CHAPTER 77 – Father and Son

Euphemia Fontaine, Grammy winner, spent the next four hours meticulously working over possibilities involving a certain Valorie, Hey Jude, and a loaned guitar. In the taxi, she had fallen into such a trance of thought that she started humming the tune aloud.

“Na-naaaah, na-na-na-naaaaah….”

If her messy hair had looked less intentional, or if her face had looked any less adorable, her driver would have kicked the teen tweaker out of his car before she left her sick all over the front seat.

At 10 PM, she slid into LAX with her bugout bag and all her documentation. She stood for a moment in the sodium lights, bathed in the gold of the old, burning bulbs, and wondered just how ridiculous her plan seemed.

A part of her scoffed at the plan—until her [Perfect Pitch] and [Memorisation] threw up the exact synaesthesia of Valorie’s breath against the muffled, padded blackbox wall, burying the girl’s panic in the porous fabric, hoping that the foam would absorb the hurt.

The texture and hue of that terrible sound, Eppie recalled, was a fresh purple bruise, black around the edges, pink and glistening near the middle, because she had heard it less than two hours ago.

She gave her doubts a few more moments to settle, then fed herself into the great confluence of bodies flowing through LAX.

In business class, her overstimulated body meant she had plenty of time to arrange Jude, using [Composer] to annotate the song for guitar.

Hey Jude was, in essence, beginner’s guitar 101.
It really was a perfect song in the sense that it was easy for anyone, from anywhere, to hum, sing, or play. No one with a degree in musicology would laud the song’s composition, because it was just three chords doing what came naturally to the human ear. F, B-flat, C. A schoolkid’s first chord chart, the kind a gifted kid learned in their second guitar lesson, right after G-C-D. No key change. No modal trickery. The melody barely left five notes for the first two verses, stepwise; it was almost lazy. The tune was so accessible that a tone-deaf layman could hum it in the shower and do a decent karaoke rendition.

And then, the bridge—resolving so predictably that it felt inevitable, like a well-worn classic by Bach. This song—this uncomplicated melody—had sold eight million copies and stayed unchallenged for nine straight weeks.

And then the CODA—four straight minutes of Sir Paul McCartney murmuring “Na-na-na-na” while a billion people hummed along without missing a beat—in the stadium, in the office, in the classrooms, and in lightless parks at night.

But what was Jude without Julian?

Eppie knew precisely what to do. She was, after all, the lady who had sacrificed the Beatles’ catalogue on the altar of her success, amongst countless other works of immense human inspiration.

Her [Script Analysis] told her that the song wasn’t just for [Causality]. For Jude to exist in this world, it mustn’t be affected by her [Prophet of Profits]. For the song to exist across the planes of causality, it mustn’t be a vehicle for a maestro’s ego, or Sony’s profit engine.

It must be a threshold, it’s simple keys opening the stubborn door to the everyman’s heart.

Heedless of the questioning looks from the business class hostesses, Eppie’s hands played her invisible guitar, while her lips hummed the lyrics, her [Vocality] leaving half a cabin with a tune they couldn’t shake from their heads.

NYC.
The Four Seasons.
Eppie stepped from the taxi into the porte-cochère, aided by Gerald Fitts, the General Manager himself.

The manager led her into the lobby, his face a mask of affability. Eppie returned the courtesy, possessing no negative feelings for the man’s initial reaction to Kiritani, especially since Gerald had since made himself useful.

Having topped up her [Stamina] after her red-eye flight, she had already assembled her thoughts, ready to manifest from hypothesis to reality.

“Allow me to take that to your room.” The manager was all smiles. “There’s someone who is waiting for you in the cafe lounge.”

Unsurprisingly, Eppie met Frederick Curon in the lobby, sprawled sideways across one of the Four Seasons’ absurd velvet armchairs. Moncler jacket. Cuban Fedora. Gucci sneakers loosely laced. A newspaper open on his knee. All black and gold. If the man were in a three-piece suit and oxfords, he would have looked the part—but now, he looked like a Gen-Alpha, AI-hallucinated idea of an old-school detective.

He intercepted her as she entered with Gerald, throwing the NY Times on the desk as if she were some femme fatale slow-sauntering through the lobby.

“There’s my little lady.” Curon was up and had her in a hug before she could protest being seen with his fashion crime in the same room. “What happened to you? Your hair looks great.”

“Thanks?” Eppie endured the ruffling of her hair, which somehow made her look cuter.

“You ate?” Curon studied her new look strangely, then shrugged.

Eppie’s stomach answered before she could, for [Stamina] replenishment was synonymous with hunger and thirst.

They ate in the hotel’s near-empty cafe, too late for the AM crowd, too early for the brunch ladies. In hushed tones, shaping her voice through [Vocality], she told her adopted father about her plans to throw Valorie a rope.

“A new song?!” Curon ignored everything else she said, zeroing in on the only thing he cared about. “And you want it open to non-profit usage?”

Eppie nodded. “It’s essential.” Essential for my… 400,000 [Causality].

Curon smacked his lips. “How good of a song are we talking about?”

Without the Julian context? God knows… “It’s good…” Eppie said modestly. “Top 10?”

Her adopted father pinched his brows. “That high? Are you trying to shorten my life? Or Davis’s?”

“Wouldn’t the good karma Sony generates add to your longevity?” Eppie cocked her head prettily, leveraging her new [Comeliness]. “Is this such a challenge?”

“You’re making it one,” Curon shielded his eyes with his latte. “I think you need to convince Davis. Carey Fielding—that’s our Head of Legal—will be on the hook to draft a standing waiver in addition to our usual licensing. We’re talking schools, non-profits, student productions, non-monetised social media—all without fee or clearance, so long as ‘Euphemia Fontaine’ is credited. That’s a hell of a grey zone. Also, you’re making my gift look bad.”

The inner Eppie made a triangle with her hands in the style of Mr Burns. And that’s how I’ll lower the cash flow and up the Karma flow…

“Films, adverts, streaming, covers, as normal,” Eppie affirmed Sony’s potential profits. “Also, what did you mean by gift?”

“We’re dropping Doves Cry next week,” Curon answered seriously. “I asked Kelvin how serious he was about making it up to you, and he decided on the gift of money. A bit crass, but the kid’s heart’s in the right place.”

“Money?” Eppie tilted her head to the opposite side. Her innards shuddered.

“Some serious money,” Curon said. “He’ll give you his cut.”

“From the song?” Eppie felt her heart seize. If that money hits my personal account… and [Prophet of Profits] kicks in… She might just evaporate in a puff of smoke.

“To your Trust, of course,” Curon watched her expression change colour. “Are you allergic to profits?”

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

“Yes,” Eppie’s soulful eyes brimmed with moisture. “I am deathly allergic… to money…”

Curon studied her for a second. “I can’t tell if you’re serious.”

“Yes.”

Her adopted father sighed. “Anyway, is the donation good enough? We’re talking three to four million over five years. I don’t think Kel understood just how much he gave away.”

“Tell Kel I’ve got a part for him in the future,” Eppie thought about Sister Act II. “Kellie, too, among others. It’s going to be an interesting project. After May.”

“No doubt,” Curon said drily. Her adopted father knew what was going down in May. What neither of them could predict was the aftermath. “Alright. Next order of business. Dream a Little MTV, I’ve got the director—Merric Webber. You’ve heard of him?”

Eppie shook her head.

“Young guy, mid 20s, he did about… two hundred music videos so far, almost always for young bands like Blue Days, Marylene 5. He’s trying to get money up for a movie—and he’s not going to give up this opportunity to rub shoulders with Vaughan’s protege. He’s signed up a bit later, so… mid-March?”

The name sounded incredibly familiar, but Eppie couldn’t place any of the pop singers, nor had she seen their music videos.

“Sure,” Eppie said. “I’ll make time when he makes time.”

They agreed on mid-March. Her job with the Sophomores was largely supervision, and her work with the Seniors… was a placeholder.

“How’s Pines doing?” she asked Curon out of curiosity.

“Maddie didn’t tell you?”

“I check emails as often as you do…”

Curon burst into laughter. “It’s doing well with critics, not so much with the public. It’s a serious song for serious people. I am surprised it sold this well. In the right circles, though, it’s making inroads. No one writes Appalachian Blues anymore, much less little white girls from Los Angeles. The music video we made isn’t doing it any favours—but I think it’s necessary.”