"And then Matt crossed your path at some point?" she cut in.
This time the look of irritation came from Jake. "Yes," he said slowly. "Matt's path crossed mine. I took some of the music courses as a general elective and for pretty much the same reason as Matt - because I thought I might learn something I didn't already know." He shook his head. "And like Matt, I didn't. I was already a better musician than anyone I encountered in those classes... except for Matt."
"We ended up in Advanced Guitar together," Matt said. "Everyone else in that class was a fuckin hacker, the instructor included. And then I heard Jake play." He took a drag off his smoke and nodded appreciatively. "I knew he was bad-ass from the start. Almost as good as me."
Jake chuckled a little. "Almost," he agreed. "So we gravitated towards each other and hit it off. And Matt told me he had a band with a good drummer and a good bass player but that they needed something else to make the sound a little richer. He asked if I would come jam with them and see about playing a little rhythm guitar."
"So you had never been in a band before?" she asked.
"Never. I'd been playing and singing since I was a kid but I was kind of shy about doing it in front of other people. Usually the only time I would was when I was drunk and trying to... you know... catch the attention of a few females. I learned a long time before that singing and playing guitar was an almost certain way to get... uh... you know..."
"Laid?" she asked.
Jake chuckled again. "Yeah. It was an easy way to get laid. So anyway, I was a little nervous at first but I got together with Matt and Coop and Darren and we had a few sessions with me playing rhythm. Now up until this point, Matt didn't know that I was a singer too. I listened to him sing and he's not bad at all, but I knew that my voice would sound a little better."
"Just a little," Matt joked.
"Well, I had more range and endurance than Matt. So I finally took him aside one day and asked him if he would let me take the microphone for one of the songs."
"And how did you react to this?" she asked Matt.
"I was kind of pissed off at him at first," Matt admitted. "I mean, he was treading on my fuckin' territory there, or at least that's what I thought. But I let him give it a shot. I'll never forget that moment, not if I live to be fuckin' ninety. He did Who Needs Love? - or at least the version of it we had before Bill." Matt shook his head. "It was fuckin' awesome, man. He belted out that song with all the emotion I'd put into writing it and it was perfect, just perfect. Before he even got to the first chorus I knew my days of singing for Intemperance were over."
"And does this ever bother you?" she asked him.
"Not a single bit," he said. "We wouldn't be sitting where we are today if it wasn't for Jake's voice. The man can sing, as I'm sure you heard."
"I will agree with that," she said. "And what about Bill? He is probably most responsible for the unique sound you have. Where did he come in?"
"Nerdly was Jake's doing," Matt said.
"Oh yeah?"
"Yeah," Jake said. "As I was saying earlier, Nerdly and I have been friends since we were little kids. We both come from musical families. He has always been something of a prodigy on the piano and I just had this feeling that mixing a classical piano in with the hard rock would sound good." He shrugged. "I guess my mind just thinks that way when it comes to music. So I brought up the suggestion to Matt... who had the predictable reaction at first."
"I thought he was out of his fuckin' mind," Matt said. "I mean... a fucking piano? But we smoked a bunch of bud one day and Jake convinced me to at least give it a listen."
"Bill blew them away," Jake said. "Just like I knew he would."
They expected her to ask a few questions of Bill at this point but she didn't. She didn't even look in his direction. "And the rest is history," she concluded. "So what's this rumor I hear about the tour splitting at the end of this leg?"
"Splitting?" Jake asked.
"What do you mean?" Matt asked.
"Well," she said, "I hear that you're going to be headlining your own show after this leg. That since you're responsible for selling out all the venues for Earthstone, National thinks it's time you went out on your own."
Matt, Jake, Coop, Darren, and Bill all shook their heads at this question. They had heard nothing whatsoever about this alleged rumor. But Greg popped up at this point.
"Actually, I just got word on that this morning," he said. "Starting March 15th Intemperance will be headlining a North American tour starting in Seattle."
"What?" Jake asked, forgetting about the journalist as he tried to absorb this information.
"We're going to be headlining a North American tour?" Matt asked. "Holy fucking shit! Why didn't you tell us this?"
"I was going to wait until after the interview," Greg said. "I guess Gloria has some pretty good sources.
"Yes I do," she confirmed, casting a knowing look at Greg.
The interview was put on hold for a few minutes as the band members swamped Greg with questions - most of which he put off for the moment claiming that all the details had not been worked out yet.
"The home office is busy at work as we speak, booking dates and working out a tour schedule," Greg told them. "All I know for certain is that we'll start in Seattle on March 15th and that Voyeur will be the opening band."
"Voyeur?" Matt scoffed. "They're a bunch of fuckin' hackers if I ever heard any. Can't you get anyone better than that to open for us?"
Greg's smile disappeared in an instant. "Uh... I think you're thinking of a different band, Matt," he said forcefully. "Voyeur is a fine band, one of National's best hard-rock groups."
Matt didn't notice Greg's look or his tone, nor did he notice the look of interest in Gloria's eyes. "They suck ass," he said. "They're nothing but an AC/DC sound-alike band. And they don't even do a good job of that. In fact, I bet..."
"Matt!" Greg hissed.
This finally got Matt's attention. He looked up to see Greg making throat-cutting gestures and casting his eyes towards Gloria. Finally, he got it. "Oh..." he said slowly. "You mean Voyeur! I'm sorry. I thought you meant... uh... that other group that... you know..."
"So you don't care too much for Voyeur, do you Matt?" Gloria asked. "Would you care to elaborate on that?"
"No," Greg said. "He wouldn't."
Gloria smiled and penned a few notes while Matt became uncharacteristically quiet, at least until she changed the subject and asked him about another rumor she'd heard. "What's this I hear about a filing cabinet and a bunch of Polaroid shots?"
"Oh... you mean my map of the US?" Matt said proudly.
"You mean your map of sinfulness," Greg said with disapproval in his voice, although he was the only one Gloria could have received the information from unless she'd been talking to the bus drivers, which was unlikely.
"So it's true then?" she asked. "You are actually taking photographs of all the girls you have sex with while you're on the road and pasting them in an album?"
"Fuckin' A," he replied. "You wanna see it?"
She did. He dashed out of the room and disappeared for a few minutes. When he returned he held an oversized United States road atlas in his hands. The atlas was tattered looking, the pages bulging unnaturally. He set it on the table and opened it up to the first state in which there were entries - Arkansas. Stapled up in the corners of the Arkansas map were two Polaroid pictures. Each was of a girl with Matt's penis in her mouth, looking up at him into the camera. On the bottom margin of the photos the date and city the picture had been taken were neatly printed. In this case they both said the same thing: Little Rock, 1-29-83.