Different Circles

“If it’s not just about sex,” Celia said, “then do me the common fucking courtesy of expecting me to be faithful to you when I’m away for a few months.”

They looked at each other and then back at Celia. They nodded. “Okay,” Jake said. “We expect you to remain faithful to us.”

She smiled. “Thank you,” she told them. “And you two do the same. No picking up some slut to slake your urge for having another woman in your bed. That is my right to demand and I’m demanding it.”

“Done,” Laura said, smiling back at her.

“And one more thing,” Celia said.

“What’s that?” asked Jake.

“I want you two to visit me a few times out on the road. Is that too much to ask?”

“No, not at all,” Jake said. “We can do that.”

“Anytime, anywhere,” Laura said.

“We’ll be in New York City for three shows at MSG in the last week of October,” Celia said. “That’ll be right about the time that pressure of which you spoke will be starting to get pretty intense. That would be a good time for a visit.”

“We’ll be there,” Jake said without hesitation.

“Already looking forward to it,” Laura added.

Jake, Laura, and Caydee flew back to San Luis Obispo the next morning, leaving well before the chartered aircraft with Celia’s band even arrived. They spent Saturday and Sunday at home, not doing much of anything. And then, on Monday morning, it was time to go back to work, this time on a new set of projects.

Caydee was left in the care of Meghan the nanny while Jake and Laura flew to Los Angeles and drove to the KVA studio in Santa Clarita, arriving there just before nine o’clock. The Nerdlys were already there, of course. Over the next fifteen minutes, the rest of the musicians came trickling in: Ben Ping, Phil Jenkins, Lenny Harris, and finally, ten minutes late because of “an accident on the 101”, Ted Duncan. It was time to start putting V-tach’s next CD together. And it was also time to start putting Jake’s next CD together. And V-tach was a group of musicians he had played with before.

“We’re going to be working on both CDs at the same time?” asked Lenny, who had never worked in this manner before.

“That’s right,” Jake said. “Ben, Ted, and Phil have all done this before. It’s how we did the first three CDs for me and Celia. We put our noses to the grindstone and get it on, working eight hours a day, six days a week until we get the tunes nailed down in basic format. We alternate days. Monday, Wednesday, Friday, we’ll work on my stuff and you guys will be my band. Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday, we’ll work on V-tach material and I’ll be a second guitar player or a backup singer if you need one. For the days you’re working on my shit, you’ll get session pay. I’ll also give you royalties once the CD is released. On the days we’re working on your shit, you don’t get session pay because it’s your shit and your payoff will come with the royalties you collect once we release. Make sense?”

They agreed that it made sense.

“How many songs do you have for the next one?” Jake asked. He knew they had been working in the studio on and off for the past month, coming up with new material.

“We have eight new tunes we’ve been working on,” said Lenny, who was the leader, songwriter, and driving force behind V-tach. “We also have the six that we didn’t use on the last release. Out of the fourteen, we should be able to work up ten for the CD.”

Jake nodded. He had not heard any of their new material yet. He would just have to hope it was as good as their previous tunes. “Sounds good,” Jake said. “I’ve got eleven new tunes I’ve been working on, but at this point, all of them are still in the acoustic only stage, so we’ll be starting almost from scratch. We’ll work with just you four, plus Nerdly here on the keyboards for now. Laura is going to sit in for most of the sessions because she has a good musical ear and I might want to throw some sax into some of my work. Once we get a little further along, Natalie is going to join us for the violin parts. She is already committing to stay with me through the recording process.”

“Cool,” Ben said, nodding. Everyone liked Natalie the violinist.

“The godless communist oppressor,” said Ted with a smile. “It’ll be fun to work with her again.”

“All right,” Jake said. “Let’s start setting things up and getting our sound dialed in.”

They went to work. Most of that first day was spent setting up. The drum set had already been assembled, but everything else needed to be placed and wired and checked. Jake would primarily be using his red Ibanez acoustic-electric to present his material to the band, but he also dialed in his black and white Les Paul for when it would be time to start translating some of the melodies into distortion riffs. Several of the tunes he had written for this CD were going to be rockers—not quite Intemperance level, but rockers nonetheless. And if he was going to be helping out Lenny with the V-tach guitar work, he would likely need a good drop-D tuned guitar as well.