Celia ignored her. “Mindy Snow,” she spat. “What other fucking puta would I be talking about?”
“Ahhh,” Jake said. “The queen of putas. What did she do now?”
“I got a call from Pauline yesterday,” Celia said. “Apparently Mindy’s ex-boyfriend is doing a tell-all interview on Entertainment Reports this Friday.”
“Which ex-boyfriend?” Jake asked. “She’s had a few.” Including me, he did not feel the need to point out.
“The most recent one,” Celia said. “The personal trainer who looks like he stepped out of a Greek God painting.”
Jake nodded. He had seen media reports of the man here and there in his travels and he thought that an accurate description. “What does that have to do with you?” he asked.
“Apparently he is alleging that the reason Mindy broke up with him is that she has always had a crush on Greg and wanted Adonis—or whatever the hell his name is—out of the way now that she managed to land a role with Greg.”
Jake raised his eyebrows a bit. “Really? Does Greg know about this?”
“He does now,” she said. “He called me last night to tell me what’s going on. Of course, by then, I already knew about it from Pauline, but he thought he should talk to me about it. He says that Mindy hit him with this shit yesterday morning during their makeup session. Mindy claims it isn’t true, that this loser of hers took a comment that she made once about Greg being attractive out of context and he’s just doing this interview because they’re paying him and so he can get back at her for breaking up.”
“Wow,” Liz said from her piano. “It kind of sounds like we wandered into the middle of a soap opera here.”
“No me digas! Jueputa!” Celia agreed sourly. “Anyway, Greg says Mindy seemed embarrassed by the whole thing.”
“Mindy, embarrassed?” Jake said with a harsh laugh. “That’ll be the day.”
“He said she seemed quite sincere,” Celia said.
“She’s a very good actress,” Jake said. “She can seem like anything she wants to seem like. I found that shit out the hard way.”
“He sure did,” said Coop, who was sitting on his drum chair, twirling a stick in his hand. “She played Jake like an accordion, bending and squeezing him every fuckin’ way.”
“Yeah,” Jake muttered.
“Didn’t you say she was really good in bed though?” asked Charlie. Now that he was allegedly heterosexual again, he tended to actively bring up and heartily participate in pussy stories—even when it was not really appropriate.
“Uh...” Jake stammered, looking over at Laura, who was frowning at the sudden turn of conversation, “well ... the fact of the matter is—”
“Oh, fuck yeah she was good!” Coop said enthusiastically. “She would get down and stinky at the drop of a fuckin’ hat! Jake used to tell us all about the shit they did when he was railing her. He said she was fuckin’ premo in the sack. What we call an NTN bitch.”
“NTN?” asked Sharon.
“Nothin’ too nasty,” Coop clarified. “You gotta love an NTN slut. Jake, remember that time you told us about how you nailed her while she was sitting on the railing of the balcony of your condo?”
“Uh ... yeah, Coop,” Jake said, blushing. “I remember that.”
“And this other time,” Coop went on, “she dressed up in the outfit she used to wear on the fucking Slow Lane and did her hair all up in that same style from the show so he could plow her while—”
“I think we all get the idea, Coop,” Jake said firmly.
“She dressed up in the outfit from the Slow Lane for you?” Laura asked, her teeth clenched tightly.
“Uh ... well ... yeah, but...”
“I always noticed that Jake would come in limping after spending the night with Mindy,” Nerdly put in. “And sometimes he would have bruises on his arms or scratches on his back or handfuls of hair missing from his head. I must say that I suspected her of being physically abusive toward you, Jake, but male social norms of the time prohibited me from enquiring.”
“Uh ... she wasn’t abusive, Nerdly,” Jake assured him. “She was just ... you know...”
“Down and stinky?” Laura asked, her eyes shooting daggers at her husband.
“That’s a good way of putting it, I suppose,” he said. “Enough about me and Mindy though. We were talking about Greg and Mindy, right?”
“Right,” Celia said, the sour look still on her face, though there was also a hint of amusement there now. “Greg assures me that he believes Mindy is sincere in her embarrassment. He says she has been nothing but professional since they started working together.”
“And do you believe him?” Jake asked.
“I believe Greg,” she said. “But I don’t trust that puta. I don’t trust her at all. She is self-serving and doesn’t care about anyone but herself. I think she’s up to something.”
Jake nodded. “She’s always up to something,” he said. “Tell Greg to keep watching his ass.”
“What could she possibly be up to?” Laura asked.
Jake shook his head. “Only Mindy knows the answer to that.”
“Anyway,” Celia said, “Greg is having Johnny release a statement that says there is nothing but a professional relationship between he and Mindy. Pauline is releasing a statement from me saying that I take no stock in reports by a disgruntled ex-boyfriend and remain supportive of Greg. That is the only acknowledgement of this fiasco we will provide. Hopefully, after the other media shows and the tabloid rags have their say about it, things will go back to normal.”
“Hopefully,” Jake said.
“Didn’t you tell me that Greg and Mindy will be required to film a scene depicting nudity and simulated sexual activity?” Nerdly asked.
Celia sighed again. “Two of them actually,” she said slowly. “Thank you for reminding me, Bill.”
“You’re welcome,” Nerdly said. “I was just wondering whether the coming sexual depictions might have the effect of adding increased combustible material and oxidizer to the conflagration.”
“What?” Celia asked.
“Fuel to the fire,” Jake translated.
“Oh ... of course,” she said, shaking her head a little. “I’m really trying not to think too much about that, Bill. I have to trust that Greg will behave professionally even if Mindy does not.”
“Interesting,” Bill said. “I’m sure that seems a sound and reasonable course of action currently, but what about when...”
“Bill,” Sharon said, covering his mouth with her hand to shut him up. “Maybe it’s time to get on with the sound check?”
“Oh ... of course,” he said once his wife’s hand was removed. “Is everyone done tuning?”
Everyone was done tuning. They stopped talking of Greg and Mindy and Jake and getting down and stinky and went to work dialing in their audio for the day’s work. This took about thirty minutes to complete. By the time they were done, everyone was back in the music mode where they belonged.
“All right,” Jake told everyone. “We’re going to work on Dark Matter for the first part of the day. Is everyone up for that?”
“Fuckin’ A,” said Coop. “I’m liking where you’re going with this tune.”
“Me too,” said Charlie. “It rocks. Reminds me of the Intemperance days—well, you know, the good parts of those days.”
“Does it?” Jake asked, feeling a certain amount of trepidation at these words. Dark (as they would soon be calling it) was indeed a hard rocking tune as he envisioned it and was directing the other musicians to perform it. Like all of his songs, the basic melody and lyrics had been composed using only an acoustic guitar, but when it had come time to start working it up, it had seemed only natural to translate that melody into a distorted three-chord riff backed by a second distorted drop-D tuned guitar. And today he planned to have Liz start throwing in some basic fills with her piano to evolve the composition a little further. That was the formula that had made Intemperance so successful, that had actually spawned an entirely new genre of rock music. And it was a genre he had vowed to leave behind when he went solo.