He called her Sunday afternoon. She answered on the first ring. They talked for more than an hour and made plans to try to arrange a circumspect date the following week. When Jake finally hung up he was in the best mood he'd been in for months.
"How'd you do with Tana?" Jake asked Matt in the limo as they drove towards the National Records Building Monday morning.
Matt made a snort of disgust. "One of the crappiest fucks I've ever had — possibly the crappiest. She didn't do nothin' but get on her back and lay there. She didn't make any noise, didn't move the whole time. I had to feel her fuckin' pulse to make sure she was still alive."
"No shit?" Jake asked, somewhat disillusioned. He had assumed that a Hollywood actress would be outstanding in the sack.
"It sucked ass," he said. "It's like she thought she was doin' me a favor by letting me in her sacred clam. I got fed up with it after a few minutes."
"Yeah? What did you do?" Jake asked, knowing that when Matt got fed up he always did something.
"I pulled my shit out of her snatch and nutted all over her face and that pretty blonde hair she was so fuckin' fond of."
"And what did she do?"
"She started screaming about her make-up and her hair and ran into the bathroom. And then, just as I was finishing up dressing she came out with a blow drier and started hitting me with it. I was forced to make a strategic withdrawal from the building."
Jake laughed. "That's just so you, Matt."
"Ain't it though?"
They made more idle conversation but stayed well away from the subject of the meeting they were on their way to. It was assumed (quite correctly in fact) that the limousine drivers were all record company spies. It was only when they were actually in the elevator heading up that the subject was discussed.
"So you're absolutely sure about this shit, right?" Matt asked.
"As sure as I can be," Jake said. "It's a simple equation. We don't have much to lose. They, on the other hand, have a lot to lose."
"I guess," Matt said, a little bit of doubt leaking through.
"Trust me on this," Jake said. "It'll work. The important thing is that we stand firm, no matter what."
"No matter fucking what," Matt said.
They entered the conference room and found the same players as before, all of them looking solemn and more than a little arrogant. The two musicians were invited to sit and were offered cocaine and a drink, which they politely declined. Acardio, acting as chairman, passed a few preliminaries and then launched right into his attack.
"I must say," he said, "that your behavior at the premier of Thinner Than Water was reprehensible."
"Reprehensible?" Matt asked. "That's a pretty strong word."
"Yeah," Jake agreed. "I think it was more in the category of dreadful, or maybe appalling at the very worst."
Acardio began to fume early today. "Don't play word games with me," he told them. "You embarrassed this record company and threatened the good will that exist between our organization and the movie industry. I cannot allow behavior like that to go unchecked."
"Well check it then," Jake said. "Stop sending us to shit like that and we can't embarrass you."
"Public appearances for album publicity are part of your job," Acardio said. "You will go where we tell you to go and you will behave the way we tell you to behave."
Jake shrugged. "You do have the right to send us to those things," he said. "But that last part — about how we have to behave the way you say — well, you're wrong about that one."
"What?" Acardio said, his face turning red now.
"It doesn't say anywhere in our contract that we have to behave in a certain manner. In fact, that subject is pretty much wide open."
"Have you been talking to that sister of yours again?" Acardio asked. "Is she filling your head with more of her lies and misinformation?"
The subject of Pauline's interpretations of their contract had come up before. Acardio and members of the legal department had gone to great lengths to try to discredit her and her advice.
"She's filling my head with knowledge and facts," Jake said. "But that's only on the main subject we've come to discuss today. On the subject of our behavior at public events, I didn't need her advice. We're just a bunch of wild and crazy guys, Max. You're the one who pushed that image, remember? So you gotta figure it's a public relations crapshoot when you send us to one of those things."
"Are you threatening us?" Acardio demanded. "Because if you are..."
"I'm just pointing out a reality to you, Max. Of course we might be inclined to mind our manners a bit more if we were treated with a little more respect."
"He is trying to threaten you," Janice said.
"Jake, this is a bad idea," Shaver spoke up. "You're way out of your league here."
Acardio ignored the rest of the speakers. He just continued to stare at Jake. "Is this your little game, Jake?" he asked. "Is this what your sister told you to do? Well she really is a shyster if she thought that having you act up at a party was going to prevent you from fulfilling the contractual obligations you made. Sorry. You lose this round, boys." He reached into his briefcase and took out the music packets. He slid one to Jake and one to Matt. They were smaller than they'd been last week, only six pages instead of almost twenty. "You've lost your privileges of picking which songs you want. I've decided for you. You will rehearse and record Embrace of Darkness, Loss of Control, and Evil Times, in that order. I want preliminary efforts on tape by the end of the month."
Matt and Jake looked at each other. Slowly they picked up the music packets and ripped them in half. They then ripped the halves in half. They then ripped the quarters in half. They threw the pieces up into the air, allowing them to come drifting down like snow over the conference table.
"How dare you," Acardio said. "You will not defy me like this."
"We just did, Maxie," Matt said.
"You are doing those songs!" he yelled. "That is final!"
"We are not doing those songs," Jake said. "And that is final."
"Then you are in breach of contract!" Acardio yelled.
"No, not really," Jake said.
"What?" several voices asked at once.
Jake smiled. "Nowhere does it say that 'the label' can compel us to record any particular song. Now once we've recorded a song, any song, it does become your property and at that point you can order us to perform it live, or make a video out of it, or you can let some movie maker use it in his shitty-ass flick, or you can even let some other rock band do a cover of it. There's nothing we can do to stop you in any of those things once a song is recorded. But you cannot force us to record something we do not wish to do. And we flat out refuse to record or perform any song that we have not written and approved of ourselves."
"You idiots," Acardio said. "You are once again operating on bad advice. True, you can technically refuse to record these songs, but we, 'the label', have the right to refuse any song you present to us. We will simply refuse everything you present except for those three songs. And if you don't have a full compliment of songs that are acceptable to us by the specified date — which is fast-approaching, I might add — then you are in breach of contract."
"I know," Jake said.
"You know?" Acardio cried. "Then what the hell are we having this discussion for? Christ, what a waste of time."
"We know," Jake went on, "and we are fully prepared to take the consequences of that."
"What?" Acardio screamed. "Are you insane? If you go breach of contract we'll sue you for everything we could have expected to make from your albums. And even the most conservative judge and jury would have to agree that that figure is in the tens of millions for the length of the contract you're under. You would be giving any money you ever made to us for the rest of your miserable lives."