They only took three hits apiece, not even half of the joint, before both felt they had reached therapeutic intoxication level. At that point, Tom dropped the joint into an ashtray and closed up his stashbox.
“Pretty good shit, Dad,” Pauline said appreciatively. “Where do you get it?”
“Let’s just say I know a gentleman who is willing to part with some from time to time,” he told her.
“Oooh, very mysterious,” she said. “Is it anybody I know?”
Tom smiled. “Perhaps,” he said. He would say no further on the subject, although Pauline had a strong suspicion that her uncle Phil—her mother’s younger brother—was the source. Uncle Phil owned and operated a skateboard shop in Heritage and had always seemed to be just a bit more well-off than his marginal business could explain.
“Let’s turn on some music,” Pauline suggested.
“Sounds good,” Tom said, nodding slowly, his eyelids at half-staff.
“Do you have any Pink Floyd?”
“I do not,” Tom told her. “I never really got into them.”
“Really? You don’t like Pink Floyd? Have you ever listened to them while you were high?”
“Not that I can remember,” he admitted.
“You have got to try it sometime,” she said. “I’ll get you a copy of Dark Side of the Moon and you’ll have to listen to it while you’re baked.”
“I’m willing to make the experiment,” he said. “In the meantime, however, how about a little Sergeant Pepper?”
Pauline thought that over for a moment and then nodded, a nostalgic smile on her face. “Throw it on,” she told him.
Tom went to his music collection and thumbed through the albums for a moment until he found the colorful cover of the Beatles’ eighth album. He carefully removed the vinyl from the cover and set it upon the turntable. He threw a few switches, turned a few knobs, adjusted the equalizer just a bit, and then gently set the arm of player down on the first track of side one. A moment later, the distinctive sound of an orchestra tuning up began to issue from the speakers.
“I haven’t heard this in years,” Pauline said. “Not since I lived here, I think.”
“It’s a classic,” Tom said, taking his seat again as the opening song began to play.
“You and Mom used to listen to this all the time,” she said. She gave a knowing look. “Usually at night, after me and Jake were settled in for the evening.”
“What can I say?” he said with a smile. “Your mother and I were very fond of this one.”
They listened in silence to track one and track two, both of them just enjoying the musical composition with their hallucinogenic enhanced minds. It wasn’t until track three—Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds—that Tom spoke again.
“Tell me, Pauline,” he said, his tone a little more serious now. “How is Jake doing these days?”
“Jake?” she said with a shrug. “He’s doing fine. He’s working hard—he and Celia and Bill and Sharon put in at least eight hours a day, six days a week.”
“That’s good to hear,” Tom said. “He certainly looks better than the last time I saw him. But how is he doing? You know what I’m talking about?”
“Ahhh,” she said. “You mean the drinking, the drugs, the self-destruction.”
He nodded. “You didn’t tell me much about what you found when you went to New Zealand to talk to him, but ... well ... I got the strong impression that things were not very good there.”
She sighed, taking a sip of her beer. “No, things were not very good there. He was in pretty bad shape, actually. The breakup of Intemperance, particularly the acid and the hatred that Matt was spewing both publicly and privately, really threw him for a loop. On top of that, there was his breakup with Helen. That was still pretty fresh as well.”
Tom nodded. “I really liked Helen,” he said. “I thought she was good for Jake.”
“She was,” Pauline said. “They were good for each other. They truly did love each other too. It was just that Helen couldn’t take the celebrity lifestyle.”
“You can hardly blame her,” Tom said. “That crazy woman showed up at her house and obviously intended to torture her and kill her. That would tend to put a doubt or two into one’s head, wouldn’t you say?”
That crazy woman he was referring to was Jenny Johansen, a twenty-eight-year-old woman from Los Angeles who had become obsessed with Jake at least as far back as his romantic relationship with Rachel—his girlfriend before Helen—but who had become incensed and over the top once his relationship with Helen became public knowledge. Her obsession had come to a peak one day when she had gone to Helen’s house with a bag containing a pistol, a pair of handcuffs, a roll of duct tape, four butcher knives, and a portable blow torch. Fortunately for Helen, Johansen had sent several letters to Jake beforehand explicitly threatening her and Jake had arranged to have a state-of-the-art security system installed in Helen’s house. Johansen had triggered that system and was arrested by Ventura County sheriff’s deputies before she could attempt to put her plan in motion. Since she had not actually tried to kill Helen, and since she had not actually broken into Helen’s property, she could not be charged with those crimes. Instead, she had pled guilty to a firearms charge and ordered to submit to a year of psychiatric evaluation. Permanent restraining orders were in place forbidding Johansen from being within five hundred yards of Helen, Jake, or any of their family members. Though a restraining order is nothing more than a piece of paper, Jake had heard no further from Johansen since her plea and neither, as far as could be determined, had Helen.
“Yeah,” Pauline agreed. “I can’t say I blame her at all. She just wasn’t cut out for the public life. All she wanted to do was teach people to fly airplanes and live anonymously on her little plot of land out in Ventura County. Her goals were incompatible with Jake’s.”
“That’s the way it goes sometimes,” Tom said sadly. “Still ... a shame. Anyway, we were talking about New Zealand.”
“Yeah ... New Zealand,” Pauline said. “You should see Jake’s house there sometime. It really is nice. Sits up on a hill overlooking a little coastal town.”
“I would love to see it someday, but you were telling me about Jake?”
“Uh...” she hesitated.
“I’d like the truth, Paulie,” he said, using her childhood nickname. “Not what you think I want to hear, not what you think you need to say to protect him. I need to know how he was and how he is.”
“All right,” she said with a sigh of resignation. “No bullshit. He was drinking pretty heavily over there.”
Tom raised his eyebrows a bit. “Heavier than he was drinking out on the road?”
“Much,” she said. “Out on the road was nothing. I mean, they got drunk and snorted some coke and smoked some weed after their shows, but there was always another show to do, always another long trip on the bus. They were working and the partying was just part of the experience. You know what I’m saying?”
“I think so,” Tom said. “It certainly seemed like they were having a good time.”
“Yeah,” Pauline snorted. “About thirty-nine thousand dollars worth of good time on their last full tour, according to Jill anyway.”
Tom gave a little whistle. “Thirty-nine thousand dollars worth of booze?”
“Well ... that includes the pot and cocaine as well, although the alcohol was the majority of that particular entertainment expense.”
“Wow,” Tom said. He didn’t know whether to be impressed or appalled.
“Anyway, my point is that the road drinking is nothing. It’s just the road. Over in New Zealand, however, Jake didn’t have anything else to keep him occupied. He had nothing to do, was depressed, was lonely, and ... well ... he pretty much spent all day, every day drunk. He stopped exercising. He didn’t compose much. He was heading straight down a road to destruction. If Jill and I hadn’t gone out there ... well ... I don’t think he would’ve made it another year. He either would have drunk himself to death or he would have ended up crashing his motorcycle or getting stabbed by some jealous boyfriend of a girl he was sleeping with.”