“You seem to be well-established now,” Collette told her as she looked, not at Pauline, but the rhythmic lines tracing across the computer monitor. “I’m going to call for the anesthesiologist to come in now.”
Pauline experienced four more moderately strong contractions—they were coming about seven minutes apart—before Dr. LaFleur, the anesthesiologist, got the needle inserted into her spine and followed it up with the nerve blocking agent. These were the last she would feel completely.
“Better?” LaFleur asked her.
“Much,” she panted. “I can still feel a lot of pressure down there, and it’s not exactly comfortable, but it doesn’t feel like someone is squeezing my fucking guts out anymore.”
“That’s the idea,” LaFleur said with a smile. “And, if you wish, I can give you some fentanyl in the epidural space to help relieve the discomfort of the pressure.”
“Fentanyl?” Pauline asked. “Isn’t that a narcotic?”
“It is,” he confirmed.
“Wouldn’t that be bad for the clump ... uh ... the baby, I mean?”
“Not at all,” LaFleur said. “It would go in your spinal column, which is on the brain side of the blood-brain barrier. Fentanyl cannot cross that barrier. It’ll go to your brain directly and not get anywhere near the baby’s.”
“No shit?” Pauline asked.
“No shit,” LaFleur assured her. “It’s perfectly safe.”
Pauline grinned. “In that case, fire me up.”
He fired her up, and soon, Pauline was feeling mighty fine indeed.
“Oh man,” she said happily. “This is some good shit.”
“I think I’m jealous,” Jake told her with a chuckle.
“Obie!” she said, turning to him, not even noticing that, on the monitor, a huge contraction was currently ripping through her. “You know what I need?”
“What do you need, darlin’?” he asked.
“Some fuckin’ headphones and Pink Floyd, The Wall playing through them.”
Obie gave her a laugh. “That would probably be nice all right,” he told her. “Unfortunately, we don’t have either of those things available right now.”
“Then go find them somewhere,” she demanded.
He laughed again, and then realized she was serious. “Uh ... I’m not going to leave you while you’re in labor, Pauline,” he told her.
“We got time,” Pauline said. “Tell him, Collette! I’m still hours away from squishing this thing out, right?”
“Right,” Collette confirmed. “At least six. Probably closer to eight.”
And so, Obie left the women’s and children’s center, got in his rental car, and drove into the nearby suburb of Lemon Hill, where he went into a regional mall that had both a record store and an electronics store. He bought her a Walkman CD player, the entire collection of Pink Floyd they had available, a Moody Blues CD just for good measure, and five sets of extra batteries.
He took his purchases back to Presbyterian of the Valley and Pauline rode out the rest of her labor in style.
The clump came into the world in the usual way at 4:20 in the morning on January 28th, 1994. At Pauline’s invitation, everyone stayed in the room to observe the birth. Jake, who had seen many a vagina in his time, was awed almost to tears as he watched one being used for this particular purpose. Celia, who had held the hand that Obie wasn’t holding through the process was awed as well. Nerdly was also awed, but he also became sick to his stomach and had to throw up in Pauline’s bathroom.
And so was born Tabitha Jean (named for Mary’s mother, God rest her soul) Blake. A pink, squirming little thing that was twenty-one inches in length, weighed seven pounds, six ounces, and had a dense mop of black hair atop her head. As she was placed on her mother’s belly and commenced nursing for the first time, she had no idea whatsoever of the kind of family she had just been born into.
Jake, Celia, and the Nerdlys flew back to Santa Monica aboard Jake’s plane three days later, landing just before the nighttime restrictions for operations began. Traffic was still terrible, but not nearly as bad as it had been on the outbound leg, and they all managed to make it home in less than an hour.
Pauline, Obie, and little Tabby stayed with Mary and Tom for another two weeks and then they flew home as well, utilizing a private jet arranged for by Obie. Mary went with them, her intent to help her daughter out for at least a month.
Pauline was glad to have her mother with her, particularly since there was a considerable amount of business to take care of as soon as she got back. All four of the big four record companies had, by this time, been able to listen to the master copies they had been given and had submitted their bids. Pauline smiled as she read them. She then called a meeting of the owners of KVA Records.
The meeting took place at her house, as there was no way in hell she was ready to leave Tabby behind and go driving around in earthquake damaged LA. There were lots of preliminaries before they got down to business because everyone, even Nerdly, wanted to spend some time holding and talking to Tabby first.
“All right,” Pauline finally said from behind her desk, Tabby in her arms and her left boob out of her shirt, the nipple in Tabby’s mouth. “Let’s talk business.”
“Uh ... right, business,” said Nerdly, who was blushing and trying to look like he wasn’t looking at Pauline’s breast.
“What’s the word?” asked Jake. “No hints of collusion between the suits?”
“None at all,” Pauline said. “It went just as I expected. The lowest bid submitted was from Warner Brothers. They offered twenty-three percent royalties based on wholesale rate for promotion, and an even fifty-fifty split of straight cost for manufacturing and distribution.”
“Nice,” said Celia, nodding appreciably for a moment and then going back to staring at the infant suckling on Pauline’s nipple. The sight was triggering some strong urges in her, urges she had never really felt before. She wanted to grow a baby of her own.
“I trust that bid includes the stipulation that control of promotion remains the exclusive right of KVA Records?” Jake asked.
“That is not a stipulation in the bid,” Pauline told him. “That was put into the language as a requirement to be agreed to just to submit a bid in the first place. In other words, just by bidding they agreed to accept that clause in any contract negotiated as a given.”
Jake nodded appreciatively. “You lawyers can come up with some cool shit every now and then,” he told her.
“So can you musicians,” Pauline allowed. “In any case, once I had the bids in hand, I faxed a copy of Warner Brothers’ over to Aristocrat. They agreed immediately to match it. That means we are contractually obligated to go with them at twenty-three percent and fifty-fifty for M&D. I let Warner Brothers, Capitol, and National all know that we went with Aristocrat. They thanked us for considering them and told us to submit again for the next albums.”
“It sounds almost too easy,” Sharon said. She too was feeling a sharp tug of maternal longing as she watched Tabby feed. She, in fact, was planning to have a little talk with Bill as soon as they got home about throwing away her birth control pills.
“Well ... like I said before, playing the Dexter card worked out to our advantage,” Pauline said, absently pulling her breast free, adjusting the infant in her arms, and allowing her to re-latch on. “We’re far from making this a done deal though. We’ve just agreed to the basics. There’s still a bit of negotiating to be done before we put our signatures on the line and start pumping out those CDs. If they decide to play hardball on things like touring, breakage rates, promotional budget, or audit rights, the deal could still fall through.”
“Do you think there’s any danger of that?” asked Jake.
“Honestly, no,” Pauline said. “The suits over there at Aristocrat seemed quite happy to go along with almost anything we suggested—within reason, of course. My guess is the first cuts will be on the radio by April 1 and the CDs will be on the shelves by the time taxes are due.”