The high notes, p.10
The High Notes, page 10
Ellen never asked for the kinds of things her older sister did. She would ask him for donations to shelters for abused pets she was currently supporting, and was grateful for anything he gave her. The two girls were very different. Their father had a real sense of values, and was generous when it was reasonable, which a ten-million-dollar house in Malibu for Margie wasn’t. She was pissed at him for the moment and not speaking to him. She was pouting, as she always did when her father didn’t give her what she wanted.
Her mother was even harsher when she didn’t get her way, and Margie had learned it from her. Frances was livid that their marriage had fallen apart before he’d started to make really big money. She conveniently overlooked the fact that she was the one who left him. She thought he was wasting his time looking for young singers that he could develop in out-of-the-way places all over the country. He had turned his gift for spotting talent into a gold mine. He was now the hottest name in the music business, with the most famous stars on his client roster. Frances was furious that she hadn’t gotten a piece of that when she walked out on him, looking for bigger fish, but she hadn’t stayed long enough to cash in, lucky for him. He had never married again after Frances. They had divorced when he was twenty-nine years old, and just starting to become successful. He was somewhat suspicious now of most of the women who pursued him. They were transparent about what they wanted from him. At forty-eight, he had been single for nineteen years and liked it that way. He dated singers, models, and actresses. He enjoyed them, but no one had stolen his heart in twenty-three years. Frances had turned out to be a mistake. She was beautiful, but empty and greedy, but he was grateful for the two beautiful girls they had had during their brief time together. He tried hard to be a good father to them, and a responsible father figure to all the artists he represented.
He loved watching Iris work in the studio, singing her heart out for her album. She was a relentless taskmaster, always pushing herself harder and challenging herself to her limits and beyond. He was watching her one night, singing one of her own songs. She hit all the high notes, just like her father used to tell her to do when she sang the anthem at the rodeo, or performed at Harry’s Bar when she was twelve, or hundreds of other places like it, over the years. Clay gave her the opportunity to work with the best sound equipment, the finest trained musicians and technicians, for an album that Clay knew would be an instant hit when they released it. And Boy was doing the same thing with his two singles that would come out on the radio, and hopefully would soar up the charts.
Clay watched Iris quietly. It was after midnight, and he could see that her musicians were getting tired, but Iris wasn’t. She was tireless, driving herself, singing with her eyes closed and her headphones on. She was surprised to see Clay watching her when she opened her eyes when the song ended.
“I think your boys are going to fall asleep here if you don’t let them go home,” he said to her gently, and she glanced at the clock and turned to apologize to them. She could see that they looked tired, but she could have gone on all night. She let them go then, and told them to be back at nine the next morning. Clay waited for her to leave the studio a few minutes later and walked her out. “I think your backup boys may need a little more sleep than you do,” he teased her and she looked sheepish.
“I want to get it right. I hate to leave before we do.”
“There’s always another day,” he reminded her. He was wearing jeans and a black sweater, and she noticed that he looked handsome, and wondered if he had a girlfriend. He had dark brown hair with gray at his temples and green eyes. He seemed like a nice man, and she always saw him alone. But this was work, and she had no idea who he had at home, or even if he was married. She was wearing jeans and a blue T-shirt and tennis shoes, as she always did at rehearsals, with her long blond hair piled high on her head in a clip. She didn’t care how she looked when she worked in the studio. She never wore makeup.
Iris looked about sixteen years old, not twenty-seven. She had a fresh, clean look to her, and was sexy because she didn’t try to be, which made her even more appealing, to Clay at least. He loved her natural looks, but was careful not to show it to her. He didn’t want to step over any lines or cross any boundaries, nor make a fool of himself if she was in love with Boy, which he didn’t think he should ask her.
“There’s no fool like an old fool,” he reminded himself every time he saw her, and he didn’t want to be one. He wasn’t old, but he was twenty years older than she was, an entire lifetime. As young as she seemed, he couldn’t imagine her being interested in him, even if she wasn’t in love with Boy. He felt like an old letch, just thinking about it. He didn’t want to abuse the fatherly role he had in her life. She needed him for that. He told her that they were meeting with the lawyers the next day about her contract, as he rode down the elevator with her. His car and driver were waiting outside, and he offered her a ride back to the hotel, which she accepted. He didn’t want her taking a cab alone at that hour, although she worked late on most nights and often did.
The streets of New York were still busy, and it was a short drive back to the Plaza. Clay lived on Fifth Avenue in the Seventies, just north of the hotel.
“Will Boy still be up when you get home?” he asked her casually, and she shrugged as she looked out the window. She was more tired than she’d realized, and it was catching up to her. She had been standing at the mic for hours and singing hard.
“I don’t know. I think he falls asleep watching TV. I don’t see him when I work this late. He closes his door, and I don’t see him till breakfast.” Clay couldn’t tell from what she said whether they were sleeping together or not, but he didn’t want to make the wrong assumption.
“How long have you two been together?” He tried another tack. He just wanted to know if her heart was engaged, even if he never acted on it, and he was sure he wouldn’t. He didn’t want to make a fool of himself or take advantage of her.
“We’re not ‘together,’ like that. We’re just friends. I met him in Jackson Hole after I left the tour, so that’s about two months now. Besides, I don’t like mixing romance with work. It never works out, and it just messes things up. I guess we could have hooked up, but it would have been a mistake. It’s much better like this,” she said with her wide eyes and innocent face. She had given him hope with the first half of what she said, and dashed his hopes with the rest. She was right not to get involved with the people she worked with. He followed the same principle, but he was tempted to make an exception for her. She had brought him back to reality, like a bucket of ice over his head. He was too old for her anyway, he reminded himself. But it made him a little sad.
The one thing he couldn’t buy was youth. He would have given anything to be her age again, or as old as Boy, and break down her resolve. Boy could have done it, but apparently had chosen not to. It wasn’t the choice Clay would have made. He would have fought to win her if he’d had the chance, but he hadn’t, so he reminded himself on the drive home that there was no point thinking about it. At least he knew her status now. She and Boy weren’t in love. She was single and alone and married to her work. It was why she was so good at what she did. She had nothing to distract her from the main event. Clay’s best artists were like that, although some of them had wild, turbulent personal lives. Iris would never be one of them. He could tell.
Joanne, Clay’s senior assistant, came to get Iris in the studio where she was working the next day, and told her that Clay and the attorneys were waiting for her in the big conference room in Clay’s office. She told her musicians they could take a break for lunch, and she followed Joanne to an enormous room, where Clay and two men were sitting at one end of a very long table, looking serious. They were there to talk about her contract with Glen Hendrix.
“Come on in, Iris.” Clay smiled at her, waved her to a chair next to him, and introduced her to the two men. They were all wearing jeans and blazers, like a uniform, and open crisp white shirts. They looked businesslike and casual, and the lead lawyer, Paul Redmond, got right to the point.
“Some of it is standard boilerplate,” he explained to her about the contract, “and a few clauses are within normal legal bounds, what you’d expect in any contract of this kind. But most of it violates your most basic rights. You have no right to any profits, and no information. You’re expected to work well beyond the hours dictated by the labor laws, with no additional compensation. You’re obliged to work if you’re sick, or penalized financially if you don’t. He has the right to dock your pay for any infraction he deems worthy of it with no explanation of what that infraction would be. You can’t hold him responsible for any physical injury while you’re on the tour, no matter what the cause is, faulty equipment, natural disasters, human error of some kind, and he can fire you at any time without notice, but you can’t quit.” The second lawyer, Andrew Stoddard, nodded as he listened. They had gone over the Hendrix contract carefully and were shocked. It was one of the worst contracts they’d ever seen, and gave one the measure of the man who had ordered it. Everything was in his favor and nothing in hers.
“Normally, some of these tour contracts can be hard to break, and take some negotiation to get out of, which we’d be prepared to do. We’ve done it before. But this Hendrix contract violates your basic human rights and all the labor laws which apply to this kind of activity so completely that there’s no question in our minds that the contract isn’t worth the paper it’s written on.” Her eyes lit up as she absorbed what he had said, and Clay looked pleased too.
“What do I have to do to get out of it?”
“Nothing,” the lawyer reassured her. “He knows how bad his contract is. He couldn’t defend it in court or in front of a labor board. We’ll send him a letter declaring it void, and making it clear that we’ll report him if he pursues you in any way. You’re free to do as you want, as of now. You can sign a contract with Clay, if that’s what you’d like to do, and you can have a lawyer of your own look at it before you sign. You should do that, to be sure you understand what you’re agreeing to.” Clay used a short form for young artists just starting out. Paul pushed it across the table to her. It was a two-page document, and unlike the Hendrix contract, the language was simple and clear. It stated that she wished Clay Maddox to represent her. Their agreement could be dissolved by either party with ninety days’ notice in writing. Any salaries, profits, or royalties due her at that time would be paid in full. She was engaging to perform on a full-length album with the songs to be chosen by her and Clay in agreement on the material. A tour was to be negotiated at a later date, under conditions she agreed to with no obligation for her to tour if she didn’t wish to. She was to receive an advance for the album that made her eyes pop as she read it and looked at Clay and he nodded.
“That’s standard,” he whispered to her.
She was to get a twenty-five percent royalty on the album, which was at the high end, with front- and back-end profits. She had an option for a second album, and all publicity and use of her image or name had to have her consent. It was all in black and white on the page, and she didn’t need an attorney to tell her it was a great contract. Clay’s contracts were always generous and fair. He wanted his artists to be happy and most of them were, except the greediest stars, to whom he made additional concessions when he thought they were worth it, and some were. Her contract also said that all costumes worn onstage or for publicity events were to be paid for by Clay. They had left nothing out. And Boy had been given a similar contract for his two singles, with an option for an album if the singles were a success.
“Where’s a pen?” Iris asked, and the three men laughed.
“You really should have a lawyer look at it for you,” Paul Redmond said gently.
“Why? I can read. Everything is right here. The only things I didn’t get were a Rolls-Royce and a dog.”
Clay slapped his head as she said it and looked at his attorneys. “Damn! Did you forget those again?” He turned to Iris. “What kind of dog?”
“A white fluffy Chihuahua,” she said, joking. She’d always wanted a dog as a kid, but there had been no way to have one with the life she led with her father. They had picked up a stray once, and he’d traveled in the truck with them for two weeks and then got hit by a car at a truck stop. Her father wasn’t even responsible enough to take care of a dog, let alone a child.
Andy Stoddard handed her a pen as Clay nodded, and she signed her name on three copies, one for herself, one for Clay, and one for the office. Then she turned and kissed Clay on the cheek with a grateful look. “Thank you for being so good to me.” He really was like a father to her, the kind one dreamed of and she’d never had. Then she turned to the two attorneys. “And thank you for getting rid of Glen Hendrix for me.”
“Consider it done. We’ll get the notice of termination letter out to him today. You’ll never hear from him again. There’s no way he can fight this. His contract is a disgrace.” She nodded and believed them. He was a miserable human being.
She left Clay with the attorneys then, and ran into Boy in the hall, coming back from lunch.
“I just signed with Clay.” She was grinning broadly. “And they’re getting me out of my old contract.”
“So did I.” Boy looked jubilant too. “I got a fifty-thousand-dollar signing bonus,” he said with awe. She had gotten a hundred-thousand-dollar signing bonus for her album, and had no idea what to do with it. She was going to put it all in the bank. “Let’s go out to dinner tonight, and celebrate,” he suggested to her.
“I’d love it.”
“There’s a diner on Tenth Avenue everyone says is great,” he said, and she laughed.
“We’re going to have to get used to better than diners now, I guess,” she said with a dreamy expression. It was all so hard to believe. But it was real.
There were red roses waiting for her at the hotel with a card when she got back there. “Welcome to the family. Love, Clay.”
She called Pattie on her cell. She told her she had signed with Clay, but not about the money. She didn’t want to make her feel bad. She had already written to Judd to thank him for the phone number that had changed her life. Pattie sounded tired and down.
“What about the contract?” Pattie asked her.
“They’re getting me out of it. They said it’s no problem. It’s not even legal. It violates all the labor laws and our human rights. You can get out of yours too,” she reminded her.
“I need the job. I may have to go home for a while, if he’ll let me. My mom is sick. I don’t have anyone else to take care of Jimmy.”
“How sick?” Iris was worried about her, she knew how Pattie depended on her mother to take care of her son.
“I don’t know. Maybe she’s just tired. He’s a handful for her at her age. He’s a lot for me when I’m home. Maybe she’ll be okay soon.” Iris hoped so for Pattie’s sake. They talked for a few minutes and then they hung up. After four years of touring together, Pattie was still her best friend, and now Boy was too. And Clay. But that was different. He was her benefactor, and her boss, not just a friend.
She and Boy went out to dinner that night to celebrate their contracts, and the diner on Tenth Avenue was pretty good. Neither of them could imagine dining in fancier restaurants. The diner was comfortable and familiar and felt like home to them. They walked back to the Plaza, to their new world of luxury and comfort, and security now, thanks to Clay. Boy had called his band to tell them it was official. He was staying in New York, and wasn’t coming back to Nashville, maybe for a long time. They were happy for him, and said they missed him. Annie and Sean had been offered a place with another band, and Joe was trying out some new bands before he made a decision. There was plenty of work in Nashville, but they all agreed they would miss Boy, yet were happy for his big break with Clay Maddox. It sounded like a miracle to them and felt like one to Boy.
Iris had just gotten into bed when her cellphone rang. It had been a big day, signing the contract, and it was the first night she had taken off in weeks. She was in a great mood. She looked at her phone, and thought it was Boy. No one else called her except Pattie, and they had spoken earlier. The call was from a blocked number. She answered, and was shocked to hear Glen Hendrix on the other end.
“Where the fuck are you?” were his opening words in a vicious tone.
He couldn’t touch her now. She was safe. Clay and the lawyers had told her so. “I’m in New York, and I’m not coming back. Your contract isn’t worth a damn. I’m done. You don’t scare me anymore.”
“Who’ve you been talking to? Some ambulance chaser? That contract is rock solid, and if you don’t get your ass back here, I’ll have you put in jail,” he threatened her. “You’re lucky I’ll still take you back.”
“You’re pathetic, and an affront to the human race. All you do is exploit everyone who works for you. That contract isn’t worth the paper it’s written on. You’re lucky no one puts you in jail.”
“Get back here, Cooper. I mean it. You’ll be sorry if you don’t.” She had run away and defied him, and no one did that to him. He had to make an example of her to the others or they’d all be trying to do the same thing, and his profits would go right down the drain.
“Don’t call me again,” she said, tired of his threats, and hung up. She was shaking when she ended the call, but not like she used to. She had Clay now, and his contract and lawyers to protect her. They had told her that Glen couldn’t do anything to her, and she believed them. But he had such an ominous, evil voice. She never wanted to hear it again.
