Soon they were all nicely stoned and Celia’s mood seem to improve to a certain degree. She still had a black cloud about her, but at least it wasn’t sparking lightning flashes and spawning tornadoes any longer.
Suzie arrived about five minutes later. She was wearing a pair of sweatpants, tennis shoes, and a tattered US Air Force t-shirt that obviously dated back to the days when she had served. It was also obvious that she was not wearing a bra, as her moderate sized breasts bounced and jiggled with each step she took.
Laura introduced Jake to her and they shook hands. Her grip was firm and strong. She seemed genuinely pleased to meet him and told him she had always been a fan of his music.
“I have the whole Intemp collection on CDs,” she told him. “When I was flying FREDs out of Travis and we’d have a long haul to Ramstein or Kadena, I’d pop them into the player and crank them out, one after the other.” She laughed. “We weren’t really supposed to do that. If we ever had an incident and they had to listen to our CVR they would’ve been pissed.”
This, naturally, led the two of them to start talking about their shared love: flying. Everyone poured some scotch (except Suzie, who drank sparkling water with lemon) and they sat down at the table and fired up Jake’s cigars. The two pilots then began to talk of their adventures piloting aircraft. Suzie’s stories were certainly more interesting and numerous than Jake’s, but Suzie did find his descriptions of flying over the Southern Alps in New Zealand in a Cessna 172 and his encounter with the Canadian goose over Portland to be worthy tales.
Celia and Laura, for the most part, just sat in their chairs and puffed away, contributing little to the conversation. Finally, after Suzie finished narrating a few stories about her role in the Persian Gulf War, Celia jumped in and changed the topic of conversation.
“There’s something I want to tell you, Suze,” she said, “before I let everyone else in the band know about it.”
“What’s that?” Suzie asked gently. She too had picked up the cloud of doom hanging over Celia’s head.
“I’m divorcing Greg,” she said simply.
Whatever the pilot might have suspected was the issue at hand, it certainly had not been this. Her eyes widened and her mouth dropped open. “Divorcing? Are you serious?”
Celia simply nodded.
“Where did this come from?” Suzie asked.
“From a little trip that Greg took with Mindy Snow a few months ago,” she said.
She told the story. It took the fun right out of the gathering.
Jake met Njord, Suzie’s copilot, at the airport the next day when they all boarded the King Air for the trip to Albuquerque, where Celia and band would be performing that night. He had already been briefed by Laura on several occasions about Njord’s personality and, thus had already developed a dislike for the man sight unseen. Meeting him in the flesh did nothing to alter this perception.
“I play guitar myself,” Njord told him after the two of them shook hands. “Do some singing as well.”
“Really?” Jake said tonelessly.
“Yep,” Njord assured him. “I thought about pursuing a career in music at one point. I’m sure I would have done at least as well as you and Matt Tisdale. But ... you know how it is. My true calling is the wild blue. Still, I do like to mess around with the old six string when I’m home. Maybe the two of us can jam together sometime.”
“Maybe,” Jake said slowly. “What kind of guitar do you have?”
“It’s a Fender.”
“What model?” Jake asked.
“Oh ... you know ... just a Fender six-string.”
“I see,” Jake said with a nod. “I’ve found throughout my career that those old Fender six strings are about the only instrument you can squeeze a decent Z-flat chord out of. Do you find that to be true as well?”
“Uh ... yeah,” Njord said, nodding wisely. “I have found that to be the case.”
Jake returned the nod and walked past the man into the plane. Behind him, Celia and Little Stevie both smirked.
They took to the air twenty minutes later. Once they were leveled off at cruise altitude, Celia gathered her band together and told them the news about Greg and Mindy and the clump of rapidly reproducing cells in Mindy’s uterus. Everyone was shocked by this.
“Dude,” Coop said, shaking his head. “That’s fucked up.”
“Yeah, Coop,” Celia agreed. “It really is fucked up.”
“Do you want me to kick his ass for you?” he asked next.
“Uh ... no, Coop,” she said. “That won’t be necessary.”
“Do you want me to kick her ass for you?” asked Liz. “I’m pretty sure I could take her.”
“I’m sure you’re right,” Celia said, “but again, no. Nobody needs to kick anyone’s ass on my behalf.”
“Are you sure?” Liz asked. “I’m willing to do the time for it.”
“I’m sure,” Celia said.
“Does this mean you’re not going to the Academy Awards in March?” asked Charlie. It had been worked into the tour schedule that the Los Angeles dates were just three days before the Academy Awards ceremony on March 25 and that they had a week off during that stretch so Celia would be able to attend.
“Uh ... yeah,” Celia confirmed. “In light of the circumstances, I will not be present at the ceremony this year.”
“That’s too bad,” Charlie said. “It sounded like fun.”
“Uh ... right,” Celia said.
“How are you going to respond to this?” asked Little Stevie.
“What do you mean?” Celia asked.
“Well ... I mean, this chick is planning to humiliate you publicly. Are you just going to sit back and wait for it to happen?”
“I talked to Pauline this morning,” she said. “She’s flying out to meet us in Albuquerque. We’re going to formulate my official response then and get it ready for release, but, yes, the plan at this moment is to just wait until the story breaks and then respond at that time with the statement that I will be filing for divorce.”
“That’s kind of lame,” Little Stevie said.
“I agree,” said Eric, muttering the first words he had said all morning.
Celia looked at him. “You do?”
The skinny violinist was actually looking her in the eyes instead of at the floor. “I do,” he said. “That makes you look like a victim, like you’re weak. You need to show them you are strong.”
“Hell yeah!” Little Stevie said enthusiastically. “That’s what I’m talking about!”
Celia shook her head. “I’m not sure where you two are going with this.”
“I do,” Jake said, smiling. “They’re talking about a preemptive strike.”
“A preemptive strike?”
“Do you really think that would work?” asked Laura.
“What would work?” Celia cried, frustrated.
“It’s simple,” Jake said, picking up the thread. “Mindy’s plan is to announce this shit just before the Oscar nominations. And she’s going to want to announce it with her own spin on the story and with no one having any inkling that this shit is going down until she releases it. Her spin is going to be something along the lines of how she and Greg had this wonderful chemistry and just couldn’t stay away from each other and nature took its course and the inevitable happened and blah, blah, blah, bullshit, bullshit, bullshit. She’ll probably even apologize to you in her little statement and ask for your forgiveness and all that. She wants people to think that her and Greg just fell for each other.”
Celia nodded thoughtfully, her face flushing with anger. “Yeah,” she said slowly. “That puta would do something like that, wouldn’t she?”