The entire situation was more than a little surreal to him. Six weeks ago, he had been just another obscure private paramedic, barely scratching out a meager existence of living paycheck to paycheck, up to his ears in credit card debt and outrageous rent payments. And then Tisdale had come into his life, taking him with him on an outrageous drunken party full of debauchery, food, and even fishing. All because Tisdale had a bad heart and wanted a trained medic to hang out with him just in case. Nothing had happened involving Matt’s heart on the trip. Jim had never once had to employ the LifePak monitor/defibrillator or the Adenosine Matt had purchased. But he had experienced a threesome for the first time in his life, had watched two women have passionate lesbian sex, had participated in what could technically qualify as an orgy, and had personally reeled in a seventy-pound marlin off the southern tip of Baja California. And then, just before the boat had docked back in its berth at Marina Del Ray, Matt had offered him the “gig” (as he called it) he was now reporting for duty for.
“I want you to be my tour medic,” Matt told him on that fateful day. “You’ll be like that dude who follows the fuckin’ president around with that briefcase full of nuclear attack codes. They call it the football. You know what I’m talking about?”
“I do,” Jim told him. “But...”
“You’ll be my football carrier,” Matt went on. “You’ll never be more than thirty seconds away from me the whole fuckin’ time we’re on tour. Only, you won’t have to wear a fuckin’ uniform or shit like that. And, instead of nuclear attack codes so Slick Willie can rat-fuck Russia or Libya or some other shithole, your football is gonna have that LifePak and all of the medications and IVs and shit that you’ll need to get my heart out of that fuckin’ SVT shit if it goes into it again.”
“Uh ... well ... I appreciate the offer and all, Matt,” Jim said. “Really, I do, but I have to go back to my regular job.”
“I’ll arrange for an unlimited leave of absence for you,” Matt promised. “All I’ll have to do is fund another trip for that corporate asshole of yours. He’ll play ball.”
“Well ... maybe, but I’m not sure...”
“No more than thirty seconds away,” Matt interrupted again. “Do you know what that means?”
“Uh ... no. What does it mean?”
“It means you’ll be hanging out with me and the boys everywhere we go,” he explained. “You’ll ride the fuckin’ airplane with us from city to city instead of sitting on the bus with the roadies. You’ll have your own fuckin’ hotel room on the same floor as mine wherever we stay. You’ll be backstage with us at every fuckin’ show, an all-access VIP pass around your neck just like what me and the boys wear. You dig what I’m laying down here, dude?”
“Uh ... yeah,” he said slowly, pondering what he was being offered. He already had a taste of what hanging out with Matt and the band was like: One long, endless, drunken party full of debauchery and sin. It had been fun and eye-opening to say the least, but was it really something he wanted to do full-time?
“I’ll pay you seven-fifty a day for the gig,” Matt told him.
“Seven-fifty? Do you mean ... uh ... seven hundred and fifty dollars? Per day?” That was considerably more than what he was paid for working a shift at SMS.
“That’s right,” Matt said. “Plus, your lodging, food, booze, and anything else you want to indulge in is covered as well.”
“That is pretty generous,” Jim said. “But when you say seven-fifty a day, are we talking like four days of the week here?”
“No,” Matt said. “We’re talking seven days a week. Out on the road, we generally have a show every night for weeks at a time. Of course, we occasionally get an extended travel day when it’s a big haul between cities for the trucks and the buses, but I’ll still want your ass within thirty seconds of me when that happens. You’ll be out there with us to save my ass if it needs saving. You’ll be on the clock every fuckin’ minute of every fuckin’ day, so you’ll be paid seven-fifty for every fuckin’ day you’re out there with us.”
“I see,” Jim said, warming quite nicely to the idea now that he had this information. “And ... exactly how long will this uh ... gig last?”
“We’ve got three legs of the North American tour scheduled right now,” Matt said. “That’s going to run us into early March at the very least. The suits over at National Records have let me know that if the album sells well—and I have no reason to think it won’t—and we sell out the arenas here in the states and Canada—which we fuckin’ will—we might go hit up Europe and South America next summer.”
“That’s ... six months,” Jim said.
“At least,” Matt clarified.
Jim’s brain did some quick, dirty mental arithmetic. Six months times thirty days per month times seven hundred and fifty dollars per day ... was ... He shook his head. No, that can’t be right! A hundred and thirty-five thousand dollars? Well over triple what he normally made in a year, even with overtime shifts thrown in! And for only working six months? That could not possibly be right.
“It’s almost a hundred and forty grand,” Matt said, as if reading his mind. “I’ve already had my accountant do the math on this shit. You say yes, and he’ll take that coin and put it in a special account with your fuckin’ name on it. He’ll take out the taxes and shit just like your regular employer does, he’ll cover whatever it costs to keep up your health coverage and all that shit while you’re on the leave of absence, and he’ll make sure your rent and other bills get paid while you’re gone.”
“Wow,” Jim whispered, overwhelmed, that number—a hundred and forty fucking thousand!—still echoing in his head. Something suddenly occurred to him. “Were you planning to offer me this the whole time? Is that why you wanted me on this yacht trip?”
Matt shook his head. “No fuckin’ way,” he said. “I mean, I wanted you on the yacht trip because you’re a medic—I already told you that shit—but I was sincere about the underlying reason. I wanted to thank you for saving my ass. It didn’t occur to me that you should go with us on tour until we were at my pad in Cabo. Do you remember our first night there?”
“Uh ... sort of,” Jim said. He had been pretty hammered that night (as he had been most nights on the trip). He had a fuzzy memory of getting a blowjob on Matt’s couch from an extremely attractive nineteen-year-old Mexican girl while Matt and the band played quarters with shots of tequila at the dining room table. Other than that, he did not remember much.
“That was when I got the idea,” Matt said. “Me and Austin were out on the deck taking a few bonghits with the bitches and I realized I wasn’t fuckin’ scared about my heart doing that funky shit because you were there. I knew if it started fuckin’ jittering again, all I had to do was get you and you’d make it stop doing that shit. It was fuckin’ comforting, dude. You know what I’m saying?”