Chapter 22: Indianapolis, Indiana

April 20, 1994

The second of two shows in Indiana’s capital city went very well, with more than sixteen thousand Matt Tisdale fans giving the band a standing ovation as they took their bows just before the house lights came back up. Only one DJ and two record store patrons had accused Matt of being a sellout prior to the show—that was a good day indeed—and, now that they were all back at the hotel for the after-gig festivities, it was April 20, or four-twenty, the unofficial National Get Stoned Day, and they had some particularly fine bud to smoke in honor of it.

The party was in Austin’s room tonight and there was a nice selection of groupies present for the band’s use and enjoyment. Matt had already staked his claim on a twenty-year-old bleach blonde slut with a fantastic body and a nineteen-year-old goth bitch with a tongue piercing. He had just smoked his tenth bong hit (in honor of the holiday) and was currently crunching up a few lines of cocaine on a mirror to wash away the road fatigue. Sitting on the end table next to him was his seventh beer of the evening.

“I like ... totally didn’t know they still made cocaine like that,” said Bleach Blonde as she watched the operation.

“Me either,” said Goth, who seemed just as fascinated. “Are you sure it’s not meth? I’m not into meth.”

“I’m sure it’s not meth,” Matt said. “Trust me, meth and I do not get along. It’s pure, uncut, Bolivian cocaine, the likes of which is pretty fuckin’ hard to come by for white trash bitches like yourselves, but easily available to someone who has money falling out of his asshole like I do.”

“If you say so,” Bleach Blonde said.

“I say so, baby,” Matt said. “Now as soon as we get these lines done, let’s get to work.” He pointed at Goth. “You, I want down on your knees sucking my schlong. And be sure to make full use of that tongue stud, you know what I’m saying?”

“I know what you’re saying, Matt,” she said with a smile.

“And you,” Matt said, pointing to Bleach Blonde, “I want you sucking on her fucking tits while she blows me. You down with that?”

“Hell yeah,” Bleach Blond said enthusiastically. “She’s got some nice ones.”

“Right fuckin on,” Matt said happily, stowing the razor blade away in his kit and removing the straw. “It’s good for us all to be on the same page here.” He picked up the mirror.

“Have you ever snorted that out of a girl’s ass crack like Jake Kingsley did?” asked Goth.

Matt gave her an irritated look. “Baby, I’m the one who came up with that whole coke from the ass crack thing in the first place. I’m the one who did it first. For some reason they always give fucking Kingsley credit for that shit. Just another reason for me to hate that motherfucker.”

“He really did it then?” Bleach Blonde asked.

“Yes, he fucking did it!” Matt said. “But he only did it after I did! Now no more talk of that traitorous motherfucker or you ain’t getting no Matt Tisdale schlong tonight. Do we have an understanding?”

They both assured him that they had an understanding.

“All right,” Matt said. “Now let’s hit this shit.”

He brought the mirror to his face, put the sterling silver straw to his nose, and quickly made two of the assembled lines disappear. It really was good shit and it started to work on him even before he could pass the mirror over to Goth. The two girls snorted their two lines up—both with a bit of hesitation at first—and then the primary festivities began with Goth pulling off her shirt to reveal an extra-large pair of nineteen-year-old tits.

“Fuck yeah,” Matt said with a grin as she sank down to her knees before him. He unbuttoned his jeans and pushed them and his underwear down. It was time for some serious schlong slurping.

Or at least he thought it was. Goth was looking at what he had to offer and the expression on her face was not one of amazed awe, as he expected. It was an expression of doubt, mixed with perhaps some pity? “Uh ... oh ... wow,” she said quietly.

Matt had never heard someone use that particular tone of voice while looking at his shit before. He looked down at himself and was startled to see that he was not ready for action—not even close, in fact. His crank was soft and withdrawn, just dangling there uselessly instead of standing tall and proud. What the fuck? he thought. He felt like he was ready to get some head from a barely legal with a tongue stud, but someone had forgot to send the memo down south.

“Uh ... I’m not sure what’s happening here,” Matt said.

“It’s okay,” Goth told him. “I can wake him up.”

She gave it her best shot. She took him into her mouth and began to slurp and suck on him, alternating her mouth action with jacking motions with her hands. Bleach Blonde handled her assignment as instructed and began to suck on Goth’s tits with a real enthusiasm. The sensation on his cock was very pleasant, as was the visual stimulation of the hot blonde slurping on those big nipples, but his manhood remained stubbornly unimpressed.

This cannot be happening to me! Matt thought helplessly, angrily as his dick remained soft and squishy and useless to his cause. This absolutely cannot be fucking happening to me!

“Boss, you okay?” asked Austin, whose own rather impressively sized manhood was being passed back and forth between two sluts who were kneeling before him.

“Fine, perfectly fine!” Matt barked back at him, nearing panic at the thought of not being able to get it up, of the thought that word of this incident might reach beyond this room. This shit does not happen to me!

“You sure, Boss?” Austin asked, his face showing alarm. “You’re all pale and shit. And you’re sweating.”

“What?” Matt asked, forgetting for the moment about his first-time onset of impotence. Pale and sweating? For the first time he noticed that he did feel a bit off. It seemed like he was having trouble catching his breath. And Austin was right, he was sweating. It was a cold sweat that was making his arms, his chest, his face damp, making him shiver in the processed hotel room air. The last time something like this had happened...

“Boss? You still with us?” Austin said.

“Fuck me,” Matt said.

“I’m not sure we’re going to be able to do that just yet,” Goth said apologetically. “Not until ... you know...”

“It’s just an expression!” Matt barked at her. He pushed her off his cock, perhaps a bit more roughly than was necessary. He pushed Bleach Blonde away as well. He then reached down and pulled up his pants.

“I was trying!” Goth told him. “It’s not my fault that you can’t get your...”

“Shut up,” Matt barked, zipping up. Then, afraid of what he was going to find but needing to know anyway, he reached down with his right hand and felt for the pulse point on his left wrist. He didn’t need to even count it. It was running like a freight train, at least two hundred beats per minute. “Shit! Not this again!”

This got the attention of Steve, who was over on the couch sliding his salami in and out of a brown-haired chubby groupie from behind while a skinny groupie was getting eaten out by her. “Not what again?” he called over, alarmed. “You ain’t doing that heart shit again, are you?”

“Yeah ... I am,” Matt said softly, now starting to feel a little ache in the middle of his chest. Maybe that had been meth after all? But no, he knew what meth smelled like, tasted like, what its effects were. And he certainly knew what cocaine smelled like, tasted like, and what its effects were. That had been coke, there was no doubt about it. And premo shit too. What the fuck then?

“Fuck!” Steve said, quickly disengaging himself from the action and hurrying over, his condom-capped schlong pointing the way like a divining rod. At least he could get his fucking dick hard.

“The heart shit?” asked Austin. “No fucking way!”

“Dude!” said Corban, who was lubing up the anus of a brunette groupie and preparing to slide in her back door. “You mean that shit where your heart goes fast?”

“Don’t call me dude,” Matt told him. “How many times I gotta fuckin tell you that shit!”

“Sorry, dude, but ... but ... are they gonna have to light you up again?”

“How fast is it going?” Steve wanted to know.

“At least two hundred,” said Matt, who was still feeling his pulse racing under his fingers.

“Goddamn, Matt,” Steve said. “What do you want me to do? You want me to get Greg?”

“Yeah,” Matt said, “but first, I think you’d better call 911.”

Steve did this, in that order. Greg arrived well before the medics did. He did nothing but confirm what Matt already knew, that his heart was going way too fast again. He was at least able to quantify the situation though. He counted the pulse rate as steady at 212 beats per minute.

“Shit,” said Matt when he heard the number. “Looks like I’m gonna be riding the fuckin’ lightning again.”

It turned out, however, that he did not have to ride the lightning. An engine crew from Indianapolis Fire Department’s station 13 and a paramedic unit arrived together about ten minutes after the 911 call was made. After a few moments of bewilderment and confusion as the first responders took in the hotel room full of booze, pot, cocaine and groupies—two of the latter were still engaging in lesbian sex on the room’s couch while another, the goth, was still shirtless, her impressive mammaries out for all to see—and then realized that their patient was the Matt Tisdale, they went to work on him. The paramedic of the crew hooked Matt up to his heart monitor and confirmed that he was, indeed, in a supraventricular tachycardia rhythm at a rate of two hundred and twelve beats per minute.

“Fuck me,” Matt barked. “All right. Let’s get this shit over with. Go ahead and bust out the paddles.”

“This has happened to you before?” asked the paramedic—his name, coincidentally, was Matt, which at least made it easy for Matt the musician to remember.

“Yeah,” Matt said. “Back in Houston. New Year’s Day of 1992, right after a show. The medic said I was almost dead. He fuckin’ lit me up right there in the backstage. Hurt like a motherfucker, but it worked.”

“He didn’t even sedate you first?” Matt the paramedic asked.

“He said I was too critical to wait for that. Is that sedation shit an option here?”

“Let’s see what your blood pressure is, my friend,” Matt the paramedic told him. “It could be we won’t even have to cardiovert you at all.”

“No shit?” Matt the musician asked.

“No shit,” said Matt the paramedic.

One of the firefighters took his blood pressure and then called out the reading. “One oh-two over forty-eight.”

“That’s good, right?” Matt asked.

“A little on the low side,” said Matt the paramedic, “particularly for someone who just used cocaine, but it’s in the range we consider stable when we’re talking about SVT. You said you’re having a little chest pain?”

“Just a little,” Matt said.

“And you’re a bit diaphoretic as well.”

“Dia-pho-what?”

“A fancy way of saying you’re sweating for no good reason,” Matt the paramedic said. “We paramedics don’t really like it when people do that shit. You’re bordering on unstable, but still technically stable, so ... as long as you don’t deteriorate, I’m not going to shock you.”

“How do we fix this shit then?” Matt wanted to know.

“There’s a medicine they can give you at the hospital,” Matt the paramedic explained. “It’s called Adenosine and it’s the chemical equivalent of cardioversion. It almost always works to convert SVT back to a stable rhythm.”

“If it’s so fuckin’ cool, why don’t you have it?” asked Matt.

“They haven’t approved it for field use yet,” Matt the paramedic said with a shrug.

“You’re saying that they’ll let you fry me with electricity but they won’t give you a medicine that does the same fucking thing without making you feel like you’re Ted Bundy taking his last ride?”

“That’s what I’m saying,” Matt the paramedic said. “Life is like a Dilbert comic, isn’t it? Now, let’s get an IV started on you and then bust our asses out of here.”

Matt the paramedic started his IV in Matt the musician’s left arm and then they loaded him up on the gurney. He was driven with lights and sirens to the Methodist Hospital of Indianapolis, which was not terribly far from the hotel, and wheeled immediately into a bed in a crowded, chaotic emergency room. Matt the paramedic gave a brief report to a doctor and two nurses, who quickly hooked Matt the musician up to a cardiac monitor, did a twelve-lead EKG on him, and then got him ready for the chemical cardioversion.

“So ... this shit is going to like ... stop my heart?” Matt asked the doctor, an Asian looking woman with the last name of Lee.

“Just for a few seconds,” Dr. Lee said. “And then it should restart in a normal rhythm.”

“And this is not going to hurt?”

“There might be a momentary sense of discomfort,” Dr. Lee said. “It will pass.”

A momentary sense of discomfort turned out to be an understatement. While not painful like the cardioversion had been, about five seconds after one of the nurses injected the Adenosine into his IV line, it felt like a fat chick had just sat down on his chest. He suddenly couldn’t breathe. It felt as if his chest would simply not respond to his brain’s command to inhale. He felt like he was suffocating. An odd sense of impending doom filled his head. He opened his mouth to say something to the assembled medical crew—all of whom were looking intently at the monitor screen above his head and not at him—but his mouth couldn’t form the words. Just as it felt like he was going to actually pass out—and probably never wake up, his mind gleefully informed him—everything suddenly went away. The weight came off his chest. He was able to a take a deep breath of wonderful oxygen. The sense of doom evaporated away like shot of Everclear on a hot sidewalk. The sweat on his skin started to dry.

“And there we go,” Dr. Lee said with a smile of what could only be interpreted as relief. “Back to a normal rhythm.”

“Damn,” Matt said, continuing to take deep breaths. “That was not as much fun as getting some Icelandic gash.”

Dr. Lee looked at him, raising her eyebrows just a bit. “Icelandic gash, huh? You’ve been to Iceland?”

“No, I scored it in France,” Matt told her. “That’s what’s so fuckin’ cool about it. It ain’t much of an accomplishment to score Icelandic gash in Iceland. I mean, what other kind of gash are you going to get there?”

Her eyebrows went up a bit more. “I suppose that’s a valid point,” she said at last. “Now then, the paramedic told me you ingested cocaine right before this onset of SVT?”

“Yeah, a couple lines of some premo Bolivian shit.” He shrugged. “Normal after-show stuff.”

“Uh huh,” Dr. Lee said. “And you also smoked some marijuana?”

“A couple bong hits after the show,” Matt said. “It is four-twenty, after all.”

“Yes, it certainly is,” Dr. Lee said. “And I can smell alcohol on you. How much did you have to drink tonight?”

Another shrug. “Seven or eight beers. The usual amount.”

“Well, it seems obvious that your heart did not appreciate all of that tonight,” Dr. Lee said. “I’m guessing that the cocaine was likely the trigger of the episode. You use cocaine regularly, it sounds like?”

“Pretty much every day,” Matt confirmed. “Especially out on the road. The last time this happened it was the meth that got it started.”

“The meth?”

“Right,” Matt said. “I was dragging ass that day and some of the roadies fixed me up with some of their tweak. Raunchy shit that meth, and then I ended up with that paramedic frying me like a fuckin’ chicken. Man, that shit sucked. I’m here to tell you, I learned my lesson that night.”

“What lesson was that?” Dr. Lee wanted to know.

“Not to do meth, obviously,” Matt told her simply. “And I haven’t done so much as a sniff of that shit since. That’s what’s so fuckin’ weird about this. If I didn’t do any meth, why did this shit happen again?”

“Uh ... as I said, the cocaine was likely the trigger.”

Matt shook his head emphatically. “No way, doc,” he told her. “I snort coke all the fuckin’ time and it don’t ever make me go into that SVT shit. And I always get good coke, you know, the pure shit with no cut in it. It has to be something else that triggered it tonight.”

“Mr. Tisdale...” Dr. Lee said patiently.

“Matt,” Matt said. “You can call me Matt, doc.”

“Matt,” she corrected. “You do realize that cocaine is a powerful stimulant, right?”

“Hell yeah,” he said. “That’s why I use it on the road. Touring is some tiring shit. The coke helps keep me awake for all the goddamn record store signings and for the after-show partying. I never do it before a show though. Every time I step on that stage to play, I’m stone cold sober.”

“An admirable work ethic indeed,” Dr. Lee said. “Be that as it may, however, long term use of any stimulant has been irrefutably linked to early onset heart damage and susceptibility to life-threatening arrythmias such as SVT. Just because this doesn’t happen every time you use cocaine does not mean that the cocaine is not what caused it or triggered it.”

“It doesn’t mean that it did either though, right?” Matt countered.

“It is impossible to prove a negative,” Dr. Lee said. “That is one of the principals of logic. But...”

“Hey, that’s some deep shit there, doc,” Matt said brightly. “Impossible to prove a negative. Nerdly used to say shit like that all the time—at least he did before he turned traitor and helped kill Darren. Were you a nerd back in school? I’m guessing a lot of you docs were.”

“Yes, I was a nerd and I still am, in fact. My teenaged angst aside, however, there is another principal of logic which says that if it walks like a duck and talks like a duck and looks like a duck, it’s probably a duck. Your SVT episodes walk like they are induced by long term cocaine use, they talk like they are induced by long term cocaine use, and they look like they are induced by long term cocaine use. Therefore...” She held her hands out invitingly, trying to get him to draw the conclusion she was trying to illustrate on his own.

Matt thought this over for a moment and then nodded. “I’m picking up what you’re laying down, doc, but I still don’t think so. There had to have been something else that caused this.”

Dr. Lee sighed. “All right then,” she said, giving up. “In any case, I’m going to admit you to the telemetry floor for a complete cardiac workup in the morning. Before we do that, however, I want to get some ... why are you shaking your head at me?”

“I can’t stay in the hospital, doc,” he told her. “We’re heading to Chicago in the morning. I got three shows to do there. After that, we’re going to Minneapolis.”

“Matt, you’ve had a significant cardiac event,” Dr. Lee said. “And this is the second time it has happened to you. You need a cardiac workup to see what kind of shape your heart is in. I must insist that you stay here and let us check you out.”

“No can do,” Matt told her. “I’ll sign your little against medical advice paper for you, but I gotta hit the fuckin’ road. The show must go on.”

“You could die if this happens again, Matt,” she told him.

“We all gotta go sometime,” he said.

“Will you at least let me run some labs and do some tests here in the ED before you go?” she asked.

“Sure, why not?” he said. “I’m sure the groupies are all gone from the hotel by now anyway.”

“Uh ... right,” Dr. Lee said. She turned to the two nurses, who had been watching the entire episode quietly, their faces without expression. “Go ahead and get a repeat EKG and then draw standard cardiac labs on him. I’m also going to order an ETOH, a urinalysis, a drugs of abuse panel, and an STD panel.”

“You don’t need that STD panel, doc,” Matt told her. “I always use a rubber ... unless I’m boning Kim, that is. We go bareback when it’s just the two of us.”

“Kim?” Dr. Lee asked.

“You probably know her as Mary Ann Cummings,” Matt clarified. “She used to be a porn star.”

“And ... you have a sexual relationship with her?”

“Yeah, she hangs out at my house and we fuck each other when I’m home. I help her run her business too. She’s all right.”

“I see,” Dr. Lee said. “If it’s all the same to you, Matt, we’ll go ahead and run that STD panel, just to be sure.”

“Whatever juices your clam,” Matt said with a shrug. “And speaking of that...” He looked at the nurses, who were pulling things out of a cart in preparation of carrying out Dr. Lee’s orders. “Do you mind if they step out for a minute? There’s something personal I want to talk about with you real quick.”

“More personal than what we’ve already been discussing?” Dr. Lee asked.

“Yeah,” Matt said. “It’ll only take a minute.”

“Sure,” Dr. Lee said, looking at the two nurses and giving them a nod. They left the room, closing the door behind them. “All right. What did you want to talk about?”

“Well ... it’s kind of embarrassing really. The shit I tell you stays between us, right?”

“Right,” she said. “Doctor-patient confidentiality is a thing.”

“Cool,” Matt said. “It has to do with ... you know ... my equipment.”

“Your equipment?”

“My schlong,” Matt said with a whisper.

“You mean your penis?”

“Right, my schlong,” Matt said. “You see ... right before all this shit happened tonight, I had a couple of groupies with me. One was this bleach blond bitch, the other a goth bitch with a tongue stud. Hot skank, you know? The kind of sluts I fuck all the time after shows.”

“I see,” Dr. Lee said slowly. “Is there a point to this story?”

“Yeah,” Matt said. “You see, when it came time for the action to start, I ... I wasn’t ready.”

“You mean you failed to obtain an erection?”

“Right. My shit wouldn’t get hard. Goth went down and started slurping on it, tongue ring and all, and Bleach Blond was sucking on her tits while she was doing it, but I couldn’t get it up. That shit ain’t never happened to me before, doc. It was distressing.”

“This happened right before you noticed you were in SVT?” Dr. Lee asked.

“That’s right,” he confirmed. “Does this SVT shit keep you from getting a boner?”

“Well ... in all honesty, I’m amazed that with all the substances you abuse simultaneously that you’re able to achieve an erection at all, under any circumstance, but to answer your question, yes, if you are in SVT it is unlikely that you’ll be able to ‘get a boner’ as you say. The blood flow in your body during SVT is compromised to some degree and this causes what we call a sympathetic response, meaning that your sympathetic nervous system is putting you in fight or flight mode. Sexual arousal is primarily controlled by the parasympathetic nervous system, which is suppressed during a fight or flight response. Does this make sense to you?”

“Are you saying that there’s nothing wrong with my shit? That it was the SVT that kept me from getting it up?”

“In all likelihood,” she said.

This made Matt happier than he’d been all night. “All right,” he said. “Thanks, doc.”

“Anytime,” she told him.

She left the room so the nurses could start their work. Even though she had only touched Matt Tisdale a few times to listen to his heart and lungs, she had an almost irresistible urge to go take a shower.

Jake had lived in California all of his life, in southern California for the last twelve years of his life, but he had never heard of the town of Oceano before. Now, at 1:30 PM on April 21st, he was flying into the small San Luis Obispo County town to check out a piece of property that was for sale just a few miles north of it.

Laura sat beside him in the copilot’s seat. She had a notebook open and was transcribing notes on the trip for Jake. Jill the accountant, who had scoped out this particular piece of property for him (very much against her better judgment and advice), was sitting in the passenger seat behind Laura.

“Airport in sight,” Jake said, looking out the right-side window at the single runway facility located only a hundred or so yards from the beach. “What’s our flight time from takeoff?”

Laura checked her watch, wrote down the time, compared it with the time they went wheels-up from Santa Monica, did some quick mental arithmetic, and then reported her answer. “Thirty-eight minutes.”

“Not bad,” Jake said. “And we’ve only burned a hundred and fifty pounds of fuel. Definitely commuter distance as far as I’m concerned.”

“How many gallons is a hundred and fifty pounds of fuel?” asked Jill, who had her own notebook open before her and was jotting down her own notes.

“About twenty-five gallons,” Jake said.

“Twenty-five gallons of jet fuel for a one-way flight,” Jill said. “And you paid four dollars and eighty cents a gallon at Santa Monica, correct?”

“Correct,” Jake said.

“That means that every round trip you take from here to LA and back will cost you two hundred and forty dollars in fuel alone. And how often do you suppose you’ll be making the trip once you get a house built and you move in?”

“If I have a house here and I’m working on something in LA, I’ll fly home every night. I won’t stay in LA at all if I don’t have to. That’s kind of the point of the whole thing.”

“So, we’re talking about five round trips a week on average?” Jill asked.

“Sounds about right,” Jake said.

“Two hundred and forty times five is twelve hundred dollars a week in fuel just for the aircraft. That’s forty-eight hundred dollars a month.”

“What is your point?” Jake asked her.

“That’s a lot of money, Jake,” she said. “All of it for an unnecessary project.”

“Yeah, but I’m a rich motherfucker, Jill. I can afford shit like that. You only live once, right?”

“It’s a frivolous waste of money,” she insisted.

“Fuckin’ A,” he agreed. “And I’m happy that life has made it so I can be frivolous in this manner. Now then, let’s see how easy it is to get into this airport. It looks pretty dead there from up here.”

“A poor choice of words, perhaps?” asked Laura.

“Perhaps,” he agreed, giving her a warm smile. “Winds are onshore right now. We’ll land on two-nine.”

Oceano County Airport had no control tower. Jake used the radio to announce on the facility’s approach frequency that he was entering the pattern with intent to land on Runway 29. No one answered him, which meant, in theory, that there was no other traffic in potential conflict with him. He flew out over the ocean and then turned right, directly into the downwind leg of the approach, dropping down to eighteen hundred feet as he did so. This brought him feet-dry over an extensive and impressive expanse of sand dunes and then over the small town itself. He turned left into the base leg and then left again for final approach, calling out his actions on the approach frequency each time. The radio remained silent and he saw no other aircraft in the sky or moving about on the ground at the airport. He touched down neatly at 1:35 PM and taxied over to the aircraft parking area.

“Engine shutdown at 1:38,” he told Laura.

“That gives you sixty-three minutes from engine start to engine shutdown,” she told him. “That’s from the fueling area, of course.”

“Of course,” he said. “An hour each way, add in a little more if I need to fuel up. The flight time is in my parameters.”

“Agreed,” said Laura.

“How much are they going to charge you to land here?” asked Jill.

“Let’s go find out,” Jake said. “I also want to scope out what hangar space goes for here. Since this is where I’d be living if the land checks out, I’d house the plane here and then just pay landing fees in LA.”

“Do they do maintenance here?” asked Laura.

“Another excellent question,” Jake said, opening the aircraft door. “That’s why we’re checking all this shit out.”

Jake was happy to find that they were close enough to the ocean that they could hear the waves breaking in the distance, could smell the salt air. The sky was blue above them, without so much as a hint of smog. So far, so good. Although his original plan had been to have his own airstrip on the land he bought, that was simply not feasible in this particular location. The land in question was not zoned for that and, even if it had been, the expense of building, operating, and maintaining one’s own airstrip was enough to trigger even Jake’s almost non-existent financial sensibilities. Still, this was a nice looking airport, conveniently located and seemingly easy to fly into and out of.

They went into the airport operations building and met with the manager of the facility, a man in his early sixties who had no idea who Jake Kingsley was and who looked at his longish hair with distaste. He collected the ten-dollar landing fee and then quoted Jake the price for hangar space. Jake thought he misheard him at first.