"We tried once," Jim said. "We paid a couple thousand bucks and put together a demo tape at one of the recording studios here in Boston. We sent it out to about two dozen agents and to all of the major recording studios, including National Records and Aristocrat Records. Most of them we never heard from again. Those we did hear from all rejected us on the ground that 'you don't have the look we're in the market for at this time'."
"In other words," Stephanie said, "we don't look good on camera so they don't care what our music sounds like."
Jake nodded, unsurprised. "Yeah," he said. "That's kind of the way the industry is gearing itself these days. It used to be they didn't give a shit what you looked like as long as you put out good music. Now, it's just the opposite. They don't give a shit what you sound like as long as you look good in the video."
Marcie shrugged, disinterestedly. "Who cares about making it big?" she asked. "I still enjoy teaching and I'm happy with my life. We get to jam together on weekends during the school year and we get to play live for people that appreciate us for what we are all summer. At least we know we're good, that we really are musicians."
"Well put," Jake said. "That really is the most important thing. But if you could get a recording contract going... if someone did agree to put out an album of your tunes, you wouldn't refuse it, would you?"
"What are you suggesting, Jake?" asked Jim.
"I have some pretty good connections in the industry," Jake said. "If there was ever a band that deserved to be heard from coast to coast, you are it. If you have any of those demo tapes still floating around, I'd be willing to let a few people listen to them and see what happens."
They all looked at him as if he were setting them up for a practical joke.
"I'm sincere," Jake assured him. "I can't guarantee anything, but maybe I can get you heard by the right people. I don't like to brag, but I can make a phone call to most of the talent agents in Hollywood and they'll listen to me. I can ask for a meeting with the CEO of National Records and he'll grant it. He may not like me very much — he and I have butted heads many times over the years — but he'll listen to me. And if he hears something that he thinks will make money for him, he'll jump all over it."
"Do you really think they'll like us?" Stephanie asked.
"I really think they will," Jake said. "The question is, do you want to move beyond New England? I'm certainly not one to romanticize the life I lead. It has a lot of good points — the most important one being that I'm rich — but there are a lot of bad parts as well."
Jim answered for them. "Mr. Kingsley," he said, "if someone were to offer us a recording contract, we would not turn it down."
Jake nodded. "Very well then," he said. "Do you still have a demo tape?"
"We do," Jim said.
"Do you have a piece of paper?" he asked next.
Marcie immediately got up and went to a locker, where she kept her purse. She rummaged around in it for a few moments and finally produced a notepad and a pen. Jake wrote down his home address and the telephone number for Pauline's office.
"Send your tape and any information you can put together about yourselves here," he told them, handing Marcie the paper. "Get newspaper clippings about your shows, reviews, anything you can to support the fact that you're talented musicians. Put together a resume that includes bios on all of you and tells how much money you're paid for a show and the names and addresses of every club you've played in over the past year. If you could get some letters of recommendation from some of the club owners, so much the better. Get that stuff to me as soon as you can and I'll see what I can do."
The band was pleased. They all thanked him profusely, Marcie and Stephanie even going so far as to give him hugs.
Jake wished them a fond farewell and then made his leave. When he returned to the club floor he found that Helen was no longer sitting at their table. While he was puzzling this out, one of the waitresses came over to him and told him where she was.
"She got sick," she said. "Cindy helped her to the ladies room. They haven't come back out yet."
"Oh... great," Jake said. "Do you think you could go in there and check on them for me?"
"Anything for you, Jake," she said, her eyes telling him that by anything, she meant anything.
He gave her his patented Jake Kingsley shy smile, the one that seemed to say: I get you and I appreciate the offer, but right now is not a real good time. She responded to it with a smile of her own — a keep me in mind smile — and headed off to the bathroom on her mission.
Cindy and the other waitress brought Helen out of the bathroom a few minutes later, holding onto her one on either side to keep her from falling. Helen was barely conscious, maintaining just enough coherence to keep putting one foot in front of the other.
"Thank you, ladies," Jake said with a sigh. "I can take it from here."
He took it from there, putting Helen's left arm around his neck and half dragging her through the crowd and out the door. As they went, she kept trying to kiss him. He kept his face turned away because her breath smelled very strongly of vomitus. He haled a cab and stuffed her inside. Within two minutes, she was sound asleep and snoring.
He had to physically pick her up and carry her into the hotel when they arrived. As he was opening the door to their suite, she suddenly woke up and began to hiccup wetly. Jake barely got her to the bathroom before she started to erupt with great volumes of alcohol-scented emesis.
"It's gonna be a long night," Jake sighed as he patiently held her hair out of her face and kept her from falling over.
When the retching finally trailed off, Jake managed to get her to her feet, get her undressed, and mostly cleaned up. Before he could get her into bed, however, she had another episode of violent vomiting. As soon as it was over, she passed out again, this time with her head in the toilet bowl. Jake considered just leaving her there — after all, she was pre-positioned for the next round — but in the end he couldn't quite bring himself to do it. He dragged her back to the bedroom and put her in bed, careful to lay her on her side to keep her from following in the footsteps of Bon Scott, John Bonham, and Jimmy Hendrix.
She woke up three more times during the night, although by the third she was reduced to nothing more than dry heaves. Finally, she fell into a slumber so deep it could almost qualify as comatose.
The next morning she was so sick she could barely get out of bed. The very mention of food was enough to make her gorge rise. She a vague memory of the end of the Brainwash show, but no recollection whatsoever of Jake leaving her at the table so he could go meet the band, how she got back to the hotel, how she ended up naked in bed, or her many trips to the toilet to purge her stomach of the poison she'd ingested.
She took a long soak in the room's bathtub and then dressed listlessly, falling back asleep while Jake packed her suitcases for her.
It was as they were in the first class lounge waiting for their flight to be called that she began to tremble.
"Jake," she told him, "I'm afraid to get on that plane."
"I know," he said, patting her leg. "I'll be with you. We'll be okay."
And, of course, they were. The 747 took off normally and leveled out at 35,000 feet. It flew normally for five hours and forty-eight minutes. It then touched down normally at LAX, only five minutes behind schedule. Helen sat in barely controlled terror the entire flight. Every bump of turbulence, every bank of every course change, every change in altitude, made her jump and look around wildly and then look out the window at the two engines on the right wing.
"Are you going to be okay?" Jake asked her at one point.
"I don't know," she admitted. "That flight yesterday scared me, Jake. I feel like we're riding in a broken down box of bolts that's going to break apart any second." She shook her head and sighed. "I'm not sure I'm ever going to climb on one of these things again."