Gold Hill (25 page)

Pete nodded. Rodney looked
at him.

“
Get to work.”

“
Oh,” Pete said.
“Great.”

Pete picked up the
clipboard and scowled.

“
Too much?”

“
No,” Pete smiled. He sat
down in the desk along the wall and began sorting paper. He looked
up. “Do I have a phone?”

Laughing, Rodney put a
phone on his desk. Pete nodded his thanks and set to
work.

~~~~~~~~

Monday mid-day — 11:55
p.m.

“
Hey, where is everyone?”
Jeraine asked.

He held the front door of
the penthouse open for the movie’s music director.

“
They’re downstairs,” the
young man said. “I wanted to speak to you. Do you have a
second?”

“
Sure,” Jeraine said. “I
was just getting lunch together. I thought we could eat while we go
through what we’ve done so far.”

The man nodded and followed
Jeraine into the penthouse.

“
What’s going on?” Jeraine
asked.

“
I want to get a few
things straight,” the young man said.

“
Okay,” Jeraine smiled.
“You’re making me uncomfortable.”

“
It’s
about . . . Well . . . ” the
young man blinked a few times, then swallowed hard.

“
Listen, man, just lay it
out there,” Jeraine said. “Whatever you have to say won’t be the
worst thing I’ve heard, even if it’s about me.”

“
Seth really laid into us
then kicked us out of his house Saturday night,” the young man’s
eyes bugged out a bit.

“
I’ve seen him on a tear,”
Jeraine said. “It’s not pretty.”

“
Pretty? No,” the young
man swallowed hard. “He sent us to Aspen to sober up and think
about what we want to do with our lives.”

Jeraine
chuckled.

“
This is no joke,” the
young man said. “He can block us from ever doing movies again. We
already have a couple producers crawling up our asses. Seth
is . . . well, Seth. What he says is gospel and if
he tells the producers we’re a bunch of drugged out scum? We’ll
never work again.”

“
Then why
you . . . ”

“
Because you called us
‘vestal virgins’ the first time we worked together,” the young man
nodded.

“
I did?”

“
You screwed every woman
in the building,” the young man said. “While you were high and you
still mixed the music perfectly!”

“
Oh,” Jeraine
blushed.

“
We just wanted
to . . . ”

“
Be cool?”

“
Not be made fun of. I
mean, we’re geeks. We don’t have women hanging on us all the time.
They only came because we were going to be working with you.
And . . . Anyway, we heard you’d quit, but we
thought it was a ploy. I mean, we work in Hollywood where most
marriages are fake and . . . well, we didn’t believe
it until . . . ”

The young man cleared his
throat.

“
Until what?”

“
We met Tanesha,” the
young man shifted uncomfortably. “I’d give everything I had for a
woman like that. She’s, I mean, no disrespect, but she’s funny and
nice and smart and . . . ”

Jeraine smiled.

“
How could you possibly
screw that up?” the young man asked.

“
I met her when I was two.
I didn’t know what I had until . . . I got out in
the world, and then . . . ” Jeraine shrugged.
“I knew enough to marry her, but not enough to understand how
special she is.”

“
You’re going to screw up
again?” the young man’s voice raised to indicate he hoped Jeraine
might. Jeraine smiled.

“
Not if I can help it,”
Jeraine said.

“
I’m supposed to
apologize,” the young man said.

“
I think I need to
apologize,” Jeraine said. “It sounds like I set all this
up.”

The young man
nodded.

“
Is that why the guys are
in the car?”

“
We don’t mind getting
yelled at, but it’s kind of your fault,” the young man
said.

“
It’s totally my fault,”
Jeraine said. “I’m an asshole. I mean, I can recover from the
addictions and maybe from the brain damage, but the asshole is
probably a permanent feature. At least, it is in my father. Is that
going to work?”

“
Can we call you on it
like Tanesha does?”

Jeraine squinted at the
young man and he swallowed hard.

“
Sure,” Jeraine laughed.
“But you can’t have her. No one can. Miss T belongs to the sole
property of Miss T. And for as long as she’ll have me, she’s my
wife. No fake.”

The young man gave Jeraine
a sly smile and Jeraine laughed. Taking out his phone, the music
director called the guys downstairs. When the men came up, Jeraine
repeated his apology.

“
Ready to work?” Jeraine
asked.

“
Did you say something
about lunch?”

Smiling, Jeraine went to
finish getting lunch ready.

Chapter Two Hundred and
Three

Interruption

Monday night — 9:25
p.m.

Tanesha pushed open the
door to the penthouse den. The room was sweltering from the
computers lined up and stacked along one entire wall of the room.
The stale sweat odor of stressed out men made her step back. To
keep the sound down, the men wore wireless headphones with
microphones on them. Jeraine and the music director were arguing.
She stood in the doorway for a few minutes before venturing into
the heat. Jeraine looked up at her when she touched his
shoulder.

“
I’m going to bed,”
Tanesha said.

Jeraine raised an index
finger to the music director and pulled off his headphones. The
other men in the room took off their headphones and turned to look
at Tanesha. Blushing at their attention, she raised a hand to wave
at them.

“
I’m going to bed,” she
repeated. “I have an early morning.”

“
Did you get what you
needed done?” one of the men asked.

“
We didn’t bug you did
we?” the music director asked.

“
No,” Tanesha shook her
head. “I was able to get my studies done. Thank you for keeping
the . . . wilder elements away. I appreciate
it.”

The music director blushed
and Jeraine smiled at her.

“
Let’s ask Miss T,”
Jeraine said. “She never lies. She’ll tell us if I’m
insane.”

“
You’re insane,” Tanesha
smiled.

He hopped up, kissed her
lips, and put his headphones on her head.

“
What do you hear?”
Jeraine asked.

“
What?” Tanesha pushed the
headphone off one ear. “I couldn’t hear you.”

“
Listen to the sound and
tell us what you hear,” the music director’s voice came in her
ear.

Tanesha’s eyes shifted to
Jeraine. He gave her an encouraging nod. She put the headphones on
both ears, turned down the sound, and listened. Her eyes shifted
off to Denver’s night skyline just outside the window. After a few
moments, her head nodded to the beat.

“
Sounds good,” Tanesha
shrugged and pulled off the headphones.

“
You don’t hear anything
other than music?” Jeraine asked.

“
Oh, sure,” Tanesha said.
“There’s that scratchy sound I always complain about.”

“
What did you say?” the
music director asked in her ear.

Jeraine put her microphone
down and clicked it on.

“
I don’t know how to
describe it,” Tanesha said. “It’s in a lot of things now. Like last
summer, my friends and I went to see this movie we were excited
about . . . um . . .
Bonnerville . . . ”

“
Bonnervillle Blues,” one
of the other men said. Jeraine nodded to him.

“
Right,” Tanesha smiled.
“We ended up calling it Bonerville. This sound went all the way
through it. Weird too because the music was good, the story was
good, the acting was good, but we hated the movie.”

“
Most women did,” the
other man said.

“
But wasn’t it a chick
flick?” Tanesha shrugged. “At least we thought it was. I mean, we
worked out babysitters and shifted our work schedules around to get
the time to see it together. Sandy had a half off coupon and Jill
bought popcorn. Then the movie was . . . irritating.
We were really disappointed.”

“
You heard this sound in
that movie?” the music director asked.

“
I wouldn’t have said it
at the time, but yeah,” Tanesha said. “I hear it a lot now and I
don’t like it.”

Tanesha stared off in the
distance for a moment again.

“
Makes me feel bad,”
Tanesha said. “Like a bad smell
or . . . ”

She took her phone out of
her pocket and called Heather. She explained what was going on and
put her on speaker phone. The music came over the
speakers.

“
What the hell? Are they
making Bonerville 2?” Heather laughed. “Jeez, do we have to
go?”

“
Hang on,” Tanesha said.
“I’m going to call Jill.”

She called Jill’s cell
phone. Sandy was with Jill.

“
Can you listen to this?”
Tanesha asked. “Tell me if you hear something other than the
music.”

“
Oh God,” Jill said. “What
is that?”

“
It’s like nails on a
chalkboard,” Sandy said. “Is that some med school hearing
test?”

“
Nah, just something
Jeraine’s working on,” Tanesha said.

“
Well tell him to stop,”
Jill said. “He’s way off track because
that . . . ”

“
Terrible,” Sissy’s voice
came from the background. “Yuck.”

“
Absolute yuck,” Heather
said.

“
Thank you ladies,”
Jeraine said.

“
Ok, I’m off to bed,”
Tanesha said.

“
Good luck tomorrow,”
Heather and Sandy said.

“
Don’t forget your
headphones,” Jill said.

And they were off the
phone.

“
That’s what I mean,”
Jeraine said. “I’m going to tuck Miss T in and we’ll figure out
what to do.”

“
Good night,” the men
waved. Tanesha waved back. She set the headphones down. Jeraine put
his arm around her and they left the room.

“
Did I say the right
thing?” she asked in a soft conspiratorial voice.

“
You were perfect,”
Jeraine said. “And that Bonnerville thing? This is the team that
did the sound for it.”

“
What is it?” Tanesha
asked. She pulled down her covers and climbed into bed.

“
We don’t know,” Jeraine
said. “They can’t hear it. I think only women can hear
it.”

“
Why can you hear
it?”

“
I’ve always been really
careful with my ears,” Jeraine said. “I don’t have the high pitch
hearing loss most men have. I’ve never been around motors and I
always wear earplugs on stage. Why do you have to remember
headphones?”

“
Jill gave me an iPod,”
Tanesha said. “She just wants me to use her gift.”

“
I just
wish . . . ”

“
Shh,” Tanesha said.
“Everything is really good. You did well at therapy and you like
your new trainer. I did really well at school. Let’s not fill it up
with regrets and sadness.”

Jeraine kissed
her.

“
I don’t know how
long . . . ”

“
You have to come to bed
at midnight to get enough sleep,” Tanesha said.

“
I’ll be back then,”
Jeraine said.

“
Tell them they can sleep
here,” Tanesha said. “I cleaned up the guest room. I have
everything packed for tomorrow.”

Jeraine smiled.

“
What?”

“
You’re great,” Jeraine
said. “You’ll wake me up when you leave? I want to walk you to the
bus.”

“
That would be nice,”
Tanesha said.

He went to the door and
turned off the overhead light.

“
Good night,” he
said.

Expecting her response, he
waited a moment. She was already asleep. Everything was really good
right now. Smiling to himself, he closed the door.

~~~~~~~~

Tuesday early morning —
4:25 a.m.

Valerie tapped on the door
to the loft.

“
Jake,” Valerie whispered
through the door.

She turned the handle and
leaned her head into the apartment.

“
Jaaaakkkkkkeeeee,”
Valerie whispered.

“
What,” Jacob whipped
around to startle her. She gave a surprised squeak and weaved
backward on the step. He grabbed her to keep her from falling down
the stairs. Once she regained her footing, she swung at him for
startling her. He smirked and walked in to the loft’s small
kitchen. Valerie followed him.