Paul looked at Renee first and then at Stella and Anna. They looked at each other, and then back at him. He said, “Go for it, Gwenny. The music will be ready.”
“Who’s going to play it? Who’s going to play the music in performance? Six performances over three weeks. Friday and Saturday nights.”
Paul looked surprised. Renee said, “You don’t have a band ready for this? Five weeks away?”
He thought a moment and said, “I can come up with a few musicians, if you can?”
She looked at him and said, “I mostly know classical musicians. People like Yo Yo Ma. I know the guys that did Dark Hope. Maybe I can get them.”
Paul said, “Gwenny, we’ll start calling people today. I don’t see a problem. We’ll get back to you.”
“They need to be here before opening night. They’re going to have to learn the music. Say in three weeks. That would give them two weeks for rehearsals. Can you do that?”
“Going to have to.”
“You going to have the songs done in three weeks?”
He looked at Renee and said, “If we can stay out of the bedroom.”
Chapter 69 - Going After Ringo
At the same time Jinny was worrying about what to do with the idiots, Paul and Renee were worrying about where to find a great band to play the music. It had to be people who could be in Charleston in three weeks, devote two weeks to rehearsals, and then three more weeks to the six performances, and that was crazy. Anna asked, “Who’s paying for this whole thing, anyway? The Junes? You? Scotilly? This is going to cost a million bucks to stage.”
Renee said, “You don’t even know who’s paying for this?”
Looking kindly at his new girlfriend, Paul said, “Roger and Gwen didn’t tell you that part of the deal? Didn’t tell you you’re the financier as well as the singer?”
She whispered something in his ear, which made him laugh. Watching this stuff from a sixty-nine year old man and a fifty-seven year old woman just about made Anna and Stella gag, but what are you going to do. Paul said, “We have two choices: we negotiate with Scotilly that she pays for everything out of her five mill, or I get stuck with the bill.”
Renee said, “What five mill?”
Stella said, “The five mill ransom he’s going to pay her and Jools.”
“Huh?”
“That’s the deal he made with them. He writes the world’s greatest rock opera, performs it in Charleston, pays them the ransom, and promises not to escape from this luxury accommodation. In return, they don’t wave guns around at us.”
“Who was waving guns at you?”
“Jools.”
“From what I’ve seen, even I could slap Jools silly and take a gun away from him if he was waving it at me.”
“Yeah, but that’s the deal he made,” Stella said.
Renee looked at her new boyfriend for an explanation. He said, “I like this place. It’s just what I needed to do something I’ve wanted to do for thirty years.”
“What’s that?”
“Write a great piece of music. A big work. I did Oceans Kingdom, and I like it, but that’s for ballet, with no singing. A human voice singing is the greatest of all musical instruments, so I wanted to do a big work with singing. But I let distractions get in the way over the last years. Then this popped up, and it all works. Enforced isolation. Well, sort of enforced. And when it appeared and I got into it, I thought of you singing with me, and that clinched the deal. The five mill ransom, and maybe another mill to finance the production….that’s all worth it. Easy. What else am I going to spend my money on?” He looked at his daughter and said, “Don’t worry, there will be plenty for you.”
Renee looked at him, then at Anna and Stella, then back at him. “Love and art, they ain’t for keeping. Let’s rock. What about the band?”
Paul sat on the piano stool and diddled the melody from My Love. Stella waited a respectable time for him to answer, then said, “What about Ringo?”
Paul stopped playing and said, “What about him?”
“His All Stars. What about asking him to put together a new band of All Stars. Some of them have been pretty good, right? Lay the burden on him. You got enough to do with writing the music.”
Paul switched to playing It Don’t Come Easy, stopped halfway through, and said, “Why not? Not a bad idea, hon. Why not give it a try. Will you ask him? Tell him what we have going on here?”
“You mean tell him you’ve been kidnapped?” With emphasis she added, “WE'VE been kidnapped?”
“Whatever it takes, babe. But we promised not to squeal on Scotilly and Jools, ok?” He pulled Renee down onto the bench with him and said, “Fourth song. Let’s do it.”
Stella and Anna left the lovebirds cum composers to it and went back to the living room. Anna asked, “You have Ringo’s number? Email? You know him very well?”
“He’s my godfather. Remember I’m the oldest, and Dad gave him that honor when I was born. So we’re pretty close. That’s why I suggested it. He needs to focus on writing the songs. I figured I had a chance to persuade Ringo to do this. Not sure, but there’s a chance.”
“You going to tell him we’re kidnapped?”
“Maybe. Depends on how he responds. If he’s iffy, then I’ll play that card. It’s an ace, right?”
“I guess telling someone that Paul McCartney has been kidnapped, and you’re asking them for help; yeah, I’d call that an ace.”
While Stella pulled on the rope that went into a metal vent stack, through the eight feet of concrete, across the fifty yards of vegetation, up to the third floor deck of the big house, and into the kitchen, and served as the signal mechanism to alert Jools that they needed something important (to use Anna’s phone), back at The Hall the team commenced their full scale attack on their production tasks. Gale had told Gwen she and Richard needed a week off in Bermuda to recover from their three day strip poker ordeal with the NNs, and Gwen had turned her down flat. “See you here tomorrow morning, 8am sharp. You have work to do.”
She showed up on time, though not in the best humor. And when she saw the NNs there, chained to the front row seats, her attitude went downhill. She said to Jinny, “I thought you were my friend. A friend would have taken these boys out past the harbor jetties and offed ‘em. Are you a coward?”
“When it comes to doing what Gwen says, yes,” was his answer. “But if you want to pull out some of their fingernails, I’ll find you a pair of pliers. She didn’t say anything about torture.”
Gale passed on that and got to work on the PR package, which she had learned how to do while working with a pro on the ballet production. She got on the horn with the people who had done the website for the ballet, and then the lobbyists who would alert a select list of cultural institutions around the world, and then the graphic artists who had done the brochure and the posters, and then the print media specialist, and then the TV media specialist, etc. Forty-eight hours later, people in Helsinki were making reservations to Charleston. It was a call from the poster artist that alerted Gale to a hole in the program, which she took to Roger, being that she still was a little pissed at Gwen for not allowing her to take off for Bermuda. “What’s the title of the opera?”
Roger looked at her and said, “The what?”
“The title? The title of Paul’s opera? The poster artist needs it for the poster, unless you just want to call it Paul McCartney’s untitled rock opera. He’ll put whatever we say on the poster and the brochures.”
“I haven’t heard a title. Go ask Gwen.”
“You go ask Gwen. I’m not speaking to her.”
Roger asked Gwen, to which she responded, “I haven’t heard a title. Go ask Jools.”
Which he did, and to which Jools responded, “I haven’t heard a title. Want me to ask Anna?”
Which he did, and to which she responded, “I haven’t heard a title. Want me to ask Paul?”
r /> Which she did, and to which he responded, “I haven’t thought of one yet. Ask Renee.”
Which she did, and to which Renee responded, “Man and Woman in the Outer World. How’s that?”
It sounded good to Anna, who told Jools, who told Roger, who told Gwen, who tried to tell Gale, but Gale wouldn’t listen, so Gwen told Roger to tell Gale, which he did, who told the poater artist, who got back to work. When he added Man and Woman in the Outer World to the design, he looked at it and said, “Killer title.” And he thought, “Wonder what it means? I thought people lived together in their spiritual worlds. Isn’t that how men and women are compatible? That’s what the TV self-helpers (self-servers), and the psychobabblers say.”
Chapter 71 – Letter to Ringo
After lunch Stella wrote the following letter to Ringo Starr:
Dear God-daddy Ringo: How’s it rockin? All’s well with me. The movie thing in France with Spielberg went good, except for all the boring parts where he kept making the actors do take after take after take, and we had to sit around on-call. My new friend Anna, who was one of the stars, got pissed at him one day when he made her do twenty takes of a scene, and told him he looked like a dork, keeping his stupid baseball cap on whenever he was indoors. She asked him if his wife let him wear it in bed. Not too many actors tell Steven he looks like a dork.
Before the movie I had my spring show in Milan, and the critics hated it, which means it was good, so I feel fine about that.
What have you been up to? Are you working on some project or just hanging out with the babes? There’s kind of a reason for this email, in addition to saying hello. I’m working on a project with my Dad in Charleston, South Carolina, and it’s a weird scene, and strange but good, I think, and Dad needs some help. He needs lots of help, but it’s for a good thing, really good, and he asked me to buzz you up and see if you’re interested. Like I said before, what are you doing right now? I mean in three weeks? He needs help in three weeks here in Charleston. And the help of some other people too, musicians, like your All Stars. You got any hanging around with nothing to do in three weeks? Charleston is very nice, especially the local food. Much better than in London.
Here’s the deal, God-daddy. Dad has been kidnapped by a Taliban woman and an English butler, and locked in a World War II bunker near Charleston somewhere, I don’t know exactly. Me too, and Anna, who in addition to starring in Spielberg movies, carries a gun when she goes out to dinner. She’s hot, which you would like if you came here, though she has a boyfriend, but then lots of women forget about their husbands and boyfriends when they have the chance to make friends with ex-Beatles, even at your age….no offense, God-daddy.
Dad is writing a big rock opera here in the bunker, really good stuff, and he has a great singer here with us, Renee Fleming, the classical opera star, who did a great pop CD titled Dark Hope, you gotta listen go it if you don’t know it. She was not kidnapped, but came willing to help Dad because he says she’s the greatest female pop singer ever, and I agree. What a voice, and as I write this note I hear them singing a Stevie Wonder song down the corridor in the studio, Golden Lady, which is how Dad is thinking of Renee right now. She is something.
Anyway, the problem is that we have to do the opera in five weeks, and, you guessed it, he kind of slipped up on the point of arranging for musicians to perform it live. It’s not exactly his fault because he didn’t know he was going to be kidnapped three weeks ago and agree to write this opera thing and have it all done in eight weeks and then do six live performances here over a three week period. If he knew about the kidnapping and performance commitment I’m sure he would have planned things better.
Anyway, CAN YOU HELP? He needs you. For me, God-daddy? Can you put together your best All Starr Band ever and get their asses here in three weeks for two weeks of rehearsals? Please!
Thank you, your ever loving god-daughter, STELLA. I LOVE you, Ringo.
Stella showed it to Anna, who said, “Nice, and thanks for the compliment, although it sounds like you’re promising him something.”
“Not really, just having some fun. You can handle him. You don’t mind, do you?”
“No. Is he married now?”
“He’s married to his harem. Bigger and better than the sheik dudes in Arabia. You wanna join?”
“Depends on who’s in the harem.”
Chapter 72 – The NNs Meet Some Charleston Jews
Anna got Jools to call Slev at The Hall, to whom she dictated the letter, and who sent it to Ringo’s email address. After sending it, Slev read it to the team, who got a kick out of it, with Roger saying, “Let’s hope he responds positively. That really could work well. Not as great as the dream team I put together for the ballet production, but still, I mean, how many people are going to say no to Ringo Starr. We saw that phenomenon in action with Renee. Paul rang, and she was down here in no time.”
Gale said, “Depending on who these All Stars are, we could have a problem.”
Gwen could guess the answer, but said, “What problem would that be, Gale?”
“Groupies.”
“Anyone in mind.”
She didn’t answer, but leaned her head against the chair back, closed her eyes, and started formulating a list of the world’s greatest rock stars, imagining their faces and bodies.
Gwen looked at Roger and said, “Your dream team was one guy.”
“Yeah, but what a guy.” Gwen had to acknowledge that. Pete Townshend, the greatest songwriter in the history of rock, and a musical genius.
With the hunt for musicians in play, Gwen looked around The Hall for the next challenge, and her gaze fell on the NNs, who sat sullenly in the front row listening to Slev talk about the difference between a lyric soprano and a contralto. She said, “How’s it coming down there?”
Slev looked up at the stage and said, “Zip, zero. What we have here are three minds the size of Le Sueur peas.”
“Ok, forget about it. I’ll get with Jinny and Nev and we’ll do Plan B with them.” The nitwits didn’t like the sound of that one bit, suddenly having their attention, what little there was of it, shifted from trying to understand what is meant by vocal range, to visions of the harbor waters out past Fort Sumter. She asked Roger where Jinny was, and he told her back in the office with Nev, cleaning their guns. She said, “You remember the day you took Nev’s gun away from him here on the stage, and sent him home to Stirg without it? And here we are, working together, and us letting him carry around us.”
“Very strange, but so far, so good.”
Gwen went back to the office and sat down at the table covered in gun parts, oil cans, and rags. “The NNs aren’t learning. We have to do something with them.”
Nev got a gleam in his eye, and said, “I told you they’re intractable. Can we get on with Plan B? I’ll take care of that.”
Gwen had to admit she had said he could have them if the character improvement thing didn’t work, but she was feeling magnanimous. She said, “I did say Plan B was to get rid of them, but I want to throw Plan C at you and see what you think.” They nodded. “The reason is, they had the opportunity to mess with Gale up at the quonset hut, and they didn’t. She was clever and managed them, but still, they resisted a fierce temptation, which was her in that emerald skirt. Ok?” Nev nodded because it wasn’t very often that anyone could say no to Gwen. She went on, “They are neo-nazis, which means they are racist and anti-Semitic, right? How about if we stick that in their faces?”
Nev said, “How?”
There are some synagogues in Charleston. How about if we volunteer their services to one of those. Make them do some work that needs doing, maybe cleaning toilets, stuff like that?”
Nev put a drop of oil on the barrel of his gun while he thought. After a minute he said, “Stirg is a member of Brith Sholom Beth Israel, on Rutledge Ave. You know, the big building made out of yellow brick? It’s huge. He doesn’t go a lot,
but he gives them money, and they know him. There are a couple of elders there that came over from Poland after the war, and have families here. They might be interested. Stirg might be interested, although I’m sure his first choice is to dump ‘em out in the harbor. Easier.”
Gwen said, “Give it a try. If it doesn’t work, they’re all yours.”
Nev called Stirg and asked him to come up to The Hall. They again sat at the edge of the stage, looking down at the three not so feisty blockheads. Stirg said, “I don’t mind taking them up there and asking the rabbi and the elders. The problem is security. Who’s going to watch them, even if they agree to have them work there?”
Jinny said, “Nev and I can split the duty.”
So Stirg called the synagogue office, and was passed on to one of the elders he knew, who had come from Poland. They had a short conversation, half in English and half in Hebrew. Nev translated for Jinny. “The guy says bring the fucking Nazis up there and he’ll take care of them for us.”
So they unchained the NNs from the theater seats, marched them out the stage door, down the steps, down the alley, and down John Street to Stirg’s giant Mercedes which easily held the six of them. Once again no one thought that seeing three guys chained together was too odd, being in the vicinity of The Hall. Kind of like seeing gorillas walking around the MGM lots in Hollywood. A half hour later the six of them were sitting in the synagogue’s conference room, with the rabbi and three elders, including the one who had referred to the NNs as fucking Nazis, a description the others didn’t seem to mind. Nev told the rabbi what the boys from Idaho were doing in town, that they had kidnapped two of their friends, including a good looking woman, even if she wasn’t Jewish, and that they wanted to find Stirg’s granddaughter and violate her so as to obtain a measure of revenge against Stirg for some alleged act he had perpetrated in Argentina some forty years ago.
The rabbi said, “So what do you want from us. Why don’t you just take them out in the harbor and feed ‘em to the fish?”
Nev smiled big and nodded agreement, but Stirg interjected. “We thought maybe there are some jobs around here that you don’t want to do, that they could do. Some nasty jobs; the nastier the better. Something that would help you out and stick it to them at the same time.”