“How do you know it hasn’t?” Laura asked.
“Well ... I don’t, actually,” he said. He then looked at the nanny. “What’s the word, Meghan? You’re part of the younger crowd. Any rumors floating around about Big Johnson’s Johnson?”
She blushed a little and shook her head. “I don’t really have much of a crowd,” she said. “And the crowd that I do have has never discussed his Johnson.”
Jake laughed and took another bite of his scramble. He chased it with a swig of Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee. Laura, meanwhile, was looking at the nanny with a little concern.
“Are you okay, Meghan?” she asked.
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“You seem to be squirming around a lot. Is everything okay?”
“Yeah, sure, everything’s fine,” she said quickly, her face flushing a little more. “I guess I’m just restless.”
Laura did not look convinced, but she let it drop. Jake elected to stay out of the issue. He turned his attention to Caydee, who was smearing a mixture of scrambled eggs and pureed squash all over her face.
“Are you getting any of that in your mouth, little girl?” he asked her.
She looked up at him and smiled. She stuck her tongue out and raspberried in his direction, spraying some of the mixture out over her high chair tray and onto the floor.
“I guess she is,” Jake said with a chuckle.
The commercials droned on for the better part of ten minutes and then Big Johnson returned to the air. Jake shushed everyone so he could hear the debut of the tune. All except Caydee obediently quieted down.
“This is the latest from Matt Tisdale here for you on KLBA, Ninety-three Rock,” Johnson told them. “The CD is called Faithless and the rumors you’ve been hearing about it are true. It was produced by none other than Jake Kingsley, Matt’s former partner in crime from the Intemp days, and was engineered by none other than Nerdly and Sharon Archer, also of Intemp fame. That’s right, they were able to work together to record this CD up in Oregon. Could this be the first step in an Intemperance reunion, perhaps? Time will tell. In any case, this song is the title cut of the CD. I give you Faithless on KLBA, Ninety-three Rock!”
Jake frowned a little. He had instructed National to instruct the DJs to intro the song and let the listeners know that he and the Nerdlys had produced and engineered it. He had not asked them to speculate on a possible Intemperance reunion, although he guessed that such speculation was probably inevitable and unstoppable. And who knew? Maybe it would even drive the sales.
The intro to the song began. Though Jake had heard the tune a thousand times or more by this point, he still got that little thrill that came with hearing something he had worked on airing for the first time. He tried to imagine the listeners out there, all of whom really were hearing it for the first time. How did it sound to them?
The intro that Jake had talked Matt into adding to the piece started with Corban playing a slow, fingerpicked melody similar to what would be in the choruses. Jake’s professional ear could hear the overdubbed string strikes that he himself had laid down atop of this. It played out for two measures and then Matt’s guitar played a slow solo over the top of it, matching the slow tempo. The drums played out a soft, military march style accompaniment in the background. All of this was new ground for a Matt Tisdale tune and was hopefully catching the attention, not just of his fans, but of other hard rock aficionados who maybe had not really appreciated Matt’s previous work as much.
After twenty-three seconds of intro, the piece launched abruptly into the first verse—the point where the tune had begun when Jake had first heard it played for him all those months ago. The tempo nearly doubled. The clean guitar switched to a distorted drop-D grind and mixed with Matt’s powerful five-chord riff that was the primary melody. The drums and bass began to pound out the rhythm. And Matt’s powerful, though limited range voice began to hammer out the lyrics in an angry, spiteful tone. Jake smiled as he heard it, bobbing his head to the beat. He was rather proud of how they had shaped Faithless.
The first chorus measure came and the tempo shifted back down. Corban’s guitar switched back to the clean, finger-picked melody with Jake’s string strikes atop it. Matt’s voice became less angry and more mournful as he described the essential hopeless nature of the human race and how nobody who was a part of it could be trusted.
“Such a dark theme,” said Meghan, who was hearing the tune for the first time.
“Yeah, that’s Matt for you,” Jake said. “Hard rock fans are going to love it though.”
“The jazz fans will pass on it, I’m pretty sure,” Laura said. She had heard the CD a few times and it had not captured her interest in the least.
Caydee, on the other hand, seemed to be enjoying the song. She was giving it the attention she did most music and even kicking her feet a little to the rhythm. Keeping cadence, as it were.
The tune went through two cycles of up-tempo verses alternated by slow-tempo chorus and then entered a medium tempo bridge section in which Matt laid down some long, drawn-out solo notes while Corban kept a simple version of the riff going behind him. And then everything stopped for a moment and Matt launched into the primary guitar solo, playing it out at the up-tempo rate used for the verses. Corban played a full version of the primary riff behind him while multiple drum fills were hammered out behind that. From there, it shifted to an extended reprise of the chorus that served as the outro. Matt repeated versions of the main chorus hook “Faithless I will stand and Faithless I will die” while playing slow, melodic solos. Gradually the tune began to fade out, the volume getting lower until Johnson keyed up the next song on his list—Sober, by Tool—and it disappeared completely.
“All right,” Jake said, happy. “Good tune. I think they’re going to like it.”
“If you say so,” Laura said sourly.
“I say so,” he assured her.
They finished breakfast and Elsa appeared as if by magic, using her sixth sense to know the precise moment everyone was done. She shooed them out of the kitchen nook so she could start cleaning up and doing the dishes. Jake went to his office to organize and collect his notebook. Laura grabbed Caydee to take her to her bedroom and get her cleaned up and changed so that Meghan could assume her duties. Meghan followed Laura to Caydee’s room.
“I got her for now,” Laura told her. “I’ll get her changed and wiped down before we leave.”
“Uh ... yeah, sure,” Meghan said a little hesitantly, “but there was something I wanted to ask you.”
“Sure,” Laura said, putting Caydee down on her changing table and unceremoniously stripping her jammies off. “What’s up?”
“Uh ... well, I know you told me that it’s okay for my sister or my parents to visit,” she said, “but I just wanted to let you know anyway. Danielle is going to swing by here for a few minutes on her way home from work. I just wanted to make sure it’s okay.”
“Yeah, no problem,” she said with a shrug. “I’m sure she’d like to see the baby she helped deliver and how big she is now.”
“She does,” Laura said. “She won’t be staying long. She’s just coming to drop something off for me. I’ll show her the house and Caydee real quick and then she’ll head home so she can sleep.”
“It’s fine with me,” Laura said. “Will she get here before we leave?”
“Probably not,” Meghan said. “She’s just now leaving work.”