Once Brando leaves, there are a few moments of awkwardness between me and his team, until Jessica offers to explain what exactly they’re doing. Behind groans of embarrassment that five people are trying to repair my reputation, and a slight regret that I never had a team like that when I was in high school, I offer to help. Since they’re posting from my social media accounts, I figure I should supply some photos, so we hook my phone up and start trawling through the hundreds of pics I took on the tour for the best ones.
After about a half hour in which the sound of speed-typing and phones ringing never stops, my own phone rings.
“Take it,” Jessica says without peeling her eyes from the screen. “I’ll upload the ones we’ve pulled from it already.”
“Thanks,” I say, as I pull the cable out and take the phone into the bedroom. “Hello?”
“Haley,” says the serious voice on the other end. “It’s Rowland. Look—”
I don’t give him a chance to beat around the bush. “I know you’re dropping me.”
There’s a pause. “Brando told you already, huh?”
“Yeah, but…I don’t understand how this is going to go. With the contract, the tour, the album.”
“It’s done already. I’ve just had my lawyer draw up the termination. You’ll have to sign it – but that’s only a formality.”
I sigh deeply, cover my eyes with my hand, and drop my ass onto the bed.
“I don’t understand…I just did a whole tour for you, the album is supposed to come out in a few months, and what about the royalties? I…”
“It’s a clean break, Haley,” says Rowland, and I can’t tell from his monotone whether he means that to sound like a good thing or a bad thing. “You’ll continue to get the same royalties from the two singles you released under our label, but that’s all.”
“But that’s not fair!” I wail into the phone. “I just busted my ass on the road for a whole month!”
“And we’ve also been paying for studio time for an album we haven’t even heard yet. We supplied you with the bus, the booking, the planning for you to get your name out there – and don’t forget, Haley, you weren’t even the headliner. As far as I’m concerned, we’re even.”
I stand up, my despair turning into cold, frustrated anger.
“You can’t get away with this! There must be something I can do.”
“Sure there is,” Rowland says, continuing to talk as calmly as if he’s ordering a pizza, “you can hire yourself a lawyer, and try to get us to uphold the contract. We would end up tearing each other to shreds, and it would cost both of us more money than we were even making from each other. Plus, and usually I enjoy saying this, but not now; unless you know the second-best lawyer in Los Angeles, you’ll just bury yourself deeper – because I happen to hire the best myself.”
I don’t speak for a few seconds as I try to process all of it, the sudden loss of everything I built my life around for these past couple of months— no, years. I think about the high-rent lease I signed on for, the almost-finished album with no label to distribute it, the reputation I built up so hard on the road turning into gossip-fodder, and wonder if I’m actually worse off than when I was just playing open mics, serving coffee, and crashing with people I only barely called friends.
Then I hear the door of the apartment open, and quickly hang up on Rowland to see who it is. I’m not the only one: the entire loft is silent now, as the team puts all of their focus on the man at the door in a ripped shirt, with cuts and bruises all over his torso, waiting for some sense of reality to reappear.
“Brando?” I say, rushing toward him and inspecting the cuts. “What the hell happened to you? Where did you go?”
“You guys can stop now,” he says to the team seated around his coffee table. “You’ve all done a great job, but I need you to get out of here. I’ll call everyone tomorrow. Thanks.”
Too stunned and frightened to ask anything else, they pick up their laptops and file past us one by one, Simon closing the door behind him and leaving just the two of us alone. Brando looks at me, his eyes loaded with whatever it is he just went through.
“What happened?” I repeat, this time in a whisper.
He puts a hand against my cheek, and brings my chin up to look at him face-to-face.