Chapter 122

Ben and his crew had already headed across the back pasture by the time Liz wrapped up her calls.

I had taken the opportunity to slip out of my sling and T-shirt to let the sun warm a section of skin that hadn’t seen sunlight since the first day of June. I sat down in the warm water (and hoped it hadn’t increased in temperature because Spenser or Stone had peed in it) and let the water wash over me. I even slipped over to let the waterfall cascade down on me.

I was alone so I was able to dip completely below the waterline. I was careful (and I even slathered the scar tissue with sunblock) but I luxuriated in the freedom.

I left my shirt off and put my arm in the soft sling before taking a seat in the lounger to enjoy the sun’s golden rays. I was about half dozing when I felt somebody behind me.

I opened my eyes and saw Liz looking down at me.

“You’re so cute,” she said.

I gave her a smile.

“I was just thinking how adorable you look with the sun behind you like that,” I said. “It’s like a golden halo.”

Liz tilted forward at the waist (and about blinded me in the process when the sun struck me directly in the eyes) and offered me an upside-down kiss.

“How were your calls?” I wondered when she stood up again.

She didn’t answer me but instead licked her lips.

“Did you go under the water?” she asked.

“Yep,” I said. “I spent ... half an hour or so ... just goofing off in the water. It was really nice.”

“What about your sling?” Liz asked.

“I left it off,” I admitted. “I did some of my exercises in the water. Talk about an awesome feeling.”

Liz took a seat in the lounger opposite me.

“Are you supposed to be doing things like that?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” I confessed a little defensively. “I figured I’d give it a shot and see how it felt. I held onto my wrist until I got in. It was no different than wearing the sling or taking a shower. It didn’t hurt. It felt really nice to ... be out of that thing for a little while.”

“OK,” Liz said. “If it didn’t hurt and you enjoyed it, who am I to argue?”

“The one that would have to take care of me if I really fucked something up,” I said, laughing lightly.

“True,” Liz replied. “But it doesn’t appear you did. It’s supposed to rain the next couple of days but you should probably ask when you’re in there Friday.”

“I will,” I promised. “So, your calls?”

“OK,” Liz said. “A lot fewer people are coming out from New York than I expected. I honestly thought almost everybody would be willing to relocate. But so far it’s only five people out of almost 200 that work there.”

“It’s early,” I said. “I’m sure they want to evaluate their opportunities before committing. I’ll be surprised if you’re still looking at five people at Christmastime. They only found out 10 days ago. You’ll lose some of them. Some of them have families that can’t move or long-standing ties to the area. Are you going to be in a tough spot if a lot of them stay behind?”

“Probably not,” Liz admitted. “There is a lot of redundancy in my operations. Morrie has been on me to restructure for the past three or four years. Communication is so simple now that there isn’t really any reason that I have people doing the same jobs in Nashville, Los Angeles and New York. I could probably cut one-third of the workforce and not really notice.”

“Except in the expanded profit margins,” I pointed out.

Liz shrugged.

“It’s like you said, if I were eating pork and beans every day it would be one thing but I’m not,” she said. “The truth is that I have only... 30 or so people ... in New York that are integral to the operations. They deal with copyrights and trademarks and those sorts of things.”

“Are you going to need to keep them in New York?” I wondered.

“No,” Liz said. “Everything is digital. You can do everything online. If there is something that I absolutely have to have somebody deal with personally, I’ll still have Morrie there. I’m still going to use his firm for my corporate legal needs.”

“So these people don’t really work for Morrie?” I asked. I hadn’t delved much into LLE’s corporate entity. I kicked myself for lounging around the pool instead of studying the makeup of Liz’s holdings.

“No, they’re separate,” Liz said. “I had them in place before I brought Morrie on board. I’ve always had problems with that stuff so I established that operation almost as soon as I started to write songs. I mean, it was one of the first things I put into place. I probably should have rolled it into the other A&R functions but I always kept it separate.”

“So you could actually do without them, too, in a pinch,” I said.

“Not really,” Liz corrected. “It’s different. The A&R guys I’m bringing in are mostly involved in arranging set musicians. It’s ... it’s different than most places. At RFN, the A&R guys didn’t need to look for songs for me. I wrote my own songs. Sometimes they would find a musical arrangement that I would use if I hadn’t written anything I liked. I used the New York group for the other things. They file patents on merchandise created by my apparel line; they trademark certain phrases or titles that we use. It’s not all ... music industry related. Morrie has suggested I continue to keep the entities separate ... mostly for accounting purposes, I guess. Personally, I think it’s because he doesn’t want to deal with the entertainment side of the business but since I agree with him about the division I didn’t argue.”

I could see that Liz was still bothered that some of the people that she had employed for a decade hadn’t immediately agreed to follow her wherever she went.

“Hey, hon, there are always going to be people that look at their professions as a job,” I said. “It doesn’t matter how nice the working conditions are or how pleasant their boss is. It’s just a job to them. You can’t take it personally.”

“I know,” Liz said. “It’s not like I’m planning to drag them to San Diego kicking and screaming if they don’t want to go.”

“What about L.A.?” I wondered.

“The same as New York,” Liz said. “There are a handful of people that have already agreed to relocate a hundred miles to the south. Some are planning to drive back and forth every day, I think.”

I scoffed at that notion until I realized that driving from Orange County to San Diego would probably take less time than trying to make it into the city of Los Angeles.

“Makes sense,” I said. “It’s not a bad drive.”

“I enjoyed riding up there when we went to tuck Caley into rehab,” Liz said. “Of course you were with me so that might have played a part.”

I reached out and took her hand. She was dressed in a skirt and blouse since she was videoconferencing.

“Why don’t you change clothes and then we can take your new car for a drive,” I suggested.

“We could,” Liz said.

“I checked with Dayton and Bobbi,” I added. “They’re willing to follow behind us. I thought you might want to do something fun tonight.”

“Oh, I do,” Liz said. “Except I’m going to have a doctor digging around my puss in the morning.”

“I thought you might want to do something else fun tonight since that is out of the question,” I amended.

“Like what?” Liz asked.

“Like anything you want to do,” I said. “It’ll be eight or so before the parents are back. We can go out to dinner or just walk around downtown if you want. I never actually got the chance to see much of Nashville. Everybody tells me that it’s pretty but I’ve seen the route to RFN and the route from the hospital to here. That’s pretty much it. Babe, if you want to fly up to New York for dinner at the Ritz, just say the word.”

“Let’s not get crazy,” Liz said, smiling again.

“Yeah, I couldn’t afford to treat you to the Ritz,” I said. “But I could buy you a corn dog at that shop you said you liked.”

“That would be ... really nice,” Liz said as she bit her bottom lip. “Thanks for cheering me up. I was a little bummed that people might just walk away from what we built.”

“Hey, my job is to keep that pretty face smiling as often as I can,” I said.

“You do,” Liz told me.

“Give it a little bit of time,” I said. “If they’re still not on board by November or December you’ll do what you have to do.”

I gave her hand a squeeze.

“And I’ll be right there beside you the whole time,” I promised.

I used my tongue on Wednesday night to ensure that Liz’s vagina was fit for inspection on Thursday morning.

By the time we’d arrived back at the house after a very relaxing evening on the town, Liz was pretty wound up. I’m sure it didn’t help that I had slid my hand between her legs once we’d exited Nashville proper on the way back to her Brentwood estate.

I thought she was going to attack me once we got the car safely into the garage. Sadly for Liz, our parents had arrived shortly before we had returned. They had been gone for almost three days but I could see that they were pleased to see their children acting like carefree teenagers instead of the hair-tempered adults they had left behind.

It was almost 10 o’clock before we broke away to head to our bed ... and probably 30 seconds later before Liz had her skirt up to her hips and my lips on her box.

We kept our explorations to oral and digital manipulations and fell into a blissful (and sated) slumber by midnight.

I got up early to get my morning workout finished. Liz was still a bit sleepy when she made her way into the exercise room. It was a little before eight o’clock.

“You’re spry this morning,” she said as she sipped a cup of herbal tea. “You’d think you got your dick sucked three times last night.”

“You said you were leaving about 8:30,” I said. “I got up at 7:30 so I could get ready and go with you.”

“You ... you want to go to the gynecologist with me?” Liz asked.

“I figure you’ve been right beside me every time I’ve gone to the doctor lately,” I said. “I wasn’t planning to come into the examination room with you but I wanted to be there ... for moral support or whatever.”

“You’re so sweet,” Liz said. “But ... it’s just my yearly exam. It’s like a physical for my pussy. It’s nothing major.”

“Oh,” I said. “I ... I don’t have to go if you don’t want me to.”

“It’s not that I don’t want you to go,” Liz said. “I always want you with me. It’s just ... I don’t really want to go. I was excited when ... I thought I might be confirming a pregnancy but this is just ... yucky. She’ll do a cancer screening and that sort of stuff. I do want to see why I haven’t had a period in ... three months. I was scheduled to start today and I haven’t.”

“Could the ... home things been wrong?” I asked.

“Not all of them at the same time,” Liz replied. “I used the others Monday. They say the same thing ... no.”

“Are you still sick of the mornings?” I wondered.

Liz shook her head.

“Not since we got back,” Liz said. “I mean, I barfed Saturday morning but that was because I was drunk the night before. That’s the last time.”

“Could it be ... something bad?” I asked, the concern for her health settling on me.

“Probably not,” Liz said. “I was on birth control for... 15 years. The hormones in the shot sometimes take time to work their way out of the system. The shot tricks your body into thinking it’s already pregnant. When you take the hormones away, your body has to reset. Factor in the stress I was under for a couple of months and it’s all explainable. But yeah, I need to get it checked out to make sure. That’s why I didn’t cancel the appointment when all the tests were negative.”