This speech actually got to Jake a little — he had not considered that they might go to the wall on this in order to avoid setting a precedent — but he didn't let Doolittle know that. He stood firm. "You do what you need to do, boss," he told him, "but we've made our good faith effort, we've submitted the tape to you, and there is no way we'll be coming up with anything else for at least three months. And even if we do come up with some new material, it will probably sound a lot like the material you already have. We kind of like this new style of ours, you know what I mean?"
"You're making a big mistake, Jake," Doolittle warned. "The biggest."
Jake said nothing in reply. He simply hung up the phone.
Chapter 15B: Crossing The Line
Jake, Matt, and Bill all received multiple phone calls over the next two days. They received them from Doolittle, from Crow, from Shaver, even from William Casting, CEO of National Records — the big guy himself. These phone calls were all in the same vein — demands to submit recordable music by the deadline, threats of what would happen if they didn't, promises that National would not cave on this issue no matter what, that they would sacrifice the millions they stood to make even if they did renegotiate the Intemperance contract just to avoid setting a precedent other bands might try to take advantage of in the future. In addition to the phone calls, they began to get the same speeches from Darren and Coop, both of whom had been told by Doolittle and Crow that they had been used to hatch an insidious plot against the record company that was providing them with food, shelter, and, most importantly, heroin.
"Dudes, that was like totally uncool of you to make us submit that crappy music," said Coop to Jake and Matt.
"Yeah, dudes," agreed Darren. "We're not like pawns on a chessboard and shit. I thought we were friends!"
Through all this Bill, Jake, and Matt stood firm in their convictions and refused to even acknowledge that there was a plot in progress. They made no demands of National Records and made no admissions of deliberately sabotaging their music to Darren or Coop. To do so would have destroyed the legal basis of their "good faith" argument. The demands, when they came, would have to come from a mouth other than theirs and even then would have to be circumspect.
National, however, certainly had no problems making demands. On Thursday afternoon Manny once again handed the phone to Jake.
"Who is it this time?" Jake asked. "Doolittle, Crow, Shaver, or Casting?"
"It's Mr. Casting," Manny whispered, obviously in awe of having talked to the head of one of the largest record companies in the world.
Jake nodded and took the phone. He lit a cigarette and took a few puffs and then finally put it to his ear. "Wassup, Cassie?" Jake asked him.
"That's Mr. Casting to you, Kingsley," Casting said icily. "What are you doing at home?"
"Well," said Jake, "right now I'm enjoying a cigarette. After that I'm going to go into my bedroom and check out the new issue of Hustler and probably jack off. What are you doing?"
"Why aren't you in the warehouse producing new music for us?" Casting asked.
"Why would we do that?" Jake asked. "We submitted new material to you, you rejected it, and you don't want to wait three or four months for us to come up with something else. There's no reason for us to be in the warehouse."
"Oh, but there is," Casting said. "I'm told you had six songs in progress before you decided to pull this little stunt of yours."
"We're not pulling any stunts," Jake replied, "but your spies do have their facts correct about the six songs. We were working on them but we decided they sucked ass and abandoned them."
"I'm told by two of your bandmates that they didn't 'suck ass', as you put it. In fact, I'm told they were quite good."
"As I said before, sucking ass is in the eye of the beholder. Darren and Coop are so strung out on that heroin you assholes are pushing off on them that they wouldn't know a good song if it reached out and took their syringes away from them."
"Nevertheless," Casting said, "I want you in that warehouse rehearsing those six tunes. We're going to record them."
"Oh we are, are we?" Jake asked.
"Yes," Casting said. "Since you're refusing to submit acceptable material to us for your next album, we're going to have you record all of the rejects you previously submitted — with the exception of that anti-bible piece — and those six songs. That will give us ten for the album."
"Sorry," Jake said. "We rejected those six songs. We're not going to do them."
"I'm ordering you to do them," Casting said. "You have material available to you and we have the right to order you to record it."
"That would be true if we had ever recorded those six songs and submitted them to you and your boys on an audio cassette. We did not do that, however, so those songs do not yet belong to you."
"You rehearsed them in our warehouse," Casting said. "We know you composed them and that they're viable. That makes them our property."
"Really?" asked Jake. "Do you have a lyric sheet on them?"
"No," said Casting. "But that doesn't matter."
"Do you have a written composition of the basic melody?"
"No, but that doesn't matter either."
"Okay then," Jake said. "Here's the most important question. Have we ever recorded those tunes in any form?"
"You know you haven't."
"Then, according to my legal source — you might want to check with yours to confirm this — those tunes do not belong to you, they still belong to us — the songwriters. They only become your property when we actually record them and submit them to you or one of your representatives. We have not done that, so we still retain the rights to those songs. And as the songwriters of un-submitted pieces, we still retain the absolute right to do with our compositions as we please. And what we please is to not record them or to offer them to any entity. We've rejected them."
"Jake, I'm ordering you to record those songs!" Casting yelled.
"And I'm ordering you to rip your cock off and shove it up your ass," Jake replied. He then shook his head. "Jesus, I've been hanging out with Matt too much."
His conciliatory statement did not mollify Casting much. He was infuriated. "All right," he said, sounding like he was speaking through gritted teeth. "You want to play hardball? We'll play hardball. We're done screwing around with you. As of this moment, your weekly allowance is cut off, your limousine service is cut off, your nightclub privileges are cut off, everything is cut off! Do you hear me?"
"I hear you," Jake said mildly. He hung up the phone.
When Casting said "everything", he literally meant everything. The phone rang again less than a minute after Jake hung up and Manny answered the kitchen extension, but he did not tell Jake to pick up. Instead, about ten minutes later, Jake heard him shuffling around, making lots of noise. He went into the kitchen and found him taking food out of the refrigerator and putting it in boxes.
"What you doing, Manny?" Jake asked him.
Manny was in quite the state. "I'm taking all of the food out of the house," he responded.
"Why would you do something like that?" Jake asked.
"Mr. Casting ordered me to," he said. "He apparently means to starve you into submission." He shook his head fretfully. "Oh this is just such a mess. I'm sorry, Jake. Why don't you just do what they want?"
"For the same reason you don't go out and score yourself some pussy," Jake told him.
"Huh?" Manny asked.
"Because I'm just not into it," Jake clarified. "You know what I mean?"
Manny didn't know what he meant. He picked up a jar of mayonnaise and put it in the box.
"Oh, and Manny," Jake said.
"Yes?"
"Put all that shit back right now."