Chapter 139

My frantic, unhappy Monday rolled right into a hectic Tuesday.

I had a pile of things on my plate a mile high and 50 miles wide.

I had to talk to the professor to begin coordinating the events that stood to potentially reshape the music industry. That conversation wouldn’t be a short one.

I had to spend three hours with George Carter – along with representatives from Liz’s other division – to convince him to take on the job of managing her career.

I had to spend an hour (cut down from 90 minutes and moved up to 7 a.m. in Nashville and 5 a.m. in the city where the call would originate – which I couldn’t remember for the life of me) speaking to a reporter from a Spanish-language newspaper and hoping to God I didn’t mangle something in my second language.

I somehow had to fit in five rehab sessions.

Oh, and I had to spend part of my morning with Morrie Epstein and Liz trying to convince them I didn’t want any of her money when she tossed my ass to the curb.

I had been on the phone to the professor until almost one in the morning and I was less than pleased when my phone alarm began buzzing four hours later. I had set it across the room, completely disregarding the time it took me to get unstrapped and moving.

“Is that another phone call?” Liz asked in a tired voice.

“No,” I grumbled. “It’s the signal that I need to get my ass moving.”

“You just came to bed,” Liz pointed out.

“No rest for the wicked and all that,” I replied as I finally extricated myself from my harness. I stumbled across the room and shut off the blaring alarm (which was set to grow louder the longer it was on). I rubbed my tired eyes and pressed my fingers to my temples to stem the headache I already felt arriving.

“God damn it,” I muttered.

“What?” Liz asked. She had sat up in bed and was blinking and rubbing her eyes.

“I need help getting out of this fucking thing,” I noted. “Brea won’t be here ... for three more hours.”

“Give me a minute to get my bearings and I’ll help,” Liz said. “Did you sleep at all?”

“Three or four hours,” I said.

“Travis!” Liz said.

“Liz!” I shot back. “I’ve got a thousand fucking things to do – and I have to get 998 done by 11 o’clock.”

She pinched her nose.

“Yeah,” she said. “I need you in with me while we talk to George. Morrie wants to have this conversation in person and he has to be on a plane as soon as we wrap up with George. We can fly him back down if you get pressed for time.”

“We’re pressed for time on the wedding, too,” I said. “It’s five-and-half weeks until Labor Day. We need to get this done and out of the way so it’s not hanging over our heads.”

“I’ll take a quick nap after my four o’clock session,” I said.

“And come to bed early tonight,” Liz added.

“If I can,” I said. “We’ve got a lot of things to get moving and we have to have our part in place before the others can act. We’re off the front page for a couple of days at least.”

“And we can stay off the front page,” Liz said.

“Ideally, we stay off of it until you announce your signing with RaveLand,” I said. “Right now, Lenny O. is taking a beating from his label. They’ve cut his advertising back to what they’ve already paid for. He went public with the information last night.”

“I didn’t hear about that,” Liz said.

“It was after you’d gone to bed,” I told her. “It hit about 11 o’clock here. He flat out told ‘Entertainment This Evening’ that if he didn’t have the label’s hands in his pocket, he could drop a disc for $12 and that he had absolutely no control over the price. That all came from somewhere else.”

“Is that good?” Liz asked.

“I don’t know yet,” I admitted. “It all depends on the initial reaction from the fans. I had to have Susan pull Adele in last night to craft a release.”

“That’s OK,” Liz said.

“It’s more God damned overtime,” I groused. “She was there all fucking day yesterday and again most of last night. At some point, Liz, we’ve got to stop working for everybody for free.”

“We’re OK moneywise,” Liz said. “I explained the situation to accounting and we’ve shifted some of the reserve fund to your budget. We’re not going to have to go out panhandling while this plays out.”

“I just wanted you to know that this is a ... six month ... proposition,” I said. “It’s not going to be balls to the wall for six months but it’s going to crop up periodically for that long. For the next two or three weeks, it’s going to be all hands on deck. Our budget is already fucked, Liz. We can’t keep coming to you with our hand out because we can’t manage our department.”

“Actually, you can,” Liz said. “Honey, cost overruns are a fact of life for me. Part of it comes back to how little I actually know about what really goes on. But another part is that shit happens. It might be a strike at a textile mill in Massachusetts or it might be a sudden increase in the cost of silk thread from India. You roll with it.”

“And that’s fine for departments that produce revenue,” I said. “It’s not fine for legal to suddenly come in $300,000 over budget one month. There is no way to recoup the money we’re spending.”

“Sure there is,” Liz said. “What you’re doing is going to pay dividends in the future. Will I see an immediate return? No. But down the road, a year or five years, the money I spend now in putting this together will lead to revenue streams I’ve never envisioned. In a way, it already is. When I first looked into handling my own arrangements, it didn’t occur to me that I would be able to expand LLE to serve as ... a partner ... to RaveLand. Even when Eric brought it up, it didn’t really seem like a real possibility.

“If it came to pass at all, it would be years or a decade down the road. But because of what your team is doing, it’s already here. By this time next year, my marketing department probably won’t be revenue-negative. I’ve taken a look at the breakdown of what I paid to RFN for these services. I can charge other artists a quarter of that percentage and still break even. If I charge them a third, we’ll be in the black by the end of the eighth quarter. That’s a pretty quick ROI on anything, Travis. Don’t worry about the money we’re spending now.”

I nodded.

“But worry about wearing people down,” Liz continued. “I want you ... no. I’m going to call Rick and Sarah and Susan this morning. I want them to identify other people besides Liam and Adele that can take point on this. I want everybody in that department to take a paid day off in the next two weeks.”

“You’re talking about having four people a day off out there, Liz,” I said. “That won’t work right now.”

“OK,” Liz said. “Then we’ll push it to a month. It’s not comp time. They’ll still be paid for what they’re doing. It’s a mandatory bonus day in the next 30 days. And that includes the salaried employees.”

“We’ll see what we can do,” I said with resignation.

“No,” Liz corrected. “You’ll do as I told you. This isn’t a negotiation. We’ll be OK if we miss something here or there or come in 10 hours late with a comment.”

“OK,” I said.

Since I had no visual encouragement, I spent my morning workout running over ways I could live up to Liz’s command. I didn’t think it likely since I had my fingers in so many pies but I figured toward the end of her timeframe I could work something out – or find a way to explain why I hadn’t.

I was headed to the shower as Liz was exiting so I stole a quick kiss.

“I’d have waited if I’d known you were going to be here so soon,” she noted.

“I figured you’d still be sleeping,” I told her.

“You’re not the only one with a lot to do today,” she pointed out.

She was having her breakfast when I entered the kitchen. I stole another quick kiss, collected a bottle of water and headed out again.

“Where are you headed now?” she asked.

“Uh, your studio,” I admitted. “I think the soundproofing will let me talk to The Professor without resorting to code.”

The shift from a job description to a title just happened. Midway through my discussions with Liz, the capital letters had just crept in.

“I should have thought of that!” Liz said.

“Well, yeah, me too,” I said with disgust. “Dayton pointed it out last night when he saw me standing behind the waterfall talking on the phone in the rain.”

Veronica tilted her head and looked at my arm.

“How do you ... hold an umbrella and the phone at the same time?” she asked.

“I don’t,” I said. “That’s why Dayton came out. Of course he waited until I was already too wet to care but that’s another story.”

I winked at Liz but she shook her head sadly.

“Anyway, I’m just going to set up shop in there today,” I said. “I mean, unless you need it for something.”

“No, that’s not going to be used for a few more weeks,” she said.

“I figured it would keep me out of the way,” I said. “I’m doing a videoconference with ‘Voz del Mundo’ first. Then I have The Professor from eight to eleven.”

“Don’t forget to eat,” Veronica said.

I patted my stomach above my right arm.

“I always remember to eat,” I said.

My videoconferences went smoothly (far more smoothly than I’d expected) and things were starting to move forward in San Diego.

Veronica offered me an apple as I passed through her domain on my way to Liz’s office where Morrie Epstein waited with a stack of papers awaiting my signature (which had improved somewhat since Susan and Chris had closed on the house).

“Is it really necessary to have my name on things?” I asked.

“It isn’t necessary but it’s what Liz has told me to do,” Morrie explained. “I did it. And I recommend you do the same. The fight it will take to convince her to change her mind is just not worth the energy it would require.”

“Because I won’t change my mind,” Liz declared.

I frowned.

“If you don’t sign them by Friday, we won’t be able to close on either property by Monday,” Morrie said. “It’s a standard mortgage agreement with the bank that Liz deals with on property matters. There is no balloon for early repayment; it’s fixed rate at a very good percentage for this amount of money. I wouldn’t have recommended it to Liz if it wasn’t in good order.”

“I know,” I said. “It’s just ... do you realize how much money I have in my bank account right now? It ain’t anywhere near the amount of money I’m agreeing to repay.”

“It will be when we get a joint account,” Liz said.

I pinched my lips, shook my head and pointed at her.

“We are not getting a joint account,” I stated firmly.

Liz lifted her eyes at me in the “we’ll see” gesture.

“OK,” I said. “I’ll sign these ... if Liz agrees that we are not consolidating finances,” I said.

Liz narrowed her eyes and then closed them.

“OK,” she said. “I agree.”

I scribbled my signature on the promissory note and she smiled.

“Technically, you don’t have anything to consolidate,” she said. “Or, at least you won’t once I find a way to bleed you dry.”

I shook my head.

“You should have asked for it in writing,” Morrie advised.

I chuckled.