Chương 173: CHAPTER 99 - With a Little Help from My Friends (2)

11 East Seventy-Third. Friday, 11th July 2008. Mrs Byrne did a lemon sole on Fridays. Eppie had learned not to comment on it. Her host was otherwise irreligious, and singularly fond of fine seafood. Juliana Vaughan ate the way she did everything, which was slowly and clinically.

"You are making a film," her not-mentor said suddenly. Eppie's fork paused.

"There have been reports on my breakfast table," Vaughan smirked.

"George keeps an eye on you, if you must know. In case you fall off the wagon, as they say. Maxing out credit cards. Indulging in recreational drugs, bringing boys home, teen pregnancies, that sort of thing." Eppie's expression grew horrified—then Vaughan burst into depreciative laughter.

"My apologies. It was just that… the idea of you being… naughty was very amusing."

"So… the film," Eppie continued with the fish.

"Yes. Tell me about it. Properly, from the beginning. The art and the money. I know how this works. I sit on four boards, film included, and I can advise on everything except the Super Bowl." Eppie told her not-mentor. The original script. The new script. The director, and the French artist who returned to finish something from a younger self. Vaughan put her cutlery down gently, then she looked at her for a long moment.

"A curious choice for a first film," she said.

"I would have expected… oh, I don't know. Pride and Prejudice? A Midsummer Night's Dream? Do you have the tape?"

"How do you know there's a tape?"

"George knows all." Eppie chose not to question that fact. George came up a little sheepishly ten minutes later with a great old trolley with a brass rail, wearing white gloves. The ancient machine was a Sony with a bulge like a fishbowl, a video recorder built into its underside, and a coat of dust that George addressed en route with a duster he produced from somewhere about his person. Vaughan waited with her hands folded, entirely unhurried, in the manner of a woman who kept time with twelve centuries of art.

Then the picture came up: a green-tinged sprung floor, a strip of gaffer tape, three chairs that did not match. Eppie watched the Chief Curator of the Metropolitan Museum of Art watch her walk down a corridor that was not there. Vaughan watched her performance as Curon had watched it, hawkishly, and with immense investment.

"Welcome home." And then the scene ended, and the tape kept running, because nobody had turned the camera off. Ninety seconds of an empty floor. Two men, not moving. Not speaking.

"Jack."

"Yeah."

"Turn it off." Vaughan sat back.

"Did you enjoy yourself?"

"I would like to think so."

"That's good," said Vaughan.

"Do you have enough money?" Why does everyone say that?! Eppie wondered if her [Prophet of Profits] was to blame, and if it was laying a trap for her [Causality] surplus.

"It's a problem of proportion," said Eppie.

"I am funding the film, since… I don't trust the banks to fund Jack."

"Explain."

"There's a line." Eppie set two fingers on the tablecloth, a few inches apart.

"The actors' union lets a small film pay low rates—but only if the film stays under a certain size. Under the line, we're allowed. Over it, we're a studio picture."

"Ah." Vaughan's mouth did something dry.

"So a generous investment would be an assassination."

"It could be." Eppie turned her glass.

"Which is why Dad is on the telephone to his old friends. He's calling in favours. Not cash—somewhere friendly to shoot, without boards and too many lawyers. Jack wants to shoot a four-page scene in one unbroken take, which means total control. We lack a good producer. Control is what we're short of." Juliana Vaughan considered this for some time.

"You're shooting that scene?" she asked. Eppie nodded.

"I would very much like to see it done properly," the Dame of the Met said.

"And the rest of the film will be in that building? Upstairs, downstairs? Stairwell? Apartment? Well, apartments…" Eppie nodded again. Vaughan sipped her wine.

"It's a bother if there are too many locations."

"It sure is," Eppie sighed, her MTV shoot still vivid in her memory.

"Let's lower the difficulty then. Like your father, I will also chip in. In that area, we own a few buildings." Eppie's glass stopped halfway. Even in her past life, she had never… owned downtown buildings. Plural.

"George?"

"Madam," George answered from beside the VHS trolley.

"How many buildings do we own in that region of the city?" George stood with the cloth folded over his forearm and gave the question the consideration it deserved.

"Freehold, or including the ground leases?" Eppie drained her glass to calm her nerves.

"The girl wants somewhere that looks authentic," said Vaughan, "and does not have a board, and does not have a lawyer, and will not charge her by the hour. Have we anything?" George considered Eppie's shocked face.

"There is Rivington Street, madam." Vaughan pursed her lips.

"I am not familiar with it." George turned to Eppie. He was very good, as if to make up for his reporting to Vaughan of her every move.

"Six storeys, miss. A walk-up. Twenty-two units originally, sixteen after the fire escapes went in. The family bought it in 1894, and it has never been out of the Estate since. The top floors require extensive renovations. The lower floors are rented. It was landmarked in eighty-one, which means we may not alter the façade, the stair, or the public hall. Is that suitable?"

"I… don't know," said Eppie.

"Jack will have to see it for himself." If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.

"The plaster is original, miss. So is the stair. There is a light well, and a public hall on every floor with a single window at the end of it, and the doors are solid." A small, deeply private satisfaction crossed George's face.

"Two of the flats still have their tin ceilings."

"Good. Give it to them," Vaughan said.

"For as long as they need it, at no charge, with the insurance on my account. Forgo rent for the families who choose to give our Eppie run of their floor. Round up to the month." Vaughan considered her offer, looked at Eppie smugly, then smiled, pleased with herself.

"And do be very careful that nobody writes an article about it. I have a museum to run. I wouldn't want anyone to get the wrong idea about my not-protégée." Her chin lifted a fraction.

"So. Eppie, tell Fred that two can give gifts, and his favour… can be used elsewhere, to better effect." Eppie lowered her head in gratitude. + Karmic Causality + Karmic Causality Christ… Her back felt clammy. The [System] must REALLY want her in the industry. After all, film was the very first catalogue Lana had fleeced. 214 Rivington Street. Friday, 18th July 2008.

The stairs went up in a square around a light well, and Eppie, George and Ferroni went up with them, and the light well had been painted, at some point before the First World War, a green that had since become a different colour. George went up ahead of them with the keys, which were on an iron ring. Ferroni had not spoken since the second floor, since Eppie told him that they had the place and the people.

On the fourth, George unlocked the hall door and stepped aside, and Jack Ferroni walked out into a public hall eleven feet wide and forty feet long, with four doors down one side and a single window at the far end, and stopped dead. Dust hung in the shaft of it like ember angels. The floor was worn pale in a strip down the middle where a hundred years of people had walked home.

They watched the director crouch at the head of the hall, which put his eye about four and a half feet off the floor — the height of a five-one teenage girl carrying milk.

"It's perfect…" he said to them. He pointed at the far window.

"That's the scene. That's the light she walks into. North, soft, dead by four, and I don't care, because I only need it once. We'll get props in here and set everything up. Rigging, lights, the works."

"Three days?" said Eppie.

"Three days. First week of August, four if the building lets me."

"They will," George announced beside them with the surety of gravity and rental offset. Ferroni looked at Eppie, then at the setting of his film, and his eyes were warm. + Karmic Causality + Karmic Causality"Well…" Eppie gave her director the same smug smile her father had used.

"George will give you the keys. See you around filming day…" That same night, Eppie tossed and turned in bed, excited, but also haunted by just how well things were going. Knowing the [System], there was no way things could be going this smoothly. And that's when Maddy texted about an email. Shifting to her iMac, Eppie checked the latest and the greatest and found the answer she was looking for.

From: Madeleine Filmore < [email protected] > To: Euphemia Fontaine < [email protected] > Cc: Frederick Curon < [email protected] >; Eric Lee < [email protected] >; R. Salcedo < [email protected] > Sent: Fri 18 Jul 2008, 2: 41 PM Subject: it's back, it's worse, and I have already called your father Eppie. I rang Fred before I typed a word of this, so he knows. Read all of it anyway. 😤 IT RESTARTED SUNDAY 13th, around 9 AM. 340 posts in five days across the boards, MySpace and four blogs.

June's worst single day was 61. NOT THE SAME ACCOUNTS. Thirty-odd new handles, all registered mid-July, all with just enough history to not look new. 🧊 AND IT'S A DIFFERENT ATTACK. June was "she's sleeping with the producer." This is two things, and the second is worse. (1) THAT YOU DIDN'T WRITE ANY OF IT. Someone at our "company" said that there's a room full of session writers at Sony and you're the face they hired. Whatever Will Be. Do-Re-Mi. Your hand in Umbrella. All of it. AND THEY ARE GOING AFTER VINCENT.

🤬 There's a trending four-thousand-word post on why "a child could not have written this" — the internal rhyme, the register. A total pro wrote it. That's what makes it dangerous. It is wrong, but it is not stupid. The Met's press office says they're on your side 🌈 (2) THE CHRONOLOGY. A post did a full-blown investigation—dated, numbered, sourced. Every public appearance you and Fred have made together since you were fifteen, in order. When you moved in.

That you're emancipated and there are no guardianship papers. That he is your "discoverer" and pointed to three existing anecdotes of what happened to the "discovered". The writer's an industry insider 😐 MORE PICTURES. Grammy night is in there—Fred with the Grammy in your lap, his hand on your shoulder. There are also witness accounts that you had a ruined dress! There are eleven new pictures, and I don't know where they came from. 😨 Two of you and Fred at a café on Fifty-Third. One in a lobby, holding hands.

One on a street I don't recognise, his arm around your waist. There's one of him buying you THREE HOT DOGS?! The post says he's fattening you up? WHY? Does Mr Curon have a gingerbread house too? AND NOW THE PART THAT IS DRIVING ME INSANE. 🤨 Whoever is taking these is extraordinary. Eleven surveillance photographs and there is not one bad frame in the set. NOT ONE. Available light, no flash, tack sharp on your eyes from what Ray reckons is thirty metres, and they are COMPOSED. Are they shooting for the Pulitzer?!

You look REALLY GOOD in them. Maybe that's why the trades are avoiding them. Five days, zero pickups. You cannot illustrate "sinister older man" with cinema-class photography. Your hair looks insane. There are comment chains on your salon 🫥 WHAT I'VE DONE. Fred knows. Artist Services is briefed, and two of our crisis people have cleared the weekend. Corbin Risk extended past the 31st. Police report stays open, and the pictures go on it Monday. WHAT I WANT TO DO — and I need you to actually think about this.

🎤 Late night talk show. You go on, you sing. Live, in the room, no track, no click, no pitch anything, and we let the broadcast do the arguing. You cannot win a fight with people who say you can't sing. You can only sing. And people love you for it. Mr Trent says he'll organise it. He says it's your job. ACTION ITEMS Read it twice. 📖 REPLY. With words. 😤 Do not post, do not comment, do not log in. 🚫 Please don't generate any saucy photos with Director Curon… Maddy.

X Madeleine Filmore, Media Manager, Artist Services, Sony Music Entertainment T: (310) 244-XXXX | [email protected] Eppie read the crisis in bed, twice. There was no anger. The suspicions were right. A child could not have written this was the honest answer. She had not written Vincent. Somebody had, in a world she could not access.

And she had carried it across and put it into the air, where it had been beautiful, and where it had made a city, many cities, stand in front of Van Gogh's paintings for fifteen minutes and finally see. She had kept her name off it. The single used Almond Flowers for its cover, no photograph, no face. She had kept herself out of the song's essence. Then she scrolled back to the photo attachments and felt only consternation. [Love the Light]. [Hitting the Mark].

Two skills she had been given and had never once had to switch on, because they had never once switched off. In these "candid" photos, her chin found its angle in a lift lobby. Her eyes took whatever was available and made it look like someone was holding a bounce card off-camera. In some of those linked photos, it looked like footage from the Hallmark film, The Daily Happy Life of Daddy and Me. The photographer was not a genius.

The photographer was a man with a long lens, bewildered by the aesthetics of his illicit invasions of privacy. Should I move the song forward? Trent said he would arrange it? The talk show? She would go on, and she would defend herself, and she would prove to the world a true lie: that her works were original, that she had paid for them with her life.