“It seems like the normal amount in there,” Meghan said. “And Laura has never mentioned anything about getting yeast infections—although I’m not certain we have that kind of sharing relationship with each other just yet.”
“It must be something else,” Danielle said. “If you’ve never been prone to them before, there’s got to be a reason why you’re getting a nasty one right now.”
And then, Meghan’s mind went back to the douching suggestion. And suddenly, a horrible idea occurred to her. She flushed visibly. “Uh ... wow...”
“What is it?” Danielle asked.
“Uh ... well ... suppose that that chlorinated water out in the hot tub was ... uh ... was...”
“Was what?”
She took a deep breath. Her face was now an alarming shade of red. Her eyes were unable to meet the eyes of her sister. “Suppose it was ... uh ... you know ... a stream of that water and it was ... uh ... kind of hitting you in that area?”
Danielle’s eyes got wide. She nibbled her lip for a moment. “Uh ... well ... is that something that possibly happened to you?” she asked slowly.
Shamefully, Meghan nodded her head.
“Are you saying that you were letting the hot tub jet ... letting it spray on you ... down there?”
“Yes,” she said meekly.
“Why in the world would you do that?” Danielle asked.
“Because it feels good,” she hissed at her sister. “Don’t judge me. I don’t have a husband to stick his dick in me when I’m horny.”
“Well ... can’t you just ... you know ... do yourself the normal way? With your fingers? Or maybe a toy?”
“It doesn’t feel as good as the water jet,” she said shortly. “Not even close.”
“Really?” she said. “I almost want to try it now. How many times have you done this?”
Meghan looked down at the floor again. “Maybe ... uh ... ten times since I discovered this last month.”
“Ten times?”
“Give or take a few,” Meghan said, as embarrassed as she had ever been in her life.
“Well ... that’s your culprit then,” Danielle said. “You’re shooting high-pressure chlorinated water directly on your hoo-hoo. It’s blasting away the bacteria layer and then sterilizing the mucous membranes in the process. You created a perfect breeding ground for vaginal yeast.”
“What a rip,” she said with a sigh, employing a Jake-ism she had picked up.
“Yep,” Danielle said. “Unfortunately, everything in this world that is fun has consequences. Especially when it comes to hoo-hoos.”
“You’d think I would have learned that by now,” Meghan said, dejected.
Danielle patted her consolingly on the back. “At least you tend to learn from your mistakes, sis.”
“Yeah. I guess there’s that.”
Jake and Laura arrived at the warehouse in Santa Clarita where Celia and her band were rehearsing at 8:55 AM. Jake parked his truck and they were admitted to the facility by Jamal, the day shift security guard. Things were starting to look like an actual stage production now. All of the scaffolding and lights were now assembled and mounted so they could bathe the stage in light or have individual spotlights shine down in a particular place. The stage itself was now surrounded by a wooden structure that contained a large backstage area for the crew to work unseen by the audience. And, new to a KVA associated show, there were now two large video screens—each one forty feet high by thirty feet wide—mounted on either side of the stage. High up on the scaffolding at the rear of the building were two high-definition projectors that would send images taken by a series of twelve video cameras that were positioned throughout the room, thus allowing even those in the worst seats in whatever venue they were in to see Celia and the band doing their thing during the performances.
Jake and Celia had both always been opposed to the video screens on general principles, but had changed their views over the past year. The video screens were now considered a standard part of a show where people paid more than a hundred dollars a ticket, and the biggest criticism of the Tsunami Sound Festival that Jake and Matt had participated in was that no such screens had been there and the people in the back areas had barely been able to make out the forms of the performers.
And so, KVA agreed to use the screens for both Celia’s and Matt’s tours. This decision added considerably to the total cost of tour production, which KVA was paying fifty percent of. Although National was paying for leasing of the equipment and the screens themselves, KVA had to pay half the cost of employing six camera operators, fifteen technicians to install and maintain the equipment, an additional twelve roadies to heft and mount everything, an additional truck and driver to haul everything around, and two video producers who would be responsible for deciding which images to display on which screen at which time. The big positive from all this was that Jake and Pauline had negotiated that KVA kept the rights to the video and audio recorded from both tours and could do with it what they pleased once the tour was over and the contract was fulfilled.
The screens were blank now and the techs that operated the system were not on site. Everything was in working order and had been tested, but Celia and the band were still working on the basic setup of the show currently. They had the setlist nailed down at this point, but things had taken a bit of a step backward now that they had a new bandmember who was trying to learn the tunes from scratch.
Miles O’Leary was his name—his real name, that was not a stage name—and, assuming he worked out, he was to be the saxophonist for the tour. He was a short, gangly man who was thirty-six years old. He had long, stringy brown hair, an unruly mustache and beard, and was a licensed commercial pilot who flew a Grumman G-164 Ag Cat crop dusting plane for an agricultural air company based in Colusa, California in the northern Central Valley. Playing the sax was just his side-gig, but he was very good at it. And he declared himself to be a Celia Valdez and Jake Kingsley fan.
He was kind of an odd person. He looked like a homeless transient and often smelled like one as well. He was a voracious stoner who smoked close to an eighth of marijuana every day. He shamelessly admitted to Jake, when they started talking flying with each other on their first meeting, that he never got behind the controls of his plane without smoking out first.
“Not even sure I know how to fly a plane when I’m not stoned,” he declared in his thick Irish brogue.
And he also insisted that he could not play his saxophone unless he was stoned as well. This was almost a deal breaker for KVA when they auditioned him. One of the firm, nonnegotiable rules that Jake, Celia, and even Matt enforced in their production was that no intoxicating substances would be used before a rehearsal or a performance. But, as Jake had been known to point out on an occasion or two, everything is negotiable.
At his audition for Celia two weeks before, Miles had played like shit when he first stepped up to blow the horn. He could not keep in time with the rhythm, he could not phrase properly, even on material that he knew well. But then he pleaded with them to let him “smoke a few wee bowls” and try again. Reluctantly, they allowed this. And he had stepped back up there and blown them away with his skill and mastery of the instrument. He was not quite as good as Laura, not quite as good as Dexter Price, but he was in their league without a doubt. And he was the only prospect on their horizon currently since Dexter and Bobby Z were currently in the on part of their on again off again relationship and Dexter was unavailable. And they were supposed to hit the road for the first date in Seattle on August 14th. The venue was already rented. The tickets would be going on sale next week. Their hands were a bit tied.
“Well,” Jake said doubtfully, “there is some precedent for the idea that getting loaded can help a performance. I mean, G and his boys get lit before every show. Who are we to judge?”