“I see,” Jake said, feeling his nervousness ramp up a little bit. “And I won’t remember any of this?”
“Not a thing,” Dr. Wei assured him.
And she was right. Jake remembered them escorting Laura out of the room and telling her she could come back once he started to come out of the sedation. He remembered Dr. Jones drawing up a milky white substance into a big syringe and injecting it into his IV line. After that, he remembered nothing else until he woke up with Laura back by his side and his right hand encased and immobilized in a fiberglass splint wrapped in an ace wrap. The hand was throbbing steadily and insistently, much worse than it had been before.
“Are you sure I can’t talk you into that Demerol?” Robert asked him.
“I’m sure,” Jake said through gritted teeth.
Shortly after a portable x-ray was done to evaluate how well Dr. Wei had put him back together, Officer Levitt came back into the room.
Jake was still groggy from the propofol, but he was lucid. “Well,” he asked, “am I under arrest?”
“You are not,” Levitt informed him. “We talked to our sergeant, and he talked to the lieutenant, who actually called the on-call deputy DA at home, and it has been decided that none of this rises to the level of a felony assault. Not your assault on the security guard, not his assault on Nerdly Archer, not even Nerdly Archer’s assault on the sound engineer. And, since none of you want to press charges on each other for misdemeanor assault, the entire matter will be dropped.”
“Sounds good,” Jake said, relieved. Although he had no doubt he never would have actually been convicted of any crime, it was nice to know he did not have to deal with the matter any further.
They kept an eye on Jake for another hour just to make sure he was having no delayed effect from the sedation and then he was put up for discharge. Dr. Wei told Jake he was going to be uncomfortable for the next few days and tried to push a prescription for Vicodin on him.
“No way, doc,” he said. “I don’t need any of that stuff.”
She tried to get him to at least take the prescription with him in case he changed his mind, but he assured her that he would not. He thanked her for her care and did the same for Robert after he pulled the IV out of his arm and read off his discharge directions for him.
They then made their way out front, to where the limousine that had brought them here was still patiently waiting.
“Back to the hotel, Jake?” the driver asked.
“Please,” Jake said gratefully.
They arrived back at Caesars Palace fifteen minutes later. It was now nearly three o’clock in the morning. They went directly to their room where they found the message light blinking on the phone. Laura listened to the message and told Jake it was from Pauline, who wanted an update from them as soon as they arrived, no matter what time it was.
“Can you handle that?” Jake asked his wife.
“Sure,” she said. “What are you going to do? Go to bed?”
“Soon,” he said, “but first I need a little painkiller.”
“But you didn’t take that prescription,” she said.
“Not that kind of painkiller,” he said, walking over to the bar.
“Ohhh, I see,” she said.
And so, while Laura called Pauline and let her know what was going on, Jake poured himself a quadruple Macmillan single malt over ice and went to work killing the pain. It worked pretty well.
It turned out that Jake could fly. He had just enough maneuverability of his fingertips to be able to manipulate the switches and dials that he needed to manipulate. As for the yoke, he could use his left hand only on that without any problems. As for the throttles, it was a bit clumsy, but he could push and pull them well enough to achieve control for those periods of flight—takeoff, landing, and taxiing—where he was not using the auto-throttle. The most awkward parts were filling out his flight plan—he was right-handed and could not write with a pen in his current condition—and programming the flight plan into his flight director screen, as he was used to doing this by punching the buttons with his right index finger and now had to switch to the left.
The Avanti roared into the sky at one o’clock the next afternoon and climbed to twenty-one thousand feet. Jake sat in the pilot’s seat and Nerdly sat next to him in the copilot’s seat (Jake had disabled the controls on that side). Sharon and Laura sat behind them (Laura had fallen asleep shortly after they had passed ten thousand feet). Obie and Pauline were sitting in the rear facing seats. G and Celia were sitting on the side seats in the rear.
“So ... how did Matt’s sound come out?” Jake asked Nerdly as they bumped and bounced a little over the mountainous terrain below. Nerdly now had a very respectable shiner going on, but he seemed rather proud of it.
“It was not our best work,” Nerdly admitted, “and I only listened to his first three numbers before it was time for us to board the limo for the ride back to the hotel, but I believe it was exponentially better than the Saturday night performance.”
“I concur,” Sharon said from behind them. “I could actually understand his lyrics and hear his guitar and the backing guitar as two distinct instruments.”
“And the volume was not as ear-shattering,” Nerdly put in. “It was still louder than your performance by a considerable margin, but not overwhelming. He and the band also seemed to be considerably more in synchronicity last night.”
“Well, I hope that asshole is grateful for what you did for him,” Jake said.
“I believe he is,” Nerdly said. “Remember, he actually shook my hand and thanked me for helping them after we completed the sound check.”
“That is very unlike Matt,” Jake pointed out.
“True, but he did also make a point to let me know that he still considered me complicit in Darren’s death and that he would never forgive me for it.”
Jake chuckled a little. “Now that sounds like Matt.”
“Indeed,” Nerdly agreed.
JAKE KINGSLEY STEALS THE SHOW AT THE TSF read the headline in the LA Times concert review on Tuesday morning. The article that followed was a ten-thousand-word piece, of which about five thousand were dedicated to Jake’s performance and two thousand to Matt’s. All the other bands’ performances were encompassed into about a thousand words (Pantera was particularly lambasted, mostly because of the ear-shattering volume, which made the set almost completely incomprehensible), while the remaining two thousand words was dedicated to the event as a whole.
Matt’s review was not a bad one by any means. The author of the article, who was enjoying his dream job of doing nothing but attending regional concerts so he could review them, commented that Tisdale’s set was “hard driving and full of emotion” and that “the former Intemperance guitarist proved to all that he is the best heavy-metal artist currently slinging an axe”. He did call Matt out for using the same setlist as his tour shows and for the initial miscues and lack of synchronicity during the first night’s performance. He did report, however, that the second night was far superior both in sound and group cohesion.
As for Jake’s performances, he flat out stated that even Tisdale could not hold a candle to them, declaring them to be two of the best live shows he had ever had the privilege of attending. He made note that Jake’s first solo performance since the Intemperance breakup was well put together and obviously extensively rehearsed. The band members were all talented, though unknown musicians who had come through for Jake exquisitely and had been the prime movers in making the show what it was. Though there were some who had suggested that Kingsley did not belong at the TSF with his progressive rock sound and his ballads (the article’s author had made such a suggestion himself only a few weeks before), he had proven them wrong by focusing heavily on his harder-driving tunes that served to compliment the more mellow pieces instead of contrasting them. He went on for a bit about Jake’s previously unrealized lead guitar skills and the use of the talk-box on I Am High. “In one extended song near the end of the show,” the reviewer reported, “Jake Kingsley stepped fully out of the shadow of Matt Tisdale in playing lead guitar, while simultaneously bringing back an icon from the seventies with a distinct modern flair that bordered on musical genius”. He even mentioned how touching it was for Laura Kingsley to join her husband on stage and lay down an impressive performance during South Island Blur. He had no real criticisms of Jake or his band and he did not mention anything about the fight between Jake and the members of Pantera’s crew.