Priceless (31 page)

She nodded, trying not to start crying in front of one of the most powerful men in media.

“If you want some advice, just take a leaf out of your friend’s playbook here.” He looked at Jackson and grinned. “Acknowledge it, and move on. You didn’t go to jail, and if you knew how many celebrities have shadows in their past, you’d be amazed.
Unless you read the trash rags, in which case you wouldn’t be surprised at all. Take this chance and go with it. The press will mention it a lot at first, but then they’ll move on. Focus on the work, and you’ll be fine.”

A beaming smile all around, and then he was gone, calling over his shoulder, “I can’t do dinner tonight after all, but have fun out there, kids!”

Tiffanii appeared and led them out, and as the door nearly hit them on their asses on the way out, they realized they were free.

“I don’t know about you two,” said Kat, looking around the early evening of downtown Burbank, “but I’m starving. It’s hard holding down three jobs, you know.”

If Peter Lakeshore had seemed a little crazy, the people at the record label made him look like the sanest guy around.

The day started badly.

To begin with, the label coordinator, Jessika, met them in the lobby of the hotel wearing skin-tight leather from head to toe. She was tall, strong, and gorgeous, with wild black hair that snaked down her back. She looked like a superhero or someone from a video game. Kat’s eyes had bugged out a little, but she’d stayed calm.

“No limo today, I’m afraid,” Jessika said as she led them to a long, low, gleaming Mercedes. “I’m driving you myself. It’s not far, anyway.” She pointed her clicker and beeped the doors open. Jackson started to head for the passenger door, but Kat shouldered him out of the way, sliding in beside Jessika smoothly. She herself was wearing a black Givenchy sheath à la
Breakfast at Tiffany’s
and stood out in the tanned L.A. crowd like a racehorse in a field of sheep.

Without warning, a flash went off, and Charlotte turned at the sound of her name.

“Charlotte! Over here!”

Suddenly, there was a wall of lights and microphones and people’s faces. Peter Lakeshore’s show reached a lot of people, it would seem.

“You bitch!” A middle-aged man, who otherwise looked totally reasonable, yelled from behind the photographers. “You steal our money, and now you’re going to get famous off it! Whore!”

Jessika was out of the car and next to Charlotte in a matter of seconds. “No comment, fuck off, thanks very much!” She yelled as she turned Charlotte around and pushed her down into the car. Checking that Jackson was in, she slammed the door and jumped in herself, squealing out of the hotel driveway at an illegal pace.

“What was that all about?” she asked, looking at Charlotte in the rearview.

“You don’t know?”

Jessika shrugged. “I was out last night, I can barely remember when I got in. I haven’t had time to read any backstory on you guys at all.”

Charlotte sighed and looked out the window. She was getting tired of explaining it.

Kat stepped in. “Charlotte’s dad is Jacob Williams, who just went to jail.”

“Oh, yeah? Did he kill someone?” Jessika seemed only mildly interested.

“No. He stole a load of money.”

“Oh? From that guy?”

“No idea. From lots of guys, so maybe that one, too.”

“Oh, well, never mind. It’ll all blow over.” Charlotte was surprised, but Jessika elaborated. “Look, I’ve worked with rock stars and musicians and actors and whatever, and they all get in trouble in one way or another. Drugs, girls, money, sex, gambling, fighting, you name it, they do it, and the press loves to make copy out of it. It’s much easier than actually reporting something, you know, like investigating something or whatever. And seeing as these people tend to photograph well, it’s more attractive news than if Joe Blow punches his girlfriend, because who cares about that?” She leaned back, resting one leather-clad arm on the car window’s edge. “If I might quote Emily Dickinson, the great American poetess, ‘Fame is a bee. It has a song—it has a sting—Ah, too, it has a wing.’”

There was silence in the car as they all digested this.

“Oh, fuck sticks,” said their philosopher-driver-coordinator. “They’re here, too.”

The Mercedes swept into the driveway of the record label, which looked like any other office building apart from the giant billboards of extremely famous bands, nearly scattering the crowd of reporters and paparazzi standing there.

“Mind you,” she added, activating the gate to an underground parking garage, “that lot of shifty characters more or less camps there anyway, just in case Britney or Lindsay shows up.”

F. ASPEN, THE
hot producer du jour, was born Francis Aspenweiser and changed his name in high school. He’d known for years at that point that he was destined for greatness, and so
did everyone around him. Francis, as his family still called him, had formed his first band in elementary school (the Recess) and persuaded his dad to trick him out with a MacBook Pro and GarageBand (with all of the jam packs) instead of a bar mitzvah. He played piano, guitar, sax, drums, bass, cello, and trumpet and couldn’t sing worth spit. Which was fine—there were always singers around, and what he really wanted to do was produce, anyway. He worshipped at the shrine of Dre, with side deities Guy Sigsworth and Bloodshy and Avant. And yet, for all his hipness and fabulosity, he was at heart another twenty-something music geek who loved nothing more than hearing a song that made him want to dance or cry or get laid. He’d heard “Fire and Ice” two days before, thanks to the Internet and an assistant whose only job it was to trawl for new music, and he’d had it on replay ever since.

“Charlie and Jack! Nice to meet you, dudes. Come on in, come on in.” He stood up, which still made him only five feet four inches tall, and hugged Jessika. “Hello, gorgeous, how are you?” He was dark-haired and normal-looking, and could just as easily have been a barista or a student, rather than a multiplatinum, multinational record producer with the world at his Chuck Taylor–wearing feet.

“I’m good, F., pretty good, thanks.” Jessika peeled off her jacket, sexily revealing a simple white V-neck T-shirt with plenty of cleavage. Kat made a small noise but bit her tongue. “These kids are all yours now, OK? I’m supposed to take them back to the hotel when you’re done working, so give me a tinkle, yeah?”

“Sure, Jessika, sure. Can you ask Sandy to send in some snacks and drinks? I’m parched. Is it lunchtime?”

Jessika laughed. “When did you get here? It’s not even
brunch, bro.”

“I got here last night, babe, and you know how it is when I’m in the zone.”

The young woman shook her head. “Breakfast’s the most important meal of the day, dude. Get yourself some granola and shit.” She sighed and looked at Kat. “Honestly, these creative types.” She left the room, her perfume lingering long after she was gone.

Charlotte looked at Kat.
Oh, dear.
That was one smitten kitten.

“
SO, LET’S HEAR
what else you’ve got.”

F. perched on the mixing desk as Jackson headed into the studio just beyond a smoked-glass window. Inside was a baby grand, and he sat down and just started playing. Charlotte stood next to F and watched, feeling enormously proud. Song after song poured out of Jackson, from bluesy love songs to fast, syncopated dance tracks. Somehow, just with his voice and the piano, he was able to convey arrangements and instrumentation, and Charlotte and Kat could tell from his body language that F. Aspen was dying to get started.

He turned to Charlotte. “OK, in you go. Do you know these songs?” She shook her head. “Go learn them, then. I’ll be back in half an hour. Have two of them ready to go, OK?” With that, he left the room, and they could hear him shouting for Sandy, whoever he or she was.

ABOUT HALFWAY THROUGH
the afternoon, a strange thing
happened. Charlotte and Jackson sort of missed it, because they were bickering over which of them should take a harmony part, but Kat had an excellent ringside seat. F. Aspen had been leaning back in his mixing chair, feet up on the console, waiting for Charlotte and Jackson to agree on the harmony. Charlotte started singing the harmony and then switched to the main melody to demonstrate her point, and for whatever reason, she looked and sounded so exquisite in that moment that even Kat caught her breath. F. Aspen suddenly leaped to his feet and essentially ran out of the room.

Jackson and Charlotte kept arguing, but Kat, who’d been watching carefully the whole time, leaned forward and pressed the button that allowed them to hear her.

“Uh … guys. I have no idea what just happened, but something did.”

They couldn’t have cared less.

Jackson was speaking calmly, but his expression made it clear that he was holding his anger just under the surface. “The way I wrote it, I sing the melody here, you sing the harmony, and then in the next verse, we trade places.”

Charlotte shrugged. “I realize you wrote it, Jackson, you don’t have to keep mentioning it. All I’m saying is that I think it sounds better this way.”

“Well, you would, wouldn’t you, because all you can hear is you.”

“That’s just not true. The harmony is vital. It wouldn’t sound the same if it was just my voice.”

“Well, I think you’re wrong, and as it’s my song—”

Their voices were getting louder and louder, but when F. Aspen came back in with another man, Kat let go of the button, and suddenly the argument was muted.

“See what I mean?”

F. Aspen seemed to be continuing a conversation he’d already started with this other man, and Kat looked at him curiously. The other man was older, like her dad older, and dressed in what Kat recognized as a bespoke suit. Under it, he wore a Cocteau Twins T-shirt, but the suit had cost more than five grand, she knew that. He was very handsome in a rich, smooth way, and although his face was unlined and relaxed, his eyes were sharp and cold. He turned to look at Kat.

“You’re Kat Karraby, the manager?”

She nodded, trying to look as calm as he did.

“Is there a contract between these two?”

She shook her head.

“Or between them and you?”

“No. We’re friends. Nothing on paper.”

A short smile. “Well, then, nothing at all.” He pressed the button and spoke to Jackson and Charlotte. “I’m John Sparks. I run this record label.”

The two musicians fell silent. Charlotte turned to face the glass, and Kat saw John Sparks’s face grow even more still.

He let go of the button and spoke to F. “You’re right, she’s smoking hot. And she can really sing?”

“Listen for yourself.” Aspen leaned over. “Sing that second song you did, the one that speeds up.”

“‘Intoxication’?”

“Yes.”

Jackson sat down at the piano, and Aspen brought up the playback, with the additional percussion and instruments they’d added earlier. He dropped out Charlotte’s recorded track so Sparks could hear her sing live, although once she’d started, he hit record again. “No point in missing another take while we’re at it,” he muttered to himself.

It was clear to Kat, who knew them well, that the argument they’d just had was working in their favor musically. The song was about sex, basically, about the slow build-up, about the gentlest beginnings turning into the most incredible passion. The song began simply and slowly and gradually doubled in pace until the last verse. Charlotte was clearly giving it her all and letting her anger power her singing.