything else?” Greg asked, raising his eyebrows a bit. “Is there more than that to tell?”

Jake shook his head rapidly. “No, nothing at all,” he assured the actor. “She was just ... you know ... pretty emotional that night.”

Greg nodded sadly. “My fault completely. I’m still kicking myself in the ass for doing that. I was weak. I know a lot of these Hollywood marriages are rife with infidelity—they cheat on each other routinely, without even a first thought, let alone a second one—but Celia and I have always had something special.” He sighed. “Or at least we did until I let my Johnson do the thinking for me one night.”

“I can relate to that,” Jake said honestly.

“Yeah,” Greg said with a nod. “You’ve performed your share of indiscretion over the years, haven’t you?”

You have no fucking idea, Jake thought guiltily. “I like to think I’m getting over that these days,” he said, feeling like a hypocrite even as the words left his mouth.

“I admire you, actually,” Greg said. “You haven’t seen Laura in how long now?”

“Not since October when I went to visit for a week out on her tour,” Jake told him.

“That’s almost as long as Celia and I were apart, yet somehow you managed to keep your dick in your pants, right?”

“Uh ... right,” Jake said softly. “It ... uh ... hasn’t been easy though.”

“Not easy, but you did it. You know the funny thing about all this is that fucking makeup girl meant nothing to me, nothing at all but someone to flirt with. And she wasn’t nearly as attractive as Celia is, not even close. I didn’t even enjoy it while we were doing it, all I kept thinking about was how wrong it was, how I’d just taken something special that Celia and I had going and smashed it against a wall.”

“You made a mistake, Greg,” Jake told him. “It happens. As I said, I can relate quite well. What I’m wondering however, is do you really think confessing what you’d done to Celia was the right thing to do?”

“The guilt was overwhelming,” he said. “I couldn’t think of anything else but how I’d betrayed her. I had to confess, Jake. It was the only way I could put it behind me.”

“Well ... maybe you were able to put it behind you, but by doing that, you put it in front of Celia. And it’s still there, isn’t it?”

He nodded. “Yeah,” he said with a sigh. “It’s still there. She was cold as ice to me when she got home today. Hasn’t said more than a dozen words to me. She’s refused to talk about it. To be quite honest, I’m not sure where we’re going to go from here.”

Jake reached over and patted the man on his shoulder. “Keep the faith, Greg,” he told him. “She’s got a lot on her mind that’s unrelated to her problems with you. We have our meetings with the big four and then we’ll have negotiations after that. Let her get through tomorrow and then maybe she’ll be more open to communication.”

Greg nodded. “I suppose,” he said. “Things always look better in the morning, don’t they?”

“That’s what they say,” Jake agreed, completely unaware that tomorrow was going to be a most interesting day for them all and for an entirely unforeseen reason.

And their day was going to start much earlier than planned.

It was 4:30 AM when it happened. Jake was sound asleep in his bed in the master bedroom, wearing only a pair of black boxer briefs, the sheets and comforter pulled tight around his body, the ceiling fan spinning along on high. Elsa was asleep in her bedroom as well. The sun was still more than ninety minutes away from broaching the eastern horizon.

A ferocious jolt of the bed rocketed Jake instantly from REM sleep to complete wakefulness in less than two seconds, adrenaline surging through him. His first thought was that an intruder had broken into his home and was violently shaking the bed—apparently wishing to wake him up before killing him with a hatchet or a machete. He sat up quickly, ready to fight or flee, his eyes looking around the dark room for his tormentor. There was just enough ambient light from the clock radio and the nightlight in the bathroom for him to see that there was no one there at all. But the bed was still being hammered back and forth. And it wasn’t just the bed. Above his head, the ceiling fan was gyrating madly as well, seemingly about to rip itself out of its mounting and drop right on top of him. And over against the wall, books were tumbling out of the bookshelf and thumping to the floor. From inside the bathroom, he heard the sound of objects falling onto the counter, the contents of his medicine cabinet undoubtedly—his deodorant, his bottles of cologne, his Tylenol and vitamin B tablets.

Earthquake! his mind finally screamed at him. And it’s a fucking big one! That had to be what was happening. As someone who had lived in southern California for more than ten years, he had felt tremors of the Earth before. There were generally quakes that could be felt a few times a year in LA. This was something different though. This one was violent. This one felt like the house was going to come apart around him.

“Fuck me!” he barked, casting the covers aside and rolling out of bed. He put his feet on the floor and tried to make his way to the doorway, which was where he had always been taught to station yourself in this kind of situation. His feet, however, did not seem to want to cooperate with him. It was like he was walking across the deck of a pitching, rolling ship after drinking a fifth of Jack Daniels. He fell down, skinning his knees on the carpet. From downstairs, he could hear the sound of other things crashing to the ground and breaking. He began to crawl frantically, growing more fearful by the second. Just as he finally made it to the doorway, the shaking came to a halt.

From outside he could hear the sound of dozens of car alarms braying out. He looked around at the room. The ceiling fan was still jittering back and forth but seemed like it was trying to steady itself. The blades were still rotating. The lamp on his nightstand had fallen over but the clock radio on the dresser across the room was still sitting there, still lit up and showing the time: 4:31. The power was still on. He stood up slowly, carefully, and flipped on the light switch. The room lit up, showing a mess of books and knickknacks spilled onto the carpet, showing his bed had actually moved about a foot to the right. The walls, however, seemed to be intact, with no signs of imminent collapse.

“That was some shit,” Jake said, feeling his heart hammering in his chest. He took a few deep breaths and then opened the bedroom door. Out in the hallway he saw several pictures on the ground.

“Jake!” Elsa voice called up to him. “Talk to me, Jake!”

“I’m okay, Elsa!” he called back. “The bedroom is kinda trashed though. Are you okay?”

Before she could answer him, the house began to shake again.

“Oh Lord!” he heard Elsa cry. “Another one! Stand in the doorway, Jake!”

“Fuckin’ A!” he yelled back at her, putting his hands against the doorjamb and bracing himself.

This shaking was not nearly as violent, but it was still respectable. Jake heard a few more things go crashing to the floor or to the counters in various parts of the house. After what seemed an eternity (but which he would later find out was only eighteen seconds), the shaking subsided and disappeared once again. He stood there for another minute, afraid to move lest there be another one.

“Still okay up there, Jake?” Elsa asked.

“I think so,” he called down. “You?”

“So far, so good!” she returned. “We have a considerable mess down here though.”

“At least we’re alive to fret about it,” he told her. “I’m gonna get dressed and come down. That felt like it was a big one. The kind that kills people and destroys shit.”

“I suspect you’re right,” she told him. “I’ll get the television on and see what’s going on.”

Jake hurriedly pulled on a pair of jeans and a t-shirt, nervously anticipating another round of shaking the entire time. None came, though outside he could hear the car alarms still braying away. He almost walked out of the room barefoot but then, thinking that there was probably broken glass to contend with, grabbed a pair of socks and his battered running shoes and put them on.

He left the room and made his way down the hallway, stepping over the fallen pictures for now, flipping on light switches as he went. He walked down the staircase and emerged in the entertainment room. His large screen television was still mounted on the wall, though it looked a little crooked, but several of his guitars had come crashing down. Fortunately, he saw, his most prized guitar—the sunburst Gibson Les Paul that had been signed by Les Paul himself (or Himself, as Jake thought of Him)—was still firmly in its case and hanging where it had always hung. His CD cabinets, on the other hand, had tipped over and spilled out their contents all over the polished hardwood floor and the rack for storing the pool cues had come down as well.

He made his way into the sitting room adjacent to the kitchen where he found Elsa, fully dressed in her jeans and blouse, staring at the television on the wall, the remote control in her hand, next to the remains of one of Jake’s wine racks, which had fallen over and broken open approximately three thousand dollars’ worth of premium vintages. The smell of wine was quite potent in the air.

“That is a goddamn shame,” Jake said, looking at his spilled wine.

“You do not exaggerate,” Elsa said. “I’m never going to get that wine out of the carpet. We’re going to have to replace it.”

“And the wine too,” Jake said.

Elsa shot him an irritated look. “The power is still on and the television works, but nothing is on the air right now. All the local stations are just showing a blue screen and the national channels, like CNN, are showing the technical difficulties screen.”

“The cable company must’ve been taken out,” Jake said.

“Yes,” she said. “That means it was a big one indeed. I need you to go outside right away and check the gas meter.”

“The gas meter? For what?”

She gave him another look of irritation. “For leaking gas,” she said sternly. “Why else would one check the gas meter after an earthquake? If you smell any gas at all, even a little bit, you’ll have to shut the valve off. I’m going to check around in here to see if any of the internal gas plumbing is damaged.”

“Shut the valve off? How do I do that?”

She shook her head and rolled her eyes to the ceiling. She then walked into the kitchen. He heard her opening a drawer and then slamming it shut again. A moment later she walked back into the room with a large crescent wrench in her hands. She handed it to him. “Shut it off with this. There’s a large, round valve with a rectangular protrusion atop it. The rectangle is currently pointing in the direction of the pipe. If you need to turn off the valve, put the wrench on that protrusion and turn it ninety degrees, so that the rectangle is perpendicular to the pipe. Do you understand?”

“I understand,” he said. “And I should only do this if I smell gas?”

“Or if I smell gas and instruct you to do so,” she said. “Now hurry, before we get blown to Timbuktu.”

“I’m on it,” Jake said. “Just one more question.”

“What?”

“Where exactly is the gas meter?”

“Oh, for the love of God, Jake,” Elsa moaned, shaking her head. “It’s right next to the backyard gate, on the street side, near the garbage cans.”

“Right,” Jake said. “I seem to remember seeing it there before.”

While Elsa began to move about the house, checking everywhere there was a gas line, Jake opened the front door and stepped out into the night. The sound of car alarms was still the primary noise out here, interspersed with a few house alarms and the distant sound of sirens. A good portion of his neighbors were outside, some seemingly on the same mission as Jake, but most just looking around anxiously. Jake did not have a good relationship with his neighbors and made no attempt to communicate with any of them, nor did they with him.

He found the gas meter right where Elsa had told him it would be and he put his face up near it, sniffing loudly, trying to detect even a hint of natural gas odor. He smelled nothing, so he went through the gate and into the backyard, still carrying his wrench in hand. He found more destruction out here. It appeared that a considerable amount of water had sloshed out of his swimming pool during the quake and flooded over his deck area. Patio furniture and tables had been pushed around or overturned and there were several inches of standing water on the lawn itself.