“What now?” Jake asked him.
Greg looked even more miserable than he had the night before. He was hungover and pale, his face a mask of misery. “Now, I go home and get together with my agent and we start preparing our press release for when Mindy breaks the story.”
“Are you going to deny the accusations?”
Greg simply shook his head. “There’s really no point,” he said. “I have to assume that the baby really is mine and come clean with the public. I’ll just stick to the facts, say that it is true, that Mindy and I had a one-time encounter, that I regret that it happened, that I apologize to Celia and everyone else I let down, and that I will do the right thing.”
“And if the DNA test shows the baby is not yours?” Jake asked.
Greg just shook his head. “In my heart, I know it’s mine,” he said. “It’s time to pay the price for my actions.”
“What about you and Celia?”
“It’s over,” he said. “You already told me you heard her reaction last night.”
“Well ... yes, but maybe after she cools down...”
“It’ll still be over,” he said. “There’s no coming back from this. She’s going to get in touch with Pauline and they’ll work out their own statements on the matter. She’s let me know without any ambiguity that she will be filing for divorce the next time she’s in California.”
“I’m sorry all this happened, Greg,” Jake told him with sincerity.
Greg simply nodded. “Yeah. Me too.”
His limo arrived a few minutes later and he headed for the airport to go home.
Jake answered the door to the suite just past noon that day. It was Celia. She was dressed in her jeans and a pullover shirt. Her eyes were swollen and red. It was obvious she had been crying.
“Hey, C,” Jake greeted carefully.
“Hey,” she returned miserably.
“You doing okay?” he asked.
“No,” she said. “Very far from it. He’s not here, is he?”
Jake shook his head. “He left for the airport a few hours ago.”
“Good,” she said, stepping into the room without waiting for an invitation.
Jake shut the door behind her and then turned back to her. He saw that she was on the verge of tears, so he held out his arms to her. She stepped willingly into them and he hugged her tightly. She put her head on his shoulder and the tears came, spilling onto his shirt, running down under his collar.
“I’m sorry, Celia,” he said soothingly. There was really nothing else he could say to her.
“Me too,” she sobbed. “That fucking asshole!”
Laura came into the room and saw them. She walked over and joined in the hug, offering her own words of sympathy. Celia did not ask them how they knew about the situation or how long they had known.
“So ... what now?” Laura asked when Celia’s tears finally dried up and they broke the three-way embrace.
Celia took a deep breath and composed herself. “Now,” she said, “we head downstairs and get some lunch. The limo will be picking us up in an hour. I have two radio station interviews to do and then some record store signings.”
“You’re planning to go on tonight?” Jake asked.
“Of course,” she said simply. “The show must go on.”
“Are you going to be able to ... you know ... get through it?” Laura asked.
“Goddamn right,” she said.
They spoke no further on this subject. They went downstairs and had lunch. Jake and Laura both ate well. So did Charlie, Coop, Liz, Eric, and Little Stevie. None of them knew what was going on with Celia, but all could tell that something was wrong with her. She did not enlighten them just yet. Jake and Laura kept their mouths shut as well.
“Where’s Greg?” asked Coop. They had known that Greg was planning to visit.
“He had to go back to LA,” Celia said simply.
“A business thing?” Coop asked.
“That’s right,” Celia replied. “A business thing.”
Jake rode in the limo with them, tagging along as they visited the radio stations and the record stores, though he did stay in the vehicle for those stops to avoid any potential of taking the focus off of Celia. Just after four o’clock, they made their way to the Special Events Center on the campus of the University of Texas at El Paso, the venue where the UTEP Miners basketball teams played. They went inside the fifteen thousand seat arena and Jake greeted everyone he knew—which was almost everyone there as he had been heavily involved in tour production and rehearsals prior to them hitting the road. He watched in pride as the well-oiled machine that was the road crew got everything ready for the show tonight.
It was another sold-out show and Jake watched it from the stage left area. Celia, who had been mopey and generally noncommunicative all day, suddenly came to life when she stepped out onto the stage and began to play. Jake admired her for this. He had played under adverse conditions before—all of the Intemperance Lines on the Map tour had been performed under a veil of near-violent hostility between Matt and the rest of the band—but never with something like what Celia was going through on his mind. She sang her heart out, played her guitar to perfection, bantered with the audience, and left them all wanting more and with no hint that her world was in the process of crashing down on her.
After the show, however, morose and gloomy Celia returned as soon as the house lights came up. She ate none of the catered food but did slam down an entire bottle of wine by herself before even stepping into the shower to clean up. It was close to midnight before they climbed back into the limo for the trip to the hotel. The ride was quiet, Celia’s mood seemingly infectious. Coop and Charlie did not even have their usual groupies.
It was as they were walking from the limo to the hotel lobby that she finally snapped out of it a little. Charlie, Coop, Little Stevie, and Liz had already gone ahead, heading for the downstairs bar for a few more drinks before last call. Eric had already disappeared in one of the elevators. Celia hung back with Jake and Laura.
“I hear you brought some cigars with you?” she asked Jake.
“Uh ... yes, as requested,” Jake said. Two nights before he and Greg had flown out, Laura had called Jake at home and asked him to bring a box of his Cubans with him. Apparently, Celia and Laura were in the habit of getting together with Suzie, their pilot, at night to have a cigar out on the balcony and have girl talk.
“Perfect,” she said. “I’m up for one tonight. Some scotch too. How about you, Teach?”
“Uh ... sure,” Laura said. “Seems like a good night for it.”
“I’ll give Suzie a call,” Celia said. “I want to tell her what’s going on.”
“Okay,” Laura said.
“Could you bring some pot too?” Celia asked. “I think it might be a good night for some of that.”
“You got it,” Laura said.
“What about me?” Jake asked. “Is this strictly an estrogen-fest? I understand if it is.”
“You may attend,” Celia said formally, with a hint of a smile. “You’re the one with the cigars, after all.”
“Besides, you haven’t met Suzie yet,” Laura said. “I think you’ll like her.”
They rode the elevator up and went to their suites. Five minutes later, Jake and Laura, cigars in hand and baggie of high-grade marijuana in pocket, knocked on Celia’s door. She answered it and let them in. She already had a half-empty glass of single malt on the rocks in her hand.
“Suzie said she’ll be up in a few minutes,” Celia told them. “I let her know we were going to be smoking some yerba up here. Understandably, she would rather not be present while that occurs.”
Jake and Laura nodded and followed Celia out to the balcony, which overlooked downtown El Paso. It was a reasonably warm night, clear, with just a hint of a breeze blowing. The air was dry and pleasant. Up in the sky, the stars were shining brightly. The three of them sat down at the patio table and Laura quickly and expertly rolled a tight joint. She lit it with a lighter she carried just for that purpose and passed it around. Jake watched with interest as Celia sucked down a tremendous hit and held it in. He had never seen her smoke yerba before.