"I like the way you think, Celia," Helen agreed. She gave Jake a quick kiss on the cheek, wrinkled her nose at the cigar smell, and followed Celia into the house.
Jake and Greg talked of inconsequential things for a few minutes. They discussed Matt's troubles and the past legal scrapes that the members of the band had been involved in. Greg was particularly shocked about the incident in Texarkana, Texas on their first tour.
"They beat him with a telephone book?" he asked, eyes wide.
"They put a football helmet on him first," Jake said. "That way when they whopped the shit out of his head with the phone book, it didn't leave a mark."
"And he didn't sue for police brutality?" Greg asked.
"I think he was happy enough just to be out of there," Jake said. "I know I was."
"That's reprehensible," Greg said, shaking his head at the injustice of it all.
"That's law enforcement in Texas," Jake said. "He's lucky they didn't bury him in a landfill somewhere."
Eventually, the subject came around to the upcoming wedding.
"We're both very happy that you accepted our invitation to the wedding, Jake," Greg told him. "And your offer to write a song especially for the occasion... well, Celia explained to me just how personal of a gesture that is. I thank you for that."
"You might want to wait until after you hear the song to thank me," Jake said with a chuckle.
"It's a pity you couldn't use that Head East song you and Celia did last night. I would think it would make a perfect song for a new bride."
"Huh?" Jake said, confused. "There's Never Been Any Reason? How would that make a perfect song for a bride?"
"It contains the line, 'I'm going down for the last time', does it not?" Greg asked with a slight grin.
It took a moment for Jake to realize that Greg had made a joke. And, once analyzed, it was a pretty good one too. Jake started to laugh. "Holy shit, Greg," he said. "There is a sense of humor in there, isn't there?"
Greg was laughing too. "Once in a while," he said. "Every once in a while."
"Seriously though," Jake said. "Now that Celia and Helen aren't around, I just want to make sure that you don't mind my presence at your wedding. I don't want to damage your image. If you're just inviting me to keep Celia happy, please let me know."
"No, not at all," Greg said. "My image will survive your presence at my wedding. It might even be enhanced by it."
"Enhanced by it?"
"Absolutely," Greg said. "My official persona is that I'm a bit of an introvert, a boring yet intelligent man who rises reluctantly but efficiently to the occasion when the situation warrants it. It's a mold that keeps me locked into certain kinds of roles. It's a mold that is already well on its way to condemning me to the status of a character actor for life. I don't want to be stuck playing just one particular type of character my entire career. I want to be the villain sometime. I want to be the lady's man sometime. I want to be the natural born leader who knows how to get things done. Do you see what I mean?"
"Yeah," Jake said. "Actually I do. I'm typecast as the hard rock singer of Intemperance, the partying, ass-crack sniffing degenerate. Any music I produce right now is expected to fall into that genre. In truth, I'm getting a little tired of the hard rock. I'd like to put out some tunes that are a little mellower, a little bluesier."
"You do understand," Greg said. "So maybe this 'coming out' that we'll be doing will help enhance your career as it helps mine."
"You think that having me show up at your wedding will help with that?" Jake asked.
"Absolutely," he said. "It'll show the world that Celia and I have dangerous friends, that we're able to hang out with and gain the friendship of the infamous Jake Kingsley. For you, it'll show that you're able to relate to the more simple and refined Celia Valdez and Greg Oldfellow. I'm actually looking forward to what the tabloids will have to say once they find out you're on the guest list and will be singing at the event."
"It should be interesting," Jake agreed.
They puffed their cigars thoughtfully, watching as one of the security trucks made its nightly rounds down the cart path of the golf course. When it disappeared onto the seventh hole, Jake looked at Greg thoughtfully.
"So I take it," he said, "that you and Celia were able to come to an agreement on the wording of your prenup?"
"Yeah," Greg said. "Finally. I'm telling you, Jake, that whole issue damn near tore us apart. We almost called off the wedding a number of times. She simply would not capitulate on the basic fact that a prenuptial agreement is necessary. She wouldn't negotiate on the matter in any way. Her position was that there would be no prenup or there would be no wedding."
"Apparently she feels very strongly about it," Jake said.
"That's the understatement of the year," Greg said. "And if I thought that she was so insistent on the matter simply because she was trying to get her hands on my money, I would've just sent her down the road a long time ago, but I don't believe that's where she was coming from at all."
"No?"
"No," he said. "In a way, her views on the whole subject of prenuptial agreement are part of what makes her personality so dear to me. It's her sense of romanticism that makes her opposed to the agreement. She honestly thinks that marriage is forever and that signing an agreement on what happens if the marriage doesn't last is an affront to the honesty and integrity that should define a marriage."
Jake nodded, taking a thoughtful puff of his cigar, a sip of his cognac. "In principle, I tend to agree with her," he said. "As I said before, however, I'm a realist. If you were a firefighter, a cop, a teacher, even a doctor or a lawyer, I would simply tell you to get over yourself. But you're not any of those things and this is not a middle-class or even an upper-middle class marriage. It's a Hollywood wedding between two celebrities and such things have a pretty shitty success rate, don't they?"
"Indeed they do," Greg said. "I finally managed to get across to her that I wasn't disrespecting her by wanting the prenup, that I was simply making a logical, common sense decision to protect my assets. She finally saw things my way and agreed to sign the document."
"Did she negotiate the terms of it with you?" Jake asked, curious about the details of the agreement.
"Interestingly, no," Greg said. "The agreement I offered is quite standard and fair. All property and income that I possessed prior to the marriage remains mine and under my control. In the event of divorce, it remains mine. All of my income will be maintained separately during the marriage, although she will have access to it while we are married — with certain restrictions, of course. If we do divorce, she'll get none of my property and I'll get none of hers. She will be given two years worth of alimony based on a standard formula that is calculated on my income after the marriage and the lifestyle we live during the marriage. The disposition of any children and child support payments would be negotiated as part of the divorce settlement. All of that is pretty fair, isn't it?"
"It sounds reasonable to me," Jake admitted.
"She hardly even looked at the agreement," Greg said. "She simply picked it up and signed it. She gave me the silent treatment for two days after that and then she just reverted back to her old self and started making the wedding plans."
"I'm glad it all worked out," Jake said.
"As am I," Greg said. "Celia's a great catch. I would've hated to let her go over an issue as trivial as the protection of my assets."
After landing at Brannigan Airport in Ventura County on Sunday morning at 11:07 AM, Jake took Helen to her house in Ventura and then drove his car directly to Pauline's House in Los Angeles. Pauline was dressed casually when she answered the door, wearing a pair of faded blue jeans and a button-up blouse. Her hair was combed but not styled. There was no make-up on her face and she wore no jewelry except a small pair of diamond earrings.