"But you still didn't say it."

No, she hadn't. She was deathly afraid to let the words out of her heart, because once she had she might begin those insufferable daydreams again, and what if they didn't turn out the way she imagined? How could they turn out the way she imagined?

"All right," he said, sighing, sounding tired, "I'll let you off the hook. It doesn't mean anything anyway if it's forced. Well, listen… it's late. We'd better say good night."

She rested the back of her hand across her eyes and felt tears gathering in her throat, disliking herself for withholding the words. The minute he hung up it would get worse, and she'd probably roll over and bawl when she had her Hie just the way she wanted it. Just the way she'd dreamed it when she was clear back in high school! Mac! Superstar! Millionaire! In absolute control of her career and her future! Mac, who didn't want to be derailed by a husband, or marriage, or a family, or any of the baggage that went along with them!

"Kenny, I don't mean to hurt you."

"It's okay, I said."

"But I feel like such a shit."

"Hey, are you crying again? You are, aren't you?" She heard a sad smile come into his words. "Well, that's something anyway."

"Kenny…" There was appeal in her voice, but she didn't know what she was pleading for, so how could he answer? "You were right before. It's time we said good night."

"Good night, Tess," he said, "I love you."

Then the line clicked and she rolled over and did exactly what she'd feared she'd do. Mac… superstar… millionaire… with her prized life mapped out before her, bawled into her pillow.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

It was quarter to two the next afternoon when they arrived at Sixteenth Avenue Sound, a converted bungalow not far from Music Row. Tess led Casey inside through a small, unimpressive reception area to a room with sofas, tables and chairs, but no windows. A Pepsi machine threw red light over the L that served as a canteen, and the coffee warmer sent out the smell of burned coffee. Country music played softly from some unseen speakers. A huge man with a receding hairline, flowing gray beard and streaked gray ponytail sat on one of the sofas extracting an electric bass from its case, whistling to the music.

"Hey, Leland! How ya doin'?" Tess greeted. "You've got to meet this pretty young thang who's gonna be doing harmony vocals for me today." Her intentional drawl made Leland smile. "This's Casey Kronek. Leland Smith."

While they were shaking hands a redheaded guy about thirty, with hair as trim as Johnny Carson's, dressed in neat blue jeans and a polo shirt, came out of the lavatory. He was the keyboardist, Dan Fontaineau, and he shook hands with Casey, too.

"Come on," Tess said, "I'll introduce you to Jack."

Jack Greaves was already in the control room at the con-sole, a fifteen-by-four-foot wedge of electronic wizardry with so many buttons, knobs and zinging orange lights it looked like the flight deck of a space shuttle. Beside him the sound engineer was deciding which of the fifty-six tracks he'd use, while the engineer's assistant sat nearby loading a tape machine. Through an immense window the recording studio was visible, a gray cube of subdued lighting where some studio musicians were warming up playing riffs, which came through the wall-mounted speakers along with their voices as a pleasant cacophony. A couple of the guys noticed Tess and gestured in greeting through the window. "Hey, Mac."

She leaned over, held a switch on the talk-back, and said, "Hey, guys."

Jack, a trim man of medium height with meticulously trimmed brown hair, beard and mustache, turned in his swivel chair. Though he smiled and kissed Tess's cheek, and shook hands when introduced to Casey, it was clear he had business on his mind, and little time to waste. As a record producer he controlled the session, which was costing Tess plenty. He himself earned some thirty thousand dollars per project plus a percentage of the royalties; the studio rental ran close to two thousand dollars a day; the sound engineer got eighty dollars an hour, his assistant twenty-five; the studio musicians-all of them double-scale caliber-commanded over five hundred dollars apiece for each three-hour session. Given that today they'd work for six hours, the cost of this day's session, even before mixing and mastering, would run over ten thousand dollars.

Jack Greaves had been in the business long enough to realize that each minute lost meant big bucks. He wasted little of Tess's money before asking Casey, "Did you sign your AFTRA card yet?"

Casey looked nonplussed, and replied, "Excuse me?"

"Union stuff," Tess explained. "American Federation of Television and Radio Artists insists that all singers' performances be documented." To Jack she said, "She doesn't need to today since it's her first time. She gets one free session, then she's got thirty-one days to join. Don't worry about it," she told Casey, "I'll have my secretary help you get in touch with the union later."

Jack went right on with business. "You want one box or two, Tess?"

"One, I think. Might be easier for Casey the first time."

"You get that, Carlos?" he inquired, turning to the sound engineer while Leland went into the studio and began tuning his bass.

Tess leaned over and whispered to Casey, "Never mind Jack. When he gets in here he's got a one-track mind. Come on, let's sit down and go over our parts."

A row of high-backed leather stools stood behind a desk facing the control board and window. They climbed onto two of them, and Casey whispered, "What's a box?"

"The recording booth-see?" Tess pointed through the window at a pair of doors leading to two tiny black-walled rooms off the left side of the studio. "Isolation booths to help keep the tracks from bleeding into one another. We can use one or two, but until we get used to each other I figure it's better if we just use one. You sometimes get better synergy with close eye contact."

Jack kept the talk-back on so the conversations were audible as they passed back and forth between the two rooms. The musicians kept tuning, occasionally breaking into spontaneous warmup music that would suddenly acquire harmony and rhythm and might run for sixteen or twenty bars, then be broken up by laughter. Conversation, when it happened, was spoken in a lexicon peculiar to musicians-short, brief colorful phrases that would make no sense away from the studio. Somebody said, "You hear that pork chop sizzling in Lee's bass?"

"Got us a buzz fly here."

"Try another track."

"Okay, I'm putting you on sixteen, Lee."

And after Leland ran a riff, "Hell, it's still there."

"Try another patch cord."

The assistant engineer left the room and appeared on the other side of the window to change the cord.

Leland played once more. "Better now," the engineer said.

The drummer put in an earplug, ran his sticks across his snares and tenors, hit the cymbals, and sampled a few thuds on the bass drum. Two guitarists were soundlessly tuning their instruments with electronic tuners. The piano player, behind a black grand facing the window, executed a quick smattering of Gershwin that segued into a few bars of boogie-woogie, followed by an arpeggio that took his fingers sailing off the end of the keys. Another guy on electronic keyboards had them sounding like bells. Leland, still monkeying with his bass guitar said, "The humidity's got my axe going sharp today. I can't keep it down." A saxophonist had set up his music stand in the hall between the two rooms and through the open doorway the sound of his bluesy wail added to the noise.

Jack said, "Somebody do the charts?"

"I did," the pianist said. "Got 'em right here."

"What do you say, should we look at 'em and give this demo a listen?"

Casey took it all in, mesmerized by her first experience in a recording session, still awestruck that she was actually a part of it. Staring at the lead guitarist, she whispered to Tess, "My gosh, that's Al Murphy. I've seen him on TNN. And Terry Solum on keyboards! He used to play with John Denver!"

"These guys have all been around awhile. You're gonna love what they do. The road musicians are essentially copyists-they can recreate the licks that are put on the albums. But these guys-the studio musicians-are the ones who have the originality to put them there in the first place. And we hire the best. Every one of these guys is a double-scale musician. Wait'll you hear them work."

"Double-scale?"

"They earn twice what the regular ones earn and twice what the union demands."

The musicians all came from the studio and crowded into the control room. Casey beamed with elation as she was introduced to all of them. The pianist passed out copies of the charts-a Nashville number system that transcribed chords onto paper, creating a crib sheet for sessions players who sometimes were unable to read music. The number system had been created in the fifties by a member of the Jordanaires and allowed for improvisation and immediate key change without rewriting the charts. Casey looked at the ranks of Is, 4s, Cs and Vs, and Tess pointed, giving a quick explanation. The assistant engineer ran the demo tape and it took less than half the song for the chart to make sense to Casey.

Keys were named. Numbers indicated how many lines would be done in that key. V indicated "verse," C indicated "chorus," and B meant "bridge." It was like looking at the frame of a house before the siding was put on: the structure of the song was all there waiting for the musicians to do it their way, with all the improvisation they pleased.

The demo ended and a bunch of musicians voiced approval. "Hey, nice song. You two wrote this together? You ought to collaborate some more. This thing is gonna cook. Lemme hear it again."