"But I don't have a car," he said, although that wasn't strictly true. His battered old 1976 Datsun sub-compact was still in a storage facility outside Hollywood, rotting along with all of his other pre-fame belongings. But its battery was undoubtedly dead and corroded beyond repair, it's engine gummed up with disuse. Nor was it currently registered or insured. Even if it were running, however, he certainly wouldn't use it to transport Mindy around in.
"I know you don't," Mindy said. "And that's what we're going to fix today."
"Excuse me?" he asked. She wasn't suggesting what he thought she was suggesting, was she?
She was. "Didn't you tell me once that you always wanted a Corvette? Well they got a butt-load of them here. The eighty-fours are out now. That's the new re-vamped model, you know. I was just looking at them. They're bad-ass."
"Mindy, I can't afford a Corvette," he said. "I can't even afford a used beater car."
"But I can," she said. "Come on. Let's go get you one."
"Wait a minute," he said. "You're saying you want to buy me a Corvette?"
"You got it," she said. "What color do you want?"
He was shaking his head. "Nope, sorry," he told her. "I mean, I appreciate the offer and all, but there's no way I'm going to let you buy me a car."
She seemed undaunted by his refusal. "Why not?"
"Well... because... I just can't," he said. "A Corvette runs more than twenty grand. That's way too expensive of a gift."
"Jake," she said, "I'm a multi-millionaire, remember? You hooked up with a rich bitch who likes to spend. Twenty grand is pocket change to me. Now come on. I won't take no for an answer. We are leaving here in your new Corvette or we're not leaving here at all."
She wore him down. In truth, it didn't take too much. The moment he laid his eyes on the new Corvette, his resolve started crumbling. When the sales manager — who was the only person Mindy would deal with — took him out for a test drive, his resolve disintegrated to dust. He picked out a metallic blue model with all the bells and whistles. The out-the-door price turned out to be $24,688. Mindy called her accountant and had him wire the money directly to the car dealership's account.
"Put the registration in Mr. Kingsley's name," she told the sales manager as he filled out the final paperwork.
"Yes, Ms. Snow," he said.
"And I trust that you and your employees will employ complete discretion about the details of this purchase?"
"Of course, Ms. Snow," he said, seemingly appalled that she would even suggest otherwise.
"Up to and including the fact that we were even here in the first place," Jake added.
"Of course," he said. He paused in his paperworking. "So... it's true what they say about the two of you?" he asked.
"No comment," they both said, smiling.
They left the lot less than ninety minutes after Jake's arrival, tearing out of the parking lot in his new car. Jake drove to the PCH and headed north. The moment they were out of the city Mindy reached in her purse and pulled out a baggie of high-grade marijuana and a marble pipe.
"Let's burn, baby," she said, stuffing a large load into the pipe. "A new car isn't properly broken in until you've done two things in it. And one of them is hotboxing it."
Jake laughed as she lit up and took a tremendous hit. "Mindy," he said. "You never fail to amaze me."
Ten minutes later they were both quite stoned. It was then that she showed him the second thing that needed to be done to break in a new car. She leaned over, opened his pants, and gave him a slow, sensuous blowjob while he twisted and turned along the winding coast highway. Somehow he managed to avoid driving his new car over a cliff while she sucked and slurped and eventually brought him to a powerful orgasm.
They drove on, following the PCH all the way to Ventura where they had lunch in a small café and then checked into a pricey hotel for four hours of enthusiastic sex. Jake then drove Mindy home and spent the night in her bed. The next morning he phoned the doorman at his building and told him to tell the limo driver he wouldn't be requiring a ride today. He drove himself to the recording studio only to find that the entire world already knew about his new Corvette.
No one on the staff of the dealership had squealed, but there had been plenty of customers in the dealership while the two celebrities had conducted their business and more than one of them had felt compelled to call a reporter and tell all they'd seen. As a result, it was assumed that Jake had been the one to purchase the car. Having the world know that Mindy had bought it for him was the only indignity he was spared.
"After purchasing the new car," an entertainment reporter narrated on Celebrity News — a ten o'clock gossip show aimed at housewives, "the couple showed up an hour and a half later at a small Ventura restaurant, where staff members tell us they dined on cheeseburgers, fries, and chocolate milkshakes. From there they went to the Oceanside Resort Hotel, where an anonymous staff member informs us they rented a suite and spent the better part of four hours in there."
"Well," Crow sighed as he watched the show with Jake, Matt, and Bill, "it's as good as official now. There's really no way to deny you two are screwing each other."
"I guess not," Jake said.
"Did she get all freaky on you again, Jake?" Matt asked.
"Actually she was pretty tame, relatively that is. I'm not even limping today."
Matt laughed. "God I love this shit." He turned to Bill. "Has he been telling you what this bitch is into? Holy fucking shit!"
"Yes, he's given me a few details," Bill said. "She is quite the unorthodox sexual companion, that's for sure."
"Would you save your locker room talk for later?" Crow cried, exasperated. "What the hell am I going to do with you, Jake? You got Mindy Snow buying you a damn Corvette and then checking into a hotel with you! Did you guys really think no one was going to find out about this?"
Jake shrugged. "I guess we didn't really care," he said. "Should we get back to work now?"
Crow let his head drop to his desk. "Yes," he mumbled. "Get back to work."
They got back to work and the recording of their second album continued with remarkably little strife between the band and the record company. Having mostly gotten their way in the matter of the album's content, Jake and Matt and the others kept their discontent to themselves about such things as the overdubs and extra rhythm guitar tracks. What strife there was had to do with the cover art and the proposed videos.
It was decided that the title of the album would be The Thrill of Doing Business, named for one of Matt's songs, the subject of which had to do with buying and selling drugs and sex. Of course the National Records art department, sticking with the Satanism theme, had designed a bleak album cover in which the five band members were dressed in black and sitting around a table with candles, a pentagram, and a yellow scroll with the word CONTRACT on top, indecipherable calligraphy covering the middle, and the small but legible signatures of the band members on the bottom. All five of them were leaning to the left. On that side of the album cover a wicked looking hand with pale skin and long, claw-like nails, was protruding from a black cape, beckoning to the five of them. The implication, of course, was that the five of them had just sold their souls to Satan and were having them removed. The band protested this cover as sternly as they could.
"The song is not about doing business with the fucking devil," Matt had screamed at Crow. "It's about creeping through alleys to buy pot and blow. Its about hiring hookers to suck my fucking dick for me!"
Crow stood firm, however, spouting the same line as Acardio before him. "It doesn't matter what your perception of the song is. The title goes along with the satanic imagery Intemperance is associated with. This will be the cover, guys. Get used to it."
They didn't get used to it, but they didn't protest anymore. The photo-shoot for the cover took almost an entire day to complete because the band members had a difficult time putting the proper expressions on their faces, but it was completed and sent to the manufacturer for mass production, with a quarter of a million ordered for the first printing.