"The phone book treatment?" Celia asked.
"Never mind," Jake said. He held out his hand to her. "I'm pleased to meet you, Celia, even if my bandmate isn't."
She shook with him. Her hand was larger than the average female's but no less soft, except for her fingertips, which were covered with the hard calluses indicative of a long time guitar player.
"Thank you," she said. "It would seem that your guitar player does not have much respect for a band that performs songs written by others?"
"Well, Matt's kind of a musical purist. He believes you're not truly a musician unless you're composing your own material."
"I see," she said, her eyes flitting downward and looking at the bar. "And do you feel the same?"
"Perhaps not as deeply as Matt feels," he replied. "But yes, I do tend to be prejudiced in favor of the classic singer/songwriter combination."
"So you don't care for our music too much, I assume?"
"It's catchy," he said. "I actually found myself singing along with I Love To Dance a few times."
"Really?"
"Really," he confirmed. "There are some impressive elements to the composition."
"Such as?"
He looked at her. Her brown eyes were locked once again onto his face, inquisitive, intelligent. "Your voice is beautiful," he told her.
"Thank you," she said. "I think I have a fairly good command of it."
"That's an understatement," she said. "You're naturally talented with your singing and its evident by listening to you on your songs that you've had considerable training as well."
She smiled again. "I'm flattered," she said. "And yes, I have had considerable training. I started out singing in the church choir in Barquisimeto when I was only eleven years old."
"Bar-what?" Jake asked.
"Barquisimeto," she said, pronouncing it slowly and phonetically as 'Bar-keys-a-meto'. "It's the city I grew up in. It's the capital of the Venezuelan state of Lara, a farming city mostly. My family is very active in the church and my mother put me in the choir at an early age. That was where I first learned to use my voice effectively. Since then I've had some professional lessons."
"They paid off," he told her. "Your singing voice is well-honed. It reminds me of Karen Carpenter with an accent."
"You like Karen Carpenter?" she asked, surprised.
"Well, The Carpenters music itself is kind of saccharin don't you think?"
"Perhaps," she agreed.
"But you don't have to like them to appreciate that Karen Carpenter's voice was exquisite, almost perfection in fact."
"And you're comparing me to her?" she asked. "That sounds like a pickup line."
He smiled. "I can't say that I'm not trying to pick up on you, because you yourself are every bit as beautiful as your voice, and I can't say that I haven't told the occasional fib before in the cause of picking someone up."
"No?"
"No," he said. "The most common one I hit them with is that I'm rich. It's an easy one to pull off when you're a famous musician, isn't it? However, since you are undoubtedly operating under a standard industry first-time contract like I am, I'm sure you already know I'm not really rich, don't you? In fact, I'm in considerable debt at the moment."
She smiled again. "Lord, don't I know it."
"But anyway, one thing I do not lie about, that I would never lie about, even to further my own sexual gratification, is someone's musical ability. I am sincere in my assessment of your voice. It is absolutely beautiful, a near-perfect contralto that Karen Carpenter herself would have been envious of."
This time she actually beamed at him. "You are a smooth talker indeed," she said.
"Thank you. Am I having an effect?"
"A minor one," she admitted. "If I didn't already have a boyfriend, and if you didn't work for a competing record company, and if I was the least bit inclined to date bad boys with a reputation for hosting orgies and drug parties, I might have agreed to go out with you."
"Did I mention your guitar playing is first rate too?"
She laughed. "No, but I'll forgo questioning your sincerity on that one and just thank you."
"You're welcome," he said, sipping from his drink. "And don't worry. I know when I've been shot down."
"Do you?" she asked. "That is certainly a rarity among men, especially men who happen to be famous musician used to having women cater to their every whim."
"I must admit, I don't get shot down often so the experience is probably good for my humility factor. I do appreciate your use of force doctrine in performing the shoot down."
"My use of force doctrine?"
"You went with the guns instead of the nuclear-tipped missiles," he said. "My ego appreciates that."
"Your ego is welcome as well. And while we're talking about your ego, can I stroke it just a bit?"
"Stroke away," he said, grinning semi-lasciviously.
She shook her head in amusement. "I'm not much of a hard-rock fan," she said, "but I find your voice and your guitar playing to be quite impressive as well. You're also quite the lyricist. I've only listened to the songs that have been in competition with ours, but I do like them. You should do more ballads and less of the heavy stuff."
"Our fans like the heavy stuff," he said. "We like it too. Our inclusion in this little production of the Grammy Awards is almost accidental."
"It seems if you made it more purposeful you might stand a better chance of getting the nominations."
"That would be selling out," he said. "We try to make our music from the heart, not from the pocketbook."
She nodded respectfully at this. "Well then, I guess that puts me in my place, doesn't it?"
"Gently, I hope," he said. "We take our music very seriously and I think that's why we're so popular. It's an effort of love that pays off quite handsomely in the end."
"Well put," she said.
The bartender returned, making a big production out of setting Celia's glass of wine before her. "My apologies for taking so long, Ms. Valdez," he said. "I had to go to the lower store room to find one of the chilled bottles of Snoqualmie Vineyards. It's an eighty-four, unfortunately, not quite as good as the eighty-three. Is that all right?"
"I think I can choke it down," she said. "Thank you for getting it for me." She dropped a dollar bill into his tip jar.
"Thank you, Ms. Valdez," he said. He then shot a distasteful look in Jake's direction. "I do hope you didn't find the company you were forced to keep in my absence to be too unpleasant?"
Celia looked from Jake to the bartender for a moment and then smiled sweetly. She plucked her dollar bill back out of the jar. "I found it much more pleasant than when you were here," she said. "Mr. Kingsley was merely trying to pick me up. He's not a brown-nosing snob like you are."
The pretentious little smile on the bartender's face withered and died. "Well!" he said huffily. "I can see how grateful some people are when you go out of your way for them!" He stormed off, going as far to the other side of the bar as possible.
"Fuckin' prick," Celia said.
Jake laughed. "I can see your impressive command of English includes some of our more popular slang terms as well."
She blushed, embarrassed. "The English comes from the Venezuelan public school system," she said. "It's a requirement for the college prep classes. The profanity... well... that's from hanging out with the American roadies out on tour. That Latin American temper we're so famous for makes it slip out on occasion."
"I appreciate you letting it slip out on my behalf. I had a witty and equally profane retort of my own all ready to go, of course, but you beat me to the punch."
"Don't tell my mother I said that," she said. "She'd wash my mouth out with soap. So would Bobby for that matter."
"Your manager?" Jake asked.
She nodded. "And the boyfriend I mentioned earlier. He really hates it when I cuss in public. It spoils the wholesome I Love To Dance image."