“Yep,” Jake said. “And I remember my flight instructor specifically warning me about that. She’d be very disappointed in me.”
“Uh ... yes, sir,” he said slowly, obviously unaware that Jake was joking. “I suppose she would. Would you care to read off the credit card number for me?”
Jake did so and then hung up.
“Another night together, huh?” Celia asked him, her face expressionless.
“Looks like it,” he said, careful to keep his face neutral as well.
Though neither let their faces betray the thoughts behind them, both knew what the other was thinking through sheer familiarity. Both were thinking the same thing: It looks like our newly forged agreement is going to be put to the extreme test tonight.
“There’s one thing I don’t understand about all this,” Celia said.
“What’s that?”
“How did black guys manage to shut down Interstate 5? And why can’t they reopen it?”
“What?” Jake asked. “Black guys? What are you talking about?”
“When you were talking to the concierge,” she said. “You told me that the interstate was shut down south of here because of black guys. What the hell does that mean? And shouldn’t they say, ‘African Americans?’ That’s the term we’re using these days, right?”
“African-Americans?” Jake asked, feeling like Alice in Wonderland. “What are you talking about?”
“And really, how many black people even live down in that part of the state? It’s kind of rural south of Portland, isn’t it? Is this some kind of media exploitation thing?”
Understanding dawned on Jake and he smiled widely, and then he started to chuckle. “Black ice,” he told her, annunciating carefully. “Not black guys.”
“Ohhh, black ice,” she said, and then she started to crack up as well. “That makes a little more sense.”
They laughed for the better part of five minutes over this, probably a little longer than it really deserved, but it was a healing laugh that served a higher purpose. Every time the laughter started to die down, one of them would say, “black guys shut down the interstate” or some variation of that and the laughter would rear back up again.
“Madres de Dios,” Celia said when they finally got themselves under control again. “I really needed that laugh, Jake.” She shook her head. “Black guys.”
“Yeah,” Jake agreed. “Me too.”
The last chuckle died away and they looked at each other with affection, the affection of friendship and not intimacy.
“All right then,” Celia said. “How about we get back to ordering breakfast?”
“Sounds good,” Jake told her, picking up the menu.
They ate breakfast together. Later, they ate lunch. They stayed in the hotel suite all day long, each doing their own thing, sometimes doing simple things together, like playing rummy or cribbage. That night, they had dinner. They ordered no wine. Throughout the day and night, neither of them consumed so much as a drop of any beverage containing ethyl alcohol. Neither of them made any remarks, directly or indirectly, or any innuendo about what had happened between them the night before.
They slept in separate beds that night.
The next morning, Jake was finally able to book a flight back to North Bend municipal aboard a Cessna Citation.
Everyone was happy to see them back.
They went back to work.
Chapter 19: Shake it Up
Los Angeles, California
January 16, 1994
The dinner meeting was held at Jake’s house on the very day that he, Celia, and the Nerdlys flew back to Santa Monica in Jake’s plane, master CD copies for both new albums in hand. They had finished well ahead of schedule, both with the recording process itself and with the mixing and mastering. After returning from their two-day excursion to Portland, Jake and Celia, by unspoken consent, had driven themselves, their band members, and their engineering team into overdrive, asking them to work twelve hour days, six days a week, and to step up all aspects of production while doing so. Part of this was because they wanted to get the projects done and out into the world. A bigger part, however, was that the constant workload kept them from having to think too much about what had happened between them that one snowy night.
It was a plan that worked quite well. Though some nerves and tempers had been frayed on occasion, Jake and Celia kept their hands off of each other and they did not speak, even when alone with each other, about their transgression. Though neither would ever be able to forget it had ever happened—Jake, in fact, took the memory out quite often, usually when alone in his bed at night—no one else in the group seemed to have the least bit of suspicion that the two singers had done anything but platonically share a two-room suite together for a few nights out of necessity.
And now, on their first day home, the Nerdlys, along with Pauline and Obie, sat at Jake’s dining room table at six o’clock that evening, Jake with them while Elsa was in the kitchen working on the dinner portion of the meeting. She was making chicken parmesan with garlic bread and the entire house smelled incredible. Jake, Sharon, and Nerdly were all sipping from glasses of a 1989 Inglenook Merlot that Jake had pulled from his collection. Pauline, who was now exactly one week from her due date and quite enormous in the stomach and boobs (although she remained remarkably trim everywhere else) was drinking a glass of iced herbal tea. Obie, who had just started his tour break paternity leave two days before, was drinking some of Jake’s Jamaican Blue coffee. Though he longed for a nice scotch on the rocks with every fiber of his being, he had made a vow to remain sober until the birth so he could drive her to the hospital when the time came.
The doorbell rang. Jake’s nerves ramped up a few notches at the sound of it. It could only be Celia and Greg ringing it, the two of them here to attend the meeting and have a little dinner. It would be the first time that Jake had been face to face with the actor, the first time he had even spoken to him, since he had left for Alaska the first time some months ago. A lot had happened since then, most notably that Greg had cheated on Celia and then (stupidly, Jake still thought) confessed it to her, and that Jake himself had spent a long, wonderful night naked and in bed with Greg’s wife. Greg and Celia themselves had only been reunited since the incident for a few hours. The potential for awkwardness was extremely high.
“Jake!” Elsa called from the kitchen. “Get the door, please. I’m right in the middle of breading these cutlets and I have egg all over my hands.”
“I’m on it, Elsa,” he called back. He stood from his seat at the table, took a deep breath, and then walked to the front door.
He opened the door slowly and there, standing out on his front porch, was one of America’s favorite couples. The dress code for meetings at Jake’s house was understood to be casual comfortable—it always had been, always would be—and Celia was adhering to it nicely. She had on a pair of loose-fitting designer jeans and a simple button-up blouse covered by a light sweater. Greg, on the other hand, had a different idea of what casual comfortable meant. He was wearing a pair of dress slacks and a long-sleeved Pierre Cardin dress shirt buttoned to the collar. A fashionable sport coat rounded out the outfit. Both of them smiled when they saw Jake standing there.
“Hey, guys,” Jake greeted, putting a smile on his own face—a smile that felt decidedly forced. “Welcome. Come on in.”
They stepped inside and Jake shut the door behind them. When he turned around, he saw that Greg was holding out his right hand.
“It’s good to see you again, Jake,” the actor told him with what seemed genuine sincerity.
“You too, Greg,” Jake returned, putting out his own right hand and shaking with him. To his surprise, Greg pulled him into a bro-hug and patted him firmly on the back. Jake returned the gesture out of reflex.