Gimme More (38 page)

Tina is uneasy. In her world they're punctual and reliable. They prove their worth by doing what they say they're going to do when they've said they're going to do it. In my world you prove your worth by winning the status games. Hurry-up-and-wait is a losing gambit. All it will do is prove to the opposition how easy you are to control. If I showed up on time I'd be telling Nash he'd got me beat, that I'd been frightened and brought down by public exposure, that my own threats had no sting. Whereas what I want to tell him is that time's on my side. I've got Jack in my pocket, the way I always had, and if he wants Jack he'll have to deal with me. I am Rainbow Woman, Nash Zalisky, fuck with me and you'll never see your pot of gold. What a difference a great frock makes!

I sit in the cab while George pays the driver, then I get out and sweep into Dog Records' lobby in one fluid swoop. I leave my briefcase in the cab, forcing Tina to retrieve it and hurry after me carrying it. We meet our two lawyers.

I have four in my entourage. Not as many as I'd like, not as many as I used to have, but four more than I've had for ages. Two lawyers, one security man and one PA to carry the bag. That's how it will look. Tina tries to return the bag to me, but I ignore her. Silly woman – whatever is she thinking? Rainbow Woman doesn't carry her own bags.

We go up in the lift to the top floor and find Sasson waiting to greet us. Good – that's more like it.

Now here is a strange thing: Sasson takes my hand and kisses my cheek. ‘God, Birdie,' he says, ‘you look stunning.'

He waves my party of four into the boardroom but he delays me.
Now we will have to enter the meeting together – which will indicate, to those present, an alliance or friendship. Sasson cannot be ignorant of the visual language of meetings.

He says, ‘Birdie, whatever happens, please believe that I was not responsible for the smear campaign. I wouldn't do that.'

‘ “Whatever happens”? What
is
going to happen, Sasson? Any more tricks up that midget sleeve?'

‘Not that I know of. I think your legal team's done a good job – a better job than I'd personally like.'

‘You mean it's a straight deal?'

‘I mean, Birdie, you don't want to make the pips squeak over every damn percentage point. There's such a thing as being
too
tough, you know.'

‘I just regret not getting tough years ago when Jack was alive.'

‘Ah yes,' he says, just for a split second looking like young Sasson.

I wonder how much he allows himself to remember. Is there a tiny corner of his memory which makes him feel that he let Jack down? Or has he armoured that tiny corner and remembered only the fiction: that I drove a wedge between him and Jack.

He says, ‘Birdie, before we go in, is there anything I should know?'

‘Like what?'

‘I don't know – anything else you're hiding, another ace in the hole that'll up the ante again. I've got a lot riding on this deal. I'd like to think, now we've got the finance sorted out, we could work together.'

I don't get a chance to answer because Nash bustles out of the elevator with his bodyguard. However late I was, he wanted to be later. I laugh. I look at Sasson and he can't resist it. He laughs too.

‘What? What?' Nash asks, suspicion flaring behind his glasses.

Sasson straightens up first. He says, ‘Nash, good of you to come. Shall we go in now?'

‘I don't know,' Nash says warily. ‘I had a terrible dream. I nearly didn't come. I nearly didn't get out of bed. Birdie, have you ever had a dream so bad that you feel the whole day will be cursed?
Remind me to tell you about it. What a beautiful dress, Birdie. Did I buy that for you?'

‘Not a chance,' I say, letting the old laughter linger in my voice. ‘This is a dress no mere money can buy.'

‘Oh,' he says to Sasson, ‘we've been paying her too much.'

‘We'll see,' Sasson says. ‘I can't wait to hear the new tracks.'

‘Why are we standing out here?' Nash says plaintively, and Sasson leads us into the boardroom.

I slip into a chair between George and the more savvy of the two lawyers. Nash sits at the centre of an army. Sasson, as host, sits at the head of the table with an array of board members and advisors. The only one not present is Barry Stears, which is strange because the deal involving the movie is with him.

Everyone turns and watches me sit down. I am the show, the girl in the spangled tights. Roll up, roll up, the notorious scarlet woman has just made her entrance. Watch her balance on the wire – soar or floor – it doesn't matter as long as there's a spectacle.

I lean towards the savvy lawyer and whisper, ‘Where's Barry Stears?'

‘I'm told he had to go to the US suddenly. That's his proxy over there.' He indicates another grey spidery man with the smallest flick of one finger. The savvy lawyer has played this game before: he knows the value of
sotto voce
conferences with his client. Nothing important is said. Sometimes, at a strategic point, he leans towards me and says something idiotic like, ‘Bit warm in here, isn't it? I wish they'd turn the air-conditioner up.' And I look down at his unreadable notes nodding sagely. The secret agenda: you've got to have one even if you haven't got one. Otherwise, I sit back, nonchalant, relaxed, legs crossed, shimmering in my rainbow garb.

The main deals are these: first, the new Dog album; sub-clauses, my participation in arranging and producing it, publishing, copyright, the videos, reproduction and mechanical rights. Second, Memo Movies' film; sub-clauses, visual material to be supplied by Ms Walker, sound-track and rights thereto, interview fees etc. Third, the authorised biography; sub-clauses, Ms Walker's agreement to be interviewed and supply previously unpublished photographs.

Hanging over all this is Nash's deal with Dog and Memo, giving him TV, Radio and CD-ROM/e-commerce rights. In other words, Nash wants the world première on everything, because he is number-one spider, and he can afford it.

Most of this was thrashed out by grey men, including
my
grey men, over the previous few days. From my point of view the offers are now adequate and the payment schedule is satisfactory. Even better, my lawyers have set up a private bank account for me with a subsidiary account in … wait for it … yes, in the Cayman Islands.

With this account in place and the knowledge that I've forced all three parties to do separate deals rather than allow myself to be bundled tidily into one all-encompassing contract, I can afford to sit back.

In fact, I am secretly jubilant. I have brought us to this stage without ever letting the opposition have a proper sight of what they're buying. The old-fashioned method of seduction has a lot to recommend it. Do not display your wares because to do so would cheapen them. Conceal and hint. Build hunger, and then in a carefully contrived accident, flash a little flesh. Ooh yeah – I've gone back to long skirts and petticoats for this deal.

From across the table I catch Nash staring at me. I lower my eyes shyly and think, yep, attempted rape only drives the bride price up, I wonder if he understands that now. I hope not. Let him think he's forced me to this table. Let him think that my counter-threat began as a tantrum and ended with one mildly snide article in Q magazine. Now he thinks there's a chink in the wall – I've broken my silence once, so I'll be easy meat for any interviewer he chooses to feed me to. I have all the stories, the essence of Jack, locked in my head; let him think he's found the key and I'll spill my precious load into his waiting hands. Well, Nash, we'll have to see about that.

But eventually, the time comes when even Rainbow Woman has to show and tell. All parties, including mine, are satisfied so far. Now they want to see the bride's face.

I ask Tina for the tape cassette and the video cassette. She gives them to me with a rather sour look. I expect that while this meeting has been grinding on, she sat there silently wondering
what the hell she's doing. Good Father George isn't wondering. He knows he's here to protect me. But Tina, being rather more sceptical, has probably come to the conclusion that her only purpose is to look like a personal assistant and bag-carrier to the woman who used to tidy her office. Tough break, Tina, but that's show-biz.

‘What do you want first?' I say, turning to Sasson, ‘music or pictures?'

‘Music,' he says. ‘Do you mind if I ask my chief engineer in to hear this? I know we won't be listening to the masters yet but I'd like him in on this as early as possible.'

I smile and say, ‘Of course.' I'm pleased with Sasson. He's provided the dramatic pause. During it I get up and walk over to the sound equipment. I keep the tape and video in my hand. Even these simulacrums of the real deal are too valuable to give to anyone else.

I look at the sound system, the giant speakers, the Star Fleet control panel. Mooching, figuring out how the system works, I have separated myself from my team, from the ranks of suited spiders. I am music, they are business. Music versus money. Romance against finance.

The silk rainbow swirls against my thighs as I walk to the window, turning my back on the table, looking out over the Soho rooftops to the clouds beyond. There are faces and fungi in the clouds. It is a dreamer's sky, full of morphing images. No two people will see the same picture on the cloudy canvas. No two dreamers will dream the same dream. That is the art of clouds and dreams. Those are the clouds and dreams of the artist. And these are the thoughts I can't afford to be thinking in the company of spiders.

I turn back towards the room and find that every eye is upon me. Nash is getting out of his chair to join me at the window. Oh no, that'll never do. I let him commit himself and then I glide around the other side of the table and out through the door. Leaving the boardroom without explanation, carrying with me the cassette and video. I cause pandemonium. Unbelievably, several of them chase my skirt as it flicks out into the corridor.

In the open-plan office at the end I stop at the first desk and ask
for the ladies' room. The chasing posse is there to be ignored. I sashay into the ladies room and lock the door.

It is extraordinary. Am I a rogue elephant or a psycho? No one, it seems, has the slightest idea of what I'm going to do next. Am I really so unpredictable that I cannot avoid Nash and go to the ladies room without being treated like an absconding prisoner?

In the mirror I look at my reflection and smile. Unpredictable, exotic Rainbow Woman is still, for the time being, in charge of the goldmine, the means of production, the wealth of the grey nation. No wonder they're scared shitless.

By the time I return, the grey nation has assumed some semblance of dignity, leaving just one scout by the elevator to make sure I ‘don't get lost'. But I cannot sit at a table with them any more. I need the separation, especially if I am to listen to Jack's voice. After I've slotted the cassette into the deck I go back to the window and turn my back on the audience.

Jack's voice begins, husky with cigarette smoke, ‘Gimme time, gimme one last chance …' The opening line of ‘Adversarial Attitude'. There is solid rich rhythm guitar under his voice and some honky-tonk piano providing the fills. It's the timeless song of the ill-treated man, his stone-hearted rival and the stolen woman. It's violent and insulting: ‘She says he's steady, kind and sweet – I know the whoring, boring man who beats his meat …' Jack calling poor Homer a wanker in his own inimitable fashion. Anger stretches his voice and gives it the horn-like power which can cut through any rock'n'roll band, however loud, and dominate it. If you heard that voice only once, even if you never heard it again, you wouldn't forget it.

I stare out at the clouds remembering how the hair on the back of my head prickled when I first heard Jack. I remembered thinking that no one could possibly mistake that voice for any other. And how he stuttered on some of his consonants, ‘My b-baby', partly playing for time if he came in a breath too early, partly the result of taking speed. Whatever. It was impossibly sexy. Standing alone, staring at clouds, remembering, I can feel even now the lurch I felt long, long ago.

The tape rolls on. I left a couple of false starts in. Jack says, ‘Fuck
it, babe. What're we doin' here?' And I say, ‘G, A minor seven and G. Split bars, remember?' ‘Yeah, right,' says Jack and begins ‘Hopeless Case' again.

Another time he says, ‘What's it say here, Birdie-bird? I can't read your writing. Whadya mean you don't know? It's your fuckin' song – I'm just the poor bleedin' singerman.'

Once he says, ‘Take three, fuck it. This time, doll, skip the harmony except on last words and the last line of chorus.' And I say, ‘
Thank
you, Maestro', in a sarcastic tone as if that's what I'd been telling him all along.

Mostly though, I've been very kind to the grey nation – apart from three superficial interruptions, I've given them ten good takes of pure Jack. I do not want to belabour the point I'm making. Which is that they must not assume that Jack wrote alone or worked unaided. They must not assume, as they always used to, that little Birdie-bird was there simply to roll his joints and warm his chilly toes.

The tape rolls on until there's nothing but audio hiss to listen to. Nobody moves. Nobody says anything. I don't bother to look at their faces but I leave the window and eject the tape into my own hand. Then everyone starts talking at once.

This is a charade of my own making and I can't blame anyone but myself. I feel like shit and ashamed. That's one of Jack's lines in ‘Coal Dirty Soul' – ‘Feel like shit and ashamed, rode the roller ‘til I went stone blind …'

Now is not the time to walk away. I should've done that years ago. But I didn't, and now I have to stand here like a huckster in the market place with my goods in my hand, peddling what can never be paid for.