“Good evening, my friend,” greeted the cabbie, a man in his fifties who was wearing a turban. “I understand we’re going to the airport?”
“That’s right,” Jake said. “United Airlines terminal.”
“Very good,” the cabbie said.
They drove off into the night. Jake did not look back.
Chapter 17: Out of the Blue
Coos Bay, Oregon
December 18, 1993
It was 6:30 AM and Jake, dressed in his running shorts, running shoes, and a white T-shirt, came downstairs from the secondary bedroom he was staying in. They were in the same house they’d rented before, the one up on the cliffside overlooking the ocean. The owners had been happy to let them occupy it for the premium price they were paying during what was usually the slowest of seasons for the Oregon coast vacation rental market. This time around Jake and Celia—since both were going to be sleeping alone for the duration of the recording process—had insisted that the Nerdlys take the master suite and the elder Nerdlys, Cindy and Stan, take the secondary suite. Jake was in one of the upstairs secondaries and Celia was in the other one. Coop and Charlie were sharing the bunk bed room (Coop had not been very keen on this arrangement, but he’d reluctantly accepted it) while Pauline stayed in the downstairs single room. Dexter had one of the downstairs bedrooms to himself—and he complained endlessly about the accommodations—while Stan and Cindy had one of the others. Tom and Mary, who had just flown in yesterday after Christmas break started for the school where Mary conducted, were in the last of the bedrooms upstairs, the tiny one intended for a single guest.
There was a light on in the kitchen and Jake figured it was Celia, who occasionally liked to join him on his morning runs, though not with the same regularity she had their first time around, especially not lately. His mood improved a bit at the thought of C hitting the trail with him. Maybe she would finally open up about what was bothering her so much.
When he went into the room, however, he found it was not the beautiful Venezuelan singer puttering about, but his beautiful, glowing sister, who was making some sort of concoction on the stove. Pauline was now well into her third trimester of pregnancy—her due date was January 24—and it showed. She was wearing a large maternity pullover shirt and a pair of black sweat shorts. Her stomach bulged out impressively, as did her breasts, which had grown considerably along with the baby. Her hair was in disarray and she wore no shoes or socks upon her feet.
“Well now,” Jake greeted as he carried his water bottle over to the sink to fill it, “look who’s all barefoot and pregnant in here.”
“Shut your ass,” Pauline grunted at him. “That’s all I need, is for one of those rags to hear you say something like that.”
Jake chuckled. Pauline’s pregnancy, and the fact that Oren Blake II was the father of record, was now public knowledge and the entertainment magazines and shows were having themselves a good time with it, especially since the two had announced no plans for marriage or even living together and Obie was currently out on tour, promoting his latest album. Despite the fact that he was on record as having planned the tour so he could have a month off starting the week before she was due and stretching for three weeks after, despite the fact that Pauline was on record as saying she fully supported Obie’s career and his need to tour, not a day went by when there was not some sort of report implying that Pauline had been abandoned and the couple were not speaking to each other.
“Hopefully they don’t have hidden microphones in here,” Jake remarked as he turned on the sink.
“I wouldn’t put it past them,” she said sourly as she watched a pot full of boiling water with pasta shells in it.
Jake shrugged and then turned his attention to what she was doing. “You’re up early,” he said. “Hungry?”
“Fucking starving,” she said. “Apparently the clump wanted to eat.”
Jake smiled a little at her reference. They knew the baby inside of her uterus was a little girl, and both Pauline and Obie loved her fiercely already. They had even given her a name: Tabitha Marie, and they were already referring to her as ‘Tabby’ on occasion. But she was still, while in utero, called ‘the clump’ by her mother more than anything else—always with the utmost affection. This stemmed from that first primary care visit she’d had way back in the beginning—back before she had even told Obie about their little gift from God—when the doctor had described her condition as ‘a clump of rapidly replicating cells in your uterus’.
“The clump wanted macaroni and cheese at six-thirty in the morning?” Jake asked.
“Not just macaroni and cheese,” Pauline said, picking up a small, flat can with a picture of a smiling fish upon it. “Macaroni and cheese with tuna.”
“Macaroni and cheese ... with tuna? You mean ... like mixed into it?”
She nodded, a sour expression on her face. “Yeah,” she said. “With tuna. I woke up about twenty minutes ago drooling at the thought of it. The funny thing is, I don’t even like tuna. I think it’s fucking disgusting—at least I always thought that before, when I didn’t have a clump hijacking my body fluids and putting in orders for what kind of goddamned nutrients it wants.”
“Wow,” Jake said. “Pregnancy is some weird shit.” He meant this with sincerity. Until his sister got herself knocked up, he had never been around a pregnant woman on any kind of familiar basis. The experience was certainly eye-opening and mind expanding.
“Pathetic, isn’t it?” she asked, giving her pasta another stir. “Hand me the milk and a stick of butter, will you?”
He opened the refrigerator and pulled out the requested items. “Has C been down here?” he asked as he handed them over.
Pauline shook her head. “I don’t think I’d expect her this morning,” she said. “She was up pretty late last night.”
“Really?” Jake asked. “Later than the rest of us?”
It had been a bit of a reunion last night as the Kingsley parents had arrived to spend Christmas break with their family and friends—and to get as much of Mary’s violin tracks recorded as they could. Celia had seemed particularly happy to see them. She had been more than a little down in the dumps during this foray into the Pacific Northwest, primarily because it had kept her from seeing Greg. Jake and Celia and the others had traveled up to start recording just two weeks before Greg had returned from his first trip to Alaska. Greg had been unable to join them in Oregon, however, because his presence was needed in Hollywood where the studio portion of So Others May Live was undergoing principal photography six days a week, eight to ten hours a day without break. And now that the studio photography had finished, he was on his way back to Alaska for another two months, at least, so they could film the on-location winter scenes that were planned for the film.
And so, Celia had taken the opportunity of the reunion to imbibe in some intoxication therapy last night. She, Jake, and Jake’s parents had gone out on the balcony after dinner and spent some time having a little informal jam session. Jake had played his old Fender while Celia played her beloved twelve-string and Mary accompanied on her violin. Even Tom took a few turns with either Jake’s or Celia’s guitar. They had played and sung some of the classics—Proud Mary, Yesterday, Can’t Take My Eyes Off You, Highway Star (Jake and Celia did that one together), Mister Bojangles (Tom did an impressive rendition of that one, singing it, and playing the guitar quite well), to name a few—while Cindy and Stan had watched and sang along on occasion and all of them drank wine or beer or both. Celia had been swilling down the fermented grapes and the fermented grain faster and in higher volume than everyone else, becoming quite hammered by the time the little party broke up around 11:00 PM—though her singing and playing never faltered even a little. Jake himself had been one of the first to call it a night. He had not been drinking much of late and he had gotten up early to fly to Portland and pick up his parents from Hillsboro and fly them to South Bend (the regular airline service was once again down to only two flights a week), so the combination had made him quite sleepy.