Rachel, not realizing that Matt was entirely serious, burst out laughing at his advice. "You are one of a kind, Matt," she said. "Anyone ever told you that?"
"No," he said, downing the last of his Jack Daniels and Coke. "I've never heard that before."
They pulled up in front of the hotel and the driver opened the door for them. Once again they exited the limo in a billowing cloud of marijuana smoke and entered the building reeking of it. The reporters outside shouted questions at them, most having to do with the Michelle Rourke accusations. Jake did not even acknowledge their existence.
He could not avoid them inside the party however. It was less than ten minutes after their arrival, as they were still sipping on their first drink, that Allison Stone, a reporter for the Los Angeles Times entertainment department, intercepted them as they were making their way across the room.
"Jake, Ms. Madison, do you mind if I ask you a few questions?"
"As long as your questions don't have anything to do with Michelle Rourke or her article," Jake replied.
Her face contorted a bit but she quickly got it under control. "I guess I can live with that," she said. She held her hand out to Rachel and introduced herself.
"I read your article all the time," Rachel told her. "It's very nice to meet you."
"Well thank you," she said. "If it's okay with you two, I'd just like to get some clarification on the details of your relationship."
"The details?" Rachel said, paling a bit as she imagined having to explain her blowjob experience.
"Uh... she means how we met and how long we've been going out and all that," Jake said.
"Oh... of course," Rachel responded. "I can do that."
They started with a brief biography of Rachel's life, mostly confirming information that was already out there — the spelling of her name, her date of birth, where she went to school, her major, where she worked. From there they went into the details of meeting Jake for the first time and the development of their romantic relationship from there. Rachel answered the questions as honestly and completely as she could, her answers well spoken and articulate. She told Allison that she had been attracted to Jake from the beginning but that he hadn't asked her out until after she'd broken things off with her previous boyfriend.
"So this all must seem kind of Cinderella-like to you," Allison said. "A normal, every day college student who suddenly find herself dating a famous musician and going to the Grammy Awards with him."
"It is quite the experience," she confirmed. "Sometimes I have to pinch myself to make sure this isn't all some elaborate dream I'm having."
Allison smiled. "You're on record as stating you do not believe the allegations made against Jake in the Catholic Monthly article that came out last month."
"I thought I told you not to go there," Jake said.
"I'm just confirming information that's already out there," Allison said.
"Jake tells me that article is a complete fabrication," Rachel said. "And I believe him, not just because he says so, but because I've been dating him now for a month and a half and I've seen no evidence whatsoever that he is capable of behaving that way."
"Good enough," she said, scrolling a note on her pad to go with the recording she was making of the conversation. "How about you, Jake? Were you attracted to Rachel from the start?"
Jake went over the story of their romance from his point-of-view, pretty much staying exactly aligned with her version. And, being the reporter that she was, she slowly edged the conversation back over to the Michelle Rourke article by approaching the subject from the flank instead of head on.
"I understand you're having a lot of trouble with the homeowners who live in the neighborhood where you're buying your house," she said. "How are things going on that front?"
"Just the way they should in America," Jake said. "They're free to shout and yell and hold signs up all they want and I'm free to move in there when escrow closes on March 2."
"So you are going forth with the transaction despite the clear disapproval of your neighbors?"
"That's correct. I've already started packing up things in my condo."
"Do you believe that there would have been all of this clamor regarding your new house if the Catholic Monthly article had not come out?"
"No," he said. "I don't."
"And in regards to that article," she said next. "If the allegations against you are untrue, as you claim, why aren't you suing the publication for libel?"
"Okay, end of interview," Jake said. "I told you not to go there."
"Jake, be reasonable," she said. "You have to talk about the article at some point. Michelle Rourke has accused you of being an abusive rapist. You can't just keep saying 'no comment' whenever you're asked about it."
"No comment," Jake said with a smile. "Come on, Rachel. Let's go mingle a bit, shall we?"
They walked off, leaving Allison to quickly scratch out a few more notes on her pad. It wasn't more than a minute before another reporter — this one from Entertainment Weekly — accosted them and began to ask the exact same questions.
In all it took more than an hour before the reporters stopped intercepting them and firing questions at the couple. They talked to each one but Jake prefaced each interview with a standard disclaimer that the conversation would come to a complete and sudden end if the subject of the Michelle Rourke article was brought up, either directly or indirectly. A few refused outright to restrict their questioning on that subject — after all, that was pretty much the only reason to interview the scrungy singer in the first place — and Jake refused to answer anything of these people. All of the rest agreed to the condition and asked questions about the relationship between Jake and Rachel, what Jake thought of his chances of actually winning one of the coveted gramophones, and what Jake's thoughts were on his stiffest competition for the awards, namely Steve Winwood and La Diferencia. Eventually, however, they always tried to work in the Rachel Rourke thing, some directly, some from the flank like Allison Stone. His response was always the same. He would immediately end the interview and excuse himself.
"Let's get another drink and then I'll introduce you to Celia and Eduardo Valdez," Jake suggested when a full fifteen minutes had gone by without an interception.
"Okay," Rachel said a little nervously. "Are you sure they won't mind?"
"I'm sure," he said.
They went to the bar and got two rum and cokes and then Jake led her through the crowded room to where the brother and sister from the famous pop band were standing amid a throng of reporters and other hanger-ons. As they came closer Jake noticed that several of the event's security force began to edge closer as well, their eyes watching Jake carefully. It seemed they had been briefed on what had happened the last time the two bands had been in the same room together.
Celia was wearing a conservative, light blue dress that fell to just below her knees. It displayed a small amount of her cleavage and covered her shoulders and most of her upper arms. She wore flats upon her feet, no doubt to keep from drawing attention to her height, which was just a hair under six feet tall. She smiled warmly as she saw Jake come up to her. Eduardo shot him a wary look and seemed to send a message with his eyes — don't fuck with us. The security guards tensed up as Jake and Rachel made it to within speaking distance.
"Jake Kingsley," Celia said, holding out her hand for a shake. "I kind of missed you here last year. We had a date to get rejected together, remember?"
Jake laughed, shaking with her. He caught a whiff of her perfume, which was the same intoxicating vanilla scent she'd had on at their first meeting. "We decided to take a year off from rejection," Jake said. "Besides, after that black eye Miguel gave me I didn't really want to show my face around here anyway." That had been during the fight that had taken place in the limo queue after the 1985 Grammies. Matt had insulted Celia in true Matt fashion and Eduardo, her brother, and Miguel, her family friend and bass player, had attacked him for it. Jake had been trying to pull Matt away from the scuffle when Miguel had swung a roundhouse at Matt, only to miss and hit Jake's face instead.