Celia Valdez sat before one such lawyer right now, in a little office that overlooked Wilshire Boulevard. Her name was Anwara Khatun-Nelson. She was an exotically beautiful woman in her early thirties, her skin a rich olive color, her hair jet-black and immaculately styled, her business pantsuit and blouse combo both professional and feminine at the same time, obviously custom-tailored to her curvy body and with no expense spared. She had a wedding ring on her left hand that had to have cost in the mid five figure range. Her English was impeccable and exact, bespeaking of one who was extremely well read, and had not a hint of accent. There were two framed pictures on her desk. One was of a smiling blonde haired, suntanned male in a pair of shorts and a t-shirt and holding a surfboard while standing on a beach. The other was of a beautiful little girl of perhaps five years of age in a sundress. Her skin was of a considerably lighter shade than Anwara’s, but her hair was the same shade of black and her facial features shared an unmistakable familial resemblance. On the wall behind the desk were two framed degrees. One was a Bachelor of Science in Philosophy from UCLA. The other was a law degree from the University of California at Berkeley School of Law.
Anwara was part of BR&J’s Family Law department. Her specialty was divorce. This was Celia’s first meeting with her. The firm itself had been recommended to her by Pauline Kingsley, who had been personally using their services for estate planning and taxation for the past six years and for copyright and trademark issues for KVA for the past three years. Pauline had no experience with their family law department, but she personally knew all three of the major partners and, while they were lawyers and could not be really trusted on that basis alone, she was confident that they would have no hackers or slackers on their payroll and that they would give their wealthy client their all.
Celia was tired and quite worn out as she sat across the oak desk from her new lawyer. Only ten hours before, she had been in Phoenix, just finished with her first of two shows in the desert metropolis. From the show, she had gone back to the hotel room just long enough to pack a simple bag and then head to the airport for a private flight to LAX. She arrived at Jake and Laura’s Granada Hills home just before two o’clock this morning, where she had then struggled to sleep in a strange bed under stressful circumstances. Still, she was dressed nicely this morning, in a black pantsuit and maroon blouse, her hair neatly done and even a light coating of makeup on her face. On the Berber carpeted floor next to her was a leather briefcase.
“That is a terrible story,” Anwara said to Celia after hearing her tale of marital infidelity, a pregnancy, and the coming wave of media publicity that would wash over her when the story broke. “I’m sorry that this has happened to you.”
“Yeah,” Celia said with a nod. “Me too. But I’m going to try to make the best out of this bad situation.”
“I understand completely,” the lawyer said, nodding confidently. “Now ... you said there was a prenuptial agreement signed by you prior to the marriage, correct?”
“Yes,” Celia said, nodding. “He insisted on it. I suppose I can see his point now. At the time we got married, I had virtually nothing and he was worth around ten million dollars.”
“Virtually nothing?” Anwara asked, surprised. “But ... you got married at the height of La Diferencia’s popularity. I remember because I was a big fan of La Dif back then. And, if I haven’t mentioned it yet, I’m an even bigger fan of your music now.”
“Thank you,” Celia said with a quick smile, “but we were operating under a first-time music contract back then. I’m guessing you don’t deal too much with those, because if you did, you’d know that first-time contracts virtually guarantee the artist or band will not make squat.”
“Really?”
“Really,” Celia assured her. “In fact, when our contract with Aristocrat Records expired about a year after Greg and I got married, La Dif was more than two hundred thousand dollars in debt to Aristocrat from all of the recoupable expenses.”
“Two hundred thousand dollars ... in debt?”
“That’s right,” Celia said sadly. “The music business is a sleazy one. Of course, we didn’t pay them any of that, not after they refused to pick me up under a favorable solo contract. And they never really pushed for it either. When KVA signed with them for MD&P on our previous projects, they finally found it in their hearts to forgive that debt.”
“MD&P?” the lawyer asked, confused.
“Manufacturing, distribution, and promotion,” Celia clarified. “We are not entirely independent of the record labels. We compose and record our own music but have to rely on one of the big four record companies to manufacture the CDs, distribute them across the world for sale, and, most important, to use their contacts to get radio airplay for them and promote them.”
“I see,” she said slowly. “And ... when you say ‘we’, you’re talking about...”
“Jake Kingsley,” she said. “He’s my partner in crime. Not many people realize this, but the two of us founded KVA together, along with Bill Archer and his wife Sharon and Jake’s sister, Pauline.”
“And ... uh ... you and Mr. Kingsley aren’t ... you know ... involved on more than that level?”
“Of course not,” Celia scoffed, putting just the right amount of offended huffiness in her tone. “We’re friends. We have been for years. There has never been anything like that between us.”
“I see,” Anwara said, making a few notes on a legal pad. “Well ... in any case, I’ll definitely need a copy of that prenup you signed with Greg. It will limit how hard we can go after him, but I can usually find a few loopholes and precedents to attack a prenup with. It’s very likely he’ll agree to a settlement of some kind instead of fighting it out. After all, you’re worth considerably more these days, aren’t you?”
“Considerably more,” she agreed. “I’ll be calling my accounting firm later today to get them to start preparing a report for you, but I know that my current net worth is in the neighborhood of eighteen million dollars, plus I’m a one-fourth partner in KVA—an entity that Greg has absolutely no financial interest in and that he will have no claim upon since that same prenup he insisted we sign keeps his greasy little hands off of my assets.”
Anwara nodded, impressed. “I’m guessing he will find that unpleasantly ironic.”
“Probably,” she agreed.
“I only hope his lawyer is not as good as I am. That could lead to a protracted fight from his side if he wants to go after your music income as community property.”
“I seriously doubt that,” Celia said.
“You do?”
“I do,” she confirmed. “I’m not really expecting that there will be a huge fight between Greg and I.”
“You’re not?”
“No, not at all.”
“Uh ... what makes you think this?” she wanted to know.
“He told me he wouldn’t.”
Anwara looked at her client as if she were mad. “He ... told you he wouldn’t?”
“That’s right,” Celia said.
“And ... you believe him?”
“I do,” she said with a melancholy smile. “We’re not your typical Hollywood celebrity couple. Greg may have trouble keeping his zipper closed, but he’s a fair and reasonably moral person. I expect the actual divorce proceedings to be quite amicable. I’m not planning to go after what he has, and he assures me he will not be trying to go after what I have. We have no children to fight over and we’re both worth about the same amount of money.”