After the tour, they sat down in the formal dining room and Elsa served lunch. It was relatively simple fare. Sandwiches made from last night’s leftover roast chicken served with fresh garden tomatoes, red onion, and green leaf lettuce. Homemade potato salad was the side dish. A pitcher of iced green tea rounded out the offerings. Loraine ate everything that was served to her and genuinely enjoyed it as far as Jake could tell.
As they ate, the conversation was a bit sparse, a bit hesitant, with Meghan making the most contributions. She shared some anecdotes about taking care of Caydee, which served to involve Laura a little more in the discussion, which then led to anecdotes from Loraine about raising girls in the modern world. Jake sat mostly in silence as the conversation went on. He noticed Loraine shooting the occasional glance in his direction, as if she could not quite believe that she was really sitting here with him.
“When was the last time you attended a concert, Loraine?” Jake asked just as they finished up the meal.
“Oh ... my goodness, it’s been years,” she said. “Not since Meggie and Dannie were little girls.”
“What show was it?” Laura asked.
“Well ... I’m dating myself a little here, but it was Hall and Oates at the Civic Center in Long Beach back in ... oh ... it must have been 1981 or so.”
“No kidding?” Jake asked. “I love Hall and Oates.”
“You do?” she asked, surprised.
“Strange but true,” he said. “Their music is well composed and masterfully engineered. The lyrics are a bit simplistic, true, but the presentation is quite good. How were they live? I never got the opportunity to see them myself.”
“Uh ... well, they were quite good actually,” she said. “Jason and I had a wonderful time.”
“That’s good to know,” Jake said. “Sometimes when a band is very technical like they are, it’s hard to reproduce the music live.”
“It is?” she asked, obviously having no clue what he was talking about.
“It’s a matter of the difference between the studio and stage and how big that difference is,” he explained. “You see, in the studio, you have almost limitless resources to draw on to make the music sound good on the recording. You can redo every track until it’s perfect, you can use any number of instruments and then overdub even more into the recording in post-production, you can adjust the levels of everything so that it mixes perfectly. The problem is that if you get too complex in the studio, you cannot hope to reproduce that up on stage unless you use prerecorded tracks, which a traditionalist like myself would consider quite dishonest.”
Her eyes were a little wider now, a strange look in then. “That’s very interesting, Jake,” she said.
He smiled and shrugged. “It’s my business,” he said simply. “Meghan told me you like to listen to Celia’s music?”
“Oh ... well ... yes, I do own a few of her CDs,” she said. “She has a very pretty voice. I really enjoy that new song she has out, the one they play on the radio.”
“The End of the Journey,” Jake said. “I think it’s one of the best songs she’s ever done.”
“It’s about ... uh ... her divorce from Greg Oldfellow, right?” Loraine asked hesitantly.
“It is,” Jake confirmed.
“That was quite the story, wasn’t it?” she asked, obviously probing for a little inside information.
“Yes, it really was,” Jake said and then changed the subject. “Anyway, I think you’re going to really like her show. The technology of putting on a concert has improved quite a bit since 1981. And Celia is a superb performer surrounded by a group of incredible musicians.”
“You’ve known Celia for a long time?” asked Loraine.
“Yeah, about fourteen years now,” he said. “We both came up in the industry at the same time but in different genres. And then when Intemperance broke up and the record companies decided that La Diferencia was no longer relevant, we joined forces and started KVA. That’s where Laura and I met; when we were working together on Celia’s first solo CD.”
“And that’s you playing the saxophone on all the songs on that CD, right?” asked Loraine.
“That’s me,” she confirmed. “I toured with her on the last tour as the sax player too. And I helped her get the new guy up and running for this tour.”
“You’re not playing with her this time?” Loraine asked.
“That’s me blowing the horn on the new CD,” Laura said. “I did all the saxophone tracks in the studio, but I’m not up for another tour right now. I have Caydee to think of and I don’t want to be away from Jake for that long anymore. That was rough on both of us.”
“How long were you gone?” she asked.
“The better part of six months,” Laura said. “We had some visits here and there, but mostly he was here, and I was wherever we were playing. Sleeping in hotel rooms, riding on planes night after night and day after day. I just do not want to do that again at this stage in my life.”
“It sounds very hard,” she said.
“It’s the life we choose,” Laura told her. “But I chose not to do it this time.”
Both Meghan and Loraine started to have some doubts when they got their first look at the Avanti when Jake pulled it out of the hangar.
“It’s such a strange looking airplane,” Loraine said nervously.
“Yeah, it’s kind of non-traditional,” Jake allowed. “The backward facing props, the hammerhead shark wings on the nose. It’s a sweet aircraft though. It’s fast, it can fly high, and it’s fuel efficient.”
“And quite noisy as well,” Loraine could not help but say.
“Yeah,” Jake said apologetically. “I wish there was something I could do about that, but there really isn’t. It’s not like a car or a motorcycle where you can just not gun the engine as much when you’re starting out.”
“And ... uh ... exactly how long have you been a pilot?” she asked.
“I’ve been a licensed pilot for ten years now,” he told her. “I have just over thirteen hundred hours logged. I’m certified for instrument flight rules, multi-engine aircraft, pressurized aircraft, and type certified on this Avanti here. So far, every time I’ve logged a takeoff, I’ve also logged a landing.”
“Oh ... well that’s good to know,” she said. “A clean record.”
“Well ... mostly clean,” Jake said. “There was that little incident with a Canadian goose over Portland a few years back.”
“A Canadian goose?” she asked, her eyes wide.
“He got in my way,” Jake said. “And he got the bad end of the deal. It was no biggie though. I just turned around and came back to the airport. Had to land with the flaps stuck in takeoff position, but it was cool. We just touched down a little hot.”
She looked at his face, seemingly to see if he was joking with her.
“True story,” Jake said. “But other than that, no mishaps in the air. Shall we get aboard now?”
“Can I call shotgun?” Meghan asked.
“Meghan gets shotgun,” Jake declared. “She called it.” He opened the door and invited the two ladies to step inside.
As was often the case when new people flew with him, they were comforted when they observed how seriously he took the business of piloting. They watched him perform the external inspection of the plane, watched him seal them in and then meticulously go through his preflight checklist after admonishing them to not disturb or talk to him until they were above ten thousand feet. Their nervous looks returned when he actually fired up the engines, but they remained in their seats as he began to taxi to the head of the runway.
Both of them gripped their armrests tightly when he powered up the engines and they began to accelerate down the runway. When they broke contact with the ground, they both heaved in a sharp breath of air. But then that fear changed over to wonder as they saw the little world they lived in from above for the first time. Though both had flown on commercial aircraft a few times in their lives—Loraine considerably more than Meghan—neither had ever taken off from or landed at San Luis Obispo. Jake deliberately took the route that led them out over the coast at Morro Bay, so they would pass over the famous Morro Rock, the 580-foot volcanic plug that towered over the entrance to the harbor. He banked left here and headed south, passing over Oceano and the western edges of SLO itself. Both of them stared down at the scenery in awe, seeing it as they had never seen it before.