On Thursday, Eppie woke to bad news.

Apparently, the NY Post had picked up on the absurd story of a sixteen-year-old acquiring a theatre.

The writer was a man named Ray Tolliver, a very well-respected veteran of the columns, whose job at the Post was to scour the Department of Buildings’ permit filings. It just so happened that he found an entry for an eight-million-dollar interior alteration at a theatre on West Forty-Eighth Street, owner of record: the Vaughan Estate, tenant of record: Euphemia Fontaine.

George laid the article on the marquetry table at half past six, second from the top.

“Shall I?” said George.

Vaughan gave her cup a quarter-turn. “Please.”

George read like an actor vocalising Julius Caesar’s northern star speech.

SWEET SIXTEEN GETS A THEATRE

Sea-shanty starlet Euphemia Fontaine, 16, is the new tenant of a dark Broadway-district playhouse, city records show—and the landlady is one of New York’s oldest fortunes.
By Ray Tolliver

She can’t drive, can’t vote and can’t order a drink, but as of last week the songwriting sensation behind the summer’s unlikeliest hit can call herself a Broadway impresario. Permits filed with the Department of Buildings show an $8 million gut renovation of the long-shuttered house at West 48th Street, bought at auction last month by the Vaughan Estate from the wreckage of a failed lender for $14.5 million, and leased to Fontaine, who is 16.

Neighbours on the block, where two shows have already posted early closing notices, were tight-lipped. “Good luck to her,” said one house manager, who declined to give his name. “It’s a hard season, with more to follow.”

A spokesman for the Vaughan Estate said the lease was “at market terms” and declined to say more.

Fontaine’s representatives at Sony Music did not respond. The singer, who lives at the Vaughan family’s East Side home as a guest of Metropolitan Museum curator Juliana Vaughan, 68, could not be reached. Sources say the first production is planned for next year. What it will be, nobody is saying. Not even, apparently, the evicted cats.

George folded the paper.

“Mmm…” Vaughan sipped her tea. “Concise and to the point. Trolliver writes well.”

Eppie ate her toast. She had no opinions either way because everything was true. There was certainly no obligation for the NY Post to state how much they admired her ability to deliver a stern message to potential bullies.

And then she went to the theatre, where the cats had indeed been evicted.

She was lucky that she had not yet read the trade papers. Unlike Trolliver’s factual opinions, her new competitors were far more sceptical.

STAGE & STREET · OPINION

A THEATRE IS NOT A TOY

By Nathan Pell

In the worst year for the American stage since 1974, with two Broadway houses dark by Christmas and a dozen Off-Broadway companies quietly wondering whether they will make it to spring, a sixteen-year-old recording artist with no producing credit, no company and no announced season has been handed a 480-seat house in the heart of the theatre district by one of the oldest private fortunes in the city.

We are asked to see this as philanthropy. The Vaughan Estate, which now owns one more piece of Manhattan, has bought a building and leased it, we are told, “at market terms,” to a girl with a video where she runs away from a singing walleye. One would like to know what the Estate’s true motives may be, because old money does not buy theatres for sixteen-year-olds in the hope of good reviews.

There are, this morning, serious artistic directors in this city who have spent twenty years raising the money for a new boiler. There are companies on Ninth Avenue, in Brooklyn, in the Bronx, that will close this winter for want of a sum that would not cover this renovation’s plasterwork. And a child has a personal playhouse to play with her dolly actors. Is that what the NYC scene has become?

Eppie read that one at the theatre, standing up, while watching the plaster being moulded.

She shook her head and shredded the paper for cleaning supplies.

By Saturday, the hive-mind had spread across the theatre message boards.

ALL THAT CHATTER
— Theatre Talk
— Thread: “W48th — the Fontaine house (merged)”

> stagelefty_44: so it’s true. 8 mil. sixteen. I have been house managing for 19 years, and I have never once been offered a theatre.

> OrchPitRat: She’ll never have the IP to do it. What’s she going to put on? She can’t get the rights to anything a 16yo would want to do. Disney won’t return her calls. She’ll end up doing Our Town like everybody else.

> stagelefty_44: Our Town with cats

> BroadwayBetty1962: I heard Verner’s PM is on it. Susanna Tyker. I did two of hers in London. She’s a pro.

> OrchPitRat: LORD VERNER working with a nepo teen?? HAHA. He has lost his soul.

> fly_floor: She bought a sound rig too. the closing on 44th. heard the cage got cleared out by “a friend of the producer.” guess who the producer is

> BroadwayBetty1962: So Verner’s people and Verner’s speakers. Call it what it is, it’s a Verner house bought by a pop[tart].

> upstairs_downstage: Trust-fund theatre. Mommy’s money from the East Side. A rich kid’s playroom. I give it one season.

> OrchPitRat: She won’t last the renovation.

> Mod_ATC: Reminder to keep it civil. She is a minor.

> stagelefty_44: so was Mozart

> OrchPitRat: At least Mozart made his own IP

Eppie read that one on her laptop, in the annex. By the next weekday, it was obvious from the papers that some of the people posting were real insiders.

“I’ve been raising money for a boiler since 1989,” said Dinah Marsh, artistic director of the Ninth Avenue Repertory, who had been asked. “I don’t begrudge the girl. I begrudge the city. The only new Off-Broadway house in a decade, and it went to a pop star. That’s art in the most expensive city in America, I guess.”

The Vaughan House. The gallery.
Thursday, 27 November 2008.

Thanksgiving happened.

Juliana Vaughan had invited two hundred people, give or take, and Eppie had to help.

Thankfully, she also got to bring her friends.

Valorie came in emerald, in a dress that was jaw-dropping. Lim came in a rented jacket, and people mistook him for the waitstaff every four minutes, and he would have happily accepted the job had Eppie let him.

Dr Cooper, who had been to this kind of thing before, was perfectly comfortable, while her father, Frederick Curon, was so comfortable that he made others uncomfortable. Trent Davis came as well, and he had brought Lucia Lancet, who then remained in their corner while Lim stared, unable to believe that he was making small talk with the most talked-about pop star in America.

BUT—they were not the main characters. They weren’t even the side characters. Juliana was the host, and the main players were the Mayor, his wife, the Met’s trustees and donors, bankers and financiers, who knew Vaughan had made it out of the GFC with liquid capital, and all wanted to know her secret.

It was Mayor Holt who found Eppie.

He crossed the room to do it, which was noticed by reporters, with a glass in his hand and the aide behind him, and he stopped in front of Eppie and regarded her with the bearing of an old lion considering the world’s most adorable kitten; whereupon he raised his glass.

“To Miss Fontaine,” said the Mayor of New York, not loudly, but the room had gone quiet enough that he did not need to be. “Who has done a very foolish thing on Forty-Eighth Street, in a very bad year.” He drank. “And who looks, if I may say so, entirely dazzling in that dress. Thank you for the fish, young lady. My grandson will not let me turn it off.”

The room laughed, and drank, and decided, in the way of rooms, which side it was on.

Holt did not speak to Valorie but kept his distance. Valorie’s outfit was far too green, and far too Hollywood, while Eppie’s Conti was classical couture.

The optics could not remotely be compared.

Vaughan, at the centre of the action, did not move from the epicentre, but gave her a long-distance nod of approval.

“Tell me about this theatre,” Holt said. “Juliana tells me you will bring great things to the city’s arts scene.”

“Well,” Eppie’s eyes twinkled. She knew exactly what must be done. “The Ark Theatre is far more than just a theatre, sir—in fact, it’s a shelter, not just for artists… but also for NYC’s theatre cats…”

The Mayor was taken aback, at least at first—

“Theatre Cats, you say?”

He resisted, but with Eppie’s [Charisma], [Comeliness] and [Persuasion] firing on all four paws, how could a hapless old-money conservative refuse a blue-eyed, mewing Ragdoll?

On the Friday, the fish went on sale.

Not all of the fish. A first run, which the Bauble Company proposed to test the waters. Forty thousand units, in eleven hundred stores, on shelves at six in the morning on the day after Thanksgiving.

Her toy fish had been metaphorically alive since Halloween, when the video had played on every screen that would hold it: a bully, a wall, and a plastic fish turning its head to sing back at her. Children did the turn at the dinner table. Office workers did it at work to their colleagues. Somewhere in Ohio, a Rotary club filmed three hundred members answering the chorus in the parking lot.

At six, the doors opened. By nine, a store manager in Dallas was on the morning news, saying, live, that he did not have any more Wallies left, begging for people to stop bullying his staff.

When the banks went, every retailer in America had cut its Christmas orders in October, but apparently, the nation’s appetite for cinema and for a singing fish could not be curbed, not even by a financial crisis.

The call went out, and Bauble promised two million units. The same day, the first reseller appeared on eBay at 1:14 in the afternoon, Eastern, at three times the price, and had eleven bids by two.

The vote was in.

The fish… was a hit as big as the song itself.

Perhaps it was the fish.
Or the ceaseless headlines caused by the fish, which made every morning segment of the news and human interest column in every paper across the United States and beyond. With the election over, there was no better headline than her singing fish.

The more people there were angling for singing fish, the nastier the articles Eppie received.

Things had gotten so bad that George began passing her personalised notes, in editorial Op-Ed form, from the industry publications.

THE VOTER · by Preston Vail

Let me save everyone the trouble. The house on West 48th seats 480. It is, by the rules of this industry, not a Broadway theatre and never will be, which means that Miss Fontaine and her landlady have spent eight million dollars to buy their way into a league that does not have a prize. I have voted on the Tonys since Cats opened. I am glad to never need to judge Miss Fontaine on stage.

Think on it: a private foundation lends money to a company in the Bronx, which supplies actors to a theatre on 48th, whose landlord runs the foundation. Follow the money around that circle as many times as you like. It is a loop with a tax deduction at one end and a teenager at the other, and the teenager, I am reliably informed, is writing her own plays. Really? Good luck.

Dubious charity. Burning money. What’s our scene coming to?

Vaughan seemed amused by it all. “Thank you, George,” she said, read the lines, smirked to herself, and kept drinking the tea.

Eppie as well, who had endured far worse during the “X.com” social media days, merely sipped her tea, albeit sadly, frowning and grinding her teeth.

She wasn’t sad.
Not at all.
She was merely feeling… vengeful, and unhappy that throwing more people and money didn’t make her theatre complete faster.

That, and she needed actors.
And it looked like she might have a dearth of talent—if this is what the “critics” were saying.

The same afternoon, Ferroni rang from Burbank to tell her they were in for Park City, and Eppie punched the air, finally enjoying some good news.

Four days in January, Ferroni said. Marcel, Hollis, Tull… and Josie.

Norbert’s final edits would be done, as would sound and colour. The final cut would be locked, and the world was about to see Euphemia Fontaine on the silver screen.

On the twelfth of December, a Friday, the Wallies arrived on shelves with the efficiency of a prophet bearing a basket of loaves.

For all of the next week, people everywhere gave fish.

It was twelve days to Christmas, and the country had singing fish fever. Office Secret Santas. Stockings. Grandmothers buying it for grandchildren who already had one. At the Sony Music Christmas party on Saturday the thirteenth, every third present under the giant tree at the entrance of the Sony Club fought the packaging when picked up.

She even bought a fish for her father.

And a fish had appeared on Trent Davis’s desk as if by magic.

“Am I a bully?” Trent asked. Everyone shook their heads. Nobody confessed.

Maddy’s email came on Monday.

From: Madeleine Filmore
To: Euphemia Fontaine
Cc: Frederick Curon [email protected]; Eric Lee [email protected]; T. Davis
Sent: Mon 15 Dec 2008, 6:11 AM
Subject: THE FISH. Please read. Please. 🐟

APOLOGIES FOR THE SILENCE. It has been a month. It has been several months in one month. I have not slept since the Friday after Thanksgiving. 😵

Re: FISH. Estimates say three million. Conservatively. Bauble says “sustained consumer behaviour will persist through the holiday window.” That’s a lot of fish, and a lot of money. 📈

THE SONG IS STILL CHARTING within the Hot 100 in week fourteen. The video won’t leave the top 50. People are sending us videos of their fish singing to other fish. 🎥

THE MORNING SHOWS are now offering to come to you. They want to know about the theatre ⏳

ERIC says thanks for the fish. He also says thanks for the stock tips. You’re giving out stock tips now?! 😶

ACTION ITEMS
Morning show — yes or no? At Dame Vaughan’s house? 📅

For the official record: I read the industry mags. They can all go to hell. I got your back, Eppie! We love you! 🙏

Maddy.
Madeleine Filmore Artist Relations | Sony Music Entertainment [email protected] | (212) XXX-XXXX

Riverside Boulevard.
Wednesday, 17 December 2008.

With Christmas on the horizon, work on the Stray Cat Society shelter continued, but work on the theatre slowed to a crawl. With nothing to shepherd, Eppie spent her days at Sony, studying the art of the corporate music scene, working on her scripts, and visiting the few people she knew in NYC.

Which mostly meant Valorie.

For this particular day, Eppie was invited to Valorie’s loft overlooking the Hudson.

Her father had bought it with family money, partly as an investment for a daughter who would be spending an inordinate amount of time in NYC, and partly because a sitting senator had to watch out for many pitfalls and clauses when investing.

For Val, her glass tower home was near Guilliams and near Eppie, and therefore good enough. It sat eleven floors up, with a wall of windows that faced New Jersey and a sunset that came in across the water every evening, stretching the shadows of the furniture like long cats.

When she came in, expecting Valorie to have made snacks or drinks, she instead found that Valorie had collected, obsessively, every newspaper, article, magazine, and more that had spoken ill about her.

She had even printed out the forum posts.

Val had read them all, more than once, it seemed; curled up on the floor, on the very low, very expensive sofa, reading and seething.

Eppie’s skin crawled—even knowing that Val meant well.

She turned to look at her friend, wondering just why she had been invited to witness all of this—and if Val had somehow relapsed into her old self—

—then a soft, hot-water-bottle body embraced her wholeheartedly, and pressed itself into her.

“I am so sorry.” Val’s breath was hot against her cheek. “After you defended me in the video… they still did this to you. I am so sorry. I’ll drag them from their high horse, I’ll…”

It took Eppie’s [Memorisation] to realise that Val meant the thoughtless verbatim insults she had borrowed from Val’s detractors at Guilliams at the start of her infamous music video.

“Val,” she hugged the girl back. “Calm down. It’s okay.”

“It’s not okay.”

“It’s fine,” Eppie said, relaxing so that she wasn’t holding Valorie up like she was a human-sized coat.

She tried to pry the girl away, but Valorie took it to be resistive self-loathing and refused to let go. She held on, tight and warm, with her chin on the top of Eppie’s head and her arms all the way round, a pace short of saying “It’s not your fault” and turning the tables. So they stayed like that for a while, a minute or two, while Val got her fix, and Eppie got some time to think.

When her [Strength] finally detached the girl’s octopus body, Valorie’s eyes were swollen.

Eppie didn’t share the sadness, but she was thankful.

“Are you okay now?” asked Valorie, watching her eyes.

“Ya,” Eppie wound up her best smile for her overbearing peer while keeping away from Val’s lips. “Thanks, Val.”

Valorie beamed.

The sun went down over New Jersey. The whole room turned autumn.

I should advise Sir Woodhouse… Eppie made the decision while Valorie happily mixed up some kind of smoothie.

She looked at the pile of negativity on the floor. As a [Usurper], she had a bad feeling.

Val, as a living force of nature, had to be kept busy.

Or else…