Chapter 3a

In Escrow

Los Angeles, California

January 17^th, 1987

11:30 AM

The yellow 1986 Volkswagen Cabriolet wound its way up the narrow two-lane road into the hills below Griffith Park. Rachel Madison, dressed in a pair of designer jeans and a silk blouse from Buffington's on Rodeo Drive, was behind the wheel. Jake Kingsley, wearing a pair of Levis and a long-sleeved pullover shirt, sat in the passenger seat, directing her on where to turn and where to go straight. They were on their way to see the house that Jake was seriously considering buying. Jake's temperamental Corvette was currently in the shop — again — the victim of a broken front-end strut this time. He could have taken a limo up for the second viewing of the residence or he could have gotten Diane Brown — his realtor — to drive him up, but he'd asked Rachel to pick him up instead. It was Saturday, a day they both had off from their normal obligations, and he wanted a woman's perspective on the house.

Since New Year's Even they had been seeing each other fairly regularly, their respective schedules permitting. As promised, she had broken up with her fourth year med student boyfriend, leaving him in shocked tears, she'd told him with a small amount of disgusted amusement. Jake had taken her out every Friday and Saturday night since, escorting her to the Flamingo Club twice, to Flamer's Steakhouse (where Mindy Snow had casually broken up with him once upon a time), and to several shopping excursions to Beverly Hills. Rachel was good company and he enjoyed being with her. She was intelligent, able to hold a decent conversation, had a sense of humor, and was very attractive. She seemed to enjoy his company as well — even when he wasn't spending hundreds of dollars on her.

So far their relationship was in holding pattern as far as physical intimacy went. They held hands when they were together and they kissed quite frequently when they were alone, even going so far as to have heated make-out sessions when the mood seemed right. So far, however, she had fended off each and every one of Jake's attempts to go further. She would push his hand away when he tried to slide it beneath her shirt. She would squirm out from beneath him if he tried to lay her down on a horizontal surface. Her typical explanation was, "I'm not ready for that yet."

Jake remained mostly good-natured about her unwillingness to go to the next level of their relationship. It was actually somewhat of a novelty. Most women he slept with opened their legs to him within minutes, hours at the most. Having to work at the game, feeling the thrill of the chase for once, made him feel almost like a normal American boy chasing a normal American girl.

"Turn here," Jake said. "This is the street."

Rachel turned onto the twisting, tree-lined street. "Nottingham Drive, huh?" she asked, eyeing the widely spaced houses that were set back on both sides of the road. "Sounds very Robin Hood."

"Matt will say it sounds faggy," Jake replied.

"He does have rather strong opinions of that subject," she said.

"Matt has rather strong opinions about almost everything," Jake said. "Slow up a little. It's coming up."

"Which one?" she asked.

"That one." He pointed.

The house in question was bigger than most of the others on the street. It was two stories tall with a large attic area that was big enough to qualify as a third story. It was fifty years old, of classic Spanish Colonial architecture, and surrounded by a lot that was just under an acre in size. A wide, well cared for front lawn stretched from the porch to the street, broken only by a circular driveway and an ornate marble fountain. Sitting off to the right was a four car detached garage.

"Wow," Rachel said. "It's huge."

"Thirty-six hundred square feet," Jake said. He had done his homework on houses in the past month. "That doesn't include the attic, which is another nine hundred square feet. Of all the places I've looked at I like this one the best. It's got the best location, the best view, and the best square footage for what they're asking for it."

"I think I love it already," Rachel said.

She pulled into the circular driveway and parked her car behind the gray Mercedes that belonged to Diane Brown. Diane worked for the same company Jake rented his current condo from. She specialized in Hollywood Hills and Beverly Hills properties and, as such, was accustomed to dealing with rich and/or famous clients. She had a knack for finding out exactly what her clients' needs and/or wants were and matching them up with the properties currently listed. In Jake's case she knew that he loathed driving in traffic and wanted to stay within fifteen miles or so of Hollywood but that a prestigious location was not that important to him. She had steered him away from Beverly Hills, where the money he was willing to spend would have gone more toward a 90210 zip code than the house and lot itself. The same amount in Beverly Hills would have netted him a house and lot half the size of what he was now looking at.

Diane was a smartly dressed, attractive woman in her mid-forties. She stepped out of her car when Rachel parked behind her and met them at the walkway that led up to the front door. Jake introduced the two women to each other and they shook hands.

"So you like this one, huh?" Diane asked. "It's a good value. A beautiful place with lots of amenities and the owners are quite anxious to unload it."

"Of all the houses you've showed me so far, this one has the most of what I'm looking for," Jake told her. "It's reasonably private, it has a big lot, it has a view, and it's close to Hollywood. I just wanted to take one more look at it and have Rachel give it the once-over as well."

"So you're thinking of putting in a bid?" Diane asked hopefully.

"I am doing more than thinking of it," Jake said.

"Well then," she said. "Let's go look it over, shall we?"

She retrieved a key from a lockbox attached to the water pipe and let them in through the double doors. The owners — a cardiac surgeon and his wife — had divorced three months before and were selling the house as part of the settlement. Both of them had long since moved out and taken all of their furnishings with them.

They walked through the interior. The downstairs contained a formal living room, a formal dining room, a regular living room, an entertainment room complete with mahogany wet bar, a huge, fully equipped kitchen, a laundry room, and one of the five bedrooms. All of this level was covered in mahogany hardwood flooring that had been polished to a mirror sheen. The entertainment room looked out to the south, out over the Los Feliz section of Los Angeles, which sat below the hills. A circular staircase led up to the second floor where the other four bedrooms, including the nine hundred square foot master suite, were located. There was also an office that looked out over the back yard. All of these rooms were covered in wall-to-wall thick pile Berber carpeting.

"I think I can live here," Jake said as they finished the house tour.

"It's gorgeous," Rachel beamed, her eyes agog at everything.

"Come out and look at the back yard," he told her. "That's what I like the most."

The back yard was actually a side yard since the back of the house was right up against the edge of the hill looking downward over the view. Jake led her out onto the balcony outside the master suite and over to a redwood staircase that led to the west side of the lot. Immediately at the bottom was an oversized swimming pool and a built-in hot tub surrounded by a large expanse of stamped concrete deck upon which a huge brick barbeque and a covered wet bar had been constructed. Beyond the patio was a third of an acre of Kentucky bluegrass. Privacy hedges formed a perimeter around the entire yard, preventing any of the adjacent properties from viewing what occurred out here.

"I've never seen a house like this before, Jake," Rachel told him. "It's like something out of a fairy tale."

"Yeah, it'll do for a starter home," Jake replied. He turned to Diane. "They want nine hundred grand for this place?"

Rachel let out a little gasp as she heard the price. Diane and Jake both ignored her.

"That is the list price," Diane said. "I am inclined to believe, however, that if you were to offer eight-fifty and a quick escrow they would probably accept."

"Hmm," he said, considering. "I like the house. Why don't you put in that bid for eight-fifty and the quickest possible escrow, all dependent on a satisfactory appraisal, of course."

"Of course," she said. "I'm sure it's no problem for you, Mr. Kingsley, but have you secured financing yet?"

"Not yet," Jake said. "But my accountant and my lawyer both tell me that with my income and my bank balance if I put twenty percent down the banks will be falling all over themselves to write a loan for me."

"I'm sure they speak the truth," Diane said, a smile on her face. She was already tasting the $8500 commission on the sale.

"However," Jake said, a hint of warning in his voice, "there is one thing I should mention."

"What's that?" Diane asked.

"I really hate it when people try to take advantage of me," he said. "I will be having real estate experts and lawyers going over every detail of any agreement. If anyone tries to screw me, even in a small way, I will void this deal immediately and I will never again do business with whomever tried to do the screwing."

"I assure you," Diane said, a little taken aback, "that I only deal on the up and up and I make sure my clients do the same."

"Then we should have no problems," Jake said, smiling. "You start writing up the bid when you get back to your office and let me know how the owners respond. You know how to get hold of me."

Jake led Rachel on a quick tour of the back yard, showing her the rose garden near the back (the bushes were all dormant and clipped down to almost nothing this time of year) and the patio attractions. After, they went back into the house and exited through the front door. They said their goodbyes and nice-to-meet-you's to Diane and walked back over to Rachel's Cabriolet.

"Are you sure you don't want to drive?" she asked, offering him the keys.

"Quite sure," he said, taking them and opening the driver's door for her. "No heterosexual male should ever be seen driving a Cabriolet under any circumstances."

"Where does it say that?" she asked with a giggle as she sat down behind the wheel.

"It doesn't say it anywhere," Jake told her. "It's instinctive heterosexual knowledge, imparted by the Creator from birth."

He came around and sat in the passenger seat of the small car. She started the engine and dropped it into gear, back toward Los Feliz Boulevard.

"Are you really going to buy that house?" she asked him.

"I really think I am," he confirmed.

"And you're going to put down twenty percent? That's like a hundred and seventy thousand dollars."

He shrugged. "I can either put it down on a house or I can give it to the IRS next year."

"That's just amazing," she said, her eyes shining almost hungrily. "That's more money than I've made my entire life."

Jake shrugged again, not wanting to talk about his finances. Such conversations made him uncomfortable. "How about some music?" he asked to change to the subject. He reached for the stereo in the dash. "Do you have a tape in this thing?"

"Uh... well... yes," she said, blushing a little, "but I don't think you'll really like it."

"You'd be surprised what I like," he said, pushing the play button. "Let's hear what you got."

It turned out to be La Diferencia's last album that was stuck in there. The final minute of Lovers In Love — the biggest hit from that album and the song that had been nominated for a Grammy this year — was playing.

"You can change it if you want," Rachel said. "There are some more tapes in the glove box there."

"This is fine," Jake told her. "I didn't know you liked La Diferencia."

"I thought it might bother you if I told you," she said shyly.

"Bother me? Why would you think that?"

"Well... you got in that fight with them that one time at the Grammy awards so I figured you hated them."

"That was Matt's gig," Jake said. "I just got caught in the crossfire. I actually think Celia Valdez has a beautiful voice and is an extraordinary acoustic guitarist. She was a very charming lady as well."

"Really?" Rachel asked. "What was she like?"

"She's tall, almost like an Amazon. She's very pretty and well spoken. She has a good sense of humor and a thick accent. She was able to hold a conversation and even give me back some of the shit I was giving her. She also put Matt quite nicely in his place, something that not many people are able to do."

"Wow," Rachel said. "Sometimes it's just hard for me to believe that I'm really going out with a famous person, you know? And here you are talking about talking to Celia Valdez, one of my favorite singers of all time, and I know you're not making it up. I mean... you've like really done that."

"I've really done that," he confirmed. "It wasn't a big deal. She's just a normal person like I am."

Rachel laughed. "You're not a normal person, Jake," she said. "Normal people don't plop down a hundred and seventy thousand dollars on a house."

"Yeah," Jake said, uncomfortable again. "I suppose."

Lovers In Love faded away and the next track started. It was a song Jake had never heard before as he'd only listened to the La Diferencia tunes that were played on the radio. It caught his attention immediately because it started with a fast, Latin-based acoustic guitar session that was fingerpicked out into a rich, melodious intro. It settled into a rhythm that was half strumming, half fingerpicking as the drums kicked in and set up a slow, military-like backbeat.

"Hey," said Jake, reaching to the volume knob and turning it up a few notches. "This isn't bad. She really can play the guitar."

"I've only heard this song a few times," Rachel said. "I usually listen to the ones they play on the radio and fast forward past this one. It's got a weird name. Something Mexican or something and they never say the title in the song."

The song continued and Celia began to sing, her soft contralto accompanying the instruments and speaking of men marching off to a battle, of muskets and gunpowder, of friends falling and others leaving them where they lie to continue on. It was a riveting piece that was completely unlike any other La Diferencia song he'd heard. He began to wonder about this.

"Do you have the cassette cover in here somewhere?" he asked.

"In the glove box there," she said. "You really like this song?"

"Strange but true," he replied. "It has a depth to it that's missing in most of their other tunes." He opened the glove box and dug around through an untidy collection of loose cassette tapes and empty and full cassette covers. He finally found the La Diferencia cover near the bottom of the pile. He opened it and pulled out the insert, turning it over to where the tracks were listed and credited. He looked at the track listed after Lovers In Love. Carabobo was the name of the tune. Rachel was right. They hadn't said that word a single time in either the verses or the chorus. He looked beneath the title and saw that words and lyrics were credited to Celia Valdez, one of only two tunes on the entire album she had written. The rest were credited to a variety of male names, none of whom were band members.

"Celia Valdez actually wrote this song," Jake said.

"Doesn't she write all of the songs?" Rachel asked. "I heard she was the talent behind the band."

"She is," Jake said, "but they don't write most of their music. It's assigned to them by Aristocrat Records. All of the songs you hear on the radio are written by record company songwriters who specialize in catchy pop music."

"They seem to do a good job, don't they?"

Jake bit back the reply that rose to his lips: To the musically unsophisticated, I'm sure it seems that way. Instead, he said, "Yeah, they're not bad. They certainly sell a lot of singles, but this song here, this Carabobo thing, this is real music. Listen to that guitar work. Listen to the mixing. The vocals are first rate with much more depth then on the pop songs and the lyrics are actually meaningful instead of a sappy, feel-good catch phrases repeated over and over."

Most of this seemed to pass over Rachel's head. "I just like a good song," she said, perhaps a little defensively.

"Me too," Jake said, listening to the ending of Carabobo. It was a strumming slow down of the guitar work and the drums while Celia repeated the final lyrics several times: "So we can be free, so we can be freeeeeeeeee."

"Do you think I can borrow this tape?" Jake asked her when the next song — one of the pop staples from the album — started.

"Uhh... well, sure," she said.

"Do you have the other La Diferencia tapes too?"

She gave him a strange look. "Sure," she said. "They're back there in that case in the back seat."

Jake reached behind him and grabbed the cassette case she had. He opened it and dug around, noting that her musical tastes were indeed a bit simplistic — she seemed to favor country and pop — and that she didn't have a single Intemperance tape in her collection. He found the other two La Diferencia tapes and quickly opened them up and gutted them of their inserts. He opened them up and read over the tracks, seeing that two songs on the first album and one on the second had been penned by Celia Valdez. He wanted to listen to those tunes and see if they were as good as Carabobo had been. Could it be that he'd perhaps underestimated Ms. Valdez's talents a little?

"So... you seem real interested in Celia Valdez," Rachel said.

"I wouldn't exactly say interested," he said. "I'm just surprised that she actually seems to have some musical depth. I didn't even know she composed."

"Have you ever... you know... gone out with her?"

He laughed. "No," he said. "I've never gone out with her. The only time I've ever met her is at the Grammy award party and the awards themselves back in 1985. She's our closest competition in terms of album sales and I'm just curious about what makes her tick. You can tell a lot about a person by what kind of songs they write. My guess is that if Aristocrat ever gave her full artistic license instead of feeding her a bunch of crap songs she'd wipe us right off the chart."

This seemed to make Rachel feel a little better. "She is really good," she said. "I've loved La Diferencia ever since their first album." She blushed a little. "I used to have the biggest crush on Eduardo Valdez. Those Latin features, that accent, and that little goatee he used to have." She shivered. "Mmm, what a hunk."

"If not a particularly great guitar player," Jake said.

"You don't think he's good?" she asked.

"Well, he knows where to put his hands on the instrument," Jake said. "I'll give him that."

"Everybody can't be as good as you and Matt, Jake," she said.

"You do have a point there," he said. "Listen, maybe you'd like to meet them?"

"Meet who?" she asked. "La Diferencia? Can you arrange that?"

"They'll be at the Grammy awards and the pre-Grammy party next month. And it just so happens that I don't have a date for either occasion."

Her mouth dropped open and she looked at him, stunned. "Are you asking what I think you're asking?"

"If you think I'm asking you to the Grammies, then yes, that's what I'm asking."

"Oh... wow, Jake," she said. "Are you serious? You mean go to the Grammies with you and be on TV and everything?"

"I am serious," he said. "And before you answer, you need to think about this a little bit. If you go, you are going to be on TV and the whole world is going to know you're dating me. Your picture is going to show up on tabloids and in the entertainment magazines. Reporters are going to be digging into your life, trying to find out everything there is to know about you so they can print it. If there's anything unflattering about your life, they'll probably find it and print that too. There will be paparazzi hanging out in front of your restaurant and snapping pictures of you. You will no longer be anonymous."

"Wow," she said again, overwhelmed.

"I won't be mad if you say no," he told her. "I'll understand completely. Being famous is not all it's cracked up to be."

"No no," she said, shaking her head strenuously. "I want to go. I'd love to go. Oh my God! What would I wear though? I mean, I know how to dress up and everything but I don't have anything for the Grammies." She screamed a little. "Oh my god! The Grammies."

"As I said," Jake told her, "think it over a little bit. I don't need an answer right away. And don't worry about what to wear. If you go, the various dressmakers of Hollywood will be falling all over themselves to be the one to outfit you for both the party and the ceremony. They'll give you whatever dress you want just so it can be seen on TV."

"They'll give me the dress?" she asked, astounded. "You mean for free?"

"If you were a celebrity of some sort they'd actually pay you to wear it," he assured her. "Don't worry about wardrobe."

"Yes, Jake," she said. "I'd love to go." She shook her head. "Oh my God. I can't believe this. Wait until Maureen hears about this. She is gonna be soooo jealous!"

She chattered on and on for the rest of the drive, asking him a thousand questions, making a thousand spontaneous statements, her mood going from elation to nervousness and then back to elation again. When they pulled up in front of Jake's building he invited her up for lunch. She accepted.

"I need a beer," Jake said as soon as they entered the condo. "Do you want anything?"

"Just a diet soda if you have one," she said. "You're really serious about this Grammy thing, right? You're not just fucking with me?"

"I'm not just fucking with you," he assured her, taking a bottle of beer and a can of Diet Coke out of the bar refrigerator. "How does turkey sandwiches sound for lunch? I just happen to have all the ingredients in the kitchen."

"It sounds good," she said absently. "Can I call Mom? I really need to tell her about this."

He handed her the can of soda. "Call away," he told her. "I'll be in the kitchen. Turn on the TV or the music if you want."

He went into the kitchen, leaving her to make her phone call. He cracked his beer open and had a large drink and then began to remove the roast turkey he'd cooked two nights ago from the refrigerator. He prepared immaculate sandwiches on sourdough rolls, garnished them with chips from the pantry, and then carried the whole works into the dining room. By this point Rachel was off the phone and Jake was on his second beer.

"Mom is so excited about this," Rachel said. "Can she be with me through the dress fitting thing? I'd love to have her there."

"I don't see why not," Jake said.

They ate their lunch and then retired to the couch in the entertainment room to watch a movie on the VCR. It wasn't long before they were in each other's arms, engaged in a heated make-out session.

This time when Jake put his hand beneath her shirt, she didn't stop him. Encouraged, he slowly unbuttoned her four hundred dollar blouse and popped the snap on her matching front-loader bra. The perky breasts that he'd admired for so long beneath her Brannigan's T-shirts at the restaurant were now visible to him in all their majestic glory. They really were worth the wait, he concluded as he gazed upon them for the first time. Nice, well-rounded C-cups capped with pink nipples that were sticking out excitedly. He cupped one and then the other with his hands, caressing them, feeling them, and then he slowly lowered his head and took the left nipple into his mouth.