“Jake play with them?” she asked, shocked. “You mean he’d put them in his ... in his...”
“No, no!” Celia laughed. “That’s not what I meant. I meant he’d like to watch you play with them, and maybe help you play with them. Greg and I have done that. It’s really kind of sexy.”
“Hmmm,” Laura said. “I’ll have to think about this.”
And she did. Though their talk on the rest of the drive turned to other things—their rehearsal sessions, the Oklahoma City bombing, the ongoing OJ Simpson trial—once they arrived at Jake and Laura’s house to drop her off, she did ask Celia to bring her that catalog the next time they rehearsed.
The next time they rehearsed was the very next day. Jake woke up a little stiff and sore. Laura had been very enthusiastic about sex after returning home from her trip to Palm Springs. She had dragged him immediately up to the bedroom as soon as she walked in the door and then, just before bedtime, they had another, lengthier and more physically demanding session before going to sleep.
Jake had long since noticed that Laura’s sexual appetite increased considerably whenever she went out with Neesh. He did not disapprove of the situation although, in truth, it never occurred to him that anything had actually taken place between his wife and G’s fiancé. He just figured that Laura had a little bisexuality in her, that her experimentation with the bartender and the groupies while out on tour had awakened something inside of her, and that Neesh’s exotic beauty stirred those feelings up. Neesh was certainly not a bisexual, he figured. In truth, the fact that Laura was turned on by women was kind of hot. And now the same had happened to her after spending a couple days on a girl’s weekend with Celia and Celia’s pilot friend, who was, according to Greg, a card-carrying butch lesbian. Interesting. He would have liked to have been a fly on the wall in that Palm Springs domicile this weekend. Again, he was sure nothing could have possibly happened. Celia certainly had no bisexual leanings and Laura would never do anything with the pilot without Jake’s preapproval (would she?). Still, he bet there had been some interesting conversations.
They showered separately, Laura going first, and then made their way downstairs to the informal dining room, where Elsa laid out some breakfast burritos made out of chorizo, eggs, fried potatoes and cheese. They each ate two of the burritos and washed them down with fresh-squeezed orange juice. They then climbed into Jake’s new car—it was a 1995 BMW 730iL with the sports package—and drove to Santa Clarita.
The Nerdlys were already there when Jake and Laura walked in. They were both sitting at the soundboard, discussing audio levels and secondary output sources. Sharon was breastfeeding Kelvin as they did this. The four-and-a-half-month-old sucked contentedly away at her swollen left boob, making happy grunting noises.
While Laura went over to fuss over Kelvin, Jake went to the storage rack and pulled down his Fender Grand Concert. He sat down at the electric piano and turned it on. When it was ready, he played the E key to the left of Middle C, listened to the tone as it resonated, and then struck his low E string a few times. He adjusted the tuning knob a bit and then struck the string again. While it was still resonating, he played the E key on the piano again. The tones matched exactly. He nodded and then began to tune the rest of his strings one by one by fretting the previous string and matching the tunings. This was a morning ritual, although sometimes he used a tuning fork instead.
Celia came in a few minutes later, dressed in white shorts and a maroon top, her hair down around her shoulders. She carried a manila envelope in her hands. After greeting everyone and goggling over Kelvin for a few minutes, she nodded her head at Laura and the two of them disappeared over into the corner for a whispered conversation. There were a few giggles, Laura blushed at something Celia said, and then the envelope changed hands. Laura carried it over to her purse and folded it inside.
“What was that all about?” Jake asked her as she headed back across the room.
Her blush increased. “I’ll show you later,” she replied.
Since they were still in the early stages of composition, they had not yet arranged for a rhythm section or a violinist or a piano player to accompany them. Soon that would have to change. Coop and Charlie had already both agreed to reprise their respective roles as drummer and bassist for the workups and the recordings. The mothers, on the other hand, had both let it be known that—while they were honored to have contributed to the first two albums—they were not up for another round and that Jake and Celia would have to find someone else for the third albums. Celia had spoken to both Natalie and Liz—the violinist and pianist she had toured with—about possibly taking on those roles. Liz was up for it and enthusiastic to get to work. She had been doing nothing but occasional sessions at Aristocrat’s studio since coming off tour. Natalie, on the other hand, had yet to commit. She had nothing going as far as work went at the moment, but she was living in Dallas with Mark, the former copilot who had recently filed for divorce from his wife of ten years, been promoted to pilot-in-command, and was on assignment there currently. She was reluctant to change her relationship with him from live-in to long distance.
“Is she going to make up her mind soon?” Jake asked Celia now as she worked on tuning her own guitar.
“She told me she would let me know by this weekend,” Celia replied.
“She’d better,” Jake said. “If she turns us down, we’re going to have to bust ass to audition and sign a new violinist.”
“That shouldn’t be too hard, should it?” asked Sharon, who was now trying to burp Kelvin but was causing a bit of a distraction because her boob was still out. “Now that you both are on the top of the charts?”
“No, it shouldn’t be hard to find a violinist,” Jake said, forcing his eyes away from the sight, “but I’d really prefer to work with someone that we’re familiar with.”
“Love makes people do odd things,” Celia said with a sigh. “Hopefully, she’ll see that her career would benefit greatly by playing for us.”
“Hopefully,” Jake said. He took one more quick peek at Sharon’s exposed breast and then settled his guitar in his lap. “Shall we do the sound check?”
Even though they were doing nothing but introducing tunes and working on the basic melodies, the Nerdlys still insisted on a complete sound check of all instruments. This took the better part of twenty minutes to accomplish. Once complete, they settled in to get to work. It was Celia’s day, so they worked on her tune Look at Me Now, which was slated to be one of the hard rockers on the next release. Jake liked the tune a lot. Though they were only playing it acoustically at this point, the melody was solid and would translate well to a distorted power riff. And the lyrics were a hard-hitting condemnation and mocking of those record executives, agents, and others who had declared Celia a has-been whose career was over back before the release of The Struggle.
They had the verses and the choruses down pat by this point but were still trying to work on an acceptable transition to and from the bridge section. Celia was in favor of putting a distorted guitar solo just in front of the bridge while Jake thought it would be better to put the bridge first and then lead it into the solo. Ultimately, since it was Celia’s song, she would have the final say, but the team had been playing together long enough now that she listened carefully to and considered all input from Jake, the Nerdlys, and even Laura, who was starting to offer more such contributions by the day.
They played around with Look (as they called it) for the better part of an hour before mutually deciding they had done all they could do for this session. Maybe, suggested Jake, they could start working up the melody into a distorted riff on the next session.