Different Circles

She turned up her hole card. It was a nine, giving her a fifteen. She was required to hit on anything less than seventeen, forbidden from hitting on seventeen or above (unless it was a soft seventeen, made with a six and an ace, in which case she had to hit). She put one more card face-up on the table. It was the queen of spades, giving her a total of twenty-five. She had busted.

“Now that’s the way to start off,” G said happily as Yolanda paid everyone their due from her large cache of chips.

She dealt up the next hand and they settled in and began to play, drinking their drinks and talking of inconsequential things. Jake went on a run in which he could not seem to lose. He increased his bets with each consecutive win and was soon up more than twenty thousand dollars. Obie was just the opposite. He endured a freakishly long streak of being dealt thirteens, fourteens, fifteens, and sixteens in situations where strategy dictated he should hit. And he busted on every single one of them. He was soon down eighteen thousand. G seemed to have found the middle ground. He won about half, lost about half, and stayed within a thousand dollars or so of his original stake. Win or lose, however, they were having a good time basking in male bonding.

“How’s the second Brainwash release coming along?” Obie asked shortly after they were served their third drinks (and shortly after he pulled out another ten thousand in chips). “My moles in my studio tell me they’re finished laying down the tracks.”

“Yeah,” said Jake. “They finished overdubs at the end of August. They’re all back in their classrooms in Providence now. The Nerdlys have been working on the mixing this past month with the techs. It’s not moving very quickly.”

“That’s because you ain’t there to prod the Nerdlys along,” Obie suggested.

Jake nodded. He knew Obie was right. Without him there to draw the lines in the sand, the agonizing over unachievable audio perfection went on and on endlessly. They were still working on the second of ten tunes that would be on the CD. And of the two that had been mixed already, Nerdly still had not signed off that they were actually complete, stating he was planning to go back and give everything a final once-over after all were done. “You speak the truth,” he said. “Nerdly has actually forbidden anyone to so much as enter the studio while he and Sharon are here to help us out with the TSF. Not a single note will be approved without his say-so.”

“Nerdly needs a brake,” Gordon suggested. “And by that, I don’t mean a break, as in a period of rest and relaxation, but a brake, a device to slow something down and/or stop it.”

Jake nodded again. “I’ll be heading up to Oregon next week to assume the position,” he said. “I feel bad enough that I wasn’t there for most of the recording process. I’ve been checking in on the weekends here and there, but I’ve had to devote most of my time to getting ready for the TSF. I haven’t even heard the complete tracks for all their tunes yet. I haven’t been able to shape them as much as I would have liked.”

“They should be okay,” G said. “Brainwash are a talented bunch of squares, that’s for sure—never would have thought I’d say that the first time you told me about them—and the Nerdlys are pains in the asses and ultra-anal, but the end product of anything they work on always comes out clean and fine in the end.”

“That’s what I’m hoping,” Jake said.

“But you’re ready to go with the TSF tomorrow?” asked Obie after taking a hit on a twelve and drawing a ten.

“We’re dialed in pretty tight,” Jake said. “I don’t know how we did it with this ragtag bunch I assembled, but everyone stepped up and I think the crowd is going to like what we do.”

“Especially the talk box number,” G said. He looked over at Obie. “Wait ‘til you hear my man Jake wail on that fuckin’ thing.”

“Paulie told me you have a talk box number,” Obie said. “You don’t think that’s kind of seventies?”

“Maybe a little,” Jake admitted, “but the sound of it is iconic and endures. I’ve updated it a bit into the alternative rock genre. I think I pulled it off.”

“His solo on that thing is badass,” G said.

“Where did you put it in?” Obie asked.

“I modified it into my tune I Am High from the second release,” Jake said. “Are you familiar with the piece?”

“Yeah, of course,” Obie said. “I’ve listened to all your CDs many times. They were recorded in my studio and my old lady sings on them, after all. It’s your tune about flying your plane.”

“Right,” Jake said. “Not one of my most popular tunes. Never got any real airplay and I never bothered trying to get it any. Just a deep cut that only people who bought the CD and listened to it a lot would appreciate. Still, a good, simple tune with heartfelt lyrics about my love of being a pilot—with, perhaps, more than a little innuendo about getting stoned. We extended out the solo from thirty-three seconds on the studio version to six minutes twenty live. I’ll do a conventional guitar solo to open it up...”