“Oh, fuck no,” Jake said, quickly pulling the covers off and rolling to his feet. He nearly sprinted across the room and hit the off button on the alarm clock before the Mormons of the Tabernacle Choir could even hit their first high note. The strategic positioning of the alarm clock, the radio dial, and the volume setting had done their magic. Jake was awake and out of bed. Once these two things were accomplished, there would be no chance of him drifting back off.
He yawned deeply, rubbed his eyes and then stretched a little. Though his head was still fuzzy from the sudden sleep to awake transition, he did not feel badly. He had gone to bed at eleven last night after only two glasses of wine, so there was no hangover, no straining bladder, no headache. There simply was not enough time to do any serious drinking now that the recording process was in motion.
The ragtag group of musicians with no name, official or unofficial, and their sound team, had packed up and come to Coos Bay one week before and were staying as a group in a rented house. Though the house, which was costing KVA Records LLC eleven hundred dollars a week, had six bedrooms, five bathrooms and nearly 4500 square feet of living space, it was still quite crowded with nine permanent residents and eventually, though it hadn’t happened yet, four transient ones.
Nobody had to share bedrooms currently. Jake had the largest of the secondary bedrooms—the only one other than the master with its own attached bathroom. Celia had the master suite on the third floor because Greg was planning to pop in and out for a few days with some frequency during their stay. The Nerdlys had the secondary bedroom next to Jake’s—one without its own shower but they had refused to take Jake’s room when it was offered on the grounds that he was one of “the talent” and therefore their reason for being there in the first place. Cindy and Stan, the Nerdly parental units, had a smaller bedroom tucked away at the very end of the second floor hall. Laura had a tiny room that was tucked away in the rear of the first floor, just off the kitchen. Ted and Ben each had tiny little rooms located off the main entertainment room. Ted’s room had bunk beds in it, and the plan was to have the drummer and the bassist bunk together in Ted’s room when Mary came to play her pieces, or when Pauline came to take care of business (she was actually flying in this afternoon for her first visit). Phil Genkins, Laura’s roommate from Los Angeles and the latest part-time member of the band, would also be coming and going with some frequency later in the process, but Laura said he could stay in her room with her. This, of course, raised a few eyebrows among everyone—mostly the elder Archers—because everyone knew that Laura was engaged to her dentist. When she reminded everyone, however, that Phil was quite gay, the eyebrows came back down among everyone except Ted, who was a self-proclaimed homophobe.
Yes, Jake thought, things are going to get interesting as this little project floats along.
The morning air in the bedroom was brisk and damp, as Jake enjoyed sleeping with the window open so he could hear the sound of the waves rolling into shore a hundred and thirty feet below the cliffside the house sat upon. He shivered a bit and then shut the window, taking a moment to look out of it. His bedroom did not directly face the ocean, so he had to crane his head a bit if he wanted to see it. Sunrise had yet to occur, but the sky was starting to brighten with its approach. The stars were out, and could be seen, so that meant there was no marine layer this morning. That was good. He did not particularly like running in the damp morning fog that occasionally rolled in.
He turned away from the window and walked to his bathroom. After taking care of his morning business and washing up, he came back out into the bedroom and put on his loose fitting shorts and a sleeveless shirt. He donned his running socks and his battered running shoes and then made his way out of the room. The hallway was dark and the doors around him were all closed. From behind the door at the end of the hall, he could hear the rhythmic drone of Stan snoring.
He walked downstairs and made a left into the large kitchen area. Here, the light was on and Celia was standing at the sink wearing a pair of running shorts of her own, as well as a baggy T-shirt with a frog on it. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail. She was filling her water bottle up. She looked over when she heard Jake enter and gave him a smile and a good morning.
“Good morning,” he returned, flashing a brief smile of his own. “How’s the tide?” The status of that tide would determine their running route, as there were places that were inaccessible to them when it was high.
“I haven’t looked,” she said. “My eyes aren’t even all the way open yet.”
Jake picked up a tide table that sat atop the refrigerator. He looked at it, found the day’s date and nodded. “It’s incoming, but we’re only two hours past low. High tide won’t be until just after ten.”
“We should be good for the beach then, right?”
“Right,” he confirmed. Both of them liked the route that took them along the beach for part of the way instead of the one that stuck entirely to the road. It was a better workout as well.
Jake filled up his own water bottle and they made their way out of the kitchen, through the dark entertainment room—they could hear the amazingly loud snores of Ted coming from behind his closed door, snores that were often interrupted by the jarring silence of sleep apnea, which he had proudly proclaimed to everyone he suffered from—and into the foyer. They walked out the front door and closed the door behind them. Jake opened a small lockbox installed next to the door by punching in a code. Inside was a key to the house. He used it to lock the door back up and then returned it to the box. They then walked down to the large circular driveway, where Jake’s BMW, Celia’s Mercedes, and a large white 1982 Ford van that KVA had purchased locally for its mass transportation needs, were parked.
They stretched out for a few minutes—Jake, as always, taking a moment or two to admire Celia’s magnifico pompis as she bent over to loosen up her hamstrings—and then walked out to the small, winding road that ran along this section of the coast. They could see the breakers rolling onto the small strip of exposed rocky shoreline below. Both of them were shivering slightly in the cool air.
“Shall we do this thing?” Celia asked.
“Let’s hit it,” Jake said.
They headed south down the road, going for a little more than a quarter of a mile, passing other ocean view houses, most of which were rentals, all of which were smaller and more modest than the one they were staying in. A narrow access trail intersected the road and they turned right. It was a steep, uneven trail full of switchbacks and liberally sprinkled with loose rocks. They treaded carefully here, not just because of the risk of a rolled ankle, but because if one fell in the right manner on this portion, one might find himself or herself tumbling over the cliff.
They reached the bottom without incident and were now on a strip of sand beach strewn with driftwood and sea kelp. During some of the higher tides, the water would come all the way up to the bottom of the trail, thus their need to carefully check the charts before heading out. At the moment, however, the breakers were rolling in twenty or so yards away. They jogged over to just outside the average breaker zone and turned to the south, quickly settling into a pace of about a nine-minute mile.
They spoke very little as they made their way two miles down the beach, their feet pounding into the sand, their path weaving back and forth depending on the terrain they were following. They curved along into a cove that was surrounded by even more towering cliffs. It was here that their tidal information became particularly important. During every high tide in this part of the cove, the water cut off both the north and south entrances and there were no trails out from within the cove itself. Though they probably would not drown if they found themselves here at the wrong time, they would certainly find themselves sitting on some rocks for six or seven hours until the water retreated enough to let them back out.