Chapter 19: Keeping in Time

Santa Clarita, California

August 29, 1997

Jake and Laura Kingsley were back in the rhythm of making daily morning flights to Los Angeles, working all day in the KVA studio, and then flying back to San Luis Obispo at the end of the day. They had been doing this five days a week since the first week of August and, so far, were having no problem with the pace or the timing. With the Avanti and its twenty-five-minute flight time from airport to airport, they were actually spending less time commuting than many Los Angeles area nine-to-fivers—and the commute in question was considerably less stressful and soul-sucking. In fact, Jake found the actual flights to and from to be the highlight of each day.

It was just past noon on this final Friday before the final weekend of the month of August. Both of the Kingsleys were in the studio helping Celia Valdez work up the tunes for her next CD—which was tentatively titled Living in Limbo. The tune they had been working on all morning was called The End of the Journey. It was a mournful, sad piece about her divorce from Greg Oldfellow (though she did not name names in the lyrics—that would be uncouth). Jake, in particular, understood the meaning of the title quite intimately. It was the exact opposite of the title of the song he had written, composed, and performed at Celia and Greg’s wedding: The Start of the Journey (the similarity in title, Jake knew, was not coincidental).

Though Jake was committed to working with Matt Tisdale on his upcoming CD—his direct involvement in that project would start in earnest the following Monday when he would go to the rehearsal warehouse and evaluate the tunes Matt and his band had worked up so far—it had become obvious over the past month that he was going to have to involve himself quite heavily in Celia’s efforts as well if they were going to turn out to be all that they could be. Celia was an extraordinarily talented songwriter and composer of melodies, but she was nowhere near as talented as Jake when it came to shaping the basic tunes into complex musical compositions that would sound good on the radio and the CD. In addition, though Little Stevie was a talented guitarist, he was almost completely worthless when it came to composing riffs and solos. He could imitate to perfection anything that someone else had come up with—everything from simple acoustic pieces to full-blown Matt Tisdale riffs and solos—but he was incapable of coming up with anything original. Therefore, it would have to be Jake’s role to come up with the electric guitar parts, including the solos and riffs, and teach them to Little Stevie so he could reproduce them in the studio.

It was going to be a busy next few months. They were scheduled to enter the recording studio in Coos Bay on October 15^th to begin laying down tracks for both Matt’s and Celia’s efforts. They had until January 30^th to finish both projects. And, as if that wasn’t enough on Jake’s plate, Laura—who would be playing saxophone on at least six of the ten tunes on Celia’s CD—would be squirting out little Ziggy sometime near the end of November, well before there was any hope of having recorded all of her parts, let alone done the overdubs.

Jake was behind the sound board with the Nerdlys currently, a sheaf of musical score sheets before him, a pencil tucked behind his ear. They had already worked up the basic composition of Journey, as they called the tune, and were polishing it up now. Little Stevie was playing his high-end Brogan knockoff but Jake’s sunburst Les Paul was leaning against a wall and there was a secondary guitar cord leading to the amps that he could plug in with if further refinement of the guitar part seemed necessary. Nerdly, who had his own musical score sheet before him, was listening to the take through a set of headphones while Sharon was intently watching the levels on the board itself. Celia, her own 12-string guitar in hand, was sitting in a chair in front of her microphone. Laura, her belly now swollen and prominent with Ziggy’s third trimester of life, was standing, her alto sax in hand so she could blow out the secondary melody and the solo she had composed to go with the piece.

All in all, Jake thought the tune was coming along nicely. It would likely require only a few more changes to the instrumentation, most of which would be minor in nature. He was already thinking that Journey would be the first tune promoted when the CD was released.

A gentle elbow in his side took him out of his thoughts. It was Sharon, who was pointing at the phone mounted on the wall next to the door. A bright red light was flashing on the phone, indicating that someone—most likely Kayla, the latest KVA receptionist—was trying to reach them. For obvious reasons, the phone in the studio did not actually ring.

Jake got up and walked over to it. He picked up the receiver and put it to his ear. “It’s Jake,” he said into it.

Even though the volume of the earpiece was turned all the way up, Jake could barely hear over the music. He heard enough though. It was indeed Kayla. She was telling him that the catering service had just dropped off lunch.

“Got it,” he said. “I’ll be out in a few minutes to get it.”

She said something else that he could not make out, but it did not sound important. He hung up the phone and then waited until the group wound up Journey (Jake still thought the outro needed some more work—maybe a violin solo from Eric?) and fell silent. He then announced that lunch was here and it was time to take thirty or so and feed themselves.

Lunch today was hamburgers and French fries. Jake and Laura brought everything into the studio and everyone settled down in various places to eat. Celia sat with Jake and Laura on the edge of the drum platform. They balanced their paper plates on their laps and set their bottles of water and tea down next to them. Celia noticed that between bites Laura was rubbing her belly just above the belly button.

“Is Ziggy kicking you again?” she asked, a big part of her full of envy at the life that her friend and occasional lover was growing in her body.

The kicks were now a regular occurrence, and strong enough now that others could feel them by putting a hand on her belly. Jake remembered with a sense of awe the first time he had actually felt an unmistakable fetal movement by his daughter. “She’s calming down now,” Laura said. “She was really hammering me when the music was playing a few minutes ago.”

“Oh yeah?” Celia asked.

“Ziggy definitely likes music,” Laura said. “Whenever we’re playing or when I’m listening to it at home, she gets really active in there. And then, when it stops, she calms down.”

“She’s certainly got musical genes in her,” Celia said.

“Or, it’s just part of God’s great plan,” Jake said.

Both ladies looked at him strangely.

“That’s what your brother told me when I suggested the existence of musical genes,” he explained. “He said there are no musical genes, that your musical talent and mine were instilled upon us by God so that we could fulfill our part in his plan.”

“What plan is that?” Laura asked.

“For us to meet and get married was how I understood the explanation,” Jake said.

“Just that?” Laura asked.

“What do you mean ‘just that’?” Jake asked. “Don’t you think that you and I hooking up was a good plan?”

“It was all right,” she said with a shrug. “It’s just that I’m not sure it rises to the level of divine intervention or anything. Wouldn’t you think that if God had a plan that involved instilling us with musical talent so we would find each other, it would have an end goal a little more profound than us jumping into the sack one night and then eventually deciding we actually loved each other enough to get married and have a little Ziggy?”

“Perhaps,” Jake said.

“Were you and your brother-in-law drinking, by chance, when you had this divine plan conversation?” asked Celia.

“Uh ... well, yeah, we kind of were.”

“Kind of?”

He shrugged. “It was Budweiser from the can,” he said.

She nodded her head wisely. “That explains a lot,” she said.

“You don’t actually believe that, do you, sweetie?” Laura asked. “That some supreme being who controls everyone’s fate just wrote my musical talent into me for the express purpose of having me meet you some twenty-six years later?”

“No, not really,” he said. “It was an interesting point of view though.”

“Budweiser from the can will do that for you,” Laura said with a giggle.

“I suppose,” Jake said with a sigh. He took a drink of his green tea and then popped another French fry into his mouth.

“So ... speaking of getting laid,” Celia suddenly blurted, though with her volume somewhat muted to keep others from overhearing.

Jake and Laura both looked at her. “Were we speaking about that?” Jake asked.

“Well ... no,” Celia said, “but we should be.”

“Should we?” Laura asked, a little shine in her green eyes. Though she was now well into the third trimester of her pregnancy, the second trimester hormones had still not given up their prominent position.

“We should,” Celia whispered. “I was hoping that maybe the two of you could come over for a little visit after rehearsal today. It is Friday, after all.”

“Yes it is,” Jake said, smiling a little, already starting to feel warm inside. “No need to get up early tomorrow.”

“No real reason not to have a visit, right?” asked Laura.

They looked at each other and exchanged sly smiles. No, there was no real reason not to, those smiles said.

“Perhaps we could pop by for a bit on our way to the airport,” Laura offered, although Malibu was nearly an hour away from Santa Clarita (assuming reasonable traffic, which most certainly could not be assumed on the LA freeways) and the airport in question was only ten minutes away in the opposite direction. “What do you say, sweetie?”

“Yeah,” he said casually. “I think we can make a little side trip for a friendly visit.”

“All right then,” Celia said happily. “It’s a date.”

“I’d better go call Elsa,” Jake said. “Remember what happened the last time we decided to visit without giving her advance notice.”

Laura remembered. Elsa had made a pot roast dinner that had gone uneaten because the people she had prepared it for had decided to eat something else in Malibu. It had not been a pleasant scene when they finally arrived home. You have never really been dressed down until you’ve been dressed down by an angry Nigerian housekeeper who had put food on the table for someone who hadn’t bothered to show up or even call to say they weren’t going to show up.

“Good idea,” Laura said solemnly.

Jake trotted back to the phone and made the call. Elsa listened to him and politely thanked him for letting her know they were not going to be home at the usual time.

“Will you be home at some point this evening?” she asked.

“Oh yes,” Jake said. “We’re still flying back tonight. Celia just invited us over for dinner at her place. We should be back between nine and ten.”

“Very good, Jake,” she said. “There are two dozen of those farm fresh eggs you like and a pound of that Italian sausage in the refrigerator if you want to make breakfast in the morning.”

“Sounds good, Elsa,” Jake said. “Have a good evening and enjoy your weekend off.”

They finished their lunch and then went back to work. Having become a bit burned on working up Journey, they spent the second half of the workday getting familiar with another tune. This one was called When You’re Lonely. It had been introduced to the band only two days before and, while the average listener would likely not be able to pick up on the meaning of the lyrics beyond the fact that it was a testament to moving on from a failed primary relationship to a rebound relationship that had no real hope of lasting, every one of the band members—who knew Celia and her secrets quite well—understood on the first presentation that she was singing about her affair with Suzy the pilot. It was a melancholy piece that evoked strong emotion, especially now, considering the fact that Suzy and Celia had not seen each other in several months. Suzy did not know who Celia had found to replace her, but she knew she had been replaced. Heartbroken, she had accepted a pilot-in-command position in Houston, flying Gulfstreams out of Ellington Field, and had made no attempts at communication with Celia since. The references to the rebound lover in the lyrics were deliberately gender-neutral, which would lead most to conclude she was singing about some nameless guy, but composed with clear affection and love with an unmistakable undertone of sadness.

No one mentioned to Celia that they knew what the tune was about. They did not have to. They simply worked on it professionally, like the musicians they were. Today they progressed beyond the basic acoustic version of the piece and started the process of working it up into what it would eventually be. This was where the teamwork and musical relationship between Celia and Jake truly shined. Celia suggested that the verses of the song remain at the tempo she had composed it and that her twelve-string would remain the primary melodic instrument. Jake agreed that this would work but suggested that for the choruses they go up-tempo and switch to a moderately distorted electric guitar for the melody here, backed by a strong backbeat of drums and bass.

“That could work,” Celia said thoughtfully after pondering this. “Show me what you mean.”

He showed her. He plugged in his Les Paul and spent the better part of twenty minutes working out a suitable translation of the acoustic melody into a distortion riff. Finally, he hit upon something that seemed to work. Coop and Charlie then jumped in and they ran through it a few times until it sounded reasonably like music. Then Celia joined them, singing the lyrics at the new tempo but keeping her own guitar mute.

“I like it,” said Celia with a smile. Since it was her tune, she had the final say. “Let’s work it up a little and see if I keep liking it. If I do, we’ll try to get Liz and Eric in on it somehow.”

“What about me?” asked Laura, who was sitting in a chair, still sipping from her tea, her alto sax still hanging on the rack.

“I don’t know,” Celia said. “I can’t envision any sax on the choruses, but maybe as a secondary melody on the verses?”

“It would have to be a light melody,” Nerdly said sternly. “You don’t want to overpower the guitar.”

“That is a good point,” Jake said, nodding.

“What if I used the soprano sax?” Laura suggested. “Like I did on Blur?”

Celia thought about this for a moment. “That might just work,” she said. “Let’s run through the choruses until we get it down and then we’ll try you out on the verses, Teach.”

“And maybe we can have Eric do some fills on top as well,” Jake suggested.

“Maybe,” Celia said.

They spent the next three hours playing around with the song. They decided that there should be no percussion at all on the verses, just a light bass line to set the rhythm. Laura on the soprano sax did compliment the acoustic guitar melody quite well, as did some fills by Eric on the violin. Liz and her piano, however, did not mix well on the verses and they abandoned that experiment rather quickly. On the heavier choruses, on the other hand, Liz was able to lay down a secondary melody atop the distorted guitar that kept the tune from broaching into the land of hard rock by just the barest of margins. After they settled on the distortion riff, Jake unplugged his guitar and let Little Stevie start working. As always, he perfectly imitated the riff that Jake had composed, the only difference a slight variance of phrasing.

They knocked off for the day just before five o’clock. Everyone stowed their instruments in their accustomed places while the Nerdlys made sure all of the electrical equipment was shut down. Nerdly then gathered up all of the notes and musical scores they had generated that day and scanned them into the computer in the office, where one copy was saved to the hard drive and another copy was saved to a disc that Nerdly would take home with him and put in his safe. The studio was then locked up and secured with the alarm (there was over a hundred thousand dollars worth of musical instruments and audio equipment in there). Everyone said their goodbyes to one another and climbed in their vehicles for their respective commutes home.

Celia deliberately left first in her Mercedes. Jake and Laura deliberately left last in Jake’s truck. They thought they were being discreet and perhaps they were. They need not have bothered, however. By this point, everyone in the band—even Eric—had realized that there was something going on between the Kingsleys and Celia Valdez. No one had overheard any remarks made, any plans being laid down, or any other confirming information. None of them had even talked to each other about their suspicions (except the Nerdlys among themselves). But all had noted the way the three of them always sat together, how they looked at each other, how they whispered to each other at times.

They were fooling no one but themselves.

By this point, Jake and Celia had their own garage door opener and key to Celia’s Malibu house. Jake parked next to the Mercedes and closed the garage door using the opener before either he or Laura stepped out of the truck. Once the door was closed, they made their way into the foyer and down the stairs to the second level. The lights were all off in the lower level, the blinds all drawn. The hallway that led to the master bedroom was lit up. They turned right and headed that way.

In Celia’s bedroom, the covers on the bed had been neatly turned back. The lights were on. Soft music was playing from the sound system. From the master bath, they could hear the sound of the shower running, could smell the steam and the scent of body wash. Both of them began to feel their libidos kick up a few notches.

Laura smiled and looked at her husband. “This still doesn’t feel wrong,” she said.

“No,” he agreed, leaning in and giving her a kiss. “And hopefully it never will.”

Hand in hand, they walked into the master bath. They could see the side profile of a naked Celia Valdez behind the steamy glass of the enclosed shower. She was scrubbing herself with a loofah sponge, currently working on her lower belly. They stepped closer.

“Should we join you in there?” Laura asked, her Nymph voice clearly coming forth. The shower was certainly big enough for all three of them.

“As tempting as that sounds, no,” Celia replied with a giggle. “I’m almost done in here. Hopefully you won’t mind if I don’t wash my hair?”

“I can live with that,” Jake said.

“Me too,” Laura agreed.

Celia laughed. “I ordered a pizza on the way home. It should be here in another five minutes or so. I’ll collect it while you two get showered up.”

“Oh ... okay,” Laura said, giving a naughty look at her husband. “We’ll shower right up.”

“No starting without me,” Celia said, now scrubbing between her legs. “In Casa Valdez, it’s all for one or none for all. Just get clean so we can get dirty.”

“I wasn’t going to do anything,” Laura said with a pout.

“You were going to suck his dick,” Celia said. “Don’t even try to claim otherwise.”

“Just a little,” Laura said.

“It is a good warmup exercise,” Jake added. Laura did give a mean blowjob—always had, always would.

“Save it for the bed,” Celia said. “I will not be denied in my own home.”

They reluctantly agreed to save it for the bed.

The shower door opened and Celia stepped out in all her glory. She looked and smelled incredible. Both of the Kingsleys stared at her nakedness in lustful awe. Though they had both seen her this way multiple times now (Jake one more time than his wife, unbeknownst to her) they never got tired of the view. Celia had a truly magnificent body in all dimensions of the word.

“I left the water running for you,” Celia said as she picked up a large bath towel and began to dry herself off. “Stop gawking at me and get in there.”

“Right,” the Kingsleys said in unison.

They stripped off their clothes, leaving them in a neat pile next to the bathtub. Now it was Celia who was staring, her eyes shifting from Laura’s pregnant body to Jake’s rapidly inflating manhood and then back again.

“Stop gawking and go get that pizza,” Jake admonished as they stepped into the steamy shower.

“Right,” Celia said, putting on a fuzzy white robe over her nudity and tying it tightly around her waist.

The Kingsleys showered quickly, using the large washcloths and the bottle of body wash that smelled like watermelon and cucumbers. They kept their hands and mouths to themselves for the time being. After rinsing, they turned off the shower and stepped out, picking up the two towels that Celia had left for them. They dried off and then walked naked back into the bedroom. Celia’s robe was now hanging on a hook and Celia herself was laying naked on the bed, her fingers idly playing with herself.

“We don’t want to eat the pizza first?” asked Jake.

“No,” Laura said, licking her lips. “We don’t want to eat the pizza first.”

“What a rip,” he said with mock indignation.

They climbed into bed with her, Jake on the left side, Laura on the right, Celia in the middle. They spent a while just kissing and caressing, Jake kissing Celia, Celia kissing Laura, Jake and Laura kissing each other, and then all three of them swirling their tongues together while their hands touched and probed in forbidden places. Laura then spent awhile licking and suckling Celia’s nipples while Jake went down between Celia’s legs and licked her swollen vagina. He kept it up until he managed to pull an orgasm from her.

“All right,” she panted once she recovered from it. “I want to eat some pussy now. Lay down here, Teach.”

“If I must,” Laura said, giving a little mock indignation of her own.

While Celia lay on her belly and licked and sucked between Laura’s legs, Jake went around behind her and raised her hips into the air. He then slid himself into her body from behind. She moaned out her approval of this action. Grasping her hips, he set a steady, deep pace of thrusting, keeping his mental block firmly in place for now.

Soon, all three of them were sweating and reeking of musk. Laura was the next to come, crying out loudly as Celia sucked on her clitoris and fingered her at the same time. After the orgasm, Celia moved up her body, kissing her passionately for a few minutes and then moving back down to suckle her pregnancy swollen nipples. Celia had found that her favorite part of making love to a woman was deep kissing her and touching and sucking on breasts (not that she minded the other aspects) and she got her fill of all of this. Laura reached between their bodies and began to play with Celia’s clitoris. Soon, she was bucking out another orgasm.

“Your turn, sweetie,” Laura panted to Jake. “Come in her! You know what I want to do next!”

Jake did know. Laura’s favorite part of the games they played was licking and sucking his semen out of Celia’s vagina after he deposited it there. He let himself go and fired off inside her body while she was still shuddering out her own climax. The moment he was done, Laura rolled their lover over onto her back and put her face between her legs. Celia sighed contentedly as she felt the soft lips and tongue working on her, as her mind turned over the sheer eroticism and nastiness of what Laura was doing.

“Come up here,” Celia panted, pulling on Jake’s leg. “I want to suck you.”

“Okay,” Jake said agreeably. A moment later, her mouth was on his manhood, slurping their combined juices off and getting him ready for round two.

Once he was back to a full erection—it did not take long—he moved back down the bed and positioned himself behind his wife. He lifted her hips up this time and slid into her body. He and Celia both caressed her swollen belly while he thrust in and out. After doing this for a while, they repositioned again, this time with Jake on his back and Laura mounting him in the female superior position. Celia leaned forward and alternated between kissing Laura’s mouth and suckling her bouncing breasts until Laura came again and Jake was given the go-ahead to finish up. He did so, blasting a second load up into his wife’s body. The three of them then collapsed in a heap onto the mattress, Laura in the middle this time.

They shared a few more kisses and caresses with each other and then Jake looked at the clock. They had been going at it for almost an hour. He felt sleepy but he also felt hungry.

“How about that pizza now?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Celia said, nodding, her face still flushed with excitement. “I seem to have worked up an appetite.”

“Me too,” agreed Laura.

They got out of bed and Celia put her robe back on. Jake and Laura talked about taking a quick shower but decided not to since they were just going to put back on the same clothes they had worn all day. They did decide that they would get in the habit of carrying a change of clothes with them on Fridays.

“Good idea,” Celia said as she watched them get dressed. “This is starting to become an end of the week tradition, isn’t it?”

They agreed that it was. They all went downstairs and tore into the pizza, annihilating two thirds of it in only twenty minutes. By then, it was approaching eight o’clock. There was no discussion about the Kingsleys staying the night. They said their goodbyes, exchanged affectionate kisses with their lover, and then headed for the airport so they could go home.

Laura slept for most of the drive back to the airport. She woke up long enough to strap into the plane and was back to sleep again before he even made it to his cruising altitude of ten thousand feet. She woke up, as always, when she heard the sound of the flaps being deployed just prior to landing.

“You know what I want?” she asked him as they climbed into Jake’s BMW for the drive home.

“What’s that?” he asked.

“One of those big microwave burritos from the 7-11.”

He looked over at her. By now, he was used to her strange and extremely specific cravings. “You just had pizza an hour ago,” he reminded her.

“Ziggy is hungry,” she insisted.

“Ziggy is hungry a lot,” he said. “How about I make you a burrito when we get home? We still have some of that leftover tri-tip from last night, I’m sure there’s a few cans of refried beans in the pantry, I can shred up some of that pepper-jack cheese we have, and Elsa always has tortillas laying around.”

She was shaking her head. “Ziggy wants the burrito you get at 7-11,” she insisted. “The spicy one that comes in the red package.”

“I think Ziggy might be a stoner,” Jake suggested.

“Don’t talk about your daughter that way,” she told him. “Just stop at the 7-11 and get her one of those burritos.”

“Will do,” he said with a sigh. The 7-11 was a bit out of the way, but Ziggy ruled supreme.

They arrived home at 9:45. The house was dark except for the security lights that clicked on as they made the trip from the gate to the garage. There were a few lights on in Elsa’s quarters. This was the usual situation. Elsa’s bedtime was generally 10:00 PM and she would wake up at 6:00 AM, whether it was her worknight or not—and tomorrow and Sunday were her days off.

They made their way into the house and Laura went immediately to the kitchen so she could pop her 7-11 burrito into the microwave and get it cooking. Jake went to the entertainment room and turned on the lights. He began to construct a Captain and coke at the bar so he could mellow a bit for the start of his weekend off. Just as he was putting the bottle of Captain Morgan back in its place, he heard the sound of a key turning in the lock at the side door that led from the outside into the kitchen. A moment later, the alarm panel inside that door began beeping its countdown while it waited for the security code to be input. The code was put in quickly, which meant that it was Elsa who just entered the house and not some deranged fan who wanted to kill them all with a kitchen knife.

He carried his drink back to the kitchen, where Laura was just sitting down in the nook to eat her burrito and drink a large glass of fresh-squeezed lemonade from the large pitcher of it that Elsa always kept in the refrigerator since Ziggy had decided that was her favorite beverage. Elsa was there, dressed in her sweatpants and an oversized pullover shirt that fell to her knees.

“Hey, Elsa,” he greeted. “What’s up?”

She was standing next to Laura and only a few feet from Jake. Jake saw that her nostrils were flaring a bit and that a knowing look was in her eyes. Oops, Jake thought, a little embarrassed. I guess we probably smell a little strongly of sex right now. Hopefully she won’t guess that Celia was involved.

But Elsa made no mention of their odor or what they might have been doing to acquire it. “Sorry to disturb you,” she said, “but the Los Angeles Police called this afternoon.”