Different Circles

They did so. And this time, the vote was binding.

Upon arriving home at his oceanside mansion, Matt immediately made himself a potent Jack and coke to chase down the three he had enjoyed on the ride home. He lined up a few rails of cocaine and snorted them up as well. Only then did he go into the entertainment room, where Kim was watching some fucking soap opera on the large screen television.

“Well?” she asked carefully. “How did it go?” She knew, of course, how agonizing a decision it had been for Matt to go crawling back to Jake and Pauline to ask for help.

“I don’t know,” he said, sitting down next to her. “We came to terms on royalty rates and a few other things, but they still haven’t decided whether to actually sign me or not.”

“When will they decide that?” she asked.

He shrugged. “Maybe today, maybe tomorrow,” he said. “They wanted to discuss it and vote on it. The vote has to be unanimous.”

She nodded solemnly, her hopes falling a bit. “What kind of deal did you agree to?” she asked.

He explained the particulars to her. She was very surprised to hear that Kingsley insisted on producing any CD that Matt recorded under the KVA label. She was even more surprised that Matt had agreed to this stipulation.

“Will you be able to do that?” she asked.

A little bit of his anger and resentment made it through the wall of cocaine and alcohol. “What choice do I have?” he asked bitterly. “The only other option is to fucking drown. To let the IRS take this fucking house away from me when I can’t pay them what they want anymore.”

She put her hand on his shoulder and rubbed soothingly. “I know how hard this has been for you, Mattie,” she said. “Hopefully things will work out.”

“Yeah,” he said, putting his hand on her bare thigh. “You want to fuck while we’re waiting to hear the news?”

“Sure,” she said. “You want a blowjob first?”

“Fuckin’ A,” he said, unbuttoning his pants.

He made it through the preliminary blowjob and was thrusting away inside of her in the missionary position on the couch when the phone started to ring. He quickly broke contact and walked over to the charging station, his shirt and socks still on, his wet schlong sticking out before him like a divining rod. He checked the caller ID screen and saw the number was KVA’s main line. He took a deep breath and then picked up the handset.

“This is Matt,” he said into it, bracing himself.

“Hey, Matt, Pauline,” the familiar voice said in his ear. “We had our vote.”

“And?” he asked.

“It was unanimous in favor of signing you to KVA’s label for a one CD deal,” she said.

Elation filled his soul at these words, but he was certainly not going to display any of it to Pauline. “Oh ... cool,” he said casually. “What’s the next step?”

“We want to meet with you on Friday at eleven o’clock,” she said. “We’ll have a contract for you to sign. You can bring a lawyer if you want.”

“I don’t have a lawyer except for that tax guy you hooked me up with,” he said.

“I see,” she said. “If you need more time to retain an entertainment attorney, I suppose we can accommodate that. Just let us know when...”

“Are you going to try to fuck me with this deal?” Matt interrupted.

“No, Matt,” she said. “We are not going to try to fuck you. That’s not what we’re about. The contract will be written in plain, easy-to-understand English and will contain the terms we have already agreed to.”

“Then I won’t need no fuckin’ entertainment lawyer, will I?”

“No,” Pauline said, “but it is certainly your right to have one.”

“Fuck that,” Matt said. “I’ll be there Friday at eleven and we’ll sign. I’m really hoping that I can start getting to work on Monday.”

As it turned out, Matt was not able to get to work until the following Thursday. Part of the issue was that he had to gather his band back together. Since coming off tour, Corban, Austin, and Steve had all been doing their own things, mostly partying a lot and living off their royalty and touring income and not doing much else (including worrying about when that royalty and touring income would reach critical levels). None of the three had picked up an instrument since returning from South America, though Corban did pick up the clap and a nasty case of crabs from a groupie he had met in San Diego one night.

The biggest issue, however, was where to rehearse. The warehouse they had used before was leased by National Records and they were certainly not going to let Matt use it for a project that did not involve their label. Nor was KVA’s main studio an option. Celia had been composing for the past few months and had reached the point where she wanted to start putting things together for her next CD. She staked claim on the studio and planned to start making use of it by the first week in August, which was the soonest she could get Eric, Coop, Charlie, Liz, Little Stevie, and Laura to join her for sessions.