“An appropriate suggestion,” Nerdly agreed. “We’ve already tuned and sound checked all the instruments except for those belonging to you three.”
“Right,” Jake said, walking over to the wall and pulling down his Les Paul. “Let’s get it done.”
They got it done and then went to work. It was Jake’s day, so they worked primarily on his tunes, spending about an hour and a half on each. One tune they did not work on, however, was Dark Matter. The week before, he had made the agonizing decision to not put it on his next album.
It was not that he did not like the tune. On the contrary, he thought it one of the best pieces he had ever composed and worked up. The problem was that it was not a Jake Kingsley tune; it was an Intemperance tune, complete with Nerdly on the piano. He did not perform that genre anymore, was not going to shamelessly exploit that sound just to help sell his CDs. He had a suspicion that if he did include Dark on the next CD, it would end up overshadowing all the other tunes that were in the alternative rock/grunge genre he was now known for. And there were some damn good tunes he was planning to put out with this next release. In addition to that, he knew that he and the group of musicians he was currently playing with would not be able to do justice to the tune, would not be able to make it all that it could be. Only Matt Tisdale would be able to play the riffs and the solos on Dark the way they were supposed to be played. And, though Celia was a fine guitar player and could shred a distorted electric pretty well, she could not do justice to the rhythm chords and the clean transitional parts the way Jake would.
No one had disagreed with him when he announced his decision in this matter. Coop and Charlie and Nerdly had been a little disappointed, but they had not argued. And Celia seemed downright relieved. It seemed clear to her that she would be unable to fill Jake’s shoes on such a cut.
Though they often knocked off a little early this late in the game, they continued to work on this day until four o’clock since they’d started late. It was a good session, and everyone seemed happy with it as they said their goodbyes for the day.
Celia gave Jake and Laura hugs, thanked them for having her at their new home, and they thanked her being their beast of burden for the move-in. She then climbed into the back seat of the Nerdlys’ Honda so they could take her home.
“All right,” Jake said as he and Laura climbed into the F150. “Let’s see how long it takes us to get home.”
Going home took longer than anticipated as well. First, there was heavy traffic on the roads driving from the studio to the airport. Once there, the filing of the flight plan went easily enough, but Jake needed to fuel the plane, a process that took the better part of thirty minutes to accomplish. Once fueled and preflighted, it took another twenty minutes to get into the air because the airport traffic itself was quite congested with both arrivals and departures. Once in the air, a moderate headwind slowed them even further, turning the forty-eight-minute flight time into fifty-five.
They touched down at Oceano Airport at 6:25 PM, both of them tired and out of sorts. They pushed the plane into the hangar (it was easier to do with Laura helping, but still a pain in the ass. Jake made another mental note to get the tug here ASAP) and closed the door. They climbed into the BMW and made the drive home, arriving at 6:50, approximately an hour later than Jake had told Elsa to expect him.
“I was worried about you,” she scolded when they walked into the door. “I thought you might have had an issue with your airplane.”
“No, just underestimation on my part,” Jake said. “Sorry about that.”
“Did it ever occur to you to call and tell me you are running late?” she demanded. “You have a cellular phone, Laura, do you not?”
“Yes, I do,” she said meekly. “And it did occur to us to call but...” She trailed off.
“But what?” Elsa demanded.
“We uh ... couldn’t remember what our new phone number is,” Jake admitted.
She looked at them, astonished. “You didn’t write it down?”
“Of course I wrote it down,” he said. “It’s on a piece of paper sitting on my desk in the music room.”
She shook her head sadly. “Your dinner was on the table precisely at six o’clock, like usual,” she told them. “It is dill salmon. I suspect it will not taste as well cold as it would have had when it was fresh out of the oven.”
“Sorry, Elsa,” Jake said. “My fault.”
“Will this be a regular occurrence?”
“I certainly hope not.”
“Hmmph,” she grunted, not appeased in the least. “Go eat. At least your wine will still be chilled.”
They ate, putting cold bites of broiled salmon into their mouths one by one and chasing them with sips of chilled Sauvignon Blanc.
“Maybe we should rethink this daily commute thing,” Jake suggested. “At least while we’re rehearsing.”
“What do you mean?” Laura asked.
“It’s not quite as easy-peasy as I thought it would be,” he said. “In order to make it to rehearsal by nine, we’re going to have to get up at 6:20 in the morning. That’s freakin’ early.”
“It is,” she agreed.
“And the only way we’re going to make it home by dinnertime on the other end of the day is if we knock off rehearsal at three o’clock.”
“I suppose so,” she said. “What is the alternative?”
“We just stay in the city during the week,” he said. “We have the Granada Hills house. We sleep there on weekdays and fly back here on the weekend.”
She thought this over for a few moments. “Well ... that would give us some extra sleep. We wouldn’t have to get up until ... what? Eight o’clock or so?”
“About that,” he said.
“But we’d have to make our own breakfast,” she said. “I’m assuming that Elsa would stay here.”
“She would,” he said. “And I know how to make breakfast. Dinner too.”
“I know you do,” she said. “You cooked for me every day when we were in New Zealand. But what about the laundry, and the grocery shopping, and the housecleaning?”
“We both know how to do all those things, hon,” he pointed out.
“Of course we do,” she said. “And I’m not suggesting that household chores are beneath me or anything, but ... well ... is that really easier than just flying back and forth every day?”
“I think it might be,” he said.
She nodded. “All right,” she said. “Let’s think it over a bit.”
“Let’s do that.”
They left the table and went into the main part of the house. They could see that Elsa had been hard at work while they had been gone. All of the boxes were now unpacked and nowhere to be seen. All of their belongings were where they expected them to be. Jake’s oak bar in the entertainment room was now fully stocked and functional, complete with booze, ice, mixers, and clean glasses.
“She did a really good job,” he remarked, pulling a glass down from the rack.
“She always does,” Laura said.
“Do you want to go out to the cliff and look at the ocean with me?”
“I thought you’d never ask,” she said with a smile.
Jake poured himself a healthy slug of Macmillan single-malt on the rocks. Laura took her wine glass and the remainder of the Sauvignon Blanc. They went out the sliding glass door and strolled across the dirt to the redwood deck on the cliff’s edge. They sat down close to each other, so their hips were in contact. It was another beautiful day, with no smog to be seen, the sky a brilliant blue above them, the ocean a brilliant blue with white foam below them, the sun a round orange ball sinking toward the horizon.
They sipped their drinks in silence as the sun drew closer to setting. Finally, it began to sink into the sea. They watched as it was swallowed up by the waves and twilight descended.