Career Girls (42 page)

‘You’re joking, right? I want a penthouse on Fifth,’ Goldstein replied. ‘We can easily afford it.’

Jesus, the stubborn sonofabitch, Topaz thought furiously asJoe vetoed another idea.

She’ll drive me nuts in six months. Tops, thought Joe, glaring at his betrothed’s obstinate expression.

But they couldn’t stay mad for ong. The heady swell of love would overcome Joe or Topaz and the other would instantly sense it and get turned on, and then nobody talked for a while. They could hardly keep their hands off each other; they made slow, gentle love, they played games, they screwed each other senseless over tables and onthe floor and up igainst the walls.

‘All the therapists say this is the worst way to resolve a dispute,’ Topaz managed, as Joe slipped two fingers inside

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I’m not going through with it.’

‘Yes you are,’ said Tiz Correy calmly, leafing through the dummy for Impact. The spacious director’s office was a mess, the immaculate caramel carpet covered with photographs, clippings and colour charts, and Topaz’s kidney shaped desk piled high with articles, memos and financial data. For a week now she’d refused to let the cleaning staff in, because, as Jason Richman pointed out, ‘Who the hell knows what you’ll be throwing away?’

The launch was less than a month away and operations had moved into Topaz’s office. Some of her fellow directors were more than a little bothered by this, but Gowers made it clear that she was to be given a free hand. Rossi was doing major work, however unorthodox a method she was choosing, and her reports to the board already showed improvements in operating costs.

Back in the fifties, when he’d borrowed three thousand dollars to start Week in Review, Gowers reflected, he’d been pretty hands-on himself. And he hadn’t done badly.

‘Leave Rossi be,’ he commanded. ‘It’s only another month,’ and Topaz’s office descended into a maelstrom of creative chaos.

‘Do you know what he just said? He said he can’t believe I’m not taking his name. All this time and he never mentioned it! He just assumed I’d take his name! He can go straight to hell,’ Topaz exclaimed tearfully.

Tiz tried to keep a straight face. Every week there was a new crisis, every week the wedding was off, and every

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week Topaz skipped back into the office like a schoolgirl, glowing from head to foot with pure happiness.

‘And you assumed he’d be happy that you wouldn’t,’ she

said reasonably. ‘You know you should both have discussed

this before.’

‘I’m giving him back his ring,’ Topaz snapped. She felt giddy and miserable. The stress must be making her ill; she’d thrown up every morning this week, almost as soon as she’d got into the office.

‘Call him back, tell him you love him and you’re proud to

be his wife, but you want to keep your own name. Ask him

how he’d feel if you wanted him to become Joe Rossi.’

Her boss gave a weak smile at the thought.

‘And if he say’s it’s traditional, tell him he knows you’re

not a traditional girl.’

, ‘Topaz, have you approved the amethyst headlines for “Not Size Eight”? Production are crawling up my ass about it,’ said Tristam Drummond, Impact’s art director, marching into the room. ‘We’re two days after their final deadline already.’

‘Jack Levinson in Sales wants to see you about the Revlon

ads,’ her secretary announced.

‘Thanks, I’ll be ten minutes,’ Topaz promised. She passed

a hand across her forehead. ‘Amethyst headlines …’

‘We thought burnt gold worked better,’ Tiz reminded

her.

‘Henri Bendel are on line two,’ her secretary said. ‘About

the fitting. They can’t do this afternoon, would tonight suit

you?’

Patrick Mahoney, Economic Mon,thly’s new editor, walked

in looking harassed.

‘Alan Greenspanjust cancelled on me,’ he told her. ‘I need

a replacement right away. Do you think Joe could find me someone at NBC?’

Impact and the new look US Woman were previewed to the trade with great fanfare. They were an instant hit. The first issue of Impact sold out across the country in forty-eight

hours.

Joe Goldstein and Topaz Rossi were married in a private room at the Pierre, in front of a hundred guests. They held hands throughout the ceremony.

The bride wore a cream gown shot through with delicate gold thread and glittering with tiny seedpearls. Her deep red hair was caught in ropes of gold beads and hung warm and lovely down her back, under a long, romantic veil of antique English lace, secured at the top with a coronet of white rosebuds. Tiz Correy and Elise DeLuca, her maids of honour, were dressed in pink Chanel suits. Joe Goldstein and his younger brother and best man, Martin, wore traditional black tie and for once Joe looked completely comfortable in it.

The reception was a riot: their buddies from NBC, Harvard, American Magazines and Oxford downed a lot of champagne, ate a lot of smoked salmon and danced into the early evening. The speeches got bluer and. bluer as the evening progressed, but most people agreed with Jason Richman, who called it ‘Not so much a marriage as a merger. ‘

That night, when they got into the honeymoon suite at

the Ritz Carlton, Joe handed Topaz a large square box. ‘Your wedding gift,’ he said.

Glancing up at him she opened it. Inside was a long necklace, a beautiful piece set with fifteen carat diamonds and exquisite polished beads of topaz.

‘I’m sorry it’s always necklaces,’Joe said awkwardly.

Topaz reached up and stroked his cheek, her eyes wet with tears. ‘I love it nearly as much as I love you,’ she said.

They kissed. ‘You’ve got two wedding presents from me,’ she said. ‘One I couldn’t bring,” because it’s in the garage at home. But I have the other one.’

She reached into her purse and handed him a crumpled scrap of paper with their doctor’s letterhead.

Puzzled, Joe unfolded it and read it. Then he smoothed it out, looked wildly at his wife; and read it again, carefully, just to make sure.

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‘You don’t mean - ‘

‘I’m pregnant,’ Topaz said, smiling at her husband.

For a moment they just stood there, almost drunk with happiness. Then Joe gathered Topaz into his arms, as gently as if she were made of fragile glass.

‘We’ll be together till we die,’ he said. ‘Nothing can go wrong now.’

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Chapter Twenty,Nine

As far as Rowena was concerned, it was over.

Only pressure from Barbara Lincoln staved offa lawsuit, and she was finished in the record business. All her success as a talent scout, all her achievements as a businesswoman, were swept aside in a second. She was publicly associated with drugs, and no record company would touch her.

‘I tried to stop them but I was outvoted,’ Josh Oberman said, calling her the day after. ‘These new fucking board

rules. Howcould you have been so careless?’

‘Are you crying, Josh?’ she asked.

‘Of course I’m not fucking crying,’ he sniffed. ‘You fucking moron.’

‘Come and work for me,’ Barbara said, anxious about her friend. Rowena had lost half a stone and sunk into total lethargy. She had her groceries delivered and she rarely left the apartment.

‘You must be joking. After what I said toJake?’

‘You can’t blame yourself for that. As if he paid any attention to any of us,’ the manager replied. ‘Look, Will Macleod decided not to tell me until the lad was half-dead, but I’m not blaming him, either. What can the crew do if the band go offthe rails?Jake’s in rehab and.we’re looking for a new guitarist. The band have had it with him, Michael can’t work with him.., you didn’t pass him a syringe, Rowena.’

‘Thanks, but I can’t work with you,’ Rowena told her. ‘I can’t face any of it.’

Her friend shrugged. ‘Any time you change your mind.’

‘Come and work with me, ‘Michael said. ‘You can help me choose my projects and negotiate my deals. I’ll give you’

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ten per cent of my company.’

The offer was worth millions.

‘I can’t ever work with you again,’ she said flatly.

‘.Why not? We’re good friends. We think the same way. I don’t give a fuck what drugs you did, and I don’t have shareholders.’

‘It wouldn’t work,’ she replied. ‘It’s over.’

‘I want you back. I miss you,’ Krebs said.

For a second she closed her eyes, longing for it all to be different, longing for the blank ache in her heart to go away, for a return of the hot, passionate joy that had filled every waking second when they’d started this affair.

‘We can’t go back,’ she said. ‘Thank you for everything you did for me, Michael. Goodbye.’

She put down the receiver.

I

John Metcalf could only guess what she must be feeling. It happened all the time in his business, of course: scandals, resignations, corporate coups. He’d been a teenager at the time of the Begelman affair; on his first steps up the ladder when Dawn Steel was ousted whilst giving birth. Hollywood was a monster, and the only emotions worth jack were fear and greed.

The trouble was that Rowena was guilty. Undeniably so. If it had been libellous, the paper would have been sued to kingdom come by Musica’s lawyers. He very much doubted whether some flippant remark by Rowena would have pushed her young guitarist down the road to addiction, but that wasn’t the point. She’d condoned the use of drugs and she’d been caught doing it.

She was right, of course. Everybody did do it, especially in LA, and he doubted the music moguls in New York were any better. Like she said, you experimented and gave up, or you didn’t give up and you screwed up your life. So she’d taken Ecstasy in the past, well, so had he. But for years they’d both been clean.

What was she supposed to say to a young rock star? ‘Just say no’? And the boy would listen to that? ‘Don’t let drugs

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do you’ was a better way of putting it, in Metcalt’s opinion. Ira blockbusting Metropolis star had that conversation with him he’d probably say the same thing.

It was going to be difficult, though. Metcalf knew that. As the youngest studio head in town, he’d made a lot of enemies just by having hits. What was it Shakespeare wrote? Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown. Right. And the shark pool circling constantly beneath him would drool at the scent of anything they could use against him. Like a girlfriend who was blackballed by her entire industry.

Fuck them all, Metcalf told himself. The closest they’ve come to love is Heidi Fleiss.

There was no decision to make.

‘Book my table at Spago’s,’ Metcalf told his secretary loudly after the Metropolis production meeting, while all his VPs of Production and other development people were gathering their papers. ‘I’m having dinner with Rowena Gordon. Tlursday at nine.’

The VPs all studiously avoided his gaze, but John wasn’t fooled for a second. Within ten minutes the word would be out round Hollywood that whatever else had happened,

John Metcalfand Rowena Gordon were still an item.

He called her. ‘How are you feeling?’

Tve been better,’ she said. Her voice was flat and listless. ‘I’m finished, John. I just don’t know what to do. I can’t do anything in the music business any more.’

‘You can’t do anything the way you did it before,’ he

corrected her. ‘That’s not the same thing.’

Tm a non-person,’ Rowena said.

‘Bullshit. I won’t allow you to give up like this,’ he answered sharply. The resignation in her. tone shocked him. She sourided as though life itself had ground to a halt. ‘We’ve having dinner at Spago’s on Thursday, and if you’re not in town by Wednesday morning I’m flying up to get

yOU. ‘

For the first time in a week Rowena found she actually wanted to do something. She wanted to see John.

‘OK,’ she said.

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Was that a faint spark of animation? Metcalfwondered.

‘Do yourself one other favour,’ he cajoled her. ‘Sort out

your finances. Make sure you know where you stand.’

‘I can’t be bothered,’ she said.

‘You can and you will,’ Metcalftold her. ‘Do you want all

those guys blanking you right now to watch you just fade to black? What would yourjerk-offfather say, “I always knew she wouldn’t last the course”? You hold your head up, Rowena Gordon. Don’t you dare let me down.’

‘You’re telling me I have no money,’ Rowena said three

days later.

She sat opposite Peter Weiss, her accountant, in the oak panelled offices of Weiss, Fletcher and Baum, waring a short brown suit and pumps. Her hair was neatly brushed

land tied back in a ponytail, and she’d put on a little foundation. She was perfectly presentable, but that was about it.

Weiss had never seen Rowena Gordon look so unattractive. Her slender frame was now gaunt, her normally healthy skin pallid, and the sparkle in her green eyes had totally vanished.

‘Not exactly,’ he replied cautiously.’Under the settlement with Musica, you lost your pension funds and received no compensation, as well as having surrendered the Lotus. The financial plans we made for you’ - he cleared his throat- ‘didn’t take account of the possibility of, uh, what happened. Which means we have to rework your numbers. Now your apartment will have to be sold because

Musica Entertainment part-funded the original deal.’

‘They own the apartment?’

‘No, you have a share in the freehold,’ he replied hastily.

‘Part of the proceeds belong to you. You also have fairly substantial monies that you could realize from selling your Musica stock.’

She shook her head. ‘I want to keep the stock.’

Weiss shuffled his papers nervously. ‘Ms Gordon, I would have to advise you against that course of action,’ he

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said. ‘Your actual monetary savings are limited. You, uh, you’ve tended to live at the top of your budgeted bracket.’

‘If we sold the apartment and my other stocks, and with what savings there are, how much would I have altogether?’