"So which one of you is responsible for teaching Celia the guitar?" Jake asked them during a break in the action. "I know it had to be one or both of you, because she's surely got some musical genes going on."
"It was I," Roberto said with no small measure of pride. "I taught Celia and Eduardo the guitar when they children."
The lessons didn't stick as well with Eduardo, did they? Jake did not say. Eduardo, lead guitarist of La Diferencia, knew his chords well enough but did not seem to be able to progress beyond simple rhythms. The few solos he had done on the albums were nothing more than disjointed noise that vaguely resembled music. "You are to be complimented, Senor," he did say. "Celia's acoustical playing is a thing of beauty."
Roberto nodded, obviously pleased with the praise (and obviously not missing Jake's exclusion of Eduardo in the statement). "She took to the instrument at a very early age," he said. "I remember teaching her the basic chords before she was even in school. She has long since surpassed her brother and even myself in skill."
"You are quite the guitar player as well, Jake," Maria said, her accent so thick it took Jake a moment to interpret just what she'd said. "I enjoyed the cockles and muscles song you did."
"Thank you, Senora Valdez," he said. "Hopefully you will enjoy the actual wedding song I composed as well."
"I'm looking forward to it," she told him. She then rattled off a long statement in rapid fire Spanish which Senor Valdez reluctantly interpreted as her opinion that he should consider getting a haircut as he looked like a girl.
Jake laughed. "I'll take that under advisement," he told her.
Finally, the rehearsal came to an end and the traditional rehearsal dinner began. The wedding party was served New York steaks, grilled mushrooms, fresh asparagus, and rice pilaf. For desert, there was baked Alaska. The food was very good and there was a lot of it.
The wedding hall was a no smoking facility, so after the plates were taken away, Jake excused himself to go step outside and have a cigarette. Helen was still working on her last glass of wine — she was a bit on the tipsy side — and talking to Greg's sister, who was interested in learning to fly. She elected to stay behind.
Jake walked out through the back door of the facility and onto a large balcony that overlooked the resort's private beach. There was a brisk wind blowing and the soothing sound of the breakers crashing on the shore drifted to him. He took out a smoke and lit up. No sooner had he taken his first drag when a whiff of vanilla reached his nose.
Chapter 13b
"Got another one of those?" Celia asked him, taking up position on the rail next to him. She, like everyone else at the rehearsal, was dressed informally. She had on a pair of khaki shorts and a white sleeveless blouse. Her hair was pulled into a simple ponytail.
"I think I can spare one," he said, pulling out his pack. He shook one out for her and then lit his lighter so she could ignite it. She drew deeply on it and then exhaled, sending a plume of smoke out over the beach where it was torn asunder by the breeze.
"Thanks," she said with a sigh. "I really needed that."
"My smokes are your smokes," he told her. "I spent a little time with your parents earlier."
"Oh yeah?"
"Yeah," he said. "You'll excuse me for saying so, but your mom is pretty hot for a woman her age. Greg should be pleased. You definitely pass the 'mom test'."
"The 'mom test'?" she asked. "I don't think I'm quite familiar with that."
Jake chuckled. "It's one of those chauvinistic ideas we men like to engage in," he told her. "According to conventional wisdom, if you're considering marrying a woman, you need to take a look at her mom on the theory that the woman in question is going to age similarly to her mother. The assumption is that you're getting a look at what your possible wife is going to look like in twenty-five years."
"Ahhh, I see," she said with a chuckle. "So if my mom would've been fat, or gray, or wrinkled..."
"Mom test failed," Jake confirmed. "Your mom, however, is none of those. Your padre is a very lucky man."
"So is my madre," she said. "You probably didn't notice, but daddy is pretty good looking as well."
"Actually, I don't tend to notice things like that," he said. "But now that you mention it, he does seem to hold up rather well."
They had a few more drags apiece, listening to the crashing of the surf. It was a companionable silence, not the least bit awkward.
"So how are you doing, Celia?" Jake asked her. "As I recall from past conversations, you only smoke cigarettes when you're stressed out. Is the wedding getting to you?"
"That's part of it," she said. "This whole week has been nothing but a frantic rush as we tried to pin everything down and make sure everything is arranged and ready."
"What's the other part?" he asked.
She looked at him and took another slow drag, letting it drift out of her mouth and nostrils. She tapped the ashes over the balcony railing. "Greg's been acting kind of weird lately," she said. "I'm not sure what to make of it."
"What kind of weird?" Jake asked. "Are we talking homicidal maniac kind of weird or the garden variety what-the-hell-crawled-up-your-ass kind of weird?"
Celia giggled a little. "The latter," she said. "It's been going on for almost two months now. He's very distant with me at times. At other times, he's very argumentative. He'll snap at me for some little thing and act like I just killed a child or something when all I did was drop a can into the garbage instead of the recycle bin. It's been getting worse over the past three weeks."
"You think it might just be pre-wedding stress?" Jake asked. "I hear it can be pretty bad."
"Maybe," she said. "It's certainly gotten worse as the date actually approached. But I think it might be something else as well."
"Like what?" he asked.
"It really started when Aristocrat told us they weren't going to pick us up for the next option period," she said.
That had been at the beginning of May, Jake remembered. The first time Jake and Helen had gotten together with Celia and Greg to play golf after returning from the international tour, the news had still been days fresh — fresh enough to still sting. And, now that he thought about it, Greg had seemed even angrier and more hurt about the rejection than Celia had. He had gone on and on about how the sleazy record companies just used someone as long as they were making money, destroyed their career with their overbearing restriction on artistic license, and then just threw them to the curb once they were done with them.
"It bothers him a lot that we're not going to make another album," Celia said. "He's been acting like it was some sort of personal affront to him and him alone. It kind of pisses me off at times, to tell you the truth. I mean, Eduardo and the rest of the band had to move back to Venezuela because they kicked us out of our condos. I would have had to move back too if Greg wasn't paying for an apartment for me. And somehow, I've managed to accept all this. I don't know why Greg can't."
"I assume you've talked to him about this?" Jake asked.
"I've tried," she said. "All he keeps going on about is whether or not there is some way I can sign with a different label as a solo artist and put out my own album."
"You can't," Jake said. "You're pretty much forbidden from making any music until your contract expires."
"I know," she said. "He can't seem to get a grip on that particular fact though. I keep trying to tell him that it's only two years, that I'll be able to put something together when I'm free, but he says that it might be too long. That people might..." She choked up a little, turning her face so Jake couldn't see it.
Jake reached out and gently took her face in his hands, turning it back to him. There was a tear tracking down her left cheek. "People might what?" he asked.