"Now that sounds like Dad," Jake said with a laugh.
"Mom, on the other hand, is not finding retirement so sweet. She couldn't stay away from the musical life."
"She went back to the philharmonic?"
"No, she didn't go that far. She got a gig with Cypress High School running the student orchestra. She's conducting classical music productions for them. They had their first concert just a few weeks ago — something I'm sure she told you about in one of her letters. It was quite the occasion."
"Does she enjoy doing that?" Jake asked.
"She loves it," Pauline said. "The only problem is that she doesn't hold a teaching credential, so they can't consider her an actual teacher. She doesn't get the same pay as a teacher and she isn't part of the union."
"Is she going to pick up her teaching credential?" Jake asked. "It shouldn't be too hard, should it? She already has a master's in classical music."
"She says she doesn't care about that," Pauline said with a bewildered shake of the head. "She says she's doing it because she wants to, not because of the money."
"Yeah, I can relate to that," Jake agreed.
Pauline gave him a sour look. You're going to have to un-relate to that, brother dear, she thought. And you're going to have to do it soon.
"Anyway," she said, "they're content and their hobbies keep them from getting on each other's nerves too bad. They are worried about you though."
"Tell them I appreciate their worry, but I'm doing fine."
You don't look like you're doing fine, she thought. In fact, you look like shit, Jake. You look like you're just one step away from a breakdown.
She kept her observations to herself. For now anyway.
The two women had left LAX at 10:00 PM and flown all night long, landing in Auckland at 6:00 AM local time. From there, they'd hung out in the Auckland airport for two hours before catching their connection to Christchurch and arriving just before 11:00 AM. Both had slept little on the overnight flight (they had, in fact, gotten their most restful sleep of the trip in the lounge chairs of Auckland International while waiting for their connection). By the time they made it to Jake's house and got the grand tour (both of them loved the house and the view) they were exhausted and wanted nothing more than to catch some sleep.
"Bad idea," Jake warned them. "Trust me on this. I know the best way to combat jet lag."
"It's not getting some sleep?" Pauline asked testily.
"No, that just makes it worse," Jake told her. "What you want to do is stay up until nine or ten tonight."
"Nine or ten?" Jill groaned.
"Are you insane?" Pauline put in. "It already feels like it's late afternoon on a day after I've stayed up all night. You want us to stay up another nine hours without even a nap?"
"That's right," Jake said. "If you do, you'll sleep all night and wake up sometime around seven or eight o'clock — exactly when you're supposed to wake up. Once you do that, your body clock will be pretty much set on New Zealand time until you go home."
They gave it a shot. Jake brewed a pot of potent Sumatra to help keep them awake. They drank three cups apiece and seemed a little more alive for the effort. Jake told them a few of his tamer tales of life on South Island. He did not show them his new tattoo. They did not discuss whatever their reason for coming here was.
"How does filet mignon sound for dinner?" Jake asked them. "I picked some up from a butcher shop down in Lyttelton yesterday. It's so fresh it was still in the cow three days ago."
"Uh... fine, Jake," Pauline said.
"Sounds delicious," Jill agreed.
Jake kept them occupied. They climbed back in his truck and he took them on a tour of some of his favorite places. They started with Christchurch itself, going through the tunnel and heading to the center city. They saw the majestic cathedral that had given the city its name. They wandered through a few of the parks surrounding the town square. They drove out to a few of Jake's favorite shops where he purchased the makings for the next day's meals. From Christchurch, they went back through the tunnel and into Lyttelton, visiting the wharf (though not the fishmongers or the bar or the tattoo shop), the butcher shop, and an old bookstore where Jake got most of his reading material.
Again, the two women avoided any confrontational conversation during the outing. Pauline did, however, update him on the happenings with his former bandmates.
Matt was going full speed ahead on the recording and production of his first solo album. He had eleven songs that had already been composed and submitted and were now being recorded in National's basement studio. Matt was the lead singer and the lead guitarist on every cut. He had demanded and been granted absolute control over the recording process. As such, there would be no overdubs of any kind inserted into the master recording. The album — which would be titled Phase Two — was slated to be released in late May.
"Who did he get for a backing band?" Jake asked, interested (and perhaps a bit jealous) despite himself.
"Studio musicians," Pauline replied. "He handpicked a bass player and a drummer from National's best. He said they don't have to be all that good, just competent. His guitar will carry them."
"It better," Jake observed. "With only three instruments, one voice, and no overdubs, he's going to have to really shine."
"I haven't heard any of the tunes myself," Pauline said, "but I talked to Crow. He's Matt's A&R guy. He says the tunes are raw and gritty with lots of power chords, complex riffs, modified palm-muted chords, and long, intricate solos. Just the sort of thing Matt Tisdale fanatics will love. He's not real happy about Matt doing the vocals though."
"No?" Jake said.
She shook her head. "He wanted Matt to get a Jake Kingsley sound-alike vocalist."
Jake chuckled. "Of course he did." There were many such people out there. Jake could think of six bands off the top of his head that were blatantly trying to cash in on the success of Intemperance by imitating their style of music and the distinctive lilt of Jake's tenor voice. All of these acts had been signed solely on the basis of their imitation skills. It was only natural that National would want to score one of these singers to belt out Matt's tunes on the theory that it would attract more of the mainstream to his solo album.
"I heard that Matt's suggestion for what Crow could do with a Jake Kingsley impersonator was among his most colorful and physically impossible," Pauline said.
"But they let him go ahead and sing himself?" Jake asked.
"Yeah, that wasn't a deal breaker," Pauline told him. "His voice is decent enough. Somewhat generic, but he can carry a tune. He's sticking to the basic formula that they want so they'll play nice with him."
"Well, I wish him the best," Jake said, and he did, although there was a small part of him — mostly hidden in his subconscious — that would enjoy seeing Matt bomb after everything he'd put him through.
Nerdly was also working hard these days. Pauline told Jake that he and Sharon spent no less than eleven hours a day in National's recording studio, overseeing the engineering and recording of the majority of the albums in production (with the notable exception of Matt's — the Archers were forbidden from even entering the corner of the studio where Phase Two was being recorded).
"Both of them are considered to be geniuses when it comes to putting audio onto a master in the best form," Pauline said. "Techs that have been working there for thirty years are regularly coming to them for advice."
"He always did like that aspect of being a musician better than the actual music," Jake said.
"Yeah," Pauline agreed, "and I'm afraid that National is exploiting the two of them terribly. They're paying them fairly good wages for what they do, but they're worth a lot more. I've tried to get them to negotiate a contract of some sort but they won't do it."