Chapter 14 – Seeking The Whosey
The next morning after coffee Gwen informed Roger that he no longer could mope around in the wine cellar, playing with his bottles of Burgundy and Châteauneuf-du-Pape. There was work to do, and he would be doing it for the next year. Roger wasn’t aware he had been moping. It was true he had been spending a lot of time in the cellar of their house, which formerly had been a cistern. Their house, built ca. 1810, like many of the houses of that era, had cisterns that had held the household water supply. The Junes had turned this brick lined space into their wine cellar.
Was that what he was doing? Moping and playing? Well, he was an aristocrat, and that’s what they do, right?
Actually, Roger had been trying to figure out how Stirg had found out where he had all the Hermitage artifacts stored (those that weren’t in the homes of their Russian compatriots who had participated in the caper), and how Stirg had stolen them right out from under his nose. We’re talking nine shipping containers of stuff; the big containers that sit on the deck of huge container ships that carry them all around the world. A warehouse full of rugs, tables, paintings, silverware, and sets of china. How had Stirg done that? Roger did some of his best thinking down in the cellar, but he hadn’t yet been able to figure that out.
“What’s your number one job; the job you’re going to work on this morning, down at The Hall?” Gwen asked.
“Umm, deciding what wine to serve tonight with the sea bass? The Santa Barbara chardonnay or the Languedoc viognier?”
“It was your idea to go after Townshend. It’s important to get the music angle of the production going. Music is central to a ballet, isn’t it, dear? We gotta have that, right?”
They walked to The Hall together, where Roger sat in a chair and watched the Ps slowly translate the notes from the score to the white boards. Then he watched Selgey and Bart change what the Ps wrote on the boards from words to pictograms. He heard Helstof talking on the phone with Gale, asking her to come to The Hall. The woman came out of the back office and said hello. “I have access to three million dollars, Roger. Where do you want to go? We can be out of town before Gwen knows we’re gone.”
“Kansas City.”
“Why Kansas City? Why not Rio?”
“I want barbeque for lunch. It’s very good in KC.”
“I think my new bank card can cover that.” The woman went over to Helstof to see if Gale was coming.
Roger sat at the computer, looking at a photo of Pete Townshend from the 70s, doing his trademark windmill guitar flailing thing. Roger had no idea how to contact a former rock n roll star, now in his early sixties. He thought of a diversion. “Hey, everyone, can you come over here. I need some help.” The four dancers, the admin woman, Helstof and Gwen joined him around the computer. “How much should I offer Townshend to do the job? He's rich, so money may not mean a lot to him. I know I have to present the whole competition with Paul McCartney thing to him, and that may be what makes him want to do this, but we have to offer him money, too. How much? Have you done a budget?” looking at the woman.
“Yes, Roger, I’ve done a budget. That’s what I do. Subtracting our plane fares to Kansas City, one night in the presidential suite of the Ritz Hotel, and $18.95 for the world’s best barbecue, we start with $2,996,981.05.”
Gwen said, “Who’s going to Kansas City?”
Roger and the woman said, “We are. For lunch.”
“Oh.”
The woman went on, “Then subtracting the dancer’s salaries and travel, the PR, the costuming, the catering, the promotions, the utilities, the insurance, the lighting, and all the other stuff, we have about five million left for the music. Is that enough for this Whosey guy?”
Everyone thought about that. A five mill fee to do the music for a world class production of a lost Stravinsky ballet, which, if successful, would propel Townshend far ahead of McCartney and his original Oceans Kingdom score for the New York City Ballet; a production which, by the way, had gotten distinctly lukewarm reviews from the critics. When no one offered an opinion, the woman said, “As far as I know, no one has ever been offered a fee of that magnitude to produce the music for a ballet. And we’re not even talking original music here. Big Igor wrote that in 1914. The Whosey guy is just going to fiddle around with it, right? Seems like a lot to me.”
When no one else commented, Gwen made the executive decision. “The music has to be great, no matter who wrote it or when. It’s key. Roger, you have five mill to get Townshend. Now stop schlepping around, and go get him.”
“Can we still go to KC for lunch, followed by a little rolling thunder at the Ritz?” the woman asked.
Everyone smiled. They liked the woman.
Just then Gale arrived. The woman asked her, “Wanna go to Kansas City with me and Roger, for barbeque lunch?”
Gale looked at Gwen, asked, “You going?”
Gwen shook her head, no.
“Anyone else?”
The rest shook their heads, no.
Gale looked at Roger and the woman, said, “Sure. We coming back tonight, or laying over? If laying over, where?”
Woman said, “Ritz.”
“Ya’ll ever drunk champagne with barbeque? Very nice.” Gale would drink champagne with potato chips, and call it very nice.
Helstof interrupted the goofiness by grabbing Gale and dragging her over to a table on which were photos of past ballet productions. They started talking costumes.
Another place Roger likes to go when he needs to think is The Battery. This is a promenade walkway that stretches along the tip of the Charleston peninsula, and is lined with beautiful old mansions. So he headed down King Street until it dumped out at The Battery, and commenced his cogitative strolling. How the hell was he going to make contact with a semi-retired rocknroller who lived three thousand miles away in London? He walked up the promenade, and down. Up, and down. What was London famous for? Fish and chips. St Paul’s Cathedral. The Thames River. Tabloids.
TABLOIDS. That scourge of English culture. No one does slimier reporting than the English tabloids. Roger had five million dollars at his disposal to get Townshend. Maybe he needed to take a small portion of that, and invest it in the initial contact. He assumed the tabloids would do anything for a fee. Could he pay one of them to print something that would find its way to Townshend’s attention? If so, what would it say? More walking and promenading. More cogitating and cogitations. What else was famous from over there? The Beatles, of course, which brought Roger’s thoughts back to Paul McCartney, and the idea that Townshend might find it interesting to compete with McCartney in the arena of music for ballet.
It didn’t take Roger long to pursue these thoughts to a logical conclusion. First, he jettisoned the idea of a London tabloid, and replaced it with The Times of London, which was the opposite of a tabloid. It was one of the most respected newspapers in Europe. He would buy the entire second page of the Sunday arts section, which would read something like this:
TOWNSHEND AND MCCARTNEY DO MUSIC FOR BALLET. In Response to Paul McCartney’s recent triumph in New York, with his score for Oceans Kingdom, Pete Townshend has agreed to act as musical director for a new ballet production in Charleston, South Carolina, USA. Townshend was quoted as saying, “Paul did well recently in New York, but the Charleston production will be something very special, especially the music. No one ever has done anything like what we will do there, a year from now. Paul, are you listening? I’ll keep two tickets for you, opening night.”
Roger sat down on a park bench under a giant bronze statue of a Confederate Civil War General, sitting ramrod straight on a huge stallion. It reminded Roger of a cartoon he had seen which showed a similar statue. Two horses stare at it, with one saying to the other in the caption, “I don’t know who the guy sitting on top is, but Lightning there distinguished himself at the battle of Gettysburg.”
He thought through his
contact idea, and then searched for others. None appeared, so he headed back up King Street, stopping at the Charleston Place Hotel bar for a martini. Roger believed in providing positive feedback to himself whenever he accomplished something important. At The Hall he found the others eating deli sandwiches and swilling sweet tea. Gwen said, “Well?”
“I got something. Might work. Might not.”
“Have you been drinking, Roger?”
“No. Been thinking. Working very hard. Been very productive. I told you I have something.”
Gwen believed him about the thinking part, but not about the drinking part. She knew all about his theory and practice of accomplishmentreward. If Gwen thought her husband had been drinking in the middle of the workday, the others thought so too, and they were envious. Roger had spent two hours on the job, and now he was done for the day, enjoying a martini, while they continued working away, long after lunch, having to wait until five for their reward, which didn’t seem fair. So they figured they had a right to judge whatever he had come up with very severely, and waited, poised to jump on him.
“I’m going to place a full page, color ad in the Sunday edition of The Times of London, announcing a competition between Townshend and McCartney. It will say that in response to McCartney’s recent triumph in New York with his Oceans Kingdom score, Townshend will produce the music for a world premiere ballet in Charleston. One way or another, Townshend will see it. I’m hoping it will motivate him to contact us, and ask us what the hell we’re doing. When he does, we tell him about the Stravinsky score, that we want him to transcribe that music to synthesizer, and then play it at the premiere. Act as music director for the whole production. I hope the ad will place the idea in his mind of a competition with McCartney. This will be something new for him, music for ballet. Then, we top off the offer with the five mill fee.”
Gwen got up from her chair, went over to Roger and sat on his lap. She looked at him for a moment, then kissed him on the lips. “Good job, babe,” she said. She looked around at the others, and said, “He has been drinking. Martinis. Beefeaters. But I think he earned it.”