She stepped out on to the patio, wet and silken from her shower, swathed in a huge white towelling bathrobe, a mug
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of very delicious cinnamon coffee steaming in her hand. The warm scent of hundreds of flowers hit her straight away. She settled into a green wicker chair, breathing in the gentle humid morning air, birds singing all around her.
‘Bloody hell,’ she remarked to a starling. ‘l could get used to this.’
Work, work, work, her New York brain screamed at her, What do you think you’re doing? You’re supposed to be setting up a soundtrack deal with the third-biggest studio in the world! Whole record companies have been established on less. This is a deal that could push Musica one, maybe two places up the world rankings, and as for your own position … bottom line, you want to wind up president, or not? You think Ahmet Ertegun would be out here
drinking coffee? Haul ass, woman! Rowena sighed. Now! it added.
Reluctantly, she drained the mug and went off to study the diagrams of unit sales in relation to box-office takings.
By lunchtime she was sick with nerves. She changed her outfit four times, eventually settling on loafers, black Calvin Klein jeans, a Def American T-shirt, and a very, .very expensive pair of sunglasses. She wanted to look Californian and give the impression that she was too important to bother with dress codes. Damn it! I am important! she told herself. I’m Rowena Gordon, MD of Luther Records and the hottest music business executive in New York!
He was just a studio head. That was all. Right?
The limo glided through LA.. Rowena stared out of the windows, mirrored from the outside, watching the landmarks of Sunset Boulevard slip past her.., the Rainbow, the Roxy, Geffen Records … it was a city designed only for drivers. She stepped out at the Ivy looking sleek and
confident, trying to feel the same way.
Relax! It’s a breeze. It’s a done deal.
‘Rowena Gordon for John Metcalf,’ she announced to the maitre d’.
‘Of course, ma’am. This way,’ he said cheerfully, leading her through the packed restaurant to the best and most secluded table in the place. I5-O to Metcalf, Rowena thought, using her metaphor for the war with Topaz Rossi. He was studying a wine list as she approached, immaculately dressed in a dark suit by Hugo Boss with discreet gold cufflinks. She pulled at her T-shirt and felt like an idiot. 30-o.
‘Mr Metcalf,’ she said, extending her hand. Tm Rowena Gordon.’
She was shocked, and tried not to show it. She was so used to being the youngest player in any deal. But he couldn’t be more than a few years older than her; he was smooth-skinned, he had a large, taut, muscular body, and thick hazel hair with just the faintest grey flecking the sides. Christ, he was gorgeous, and what astonishing eyes. Thirty-five, tops.
‘Good to se you, Rowena. Have a seat, please. And the name’s John.’
She wanted to reply that he could call her Rowena, but forced herself to swallow the rebuke. It was his show.
‘Please, indulge me, don’t insist on sticking to the mineral water,’ he said. ‘The kir royales here are exquisite. I’ll order for us both, so you won’t be at any negotiating disadvantage. Please. i beg you.’
She looked at the handsome man smiling opposite her, who then batted his eyelids in a theatrical gesture of persuasion.
What a character, she thought with complete approval. The kind of guy you’d call a record man. Except that he’s in movies.
She deided to throw away the script.
‘OK, you win,’ she said. ‘I hate to see a grown man
cry. ‘
The two-hour lunch turned into a three-hour lunch, and a three-hour lunch turned into tea complete with china cups and a fake Georgian silver teapot.
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‘Cucumber sandwiches! Bring me cucumber sandwiches,’ Metcalf demanded. ‘I have an English lady here.’
‘You’re a jerk, John,’ said Rowena, grinning. ‘No one in England eats cucumber sandwiches. And no one eats muffins either. And we don’t all know Princess Diana.’
‘Next thing you’ll be telling me there’s no Victoria’s
Secret in England,’ Metcalfprotested.
‘There isn’t.’
‘No Victoria’s Secret, English lingerie, in England?’ he asked.
‘None,’ said Rowena mercilessly.
Metcalf considered this disconsolately. ‘What about the tooth fairy?’
‘Oh, she’s real,’ she reassured him, and they both started
to laugh.
‘Twelve per cent rising one per cent, point five, point five, point five in the four years.’
‘Get out of my face,’ she said.
‘That’s the deal, take it or leave it,’ John insisted. ‘I can take it to PolyGram tomorrow.’
‘They’ll leave it too,’ she said. ‘I won’t make this deal unless the numbers are right. And you can forget about reversion of rights. Musica does not surrender its masters. We’re only in the market to buy, we’re not interested in renting.’
‘You’re a tough bitch, Ms Gordon, anyone ever tell you that?’
‘Frequently, Mr Metcalf. Frequently.’
‘So I hope I can tempt you along to the gig tomorrow,’ Rowena said.
‘What, go see the hottest band in the world with the best-looking woman in the universe? I’ll have to check my diary,’ Metcalfteased her, shaking her hand.
Rowena opened the door of the limo and gave him what she hoped was a businesslike smile. ‘I feel like I just went nine rounds with Mike Tyson,’ she said.
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He gave her a quick, intelligent glance. ‘You did,’ he said. ‘But I’m still standing.’
‘For now,’ said John Metcalf. ‘For now.’
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‘… And this is Gloria Roberts, live from o5.5, KNAC, always there at all the really big concerts, and we are backstage at the Coliseum and Joe Hunter of British rock sensations Atomic Mass is here with me! Welcome back,
J
oe. ‘
‘This lady I am talking to,’ said Hunter, in his rich
,
Lancashire burr, ‘was one of the first people ever in America
to play Atomic Mass on the radio! Can you remember?’
‘I do remember!’ said the DJ, immensely flattered.
John Metcalf spun the steering wheel lightly with one hand, cruising down the Santa Monica freeway towards the Coliseum, listening to the band on KNAC, where Joe, the singer, was playing the interviewer like a guitar. He flicked a few buttons on the multi-play sound system, trying to find a Top 40 station that wasn’t wall-to-wall Atomic Mass. He failed.
‘And this is “Big Cat” from Animal bstinct…’
‘… That was “Frozen Gold”, a little Atomic Mass for ya there…’
‘… from a record which just sold and sold and sold.’
‘… making the British rock. combo only the third act ever to sell out the Coliseum…’
‘… live from Venice Beach, where our “what would you do for a pair of tickets for Atomic Mass” contest is reaching its climax.’
‘And that was “Sea Diver” by Mott the H0ople…’
John rolled his eyes in mock relief.
‘… who, by the way, are cited as one of the biggest influences on the band of the moment, Atomic Mass,
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headlining the Coliseum tonight on the veryfirst show of the Animal Instinct world tour 995 - .’
He groaned in delighted defeat. He couldn’t get away from them, which meant he couldn’t get away from her. At least his baby label was in good hands. What a woman! What an executive! What a… what a babe!
She had sat in his office, commandeered a spare telephone and fixed the problem.
‘OK. This is how it is,’ she had said briskly, slapping a sheet of ticket sales in front of him. ‘Gate is eighty-five per cent. And that’s not good enough. I need a hundred per cent. ‘
‘But why do you care?’ he’d asked, amused. ‘You’re fine at eighty-five. They’ll make money!’
‘That’s not the point. It’s how the band are perceived. We open at the Coliseum, we sell out the Coliseum. That’s it. No argument. I want people clamouring for tickets they can’t buy.:
‘Otherwise what? They look bad?’
‘Congratulations, you win a cigar,’ said Rowena, as if to a particularly stupid child. ‘The boys are hot property today and I want them to be hot property tomorrow and the day after that.’
‘But the gig is tomorrow,’ he pointed out, admiring the silver-blonde cascade of hair tumbling to her slender waist.
Her iced-mint eyes were sparkling with the challenge. ‘That gives me three hours,’ said Rowena.
‘You can’t do anything in three hours!’ laughed John. ‘Oh yeah?’ she said. ‘Watch me.’
And he’d watched her. He’d watched the elegant turn of her calf in her tight jeans, the tight sweet swell, of her small breasts under her bodystocking, the Way she sat with her legs apart like a man, tapping her knee with one beautiful, unpainted hand. He’d tried not to stare too hard at her crotch, gently outlined under the protecting denim. He wanted to undo the buttons of her fly and slide his hand in there, and guide her slowly, slowly, to spasm, till she was whimpering and begging, and maybe he’d take a couple of
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handfuls of that fountain of blonde hair and twist her head roughly about while she squirmed against his palm… God, he’d be patient with her, and when he put his cock in that soft silver wetness he’d take her with a slow intensity, deep, long strokes, ignoring her pleas to fuck her brains out. He’d teach her what sex was really about, and she’d come like it was the end of the world, and then … and then … and then he’d marry her, the gorgeous fucking creature.
And occasionally he’d watched how goddamn great she was at her job.
‘So can I speak to the PD? Hey, Ken? Rowena Gordon! Uh-huh? You too, up book again I see… Look, I got a trade for you.., stick on the Catch-22 single. No, listen, you play it, I got five hundred tickets for Atomic Mass at the Coliseum tomorrow.., that’s right, completely sold out … great.’
‘Sam Goody in Sacramento please - Richard Brown? Rowena Gordon - you got a nice Mass display up there, babe? Cause I’m thinking maybe the boys might drop in on their way out to the plane.., shit, you know I can’t guarantee it… No, the show’s totally sold out, but you vanna run a promotion I can cut you a deal-a hundred, two hundred? two fifty? I don’t know, it’s tough - call Simon at TicketMaster and tell him it’s on Musica corporate rate. Anything for my favourite store manager.’
‘Joseph Moretti. This is Rowena Gordon. Of course top brass work the promo phones! This is Musica, not MCA! Here it is. Show is totally sold out. I want tomorrow to be Atomic Mass day on KXDA-you get one thousand tickets and ten pairs of all-access passes,. I get three tracks an hour every hour minimum-I can fix interviews - no, that’s fine! I don’t know, what are the three most beautiful words in the English language? A done deal? Ha ha ha! You got it …’
She put the phone down on Tower on Sunset two and a half hours later, and Atomic Mass had an exclusive franchise on every major radio station and record store in southern California.
‘You’re just a show-off,’ said John, shaking his head.
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Rowena lit a cigarette and took a deep pull, satisfied. He noticed she neither asked for permission to smoke nor
apologized for it.
‘What now?’
‘Now I fax Musica’s head of PR in New York with a press release.’
‘Which says what?’ he asked, completely fascinated. ‘Which says,’ she grinned, ‘that the show is sold out, the only way to get tickets is through radio and in-store competitions, and that police have been warned of possible riots by crowds of disappointed fans unable to get in.’
He laughed. ‘Woman, you are incredible. I can’t believe it. I gave you a phone, and you delivered Los Angeles.’
‘With red ribbons and a cherry on top,’ Rowena agreed. ‘So modest.’
‘Fuck modest!’ she said, feeling powerfully happy. ‘I’m the best.’
He drove her to Morton’s for dinner, and the night air was charged with jasmine and sex. She was wearing a grey dress, a little silken thing that poured over her slim body like water. Her long legs were naked down to the designer sandals. He wanted her so badly it ached.
John Metcalfwas a studio president, and attractive in his own right. He was rich, he was powerful, and he was straight, in one of the most hedonistic cities in the world. There had been a lot of women, not all of them stupid.
But he knew within days of meeting her that Rowena Gordon was quite different from all of them. It wasn’t a blinding revelation, the flash of light and cosmic neon arrows and everything else an Angeleno expects.
It was just a quiet certainty that this girl was the one.
He wanted to own her and possess her. He wanted to put his ring glittering on her finger and scream to the world that she was his alone. The contradictions of her entranced him that cool, ladylike English voice wheeling and dealing with the appetite of a Brooklyn hustler; that delicate rosy beauty throwing itself into brutal male music like heavy metal and
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hardcore rap; her classically educated brain focusing its laser intelligence with total absorption on music he didn’t understand and names he didn’t recognize - techno, glare, swingbeat. She seemed interested in making money, even greedy, and yet completely uninterested in making it anywhere other than the record business. The day after the soundtrack deal was finalized, he’d offered her a vice presidency at the studio, with stock options, at triple what she was making at Musica. She’d smiled and asked him to explain to her why she should trade down.
He wondered about her sexuality as his dark eyes swept
over her lithe athletic body. He wondered if she realized how obvious she was about what she wanted. She flung her success down like a sexual gauntlet. She couldn’t have made it clearer if she’d gone out in a T-shirt saying DOMIqATE ME in big black letters. And she evidently had some lover, some man who was giving her what she thought shewanted.
John Metcalfpressed his foot on the accelerator, thinking murderous, aroused thoughts. The cool night air rushed past them, lifting Rowena’s blonde hair like a golden banner streaming in the darkness. That made it worse. Whoever he is, he’ s history, Metcalfthought grimly. I wonder what he made her do for him. I wonder if he made her swallow. I wonder if he put her on her hands and knees and screwed her from behind. Jesus! If he touches her again, he’s a dead man.