CHAPTER 111 — O Holy Night (2)

Universal Music. Midtown.

Tuesday, 30 December 2008.

Sir Justin Woodhouse, having heard from Valorie that Eppie had been brainstorming ideas for Valorie’s debut in her apartment, sent her an actual, formal invitation.

The letter, embossed in gold and written in Sir Justin’s Eton-style handwriting, was impeccably styled, composed, and delightful to read. Miss Sanders and my humble self would like to cordially invite you, it read, to 1755 Broadway, the home of Isle Jam, Interscopic, Groovetown, and Vervain.

Interscopic, this world’s Interscope, was based in LA—but Isle Jam and Groovetown were the undisputed home of RnB in NYC, and thus, the perpetual cultural engines powering Universal Music’s dominance.

Eppie had immediately replied to the RSVP and informed her father of her work among Sony’s enemies. She had also reminded him that he had two more days of relaxation before they had morning Pilates every Wednesday and Saturday.

In retaliation, Curon must have told Davis, because a flummoxed Eric Lee then arrived on the morning of the 30th, driving Sony’s S-Class town car, and told her that he was to be her escort.

Her dear Newfoundlander also thanked her for the generous gifts for himself and Emily’s first NYE in NYC. Eppie said not to worry, guiltily, because it was Maddy who had organised the gifts in her name.

Unlike the Belmont, 1755 Broadway was a glass box at the corner of Fifty-Sixth and Broadway, originally built for a bank. Its entrance encompassed a pair of art-deco-looking gates in plated gold and glass, within which hid a long, minimalist corridor with all of Universal’s labels. Further in, much like Sony itself, innumerable gold and platinum records were affixed at eye level and above, testaments to Universal’s dominance.

They passed security and rode the lifts twenty-five floors up into an enormous floor where the carpet ate the sound of footsteps and made her heels difficult. There was an enormous granite reception desk with a single orchid, behind which glass and aluminium stretched onward left and right around the corner.

“Miss Fontaine!” Sir Woodhouse emerged like the final boss of the floor from a sunken wall panel, trailed by a plethora of hangers-on. Behind the man stood Valorie, her long hair wrapped in a striking ponytail, her figure fully covered in the old, nostalgic theatre blacks Val wore like a uniform.

Sony and Universal shook hands.

A dozen or so suited men and women stood behind Woodhouse. The men were dressed from vintage to three-piece, and the women from Gucci to Chanel. All regarded her coldly, with hostility.

This was the hussy who took from their Album of the Year! Her [Facial Landscape] read their grimaces like a picture book.

“She’s tiny…”

“She looks like an intern…”

“We lost to that…”

Eppie did not blame them.

She had… created Umbrella for survival, and to one-up Davis’s plans for Kellie Noah. Universal was an unintended fallout.

They moved to the conference room.

Eric was directed to a sofa, from where he could see the meeting take place, albeit behind several layers of soundproofed glass.

Once relocated, the gathering sat around an enormous Herman Miller waterfall table, the American-made, vintage models that remained timeless well into the future, on vintage aluminium side chairs by the same designer duo.

“Please just… observe,” Sir Woodhouse told Eppie, moving them a discreet distance away. “Feel free to intervene… any time.”

If the hostility from before could be felt as heat—it was now making her follicles squirm. Valorie, watching with an expression that was halfway between embarrassment and terror, reached out and took her hand. Eppie received it, just because, then settled her nerves to regard Universal’s star-makers.

Thanks to her lessons with Curon, Eppie knew them almost too well.

A&R was the lady in black, jointly represented by Sir Woodhouse.

Marketing was the two young blokes in cashmere suits.

Creative services was the boho-looking guy in Japanese fashion, and he kept glancing her way and getting distracted.

Publicity was the bored-looking woman with the folios and the horn-rimmed glasses.

And Management was… also Woodhouse.

Were it not for Sir Woodhouse’s promise to Senator Sanders, three out of the five would have shoved Val in a tight dress with a push-up bra and started collecting money. With Val’s assets, there was absolute certainty that a certain demographic would absolutely lap it up.

“—so, the keynote is approachability,” said Marketing. “She’s a Senator’s daughter, right? That’s cold. Remote, as they say. I say Val will kill it as… girl-next-door, country-adjacent, rich, of course, but dreamy. I am talking Nashville country for the first single.”

Woodhouse stared the man into submission.

“How about we home in on the politics? Rebel daughter, leather jackets, apple bottom jeans, hip-hop anthem—”

Woodhouse’s jaw tightened.

“UNATTAINABLE,” said the other young man in marketing. “Power. Legacy. Super cars. Dance pop anthem. Ibiza. Black Sea. Party on a Yacht.”

“Hold that thought.” Woodhouse raised a pen. The room relaxed. “Next.”

Someone suggested a duet.

Someone else said she could be the centre of a girl group.

One after another, they deviated further and further, and Eppie couldn’t help but feel her eyes roll toward the back of her skull. Thanks to the sheer size of her eyes, her irritation was all too visible from the desk.

She knew the answer already, the perfect answer—and it was… both disappointing and strange that no one could guess it, despite the fact that Universal had Vanessa Vines bring home two Grammys.

Why didn’t they see Val as similar to Vanessa?

Did Val not suffer enough?

Was she not damaged enough?

If only they knew just how broken Val was, beneath her porcelain exterior.

Valorie Sanders, left wholly uncontrolled, was a Manic Pixie Nightmare of the highest degree.

And then there was Val’s looks.

She was… excessively sensual by nature.

She was five foot ten, WITHOUT HEELS. And traditional marketing would NEVER forgo four-inch heels.

Popstars were not six-foot models. They were petite, small, fragile, and sold through a paradox of virginal helplessness and aggressive sexuality. It was the kind of bullshit status quo that Davis had set with their alter-world Britney in the early 00s, and there was no putting the genie back in the bottle.

The stupidity of Universal’s people was that they were circling Val with six flavours of sex sells. They could not fathom that someone with a figure like Val’s, with her face, her sultriness, could sell anything other than sex.

The more they spoke, the more Valorie retreated into her seat, not unlike Andrew Garfield cramming himself into a cubbyhole so Eppie wouldn’t smoke him like a fine cigar. If the girls at Guilliams knew that Valorie’s pet stray cat had a twenty-five-square-metre room overlooking New Jersey to itself…

Woodhouse put his pen down.

“Thanks, folks, I’ll take those decks,” he said to the room, clearly unimpressed. “Happy New Year. Euphemia…”

After about six seconds, no one moved from their chairs.

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

Woodhouse, having clearly expected this, smirked, his lips pressed into two pale, thin lines, a true-to-life British drama villain. Evidently, Universal’s people preferred seeing Euphemia Fontaine crash and burn to going home to loving families. It was a matter of professional pride.

Valorie’s hand found her hand again, though it was questionable who was comforting whom.

Eppie exhaled through her nose.

Sir Woodhouse was using her as a whetstone for his uncreative team. He was hoping that, long after she was gone, they’d be changed by the experience. What it told her was that he was a CEO of her own heart. That and his supernatural confidence in her actually having a working idea was nothing short of uncanny.

What a wily old fox!

“Miss Fontaine.”

“Sir Justin.” She smiled.

“Have you any… input?”

“I have.” Eppie stood, then pulled up her chain-gang companion, eliciting from her an embarrassingly feminine yelp.

She concurrently whipped out her phone. Ran Google Images. Saved three items and sent them to Woodhouse. “Bring me this.”

The others strained to see, but Woodhouse kept her clues discreet, while simultaneously forwarding them down to Wardrobe; at least a skeleton crew would still be working until the morning of the thirty-first, whereupon they would leave the corporate building to accompany Universal’s various acts.

While they waited for Wardrobes, Eppie hammered out a spontaneous set of lyrics on her iPhone’s notepad, bobbing her head to the internal metronome of her [Composer] and [Songstress] working in tandem.

By the time she finished, wardrobe arrived with the outfit.

A white-green flower garland, because Val was BORN to wear hair ornaments.

A white boho-dress cut above the knee, extended at the back, with a modest plunge that bared the shoulders.

And a pair of booties, kitten heels, in camel.

That was it.

It was Woodstock, 1969.

Something electrifying shot through the team. The Market guys got it, instantly. The idea had entered through their optic nerves and set their imagination on fire.

Valorie left to change, leaving Eppie alone with the Universal crew.

“How’s Martin?” she asked, suddenly. “You’ve kept up your side of the deal?”

Sir Woodhouse smirked. “He’s in Stratford, Ontario. He has tutors with doctorates overseeing his work. We pay his mother to feed and keep him clean, and they have the third-party lawyer you wanted. His money is in a trust in Toronto no one can touch. We’ve kept marketing to a minimum, and he manages his covers on YouTube, on our direction, but at his own discretion.”

The CEO swallowed. “He’s a charming kid. Vocals says his voice will break within two years. When it does, we’ll give him another six months to be ready. We’ll do the full push then, when he’s sixteen. His dream or otherwise, we’ll recoup our cost.”

Eppie nodded. “That’s reasonable.”

“It’s ridiculous, is what it is,” Woodhouse said. “Now, your side of the bargain.”

The Universal crew looked from Eppie to Woodhouse. This arrangement was… news to them.

“Eppie?” Valorie made a small noise behind the door to the bathroom, where she had changed.

“Come on out,” Eppie said.

Valorie came out—and the room grew four decades younger.

She walked out not onto the carpet, but onto the mud and grass of Woodstock. She wore a crown of crushed pink and cream petals on a pale green band, worn, pinned into her hair against the natural curls.

The dress they found her in was lace and ivory, aged to look pink at the edge, printed with gold paisley, with the wide sleeves typical of the epoch. It fell, tight around the chest and waist, but open near her hips, a little too high above the knee because she was too tall and the dress wasn’t fitted.

She was barefoot.

The booties didn’t fit.

+ Karmic Causality

+ Karmic Causality

+ Karmic Causality

God damn. Eppie praised her own impeccable taste, her pride purring like Mr Chin.

“Whoa.” Woodhouse inhaled. “Whoa.”

The rest of the room tried their best to remember how to breathe.

“Now,” Eppie stood beside her flower girl hippie from out of time, placed a hand around a flaming Valorie’s waist, and said the magic words. “YOU SELL NOSTALGIA.”

Nostalgia

The fabulous five from Universal took notes, straight from the horse’s mouth, writing down the sermon from the prophet of profits.

Eppie laid a hand on Valorie’s head. “Flowers in her hair. Always real ones. Bare feet on a lawn. Film grain is your friend. Shoot her videos in 8 MM. Use archive videos of Woodstock, Glastonbury, and the new one, Coachella?”

Marketing nodded.

“Right,” Eppie said, hovering her hands over Valorie’s… more pronounced sections. “Keep this area contained, show not tell. Hint at it. Don’t flaunt it. Something sheer, something period appropriate, but keep the emphasis on the shoulders.”

Valorie had the most amazing collarbones and square shoulders that gave her an aristocratic air.

Eppie moved onto the bottom half. “Always flowing, always moving. Have her run through the field. The beach. The road. The old mall. The parking lot. The neighbourhood. Although you will need shoes for some of those.”

“What’s the personality?” Woodhouse raised his hand.

“Val’s living the personality.” Eppie rather liked her life-size dress-up Valorie. “A little rich, a little sad, a little daring, a little in love with… tragedy.”

The others thought she meant theatre, though both Eppie and Woodhouse knew that there was more to it than that.

“Yes.” Woodhouse looked at his own team and sighed. “Yes, I think that will satisfy Senator Sanders.”

“Think Pre-Raphaelite.” Eppie decided on ekphrasis to explain her vibes. “Soul of the Rose, John William Waterhouse.”

“YES!” Woodhouse almost made a gesture that said hallelujah. “And the songs?”

“No songs.” Eppie paused, looked at Valorie, who stared at her with big, expectant eyes, and sighed. “Okay, a bit of a song.”

Without missing a beat, without her audience being remotely ready, she sang. It was a song that rhymed, though the composition was, for once, her own. For Eppie, the nostalgia was real, because for her, the feeling was an elegy—an elegy for a life that had been washed away in Santa Monica, beside the pier.

Her voice… was a little sad, a little reedy and a little fragile.

We lolled in the long grass, my face against your shoulder

Recalling how the lyrics sweetly rhymed

I was lost there for a second, then lost for a minute

For a sweltering summer, we lost our minds

How could this life be ending?

Both tonight and in the morning?

Just cuz men drew a dotted line?

But what about the peace they promised?

The world we were sold as children?

What about our darling daughter?

Whose hair would look like mine?

The rhetorical question was unanswered—Eppie had run out of lyrics.

The song was moving, so moving, that Eppie herself felt momentarily stunned. She hadn’t intended to write something just good. It was… it was [Composer] and [Songstress], and it was the activation of her [Perfect Pitch].

What was insane was that, somewhere in her chest, [El Duende] had activated, because she was singing about death, about loss, about war, and she, who was not sixteen, knew far too much, and had seen far too much, live-streamed, on every channel and social media platform.

She didn’t even intend the last verse!

It just… seemed appropriate, because Val’s hair was so red, her look was so floral, and she was RIGHT THERE, radiating heat and adorability like a furnace.

Sir Woodhouse was reduced to a bubbling mess.

The room sat in stunned silence.

“I was there, you know.” His voice drifted across the sterile space. “I was there, at Woodstock, in 1969.”

The room soaked that information in while he dabbed his face with a handkerchief.

Valorie’s head was already lying on her shoulder.

At some point during the second verse, they were swaying to a song that wasn’t complete and should not exist, and Valorie simply… latched on.

Her vision blurred.

A box like no other glowed fierce, orange, and demanding.

Original Creation Acquired

[Hair Like Mine]

“What about our darling daughter?

Whose hair would look like mine?”

Composed by the [Usurper] in an act of unbidden sublimity, inspired by Valorie Sanders, through Karmic Reciprocity.

The Karmic Resonance of this work does not exist in this world.

For the [Usurper]’s first original work, the penalties of [Prophet of Profits] have been halved for [Hair Like Mine].

“Euphemia?” Sir Woodhouse’s voice sounded like a mother cat meowing through a hazy dream. “What’s the song called?”

Eppie looked to Val, to Woodhouse, then back to her new notification box.

Halved? She… she could… make [Causality] and money? She could… buy things? That belonged… to her?

“I think…” she said slowly, and with complete seriousness. “I think I need to call an adult.”