Chapter 20: Working It All Out

Malibu, California

October 10, 1997

It had been a long, busy Friday for Jake, Laura, and Celia. The workups for both Celia and Matt had come to an end the day before and it was now time to move the entire operation up to Coos Bay to begin the recording process. The bulk of the day had been spent packing up audio equipment into the moving truck that would take it north to Blake Studios. Packed in with KVA’s equipment was Matt’s equipment and instruments as well—though at least Matt and his band had done their own packing. In the morning, everyone from both bands would be Oregon bound, though most of the crew was going by ground transport and it would take them a few days. The Nerdlys, who wanted to start getting things together at the studio, had already left the day before and would be arriving the next morning. Jake, Laura, Celia, Matt, and Jim, Matt’s paramedic, would be flying up there in Jake’s plane, leaving Whiteman at 11:00 AM. It would be the first time that Laura met Matt in her life. It would also be only the third face-to-face encounter between Matt and Celia since the infamous Grammy Awards ceremony of 1985, the night that the guitarist had gotten into a fight with Miguel, La Diferencia’s bass player and Jake had gotten a black eye from Celia’s brother, Eduardo, who had been trying to punch Matt but missed. It promised to be an interesting trip. Jake was not particularly looking forward to it. Neither was Celia. But it would have been insulting to ask Matt to drive all the way to Oregon when he was one of the primary performers being recorded.

After seeing the equipment safely on its way and turning Celia’s keys and Mercedes over to Coop (he, Charlie, and Eric would be driving it up to Oregon together—a strange combo of their own), the three of them had piled into Jake’s truck and driven back to her Malibu mansion together. They arrived just after sunset and Celia ordered Chinese food to be delivered. While they waited the food to arrive, they all took showers individually to cleanse the grime and sweat of their daily labors from their skin. All dressed in night clothes—Laura a shiny pair of silky green maternity pajamas, Celia a long t-shirt with nothing on underneath, and Jake a pair of sweat shorts and a Harley-Davidson t-shirt. They ate their Chinese food and then cleaned up the mess. And then it was time for bed. Jake and Celia had been eagerly anticipating the usual Friday night threesome all day. The problem was that Laura, swollen, uncomfortable, and cranky in her thirty-fourth week of pregnancy, was not in the mood. This led to a dilemma.

“It’s okay,” Laura insisted to her two lovers. “I am honestly and sincerely telling you two this: Go in the bedroom and fuck each other. I don’t mind.”

“We can’t do it without you there,” Jake insisted. “That is the rule and I think we should stick by it.”

“So ... you want me to just sit in the room and watch you two fuck?” Laura asked. She shrugged dispassionately. “Okay. I can do that if you want.”

“No,” Celia put in. “You have to participate as well. If you were just watching us it would be even more awkward than if we were doing it by ourselves.”

“I have a baby constantly pushing stomach acid up into my throat,” Laura told them. “That same baby has also caused a hemorrhoid in my butthole from the pressure she is putting on my butthole blood circulation. When I lay down, it gets hard to breathe because she is pushing on my diaphragm as well. I’m sorry, guys. I love you both dearly and I enjoy all the sweaty, stinky things we do when we get naked together, but I’m just not feeling up to it tonight.”

They sighed in unison. “All right,” Jake said, resigned. “I guess we’ll just wait for another day.”

“Maybe tomorrow night,” Celia said. “Our first night in the Coos Bay house. That might put you in the mood, Teach.”

“Of course, we’ll have to sneak around and be quiet,” Jake added. “The Nerdlys will be there. They left yesterday, remember? They should already be there when we fly in.”

“And the rest of the band will be there on Monday,” Celia put in. “We’ll have to be even sneakier and quieter once they all move in.”

Laura glared at them. “This is what it’s come down to? A guilt trip?”

“Is it working?” Jake asked hopefully.

She sighed. “You two are insisting that you’re not going to fuck if I’m not involved?” she asked. “Seriously? Even though I’m giving you explicit permission to do it?”

“It wouldn’t be right, Teach,” Celia said. “We have an agreement.”

“It’s all for one or none for all,” Jake said. “You and I can get it on by ourselves, but you and C can’t and me and C can’t. That’s the rule.”

Laura rolled her eyes. “Okay,” she said. “Celia, if I took off my pajama top and let you suck on my boobs while he fucks you, is that an acceptable level of participation?”

Celia and Jake looked at each other and then nodded quickly. They were both, after all, very horny at the moment. “Yeah, that works for me,” Celia said.

“That is clear and unmistakable participation,” Jake added.

“All right,” Laura said, standing up. “Let’s do it then.”

“Hell to the yeah,” Jake said with a smile. He held up a palm to Celia, who slapped him with a high five. “Let’s get to it.”

They got to it. They went to the bedroom and Laura pulled off her pajama top and tossed it on the floor. She laid down on the bed on her back, her head propped up on pillows. Jake and Celia undressed completely. They both spent a few minutes sucking on Laura’s breasts and, of course, this had the predictable effect on her. After Jake went around behind Celia and entered her from the rear, Laura pushed on Celia’s head, urging her further downward.

“You know,” she said, a little breathless now, “I wouldn’t mind if you ate my pussy out just a little bit.”

Celia giggled. “Just a little bit?”

“Just a little bit,” Laura said.

A little bit turned out to be a lot. She managed to lick and suck Laura to two orgasms before Jake fired off inside of her. By that point, Laura was fully in the game. She made Celia lay down on her back and she put her face between her legs to lick up all of Jake’s offering. And that led to Jake’s resurgence. He entered his wife from behind and gave her one more orgasm before firing his second load inside of her.

They collapsed to the bed, Laura in the middle, and stared up at the ceiling as the sweat and juices dried from their skin.

“You know,” Laura said after a few minutes, “we’re going to have to come to some kind of accommodation with this all three of us thing.”

“I thought we accommodated it pretty well just now,” Jake said.

“That’s right,” Celia said with a naughty smile. “You are a pushover for having your nipples sucked, Teach. As soon as we put our mouths on you, you were ours.”

“That is true,” Laura agreed. “But that’s not going to work once Cadence is born. There’s a six-week moratorium on my pussy after that. And if you start sucking my boobs after she comes out, you’re going to get a mouthful of her milk.”

Jake looked over at her, startled. He hadn’t thought about that. “I guess Cadence wouldn’t like it if we drank her milk,” he said.

Celia, however, seemed to be intrigued by that thought. “I wonder what it tastes like,” she pondered, a little shine in her eyes. “Is it perverted for me to think about something like that?”

Laura sighed. “Lactation and out of order pussy aside,” she said, “I’m likely not going to be in the mood as often as the two of you are. I’m going to be tired and sore and worn out at times. Are you just going to go without when that happens?”

“I guess we’ll have to,” Jake said with a shrug.

“Yeah,” Celia agreed. “That’s the way things go.”

“That’s not fair to you two,” Laura said. “You shouldn’t have to go without just because I had a baby and can’t be involved.”

Jake was shaking his head. “We’re not going without anything,” he said. “If Celia wasn’t involved here, I still wouldn’t be getting any for six weeks anyway.”

“And I wouldn’t be getting anything at all,” Celia put in. “We can keep our hands and genitals off each other when you’re not in the mood, Teach. Don’t worry about us.”

She looked from one to the other and then smiled a warm smile. “I really do love you two, you know that?”

“We know,” Jake said, leaning over and giving her a big kiss on the mouth.

“And we love you too,” Celia said, giving her a kiss of her own once Jake was done. She then leaned over Laura’s body a bit more and kissed Jake.

They laid back on the bed. Soon, Laura was drifting off to sleep. Celia curled up against her and began to nod off herself. Jake, though tired, was not quite ready to go to bed just yet. He rolled away from them and put his feet on the floor. He picked up his sweat shorts and Harley shirt from the floor and put them on, not bothering with the underwear. He then quietly left the room and went back downstairs to the family room and the bar. It was still more than twelve hours until he would sit down in the cockpit of his plane. That meant he was good to have a little scotch on the rocks out on Celia’s deck.

On his way to the bar, however, he caught sight of his cellular phone sitting where he had left it on one of the end tables. The little green light was blinking on and off, letting him know that he had a missed call. He sighed and changed direction, wondering what was happening now. Another Matt incident? Some snafu with the equipment or one of the musicians? Had Coop crashed Celia car? Had Little Stevie and Liz crashed Jake’s car? There were not many people who had his cell phone number. And those that did rarely called with good news—especially not after nine o’clock at night.

He picked up the phone and flipped it open, looking at the screen to see who had called him. It was Jill Yamashito, his accountant. Now why would she be calling on a Friday night? He dialed up the voicemail number and put the phone to his ear. This did not shed any light on the subject. Jill’s message was simply a request for him to give her a call as soon as possible.

He dropped the phone into the pocket of his sweats and continued his trip to the bar. Only after he had a triple scotch on the rocks in hand and his butt on one of the deck chairs overlooking the dark beach did he flip the phone open again. He navigated the contacts list to Jill’s home number and pushed the send button. About twenty seconds later, the phone began to ring in his ear.

“This is Jill,” her voice said after the fourth ring.

“Hey, Jill. Jake. Just returning your call.”

“Hi, Jake,” she said, her voice neutral, as usual. “Thanks for calling back. Sorry it’s so late. Where are you?”

“In Malibu at Celia’s place,” he said. “We’re staying the night here and then flying to Oregon tomorrow morning to get settled in.”

“Oh...” she said slowly. “That’s right. I forgot you were leaving tomorrow.”

“What’s up?” he asked her. “We got some shit going down, or what?”

“Oh ... no, no shit going down,” she said. “It’s just that that prospective buyer for your old plane—the Chancellor—that I told you about a few weeks ago ... do you remember?”

“Yes, I remember,” Jake said. Jill had been trying to unload his Chancellor ever since he had closed the deal on the Avanti. Selling a high-end used plane, however, was not as easy as selling a car or a house. It was a perpetual buyer’s market since one had to wait for the person or entity who was interested in that particular aircraft to appear out of the ether. “The Korean dude, right?”

“That’s right,” she said. “Jae Luc. He’s a structural engineer from Reno. He specializes in casino construction. I’ve talked to him multiple times now and he is very interested in the Chancellor. He wants to fly out and have a look at it soon.”

“Well, have him come on out,” Jake said. “It’s just sitting there in the hangar at Oceano airport. I take it up once a month or so just to keep it from rotting.” And, though the Chancellor was quite tame and quite slow compared to the Avanti, Jake still enjoyed flying it. There was a lot of nostalgia connected to that plane.

“That’s just the thing,” Jill said slowly, her voice uncharacteristically hesitant. “I kind of told him that ... uh ... he would get to meet you when he came out to see it.”

“You told him that?” Jake asked. “Why would I need to do that? We just need to give Dave at the airport forty bucks and he will open up the hangar for him and can even pull the plane out so he can inspect it.”

“That is true,” Jill said, “but...”

“And I have copies of all of the maintenance records stored in the plane just so a buyer can look them over,” Jake added.

“I know that,” she said, “but he really would like to meet you. He’s a fan of yours.”

“He is?”

“He is,” she said. “He told me that he’s seen you in concert multiple times, both with Intemperance and when you performed with Gordon. He was also at the Tsunami Sound Festival for both nights. He is really interested in the aircraft, partially because it belongs to you, and I think that having you meet him and talk to him about the plane might help clinch the deal.”

Jake felt that Jill was being truthful about this, but he was also detecting something else in her tone, something she was not telling him. He smiled. “Do you have the hots for this dude, Jill?” he asked.

“What? No, of course not!” she said, perhaps a little too aggressively. “We’ve never even met before. I’ve only talked to him on the phone.”

“Is he married?” Jake asked.

“Divorced,” she said. “For more than eight years now. He has a ten-year-old son that he has joint custody of.”

Jake chuckled.

“What?” she asked, clearly exasperated.

“You talked about his marital status and child custody arrangements while discussing the sale of my aircraft with him?”

“It came up in conversation,” she said. “Are you going to be able to do this at some point, or not?”

He chuckled again. It was just so enjoyable to hear Jill flustered. “All right,” he said. “Laura has an OB appointment next Friday afternoon at two o’clock. We’re flying down for it and then staying through the weekend. Can your engineer make it out on Saturday?”

“I’ll have to check with him, but that shouldn’t be a problem,” Jill said. “He owns a Cessna 172 currently and told me he can fly directly to Oceano whenever is convenient for you.”

“Well, pencil it in then,” Jake said. “It’ll be sad to finally sell that old girl, but also happy since someone will be flying her regularly again.”

“It’s just an object, Jake,” she said, not for the first time. “It’s not a he or a she. It’s an asset that is currently costing you more than a thousand dollars a month in storage, maintenance, and insurance fees.”

“I suppose,” Jake said with a sigh. “Just give me a call when you have the time nailed down. Oh ... and not too early please. We’ll really want to sleep in on our Saturday after a week of getting up early.”

“Understood,” she said.

A limousine picked up Matt and Jim from the Granada Hills home at 10:30 AM the next morning. Matt was a bit hungover, like usual, and dressed in a pair of faded jeans and a white t-shirt that showed two stick figures engaging in rear entry intercourse and had the motto “FUCK YO MAMA!” prominently displayed above that. He carried the travel bag that he used out on tour with him. In his shirt pocket was a Marlboro pack that contained eighteen filtered cigarettes and two tightly rolled joints. Jim was dressed in jeans and a more conservative t-shirt (his featured a picture of Bart Simpson on it) and he carried his own travel bag plus the football that contained all of the emergency medical supplies he would need to treat Matt if he went into some life-threatening cardiac arrythmia.

The trip to Whiteman Airport took only about fifteen minutes. The limo parked in front of the general aviation terminal. Out on the tarmac, Jake’s airplane was already parked, a fuel truck connected to it by a hose. Jake, Celia Valdez, and Jake’s old lady were all standing around near the open door of the plane. Matt could not help but admire the aircraft. He had heard tales about how the residents near this airport and the one in San Luis Obispo were always complaining about the noise it made, but he had never seen an actual picture of the plane. It was sleek and cool looking, with the hammerhead wings on the nose and the backward facing engines in the rear.

He felt a little stab of jealousy that his former bandmate could afford something as expensive as that, but fought it down. He had been working closely with Jake the past month—an experiment that was turning out to be much more successful than either of them could really have hoped for in the beginning—and if there was one thing he had reluctantly come to acknowledge, it was that Jake was a hard worker. He had seamlessly moved back and forth between two projects underway, both of which were operating under a hard deadline, and had managed to keep both on the rails and moving along through sheer force of will. And he had not been a prick about it, at least not with Matt. He had come to their sessions, listened to what they had, made suggestions in a polite manner, and then let Matt and the band figure out the best way to implement those suggestions. He had never once insisted on a change or modification to a tune if Matt himself strongly disagreed with it. And Matt, in turn, had made his best effort to listen and fairly evaluate each modification suggested instead of hating it immediately by default. All in all, he could not help but feel that his music was being positively enhanced and that this might be his best CD yet. Jake had gotten better at producing over the years and Matt had gotten better at listening to advice.

He and Jim got out of the limo and walked over to the plane, bags in hand. Jake came over to greet him, his old lady walking with him. He let his eyes appraise the bitch that Jake had married and knocked up. He had seen pictures of her, of course, and knew that she was a hot little spinner, but this was his first time actually meeting her in the flesh. And even though she was quite obviously in an advanced state of pregnancy, and even though he was most definitely not into pregnant chicks, he had to admit that she still looked good. Though her stomach was sticking out in front of her and she kind of waddled when she walked, her face was still very cute, very wholesome looking, and the rest of her body was still shapely and hot. Her tits were even bigger than the pictures he had seen suggested they would be. Maybe that was because she was knocked up. He had heard before that a bitch’s tits got bigger when that happened.

“Matt,” Jake greeted. “You ready to fly?”

“I’m always ready to fly,” Matt told him. “You should know that shit.”

Jake gave a polite chuckle and then put his arm on the redheaded bitch’s shoulder. “This is Laura,” he introduced. “Laura, the rather infamous Matt Tisdale.”

“Nice to meet you,” she said, holding out her right hand. It was a dainty hand, but not a manicured one. Her nails were short and unpainted and even had a few chips in them. He realized that this was not because of lack of femininity on her part, but because she was a professional saxophonist who had been playing a lot recently. Pushing those keys all the time probably played hell on a bitch’s nails.

“Nice to meet you too,” he said, politely enough, shaking with her. Again, he noted that her fingertips were not soft like a woman’s, but calloused like someone who used them for a living. He wondered if that felt weird to Jake when she gave him a handjob. It would almost feel like a dude was pumping the shaft. Oh well ... to each their own. He broke the handshake and then turned to Jim. “This is my man, Jim,” he told Kingsley’s bitch. “He’s a paramedic. He hangs out with me in case I need him.”

“I see,” she said with a nod, asking no questions. She shook hands with Jim and told him it was nice to meet him.

By this point, Celia had stepped forward. Matt took an even longer look at her. True, she was a bitch extraordinaire, but goddamn if she wasn’t hot! She was dressed in jeans and a white blouse that showed off that premium rack of hers like no fucking tomorrow. Her hair was tied up in a ponytail and she had only a light coat of lip gloss on, but her face was still one that a man just wanted to nut on.

“Celia,” he greeted. “How are you today?”

“Feeling good,” she said, her face keeping its neutral expression. “Ready to get to work.”

“Fuckin A,” Matt said with a nod. He then made the official introductions between Celia and Jim. They shook hands.

“I really enjoy your music,” Jim told her.

“Thank you,” Celia said. She too asked no questions about why Matt had a paramedic traveling with him and staying with him in Oregon.

“Suckup,” Matt whispered to Jim when Celia turned away and headed back over to the plane.

“All right,” Jake said. “Let’s go over and get you two and your baggage weighed.”

Jake had explained yesterday that this was a necessary part of riding in his plane. “Let’s do it,” he said.

“I trust you adhered to my rule about cocaine in your baggage?” Jake asked him.

“Yes,” he said sourly. “There is no cocaine in my bag or in Jim’s.” And this was true. He had sent six grams of uncut Bolivian shit in one of his guitar cases that had gone on the equipment truck, but there was not so much as a flake in the bag he was flying with.

“Excellent,” Jake said.

“Do you want to check?” Matt asked defiantly.

Jake looked him up and down for a moment and then shook his head. “No,” he said. “I trust you.”

Matt nodded. He then patted his shirt pocket. “I do have a couple of doobs with me though. Is it cool if we burn once we’re up in the air?”

“No,” Jake said without hesitation. “It is not cool.”

“Aww, come on, dude,” he pleaded. “I won’t be a Bogart! There’s enough for everyone.”

“The FAA frowns upon the hotboxing of an aircraft in flight,” Jake said. “And Laura’s OB frowns upon her being in a hotboxed aircraft in flight.”

“Oh ... yeah, I guess,” Matt said with a frown. When had Jake turned into such a fucking stickler for rules? “Well, is there somewhere around here that Jim and I can burn before we go up? If I’m going to fly in a badass plane like this, I gotta be stoned.”

Jake sighed. “Let’s do the weigh-in and then you can go around behind the hangar complexes and light up,” he said. “But make it fast. And don’t let anyone see you.”

“Right,” Matt said, happy again. “You got it.”

They put their bags on the scale and then themselves. Jake wrote down the readings on a piece of paper on a little clipboard and then he opened up the cargo compartment at the front of the plane and began loading the baggage in. Matt offered to help but Jake declined, telling him it had to be put in in a specific way. Something about balance and shifting or some shit like that. He and Jim then took their walk, finding a secluded haven behind the hangar complexes. They burned one of the joints down to the roach, which Matt then popped in his mouth and swallowed. By the time they made it back to the airplane, both of them were cataclysmically stoned and ready for adventure.

They boarded the plane and Jake directed them to the two forward-facing seats just behind the cockpit. The Valdez bitch was sitting in the copilot’s seat and Kingsley’s bitch was sitting in one of the rear-facing seats behind Jim and Matt’s seats. This was a bit surprising.

“You know how to fly the plane?” Matt asked Celia.

“I do not,” she said, “but this is where I always sit when I fly with Jake.”

“I see,” Matt said slowly, though he did not. He turned to Laura. “Don’t you want to sit up here though, close to your old man?”

“It doesn’t matter where I sit,” she said. “I’ll be asleep before we even hit cruising altitude.”

“Really?” he asked.

“Really,” she said. “I always sleep on planes. It’s a good way to pass the time.”

And, sure enough, she was right. They roared into the sky fifteen minutes later, climbing steeply and heading north. And before they even cleared the mountains north of the San Fernando valley, Kingsley’s bitch was sound asleep in her seat, her hands resting on her swollen stomach, her head bobbing up and down in the turbulence.

It was a little bumpy until they got out over the San Joaquin valley and then the ride smoothed out. By that point, they were at cruising altitude, which Jake said was thirty-two thousand feet. Far below, Matt could see the agriculture fields and the little thin black line that was probably I-5. Pretty cool shit. And then something else occurred to him.

“Hey, Jake,” he said. “It’s okay to talk now, right?”

“Yeah,” Jake said. “We’re up above ten thousand and the autopilot has the plane. What’s up?”

“I noticed you have what appears to be a bar back there,” he said.

“Yes,” Jake said. “It’s one of the amenities that comes with a four point seven-five-million-dollar plane.”

“Damn,” Matt said, impressed. Four point seven-five million fucking bones? Jake really was doing well. “That’s some serious coin. Anyway, that bar ... is that for anyone?”

“Help yourself, Matt,” Jake said. “I had it stocked with fresh ice this morning with you in mind. Just be sure to re-secure the bottles after you pour.”

Matt smiled and unbuckled himself, happy once again. “You’re all right, Jake,” he said.

“I try,” Jake said.

As soon as Matt got up, Jim unbuckled and joined him.

The plan that Jake had come up with that would hopefully give the KVA/Matt Tisdale relationship the greatest chance of successfully making it through the grueling process of recording and mixing a CD was simple. They would keep Matt and his people as separated from Celia and her band as possible. They would work in two separate studios at Blake Studios, with Jake and the Nerdlys alternating days between them as necessary. And, most importantly, Matt and his band would stay in their own rental house in Coos Bay, miles away from where Jake, Celia, Laura, and the others were staying.

The house that KVA was renting for Matt, Steve, Austin, Corban, and Jim was a five bedroom that sat on beachfront property just north of the Coos Bay Bridge. It was not on a cliff, which meant there was a small danger of a tsunami washing it away, and the larger danger of one of the drunken and/or stoned bandmembers drowning in the ocean, but KVA and Matt decided to take their chances with this. The best feature was that it was isolated, butting up against state park territory, which meant the nearest neighbor was more than a quarter of a mile away. Though it was costing KVA twelve hundred dollars a week for them to stay there (and God only knew what kind of damages they were going to have to pay for when the fivesome eventually moved back out), Jake considered it money well-spent.

Austin, Steve, and Corban joined Matt at the rented house on Monday night after spending two days driving up in Austin’s Chevy Suburban. They would use that vehicle for transportation during their stay. On Tuesday afternoon, the five of them drove to the studio to tour it for the first time. Obie—who was recording his own new CD in the third studio (and would make occasional use of the Nerdlys himself as part of his agreement to allow Matt and Celia use of the other two simultaneously)—met them when they arrived.

“It’s good to meet you, Matt,” Obie greeted. “I’ve been an admirer of your guitar work for years.”

“Thanks,” Matt told him. “And I have to say, your music doesn’t suck ass as much as most country music does.”

Obie chuckled. “How often does a man get a compliment like that?” he asked.

Matt and the boys were quite impressed with the studio, which was still one of the most advanced in the world when it came to digital recording. They were also impressed with Obie, who took them out for a night of drinking on the town after the tour. All five of them were hungover and out of sorts when they reported for duty at 9:00 AM the next morning for their first session.

Naturally, the vast majority of that first day was taken up just setting up the equipment and the microphones and sound-checking and adjusting everything until it almost (but not quite) met the satisfaction of the Nerdlys, at which point Jake would step in and gently call an end to the adjustments. The most actual recording they got done that day was the first bass track of the first verse of the first tune out of the ten that had been picked for the project. And even that was just the preliminary recording, just enough to help set the drum track for the verses portion.

The next day, the Nerdlys went through the same process with Celia and her band while Jake worked with Matt and his band in the other studio. Under Jake’s direction, they managed to work their way through all of the bass tracks on the verses for the first tune and the barest beginnings of the drum tracks. His interaction with Matt remained professional and respectful and Matt returned that respect without argument or even vibes of resentment or discontent. But then again, they were only working on the rhythm tracks. If there was going to be issues, it was going to be during the recording of the vocals and the guitar tracks.