Pauline looked at him for a moment, as if considering, and then nodded. “All right,” she said. “I guess you can wing it if you need to.”
“Performing is what I do, Paulie,” he told her.
“Forgive me for doubting you,” she said. She pointed at the Walkman. “Is that the tape I listened to?”
“It is,” he told her. “I’m going to have Celia give it a listen, if she’s up for it.”
Pauline looked at the beautiful, yet obviously troubled Venezuelan singer/songwriter/guitarist. “She doesn’t look like she’s up for much of anything right now, except for swilling down those vodka and tonics.”
Jake sighed. “Yeah. She does not seem to be having a good time over there. Maybe the music will cheer her up.”
“I don’t think multiple orgasms would cheer her up,” Pauline said. “Do you know what the issue is between her and Greg?”
He nodded slowly. “Yeah, I do,” he told her. He said no more.
“None of my business?” Pauline asked.
“The details ... no, not really. As her manager, co-owner of KVA, and friend, however, you should know that they’re in kind of a bad spot right now.”
“Well, no shit,” she said. “Any moron can see that. I haven’t seen them say a dozen words to each other since we came back from Oregon. They’re sitting as far apart as they can sit right now. How bad is it? Are we talking divorce here?”
“I honestly don’t know,” Jake said. “She’s extremely focused on getting out on the road. I think she’s using the stress of the planning to avoid thinking about what is really bothering her.”
Pauline nodded. “Let her know I’m here for her if she needs me.”
“I’ll do that,” Jake said.
“And as for that...” She pointed at the Walkman again. “I trust you, Jake. You know that. But you’re talking about a huge risk to KVA money. Are you sure this is a good idea?”
“As long as they’re still in the groove they were in five years ago, yes, I’m sure.”
She sighed. “All right then,” she said. “As long as Nerdly and Celia are down with it, I guess I am too.”
“Thanks, sis,” he told her. “If Celia’s up for it, we’ll need to fly up to Providence after the ceremony, spend a few days there. Is Ronnie going to be up for that?”
“Probably,” she said. “She doesn’t need to be back to school until Monday. If I keep paying her, she’ll hang in there.”
“Fair enough,” Jake said. He stood, picking up his drink glass and the Walkman, and then said, “Here goes nothing.”
“Good luck,” Pauline said.
He made his way to the rear of the plane. Celia, dressed in jeans and a peasant blouse, her hair down and with no makeup upon her face, looked away from her perusal of the passing desert and put her eyes on Jake’s face.
“Time to offload?” she asked him, nodding toward the bathroom door.
“Not just yet,” Jake told her. “I was hoping to talk to you about something.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Can I sit down?”
“Be my guest,” she said, waving to the seat next to her.
He sat, putting his drink and the Walkman on the table. Celia looked at the latter with amusement. “Wow,” she said. “That’s some retro technology you got going there.”
“I had to dig it out of storage in my attic,” Jake told her. “That and the tape that’s inside of it.”
“What’s the tape?” she asked.
“It’s a demo tape put together by a band from Providence called Brainwash,” he told her.
She raised her eyebrows up a bit. “A demo tape?”
“That’s right,” he said. “I don’t think I ever told you the story of Brainwash, did I?”
“I’m pretty sure you haven’t,” she said. “I would’ve remembered a band with a name like that.”
“They’re teachers,” Jake said. “Most of them high school teachers, but one is a middle school teacher.”
This brought a little bit of a smile to Celia’s face. “Teachers,” she said, nodding appreciatively. “Brainwash. Very clever.”
“I thought so as well,” he said. “Anyway ... the story of Brainwash. It was actually you who introduced them to me, in an indirect way.”
“Me?”
“You,” he confirmed. “I saw them perform in Boston the night after your wedding. Do you remember me telling you about the little aircraft incident Helen and I had as we were flying back home the next morning?”
She nodded. “Your plane lost an engine on takeoff,” she said. “You had to come back to the airport.” Another chuckle. “Shit like that sure seems to happen to you a lot, Jake.”
He shrugged. “I don’t know that two incidents in five years when one flies more than fifty thousand miles each year quite qualifies as ‘a lot’, but yeah. Perhaps more than your ordinary traveler. Anyway, Helen was not fond of flying commercial to begin with. That little mishap really scared her and she was afraid to go home right away. So, we decided to spend the night in Boston and go home the next morning on a different flight on a different kind of plane. That meant we had a night to kill. We went out to a club to catch some live music and that was where Brainwash was playing.”
“And they impressed you?”
“They impressed me greatly,” he said. “They’re kind of like a modern-day Fleetwood Mac. Three singer/songwriters—one male, two female—and they each sing their own tunes while the others back whoever is singing. Lots of three-part vocal harmony. The male singer used to be with the band Courage, which was a one-hit wonder group back in the early eighties. Aristocrat—lovely folks that they are—didn’t pick them up for their third option and the band broke up. When the contract term expired, he formed Brainwash with his wife—she’s the keyboardist and one of the singers—and three other teachers with some musical talent. The lead guitarist—she’s also the other female singer—can shred pretty good.”
“A female lead guitarist, huh?” Celia said, pondering that.
“She’s a lesbian,” Jake said. “The club owner I met the night they were playing seemed to think that is why she’s so proficient at the lead guitar position.”
“Well, of course,” Celia said with a chuckle. “It didn’t even occur to me that she might not be a lesbian.”
They had a laugh about this—the first genuine Celia laugh he had seen in a while—and then she turned serious again. “So ... why are you telling me all this? Why did you bring me their demo tape in a Walkman? I presume you have a reason?”
“I do,” he said. “You see, I thought so much of them after seeing them perform, that I went backstage to meet them after the show. They told me their story—how they met, who they were, how they got together, all that shit—and I asked them if they’d ever tried to go big. They said they’d made a demo tape a few years before—a copy of which is in this Walkman—but, despite the fact that they were pulling in more than five bills a show and were the most popular club band in New England, no agent would give them the time of day because they didn’t look good on camera.”
“Ahhh,” she said knowingly. “MTV syndrome.”
“Exactly,” Jake said. “I still think the music video is the first nail in the coffin of the music industry. It’s been in a steady, downward spiral ever since they first played Video Killed the Radio Star that fateful day.”