Emmy And Me

On the flight to New York I couldn’t help but do the math on jet ownership again. It’s not that the executive FBO flights were bad- not at all, in fact. The downside was that they ran to a fixed schedule like any commercial airline unless full charter prices were paid. At full charter price, a flight from Los Angeles to New York, or New York to London, would run about twenty grand. If we, as a family, were to make one of those flights maybe seventy-five times a year, we’d be looking at the equivalent outlay to annual jet ownership, on the average. Seventy-five times seems like a lot, but cut that number in half with the assumption that they’d mostly be round trips and then you’re only looking at three flights a month… Even, realistically, one flight to London and a couple of hops up to San Jose from Los Angeles.

It would be nice to have that sort of flexibility, I mused, as we touched down at Teterboro Executive Airport at nearly two in the morning local time.

Wally was his usual immaculate self even at that late hour, and his smile of welcome was good to see.

“Are you hungry, or is it straight to the townhouse?” he asked once he got the big BMW sedan moving towards Manhattan.

“Straight home, I think,” I told him. “What time do Emmy and Angela get in?”

“Their flight is scheduled to arrive at twenty to ten,” he replied. “At Laguardia.”

“When would you have to leave to pick them up?”

“It’s an easy drive,” he assured me. “Twenty minutes on a good day, forty-five in rush hour. Then there’s parking, so add another twenty minutes. Saturday mornings are light, so I’ll leave the townhouse at eight forty-five. It’ll mean a bit of wait for me, but I’d rather that than be late.”

“Alright,” I told him. “If I’m up I’ll go with you, but don’t wait for me.”

“Of course.”

Mia was up when we got to the townhouse, which didn’t surprise me at all. After a quick greeting, she said she had some new developments she wanted to talk about. I told her I was wiped out and just wanted to head to bed, but we could talk in the morning, and that satisfied her.

I’d really meant to wake up to go to the airport with Wally, but just didn’t manage it. I was awake, showered and dressed by the time he came back with his four passengers, though, followed by a cab with Lee, Jen, and Jackson. It was going to be a full house, but that was fine. It’s why we bought it, after all.

“It is a shame you missed the show last night in Montreal!” Emmy said after we all settled down for breakfast. “I think that we are getting better and better at playing these large arenas.”

“We should be by now,” Jackson agreed. Lee just nodded, his mouth full of a big piece of French toast that Luisa had made. Jackson added, “We really should be by now. I think this was what, stop number seventy-three or so?”

“It sure feels like it,” Lee agreed, done chewing. “Only thirty-seven more shows to go.”

“You two are such drama queens,” Emmy said with a laugh. “We have only performed thirty-four concerts so far, and we only have seventeen more to do here in the United States. We are very nearly done if you consider the amount of time left.”

“That’s still a lot of shows,” Luisa said, serving out another round of her amazing French toast. “I get that there’s a lot less traveling now, but still…”

“Most of our remaining shows are double nights,” Jackson told her. “I think except for Denver, right? That means that there’s not nearly so much work- half the travel and setup time per show, in effect.”

“God, second nights are so sweet,” Lee said. “All we gotta do is show up and play. It’s awesome.”

“We really should do one of those ‘seven nights in a row’ things at Madison Square Garden, or maybe Vegas,” Jackson said. “That would be sweet.”

“Not any time soon,” Emmy replied. “After our last scheduled show back home in Los Angeles I am going to do nothing for a long time.”

“Nothing except push a baby out,” Jen said. “It’s not like that’s trivial or anything.”

“No, that is true. Angela and I will be consumed with motherhood for a while,” Emmy said, a gentle smile on her face.

“Jackson, will you stick around Los Angeles, or are you going back to Austin after the tour?” Angela asked.

“I might go back home for a little bit, but I gotta start work on my solo album before Emmy gets too big to play her guitar,” he replied. “And besides, I have to do some house huntin’. Leah said she’d help me find a house in LA.”

“That reminds me,” I said. “I flagged a couple of possibles I’d like you to look at,” I told him.

Seeing the look Jen gave me, I gave her a little nod. “Lee, I know you’ve been having problems with your neighbors there in Pasadena, so I found a couple of places you might want to look at, too.”

“Me? Buy another house?” he asked, surprised.

“I found one that already has a little studio setup, and it’s soundproofed. It’s also only a few minutes away from our place, so coming in to the recording studio would be easy.”

“That… That could be awesome,” Lee admitted, not noticing the thumbs-up Jen gave me.

Jen and Lee took off right after breakfast, and Jackson left the house soon after. We had five hours until Emmy needed to leave for the sound check at Citi Field, time we spent snuggling on the big, comfy couch in the parlor.

“I have enjoyed this tour very much,” Emmy said with a sigh once we all found our comfy spots. “But I will be very happy to be done.”

“Me, too,” Angela said.

“It’ll be so good to have you two home full-time,” I agreed, kissing the tops of their heads. “Everybody at work knows I’ll be taking leave for a while, but I will still have to go to San Jose every other week.”

“I would not want you to stop that,” Emmy said, readjusting her position to give her noticeably larger belly some more room.

“I can’t wait to get back to the club,” Angela agreed. “It’ll be weird, leaving just you and Marie-Anne to take care of the babies…”

“Marie-Anne?” I asked.

“Yes, I spoke with her a few days ago, and she has agreed to come to Los Angeles,” Emmy said.

“That’s great. Was it hard to talk her into leaving your parents?” I asked.

“No. She told me that she had been secretly waiting and hoping I would call her to help out when the babies were born. My parents had apparently assumed that I’d already spoken with her, so they were not surprised when she told them she wanted to come to California. I also think she enjoyed her time in Fallbrook,” Emmy added.

“Hollywood is a lot different from your place out in the orange groves,” I said.

“It is. That is true,” Emmy admitted. “But I am certain she will enjoy our new home, too.”

“You know I’ve asked Tiny to stay on after the tour, right?” I asked. “As soon as the tour is done I’ve got him enrolled in driving classes, so he can drive you two and the babies around. I’d feel much better if you guys have him with you when you go out.”

“I did not know that you had talked to him about that,” Emmy admitted. “But I think his presence would be welcome.”

“I like Jeremy,” Angela said, surprising me, since I’d thought she’d fallen asleep. “He looks big and scary, but he’s like a giant teddy bear. He’s super gentle and helpful.”

“He is,” Emmy agreed, then added with a little giggle, “I have an image in my mind of him carrying the two babies, the two girls completely swaddled so only their little faces show.”

Of course, that made me picture the same thing, and brought a smile to my face as well.

“Ange, when is your mom coming to LA?” I asked.

“Soon after we get home,” she said. “And Papí and Cecy will come a few days before I am due.”

“Don’t cut it too close. I’d hate for them to miss the birth because you were a little early,” I cautioned.

“No, I know,” she said, burrowing deeper between me and the back of the couch. “But with his work, he can’t take too long.”

“Yeah, I can understand that,” I agreed, making a mental note to look into some sort of contingency charter flight just in case.

“It is amazing how hard our road crew works,” Emmy said, changing the subject. “The moment the show finished last night they went to work packing everything and loading it into the trucks. Then they had a six hour drive here from Montreal, and they have to start building today’s stage immediately. We will have the sound check at four this afternoon. Even though I have seen it many times now, I still find it incredible what they can do.”

“Is Stephanie traveling with the crew?” I asked.

“I think she must be,” Emmy replied, her voice getting drowsy. “She was not on our flight.”

I didn’t ask any more questions, since it was obvious the two of them were either already asleep or were soon going to be. I just let myself enjoy the feeling of their weight on me, their love cocooning me on that couch.

Marie-Anne coming to Los Angeles was great news, but I wondered how the kitchen power-sharing was going to go with her and Mamá both in residence. They’d just have to work it out between themselves, I mused. I figured they’d likely become great friends, sharing recipes and force-feeding anybody who came too close to the kitchen.

After a late lunch Wally took Emmy, Grant and Tiny to the baseball stadium for the sound check, leaving Angela and me back at the townhouse. Angela wanted to get some work done on her social media feeds, so I texted Mia to see if she was awake and had time to discuss whatever the developments she hinted at actually were. As it turned out, she was down in what she’d come to refer to as her office, the little security room down in the lower basement.

“What’s up?” I asked, taking a seat in the small space, noticing there were even more monitors than before.

“Well, a few weeks ago our local Night Children got a visit in their headquarters,” Mia said, turning other computer to bring up the images. “Now, in general, they just don’t get anybody coming to visit, ever. I mean, since we got the cameras set up to watch the place, only the regular local Night Children ever go in or out of the place,” she said, displaying a couple of views from different angles of the ramshackle building.

“How many regulars?” I asked.

“Thirty-seven different unique individuals all told, but usually it’s just the same fourteen. The others will come by once in a while- like maybe once every few months or something, but that’s it. So, we haven’t flagged any newcomers in well over eight months now, until, like I said, a little over three weeks ago. Then this happened,” Mia said. She brought up the video of a car pulling up in front of the old brick building, lights off in the middle of the night. The driver and front passenger got out, scanning up and down the street for threats, before opening the door for the man in the back seat. He got out, looked around suspiciously, then gently knocked on the metal fire door. A short moment later it was opened, and after a brief conversation with whoever it was that had opened the door everybody went inside.

“Now, those three guys were in there for almost three hours,” Mia said, skipping the recording ahead. “Here they are again.”

The three men, plus two more, emerged. The main guy talked for a moment to the two locals, then the three visitors got in the car and left, again with the car’s lights off.

“That looks like some sort of official visit,” I said.

“Do you know who the big guy is?” Mia asked, zooming the image in on his face.

“Never seen the guy,” I admitted.

“I tracked the car’s plates. It was rented at Newark Airport,” Mia said. “I’d really like to get into National’s systems and see who rented it… Or even better, access to the airport’s video feeds and facial recognition systems,” she said wistfully.

“Want me to talk to my guy in San Jose?”

“I already did,” Mia confessed. “But he’s on vacation in Bali and won’t be back for another week. He doesn’t have access to any secure machines over there.”

“That explains why I didn’t see him last time I was in San Jose,” I said, thinking back to Andrej’s absence from the club.

“So, anyhow, these guys are from out of town. They flew in, presumably, and rented a car to visit the local Night Children, who were expecting them,” Mia said, returning to the frozen video of the three guys standing around outside their car.

“Obviously the main guy is a Night Child of some rank,” I agreed. “The two other guys sure gave off bodyguard vibes.”

“Yes, they certainly did,” Mia agreed.

Leaning back, I took a moment to think about what Mia had just shown me. “Alright,” I said. “These visitors are obviously important, and this meeting was important- too much for a phone call. This tells us a couple of things. First, it confirms what we already believed, which is that that place is the center of power for some, if not most or all, of the Night Children in New York. This guy came here specifically to talk to whoever it is in charge here, right? Second, it tells us this local group has contacts outside the area. We don’t know at this point where the outsiders came from. It could be that guy is The Boss from Chicago, or a bigwig we haven’t heard of yet from some town we don’t have full control of yet. Or he could be from one of the other nations. We just don’t know, but send me the best screenshot you have of the guy and I’ll ask Emmy’s dad.” Thinking about it for a long moment, I added, “The third thing it tells us is that something is up. This is a new wrinkle. It may be harmless, it may not, but we should be on our toes for a while.”

“I talked to Dad this morning and showed him the videos. His conclusions were pretty much the same. I think his exact words were, ‘Make sure you keep a close fucking eye on those fuckers’.”

“Sound advice,” I said with a laugh.

The show that night was excellent. The band was on fire, the warm night perfect for Emmy and the boys to show off their incredible talent. Thirty-five thousand fans had paid good money to be there that night, and they definitely got their money’s worth.

I spotted Stephanie backstage and went over to congratulate her on making the tour such a success.

“You know, when I signed on to this gig, I knew it was going to be a lot of work,” she said, happy to take a few minutes to just chat. I guess that she had some down time, relatively speaking. There was very little packing up to do and no travel overnight since they’d be playing the same place the next night. “And it has been. I mean, seriously, I’ve been working harder than I ever have in my life, you know? But it’s also really satisfying, seeing the whole thing come together night after night. And of course, the money! You know how much these two shows here at Citi Field are going to gross? Eleven million bucks! After all the costs are paid, that still equals over a million bucks each for Emmy and the guys. My cut isn’t anything near that, but remember when I said I might buy a place in Maui after I cash out from this tour? It’s gonna be a real nice place,” she said.

“That’s awesome, Steph,” I said. “Let me know when your housewarming party is gonna be, and we’ll be there for sure.”

“Speaking of parties, are you coming to the afterparty tonight?” Stephanie asked. “It’s going to be at a rooftop bar sorta near your place.”

“If Emmy and Angela are up for it,” I said.

“Maybe see you there!” Stephanie said, and with that, she rushed off to take care of whatever it was that needed her attention.

“Hey, babes,” I said, sitting down next to Angela and Emmy on a couch in the dressing room. “Stephanie said the afterparty is going to be near our townhouse- are you two interested?”

“I don’t think I am,” Angela said. “But you two can go without me. I just want to take a bath and go to bed.”

“I do, too,” Emmy said. “But I must put in an appearance. There will be very many music industry people at the party tonight, and it is important to not be seen as aloof.”

“Then you guys go. I’ll just get Wally to take me home with Luisa and Mia,” Angela said.

“We will not stay out too late, my love,” Emmy said, leaning over and giving Angela a tender kiss. “Please save our spots in bed.”

“Always,” Angela smiled, grateful to be let off the hook.