Playing Dirty (2 page)

Sarah squeezed her eyes shut. Wendy had warned her that she’d had a conference with their superiors at Stargazer. Even though Sarah had just extracted an album from a lunatic, they weren’t happy he’d wound up in prison in a different hemisphere afterward, because their client Manhattan Music wasn’t happy. Now Sarah’s job was in jeopardy. Wendy thought if Sarah took on another act that was a perennial problem for the record company, it would go a long way toward smoothing things over. Wendy had said she’d be on the lookout for a job fitting that description for Sarah.

And this was it? Sarah longed for a nice girl group with no worse problem than big mouths, like she used
to handle. Romantic jealousies between band members were the worst work for public relations salvage agents. These crises almost
always
signaled that the band would break up, no matter what the PR agent did. That would be a strike against Sarah, to go along with the one she already had, courtesy of Nine Lives. And nobody at Stargazer—not even Wendy—knew how bad the Nine Lives situation had gotten. Yet. If Nine Lives managed to spring himself from jail and showed up at the Manhattan Music office to enlighten everyone, that would be Sarah’s strike three.

She opened her eyes and texted:

You shouldn’t have gotten me into this. It’s a bad one. I’m not going to be able to get them out.

Wendy replied:

You will. You’ve just lost confidence. Nine Lives is a superfreak and you worked a miracle getting an album out of him. Do the same with the Cheatin’ Hearts. Just a lot faster. And maybe keep them out of prison?

With a wistful laugh, Sarah looked up again at Vulcan’s bare behind. This was what her life had been reduced to. Her divorce would be final any day now. She had no boyfriend and no prospect of ever having a family of her own. She’d spent the last three quarters
of a year in hell. And now, to top it all off, she was about to lose her job, on a hundred-degree day in the Deep South under a statue’s naked ass.

She called the band’s publicity office and stressed, in her best imitation of Wendy, that they’d better
stay there
until she arrived.

Back on the parking lot Birmingham called a highway, she dialed up a Cheatin’ Hearts album and plugged her MP3 player into the car. She hated country music, but business was business. She might as well make use of this downtime to familiarize herself with the wildly popular songs that she’d been sent to secure more of.

Despite her dislike of their genre, she’d definitely heard of the Cheatin’ Hearts before her wee-hour assignment. Everyone knew they should have won the Country Music Award for Top New Vocal Group their freshman year but were snubbed because they were an affront to family values. They were also something of an affront to Manhattan Music.

Word around PR circles was that they were conniving as well as raucous. They’d always denied lead singer and bass guitar player Quentin Cox’s cocaine addiction, blaming his frequent trips to the emergency room on asthma or allergic reactions. After signing with the record company two years ago, the band immediately started a foundation for pediatric asthma and allergy research at a hospital just down the avenue from the Manhattan Music offices, as if thumbing their noses under the company’s watchful eye.

By the time the convertible reached the next mountain on the trek toward the Cheatin’ Hearts’ publicity office, Sarah had made it through the group’s first album and was listening to the second,
Ass Backwards
. She inched the car forward again, then examined a printout of the cover. Erin relaxed in a lawn chair in her Daisy Dukes, considering the muscular backsides of her three nude bandmates. Sarah was surprised Manhattan Music had approved this photo for distribution. Maybe Target plastered a big price sticker over the offending parts.

On the flip side of the cover, each band member was pictured individually, clothed, in a cowboy hat. All were about her age, thirtyish. She shuddered at the thought of
thirtyish
—her thirtieth birthday was coming up fast—then went back to her examination. Quentin had a piece of hay hanging out of his mouth. Erin winked false eyelashes. Could these people get any more cornball?

As if Erin’s bleach-blond hair and the wink and the cowboy hat weren’t enough to get the point across, she wore heavy eye makeup and a red push-up bra. Owen, the drummer with whom Erin was having her fling, was handsome, huge, and blond. His photo reminded Sarah of the pictures in the football game programs from her high school, with the linebackers trying to appear as tough and emotionless as possible, necks stiff, eyes elsewhere. Martin, the guitar player, apparently the musical genius of the group, looked like a mad scientist in crooked thick-framed glasses, despite the cowboy hat.

Sarah let her gaze return to Quentin’s photo. Dark green eyes glared defiantly from under his hat brim. Long lashes framed and softened those eyes. A few boyish brown curls peeked around his ears under the hat. Surely he would have had those curls Photoshopped out if he’d noticed.

Sarah made a mental note to look up the photo on the Internet when she stopped in at her hotel room, and to e-mail it to Wendy, who needed a thrill. She and her husband Daniel had stopped having sex when Wendy was five months pregnant because they had agreed it was like Daniel was making love to a waterbed. Poor Wendy had only wanted to start a family with Daniel. She hadn’t counted on the waterbed factor, the nausea, or the crippling sciatic nerve pain like a bullet in the butt cheek (she said) that had come to visit in the second trimester.

And Sarah hadn’t been there to help Wendy through any of it, because she’d stupidly volunteered to save Nine Lives. She would have felt better if their friend and former trainee Tom had remained in the office, but he’d shipped off to save a client in Moscow about the same time Sarah left for Brazil.

She still remembered her shock at the way brave Wendy had looked in the LaGuardia ticket lobby when she’d driven Sarah there for the flight to Rio. Overcome with a wave of dizziness, Wendy had sat on a bench by the windows, both arms wrapped protectively around her middle, seeming uncharacteristically lost. She’d called Daniel to come rescue her. And
when Sarah had returned from Rio this week, Wendy had been sitting in the same place, in the same position, this time because her feet were swollen, with her arms wrapped the same way around her much bigger tummy.

Sarah could
not
involve Wendy in the trouble she’d found for herself in Rio. She had a band to rescue and her job to save, all by herself.

She focused on the music again. The Cheatin’ Hearts’ songs were an odd mix. Erin and Owen co-wrote the overblown love ballads. Quentin probably should have seen a more intimate collaboration between the two coming: that Erin would cheat on him with Owen. Martin wrote the most complex and technically demanding songs, which tended to be minor hits and critical favorites. Two of his songs had won Grammys. He’d gotten into fistfights with the losers at the awards after-parties both years.

But their biggest hits were the ridiculous songs by Quentin. Even Sarah had heard these when they crossed over to the pop charts and became the background music in sports arenas. There was “I Want a Leia,” about
Star Wars
or sex, according to how much smut your sense of humor could stand. There was “Heavily Sedated,” which unfortunately was autobiographical. And then there was their biggest hit of all, “Come to Find Out,” a colloquial term in Alabama for making an unexpected discovery: “Come to find out you done done it again / Come to find out I got
screwed in the end / Shoulda known better there’d be no doubt / You done the mailman” (or “the mayor,” or “all the neighbors,” depending on the verse), “come to find out.”

But every song had that unmistakable Cheatin’ Hearts harmony: Quentin’s strong, lazy voice on melody, Erin’s high voice an octave above him, Owen singing baritone, and Martin anywhere and everywhere between, his voice transforming the chord mid-syllable. They didn’t seem to use backup musicians, and they put out an enormous sound for four people. Sarah turned the car air conditioner down before she realized that it was the music making her hair stand on end.

Finally,
finally
, she pulled the convertible into the parking deck at the Galleria. Besides an enormous shopping mall, the complex featured Sarah’s hotel and the building that housed the band’s publicity office. She checked her look. Leather bag, ominously organized. High-heeled sandals, strapped on securely. Tight pants, clean and smooth. Cleavage, showing. Makeup . . . She examined her chin in the mirror on the visor. The scar Nine Lives had given her was going to show, but she’d minimized it as much as possible. Hair—

She sighed ruefully as she fingered her hair into place. Hot pink and platinum blond streaks shocked her natural brown. Even now, months after her impulsive makeover that had transformed her from sporty
tomboy to vixen, her new look still caught her off guard when she got a glimpse of herself. She had a feeling that, even though her old hometown was a four-hour drive from Birmingham and her mother was rarely in residence, there would be a family reunion during her stay. And her mother would have something dry to say about her hair.

Leaning back against the seat, Sarah tried to relax into the part and channel Natsuko. Natsuko had been the publicist for a Japanese rock band performing with one of Sarah’s clients at the Grammys last year. Everyone referred to her in awed tones by that single name, like Madonna, because nobody could pronounce her last name, or—more probably—because Natsuko was a force of nature. She wore low-cut tops, tight pants, killer heels, and blue streaks through her black hair, never afraid to outglitz the genuine stars. When she barked an order, the ultra-cool hipster rock stars who’d hired her snapped to attention and murmured placations to appease her. She was also something of a ho, having hooked up with two of the band members and a top reporter for
Rolling Stone
in the few days Sarah had kept tabs on her.

At first Sarah had been jealous of Natsuko. Then she’d fallen in love. Finally she’d had an epiphany. After years of clients pushing her around and Wendy telling her that dressing for work in something other than athletic wear might help, she knew what she
wanted to be when she grew up. A few months later, when her husband told her he wanted a divorce, she’d grown up.

She’d channeled Natsuko for nine months in Rio. The new act had worked better than her old one for threatening rock star assholes, but it still seemed unnatural. This persona was very different from Sarah’s normal one. Natsuko didn’t have a mother, but had leaped fully armed out of the head of Zeus. She was taller than Sarah and infinitely more sophisticated. Her face revealed nothing, no vulnerability. She only arched one eyebrow when calling a bluff. She used her cleavage and, if necessary, sex appeal as a weapon. Consequently, unlike Sarah, she’d had sex with more than one person in her lifetime.

A car crashed across a seam in the pavement somewhere in the echoing parking deck, and Sarah started around. Then she berated herself, because Natsuko was never startled. Sarah was deathly afraid that Nine Lives would finagle his way out of prison and report to Manhattan Music about what she’d done to him. Worse, he would bypass going after her job and come after
her
. But projecting strength she didn’t possess would salvage her job
and
—maybe—keep her safe. She dragged her bag out of the car, kicked the door closed, and walked to the office building entrance with the gait of a no-nonsense bitch used to high heels, humming “Come to Find Out.”

The guitar dropped out of “Naked Mama.” Quentin glanced up from the strings of his bass to see what was going on. Martin had stopped playing and was reaching to a nearby music stand for his cell phone. Now that the rest of the band had stopped playing their instruments, too, Quentin could hear Martin’s phone beeping “Stars Fell on Alabama.”

With a groan, Owen hurled his drumsticks at Martin and the phone. Quentin jumped backward in reflex, nearly dropping his bass guitar. The sticks narrowly missed Martin and Quentin, flew over Erin’s head, and clattered against the glass wall of the sound booth. The album technicians in the control room ducked instinctively.

Quentin was fed up, too. The track had sounded great until they were interrupted. “What the hell,” he protested. Then, realizing he’d cussed in front of the elderly couple watching from the control room, he said, “Pardon me, Mr. and Mrs. Timberlane.”

The Timberlanes were Quentin’s next-door neighbors. Occasionally, when Quentin let them know he’d be home from tour for a few weeks, recording with the Cheatin’ Hearts in his basement, the Timberlanes sent their butler to complain about the noise. It was impossible they’d actually been disturbed. The sound booth was so well insulated that the music could hardly be heard in the kitchen upstairs. So Quentin
always invited the Timberlanes over to sit in the control room.

Seems he guessed right that they just wanted in on the action. Instead of looking offended at his language, Mrs. Timberlane smiled serenely and Mr. Timberlane winked at Quentin:
Thanks for letting me take my chick on this hot date
.