The opening salvo of Bigg G's tune Light Me Up began to play. Jake smiled as he heard his friend's voice begin to pump out the lyrics. Light Me Up had absolutely nothing to do with the Aurora Australis, or southern lights, of course. It had to do with getting wasted and getting into fights. It was Gordon's version of The Thrill Of Doing Business.
Though Jake had learned to appreciate rap music to some degree since meeting and getting to know Gordon, his brain slowly lost interest in the tune. Light Me Up had been overplayed in recent months because it was one of the few songs on Gordon's album that didn't have to be censored for airplay. Jake instead started thinking about Gordon himself. He hadn't seen him or heard anything about him in months. He wondered how he was doing. Had his plan to break away from Cedric Jackson's C-Block Records been successful? Was he even working on his next album? He made a mental note to ask Pauline about Gordon in the morning. She would know what was up with him. She kept her ear pretty close to the ground when it came to anything involving the music business. She had to. She had not been brought up as a musical manager and had lots of lost time to make up for.
"Good old Gordon," Jake said, raising his wineglass in a solitary toast to him. "Hope everything's working out for you."
Jake took another few sips of wine and lit another smoke. He stared to the south, hoping to catch a glimpse of the Aurora Australis Laura Goodhope had mentioned. He saw nothing but the stars. Light Me Up continued to play and Jake continued to think about Gordon and his career plans. Gordon certainly had the right idea with going independent. It was a risky venture, that was true, but the rewards if successful were worth the risk. Complete control of your own musical destiny. Keeping most of the profits from record and single sales in your own bank account.
Jake had actually had Jill and Pauline look into the possibilities of Jake going independent now that he was free of National Records and preparing to go solo, but it hadn't really been feasible. Though Jake was famous for being the lead singer of Intemperance, he was untried as a solo artist. The start-up costs for going independent — even assuming that one used one of the major label's distribution and production networks — were somewhere in the vicinity of three million dollars. In order to get his hands on that kind of financing, Jake would be forced to take out a loan from one of the banks that specialized in backing entertainment ventures. This meant that paying the loan off and getting back into the black would require at least two multi-platinum albums. Since he was untried as a solo artist, most of the banks were hesitant to lay out that kind of money. Those that were willing demanded interest rates that were starting to approach the levels loan sharks employed.
It was really a pity, Jake thought as Light Me Up came to an end and Bob Seger's Against The Wind started to play. Going independent would solve all of his problems. He could make whatever music he wanted and maintain complete control of the album. No oversight from any record company suits. No restrictions on the musicians he hired to back him. No worrying about which song the label is going to promote because he would be doing it himself.
That would be just the ticket for Celia as well. True, she would be deemed an even worse risk than Jake by the banks, but her husband was rich enough to at least partially finance the venture and reduce the amount she needed to borrow. And if she got someone like Nerdly and Sharon to work on the engineering of her album, it would come out sounding like a masterpiece.
Jake sighed, chiding himself a little for his pipedreams. There was no way any of that could come to pass. They only way he or Celia could hope to go independent would be if they managed to combine forces somehow and secure enough financing to...
Jake suddenly stopped, his mouth dropping open, his cigarette falling unnoticed from his fingers and into the water where it was quickly sucked into the first-line filter. He stopped hearing Bob Seger sing about moving eight miles a minute for months at a time. He stopped seeing the sky before him. He even missed the first flashes of the southern lights as they began to twirl and twist and light up the night. The thought he just had was so staggering, so simple. How had it eluded him for so long?
Could it work? Could it?
He got out of the hot tub and put his robe on without toweling off first. Excitedly, he rushed into the house, leaving his wine outside and the cover off the tub — two things he never did no matter how drunk he became. He ran through the house until he came to the door to the bedroom Pauline was staying in. He began to pound on it.
"Pauline!" he yelled. "Wake up! I just had an idea."
He had to pound three more times and repeat this phrase before he heard his sister's fuzzy voice from the other side of the door mutter "Whu?"
He opened the door and clicked on the light. Pauline was sitting up in her bed, rubbing her eyes blearily, her face still showing confusion. "We need to talk," Jake told her.
"What time is it?" she asked blearily. "Is it morning?"
"Not quite," he told her. "Meet me in the kitchen. It's important."
"Jake, I'm exhausted," she pleaded. "Can't this wait until morning?"
"No," he told her. "Go to the kitchen. I'll get Jill."
Without waiting for her to answer, he turned and headed down the hall, crossing over to the other side of the house, where Jill's bedroom door awaited. He pounded on it as well.
"Jill! Wake up! We need to talk!"
Again, he had to pound and repeat himself three times before he received a mumbled verbalization from the other side. He opened the door and flipped on the light. Jill was sitting up in bed as well. Jake discovered that she was apparently in the habit of sleeping nude — or at least topless. Her bare breasts were plainly visible to him.
"Jake!" she squealed, coming fully awake in an instant. She snatched the sheet up and covered herself.
"Sorry," he told her. "I didn't know you were... uh, you know."
"What's going on?" she demanded. "Why are you bursting into my room? I've only been asleep for an hour!"
"Sorry," he said again. "I just had a brilliant idea. I need to know if it's feasible or not. Meet me and Pauline in the kitchen."
"Right now?" she asked.
"Right now," he confirmed. "This can't wait until morning."
She shook her head in bewilderment. "Okay," she said. "Give me a minute to get dressed."
"Right," he said and started to close the door. He hesitated. "Oh, and by the way... very nice boobs. You should wear tighter shirts."
"Get out of here!" she yelled.
He closed the door and got out of there.
The two women met him in the kitchen five minutes later. Pauline was dressed in the long T-shirt she'd been sleeping in. Jill had put on sweats and a T-shirt and had covered them with a thick terrycloth robe.
"All right," Pauline said testily as she took her seat at the table. "What's so goddamn important that you had to wake us up from our exhaustion?"
"Yes," said Jill. "And burst in on us while we were indecent."
"You were indecent?" Pauline asked, surprised.
"She sleeps in the nude," Jake said. "I didn't know."
"Me either," Pauline said. "Do you always sleep like that, Jill? That's kind of out of character, isn't it?"
"I always envisioned her in a Little House On The Prairie nightgown myself," Jake added.
"Can we stop worrying about how I sleep and talk about whatever you woke us up for?" she barked at them.
"Right, sorry," Jake said.
He told them his idea. They listened thoughtfully to it, occasionally exchanging glances with each other.
"Well?" Jake said when he was done. "What do you think? Can it work?"
"It'll be risky," said Jill, the conservative. "If the albums don't sell like you think they will, everyone could lose their money."