"You don't really have to guide her anymore in this part," Mindy said. "The horses will follow the trail on their own."
And follow they did. They took their passengers through the thick woods, climbing higher and higher into the mountains. To Jake it was quite the novel experience. He was out in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by pine trees and the scent of fresh, smog-free air. Squirrels and chipmunks were everywhere. Birds called out from the trees. The occasional deer crossed their path, usually does and fawns but the occasional buck as well. He was in nature, in a square mile of land that did not contain another eight thousand people, as every square mile of the LA urban area did. And no one knew where he was. He had no babysitter with him. There was no phone to ring with an enquiring voice, asking him what he was doing or telling him to go somewhere or threatening him if he didn't record a bunch of crappy music that some sell-out hacker had written. There were no autograph seekers or religious fanatics. The only sounds were the sounds made by the animals.
"I see why you like to come out here, Mindy," he told her. "It's so... so peaceful."
"Yeah," she said dreamily. "It's a little slice of solitude. I paid a lot of money for it, but it's worth it."
They continued on, not talking much, just enjoying the outdoors. Jake found his eyes flitting back and forth from the beauty of the surroundings to the beauty of the girl sitting atop the horse beside him. She almost seemed to glow with an innocent splendor he had encountered in no one he'd met since he started performing live as a musician. She seemed like she had no idea how pretty she was. Her tanned legs were smooth, perfectly formed, with just enough muscling to give them shape. Her breasts jiggled softly beneath her shirt, not too large, not too small, rounded in a way that made men ache to look at them. And her face... it was simply exquisite, a terminally cute, terminally innocent face that conveyed gentle naiveté, wholesomeness, and stubborn purity all at the same time. This was Mindy Snow he was with. He could not get over this. He was riding into the mountains with Mindy Snow.
After about an hour of following various trails, branching left and right, going up hills and down until Jake — a city boy — was thoroughly and completely disoriented, they came to a small clearing about thirty yards across. Here a mountain stream babbled and roiled its way down the side of the mountain.
"We're here," Mindy announced. "My top secret I-want-to-be-alone-place."
"I like it," Jake said, looking around, thinking that this place was about as isolated as it was possible to get within the territorial boundaries of Los Angeles County.
"Of course it's not really mine," she said. "We left my property about a half hour ago. This is National Forest property here."
"As long as they don't mind you using it."
"They haven't complained yet," she said. "In fact, I've never seen another person here in all the times I've been here."
She dismounted and stretched her back a little. Jake climbed down as well — finding it considerably harder than climbing up had been — and felt a definite soreness in his butt and legs. He stretched himself this way and that a few times, trying to work out the stiffness.
"It'll take your bottom a little while to get used to it," Mindy told him as she unstrapped the picnic basket. "Can you get the blanket from the back of your saddle?"
He figured out how to release the straps that held it in place and unfolded it. It was a large, soft cotton blanket, red and white checkered. At Mindy's direction he spread it out on the bank of the stream. While the horses wandered over and began to drink, Mindy opened the picnic basket and pulled out fried chicken, potato salad, corn on the cob, and ice cold sodas. She filled two plates and they began to eat. The food was nothing short of spectacular.
"This is great," Jake said between chomps and chews. "Did your maid make this?"
"Yes," Mindy said. "She's real good at the kinds of food I like — fried chicken, chicken fried steak, gumbo, meatloaf. That's one of the reasons I hired her. Part of my interview process was having the candidates cook for me." She giggled. "I had to do a lot of extra hours with my trainer during that week to keep the pounds off, but it was worth it."
"Wow," Jake said. "You actually interviewed and hired your own servants. I can't get over that."
"I can't get over the fact that your servant was assigned by the record company and that he spies on you. Why don't you fire him if he's not loyal to you?"
He explained to her about their contract and their housing assignment clause and the assigned house staff clause.
"That's horrible," she said, genuinely shocked. "Are all musicians treated this way?"
"Well, I haven't talked to all musicians, obviously. And I doubt that once you reach a certain level that they can treat you that way, but I think that most musicians under their first contract experience pretty much what we're going through. We're so eager to get signed in the beginning we'll agree to damn near anything. And the record companies take horrific advantage of that."
"And you don't have a union or any sort of professional organization to help you?"
"Not that anyone has ever told me about," he said.
"You need one. We have the Screen Actors Guild. They make sure that even extras are paid fairly and treated fairly. And for those of us that do this for a living, we're very well protected and set up. They have health insurance and retirement plans for us. Most important, there's a whole list of exclusions that the movie producers are not allowed to try to put in our contracts."
"What a concept," Jake said sourly.
"Writers have a guild too," she said. "So do cartoonists and stuntmen and theater actors and television actors and even people who make commercials. Why don't musicians have one?"
"I don't know," he said.
"Well somebody should get one going, don't you think?"
"Yeah," he agreed. "I'd vote for it."
They ate in silence for a few minutes, finishing up the last of their food. Jake wiped his face with his napkin and took a drink of his soda. "Does it bother you?" he asked her.
"Does what bother me?"
"That I'm not really rich and powerful? That its all just an illusion?"
She laughed. "You may not be rich, Jake, but I think you're very powerful."
"Oh?"
"Your songs are incredible. They're very moving. You're voice is hypnotic and very... you know..." She blushed furiously. "... sexy. And your lyrics are deep and meaningful. Your song Descent Into Nothing sounded like you wrote it about me, about what it was like to grow up in an adult world like a television studio, about how I felt like I'd been pushed too hard and too fast, that I... I don't know... learned things young that I wasn't meant to know about yet. You captured all of that in three verses and a bridge and then put it all to music. Don't tell me that's not powerful."
Jake was amazed. Mindy knew exactly what the song was about. Exactly. She was one of the few people he had talked to who had actually absorbed the message he had imparted into that song. "Thank you," he stammered.
"Like I said, I'm a fan of yours, Jake. And just because I'm famous myself doesn't mean I'm not in complete awe that I'm actually sitting here with you, talking to you, that the Jake Kingsley actually rode one of my horses out here. I keep wanting to pinch myself to see if I'm just dreaming all of this. I don't care that you don't really have any money. Why should I care about that? I have my own money. Lots of it."
"You're very mature for a twenty year old," he said, looking into her brown eyes again, feeling his infatuation for her deepening into something a little stronger.
She gave him her shy smile. "I went through the descent into nothing," she told him. "Just like you did."
"Yes," he said, "but somehow you came out just as cute and cuddly on the other side, didn't you?"
"Well," she said thoughtfully, "you can look at me and say whether or not I'm cute, so I'll have to take your judgment on that one. But you can't say I'm cuddly until you've actually cuddled me."