Different Circles

“It’s a good story,” Ted said, just itching to spin a tale of death and destruction.

“I’m sure it is,” Jake said, “but I’m going to take a pass on this one.”

“All right,” Ted sighed, clearly disappointed.

They finished their sound check and showed him what they had accomplished. It was a lot. When he had left for Dallas nearly two weeks ago, they had been in the very beginning stages of learning his melodies. Now, they were able to perform respectable instrumental versions of every one of the sixteen songs on the setlist. Of course, they still needed to work on the bridges, intros, outros, and the mixing with Jake’s vocals, but they had made good progress while he was gone and his confidence that he could pull this off began to rise.

Nobody had listened to the news today or had read the LA Times. For that reason, nobody knew that a media circus was currently in progress just a few miles away. The first that Jake heard about it was when the band broke for lunch and Jake used his cell phone to call Greg Oldfellow. Greg was staying in LA these days because Palm Springs was too hot for his taste this time of year. The two of them had made plans to have dinner today as they had not seen each other in more than a month now.

“We still on for Remington’s?” Jake asked the actor when he answered his phone.

“Are you kidding me?” Greg asked. “I’m not leaving this house until all of this blows over.”

“Until all of what blows over?”

“You haven’t heard?” he asked.

“Heard what?”

“Mindy is having her baby today,” he said. “She’s in the hospital right now.”

“Oh ... I didn’t know that,” Jake said, still not understanding what the issue was. Why was Greg the least bit interested in the birth of a child he had been tricked into fathering and had publicly renounced a relationship with?

“I have reporters and paparazzi clustered in front of my house and at least two news helicopters circling over the top of it. It’s insane.”

“Why are they bothering you?” Jake asked.

“Because I’m the father,” he said. “Johnny, my agent, tells me they have been harassing him since last night. First it was Bernadette Tapp for the LA Times. She’s the one that broke the story that Mindy was being induced today. And then, once the Times came out this morning, all of the other gossip trolls started calling and showing up in front of my house.”

“I don’t understand their interest in any of this,” Jake said. “She’s just having a baby. An ordinary, everyday baby. It’s not like she’s a virgin birth or something.”

“A truer statement was never made,” Greg scoffed.

“Why the helicopters and the pap and all that? I don’t get it.”

“It’s because Mindy is being induced more than a week before her due date,” Greg said. “Somebody at her doctor’s office or the hospital leaked that information along with the speculation that she is doing it for vanity reasons.”

“Vanity reasons?” Jake had no idea what he was talking about.

“That she’s getting the baby out early to avoid stretch marks or a C-section scar. This same ‘anonymous source close to the case’ is also claiming that Mindy was starving herself the entire pregnancy to avoid weight gain. The press has already been painting her as a heartless manipulative slut.”

“That’s what she is,” Jake reminded him.

“I know that,” Greg said, “but now they’re painting her as an unfit mother, willing to risk the health of her child for her own vanity. The article brings up the fact that she had an amniocentesis that was not medically necessary just to DNA type the child as being mine. The anonymous source is claiming that there was no medical reason at all to induce the baby early and plenty of reasons not to.”

“I see,” Jake said. “And they’re trying to drag you into this for what reason?”

“They’re asking Johnny crazy questions,” Greg said. “They want to know if I’m going to step in and try to stop the induction. They want to know if I’m going to try to obtain full custody of the baby to keep her incompetent hands off of it.”

“And you’re not going to do any of those things?”

“Of course not!” he said. “My position is unchanged. Mindy made this bed, now she can lay in it. I just don’t want to deal with those reporters and this media circus. I’m holing up in here until this all blows over.”

“Didn’t you say you were going to head up to Coos Bay soon?” Jake asked. His golf course was now complete and would be ready to host its first players on July 20. Greg planned to be the very first golfer to swing a club on the course. And it was intended to be a high-publicity event to serve as advertisement for the posh course.

“I will be there, one way or the other,” he vowed. “I still have a week to figure it out. Maybe this will have died down by then.”

“I doubt that,” Jake opined. “Listen, I have an idea.”

“An idea?”