Jake and Laura watched it go and then turned back toward the house.
“I already miss them,” Laura said as they walked back to the front door.
“It was a nice visit,” Jake agreed. “Your family is all right.”
“That part of it, anyway.”
Jake nodded and said no more.
“Well,” Laura said, “I guess we’d better start working on the laundry and getting the house back together so we can fly home today.”
“Let’s do it,” he said.
They stripped all the beds and started a load of linen in the washing machine. There was at least three more loads of linen and two of towels that would need to be washed, dried, and put back in their respective places before they could even think about heading home. By the time the second load was in the dryer, all of the other housework had been completed so they decided to go to the bedroom and have a nice fuck while they waited for the latest laundry cycle.
It was while they were going at it hot and heavy that Jake heard the phone ringing from the living room. He put it out of his mind and continued his rear-entry thrusting in and out of Laura’s vagina while he rubbed her swollen belly with one hand and played with her dangling breasts with the other. She was crying out loudly as he fucked her, without restraint for the first time in a few weeks. The phone eventually stopped ringing and he heard the beep of the answering machine fielding it. About two minutes later, his cell phone began to ring from its place on the charger on the dresser. He ignored this as well. And then Laura’s phone began to ring as well, going through two cycles of its own.
Jake’s cell phone rang through yet another cycle before he finally reached his climax and unloaded himself in Laura’s clutching chasm. They collapsed together on the bed, a pair of naked, sweaty messes, and lay there, panting, holding each other closely, feeling the blessed postcoital bliss they enjoyed so much.
Finally, Jake rolled over on his back. Laura did the same. She looked over at him. “It sounded like someone was trying really hard to get in touch.”
“Yeah,” he said with a sigh, knowing that such a thing was rarely good news.
“Are you going to see who it was?” she asked.
“In a minute,” he said.
It was actually closer to ten minutes before he finally rolled to his side and put his feet on the floor. He walked over to his phone and picked it up. He had never bothered to set up the voicemail box on the cell phone, but he did now have caller ID and missed call identification. He flipped it open and looked at the screen. Both calls had come from Nerdly.
“What the hell?” he muttered. He walked over to Laura’s phone and picked it up. The missed call on her device was also from Nerdly.
“Who was it?” Laura asked.
“Nerdly,” Jake said.
“What did he want?”
He gave her a look. “I don’t know what he wanted,” he said. “I am not a phone psychic.”
“You’re a funny man,” she said without humor in her voice. “Why don’t you go check the answering machine?”
“Right,” he said.
He walked naked into the living room. The answering machine was on the end table next to the couch. The red light indicating a message was blinking. He pushed it and heard the beep. A robotic voice told him the date and time of the message. It then began to play.
“Jake, this is Bill,” Nerdly’s voice said. “I need to you call me as soon as you get this message. This is important. I’ve just received the most peculiar phone call.”
Jake waited to hear the details but there weren’t any. That was the end of the message. The machine beeped and told him that he had no further recorded communications to ponder.
Peculiar phone call? he thought. What the fuck is going on now?
He picked up the cordless phone and dialed Nerdly’s number from memory. Bill picked up on the second ring. He had caller ID as well and knew who he was talking to.
“Jake!” Nerdly said. “I tried multiple times to achieve communication with you on multiple devices. Where were you?”
“I was engaged with something, Nerdly,” Jake told him.
“Engaged with what?” Nerdly returned.
Jake took a deep breath, irritated in advance at whatever news Nerdly had to share. “I was fucking my wife, Bill!” he barked. “I did not want to stop to answer the phone.”
“Oh,” Nerdly said simply. “I see. I hope it was enjoyable.”
“It was,” Jake assured him. “Now, what’s going on? What’s so important that you had to call four times in five minutes?”
“I just got the strangest phone call,” Nerdly said.
“From whom?”
“From Matt,” Nerdly said.
Jake’s eyes opened a little wider. “From Matt?” he asked. “You mean ... Matt Tisdale?”
“Matt Tisdale,” Nerdly confirmed. “He called me here at home thirty-four minutes ago.”
“What did he want?” Jake asked, with no idea what Matt possibly could want.
“He wanted to talk about the possibility of signing with KVA Records for his next solo album,” Nerdly said simply.
Jake stood stunned for a moment, naked, still reeking of his wife’s sexual musk, his penis still a bit swollen and wet with her secretions.
“Are you shitting me?” he finally asked.
“I am not shitting you,” Nerdly said. “The enquiry was sincere.”
Chapter 18: I Would Swallow My Pride
Santa Clarita, California
July 18, 1997
The meeting between Matt Tisdale and the owners of KVA Records was scheduled for 11:00 AM at the KVA office where the rehearsal studio was located. Jake, Celia, Pauline, and Nerdly had all arrived by 10:00 so they could have a pre-meeting and discuss their various opinions on the matter at hand. This pre-meeting took place in the same place the meeting itself would: in the studio itself, which was currently not being used by anyone in the KVA organization. There was no drum set on the platform, no piano or keyboard set on the floor, no guitars or violins hanging on the racks. The microphone stands and the amplifiers and the effects pedals were all clustered together in the corner of the room, looking lonely and disused. Pauline had set up a large folding card table and some folding chairs just in front of the drum platform. In these chairs is where everyone was sitting currently.
“I am still mostly inclined to tell him to take a flying fuck,” Jake opined to the rest of them. “I don’t care if there is money to be made by signing him, he’s burned all of his bridges with me.”
Everyone nodded, having no problem whatsoever understanding Jake’s point of view. Matt had, after all, accused Jake of murdering Darren on multiple occasions. And even though those accusations had softened a bit over the years, he was still very much on public and private record as expressing the opinion that Jake, Nerdly, and Pauline were strongly responsible for Darren’s death.
“That is a very strong possibility,” Pauline said. “We have no reason to believe he has changed in any meaningful way. The very fact that he tried to push demands for production on us before we even agreed to talk to him about a signing strongly suggests this.”
Nods were exchanged all around. What Pauline was talking about was the offer that Matt had given to Nerdly initially, when he had first made contact. He had told Nerdly that he (Matt) would be willing to sign with KVA for his next solo album provided that he was given full control over the recording and production of the album—with maybe a little help from the Nerdlys in the mixing and mastering process— and as long as he did not have to meet with or have any interference from Jake, Pauline, or anyone else. Jake’s response—which he had given without even bothering to check with Pauline or Celia—had been to tell Nerdly to tell Matt to take that flying fuck. And Nerdly, being Nerdly, had done just that, using Jake’s exact words. Matt had hung up with a few choice words of his own, but he called Nerdly back the next day and, though he did not apologize in any way, asked if they could start over. It was then that he requested to meet with all of the owners of the label so they could talk the matter over. Nerdly had called Jake back and Jake had called Pauline and Celia at that point. Celia had been reluctant to agree to the meeting, as had Jake, but Pauline suggested that they at least hear him out. Perhaps there could be some profit they could pull in if they could agree to terms.