“Right,” Jim said. “Just an ex-wife who wouldn’t piss on me to put me out if I were on fire.”
Matt pointed a finger at him and nodded approvingly. “I like that one,” he said. “Kind of describes my feelings about the bible-thumper over there sipping his fucking bubbly water—and most of the suits that work for National. Anyway, you ain’t got no kids either, right?”
“Not as far as I know,” Jim said.
“What about other family?”
“My parents, my sister, my brother, a couple of nieces and nephews,” he said. “Some friends I hang out with at work.”
“You can keep in touch with them with that new email shit they got going, can’t you? Won’t even cost you a stamp.”
“True,” Jim said slowly. “But still ... a year and a half away from home.”
“And about four hundred grand in your bank account for doing it,” Matt pointed out. “Is that such a bad deal?”
The man had a point. “No,” Jim said. “It really isn’t.”
“And it’s not like we’ll be gone from LA the whole time. We’ll be back every four or five months; on the tour breaks between legs, for international rehearsal before we head out overseas. That shit’s necessary for your sanity.”
“That is good to know.”
“Think about it, dude,” Matt said. “I’m offering you a gig where you get paid to party. You get to drink and you get to smoke out if you’re into that. There ain’t no random drug testing when you work for Matt Tisdale. And the gash! You’ll get laid with a different bitch or bitches pretty much every night. You saw how it was hanging with us on the boat and down in Cabo. They’ll be throwing the pussy at you just because you hang out with me. That’s a perk that fuckin’ corporate America don’t offer, right?”
Jim nodded, remembering some of the “gash” he had scored on the Mexico trip. Beautiful, nasty women willing to do anything asked of them—and more—with little or no preliminaries. Women so far out of his league that they could not even see his league from where they were, but they had dropped their clothes for him happily just because he was one of Matt’s people. Yes, that was quite a perk to his current employment position.
“So, just think it over for now,” Matt said. “I’m not asking you to sign any papers or any shit like that just yet. Let’s just see how this first leg goes and we’ll take things from there.”
“All right,” Jim said. “We’ll do that.”
“My man,” Matt said with a smile. He took a large gulp from his drink, savoring it. He then nodded over in the direction of Lori, who was constructing new drinks for Austin and Steve. “How about that stewardess bitch? Ain’t she about the ugliest fucking chick you’ve ever seen?”
“Uh ... no, not even close,” Jim said truthfully.
“Really?” Matt asked in disbelief.
Jim chuckled. “I’m a paramedic, Matt. I’ve been working the streets for fifteen years. I’ve seen women out there that would make Lori look like Cindy Crawford. Skank that would haunt your dreams.”
“No shit?” Matt said, visibly impressed by this claim.
“No shit,” Jim assured him.
“You’ll have to tell me some of these stories,” Matt said. “Only ... not right now. Wait until I can get a few lines in me first. Anyway, she may be ugly as a fuckin’ prolapsed rectum, but she seems like a pretty cool bitch. She don’t take no shit off of us. I respect that shit; you know what I’m sayin’?”
“I think I do,” Jim said. “There’s something I don’t understand though.”
“What’s that?”
“Why did they assign someone who looks like that to your plane? I mean, you’re Matt Tisdale. All of this was set up to keep you happy, right?”
“For the most part,” he agreed.
“So, why an old, ugly chick to work on the plane? I would’ve thought they’d get us a hot one—you know, some girl with big tits in a short skirt willing to give her all.”
Matt was shaking his head. “They would’ve scraped up something like that if I’d wanted them too, but that’s a bad idea in a situation like this.”
“It is?”
“It is,” he said. “You don’t want no hot gash workin’ as a servant for you on a day in and day out basis. You want either a dude, or some bitch you wouldn’t dream of fucking. You don’t shit where you live, my man. That’s one of life’s great truths. It’s best to have no fuckin’ sexual tension with the people you work and live with day after day. Trust me on this shit.”
Jim nodded, impressed; feeling there was indeed some wisdom with this counterintuitive thought. “I guess that makes sense,” he said.
“There’s enough gash for the taking in this world that you don’t have to be bringing it into your business. Make that your policy and you’ll go far without any needless distractions and bullshit in your life.”
“I will keep that in mind,” Jim said, intending to do just that.
The conversation petered out at that point. Matt continued to sip frequently out of his drink and occasionally look out the window at the landscape passing below. Jim started to feel a little awkward after a minute or two and so, just to break the silence, and because he genuinely thought Matt would be interested in the topic, he asked, “Have you heard that new song that Jake Kingsley and Bigg G just put out?”
Matt’s head whipped around so fast it was like it was on a spring-loaded swivel. His expression, which had been somewhat pensive, suddenly turned serious. “What?” he asked... demanded.
Jim immediately got the impression he had said something wrong. He knew that Intemperance had broken up under bad terms, that Matt blamed Jake Kingsley for the death of Darren Appleman, but he had kind of assumed that after so many years that those things were water under the bridge now. “Uh...” He couldn’t think of anything else to say.
“Are you saying that you heard a song by Kingsley and Bigg G?” Matt asked, slowly annunciating each word. “Is that what you’re telling me?”
“Uh ... well ... yeah,” Jim said. “I ... uh ... I heard it on the radio this morning while I was getting my things together for the trip. On KRON.”
“A new song?” Matt asked. “Not that Step Inside bullshit from last year?”
“Yes,” Jim said, now very sorry he had brought this up, but all he could do at this point was answer his boss’s questions. “It’s a new song, from Bigg G’s new CD. The DJ said it’s not even for sale yet, not until closer to the end of the month or something. Jake Kingsley sings on this one.”
“Kingsley is rapping?” Matt asked incredulously.
“No, he’s singing normal like. Bigg G raps in the song though. It’s like ... what do you call it again when two singers sing in the same song?”
“A duet,” Matt said through gritted teeth.
“Right!” Jim said nervously, wishing to get out of this conversation as quickly as possible before he got fired on his first day. “A duet! Bigg G raps out his part and Jake sings like a rock singer in his part. He plays the guitar too.”
“The guitar? You mean the acoustic guitar, like in Step Inside?”
“Uh ... no,” Jim said. “An electric guitar, like in a rock song. They keep switching back and forth from the rap part of the song to the rock part. It’s actually pretty ... uh ... oh ... uh, never mind.”
“Pretty what?” Matt demanded.
“Well...” a deep breath. “It was ... uh ... pretty cool. Uh ... that’s just my opinion, of course. I’m not a musician though.”
“No,” Matt said, shaking his head a little, “but you’re a music consumer, aren’t you?”
“Well ... yeah,” he admitted.
“How do you know it was Kingsley playing the guitar?” Matt asked next.
“The DJ said so,” Jim told him. “He made a big deal when he introduced the song about how it was Jake and Bigg G singing a duet and Jake was playing the electric guitar. Oh ... and get this ... Bigg G plays the piano on the song.”