True to her word, Pauline had made sure that Charlie was covered under the master Intemperance contract just like the rest of the band. As such, he was allowed to sign endorsement contracts with anyone he pleased. On the advice of the other four band members Charlie had allowed Pauline to handle the negotiations and bargaining for such a contract. Cashing in on their fans' fascination for Darren Appleman's replacement she'd been able to get a bidding war going between Fender and Brogan. Fender had come out the winner when they'd agreed to a nine hundred thousand dollar endorsement fee plus twenty dollars for each Charlie Meyer signature model bass that was sold. Even with the taxes and Pauline's twenty percent taken out Charlie had been able to pay off all of his debt to National Records (it had been reduced by half the moment he signed the Intemperance contract), buy a new car, and put down a healthy down payment on a modest three bedroom house in Silver Lake, very near where Pauline lived.
He played his signature Fender bass now with love and pride, his skilled fingers fingerpicking the thick strings with his right hand, pushing the fretboard with his left. He brought the tempo up, faster and faster, building it to what seemed a tension inducing crescendo. Though the rest of the band had found Charlie to be more than a little odd as they'd gotten to know him these past months ("he's as crazy as a shithouse rat," Matt had proclaimed on more than one occasion) no one disputed his skill with his instrument. He was one hell of a bass player — in the same league as Geddy Lee of Rush, whom Jake and Matt both considered the best of all time.
Nerdly began to throw some piano into Charlie's rhythm, playing just over the top of it. Coop sounded in next, starting with single strikes on his floor toms at the top of the melody and then gradually adding more until he was fully supporting the rhythm. Matt and Jake came in next with Matt grinding out a harsh, almost brutal riff and Jake supporting it with a less distortion and less complexity. It was, overall, a classic Intemperance musical arrangement that had never been recorded before, that had been composed solely as the instrumental intro to the first encore song on this tour.
They played it for another twenty seconds, becoming louder, faster, and more complex with each repetition of the rhythm. Suddenly, everything stopped. The instruments went mute except for a deliberately prolonged reverterbration of the final note on Matt's guitar, drawing out, slowly fading away. Just before it faded completely Matt launched into the opening riff for Descent Into Nothing. Hearing this the crowd once again began to cheer wildly. As Jake stepped up to the microphone to begin singing the verses he saw two young women in the front row raise their shirts to show him their breasts. A bra and two pairs of slinky panties came flying in from another direction. He gave a little grin. Sometimes it was just great to be a rock star.
It was as he was singing the second chorus, just before the bridge and the guitar solo, when other objects came flying onto the stage, a group of ten or more, coming from several rows back, moving with considerable velocity.
Damn it, Jake had time to think before one of the objects, a black book a little larger than a pack of cigarettes, hit him directly in the chest hard enough to hurt. I thought we were going to get through a concert for once without this shit. The small book bounced off him and landed at his feet, its cover facing upward. Jake didn't need to look to know what was printed on it. The New Testament — The Gospels Of Jesus Christ. It was a small bible, the sort religious fanatics carried around to hand out to people they wanted to save.
The tour had opened November 15 in Bangor, Maine. From there they'd worked their way down the eastern seaboard to their current gig in Tallahassee, Florida. At every city they'd played in groups of religious protestors — the Family Values Coalition chief among them — tried to petition the various city councils and county boards of supervisors to get Intemperance's concert permit revoked. When that failed — and so far it had failed miserably at every destination — they picketed the venues for days in advance of the show, their signs reading things like BLASPHEMY IS NOT FREE SPEECH or MOTHERS, DON'T LET YOUR CHILDREN BE CORRUPTED! The picketing always reached a frenzied peak on the night of the show with hundreds of protestors waving signs and trying to hand bibles and/or anti-rock music tracts to the people waiting in line to get in. In almost every city so far there had been fights between concertgoers and protestors. In Boston there had been a full-scale riot outside the auditorium in which dozens had been arrested, dozens injured (including one pious young man who had been pantsed and then had the top of his sign shoved into his anus) and the cops had been forced to fire teargas in order to restore order.
No matter what the protestations, however, the shows went on in each and every venue, although thanks to the media coverage of the unruliness the cops had learned to deploy in force whenever Intemperance came to town, both outside the arenas and in.
It was during the show in Hartford, Connecticut that the bibles first started to fly in from the audience. Apparently there were members of the various religious groups who were purchasing tickets to the shows for the specific purpose of throwing bibles onto the stage. It had started as a spontaneous act but after realizing how great of an idea it was it had become more organized and persistent. The word had spread through whatever channels of communication these groups utilized that the way to show everyone what sinners Intemperance were was to infiltrate ten or fifteen people into each concert and hurl copies of the New Testament at them.
These flying bibles at one time or another had struck all five members of the band, with the three front men taking the brunt of the attacks. Jake had been hit in the head twice, in the hands three times, and in the body more than he could count. The press had reported on the bible-throwing incidents with the same lighthearted humor they'd displayed about the cross in Jake's yard or the muriatic acid in his hot tub — like it was all just good clean fun at a satanic rock band's expense. Or at least that had been the case until the show in Buffalo, New York when Jake had kicked one of the bibles off the stage to keep from slipping on it.
Jake Kingsley stomps on New Testament on stage, the headlines read the next day.
Or there had been the incident in Charleston, South Carolina, when a group of Intemperance fans in the mosh pit had taken offense to the bible throwers and had roughed them up a bit.
Intemperance fans savagely beat religious protestors, went out on the AP wire within hours.
Now, Jake left the bible where it had fallen, noting its position so he wouldn't accidentally slip on it later. The rest of the band did the same, with the exception of Coop, who was forced to brush one off the top of his left bass drum. They played on with the song and then launched into Point Of Futility. No more bibles came flying up but no less than ten pairs of panties did. Futility was a particular favorite among the female Intemperance fans.
During the guitar solo a drunken, sweaty, extremely attractive, and shirtless young woman jumped up onto the stage, rushed across it with lightening speed, and grabbed hold of Jake. She rubbed her bare breasts all over his arm, kissed him wetly on the cheek, and yelled something he couldn't understand into his ear before two members of the security team ran onstage, pried her loose, and dragged her off. Such incidents were common, usually occurring once or twice a week. About half of the girls rushed after Jake, the other half after Matt.