"I always go for the vegetarian option," she said, clicking out of her professional personality. "It's nothing philosophical, really. I don't mind meat stocks or sauces. But when you've exhumed as many mass graves as I have, you lose your taste for T-bones."
He was sorry he asked, but she didn't seem to mind.
"And they do the most exquisite minty peas here," she added.
So that's what she was having. A big bowl of minted peas.
"Wow," said Dan. "My ma would have died a happy woman if she thought I was eating a whole bowl of peas for my dinner. She used to have to stand over me with a wooden spoon to make sure I didn't flick mine out the window."
"Try your own dish, Dan," said Julia. "It's not meat, but you'll love it. Trust me."
In fact, he didn't mind it. It was warm, and felt a bit like steak in his mouth, which, O'Brien explained, was why she didn't order it. If he thought there would be a respite from the financial conversation, though, he was wrong.
Julia had no sooner swallowed a mouthful of omelet before she started up again. "Maria, you were warning us off content providers, but I know you've got Davidson and some of your other clients hooked into that market."
The lawyer shook her head. "No. We've signed them up to an agency agreement, you know, guys like Elvis and Sinatra. And we're taking the industry-standard commission off their royalties, but where there's an extant commercial entity that could claim ownership of say, the words and music to 'Blue Suede Shoes,' we've actually sought them out, provided the product, and offered the right of first refusal. Nine times out of ten, they jump at it, and we negotiate a much better deal for the client than was the case originally, back in our world. So everyone's a winner."
"Really?" said Dan, who was only following a fraction of what she was saying.
"Well, no, not really," she admitted. "The recording companies are getting screwed, because their original contracts were so onerous. But they know a guaranteed income stream when they see it. They don't want to lose it to a competing company, which they could do, because their legal claim is tenuous at best. Nobody likes arguing jurisdictional issues, and there is no case law in Multiverse Theory. So most of the time they just sign up. And the artists do get a much better deal.
"For example, we got Sinatra out of Tommy Dorsey's band and right into his solo career. He's so grateful that he's playing four nights a week here, for free."
O'Brien spooned up a mouthful of peas, drew a breath, and started talking at a mile a minute again.
Julia looked fascinated.
Dan decided to concentrate on his dinner. He wasn't sure why he didn't like the sound of this, but it all made him feel decidedly uneasy. It seemed as if this woman was making a fortune out of thin air, but she wasn't producing anything. She was just making people pay for things that, to his way of thinking, belonged to them anyway.
"It's a lot easier when you have a single artist involved," she continued. "But it gets nightmarish very quickly when you get into things like movies, and you have hundreds of people who lay claim to be being responsible for some part of the production. And of course, you have a lot of the parent companies like MGM or Paramount operating right now. I advise my clients to stay well clear of them. There are hundreds of cases working their way through the lower bowels of the court system, and you can tell that nobody has a fucking clue about where to even begin untangling the mess. Anyway," she said, scooping up another mouthful of peas, "I always saw the entertainment industry as a sunrise initiative. Most of the opportunity has come and gone there. We're looking at medium- to long-term strategies now. Like what's going to happen in the Middle East when the war is done. I don't imagine we're going to bend over and invite the Saudis to buttfuck us again, for the next eighty years."
"So what, you're looking at alternative energy sources already, back here in nineteen forty-two?" Julia asked.
O'Brien shrugged. "I like to think of it as foresight." Then she leaned forward. "I hear there's OSS teams in Vietnam already, talking to Ho Chi Minh."
"So what are they doing there?" asked Julia in a voice Dan recognized immediately. She was at work again.
O'Brien smiled. "Well, I don't know. If they are there, I didn't send them. But I imagine they're telling Uncle Ho that he can have the fucking place, and as many surplus Springfield rifles as he wants, as long as he uses them to shoot Japanese soldiers. I mean, what's Lyndon Johnson doing now? He's off somewhere in the navy, but I'll bet he's spending every minute boning up on his presidency. He's not going to want to make the same mistakes, and he's already plugged into Roosevelt. He ran for Congress as a New Deal Democrat in 1937. He won and got himself straight onto the Naval Affairs Committee-as a freshman! FDR put him there. He's only in the navy now because he lost a race for the Senate last year. I don't imagine he's behind the OSS thing, but nor can I imagine him sitting around with his thumb up his ass when he knows what's coming."
Like millions of Americans, Dan Black had read a couple of the "future" histories published within weeks of the Transition. Julia's colleagues on the Clinton had written many of them, and she'd pointed him in the direction of some of the better ones. So he had a pretty good grasp of what they were talking about.
"So that's what you mean by foresight," he said.
"Exactly. Things aren't going to be the way they were in our time, Dan. That's what makes this business so exciting. If you were betting on a race that had been won already-"
"Like Slim Jim has," Julia added, grinning.
"No comment," O'Brien replied, her own smile just as wide. "But if you were betting on a done deal, sure, it's easy money. But where's the challenge? And of course, once people know the future, they immediately start fucking with it. So that's where the challenge comes in. That's why I love it."
"I thought you loved it for the money," Dan said, letting his offended sensibilities get the better of him. But neither of the women obliged him by taking offense.
"Sure," agreed O'Brien. "And there's the money, too."
"There's nothing wrong with the money, Dan," Julia chimed in. "Money's what makes the world go round."
Slim Jim loved this place. Of all the things O'Brien had hooked him into, the Bayswater was the best. He would never have thought he could get so jazzed about a club that not only let in your niggers and your Jews-but actually invited them to come.
He never would've thought you could make money on something like this, either, especially not with the top-shelf wages he was paying. But the money rolled in like a flash flood that never ended. And anyone who was anyone in this town was beating on the doors, trying to get in and throw their money around. It was one of the seven fucking wonders, was what it was.
And two or three of the other wonders were right in here with him, too.
That Sinatra kid, up on stage singing "Slow Boat to China" with Joybelle-you had to admit, that kid's voice was a wonder. And this piece of ass Slim Jim had here on his arm, the fabulous Norma-or Marilyn, as she was calling herself now that Ms. O'Brien had sorted out the business with the movie guys-this fantastic piece of ass was such a natural wonder of the world that he was sure every guy in the room would crawl a mile over cut glass just to jerk off in her shadow.