Everyone nodded, even Jake. “That makes sense,” he said.
Jill smiled and looked at her most lucrative client directly. “That means you should not spend all the money you pull in, Jake,” she told him. “I would hold off on buying any new houses, any new airplanes, any new land, until you’ve taken care of your personal tax liabilities.”
Jake smiled at her. “I will take your words under consideration,” he told her.
She shook her head a little. She knew what he meant when he said something like that.
“All right then,” Pauline said. “Are we all in agreement here? Distribute all but three million dollars among the four members?”
Greg mumbled a little, but they were all in agreement.
And so, the quarterly meeting of KVA Records’ members—if not their board of directors—came to a close.
“Good meeting,” Jake said. “Does anyone want to go out and grab a little lunch? It’s getting to be that time.”
“I’m in,” Pauline said.
“Sharon and I are actually going on a date to the tar pits,” said Nerdly. “They’re having a presentation in the museum at one o’clock regarding the microfossils and mollusks that were trapped in the tar.”
“They’re going to have displays of the fossils that are not usually shared with the public!” Sharon said excitedly.
“If anyone would like to go with us, you’re more than welcome,” Nerdly added.
“Uh ... well ... yeah,” said Jake. “As fascinating as that sounds, I think I’ll take a pass and just go do some lunch.” He turned to Celia and Greg. “How about you two? We can hit that new place over on Alvarado?”
“Have we heard any reviews on the quality of the establishment yet?” asked Greg.
“We have not,” said Jake. “They’ve only been open a few weeks.”
“Well...” Greg started.
“We’d love to go,” said Celia, overruling him. “I’m starving.”
Greg sighed. “I guess we’re in,” he said.
“Didn’t you have breakfast, Celia?” asked Pauline.
“If you can call it that,” she said sourly. “I ate half a grapefruit and half a cup of cottage cheese.”
“That does not sound particularly appealing,” Jake said.
“Are you on a diet?” asked Sharon.
“Kind of,” Celia said with a shrug. “I haven’t been able to get my runs in as much as I like to lately and ... well ... I put on a few pounds.”
“You did?” asked Jake, looking her up and down. “Where did you put them?”
She smiled. “It was just a few, but it means I’m moving in the wrong direction. My trainer suggested this grapefruit and cottage cheese diet for breakfast and a low carbohydrate diet for the rest of my meals.”
“That’s what you’re eating every morning now?” Pauline asked.
“Yeah, kind of boring, huh? I’ve been doing it for about two weeks now. I used to like grapefruit and cottage cheese.” She shook her head. “Not anymore.”
“Did you talk to your doctor about this diet before you started it?” Pauline asked.
“No,” she said. “Why would I do that?”
“Well, I’ve heard that grapefruit juice sometimes interacts with certain medications and makes them inactive.”
“I’m not taking any medications,” Celia said. “Except my birth control, of course.”
“Birth control is one of those medications I heard can be inactivated by grapefruit juice,” Pauline told her.
“Really?” Celia asked, her eyebrows going up with a bit of alarm.
“That’s what I heard,” Pauline said.
“I believe that is a myth,” said Sharon.
“A myth?” asked Pauline.
“It is my understanding that certain antibiotics and other medications can be degraded in effectiveness by the consumption of grapefruit juice, but that standard progesterone-based birth control pills are not one of them. It can lead to increased side effects from the pills, but should not cause ineffectiveness as long as the dosing schedule is followed.”
“Well ... that’s a relief,” Celia said. “Kind of, anyway. I was hoping for an excuse to stop eating the grapefruit.”
“I am not a doctor, however,” Sharon said. “I would still check with yours regarding your diet.”
“I’ll do that,” Celia promised.
However, by the time they made it to the restaurant and sat down for lunch, she’d forgotten all about the conversation.
Culpepper Studios was a small recording studio owned by National Records and located in West Hollywood, just outside the Los Angeles city limits. It was a non-descript building of only two floors. Inside of it were three fully equipped studios. These studios were not, however, involved in the making of popular music that would be burned onto CDs or transferred onto magnetic tape for distribution. Culpepper’s main reason for being was to record secondary projects such as background music for television shows, music for radio commercials and other forms of audio advertisement, and, the studio’s most lucrative source of income these days: on-hold music that was sold to telecommunications firms.
Laura Best had been assigned to work full-time in Culpepper Studios for the past six weeks now, ever since Bobby Z’s album had been mastered and Bobby himself had gone out on tour to promote it. There had been a brief period of discussion when it seemed that Z might actually ask Laura to be his primary saxophonist out on the road—a prospect she had been both terrified and deliriously excited about—but then Z’s lover and usual sax player Dexter Price had come to his senses and made up with the man. Off they’d gone to tour the country and tune each other’s instruments (as Jake would have said), and off she’d gone to blow her horn in an out of the way studio for forty dollars an hour, plus benefits (the health plan was actually pretty good, much better than that offered by the LAUSD).
It was not the most exciting and respectable musical assignment of her life, but it paid the bills (not that there were that many bills to pay, of course, since Jake paid for her housing, her food, and had bought her a car) and she could quite honestly say that she was a professional musician—she would, in fact, have to list that as her occupation on next year’s tax forms.
She walked out the door of the studio at 4:30 PM and headed to her green Cabriolet, her saxophone cases—one for the alto sax, one for the soprano—in hand. She was dressed in a pair of jeans and a sleeveless white blouse. Her red hair was tied back in a ponytail that she planned to release the moment she sat down. She had just spent the day working on a semi-jazzy piece that she had rather enjoyed contributing to but which she knew was only going to be heard by people waiting on hold when they called an insurance company or a cable TV provider. Such was life.
Her mood was not the best it had ever been. She enjoyed the life she had with Jake, and she loved him to death, but she was now quite in the midst of the bad side of being a notorious celebrity’s girlfriend.
The public knew about her now and the entertainment media were quite interested in learning all there was to know about Jake Kingsley’s current girlfriend, especially since he had a best-selling album that was getting a ton of airplay of late. The problem was the media did not want to know anything good about her. They only wanted to present the bad. And if there was no bad to present, they were perfectly okay with spreading innuendo or even outright lies.
Her first indication that they were interested in her came from Pauline about two months before. Pauline had called her at Jake’s home in the early evening to inform her that a reporter from the American Watcher publication was planning to run a story and photos about her relationship with Jake and wanted to know if she cared to be interviewed on the subject or otherwise comment.