Bailey sighed. “I suppose you’re right,” he said.
“All right then,” Doolittle said. “So, we’re in agreement then? No offer to negotiate with OB2 on this shit?”
“We haven’t heard Valdez’s master yet,” Crow said.
Doolittle looked at him as if he were a bug. “Valdez’s master? Why would we listen to that crap if we’ve already decided not to go with the deal?”
“It’s part of the same deal,” Crow said. “Shouldn’t we at least give it a listen, just so we can speak with authority when we reject OB2’s offer?”
Another roll of the eyes. “Sure, why not?” Doolittle asked. “Maybe it’ll be good for a few laughs.”
Crow opened up the CD case and removed the disc. He ejected Jake’s master from the boombox and inserted Celia’s. He closed the compartment and pushed play. The music began to issue from the speaker.
They listened to the entire CD, track by track, saying little, but passing some looks back and forth.
When the final cut came to an end they simply sat there in silence for a moment.
“Holy fucking shit,” Doolittle whispered.
“My feelings exactly,” Crow said.
“Can we listen to that again?” asked Bailey.
“Later,” Doolittle said. “For now, I think maybe we’d better contact OB2 and get him to fly down here.”
“Right,” Crow said. “I’ll get my secretary working on it right away.”
Twelve days later, it was a Saturday once again, the last Saturday of the month of May 1992. Jake and Laura had been enjoying their experiment in non-legally-sanctioned domestic cohabitation in Jake’s house. So far, things had gone smoothly enough. They slept in Jake’s bed every night and usually had sex in some way, shape, or form at least once a day. Elsa cooked meals for them and cleaned up after them—taking particular care to wash the sheets on the bed every single morning. Laura went to school each weekday morning and taught her seventh and eighth graders the finer points of the English language and it nuances—or at least she tried to. And Jake, with not much else to do, simply stayed at home, answered some fan mail once in a while, and worked on composing new material with his battered old Fender guitar. He had a few beers or a few glasses of wine at night, but he avoided drinking during the day unless it was a special occasion. And even at night, he rarely progressed much beyond a solid buzz before calling it quits. He did not want Laura to see him hammered unless she was too.
Tonight was somewhat of a special occasion. An old friend of Jake’s was coming over for dinner and bringing his new fiancé with him.
“Have you ever smoked weed before?” Jake asked Laura as they were getting dressed for the occasion at five o’clock that evening.
“Weed?” she asked, looking over her shoulder at him from her spot before the bedroom mirror. She was dressed only in a strapless white bra and a pair of slinky matching panties. Her hair was damp from her shower and she was combing it out stroke by stroke. “You mean pot?”
“Right,” he said, admiring her form. She really did look good in a state of undress. “You ever fire up?”
She smiled. “I was raised a Mormon, remember?” she said. “Mormons aren’t even allowed to have caffeine. They particularly disapprove of marijuana.”
“Yeah,” Jake said, pulling on a pair of tan slacks over his black BVDs, “but I can’t help but notice you swilling down the Jamaican Blue every morning when Elsa puts it before you.”
“Well ... I’m not really a Mormon anymore,” she said.
“So I noticed,” he said with a chuckle, thinking of the many non-Mormon approved things she had done with him. “Now give it up. You ever burn or what?”
“I played around with it a little back in college,” she allowed.
“Played around with it?”
“My roommate in the dorm was a pretty good stoner. In fact, she flunked out her junior year because of it. Anyway, I used to smoke a little with her every once in a while—just to see what it was like, you know?”
“Oh yeah, I know,” he assured her. “Did you like it?”
She shrugged. “It was okay. Mostly it just made me hungry, but it felt kind of good. It was really hard to study though.”
“Yeah, I could see that,” Jake agreed, walking to the closet to pick out a shirt.
“Why do you ask?”
“Well, Gordo is probably going to want to burn a little while he’s here,” Jake told her. “I just wanted to mention it to you before the subject came up.”
“You have some?” she asked, surprised.
He laughed. “I’m a musician,” he said. “Of course I have some. I just don’t smoke it very often. It’s one of those things that used to be really important back in my teens and twenties, but that I can take or leave now that I’m in my thirties. Most of the time I leave it. Still, there is a time and a place for burning. Tonight just might be both.”
She nodded, giving her hair a few more strokes (and causing her boobs to jiggle in a most appealing way). “Are you asking me if I want to smoke some tonight?”
“I suppose I am,” he said. “You don’t have to. Again, I’m just broaching the subject now so we go into the evening with an understanding.”
“That’s a very mature thing to do, Jake,” she told him.
“I thought so.”
“Anyway, as a public school teacher, I’m subject to random drug testing.”
“Really?” he asked.
“Really,” she confirmed. “And testing positive for marijuana is an automatic termination offense. No union representation, just pack your stuff and get out.”
“Oh ... I see,” he said, a little disappointed.
“But,” she said, “since I only have one more week of classes before summer starts, and, since I’ve never been randomly tested a single time since I did my initial hiring pee test ... what the hell? The odds are in my favor. Let’s burn, sweetie!”
Jake grinned at her. “All righty then,” he said. “Let’s burn.”
Gordon Paladay, more commonly known as Bigg G, rang the doorbell at precisely 5:30 PM that evening. Jake answered the door personally, allowing Elsa to keep cooking the tacos she was working on in the kitchen. Bigg G was standing there on the porch, his top-of-the-line Cadillac parked in the circular driveway behind him, an exotically attractive light skinned woman who appeared to be a mix of African-American and Asian on his arm. G was wearing a pair of purple slacks and a red, button-up shirt that was unbuttoned to midway down his chest. A silver medallion in the shape of a clenched fist hung in the gap between the buttons. A large gold hoop dangled from his left ear. His hair was neatly styled into cornrows and shiny with oil.
“Jake?” Gordon asked as he got a good look at the rocker’s new image.
“It’s me,” Jake assured him. “A little disguise action so I can pass, you know what I mean?”
Gordon chuckled. “I know what you fuckin’ mean,” he said, holding out his hand.
They exchanged a complex, multi-faceted handshake that involved three different grasps from three different angles, two fist bumps, an elbow tap, and then Gordon pulled him into a bro-hug that was full of affection and sincerity.
“It’s good to see you, Gordon,” Jake told him, pounding his back a few times and then releasing him.
“Fuckin’ A on that shit,” Gordon returned. “Can I introduce you to my lady?”
His lady looked like the epitome of high-class. Aside from the exotic beauty of her face and the almost painful curves of her body, she was dressed to kill. The white and black evening dress showed off her legs quite nicely and clung to her curves in a manner that could only spell custom fit. Her black, straight hair was done just so, styled to the point that it looked like a work of art in a museum. And the ring on her left fourth finger ... it belonged in a museum as well. It was huge, with a central diamond that had to be somewhere in the vicinity of four carats, surrounded by a perimeter of another carat at least.