“Hard hitting,” Jake said, visibly impressed after hearing the first go through.
“That shit’s from the heart, brother,” G told him. “From the fuckin’ heart.”
“I feel it,” Jake said, nodding. “And I have a bridge I’m working on to throw in there as well.”
“Can’t wait to hear it,” Gordon said.
“What about the different keys?” Laura suddenly spoke up, the musician in her pushing forward for the first time in a while. She hadn’t picked up her saxophone in months now—hadn’t even taken it to Oregon with her—but listening to the composition just now stirred something. “I mean, the tempo is easy to adjust once you start putting it together, but you’re both composing in different keys.”
“I like E major,” Gordon said. “It’s what most of my tunes are composed in.”
“That makes sense,” Laura said. “You have a baritone voice and the two go together. Just like Jake likes G major and F major to go with his tenor voice. But you’ll have to pick one or the other, won’t you?”
“Not necessarily,” Jake said. “We can modulate. It’s been done many times before.”
“Well ... yes,” she agreed, “but it’s very hard to pull off successfully.”
Jake simply shrugged. “The Beatles did it with Penny Lane, Genesis with Invisible Touch, Bon Jovi with Livin’ on a Prayer, and Pink Floyd with pretty much all of their complex tunes.”
“Michael Jackson, Diana Ross, and Whitney Houston did that shit too,” Gordon put in. “It can be done.”
Neesh was shaking her head. “I don’t have the slightest idea what any of you are talking about,” she said.
“The key is the scale of notes the song is played in,” Laura told her. “It tends to be based on the range of the vocalist, but not always. Anyway, most songs remain in the same key throughout. To change key, or modulate, as the term goes, makes the music a lot more complex to play for one thing, but it also makes parts of the song sound different from each other. It’s hard to pull off without it jangling the listener. They may not know anything about music, but they’ll notice something off if you change key.”
“Unless you do it right,” Jake said. “And if we do this, we’ll do it right.”
“Fuckin’ A,” Gordon agreed.
Neesh shook her head again. “I still don’t have any idea what you all are talking about. Can we maybe talk about the law and contracts for a bit?”
They did not. Instead, the two musicians went back to work, playing their music for each other and experimenting with ways to combine it. Neesh and Laura watched them, mostly in silence, and sipped their wine, with Laura playing proper host and getting up to refill their glasses when they were empty. Before long, they’d worked their way through a bottle and a half.
After pouring their latest, Neesh leaned over to Laura just as she sat back down. “This is a getting a little bit tedious for me,” she whispered. “How about we go kick back on that deck out there now?”
Laura was feeling the effects of the wine quite strongly. Her nervousness about speaking of such a delicate subject was still there, but had retreated considerably. “Let’s do it,” she whispered back. She stood up again and turned to Gordon and Jake. “We’re going to go sit out on the deck for a bit, guys.”
“Sounds good,” Jake said without looking up at her, without even halting the strumming he’d been doing on his guitar. Gordon didn’t acknowledge the statement at all. He was busy penciling down a few notes on his pad.
“All right then,” Neesh said with a little smile. “Shall we head out?”
“We should,” Laura agreed.
Laura opened the sliding glass door and they stepped out onto the deck. She closed the door behind her, cutting off the sound of the music being played in the entertainment room. They sat down on the reclining chairs and looked out over the city. The sun was now down and the lights of Los Angeles were shining brightly. Off in the distance, the lights of a police helicopter blinked. It was even clear enough to see the buildings downtown. The temperature was quite pleasant, in the mid-sixties.
“Nice night,” Neesh remarked.
“It is,” Laura agreed.
“Gordon tells me that the property Jake bought on the ocean closed escrow last month.”
“That’s right,” Laura said. “He’s got a contractor working on improving the road and stringing power lines right now. And he’s got meetings scheduled with an architecture firm to start designing the house.”
“That’s very exciting,” Neesh said. “What’s he going to have them build? A mansion?”
She shook her head. “It’s going to be a big house—eight thousand square feet total, plus a guest house that will be another two thousand. But it’s all going to be single story. Jake is not pretentious. He wants a house that’s comfortable and has all the room he wants and needs, but not one that’s going to say, ‘look how rich I am’. He wants it to be the sort of house that people will look at—although the only way they’ll be able to see it is if they’re on a boat out in the ocean or flying over in an aircraft—and hardly even notice.”
“Interesting,” Neesh said thoughtfully. “That explains a lot about the wedding you two are having. Simple, intimate, and secluded.”
“It’s what we wanted,” she said.
“Really?” she asked. “Didn’t you ever dream about a huge production with hundreds of guests, the event of the season for your wedding? Everyone focusing on you, the bride?”
“No,” she said quite honestly. “The very thought would terrify me. In truth, I would’ve been happy driving down to the Justice of the Peace in our jeans and getting married that way.”
“You’re kidding,” Neesh said.
“Not at all,” she said. “Jake insisted that we have some sort of ceremony though. He wants his family and friends to be there.” She giggled a little. “And he wants to stomp on a wine glass at the end of the ceremony.”
“Stomp on a wine glass?” she asked. “He’s not Jewish, is he?”
“No, he’s not religious at all. Nerdly did that at his wedding, however, and Jake thought it was very cool.” Another giggle. “He told me once that the real reason he asked me to marry him was so he could stomp on the glass.”
Neesh laughed. “You two are an interesting couple,” she said. “I think you’re right for each other.”
“So do I,” Laura said. She swallowed. “And that’s why ... I wanted to talk to you about something.”
Neesh looked at her. “What happened on the beach the last time we were together?” she asked.
“Yeah,” Laura said. “About that.”
“I assume you’re not talking about you tripping over the sea lion and us having to sneak in the house naked?”
“No,” she said, “although that is a great story now that the injuries have healed and my toenails are growing back. I’m talking about what happened just before that.”
The light was dim out here, provided only by the inside lights shining through the windows, but it was enough that Laura could see Neesh smiling fondly. “That was just girl-time, Teach,” she said. “And it was interrupted girl-time at that.”
“You ... uh ... you seem to think of it a lot more casually than I’m able to,” she said.
“Why shouldn’t it be?” Neesh asked her. “It’s not like it’s cheating. It’s just two girls...” a little naughty giggle, “ ... sometimes three, having some fun, sharing pleasures. Nobody can get pregnant from it. Nobody can get no disease from it—at least not very easily—and the very thought of it tends to turn guys on something fierce if they know about it. So, tell me, what’s wrong with a little girl-time every now and then?”