Rachel looked at him for a moment and then said softly, "Going on a trip?"
"Yeah," he said. "I'm finally going fishing with Matt in Cabo San Lucas. He's been trying to get me there ever since Sammy Hagar first told him about the place."
"I see," she said, expressionless. "And... uh... am I staying here?"
"Well... yeah, it's kind of a guy's trip, you know," he told her. "I'm sorry I didn't tell you about it earlier. We've just been so busy trying to finish up the album these past few weeks and all. It slipped my mind."
"That's okay," she said, taking a large sip of her wine. "I'm sure I'll find something to do while you're gone."
"Look, babe," he said, "I'm really sorry I didn't tell you about it and I'm sorry you can't go. I'd take you if I thought you'd have a good time but we're just going to be fishing out on a boat the whole week."
"I understand."
"I have an idea," he said, suddenly struck by inspiration. "Why don't we take a little trip of our own before I leave? I'm on vacation now. You don't have anything else to do. Where do you want to go? I'll take you anywhere in the world."
"Really?" she asked.
"Really," he told her. "You name the place and I'll make it happen. We'll leave tomorrow morning."
This had the effect he'd intended on her. She was overwhelmed and quickly forgot about the trip to Cabo without her. Or at least it seemed that way. "I've uh... never been to Yellowstone Park before," she said meekly. "I've always wanted to see the bears and the geysers."
He smiled at her. "Camping or deluxe accommodations?" he asked.
"We could go camping if you want," she said doubtfully, "but I've never been camping before."
"Screw camping then," he said. He leaned forward and kissed her. "I promise you that tomorrow night you'll be sleeping in deluxe accommodations in or around Yellowstone National Park."
It was a promise he was easily able to keep. Twenty minutes on the phone with a luxury travel agent he'd done business with in the past and he had a complete week's vacation booked, including airfare, hotel rooms, and vehicle rental. The next morning they boarded a chartered twin-prop aircraft from Van Nuys and flew to Cody, Wyoming. The spent the next three days exploring Yellowstone National Park in a rented Jeep. They then boarded another chartered aircraft and flew to Kalispell, Montana and spent another three days exploring Glacier National Park in another Jeep.
They had a very good time, not arguing or bickering even once. They ran into no paparazzi or other forms of media hound. Only a dozen or so people even recognized the two of them and approached Jake for an autograph. They flew home on August 24. The next day Jake boarded a private Leer with Matt and they took off for Cabo San Lucas on the tip of Mexico's Baja Peninsula.
Jake liked Cabo, but not as much as Matt and Sammy Hagar. It was a starkly beautiful place, one of the few places on Earth where the desert met the open ocean. The rock formations at Land's End on the very tip of the peninsula were a true testament to the beauty of nature. However, for all of Cabo's splendor, it was a desert and it was hotter than hell the entire time they were there. The temperature tended to hover around the mid-nineties during the day and only dipped six or seven degrees when they went out on the ocean.
Jake also liked the deep-sea fishing they did five of the seven days they were there. Again, however, he didn't like it quite as much as Matt. It was fun to reel in a marlin that weighed eighty or ninety pounds, but it was exhausting work, the sort of thing Jake preferred to do a couple of times a year instead of at every available opportunity like Matt.
What Jake did love about the trip was the sea. He fell in love with the ocean on the trip and the idea of going out on the open ocean in a boat, out beyond the sight of any land, was something he knew by the end of the first day that he wanted to pursue as a hobby in some way. The boat that Matt had chartered for them was a fifty footer with twin diesel engines. It was crewed by three Mexican men — a captain, a first mate, and a fishing assistant — all of whom had at least ten years of experience with open ocean vessels and navigation. All three spoke flawless English and Jake spent a good portion of each trip on the bridge, plying the captain for every bit of information he could get out of him about how the boat worked, what kind of horsepower it generated, how the navigation and radio equipment worked. The captain, delighted that Jake was showing an interest (Matt had never given a rat's ass about the hows and whys of the boat), gave Jake a crash course in small vessel operation and navigation, even showing him his charts and explaining the various features on them.
The hotel they stayed in was the best available on the peninsula. They each had a private suite at the very top, complete with in-room hot tubs, wet bars, sitting rooms, and luxury bedrooms with butler service. Every night after coming in from their fishing trips, showering, and napping away the ten to fifteen beers they'd consumed on the boat, they hit the bars of Cabo, hopping from one to the other, getting outrageously drunk.
Most of the tourists in Cabo — which had yet to be fully discovered as a popular tourist destination at this point in its history — were men and women in their late forties to early seventies, golfers and sport fishermen from the western United States for the most part. Very few people recognized the shaggy-haired youngsters in their midst as famous rock stars. That was just fine with Jake, who relished namelessness like other men relished power or money. Matt, on the other hand, always managed to find some young girl somewhere who knew who he was and hook up with her for the evening.
Jake stayed away from the women, mostly because he was currently spoken for but also because there were very few to choose from. On their fifth day, a day when they had no fishing planned, he and Matt caught a water taxi out to one of the beaches at Land's End. The beach was unique in that it had water on both the east and the west side. On the east side was the placid water of the Sea of Cortez where a few dozen tourists were swimming, snorkeling, or just wading in the warm water. On the west side was the turbulent Pacific Ocean where breakers that had rolled all the way from New Zealand smashed against the rocks with a furious violence that made swimming or wading a lethal activity.
Jake and Matt set up their loungers facing the swimmers on the east side and commenced drinking margaritas that were sold for fifty cents apiece by roving cocktail servers. Within an hour they were quite drunk and Jake's better judgment was hiding in its hole. Soon after that, Matt disappeared for a bit and returned with two bikini-clad young women in tow.
"Jake!" he said, plopping down in his lounger. "This is Rose and Miranda. I met 'em by the shitter over there. They're cousins and they were both just dying to meet us."
"Hi, Rose and Miranda," Jake said dutifully, raising his drink to them. Rose was a bleach blonde with large breasts wearing a bikini that stretched even the liberal standards of Cabo. Miranda was a freckled redhead with medium breasts. Her bikini was a bit more conservative. Both looked at the two rock stars as if they were gods right down from the heavens. "It's nice to meet you."
"He wasn't just messin' with us," Rose said to her cousin. "He really is Matt Tisdale. And this really is Jake Kingsley."
"Yeah," said Miranda, starting to actually tremble a little now. "This is, like, so cool!"
"Hey, Taco!" Matt yelled to the nearest waiter (whose name was not Taco). "Grab a couple of them fuckin' chairs for these chicks here and then bring us another round of drinks!"