Chapter 9: The Masters

Santa Monica, California

May 16, 1992

Jake’s plane touched down gently on Runway 21 of Santa Monica Airport after the three and a half hour flight from Coos Bay. It slowed to taxi speed and then turned off onto the taxiway and made its way to the row of hangars just south of the main airport buildings, where it came to a halt in front of hangar number 37, one of the bigger ones on the grounds, a precious space that Jake paid six hundred and fifty dollars a month for. The engines shut down, the lights were turned off, and then the door opened and Jake himself stepped out onto the concrete. He stretched out a little, limbering up his legs and his lower back, which were a bit stiff from the flight. He was feeling a mix of emotions—melancholy, excitement, a little fear, and a great deal of anticipation. The project of the two albums was finally done, the tunes for both put down on masters in their final formats and mixes. He was home for good this time—or at least in what passed for home.

Jake was the only one in the plane. Celia and the Nerdlys had flown home two days before, leaving Jake behind to take care of the final details of their stay there. He’d sold the van they had used while in Coos Bay, taking an eight hundred dollar loss from the purchase price. He’d arranged to have the rental house thoroughly cleaned before it was returned to the vacation rental company. And he’d arranged to have his BMW driven back to LA. One of the studio techs they’d worked with was performing that task for him for the price of six hundred dollars and an air ticket back to Coos Bay. The car would be back in his garage by Monday, if all went as planned.

He looked at his watch—it was just after two o’clock in the afternoon of a beautiful southern California spring afternoon—and then back down the tarmac between the rows of hangar complexes. That was when he saw the car approaching. It was the old Toyota Corolla that belonged to Laura. Since it was not a school day, she had volunteered to come pick him up when he arrived. He smiled, anxious to finally see her. They had not laid eyes on each other in two and a half months, since the morning after the Dr. Dave incident.

She parked her car where Jake pointed—just next to the hangar door of number 36, well out of the way of any other aircraft that might come through. The engine had barely died when she was out of the car and rushing toward him. She was looking particularly adorable to his eyes, dressed in a green and white pullover sundress that showed off her legs and accented her breasts, her hair loose and flowing freely over her shoulders, a large anticipatory smile on her own face. They came together in an embrace and Jake relished the feel of her body against him, the whisper of her breath against his neck, the touch of her lips against his.

“Welcome home,” she breathed when their kiss finally broke and they pulled back a little to look at each other.

“That was a good welcome,” he told her, his fingers playing with a lock of her hair. “You look beautiful, hon. The best thing I’ve seen in months.”

“Thank you,” she said, flushing a bit. “I can’t wait to get home and get naked. It’s all I can do to keep from jumping you right here.”

“I know the feeling,” he said, letting his hand trail downward, sliding it slowly across her bare shoulder, over her breast, and then down the curve of her abdomen to her hip. Soon he was touching the soft skin of her thigh, just below the hem of her dress. The hungry look appeared in her eyes and he was about to slide his hands up under the skirt for a quick feel, but then another car, a Toyota pickup, suddenly turned into the row and started driving toward them.

“Hmmph,” she grunted as they took their hands off of each other and stepped apart. “Let’s gets this plane in there and go home.”

“Right,” he said, smiling at the thought that she considered his house to be home.

Jake opened the cargo compartment at the nose of the plane and unloaded his two suitcases. He carried them over and stowed them in Laura’s trunk. All of the rest of his belongings—including the four guitars he had taken to Oregon—were being brought back in his car. He grabbed the aircraft caddy out of the hangar and attached it to the nose wheel of the plane. It was electric powered and fully charged from sitting plugged in for the last six months. He used it to first pull the aircraft out in front of the door and then to push it backwards into the hangar itself. A veteran of the process, he managed to perfectly park the plane on the first try.

“Nice work,” Laura said appreciably as he leaned over to remove the caddy from the wheel. She could not resist running her hand over his ass. “Did I ever tell you how nice your butt is?”

“No,” he said, enjoying her touch on him quite a lot. “Please do.”

“It’s like ... mmmm, really nice,” she said, continuing to stroke it.

“You keep that up and we’re not going to wait until we get home,” he warned.

“Really?” she asked, interested, but also confused. “Where would we do it?”

He turned and looked at her. He was already half hard in his pants, working toward full-on boner status. He was quite unaccustomed to going two and a half months without sex that did not involve only himself. He was starting to like the idea he was having more and more. “Right here,” he told her. “In the hangar.”

She looked around for a moment, her eyes going from place to place. “There’s no bed in here, Jake,” she said.

Jake chuckled. “It is possible to fuck without a bed being involved,” he informed her.

“It is?” she asked. “How come we’ve never done that before?”

“A good question,” he allowed. “How about we do it now?”

“Are you serious?”

“I am dead serious,” he assured her. “You up for it?”

“But how would we ... I mean, where would we...”

He lifted her face and put a kiss on her lips, shutting her up. When he pulled his lips away, he waved her into the hangar. “Step inside my office,” he told her.

“Okay,” she said, walking in, stepping carefully around the left wingtip and going behind it.

Jake reached up and pulled down on the hangar door. He did not close it all the way, however. Instead, he stopped it about a foot above the ground. He then turned and made his own trip around the wingtip.

“Jake,” Laura said. “The door is still open a little.”

“It has to be,” Jake told her. “There’s no ventilation in here. If I don’t leave it cracked it’ll get hot as hell in here in about three minutes.”

“I can’t do it with a door open!” she hissed at him.

“Nobody is going to come in here, Laura,” he assured her. “And nobody is going to peek under the door. You’re just going to have to be quiet while we do this.”

“I’m sorry, Jake,” she said, shaking her head. “I can’t take off my clothes while that door is open like that.”

“Who said anything about taking off your clothes?” he asked, stepping close to her.

“Huh?” she asked, genuinely confused now.

“Let me show you how it’s done,” he whispered to her, taking her in his arms.

“Jake, I...”

Once again, he shut her up with a kiss. This time he slid his tongue into her mouth. She swirled her tongue with his, hesitantly at first, but then with growing enthusiasm. Her own arms went around his neck.

He let his hands slide downward, over her ass, which he paused to give a little squeeze, before continuing downward, onto the backs of her thighs. He then began to move the hands upward again, beneath the hem of her dress. Soon he had a double handful of her butt, his fingers feeling the lacy material of her panties. He pulled her against him, so she could feel the bulge of his erection pushing into her stomach.

“Mmmm,” she said, pulling her mouth free for a moment. “Oh God, Jake. That feels so good.”

“It does,” he confirmed, sliding his lips down to kiss and nibble at her neck. Meanwhile, he let his fingers probe under the elastic of the panties, so he was now touching her bare buttocks. He squeezed some more, enjoying the feel of her silky-smooth skin on his fingertips.

“I’m getting really hot,” Laura whispered to him, still quite cognizant of the partially open door. “How ... where ... do we do this?”

“Right here,” he said.

“Next to the airplane?”

“On the airplane,” he corrected. He pulled back from her.

“On the airplane? You mean inside of it?”

“No,” he told her. “I mean on the airplane.” He slid his hands down and grabbed the hem of her dress. He then lifted it up until it was above her waist, showing the frilly green panties she was wearing. They matched the dress perfectly. “Put your arms around my neck.”

She did this, grasping firmly. He stood up tall, lifting her feet off the ground. He carried her two steps forward and one to the right before setting her down on the wing of the plane, well clear of the retracted flap, right near where the primary flight surface attached to the fuselage. The height was just about perfect.

“Oooh,” she squealed. “This is cold on my butt.”

“It’ll get warm in a minute,” he promised, letting go of her. His hands went to the buckle on his belt. She watched him with growing lust as he opened his pants and pushed them and his underwear down to his knees, freeing his erection.

“Mmm,” she said, looking at it hungrily. “I’ve missed that so much.”

“And it missed you,” he assured her, his hands now stroking the skin of her bare thighs.

“I kind of see what you’re going to do here,” she told him. “Should I take my panties off?”

“No,” he told her, stepping a little closer and adjusting his stance. “You shouldn’t.”

She reached out to stroke his member, her fingers gripping him, feeling him, playing with him. “But how are we going to ... you know... do it, if I leave them on?”

“Like this,” he said, sliding his right hand over her thigh until his fingertips were caressing the crotch of those panties. They were damp and he could feel the outline of her lips beneath them. He caressed her in this manner for a few more seconds and then hooked his fingers beneath the elastic band and pulled the crotch to the side, exposing her swollen lips to his gaze, letting a powerful whiff of her aroused juices into his nose.

“Oh...” she said softly, her green eyes shining. “I get it now.”

“You certainly do,” he told her, pushing her hand off his straining erection. He put his left hand around her, grasping her by the ass while pushing himself forward, aiming for where he wanted to go. The head of his manhood touched warm wetness, feeling the slippery juices that had been produced. He pushed forward and slid in the tip. He then pushed a little harder and buried himself inside of her body.

“Oh ... sweet Lord!” she squealed delightfully at the intrusion.

“Shhhh,” Jake hushed her as he ground around a little, feeling her grip at him, lost in the sensation of sinking into female flesh after so long without it. “Remember the door.”

“Right,” she panted, putting her arms around his neck again. “This is so ... so ... dirty!”

“It is,” he agreed. “Do you like it?”

“I love it,” she whispered. “Now fuck me, Jake.”

“Gladly,” he said and began to thrust.

His thighs quickly became tired and threatened to cramp up on him, and his lower back wasn’t really pleased with the angle of attack, but he powered on, driving himself in and out of her body. Almost immediately he had to employ his best mental blocks to keep from firing off quickly. It felt just so damn good to be inside of her again.

She was obviously enjoying herself quite well too. She thrust back at him as much as she could, kissing his face, his neck, nibbling on his lower lip, occasionally plunging her tongue into his mouth and sucking on his tongue. Her hands kept busy too, going up and down his back, sometimes dropping to his ass to pull him harder against her, sometimes going up to his head to run her fingers through his hair.

“Come for me, baby,” Jake whispered to her when he felt his blocks starting to crumble. “Come and then I’ll shoot up inside of you.”

That did the trick. The moment these words were out of his mouth, her thrusting became erratic and her breathing grew heavier. The flush of her pale skin darkened almost alarmingly.

“That’s it,” Jake whispered, thrusting harder, giving her the little grind at the bottom of each stroke. “Come for me.”

She began to squeal and Jake had to cover her mouth with his to keep her quiet. She tightened up against him as her orgasm blasted through her body. Jake could tell it was a little more powerful than her typical one. As soon as she started to relax a little against him, he let himself go as well. A few seconds later it was he who was erratically thrusting, he who had to have his mouth covered with hers to keep the audio level outside family friendly. The exquisite pleasure exploded from his center and he poured himself out into her.

They held each other tightly, exchanging soft kisses for a bit, before he finally withdrew his wilted member from her body. A stream of their combined juices ran out and puddled on the surface of the wing. Jake saw that the side of his penis was abraded from rubbing up against the band of her panties. That was the price one had to pay for the old pull-the-panties-to-the-side trick. It was worth it.

“That was incredible,” Laura told him as he helped her back down to the floor. Her face was sweaty and still flushed.

Jake gave his signature see-saw of the hand. “It was all right,” he said.

“Fuck you,” she said, slapping at him playfully. “You know that was hot. How do you come up with ideas like that? I never would have thought of doing it on the wing of a plane.”

He shrugged and then reached down to pull up his pants. “When you think about sex as much as I do, some good ideas will inevitably form.”

She giggled a little, and then turned a little more serious. “Have you ... ever done that before?” she asked. “You know ... with someone else?”

“No,” he assured her, quite truthfully. “That was the first time I’ve ever screwed someone on the wing of my plane. Hell, I’ve never even screwed inside the plane before.”

“Hmm,” she said. “I guess we’ll have to try that one later.”

Jake drove home, not because he wanted to, but because Laura was old-fashioned enough that she insisted the man drive whenever feasible. As they made their way out of the airport and toward Santa Monica Boulevard, Jake pointed out a small paper bag he had stashed in the back seat.

“Why don’t you take a look in there,” he suggested.

“What is it?” she asked.

“Look and you’ll see,” he said.

She picked up the bag and then squealed when she saw what was in it. She reached in and pulled out two CD cases, both of them white with plain black writing on them. “The master CDs?” she asked excitedly.

“Well ... copies of the masters, but yes. Those are them.”

“Oh my God, I can’t wait to hear them. I wish I had a CD player in the car.”

“Maybe we can get you one,” Jake said.

“A CD player?”

“No, a new car,” he said. “This one has almost a hundred thousand miles on it. What kind of car would you like?”

She was shaking her head. “Jake, I can’t afford a car right now.”

“I can,” he said.

She looked at him pointedly. “You’re not serious, are you?”

“I’m pretty serious,” he said. “How about a Volkswagen Jetta convertible? A green one, maybe. You would look so totally cute in one of those.”

She was shaking her head. “Jake, I can’t let you buy me a car.”

“Why not?” he asked.

“Because ... well ... it’s just ... well, I really don’t know, truthfully, but I just can’t.”

He shrugged. “Well, think it over. I’m going to keep pestering you about this.”

“I thank you for the offer,” she said.

“And who knows?” he said mysteriously. “Maybe this Corolla might meet with some unfortunate accident one of these days and you’d be forced to take me up on my offer.”

She looked at his face for a moment, trying to determine if he was joking or not. A slight smile gave him away.

“Anyway, new subject,” Jake said. “How is Phil’s gig down at the studio going?” Armed with vocal credits on the upcoming Jake Kingsley and Celia Valdez solo albums, and with letters of recommendation in hand, and, with a little phone call from the Nerdlys to certain bigwigs in the recording department at National Records, Phil had gotten himself a few sessions singing backup for various projects that needed a baritone voice. According to earlier conversations Jake had had with Laura on the phone, Phil was making a good impression over there.

“He’s getting called in about twice a week now,” she told him. “Usually working on low end stuff, but they pay him union scale—forty dollars an hour with a minimum of four hours just for showing up.”

“He’s getting by then?” Jake asked.

“It’s not quite enough to make the rent in and of itself,” she said, “but he’s still got most of the recording money banked, so he’s making it okay for now.”

Jake nodded. “Tell him if he ever needs any help to contact me. I owe him a big one for keeping Dr. Dave off of you.”

“I’ll do that,” she said softly, shuddering a little at the mention of the dentist. Though she had not heard a word from him since Jake had had his little talk with him, she was still scarred by her relationship with him and by what had almost happened that day. She had confessed to Jake that she sometimes obsessively thought about how things might have turned out if Phil hadn’t happened to have been home to hear her screams.

“And what about you?” he asked her next. “You have ... what? Three more weeks of the teaching gig before summer starts?”

“About that,” she said.

“Are you going to go down and audition at the studio as well?” he asked. “You know that Nerdly got you an open invitation to blow some horn for the head studio hauncho, just like he did for Phil. And I’m told there’s a much bigger demand for sax session players than there is for singers.”

She frowned a little. “I ... well ... I just don’t know,” she said. “I’m still thinking about it.”

“What’s to think about?” he asked. “You have an in, hon, and they’ll probably put you to work. Don’t you want to play your sax and make some money from it?”

“I do ... but...” She shook her head. “It’s complicated.”

“Explain it to me.”

“I’m ... well ... I’m afraid I’ll do the same thing I did at your audition,” she said.

“The same thing?”

“Yeah ... you know what I did,” she said.

“You mean come across like an aloof, cold fish and then play the horn like shit on the pieces we wanted you to play?”

“Yeah,” she said sourly. “Thank you for putting that so delicately.”

“You’re not going to do that, Laura,” he told her.

“How do you know?”

“Because you’ve learned something from the time you spent with us ... or at least I hope you did. You’ve grown musically and learned to appreciate music that is outside your favored genre. I mean, look at you. You listen to Led Zepplin sometimes now, and Journey, and didn’t I hear you cranking out some Bad Company a time or two back there in Oregon?”

She gave him an embarrassed smile. She had indeed learned to like about half of the albums that Jake had introduced to her during their challenge—as he had learned to like about half of the albums she had introduced him to—but this was not something she was particularly proud of. When she was caught listening to something in the rock genre she always blushed and acted a little like a teenage boy who had been caught masturbating. “I like the technical aspects of that album,” she said defensively.

“Of course,” he said, giving her a little eye roll. “And I read Hustler for the journalistic excellence they represent. Anyway, my point is not what you listen to, it’s your musical growth. Go to the audition and play. I think you’ll surprise yourself.”

“I’ll keep thinking about it,” she told him.

“And I’ll keep pestering you about it,” he promised.

“Deal,” she said.

He made the turn onto Santa Monica and started heading east. “I’m kind of hungry,” he said. “You want to stop somewhere and grab a bite?”

“Uh ... no,” she said, quite firmly.

“Why not?”

“Jake,” she said, “we just had sex. I still have your ... you know ... your stuff up inside of me. It’s leaking into my panties.”

“That’s hot, baby,” he told her.

“It is not hot!” she said, and then she reconsidered. “Okay, maybe it is kind of hot, but there’s no way I’m going to a restaurant like this.”

“Prude,” he told her with a smile.

“I am not a prude,” she said. “I’ll have you know that I just fucked a guy in an airplane hangar on the wing of a plane while still wearing my dress! What do you think of that?”

“Anyone I know?” he asked.

She slapped at his shoulder. “Shut up,” she said. “No restaurant if I have stuff in my cooter. Besides, Elsa is making you a special dinner for your homecoming.”

“Oh yeah?” he asked. “What is it?”

“You’ll just have to wait and find out,” she said. “I’ve been sworn to secrecy.”

“What a rip,” he said sourly.

Jake played the master copies for her when they got home, starting with Celia’s album. The first cut was The Struggle, and she listened in awe as she heard the final version, as she listened to her saxophone—that’s me playing that, she thought in wonder—coming out of the speaker, mixed perfectly with the rhythm instruments and Jake and Celia’s guitars.

“Wow,” she whispered, feeling pride and wonder competing for top billing.

“Pretty good shit we came up with, eh?” Jake asked.

“I can’t believe how good it sounds.”

“The Nerdlys outdid themselves on this project,” Jake said. “They used that mixing board as another instrument, maybe even the most important instrument. They blended all of those basic tracks and all of those overdubs into a work of freaking art.”

“It’s amazing,” she said, listening to Jake’s guitar solo on the cut. She had heard him play it dozens if not hundreds of times before, but she had never heard it like this. It sounded crisp, clean, the timing absolutely perfect, the blending of volume in perfect symmetry with the backing instruments.

The next cut was Done With You, which featured the dueling solos between Laura and Mary on the outro. Again, she had personally played her part of that dozens upon dozens of times during the recording process and the overdubs, but hearing it now, fully mixed and integrated, was almost like hearing it for the first time. She knew the notes, of course, but hearing the blend of the instrument with the others, hearing how it played against the backbeat of the drums and bass, was surreal, as if she were listening to someone else’s work—someone with some talent—but at the same time, she knew it was her lips, her fingers, her aptitude that had produced the music.

“That chick on the horn kind of rocks, huh?” Jake asked her.

“She really does,” Laura said with a smile.

They listened to the entire CD from start to finish and then put in Jake’s and listened to that as well. She was not quite as familiar with Jake’s work as she was with Celia’s, as she was only featured on one cut: South Island Blur. True, she had heard all of Jake’s tunes just from being in the studio while they had worked on them, but she did not know them quite as intimately. Had she been hearing them for the first time ever, especially without the benefit of her recent experience as part of the unnamed band, she probably would not have cared for most of them. Most featured some level of distorted electric guitar for the primary melody, a sound she had emphatically abhorred in her pre-enlightenment days. But now, now the tunes sounded sweet to her ears, particularly Insignificance, which had been mixed into a hypnotic blending of Jake’s tenor voice, his fingerpicking acoustic skills, and Mary’s brilliance on the violin.

“You guys did a really good job in the mixing,” she told him.

“And the mastering,” Jake added. “Don’t forget about that.”

“What’s the difference?”

“Mixing is the blending of the tracks together to construct the cut out of the available tracks. Mastering is the setting of the cut order and the adjustment of the volumes and levels so that all of the tracks on each and every cut on the CD mix together in a similar manner and sound good in whatever format they’re being played. It’s what keeps Insignificance from being louder than Island, or vice versa. It’s what makes the CD sound good while being listened to in someone’s car, but also while being played over the airwaves as a radio song.”

“I had no idea there was so much involved,” Laura said. “Now I know why you had to stay another two and a half months after I left.”

“That was what we were doing,” he said. “Making CDs and then listening to them over and over again under all kinds of different conditions. We listened to them in the house, in the cars, out of a boombox down on the beach, you name it.”

“What’s the next step?” Laura asked.

“The next step is to let some record execs hear what we have. Obie has already sent out some copies to certain people. Once they get a listen ... well ... that’s when the fun really starts.”

The following Monday afternoon, in a conference room on the upper floor of the National Records Building in Hollywood, that fun was about to start.

Steve Crow, who had been assigned as the contact between Oren Blake II, the holder of the MD&P contract with Jake Kingsley for his solo album, and National Records, the entity that had the ability to fulfill that MD&P contract if the price was right, had called a meeting. He had received the envelope with the two master copies that very morning. It was time to hear what Kingsley had come up with.

Also present at the meeting was James Doolittle, the head of the artists and repertoire department, and Rick Bailey, the head of the new artist development department. All three participants remembered another gathering they’d participated in a few years before—in this very room, in fact—to listen to a cassette tape that had been presented by the band Intemperance. That tape had been a joke, filled with songs like Fuck the Establishment, which was an angry, profanity ridden piece that, while powerful, was also completely unsuitable for airplay; and The Choice, which was a contrite yet playful tune about picking out a can of soup in the grocery store; and The Discovery, which was about finding a piece of lint in one’s navel. Intemperance—Jake, Matt, and Bill the ringleaders, of course—had deliberately produced and recorded substandard and offensive tunes as a ploy to renegotiate their contract.

And it worked, Crow had to remind himself sourly. He still had some hard feelings over having a band full of young punks get one over on him.

“All right,” said Doolittle, who was the highest ranking member of the meeting—for what that was worth. “I understand we’re going to hear Kingsley’s master, at last.”

“Got it right here,” Crow said, holding the white CD case up.

“It’s kind of a boring album cover, isn’t it?” asked Bailey. “Is he going for a White Album kind of feel, or maybe The Wall?”

Crow rolled his eyes. He was not a real fan of Bailey, never had been. The man had obviously been put into his position because of connections, and not because of his musical and industry knowledge. “This is not the final album cover,” he explained, as if he were talking to a four-year-old. “This is just the master copy they sent us. If we decide to go into production with the project, an actual cover will be designed for the shelf product.”

“Oh ... I guess that makes sense,” Bailey said.

“Glad I could clear that up,” Crow said.

“Is there a copy of the Mexican chick’s master in there as well?” Doolittle asked. “Remember, any deal we make for Kingsley’s work is contingent on us agreeing to manufacture, distribute, and promote Valdez’s work too.”

“Yeah,” Crow said unenthusiastically. “It’s in here as well. I guess we’re kind of obligated to give it a listen.”

“That’s pretty shrewd of Kingsley to include her in the deal like that,” Bailey observed. “He’s got to be boning her. Why else would he tie up his career with such a has-been?”

“Yeah, he’s sliding her the salami all right,” agreed Crow, “but I wouldn’t use the word shrewd to describe him. I’d use the word stupid. Depending on how bad her crap is, that could be the deal breaker.”

“I’m not sure there’s much hope for a deal with this bunch anyway,” said Doolittle. “They already signed a contract with OB2 for forty percent royalties. That means that OB2 won’t accept anything more than mid-thirties. There would have to be some extremely marketable shit on those masters for us to even consider entering a deal for that kind of a percentage. Especially when they’re not planning to tour to help us promote the fucking things.”