"Is that what you were after?" Jake asked her the following Sunday, as they paddled surfboards out beyond the breakers at Point Dume. "Pictures of innocent Mindy Snow dancing dirty?"
"That's exactly what I was after," she said. "You did good."
"I'm glad I make such a good prop," he said sourly.
She gave him a hurt look. "Jake," she said, "we've been over this. You know I'm not seeing you just for the publicity. I told you that the day you found out. I'm with you because I like being with you. The publicity is now just a pleasant side-effect."
"Yeah," he said, partially mollified. "I guess so. Come on. Let's catch a wave."
In truth, he wasn't quite sure what to think of Mindy anymore. He couldn't tell from day to day, from minute to minute whether this entire thing was just an act or whether, as she claimed, it had merely started out that way and had evolved into a real relationship. She was as passionate as she could possibly be in the bedroom and when they were alone together — completely alone, out of the public eye — she was just as sweet and caring as she'd always been. They still talked on the phone for hours at a time during the week when they couldn't get together. It was when they were in public, however, or when there was even the slightest possibility that a member of the public might be watching them, that the whole relationship seemed contrived and scripted. Even now, as they were floating a hundred yards offshore of a relatively isolated beach, her mannerisms, her movements, even her clothing, were all designed to project the image she was fomenting. She was wearing a skimpy blue bikini that flirted with the local community standards of decency. She frequently held hands with him, or rubbed his back, or stole kisses, or grabbed his butt, not out of spontaneity or affection, he was sure, but out of the hope that someone back on shore was seeing her do it or even photographing it.
Subsequently, when he began to get irritated with these phony overtures of affection — as he was getting quicker and quicker to do with each public appearance — he would try to reject them. He would twist away from her kissing mouth, or pull his hand from her questing fingers, or grow surly and silent to her conversational gambits. At this point she would usually chastise him, hissing words through clenched teeth that was "spoiling the image."
Sometimes — usually in the midst of one of these public put-ons — he would swear he couldn't take it anymore. I'm not an actor, he would tell himself, and I'm tired of pretending. Several times he had decided it was time to put a stop to it. That's it, he would vow, as soon as we get home I'm breaking up with her. I can't take this anymore. And then they would get back to his place — or her place, depending on what they had been doing and where they had been doing it — and she would turn her raw sexuality, her deviant nastiness, full force upon him and his will would wither, his resolve crumble, under the onslaught of black eroticism. That was where she had him and she knew it, and she had no compunctions about using it.
On one occasion she had gone out onto his balcony, pushed off her pants and panties, and then sat on the balcony rail, her legs spread widely. He fucked her right there, holding onto her waist and pounding in and out, knowing that a simple mis-balance would send her careening downward to crash on the sidewalk three hundred feet below. On another occasion she had dressed in the white blouse and hoop skirt she used to wear on The Slow Lane, her hair done in exactly the fashion her character had been known for, the standard naïve clichés like "gee willikers" and "goodness gracious" coming out of her lips in exactly the right tone and inflection as he lifted the skirt and slid into her body. No matter how old the public posturing and contrived mannerisms got, the sex remained quite fresh and Jake, led by the penis, remained an official part of her life.
Recording for The Thrill of Doing Business was officially and totally completed on October 28. Since Descent Into Nothing was still holding firm in the top ten of album sales — it had slipped from number one but was steady at number three — and since four of the songs from Descent were still enjoying saturation airplay nationwide, Crow told the band Thrill would not be released until at least January 31, and possibly not until the beginning of March.
"Now we're going to shoot three videos for the first three scheduled single releases," he told them, "and we're going to have you do an extensive rehearsal for the upcoming tour, but we won't start any of that until November 16. Until then, you boys are officially on vacation. Tell us where you want to go and we'll arrange for it. You've earned it."
They were glad for the vacation but no one wasted any sentimentality on National's generosity. Their vacation expenses would of course be deducted from their recoupable expenses accounts.
Matt, Coop, and Darren all elected to go to an exclusive resort in Rio de Janeiro. Jake and Bill made different plans. They both wanted to go home and visit their families. Crow, when given this request, attempted to veto it on the grounds that there would be no favorable publicity resulting from such a trip.
"Going home is boring," he told them. "We want shots of you running rampant through some tropical beach somewhere, getting in trouble with the tourists girls and the locals. Visiting your mom and dad is just a little too wholesome, don't you think?"
"Oh, I'm sorry," Jake said. "I thought this vacation thing was supposed to be so we could rest and relax before going out on the road. I wasn't aware it was nothing but a publicity angle for you."
"Everything is a publicity angle," Crow told him. "You know that. Now look, why don't we set you two up at a resort down in Cabo? If you really want to see your parents, I'll arrange to have them flown up here for a couple of days when you get back."
They declined his kind offer and Mindy came to their rescue. Stating that she thought it was high time she met her boyfriend's parents, she booked the three of them on a private jet and they flew to Heritage County airport on November 1. The trip was a disaster pretty much from the point they landed.
Jake looked out the aircraft window as they taxied to the general aviation terminal and saw no less than six news vans, their antennas poking up into the sky, and nearly fifty reporters, photographers, and videographers standing between them and the terminal entrance.
"Holy shit," he said as the plane came to a stop and all the cameras pointed at the door. "How did they know we were going to be here?"
Mindy gave a nervous little giggle. "Well... uh... actually, I think Georgette might've... you know... tipped them a little."
"Georgette told them we were coming here?" he asked, feeling his anger start to rise.
"She thought it might be a good idea for the press to know I was coming home with you to meet your parents," she said. "You know? It gives the relationship a little more weight, makes it seem serious. It's one of those milestone things."
"Oh my God," Jake said, shaking his head.
"I'm sorry," she said, sounding anything but. "I didn't know there would be that many of them out there."
He held his tongue for the time being. They stepped out into the throng and the cameras began to fire like machine guns. The reporters began shouting their inane questions.
"Are you going to meet Jake's parent's right now, Mindy?"
"Is it true you're going to announce your engagement to them?"
"What about the reports that you're pregnant?"
"Do you think your mother will approve of Mindy, Jake?"
They kept their heads down, their expressions blank, and their mouths shut as they pushed through the throng and entered the terminal building. Inside were hundreds of fans and onlookers, all of them crowding around the group, shouting their own questions, snapping their own pictures, asking for autographs. Another group of people stood near the doors holding up protest signs that said things like HERITAGE SAYS NO TO INTEMPERANCE and HERITAGE HOLDS NO PRIDE IN THE SINNER and GO BACK TO HOLLYWOOD, FREAKS (and take your corrupt whore with you).