He shrugged. “I’ll leave it up to you, since you’re the one who will be doing the work, but I’m up for a little stay in LA if you are.”
Mary sighed. “I just don’t know,” she said. “I want to help you out, of course.”
“I wouldn’t have asked if we didn’t really need your help, Mom,” Jake said.
“I know, honey,” she said. “It’s just that eight weeks is a long time to be away from our home. And ... well, what about your privacy during all this? Are you sure you want to have your parents living with you? I mean ... I’ve heard of some of the things you get up to, Jake.”
“Some of the things I get up to?” Jake asked, partially amused, partially ashamed.
“Well, you’re a rich rock star,” his mother said. “You like to ... you know ... party and stuff like that. I’m not sure I would want to be witness to some of the things you might do.”
“I assure you, Mom,” Jake told her, “I will do nothing to embarrass myself or make you uncomfortable while you are under my roof. There will be no orgies, no sniffing cocaine out of butt cracks, and no vomitus episodes of gross intoxication.”
“At least not while you’re there,” Pauline said with a chuckle.
“Exactly,” Jake confirmed with a smile. “I’ll send you off on a day trip to Catalina or something if I want to do all that.”
That brought a smile to Mary’s face, but she still was not quite convinced. “Can I think it over for a bit?” she asked.
“Absolutely,” Jake said.
“Okay,” she said. “I’ll have an answer for you before you leave.”
The loose plan was for everyone to make the walk over to the Archers’ house after lunch so Jake and Celia could get the grand tour over there. Jake had a few requests first.
“Dad,” he asked, “do you still have that old acoustic guitar of yours?”
“That old Yamaha?” Tom said with a nostalgic smile. “Yeah. It’s up in the attic with a bunch of other stuff we haven’t found a place for yet.”
“I think we should hang it up in the entertainment room,” Mary opined. “That and that old Les Paul and those two Fenders he used to play.”
“That was my next question,” Jake said. “Do you still have any of those electrics laying around? And the amp and the cords?”
“All of those are up there in the attic,” Tom assured him. “Why do you ask?”
Mary turned to Celia. “Jake used to play those instruments much more than Tom ever did,” she told her. “Tom only picked them up every once in a while after he got into law school.”
Usually when you two decided to burn a little, Jake could not help but think, though he did not say this. Instead, he said: “I was thinking maybe we could go grab the acoustic and the Les Paul and the amp and take them over to Stan and Cindy’s with us.”
“What for?” Mary asked.
“Well,” Jake said, “I assume that Cindy has her Baby Grand over there somewhere, right?”
“Of course,” Cindy said. “It’s the centerpiece of our formal living room. I still play it several times a week.”
“Outstanding,” Jake said. “I was thinking maybe mom could grab a fiddle as well and maybe we could sit down and play a little music together over there.”
“Play some music?” Mary asked, her eyes showing definite interest.
“Right,” Jake said. “Celia and I could pound out the melodies and rhythms we’re working on and you two could jump in with the violin and the piano so we can see how they sound together.”
“Well ... I still haven’t decided if I’m up to this whole thing, Jake,” Mary said.
“Understood,” Jake assured her. “But maybe this will help you make the decision.”
“Well...”
“Oh, come on, Mary,” Cynthia said. “I think it’ll be fun.”
“Yes,” said Celia. “I would love to play with you. Imagine, jamming with the former lead violinist for a symphony. What an honor! Please, Mary? Let’s just try it for a little?”
This served to push Mary over the edge. The thought that a successful recording star felt it would be an honor to play with her was too much to resist. “I’ll go grab my rehearsal instrument,” she said. “Tom, you and Jake go grab those guitars from the attic.”
“Yes, dear,” Tom said with a smile.
Thirty minutes later, the entire troop of them were sitting in the formal living room on the bottom floor of Stan and Cindy’s two-story house. The tour of the home had been brief, taking less than five minutes, as the musicians among them were eager to get to playing. The formal living room was the biggest room in the house, just inside the main entrance. It was done up in earth tone Berber carpeting and, instead of being filled with antique furniture that no one was allowed to sit on, it featured, as the centerpiece, a 1954 Steinway baby grand piano that had been recently appraised (for insurance purposes) as being worth thirty-seven thousand dollars. Arrayed around the piano and its bench were a series of comfortable, tasteful chairs and an oak coffee table. Jake, Celia, and Tom spent a few minutes plugging in the small Marshall amplifier and hooking up the 1970 Les Paul to it.
Jake felt a strong sense of nostalgia as he held the sunburst patterned Les Paul in his hands for the first time in many years. This was the first electric guitar he had ever played in his life, the instrument he had used to form the beginnings of his eventual mastery of one of the most important tools of his trade. The Marshall amp he had plugged it into was where he had begun to learn the intricacies of electric distortion levels that were the signature of rock and roll music. He remembered playing the Les Paul for hours upon hours, experimenting with feedback and reverb and distortion, trying to nail down the exact sound of various songs he had learned to like. It was this instrument and this amp with which he had first learned to duplicate Jimmy Page’s riff from Whole Lotta Love, Tony Iommi’s riffs on Paranoid and War Pigs, and, of course, Ritchie Blackmore’s most common first riff ever learned by new guitarists: Smoke on the Water.
The instrument now was showing its age. The paint was faded and chipped in a few places (Jake knew that many of those chips were from him). It was covered with a layer of dust. Still, after wiping it down and plugging it in, after turning on the Marshall amp, he heard the gratifying hum of connection coming out of the speaker. He twirled the volume and tone controls and then flipped the switch for the dual Humbucker pickups to the setting that would allow simple clean output. He adjusted the reverb and the vibrato on the amp to zero and then turned up the volume to five, just enough to mix with the sound of Celia on the acoustic and Cynthia on the baby grand.
He gave the strings a strum on the open chord. The sound was flat, flatter even than the proverbial pancake. It was extremely offensive to the professional musician ear.
“Jesus Christ, Dad,” Jake said with a wince. “When was the last time you tuned this thing?”
Tom looked more than a little guilty. “Uh ... well ... probably around 1984 or so.”
Jake looked at his father sternly. “Goddamn Reagan was still in his first term then,” he told him. He shook his head. “This shit is not all right.”
“Sorry,” Tom said, visibly ashamed.
“Uh ... I’m afraid this one is in about the same shape,” Celia said. She had the Yamaha acoustic six-string in her hands.
“Oh ... well, that one I’ve tuned more recently,” Tom assured them.
“Yeah? When?” Jake asked.
“Well ... I distinctly remember playing it one night while we were watching a news report on the Challenger investigation. And I had recently tuned it then.”
“So ... that would be 1986 then?” Jake said. “Reagan’s second term?”
“Has it been that long since the Challenger explosion?” Tom said, shaking his head now. “Wow, how time passes.”