Chapter 17: The Best Vacation

San Luis Obispo County, California

July 3, 1997

Chastity Best, known pretty much universally as Chase unless she was in serious trouble (something which did happen with her on a fairly frequent basis), had just turned fifteen years old the week before and was now on the adventure of her young life. She was in the front seat of a sixty-five-thousand-dollar BMW 7 series car driven by her uncle Jake Kingsley, the world-famous (and infamous) rock and roll musician, on the way to the airport where he was going to fly her to Los Angeles in his private plane so she could meet her absolute idol, Celia Valdez, and then actually hang out with her for the next few days. She kept having to pinch herself to make sure this was all really happening and not just a dream.

She was getting better at convincing herself this was reality. She and the rest of her family—her mother, father, older sister Grace, older brother Brian and his wife Julie, and her nephew Everett—had flown first-class from Salt Lake City International Airport to Los Angeles International two days before for a two-week visit with her Aunt Laura and Uncle Jake. At LAX, a long stretch limousine (with a uniformed driver, a fully stocked bar, a television, and a VCR player inside) had picked everyone up and taken them to a smaller airport across the impossibly huge and crowded city. There, Jake had flown them all over some mountains and along the coast to San Luis Obispo, near where their house was. The flight in Jake’s plane had been rather crowded, with every seat taken up except the one in the small toilet (and Grace and Chase would have to alternate using that seat for takeoffs and landings on any flights where Aunt Laura was along for the ride as well—several such trips were planned during the vacation), but once they’d landed and all piled into three cars and made the twenty-minute drive to Jake and Laura’s radical house up on the cliff, the true adventure began.

She had her very own room in the house! It was a room that was twice the size of the room she and Gracie shared at home, with a bed that was also twice the size of hers, a walk-in closet, her very own bathroom (complete with a bathtub with little jets that shot water out), and a window that looked out over the ocean! The house had a pool table, a pinball machine, something called a shuffleboard table, refrigerators that were endlessly stocked with Pepsi, a bitchin’ stereo system with a huge collection of CDs, and a big screen TV with a huge collection of recorded movies. There was a radical housekeeper named Elsa, who talked with a British accent, called her “Miss Chastity”, did her laundry for her (as long as she emptied her pockets and put it in the hamper), fixed snacks for them throughout the day, made awesome breakfasts and dinners, and then cleaned everything up afterward herself (as long as they finished what was placed on their plates and as long as they put everything else in the places she had designated they be put). And there was a hot tub out on the edge of the cliff the house sat on; a hot tub that she was allowed to use as much as she wanted. And she used it quite frequently, sitting out there for hours at a time, staring out at that amazing expanse of blue water that was the Pacific Ocean until her skin became wrinkled like a prune.

Their first full day in Oceano they had spent mostly in the huge sand dunes along the beach, riding four-wheel ATVs with big flags sticking up from the rear. She and Gracie had been allowed to each have their own ATV to themselves! And after the day of riding, they had come back to the home, taken showers in their private bathrooms, and been served a meal of homemade chicken tacos, refried beans, and Spanish rice.

Uncle Jake and Aunt Laura had the friggin’ life! And all because he knew how to play his guitar and sing a little! Friggin’ amazing!

But none of that could even come close to comparing to what was going to happen today. Celia friggin’ Valdez! she thought with a near religious awe. I’m actually going to meet her in a about an hour! Oh my God! What will I say to her? What will she be like? Will she like me? Why would she like a kid like me? Will she even talk to me?

“Relax, Chase,” Uncle Jake said with a smile, obviously picking up on her thoughts to some degree. Uncle Jake was a very perceptive guy (and, she could not help but think, pretty friggin’ hot in a bad-boy sort of way—after all, he wasn’t a blood uncle, right?) “Celia is just an ordinary person like you and me. She likes spunk, and you’ve got a lot of that.”

“You think so?” she asked.

“I know so,” he assured her. He seemed about to say something else, but then his attention was suddenly distracted. “Ohh, here it is,” he said reaching for the volume button on the car’s radio screen.

“That song you were talking about?” Chase asked.

“That song I was talking about,” he said. “It’s debuting this morning. Let’s listen. Tell me what you think about it.”

“Okay,” she said, sensing that he was not just trying to shut her up so that he could listen, but was genuinely interested in what her opinion of the song might be. That made her feel very adult.

The DJ on the local alternative rock station was introducing the new tune to the listening audience—a large portion of which were college students from Cal Poly. “ ... from a band called V-tach, whatever that means,” he was saying. “Their debut album will be coming out in a few more weeks and is produced by none other than Jake Kingsley, our local cliff-dwelling, noisy-airplane-flying celebrity who used to front Intemperance. I’m told that the members of V-tach are all members of the band that backed Kingsley last year at the Tsunami Sound Festival in Indian Springs, Nevada, where all the reviewers report they stole the show from the headliner Matt Tisdale, former guitar player for Intemp. Bigg G, the piano playing rapper who was part of Kingsley’s band for the TSF is, alas, not one of the members of V-tach, but nevertheless, this is some good, solid alt-rock music. Give it a listen. It’s called When I’m Not Home.”

The song began to play. Chase instantly liked it. Unlike her parents, sister, and brother, who listened to nothing but country music (Uncle Jake was trying to arrange a visit from Obie II, who they all worshiped), Chase loved alternative rock, thought it was the best friggin’ music ever invented, and had a keen appreciation for the jangling guitars and emotionally tragic lyrics that often went with the genre. She had no musical training of any kind, had never picked up an instrument in her life, but she had a love for music that transcended the average fifteen-year-old (or even the average forty-year-old) by a light year or two. As she listened now, she was drawn to the changing tempo and alternating distortion levels of the guitars between the verses and the choruses, the rhythmic backbeat that alternated along with the tempo, the lyrics, which she had no trouble at all interpreting even though it was a first listen, but most of all, the smoky, sexy sound of the lead singer’s voice as he sang out those lyrics.

The song came to an end and Ironic, by Alanis Morrisette began to play. Chase made a sour face as she heard it and was grateful when Uncle Jake turned the radio down to nearly sub-audible level.

“What did you think?” Jake asked, again, not with simple politeness, but seemingly with genuine interest.

“I liked it,” she told him. “It caught my attention right away. The guitar was good and the lyrics were totally bitchin’.” She flushed a little, forgetting for a moment that she was talking to an adult and not one of her peers. “Uh ... sorry, I mean cool.”

Uncle Jake chuckled. “I’m unoffended,” he told her.

“I really dig a song where I know what the singer is singing about,” she said.

Uncle Jake’s eyebrows went up a bit. “And you understood what he was singing about?” he asked.

She rolled her eyes. “Duh,” she said dramatically. “He’s talking about someone coming to his house and doing his girlfriend when he’s not home. How can you interpret that as anything else?”

Uncle Jake looked surprised and then smiled at her warmly (making her feel a little funny in the stomach). “That is, in fact, what he’s singing about,” he said. “You seem very astute at picking up lyrical meanings.”

She shrugged. It didn’t seem like that big a deal to her. “I love his voice too. Is he good looking? Please tell me he’s good looking ... and single.”

“Phil is a pretty good-looking guy,” Uncle Jake said. “And he is single.”

“Wow,” she said, already starting to fantasize about him.

“He’s also quite gay. He used to be Laura’s roommate when she and I first met.”

Her hopes came crashing down. This was tempered, however, by the shocking revelation that Uncle Jake had just laid on her. “Aunt Laura used to live with a gay guy?” she asked.

“For several years,” Jake said. “Until she moved in with me after we got together as a couple. They were really close friends. Still are, as a matter of fact. Phil walked Laura down the aisle in place of your grandfather at our wedding.”

“No shit?” she said, forgetting again that she was talking to an adult.

Uncle Jake did not even blink an eye. “No shit,” he assured her.

They talked more about the V-tach song as they continued the drive and Uncle Jake promised to give her a copy of the CD as long as she promised not to give any copies of it to her friends prior to its actual release. She promised not to. He then pointed to the radio. “I noticed a little wince on your face when Alanis started to sing,” he said. “You’re not a fan of Ironic?”

“No,” she said, making the sour face again. “Not only have they played that friggin’ song to death—I mean, they play it at least once a friggin’ hour on the alt-rock station we get out of SLC—but the lyrics are just dumb.”

“Really?” he said, that keen interest showing in his face again. “Why do you think so?”

“Because most of that shi— ... uh ... stuff that she’s singing about is not ironic. If you’re going to sing about things that are ironic, you should make sure they actually are ironic.”

“Explain,” Uncle Jake requested.

She explained something she had tried to describe to her dumb-ass friends who loved that stupid-ass song on multiple occasions. “Having it rain the day you get married is not friggin’ ironic. It’s a bummer, yes, but not irony. Not taking someone’s good advice is not ironic either. It’s stupidity or ignorance. And having a dude who is afraid to fly die in an airplane crash is also not ironic. It just means he was right to be friggin’ afraid. A fly in your friggin’ glass of wine? That’s not ironic, it’s friggin’ gross! And meeting some hot dude and then finding out he’s married? How is that shi-- ... uh ... stuff ironic? It isn’t! It’s just another bummer!”

Uncle Jake was laughing now, but not in a mean way. “Chase,” he told her, reaching over and patting her on the shoulder, “you are completely correct and years beyond your age in musical sophistication.”

She blushed again, both at his words and his touch. “You think so?” she asked.

“I know so,” he said. “And that makes me extremely glad that you enjoyed When I’m Not Home.”

“Why is that?” she asked, glowing at his praise.

“Because now I know it is going to sell like mad,” he told her.

“You know that just because I liked it?”

“Well, I already suspected that it was going to be a big hit—V-tach’s first of many—because that is my job, to find and produce good music. But there is always that little doubt in my mind before each new tune hits the airwaves. Am I wrong? Am I losing my touch? You are the first listener I have encountered who has actually heard the tune and you like it. My mind is now at ease, and for that, I thank you.”

“Uh ... you’re welcome,” she said, pleased. And then her mind went back to the lead singer. “When you say gay though, is he completely gay?”

“Completely and thoroughly,” Uncle Jake assured her.

“That really is a bummer,” she said.

“But not ironic,” Uncle Jake said, causing both of them to crack up.

When the laughter died down she looked meaningfully at her uncle. Something had occurred to her. “Did Aunt Laura used to walk around in her bra and panties in front of him?” she blurted. The thought of being able to walk around freely in your underwear in front of a guy without embarrassment was strangely intriguing to her.

Uncle Jake laughed again but did not answer the question. She got the feeling that he did not know the answer himself. Maybe she would ask Aunt Laura later—not in front of her parents, of course.

They arrived at the airport and Uncle Jake went about pulling his radical airplane out of its hangar and doing a bunch of the preflight stuff that needed to be done. She followed him around, keeping silent as he had requested, and he explained everything he was doing as he did it.

“Okay,” he said when the checks were finished. “You stay here and make sure no one flies off with my plane. I’m going to go file the flight plan. Shouldn’t take but five minutes or so.”

“You got it,” she promised.

He drove off in the Beemer and she wandered around the plane, looking at everything, paying particular attention to the strange front wings mounted just in front of the cockpit windows. She then read all the various warning stickers that were mounted near the sensors and the panel openings. After that, she examined the little doodads that stuck out here and there. She remembered Uncle Jake calling the little tubular doohickeys that were mounted on both sides of the cockpit and just below and in front of both main wings pitot static tubes and said they were what measured airspeed and angle of attack—which he further explained meant the angle the plane was going as it moved forward through the air. He had pulled little covers off of them during his walk-around. All of the covers had long red ribbons dangling from them with the words REMOVE BEFORE FLIGHT written in large white letters. That made sense to her. Though Uncle Jake had not specifically said so, she intuited that the pitot static tubes worked by having air flow into them. If they were covered in flight, that air would not flow and they would not be able to tell the pilot how fast he was going and what angle he was flying up or down. If you did not know that information while in flight, that could probably cause all kinds of weird problems—some of which might end with you smashing into the ground or the ocean. But why would you have to cover them when you were not flying? Wouldn’t it be easier to just leave them uncovered all the time so you didn’t have to worry about whether or not you remembered to remove them? She decided she would ask Uncle Jake about this once they were up in the air and that sterile cockpit rule was no longer in effect.

Uncle Jake returned on foot and opened up the main door of the plane. They climbed inside and he actually let her sit in the copilot’s seat. Way cool! He started up the engines and went through another set of preflight checks, calling out things as he did them, one by one, though usually not stopping to explain what it was he was talking about this time. Soon, he declared his checklist complete and he spent a moment talking on his headset thingy to one of the controllers in the airport’s tower. Chase was not wearing a headset—Uncle Jake had offered her one but she did not want to mess up her hair before she met Celia Valdez—so she did not hear the tower guy’s responses to him. Jake pushed the two levers between the seats forward and they began to move. There were no other planes moving around right now so it did not take them long to get to the turn that led onto the runway. Uncle Jake went throughout another checklist—setting flaps, verifying something called trim (which made her giggle a little—trim meant doing it, something that she had never done before but which she and her girlfriends talked about endlessly) and a few numbers preceded by V’s. At last, he pushed the throttles up again and turned onto the runway so they were facing down it, directly on the centerline. He throttled back down and brought them to a stop.

“You ready to go?” he asked her.

“Let’s do it!” she said enthusiastically. She had found that she quite liked flying, especially in Uncle Jake’s plane, and that taking off was her favorite part.

“Okay,” he said. “Why don’t you help me out then? Put your hand on those throttle levers and slowly push them forward until I tell you to stop.”

“Really?” she asked, her enthusiasm kicking up a few notches.

“Really,” he said. “Just be sure that you advance them together at the same pace. Nice and slow, keep them together.”

She nervously reached out and put her left hand on the two side-by-side levers. They were not very big and she could grasp both of them easily. She pushed forward, surprised at how much force she had to use to get them to move. As they moved forward, the sound of the engines began to get louder and the plane began to move forward, slowly at first but quickly picking up speed.

“That’s good there,” Uncle Jake told her. “Thanks for the help.”

“Anytime,” she said with a smile.

They left the ground about fifteen seconds later, passing over the perimeter fence for the airport and climbing higher and higher into the sky. Uncle Jake flipped up a lever and the landing gear came up. He flipped another lever (“flaps to zero,” he said as he did so) and there was a whine of machinery from behind them and she felt the now-familiar sensation of falling as the nose came down a bit and they began to pick up speed. The town of Oceano, with the sand dunes they had ridden on yesterday and the bright blue ocean beyond was now visible in front of them. She thought she could actually see the cliff where Uncle Jake and Aunt Laura lived for a brief moment before they passed over the water and turned to the left.

They climbed to twelve thousand feet. Uncle Jake showed her the altimeter and taught her how to read it. It was easy when you saw how it worked. Just like an old-fashioned clock. The scenery was amazing as they flew. From up here in the front, she could see everything! Uncle Jake pointed out the sights as they came into view. There were the coastal mountains, and the city of Santa Maria, and then Oxnard—mere suburbs that were each more than twice the size of Pocatello. Off to her right, she could see the Channel Islands, and boats and ships down in the water looking like tiny little toys with V-shaped wakes stretching behind them opposite of their direction of travel. Far in front of them, beyond another set of mountains, was a brownish-gray haze. He told her that was the Los Angeles basin and the smog layer it was famous for.

As they descended over that last mountain range and over the huge expanse of houses, buildings, and freeways that was Los Angeles, she began to feel nervous again. Celia Valdez is down there! And I’m going to meet her as soon as we land! Oh my God! Can I do this? Do I have a choice at this point?

Once again, Uncle Jake picked up on this. Even though the cockpit was supposed to be sterile at the moment, he reassured her. “Don’t worry,” he said. “She really is nice. Much nicer than me.”

They touched down smoothly at the same airport they had left from two days ago. Uncle Jake drove the plane off the runway and followed a series of taxiways until he came to an area where a whole bunch of planes were parked and there was a large building adjacent. He pulled into a spot near the building and shut down the engines.

“We have arrived,” he told her. “And Celia is here. That’s her car parked over there.”

“Which one?” Chase asked, looking at the row of parked cars.

“The gray Mercedes,” he said.

“I don’t know what a Mercedes looks like,” she said.

“The most expensive looking car in that parking lot,” he said.

That was the clue she needed. She quickly found the vehicle in question and looked at it in awe.

They unstrapped from their seats and Uncle Jake opened the door just behind the cockpit and folded down the small set of steps. They stepped out into the warm air—it was noticeably higher in temperature and humidity here than it had been in San Luis Obispo—and out onto the tarmac. The sound of aircraft engines could be heard from several directions and the air had the distinct smell she had come to associate with the jet fuel that airplanes like Uncle Jake’s ran on.

“There she is,” Uncle Jake said as they reached the nose of the airplane. He pointed in the direction of the building.

Feeling a little jolt of adrenaline, Chase looked in that direction. At first she could not credit what she was seeing. Yes, there was a good-looking woman heading in their direction, a friendly smile on her face, but that wasn’t Celia Valdez, was it? She was wearing jeans and a sleeveless button-up peasant blouse. Her hair was in a ponytail and she had on a blue baseball hat with the letters L and A superimposed upon them. She looked just like anyone else in the world—perhaps a bit more attractive and fit than most—not a goddess. But then Chase noted the guitar case she carried in one hand and the suitcase she carried in the other. And she looked carefully at the woman’s face. She had no makeup on except lip gloss, but the facial resemblance to Celia Valdez could not be denied. It has to be her! she was forced to conclude. She felt all the spit in her mouth dry up at this realization.

Uncle Jake smiled and walked forward, meeting her about halfway and taking the suitcase from her hand, leaving her with just the guitar. The two of them exchanged a hug and Celia actually kissed him on the cheek affectionately. They exchanged a few words she did not hear clearly and then they turned and walked directly toward her. Chastity felt her heart beating faster in her chest as he idol approached.

“Celia,” Uncle Jake said when they were all face to face, “this is Chastity Best, my niece from Pocatello. She’s your number one fan and she likes to be called Chase, right Chase?”

Chase’s mouth was now open in awe. She tried to respond but all that came out was something that sounded like: “Arrgh gast a maw.” Oh my God! she thought desperately. I can’t friggin’ talk! She’s going to think I’m a moron! Or that I’m having a friggin’ stroke! Or both!

Uncle Jake chuckled at her, though in a sympathetic way, not in a mean way. “Well put,” he said. He turned to Celia. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen her speechless before.”

Celia’s smile grew warmer and she took another step forward. “It’s nice to meet you, Chase,” she said. She set her guitar case down on the ground and then held out her arms for a hug.

She wants to hug me?? Oh my friggin’ God! “Blast a maw,” she said.

Celia chuckled and put her arms around her. Chase was amazed at how tall she was. She stood a good six inches taller than her, almost as tall as Uncle Jake. Her body was firm and fit as it pressed against her. She smelled of vanilla. Instinctively, she returned the hug. I’m actually hugging Celia Valdez! she thought in amazement.

It lasted only a short moment and then it was gone. Celia stepped back and regarded her for a moment. “How was the flight in?” she asked her.

Chase took a deep breath and commanded herself to articulate coherently. “It was ... uh ... you know ... fun.”

“Yes,” she said, nodding. “It is fun to fly in Jake’s plane. I used to be afraid of flying—I still am a little bit, to be honest—but it has grown on me over the years, especially flying with Jake in this plane.”

“I ... I love flying,” Chase managed to blurt. “I never did it before until I met Uncle Jake.” She flushed. “Flying that is. I still haven’t ... uh ... done ... uh...” She realized what she had been about to say at the last second and snapped her jaw shut. She took a deep breath again. “Never mind. I’m babbling.”

Celia patted her on the shoulder affectionately. “That’s okay,” she said. “I’m flattered that you like me so much that I can reduce you to babbling. But don’t worry. I’m just an ordinary person like everyone else.”

“I really love your music!” Grace told her.

“Thank you,” Celia said.

“And I found out on the way here that Chase has fairly deep appreciation for music,” Uncle Jake told her.

“Oh yeah?” Celia asked.

Uncle Jake nodded. “We heard the debut of Home on the way here. She liked it and correctly interpreted the lyrics. And she does not like the song Ironic because most of what Alanis is talking about there is not, in fact, ironic.”

Celia smiled, delighted. “I’ll take an endorsement like that to one of our projects any day of the week.”

Jake had the FBO services pump his tanks half full and then they immediately left for the return flight to SLO. Celia sat in the copilot’s seat—her always preferred location when flying with Jake—and Chase sat immediately behind Jake, where she could see and talk to Celia with ease. And talk she did. She quickly recovered her voice and spent most of the flight jabbering to Celia, asking her a thousand questions about her childhood in Venezuela, her time with La Diferencia, and her recent years as a mega-star. Jake, who listened to the conversation but contributed nothing, noted that Chase had enough tact not to bring up Greg Oldfellow or the allegations that Celia dallied with her pilot out on the road. This reinforced his already strong opinion that his recently discovered niece was actually a pretty good kid.

They came in to land just past 11:30 AM and Jake parked the airplane in his rented hangar. Chase insisted on carrying Celia’s guitar case for her while Jake carried her travel bag.

“How is Teach doing?” Celia asked as they made the hike back to the GA terminal. They had not seen Celia in more than a week now.

“Looking forward to seeing you again,” Jake said with a little smile.

Celia returned the smile. “I’m looking forward to seeing her as well.”

The little inflection that each of them put on the word seeing was no accident. Both knew exactly what they meant by it. Since that day nearly two weeks ago when the three of them had a session of steamy, erotic threesome sex at Celia’s Malibu house, they had gotten together one more time for more of the same. This had also been in Malibu, after the last KVA meeting prior to the debut of Home. It had been just as good and the three of them continued not to feel regrets, shame, or any other negative emotion associated with what they were doing except for a bit of guilt that they were not feeling any regrets or shame or other negative emotions. All in all, the three of them remained very enthusiastic about the new dynamic they had brought to life and looked forward to future endeavors.

Perhaps even tonight, Jake thought now as he saw the little sparkle in Celia’s eye. This was a realistic hope. Though Laura the Prude had reigned supreme when the two of them had stayed at the Best house in Pocatello, Laura the extremely horny second trimester Nymph was still firmly in command while the Bests were staying with them. She had to hold a pillow against her mouth every time she came, but she was certainly not being prudish.

They threw the luggage and the guitar into the back of Jake’s BMW and then climbed in, Chase in the back, Jake behind the wheel. They drove back to the house on the cliff and introduced Celia to the rest of the Best clan. All were pleased to meet her, particularly the males. Grace, however, had a hard time even meeting her eyes, let alone speaking to her. She managed to shake her hand briefly, but that was the extent of their first contact.

Dinner that night was New York steaks that Elsa had procured from a high-end butcher shop in San Luis Obispo near the historic mission. While she prepared a large garden salad, sauteed mushrooms, and made her famous garlic mashed potatoes, Jake went out on the deck and fired up the large charcoal grill that sat next to the more convenient gas grill. Joey and Brian followed him out there. While waiting for the coals to burn down so he could grill the steaks, Jake drank a few bottles of his favorite beer—Foghorn India Pale Ale from the Lighthouse Brewing Company in Coos Bay—while the two generations of Bests drank their favorite beer—Budweiser from the can. They had tried the Lighthouse Ale that Jake offered them on their first night—genuinely curious about what “hoity-toity beer” would taste like—but had been hard pressed to even finish their bottles before they became warm. “It’s too strong,” Joey had proclaimed. “Too heavy,” had been Brian’s opinion. And so, Elsa had picked up a few cases of the red and white cans for the houseguests. She knew that if the Bests did not drink it all before they left, the excess would sit in the bottom of the pantry until their next visit.

The Best males were impressed with Jake’s skill on the grill. No slouches with a charcoal grill themselves, they found it quite down-to-Earth that Little Bit’s highfalutin husband—who had most of his actual housework and other chores done for him by a live-in housekeeper—actually knew had to perform a manly skill like cooking a steak on the old Weber. And when they tasted their steaks at the dinner table, their opinion of him shot up a few more notches. The steaks were juicy, grilled perfectly, and had a smooth, exquisite texture unlike anything they had ever tasted before. Naturally (though perhaps a little reluctantly), they attributed this to Jake’s touch with the coals and the spatula and not the fact that they were eating expensive, restaurant-quality meat instead of the cheap cuts from the local Walmart meat counter, which was what they were used to.