Chapter 3 #2
"Second thing." Odette turned it around. "Two and a half million dollars. Paid out over three years, in quarters, for your interest in the tour proceeds and a full release."
Savannah looked at the number. It sat there in a serif font, on cream paper, with a cover letter above it that had the word care in it twice.
"Read the letter," Odette said.
In light of the difficult circumstances, and out of genuine care and regard for Savannah's future and her long contribution to the partnership, we would like to propose an arrangement that provides real security and allows both parties to move forward with dignity.
"That's a nice letter," Savannah said.
"It's a beautiful letter. Now turn to page four and read paragraph nine, and read it slow, because it is the only sentence in this envelope that anybody spent money on."
Savannah turned to it.
The Recipient agrees that she shall not make, publish, or cause to be made any public or private communication regarding the circumstances of the parties' separation, including but not limited to statements to press, industry professionals, or on any social platform, whether directly or through any representative.
She read it again.
"Private," she said.
"Private." Odette took her glasses off. "That's not a gag on the press. Press gags are standard. That is a gag on your kitchen. Under that language, if you tell a co-writer at a session why you left your husband, you have breached, and they can claw back everything already paid."
"They'd never enforce it."
"They wouldn't have to. That's the design.
" Odette set the glasses on the pad. "It's a leash with a check on the end of it.
You'd feel it every time you opened your mouth for three years, and that's a hundred and forty-four weeks, which is exactly long enough for the tour to run and the story to die. "
Savannah put the papers down.
The window unit shuddered.
"No," she said.
"You want to think about—"
"No."
Odette's mouth moved, barely. "Then let's decline it in writing and enjoy ourselves."
The phone rang while she was reaching for the pad. Odette looked at the screen and turned it so Savannah could see. SENNETT MEDIA.
"Do you want me to take it?"
"Put him on speaker."
Holt's voice came into the room warm and unhurried, the way it came into every room.
"Savannah. Hon. Are you all right?"
"I'm at my lawyer's, Holt. You're on speaker. This is Odette Callahan."
"Ms. Callahan, pleasure." Not a beat missed. "Savannah, I wanted you to hear this from me before the paper got there. That is a real number and it came from a good place. I've watched you work for nine years."
"Fifteen," Savannah said.
"Ma'am?"
"You've watched him work for fifteen. You've watched me for nine, and you've never once called me directly about anything but a call time."
There was a pause about the width of a breath.
"That's fair," Holt said. "That's fair, and I'd like to fix it. Which is what this is. I don't want you walking out of a nine-year run with nothing but a story."
"Take out paragraph nine and I'll read the rest of it."
"Paragraph—"
"You know which one."
"That's boilerplate, hon. Every deal in this town has language in it."
"Not about private conversations, it doesn't," Odette said pleasantly.
Another pause. Longer.
"Savannah," Holt said, and the warmth came up a notch, the way a thermostat comes up. "I've known you a long while. You've got a hard year in front of you. Take the number."
"Holt," she said. "Does he know you sent this?"
The pause was the answer, and then he covered it. "Deacon's got a record coming out."
"That's not what I asked you."
"I'll call you next week," Holt said. "Get some rest."
The line clicked.
Odette sat back and looked at the phone for a second.
"Well," she said. "He's good."
"He's the best there is."
"He's the best there is at a thing I don't like." Odette pulled the pad over. "Let's write him a very short letter."
Nine days later Odette called and asked her to come in, and said, in a voice Savannah had not heard her use, "Bring nothing. Just come."
There was a single blue-backed document on the desk. Odette was standing behind her chair instead of sitting in it.
"This came at nine this morning," she said. "From Deacon's counsel. Not Sennett's office. A firm in Brentwood I've never seen his name on before."
"What is it?"
"Sit down first."
"Odette."
"He's assigned you his publishing." Odette put two fingers on the cover page. "The whole of his remaining interest in the Holloways catalogue. Every song, back to the first record. Writer's share and publisher's share both. Into your name alone, irrevocably, effective on execution."
Savannah heard the window unit and nothing else for a second.
"All of it," she said.
"All of it. Not half. Not a reversion. There is no conditional language in this instrument at all." Odette pushed it across. "He signed it Friday. It was filed Monday. There has been no press release, and I checked, because I assumed there would be one."
Savannah turned the pages. The signature was on the last one, big and slanted and pressing too hard, over a notary's stamp.
"What does he get?"
"Nothing."
"There's something in it."
"I have read it three times." Odette said it flatly.
"I read it once as his lawyer would write it.
I read it once looking for a reconciliation trigger, because that is the standard hook — sign here, and if she files, it comes back.
There's no trigger. I read it a third time for a morals clause, a non-disparagement rider, a right of first refusal on the songs, an audit provision, a consulting agreement buried in an exhibit.
There's no exhibit. It's nine pages and eight of them are the song list."
"That doesn't happen."
"It does not happen." Odette finally sat down. "In thirty years I have never once had a man hand over an income stream with no string on it. I want you to understand I am not being sentimental with you. I looked. It isn't there."
Savannah sat with the document in her lap.
She had expected to feel something clean, like a win. What came instead was low and unpleasant and sat right under the sternum, and it took her a minute to name it, and when she named it she liked it even less.
It was the feeling of a floor moving.
She could hold a line against the buyout for the rest of her life. The buyout had been easy. The buyout had a leash in it and a warm voice on the phone and a number that told her what nine years was worth to a man with a calculator. She had spent four days being furious in a way that fit her hands.
This had no handle on it anywhere.
"Why would he do this," she said.
"That's not a legal question."
"I'm asking anyway."
Odette took off her glasses and rubbed the bridge of her nose.
"I'll tell you what I know, and then I'll stop, because it isn't what you pay me for.
" She set the glasses down. "Whoever drafted this told him not to.
I can promise you that. No attorney in this state writes an irrevocable assignment with no consideration and no conditions and feels good about it.
Somebody sat him down and gave him three better ways to do the same thing and keep a hand on it. "
"And?"
"And he did it this way anyway." Odette shrugged. "That's all I've got. It cost him a great deal and it buys him nothing, and men do not usually spend money that doesn't buy them anything."
"He might think it buys him me."
"He might. That would be a bad investment and he'd be a fool.
" Odette pulled a single sheet from the folder and laid it on top.
"Which brings us to this. Acknowledgment of receipt.
It says you got it and you know what it is.
It does not thank him. It does not accept anything.
It does not agree to one single thing. It is the most nothing letter I know how to write. "
She set a pen on top of it.
"Sign it and it's yours," Odette said.
Savannah picked up the pen.
The line was right there, three inches long, above her printed name. Savannah Holloway. Her own name, spelled out on paper by a stranger in Brentwood, on a document that made her the sole owner of every word she'd ever written at that kitchen table.
She put the tip of the pen on the paper.
She sat there.
Down on the street somebody's car door shut. The window unit rattled up and settled.
She had left. She had folded four pairs of jeans and put a shoelace through a zipper and driven out at midnight, and the whole way to Berry Hill she'd had it straight in her head: he's going to throw money at this, and I am not going to take it. That was the plan. That was the only plan she had.
He hadn't thrown money at it. He had thrown away money at it.
"Savannah," Odette said. "It's a receipt."
"I know what it is."
"It obligates you to nothing."
"I know."
Her hand did not move.
After a while she put the cap back on the pen and set it down beside the letter, square with the edge of the desk, and looked at it there.
"Not today," she said.