December 24th [COMPLETED]

Chapter 4: Twenty-Three

It had not dawned on George that it was Christmas Eve. Nor was there any part of her brain aware of the fact that it was her twenty-third birthday. Sure, at some point during the day, a half-second there, a milli-second somewhere else, she was sure to have remembered that it was December 24th and she was, in fact, turning twenty-three. But standing at the edge of her mother's lawn, her back to the cityscape below, her eyes staring unseeing out onto a mingling crowd of party-goers, all of them seemingly enjoying Vivian Burns' legendary annual Christmas party, George had no idea about the date nor the double significance of it. Her brain didn't have room to worry about such trivial things such as major holidays and birthdays.

If George had been able to look at the evening rationally, to recount the event that was the current cause of her mental haze and confusion, to look back over the year and see what had transpired, what pieces had fallen into place to end her up at her mother's party, standing on the edges of society, looking in, she still wouldn't have been able to see coming what did.

It had been a big year for George. The biggest maybe ever. And Concept was planning on celebrating that fact. Last year, at the annual Concept holiday party, George had won Rookie of the Year. She wasn't there to accept it so Julien had accepted it for her. This year, she won Producer of the Year! A big deal and on Concept's fifteenth anniversary.

Looking back over the year, looking back at what she had accomplished for the company, George was ready to walk up onto that little stage set up in the Concept Headquarters's lobby and accept that gold plaque that meant nothing outside of that building. She was ready to take her spot in front of the microphone and look out onto the sea of faces she had come to know over the last year and a half, the secretaries, the assistants, the board members, the sound engineers, the legal staff, the accounting department, the people that made up her peers, her colleagues, her coworkers. Even with an unusual bout of stage fright lurking in the shadows of George's mind, even with the bank of reporters and photographers in attendance to chronicle Concept's big anniversary event, George was ready to take the spotlight.

But George never got the chance.

Concept owed a lot to George that year. If all she had done was produce Felix's album two years ago, they still would have owed her a great debt of gratitude. Felix was on a rocket ship that seemed to only go up. He was Concept's top-selling new artist and his tour had sold out in a matter of days, unheard of for someone so new to the industry. He was big in the States, he was even bigger overseas and his album had gained him, and Concept, major accolades. Concept had George to thank for the album.

But that wasn't all George had done for the company. Other than taking every job Concept handed her, especially the ones the other freelance producers didn't want, (touring with a trio of brothers who were in the midst of major infighting and on the verge of breaking up didn't sound very appealing, even to George) George also signed them one of Concept's newest stars. She had stumbled across Rosie Mulligan in a small pub back in New York during her one week off while out to dinner with Sydney. George was the only one paying attention as Rosie sang out from a small, make-shift stage, her only instruments her voice and a guitar that seemed like it was a part of her. George sent her music to Julien and Rosie was signed the following month, hitting the top of the charts by the end of the year with her debut album.

George was fully aware of the decisions Concept made that she wasn't 100% behind. She might have been signed to them, unlike their other producers, but George saw herself more as a freelance consultant than a permanent part of the staff at Concept. It helped when decisions like passing Rosie on to one of their older, more experienced producers were made. The fact that George was the one to discover Rosie went completely overlooked.

This was where having Julien in her corner helped George out big time. It evened the playing field (in her mind at least). When she was at a disadvantage because of something as trivial as her age or gender, Julien did his best to fill in the gap. He got her two weeks with Rosie at Anton's studio in Brooklyn. George and Rosie wasted no time those two weeks, working as hard and as long as they physically could. Out of the ten songs they wrote during that time, eight of them made it onto Rosie's debut album, making up more than half of the final tracklist.