Jake chuckled.
“What?” she asked, clearly exasperated.
“You talked about his marital status and child custody arrangements while discussing the sale of my aircraft with him?”
“It came up in conversation,” she said. “Are you going to be able to do this at some point, or not?”
He chuckled again. It was just so enjoyable to hear Jill flustered. “All right,” he said. “Laura has an OB appointment next Friday afternoon at two o’clock. We’re flying down for it and then staying through the weekend. Can your engineer make it out on Saturday?”
“I’ll have to check with him, but that shouldn’t be a problem,” Jill said. “He owns a Cessna 172 currently and told me he can fly directly to Oceano whenever is convenient for you.”
“Well, pencil it in then,” Jake said. “It’ll be sad to finally sell that old girl, but also happy since someone will be flying her regularly again.”
“It’s just an object, Jake,” she said, not for the first time. “It’s not a he or a she. It’s an asset that is currently costing you more than a thousand dollars a month in storage, maintenance, and insurance fees.”
“I suppose,” Jake said with a sigh. “Just give me a call when you have the time nailed down. Oh ... and not too early please. We’ll really want to sleep in on our Saturday after a week of getting up early.”
“Understood,” she said.
A limousine picked up Matt and Jim from the Granada Hills home at 10:30 AM the next morning. Matt was a bit hungover, like usual, and dressed in a pair of faded jeans and a white t-shirt that showed two stick figures engaging in rear entry intercourse and had the motto “FUCK YO MAMA!” prominently displayed above that. He carried the travel bag that he used out on tour with him. In his shirt pocket was a Marlboro pack that contained eighteen filtered cigarettes and two tightly rolled joints. Jim was dressed in jeans and a more conservative t-shirt (his featured a picture of Bart Simpson on it) and he carried his own travel bag plus the football that contained all of the emergency medical supplies he would need to treat Matt if he went into some life-threatening cardiac arrythmia.
The trip to Whiteman Airport took only about fifteen minutes. The limo parked in front of the general aviation terminal. Out on the tarmac, Jake’s airplane was already parked, a fuel truck connected to it by a hose. Jake, Celia Valdez, and Jake’s old lady were all standing around near the open door of the plane. Matt could not help but admire the aircraft. He had heard tales about how the residents near this airport and the one in San Luis Obispo were always complaining about the noise it made, but he had never seen an actual picture of the plane. It was sleek and cool looking, with the hammerhead wings on the nose and the backward facing engines in the rear.
He felt a little stab of jealousy that his former bandmate could afford something as expensive as that, but fought it down. He had been working closely with Jake the past month—an experiment that was turning out to be much more successful than either of them could really have hoped for in the beginning—and if there was one thing he had reluctantly come to acknowledge, it was that Jake was a hard worker. He had seamlessly moved back and forth between two projects underway, both of which were operating under a hard deadline, and had managed to keep both on the rails and moving along through sheer force of will. And he had not been a prick about it, at least not with Matt. He had come to their sessions, listened to what they had, made suggestions in a polite manner, and then let Matt and the band figure out the best way to implement those suggestions. He had never once insisted on a change or modification to a tune if Matt himself strongly disagreed with it. And Matt, in turn, had made his best effort to listen and fairly evaluate each modification suggested instead of hating it immediately by default. All in all, he could not help but feel that his music was being positively enhanced and that this might be his best CD yet. Jake had gotten better at producing over the years and Matt had gotten better at listening to advice.
He and Jim got out of the limo and walked over to the plane, bags in hand. Jake came over to greet him, his old lady walking with him. He let his eyes appraise the bitch that Jake had married and knocked up. He had seen pictures of her, of course, and knew that she was a hot little spinner, but this was his first time actually meeting her in the flesh. And even though she was quite obviously in an advanced state of pregnancy, and even though he was most definitely not into pregnant chicks, he had to admit that she still looked good. Though her stomach was sticking out in front of her and she kind of waddled when she walked, her face was still very cute, very wholesome looking, and the rest of her body was still shapely and hot. Her tits were even bigger than the pictures he had seen suggested they would be. Maybe that was because she was knocked up. He had heard before that a bitch’s tits got bigger when that happened.
“Matt,” Jake greeted. “You ready to fly?”
“I’m always ready to fly,” Matt told him. “You should know that shit.”
Jake gave a polite chuckle and then put his arm on the redheaded bitch’s shoulder. “This is Laura,” he introduced. “Laura, the rather infamous Matt Tisdale.”
“Nice to meet you,” she said, holding out her right hand. It was a dainty hand, but not a manicured one. Her nails were short and unpainted and even had a few chips in them. He realized that this was not because of lack of femininity on her part, but because she was a professional saxophonist who had been playing a lot recently. Pushing those keys all the time probably played hell on a bitch’s nails.
“Nice to meet you too,” he said, politely enough, shaking with her. Again, he noted that her fingertips were not soft like a woman’s, but calloused like someone who used them for a living. He wondered if that felt weird to Jake when she gave him a handjob. It would almost feel like a dude was pumping the shaft. Oh well ... to each their own. He broke the handshake and then turned to Jim. “This is my man, Jim,” he told Kingsley’s bitch. “He’s a paramedic. He hangs out with me in case I need him.”
“I see,” she said with a nod, asking no questions. She shook hands with Jim and told him it was nice to meet him.
By this point, Celia had stepped forward. Matt took an even longer look at her. True, she was a bitch extraordinaire, but goddamn if she wasn’t hot! She was dressed in jeans and a white blouse that showed off that premium rack of hers like no fucking tomorrow. Her hair was tied up in a ponytail and she had only a light coat of lip gloss on, but her face was still one that a man just wanted to nut on.
“Celia,” he greeted. “How are you today?”
“Feeling good,” she said, her face keeping its neutral expression. “Ready to get to work.”
“Fuckin A,” Matt said with a nod. He then made the official introductions between Celia and Jim. They shook hands.
“I really enjoy your music,” Jim told her.
“Thank you,” Celia said. She too asked no questions about why Matt had a paramedic traveling with him and staying with him in Oregon.
“Suckup,” Matt whispered to Jim when Celia turned away and headed back over to the plane.
“All right,” Jake said. “Let’s go over and get you two and your baggage weighed.”
Jake had explained yesterday that this was a necessary part of riding in his plane. “Let’s do it,” he said.
“I trust you adhered to my rule about cocaine in your baggage?” Jake asked him.
“Yes,” he said sourly. “There is no cocaine in my bag or in Jim’s.” And this was true. He had sent six grams of uncut Bolivian shit in one of his guitar cases that had gone on the equipment truck, but there was not so much as a flake in the bag he was flying with.
“Excellent,” Jake said.
“Do you want to check?” Matt asked defiantly.