Goldstein looked at his patient and gave a little shake of the head. “Well ... I suppose that’s a small victory,” he said.
“Sometimes those are the best kind,” Matt told him. “So ... can I get out of here now?”
“You mean leave?” the doctor asked in disbelief.
“Fuck yeah I mean leave,” Matt said. “I got a show to do in Dallas tomorrow.”
“You’re not going to make your show in Dallas tomorrow,” Goldstein told him. “Nor are you going to make any shows for the next week or so. I’m going to have you admitted to the cardiac floor and we’re going to do a complete cardiac workup on you in the morning. Treadmill stress test, nuclear stress echo, the whole bit.”
“Uh ... yeah, doc,” Matt said. “That’s awfully nice of you to offer, but I’m going to have to decline that shit.”
“Decline?”
“Decline,” Matt said. “My heart’s back to normal, right?”
“Well ... for the moment, but it could go back into a lethal arrythmia at any time.”
“I’ll just have to deal with that when it happens,” he said. “The show must go on, doc. I’m busting out of here. Go ahead and start getting the paperwork together, huh?”
“Matt, this is a very bad decision,” Goldstein warned.
“Yeah,” Matt said. “I’ve made a few of those in my time. Anyway, while you’re working on the paperwork to get me out of here, can you send someone out to the waiting room to collect Greg Gahn for me? He’s a grinning little weasel of a freak. Looks like a cross between a car salesman and one of those TV preachers that rip off old ladies.”
“Matt, I think we should talk about this some more.”
“Are you going to try to keep me here against my will?” Matt asked.
“No, of course not,” the doctor said. “You have the right to refuse medical care as long as you’re coherent, but I don’t think you’re taking what happened to you seriously. You need to have that cardiac workup so we can determine to what extent the damage to your heart is.”
“I’m gonna have to pass on that,” Matt told him. “Like I said, there’s a show tomorrow and the show must go on.”
Matt signed out of Houston Methodist twenty minutes later, wearing the jeans he had come in with and a paper hospital shirt. Greg drove him back to the hotel in a rented car and they arrived there just after midnight.
There were still a few groupies hanging around. So Matt had a few drinks, a few bonghits, and two lines of cocaine. That put him nicely in the mood for some meaningless fornication.
Chapter 8: Wrap it Up
Coos Bay, Oregon
February 25, 1992
The Water’s View Restaurant on the west side of Coos Bay certainly lived up to its name. Perched on a cliffside over the rocky shore, its huge westward facing windows offered an impressive vista of the rolling blue ocean stretching off to eternity. And though the sky was overcast on this late winter day, there was just enough of a break in the clouds off to the west for a decent sunset to occur as the party truly got rolling.
Jake and Greg had rented out the entire top floor of the exclusive eatery for the evening. The cause for celebration was threefold. The first reason was that two days before, Greg, Celia, Pauline, and Jake had come to an agreement with Obie over manufacturing, distribution, and promotion of the two albums. This came after a lengthy series of negotiations and compromise that had stretched at times the friendly relationship they had developed with the country singer. The forty percent royalty rate, which Obie had offered in that initial meeting with Pauline on New Year’s Day, had only been the starting point for the deal, and, though that number did not change (nor was it ever suggested by either party that it should change) there were dozens of other numbers and directives that had to be presented, squabbled over, re-presented, modified, and then, one by one, agreed upon. The fact that all of that was done and a deal was in place, with contract signed by all relevant parties, was cause for celebration in and of itself.
The primary reason for the gathering, however, was to serve as the wrap party for the band with no name. As of that very afternoon, at 1:30 PM, the last overdub of the last song had been laid down. It had been a backing vocal track by Phil, Jake, Celia and Pauline singing in harmony for the outro to Jake’s tune Hit The Highway. As of the moment that Sharon and Nerdly approved of the take and committed it to the digital memory of the studio, the recording process was officially over. The band had completed their mission, although there was still at least a month of tedious post-production mixing that would start in two days, and then the final mastering after that. Only Jake, Celia, and the Nerdlys were going to be involved in post-production, however. Almost everyone else would be flying out on a chartered aircraft in the morning to head back to their respective homes and lives. That lent credence to a third aspect of the party. It was a goodbye celebration for a group that had been through quite a lot in the last five months.
Ben had already gone home in mid-January. He was now back at his gig teaching community college students the finer points of guitar playing, and staying up late at night with the infant baby girl his wife had delivered on February 10. Aside from him, however, every other member of the crew was here, seated at the long table, eating seafood or steaks (or, like Jake and Ted, both) and drinking expensive wine. Obie was here as well, having been invited by Pauline. He was not a wine drinker and was instead swilling down whiskey sours like they were going out of style.
“You know what this reminds me of?” Ted, who was sitting across from Jake and Laura, suddenly asked.
“Whatever it is, it’s probably a Rule 3 violation,” Jake told him.
“No, no,” Ted said, shaking his head. “It’s not gross at all, I promise.”
“You’ve said that before, Ted,” Laura told him. “And the stories are inevitably gross on some level, even if you think they’re not.”
“Yeah,” Ted said, “I guess I do have a different standard of what gross is than you all. But even if it is, Rule 3 doesn’t apply here. We’re all done eating, right?” And indeed they were. All the plates had been taken away by the wait staff and everyone was just enjoying their drinks at this point.
“Well ... that seems a bit of a technicality,” Laura said.
“Screw it,” Jake said. “Tell the story, Ted. We’ll stop you if it gets too gross.”
“All right,” Ted said happily. “This one is actually kind of funny, in a weird way. I was working with Maureen States this one shift. She’s a cute little redhead EMT, or at least she was cute when this happened. She got into drinking and popping pills a few years later and well ... she ended up pretty haggard once that shit started—got fired about a year ago after she passed out behind the wheel at post and they found narcotics and alcohol in her system. Last I heard, she was living with some loser dude she met in NA and collecting welfare to get by. Anyway, back then she was still straight in the head and cute as can be. Whenever I look at you, Laura, you kind of remind me of her back then.”
“Uh ... thank you,” Laura said slowly. “I think.”
“So, we get this call for a fall in a shower. A common thing, right? But usually when there’s a fall in a shower it’s some old geezer. This time, however, we get there and find this woman in her early forties, naked as the day she’s born, on her back on the floor of the shower. She was a fatty, you see. At least three and a half bills, maybe even pushing four. She had big old fat rolls, floppy titties that you could’ve wrapped around her waist if you’d wanted to, acres of cellulite, the whole bit. Not exactly someone you really want to see naked, you know what I’m saying?”