Judith Krantz (4 page)

Once Evan was firmly established, Phoebe lost interest in him. There was only so far he could go, only so much money she could make as his rep. He didn’t have the desire to change and only the new and innovative interested her. She found him another rep in 1980, opened her own small office, and set herself to an analysis of the subjects of the ads in American magazines.

There were more ads for food products than any other category including cosmetics. Next came cars. Automotive print ads were everywhere as soon as she started to look for them. Phoebe made herself an expert on the relative merits of food and car photographers and picked out Mel Botvinick and Pete di Constanza as the two of their species she was prepared to rep.

She bagged the two men quickly, setting her percentage of their fees at one-third. The more she did for them, the more they needed her. The more she extended a hand, the tighter they grabbed on to it. Without her prudent management of their careers they would never have dared ask for the money they now commanded. Whenever there was a job going that they really coveted, they grew anxious and overeager, certain that someone else would nab it. At that crucial point they were willing to cut their own established fees.

Fat chance of that while she was around, Phoebe said to herself, smiling. She kept their fees up at all costs, turning down all low-ball offers even if it meant an idle day for them. From the time she took them on she steadily increased their earnings so that they all commanded the maximum in the business. Pete made well over a million dollars a year, Mel almost as much.

Jazz Kilkullen, because she shot so much editorial work for magazines, with her name on the photo, was the only famous one of them. She earned about
four hundred thousand dollars a year, since editorial paid so much less than ads. Still, her potential was incalculable, particularly in cosmetic ads. If only there were two of Jazz: one who would just shut up and photograph models for major cosmetic advertisers, and another who could shoot magazine fashion and celebrities to her heart’s content. But there was only one Jazz and that one insisted on doing editorial work because she liked the freedom.

In other ways too, Jazz was a different kind of cat than Mel, who did only the amount of editorial work Phoebe approved, and Pete, who did ads only. Jazz had a tendency toward that quality Phoebe resented the most: independence.

Yes, a damnable tendency, almost certainly due to her background, Phoebe recognized in familiar annoyance. Jazz’s father, Mike Kilkullen, owned the last great cattle ranch between Los Angeles and San Diego, sixty-four thousand acres that remained virgin, intact, and undeveloped: a family-run empire as it had been since the days of the Spanish Land Grants. Jazz was an eighth-generation Californian, with old Spanish ranchero blood in her veins, as well as Irish and Swedish. She had always been a problem to control. Phoebe brooded, greedily eating some cream cheese straight, with a plastic spoon. Repping was like being a lion trainer. Just enough kindness, steady authority and fearlessness.
But above all, control
.

The three photographers straggled into Phoebe’s office, irritated as usual at this invasion of their Saturday morning.

“How about that quake?” Mel Botvinick asked the group. “I’d just finished setting up to shoot a double spread on soufflés for
Bon Appétit
when it happened. We all had to stay till midnight to do it over. Talk about miserable timing!”

“That’s nothing,” Pete di Constanza replied. “I was standing on a ladder looking at the top view of the new Ferrari when the thing hit. If I didn’t have such
fast reactions, I’d be in the hospital today with a broken leg. But it could have been a lot worse—the car could have been hurt. Jazz, what happened to you?”

“Actually it came at a reasonably convenient time, all things considered,” Jazz answered. “I wasn’t doing anything special.”

“Oh, you’re all such babies,” Phoebe said peevishly. “What’s a little local earthquake? In Beverly Hills we barely noticed it.”

“Shopping?” Pete asked.

“Getting my hair done, as usual. You know my Friday afternoons are sacred, Pete.”

“Yeah, right. Like my Monday and Thursday hours with my shrink. I can’t believe him,” Pete di Constanza complained. “The fucker makes a point of driving an old, ugly, beat-up Volvo, like there’s something virtuous about it. So when I tell him I’ve just got the new Countach Anniversary account, guess what he says? ‘I thought you only did cars.’ The fucker doesn’t know what a Countach is! Lamborghini brought it out in 1971, nineteen years ago, it’s still the most powerful sports car on the road, and he doesn’t fucking
realize.”

“How come you know what your shrink drives?” Mel Botvinick asked.

“I asked him.”

“And he told you?” Mel said, puzzled. His shrink never answered questions.

“Yeah, he’s not into that Freudian crap. You ask him an ordinary, acceptable question, you get an answer.”

“Why are you so sure he thinks the Volvo is a sign of virtue?” Jazz inquired, laughing fondly. Pete di Constanza, from Fort Lee, New Jersey, dressed like a park ranger, looked like a lifeguard in a soft-porn beach-blanket movie, and lit hunks of metal like a god. He was one of the world’s good people.

“I inferred it,” Pete said with dignity.

“See, that’s why my shrink won’t answer questions,” Mel said, with a superior sniff. “He doesn’t want me to infer anything, he wants me to project.”

“That’s the guy who also told you not to write down your dreams,” Pete objected. “How the hell does he expect you to remember them if you don’t write them down?”

“He says I will if they’re important.”

“Boys, boys,” Phoebe interrupted. “Could you save this fascinating discussion of your psyches for some other place?”

Pete subsided into silence. He wouldn’t have to be at this time-wasting meeting if Phoebe hadn’t persuaded him to invest in the studio. Sure, it was the best investment he’d made in his life, in fact it represented the only real money he’d ever kept, but being a landlord wasn’t his style, not even of one-quarter of a building.

Since buying the old bank and converting it had been Phoebe’s idea, she made them all show up to discuss the smooth running of Dazzle, on the theory that three photographers couldn’t manage to get along without her monthly mediation. Airs and graces! As far as he was concerned, Phoebe had just one clearly defined function in life and that was to free him from petty details so that he could come up with killer shots.

Not just product shots. Any bum in Detroit could take product shots, and a lot of bums did, with cheapo colored smoke and firecrackers and mirror effects that made the car look as if it were part of a Vegas floor show. But if you wanted a shot of a car that caught the existential
essence
of the car? A shot that could convey the ultimate
emotional
experience of driving at 186 miles an hour and get that shot with the car standing still in a studio? A shot that was fucking romantic, a shot that was fucking poetic, a shot that made the car into a God damned icon? You simply had to come to Pete di Constanza.

By the time he spent a few weeks experimenting with some new lighting ideas he had, the new version of the great classic Countach would look as if it had just floated down from a spaceship and was lit from within, the kind of car your leading alien gear head
would be thrilled to drive. If they’d let him take the prototype out on location there’d be no limit to what he could do, but this particular prototype was too precious to be let out of doors.

“Minutes of the last meeting—” Phoebe began in an official voice.

“Read and approved,” Mel Botvinick interrupted hastily.

“So moved,” Pete and Jazz yelled simultaneously.

What was it with her, Mel wondered? Did Phoebe think that she was running a Fortune Five Hundred company? Come to think of it, with her one-third take of everything the three of them billed, she made more money than most top executives in big business could dream of. She certainly didn’t waste it on their refreshment, he noticed, looking with disapproval at the meager platter of bagels, the half-empty plastic containers of cheese and the pitcher of iced tea which she always insisted she’d brewed but which he knew was Lipton’s presweetened, right out of the can, into which she’d brought herself to sacrifice a lemon cut into four pieces and a few ice cubes. She couldn’t give a hoot about food. Mel shuddered as he looked at her tiny waist and delicate wrists. She could certainly afford to fatten herself up until she’d appeal to a sensible man, but no, she’d rather be painfully thin.

Still, why grumble? Phoebe was worth the money she took from him. He shuddered at the thought of having to go out and solicit an account, of being forced to venture unprotected into the hard-sell world of Wesson Oil and frozen pizzas and hustle his book by himself. Phoebe didn’t mind the horrible humiliation of actually calling up prospective clients and proposing him for a job he’d never even heard of.

Phoebe had a sixth sense that told her exactly when an account was looking for a fresh approach to breakfast cereal and she never made him do more than two fast food shoots a month. No artist could subject himself to the kind of aggravation you’d have without a rep and still keep himself in a condition to follow his
calling, for that was what it was. Food photography was a calling, nothing less, like ballet or brain surgery, just different in the details.

“Does anyone have any new business?” Phoebe inquired. Pete was slouched in his chair, making a ridiculous point of looking uncomfortable with his long legs in L.L. Bean hiking boots sprawled awkwardly in front of him. Mel was sitting, as he always did, as close to upright as he could in the slinglike chair, his delicate hands neatly folded on his plumply rounded belly, his light gray shirt uncreased, one black-trousered leg carefully crossed on the other. He dressed like a defrocked monk, she thought, and he looked like one too, with his smoothly barbered hair and his bland features in an egg-shaped face.

“No,” they chorused.

“I do,” Phoebe said briskly. “I’ve learned that the Purple Tostada Grande is thinking of selling their place.” Moans filled the air.

Everyone who works in a photographer’s studio is utterly dependent on take-out food for nourishment. Jazz, Mel and Pete each had a half-dozen different menus from local spots from which they ordered every day for the people who were working in their studios. The Purple Tostada Grande, an inexpensive Mexican place with a large patio directly across the street on the boardwalk, was everyone’s favorite. Clients often walked in the door with their mouths already watering for stuffed quesadilla, that flour tortilla grilled and filled with green chilis, onions, sour cream, tomatoes and cheese; or the burrito combo with beans and beef, to say nothing of the famous shrimp in a basket served with fresh guacamole and fries on the side.

“How can they do this to us?” Jazz wailed.

“It’s a disgrace,” Pete sputtered. “I have clients coming from Japan and Germany who are already thinking about their Tostada lunches. I’ll lose face with them.”

“If we don’t have Tostada, my clients may start eating the stand-in food,” Mel worried. “As if I don’t have enough trouble with clients who say they ‘just
want a taste’ and pop the hero food into their mouths.”

“Look at it as an opportunity,” Phoebe said. “Why don’t we buy it ourselves? That way we can keep it in business and maybe make a little money.”

“No way,” Pete said promptly. “It’s bad enough owning part of a building, but a restaurant, no way.”

“Jazz?” Phoebe continued her poll.

“I’ll pass. I’m not investment-minded at the moment.”

“Mel?”

“You’re kidding, aren’t you? I shoot the stuff all day. I have the best-equipped kitchen in the world in my studio. I don’t want to go into the food
business.”
He looked offended.

“So you don’t mind if I buy it myself?” Phoebe asked.

“Great!”

“Terrific!”

“Good show, Phoebe. Saved by our rep,” Jazz applauded.

“Thanks, people. I’ll make a note of your approval for the minutes.” Phoebe looked cheerful. As she had expected, none of them had the native good sense to realize that every bit of Venice property was rapidly rising in value. Particularly a parcel right on the boardwalk. If she bought it today and didn’t do a thing to it, the property could double in a year.

But better yet, the Tostada, with its big patio, was an ideal location for a totally new restaurant, a theme restaurant, something wildly different. Wildly expensive. Valet parking, of course, and a young top chef who was already firmly established somewhere in the American heartland, Chicago for instance, a chef who knew he’d never have arrived until he made it in L.A. Financing would be a snap. There were plenty of big shots who’d put up the money for the new place; everyone in this town wanted to be in on the ground floor of a new restaurant. Tony Bill wasn’t the only person around who wanted to own pieces of Venice, California.

“Anyone have anything else to say?” Phoebe chirped.

“Uh,” Mel said, and stopped.

“Mel? New business? Are you thinking of upgrading your air conditioning again?” Phoebe asked suspiciously. “We’ll have to change the electric panel if you are, I warn you. And we have enough electricity coming in here already to operate a hospital.”

“I’m, uh, getting married.” He blushed violently.

There was a momentary silence of blank astonishment. Mel, with his total devotion to his work, had kept his private life so silent that they had finally assumed he didn’t have one. How could Mel be getting married if none of them had heard about it on the studio grapevine?

“Who?” Phoebe said, startled. She should certainly have been told first, before he made such an important decision.

“Who?” Jazz asked in delight.

“Who?” Pete wanted to know. What kind of guy wouldn’t have told him first, before the others?

“Sharon. You all know Sharon.” Mel was beaming, now that the news was out.

“Sharon—I should have guessed. Who else is good enough for you?” Jazz said, struggling to get up out of the chair and kiss him. She doted on Mel. Her first job in the business had been with Botvinick.