Vanni: A Prequel (Groupie Book 4) (18 page)

My brow knits with confusion. “So what does any of that have to do with me?”

Her gaze traipses lazily across my body. “I’ve been looking for a musical act to entertain our guests for the event.”

Have I missed something? Was she trying to book us for a gig? “But you don’t even know if I can sing.”

“It’s so cute that you think I don’t,” she says again as she reaches for the champagne bottle herself. “I’m going to be honest with you, Vanni. I could book any number of acts in this city, many of whom would waive any payment just to give back to a worthy cause. I have the biggest names in music–hell, in entertainment–who are just a phone call away to do any favor I ask. I’ve done that for years and years and frankly, I’m over it. I want to show those two-faced busybodies something new. Something,” she says as she leans forward, close enough I can smell the perfume from her neck, “that they’ve never seen before.”

I lean back. It’s rather cute that
she
doesn’t think I’ve done my homework. “And this has nothing to do with the fact that I’m exactly the same age as the model who will be hanging off your Julio’s arm, I guess.”

She chuckles. “Now see? That is swagger. You’re a smart boy, Vanni. You know what I’m offering. It doesn’t really matter why as long as you get your foot in the door, now does it?”

“I’ll have to talk it over with the guys,” I bluff.

“Why?” she asks. “I’m not booking them.”

My eyes shoot back to hers. “What?”

She leans closer. “Just you. One night. Show me what you can do and then we’ll talk about all the rest.” Her eyes devour me. “It’s quite simple, really. You get the opportunity of a lifetime, and I get the hottest guy in the room on my arm. What have you got to lose?”

I shrug away and stand to my feet. “Look, I don’t know what you think you’re buying here,” I start, but she cuts me off.

“I’m not buying anything, sweetheart. I’m investing.” She stands as well. “Do I look like a stupid woman to you, Vanni?”

I look her over. I concede after a moment with a slight shake of my head that she doesn’t.

“There’s a reason so many of my acts go national after being featured on my stage, honey. I know what I’m doing. I can take you and your little dive-bar band and make you all stars like that,” she says as she snaps her fingers. “But I didn’t get to where I am giving away favors. It’s tit for tat in this business. You want me to give you your big break? You have to ask yourself, what are you willing to do for me?”

She steps closer, running her hand along my abdomen and up my chest. “One night. One performance. One chance. It’s more than I’m willing to give anyone else. If you don’t think you deserve that chance, tell me now. Because if there’s one thing I hate, it’s wasting my time.”

I contemplate my choices. Doing a solo gig feels like a betrayal to my boys. But if I don’t do this gig, we may never get another shot to play at Sedução again, at least until we’ve broken into the big leagues, and who knows how long that will take? At this rate, I’m weeks away from going back to Cynzia’s just for a paycheck.

Besides this was part of my big plan, isn’t it? I had sworn to Yael I could book Sedução, and here I was, with the opportunity quite literally being handed to me. One week, one little old week, and I could secure the first major step for the band.

I grab her hand as it slides down my rock hard stomach, stopping her just before she reaches my cock. She’s not the only one who can put a carrot on a stick. “So how much does this little event of yours pay?” I ask with a slightly raised eyebrow.

“Don’t you want to donate your fees for charity?” she asks with an innocent pout.

“Charity starts at home,” I tell her.

She chuckles again. “Atta boy,” she says. She names a price, and I can only hope my eyes don’t widen with shock. “So what do you say, Vanni?” she asks as her dark brown eyes meet mine.

I lean down, my mouth hovering over hers in an almost-kiss. I don’t say a word until her breath hitches. “I say you’ve got yourself a date.”

That Monday I begin leading a double life out of necessity. I can’t say anything to my band about what I’m going to do, simply because I don’t want to get their hopes up of booking Sedução. After all the games she’s played thus far, I don’t trust Tina quite yet. I have no guarantee she’s not going to flake out on the second, less guaranteed part of her offer and book our band after she’s done using me like a dish rag on Friday.

I’m no idiot. I know she only wants to parade me around under her ex’s nose as her new boy toy, in revenge for his latest arm candy. Recent tabloid articles had been floating the idea this new girl’s been spotted with a baby bump. Considering old Julio left Tina for her, that news must be really hard to swallow, especially in front of all their friends and the press this event will generate.

And Tina is completely right. She didn’t get to the top by giving out favors. I know I’m going to have to work my ass off to secure that gig for the rest of us, and that’s my most important job come Monday morning.

Unfortunately for me, we also have a gig on Saturday, and Yael’s rehearsal schedule is just as intensive as Tina’s. It is the first of many lies when I tell him that I’ve had to take some shifts at Cynzia’s during the day, pushing our band rehearsals to later at night.

I arrive at Sedução by ten o’clock, and more burly bouncers let me in. Tina waits for me at one of the tables. She’s dressed in a black pencil skirt and heels, with a silk, sleeveless blouse in blue, and looks just as sexy as she does showing a lot more skin. It’s just in the way she carries herself. She’s impeccable head to toe.

I sit at the table without being asked. She barely looks up from her paperwork. “First order of business, we have to work on your image.”

I immediately bristle. “My image?”

“You look every inch of what you are: a singer in a bar.”

“Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t that the look that drew you to me?”

She chuckles as she spares me a glance. “I didn’t pick you based on how you are, honey. I picked you based on how you could be.” She looks over her shoulder towards the darkened bar, where I see that some employees have already begun setting up for the day. At least one employee in particular.

“Sasha, can you buzz our friends in? They should be here by now.”

Sasha nods and picks up the phone.

“Friends?” I ask.

“I called in a few favors,” she tells me as she shoves her paperwork into a folder and stands.

Within a minute, a group of people flood the empty bar. Leading the charge is a woman with a bright pink pixie cut, who has clearly come from an alternate dimension sometime in the 1950s. Her black Capri pants are covered in bold, white polka dots. She wears platform pumps with a peekaboo toe, revealing her equally pink toenails. Her white button-up shirt is tied at the middle, and a large bold pendant rests between her unnaturally cone-shaped breasts. She looks like someone took Lucille Ball and Madonna and threw them both in a psychedelic blender.

Tina makes the necessary introductions. “This is Frankie Fleck, stylist extraordinaire.”  

The unusual woman holds out a hand, which I shake.

“This is Giovanni Carnevale,” Tina tells Frankie, who begins a slow circle around me where I stand, looking me up and down. She lifts up a lock of hair, brushing it away from my face.

“You dress much too small for that name that big.” She turns back to Tina. “So what were you thinking?”

Tina starts to circle me now too. “He’s got a great body. We can show it off.”

“Slowly,” Frankie agrees with a smile.

“Don’t take him too far from his blue-collar, Brooklyn roots, but add a little Manhattan flair. Product for the hair; styled, of course. Maybe some blond highlights. Lighten it up. Give it dimension. Better material,” she sneers as she fingers the fabric of my vintage shirt. “Retro but not second-hand. Edgy, but still trendy.”

They both stop in front of me, staring into my face. “Makeup?” Tina asks. There’s only a split second before they both say, “Eyeliner,” in unison.

“Needs more bling,” Frankie decides and Tina nods.

Frankie finally looks at me. It’s the first time they’ve included me in this little discussion, and I’ve been too stunned to notice otherwise. “How’s the chest?”

I don’t bother hiding my smirk as I peel up my shirt to reveal upper body, chiseled hard from all the workouts I’ve been doing all summer. I’m gratified by the slow smiles that appear on both of their faces.

“I like it. Enough hair that he’s got that aura of rugged masculinity,” Frankie starts.

“But not so much he’s the missing link,” Tina agrees.

Just when I start to wonder if I should be offended of how they’re examining me like some cut of beef, Frankie’s gaze drops downward toward my crotch. “My, my, my. I bet you don’t even have to fluff, do you?”

“What can I say?” I quip back. “I’m Italian.”

She stands back and takes it all in. “Yes, you are. All right,” she decides suddenly. “I think I’m ready.”

She turns on her heel and struts for the entrance. She doesn’t turn around until she gets there. “You coming?”

I turn to Tina, who nods Frankie’s direction. “I thought I was supposed to be rehearsing,” I try to remind her.

“There’s time for that,” she tells me, crossing her arms across her chest. “Unless you’re not as confident you can impress me as you think you are.”

I stare her down for only a moment before I stalk off after Frankie.

Frankie and her crew head straight for a waiting limo, where my pink-haired hostess plies me with champagne to keep me compliant. We end up in a high-end spa for men, where I get my first mani/pedi, my first facial, a body scrub, and my first spray-tan.

By the time she’s done with Phase One, as she calls it, I’m racing to SoHo for rehearsals with the guys.

Having never been plucked and pampered before, I felt like a stranger in my own skin all the while we play. I screw up more than I have in a long while, forgetting lyrics and missing pitch. They throw me completely off-center when I have to explain the tan. “Just trying something new. A friend had a gift certificate and I thought what the hell?”

Just another lie on top of many.

The next morning, Frankie is already there when I get there. Like the day before, she whisks me away without my singing a note. She spends Tuesday getting my hair styled, yet another thing I have to explain away to the guys. I start crafting my story as I sit in a chair, tin foil all over my head, praying for the end of Phase Two.

They layer my long hair, teasing it to look a lot wavier than it usually is. It’s now chestnut with honey highlights, or so the stylist tells Frankie. To me it looks brown and a little less brown. They pluck and shape my eyebrows and I get my first straight razor shave.

Wednesday follows the same pattern. When I get to Sedução, Tina is nowhere in sight. It’s just Frankie, and this time she’s ready to overhaul my wardrobe.

By Phase Three, I’m fairly frustrated. My performance is in two days and I haven’t rehearsed once. I can only hope our shopping excursion won’t take up all of our afternoon.

Sadly, Frankie has other ideas. She drags me through every funky, trendy boutique in the city. By the time we’re done she’s dropped thousands of dollars and fills the limo with bags and bags of clothes, shoes, accessories, including jewelry, and a crap load of cosmetics to maintain this high dollar makeover for more than a week.

When we return to the club, there’s not enough time for us to take all my new belongings back to Brooklyn before I have to head over to my other rehearsal.

“No problem. Drop them off at my place,” Tina decides. She turns to me. “You can pick them up after rehearsal is done. Just tell me where to send the car.”

At first I want to decline. I’m exhausted after a week of running around. But I really want to get to bottom of her master plot. She’s hired me for a gig to win over the jet-setting Manhattan crowd, but has systematically prevented me from preparing for it.

I need to know why.

I’m so out of sorts, I’m still struggling through our rehearsals for the weekend. I try to figure out what the hell I’m going to do, my mind racing so much it won’t slow down even with a hit or two from Felix’s sweet-smelling blunt, or with an entire six-pack of Bobby’s beer. I’m still amped up when Tina’s car comes for me at the deli down the street from Yael’s loft.

It takes me to a swanky high-rise apartment building on Park Avenue, where the car pulls to the curb to let me out. A doorman greets me. “Mr. Carnevale?”

I nod and he escorts me inside the large arched glass doorway into the impressive lobby. The floors are marble, as well as the archways and stately fireplaces. The doorman walks to the elevator bank and summons the car. I step inside. He reaches around to push the button for the penthouse. “Have a good night, sir,” he bids as the elevator doors close.

The elevator zips me up to the 51
st
floor, where the elevator spills out into the foyer of a private residence.

The décor is a neutral beige and bone, with gleaming chrome accents. There’s a large charcoal drawing in a chrome and glass frame right in front of me. Expensive cut flowers fill a large crystal vase just under the portrait, which keeps drawing my eye.

“That’s Klimt, sir,” says a male voice that is suddenly at my side.

I turn to find a uniformed valet. Young, like me, clean-cut, unlike me. I stammer as I say, “Pardon?”

He nods towards the print. “The artist, sir. Gustav Klimt.
The Study for the Figure of “Lasciviousness.”
Beethoven Frieze
, to be exact. Dated 1901.”

I study the impish, beautiful woman in the drawing. She looks lascivious indeed. In fact, I can barely take my eyes off of her.

The valet clears his throat and I tear my eyes away to follow him where the hallway spills into the living room. There are large spectacular windows on every wall of the spacious room, one of which clearly faces out towards Central Park, and all the beautiful lights of the city that surround it. Soothing Latin instrumental music pipes through the speakers around the room, which helps set the mood.

“Champagne, sir?” the valet asks.

Champagne. It is quickly becoming the drink of choice in this bizarre new life of mine. “Yes, thank you,” I say, feeling utterly ridiculous and out of place.

I walk around the richly decorated room, with cold marble flooring stretching throughout the entire first level. The walls are beige, the furniture stark white. Chandeliers float down from the ceiling in cascading glass bubbles, creating star burst of light around the room and the three, count ‘em, three different seating areas.

I head straight for the window facing the Park. I don’t even want to know how much she pays for this view. It’s like sitting on top of the world.

I guess for people like Tina, that’s exactly what it is.

The valet arrives before Tina. He places a silver tray on the large oval coffee table made of glass. I see he has brought a caviar plate in addition to the champagne. I round the large coffee table to take my seat on the cushy beige sofa. As he takes a match book from the crystal dish near a large humidor and lights the taper candles that sit in tall silver candlesticks, I have to wonder how many times he has set the mood in his mistress’s web for her.

“Thank you, Bertram,” Tina says as she enters. She wears high heels, full makeup and a silk robe. The air is immediately charged with intimacy.

Bertram nods his head and takes his leave, while Tina joins me on the sofa. I notice she doesn’t look out the window once.

“Good rehearsal?” she asks. She gently scoops the caviar onto a toast point.

“Not bad,” I say as I pour our champagne. “It’s kind of hard to concentrate on things since I have no idea what the fuck I’m doing for you yet.”

She chuckles as she sips her drink. “Of course you know what you’re going to do. You’re going to impress me. Isn’t that the plan?”

“Is making it harder for me to do so a part of yours?”

She leans back against the sofa. “The way I see it you have two alternatives in this life. Look at everything as a problem, or look at everything as a challenge. If you see problems, then everything that stands in your way turns you into a victim of your own life. But if you see challenges, then every step forward, even the little, incremental ones, are victories.”

I look around her extravagant home. “You should know.”

“And that’s Lesson Number One. So glad you’ve already learned it.”

I lean back on the sofa. “So what’s next? Why am I here?”

“Convenience,” she said as she leaned back as well. “There’s no sense dragging yourself back and forth to Brooklyn every day when I have five extra bedrooms here. You’ll be perfectly cozy.”

My eyebrow cocks. “You want me to stay?”

“Is that a problem?”

I look around the palatial room again, clearly furnished with finest of everything. She can have anything she wants in the world. And she wants
me
.

A smile tugs at my lips. “Not at all,” I say as I put my glass back on the table and slide closer to where she sits on the sofa, in her silk robe, as if she’s been waiting for me. If this is my invitation, then I’m taking it. She allows me to crowd her back against the sofa, my eyes dark and hooded as I focus on her succulent lips. I bend for a kiss. Before my mouth can land on hers, however, she halts me with one finger.