"Coop is indeed a wise man," Jake said. "Now keep your mouth shut about it or you'll risk ruining everything. You dig?"
"I dig," Darren said. "But you didn't have to hit me so hard. That shit hurt, man."
"Sorry," Jake said, finishing the process of mollifying him.
They stepped back over to Charlie and Mike, both of whom were giving them strange looks.
"Excuse us," Jake said. "A little band talk, you know?"
"No problem," Mike said.
"What was that you were saying, Darren?" Charlie asked. "About what you threatened them with?"
"It's nothing," Darren said. "Forget I said anything."
"But..."
"It's nothing," Jake said. "Nothing at all."
"Yeah," Darren said. "And I gotta go to the bathroom again. You coming, Coop?"
"Oh... yeah," said Coop. "Good idea. I really gotta go."
They wandered off, undoubtedly to shoot another load of China White into their veins in one of the stalls.
"You guys are renegotiating your contract, aren't you?" asked Charlie.
"No," Jake said. "Not at all. You should know that National would never do that."
Charlie didn't look like he believed him but he said nothing further. Jake wished them the best of luck and then excused himself. He headed for the bar again, this time arriving safely and un-molested.
"Another triple rum and coke?" the bartender asked, his voice more than a little condescending. He, like most of the serving staff, was a frustrated actor (although some were frustrated musicians). He also seemed to think he had been appointed etiquette guardian and his disapproval at the members of Intemperance reeking of marijuana and ordering jumbo-sized drinks in water glasses was quite plain with every word he spoke, every piece of body language he communicated.
Jake didn't really care whether the man approved of him or not. "You know it," he said. "It's a night for celebration, isn't it?"
"Fuckin' A it is," said a voice behind him. It was Matt, who had just appeared out of the crowd for a drink of his own. "Hey, loser-boy," he told the bartender. "Fire me up with another quadruple Chivas and coke, will ya? And not so much fuckin' ice this time."
"Do you have any idea," the bartender asked with a glare, "just how expensive this Chivas you're swilling down is?"
"Do you have any idea," Matt returned, "just how much I'm going to kick your snooty ass if that drink isn't sitting before me in the next forty-five seconds?"
"Are you threatening me?" the bartender demanded.
"Yes," Jake said mildly, "he is. And he will follow through with that threat too."
The bartender looked in Jake's eyes, spared a quick glance at Matt, and then apparently decided that the two of them were telling the truth. He mumbled something under his breath and took down two water glasses. He filled them with ice, poured four shots of Chivas into one, three shots of Jamaican rum into the other, and then topped both off with coke from his tap. He pushed the drinks at the two musicians and then headed off to the other end of the bar to serve one of the members of Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band.
"Prick," Matt said, sipping from his drink. "I oughtta kick his ass anyway just for the sheer enjoyment of it."
"He does seem to be a man who could use a good ass-kicking," Jake agreed.
"Imagine that shit, a fuckin' waiter looking down his snooty nose at us." He shook his head in disgust. "Oh well. Fuck it." He brightened. "Hey, you know who I was just talking to?"
"Who?" Jake asked.
"Sammy Hagar. Now there's a dude that knows how to party. We were talking for almost half an hour."
"Is he cool?" Jake asked. He had found, since becoming famous and meeting other famous people, that many celebrities were not cool, that they were, in fact, arrogant, stuck-up assholes.
"Way cool," Matt assured him. "He's into fishing, just like I am. He was telling me about this place he found down in Mexico on the Baja peninsula. It's called Cabo San Lucas."
"Cabo San Lucas? Never heard of it."
"Me either," Matt said. "He said it's a small little village right on the ocean where the Pacific and the Sea of Cortez come together. The weather is nice and warm in the winter and they have the best sport fishing he's ever found. Marlin the size of fuckin' Volkswagons. Once this contract shit is all settled and we start pulling in some legal tender I'm gonna fly down and check it out. Shit, if it's as good as he says maybe I'll buy myself a house down there."
"Sounds like your kind of place," Jake said.
A woman walked up and stood at the bar next to them. Jake first saw her with his peripheral vision and even with only that as input he could tell she was attractive. He turned to look more fully at her and recognized her as Celia Valdez, lead singer and acoustic guitarist for La Diferencia, the band who's singles had aced them out of two number one spots over the last year and who's album had bumped The Thrill Of Doing Business from the top of the album chart.
She was bigger than he expected, not fat or out of proportion in any way, but definitely not petite. She stood nearly six feet tall, only a few inches shorter than Jake himself, and, unlike many female celebrities, who tended to resemble anorexia victims in real life, she had an appetizing amount of meat on her bones. She was dressed in a conservative royal blue gown, her brunette hair cascading alluringly over her shoulders, only the very top portion of her ample cleavage revealed. Modest diamond earrings were in her lobes and an expensive looking diamond bracelet adorned her left wrist. Jake caught a scent of vanilla wafting off of her, noticeable mostly because it was not Chanel #5 or some other ritzy scent favored by the rich and famous.
The bartender saw her standing there and practically fell all over himself rushing to serve her. "Yes, Ms. Valdez?" he said graciously. "What can I get for you?"
"A glass of chardonnay," she said, her accent considerably thicker than it was on her album. "Do you have Snoqualmie Vineyards?"
"Of course," he said. "Let me go open a bottle for you."
"Thank you," she said. He disappeared, nearly running towards the back room. She turned and looked at Jake and Matt. A smile appeared on her face. "Hi," she said, speaking to both of them. "You're Jake Kingsley and Matt Tisdale, aren't you?"
"And you're the current, though undoubtedly short-lived queen of feel-good pop, aren't you?" asked Matt, his voice sounding very much like that of the bartender when he'd been talking to Jake.
The smile disappeared from her face, a slight frown replacing it. "I suppose you could call me that," she said. "Although it would be rather rude of you to do so, don't you think?"
Matt shrugged, his eyes fixed on her. "Shouldn't you be out dancing?" he asked. "Since you love it so much. Oh... that's right, you didn't write that song, did you? Some Aristocrat Records hacker pumped it out for you."
Her frown deepened, her eyes flashing anger, but just for a brief second. "You and your band compose your own music, don't you, Mr. Tisdale?" she asked.
"Damn right," he said. "We're real musicians."
"As I recall," she said, "Crossing The Line and Rules Of The Road were both outsold and out-charted by our songs I Love To Dance and Young Love. Our album also sold a quarter million more copies than yours. So if our songs were composed by hackers, what does that make you and your band?"
Matt was actually rendered speechless. He stumbled and stammered and his face turned bright red but he was unable to formulate a single word. Finally he took a deep breath and composed himself. "I'll see you later, Jake," he said. "Something stinks around here." With that, he walked away, taking his drink with him and quickly becoming lost in the crowd.
"Wow," Jake said once he was gone. "I don't think I've ever seen anyone pull his chain like that before, not even when those cops in Texarkana gave him the phone book treatment."