Then the crash.
Margie paused it. “We’ve heard the rest.”
“Where did you get that garbage?” Rinaldo asked.
“You Tube,” Margie said. “It had seven hundred views this morning. But let me refresh. Huh. Got about forty-two hundred now. Funny what people find entertaining, isn’t it?”
“A woman asking for it,” I muttered. Margie shot me a look, but I was spared the heel.
“She stole my phone.” Jessica’s eyes bore into me.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“The singer.”
“Go near her again, and I’ll kill you.”
Margie’s heel drew blood. I would have to buy her flats for our next meeting.
“Like you did Rachel,” Jessica said through her teeth. “Took sixteen years. But there’s no statute of limitation on murder, even manslaughter, Jon.”
Ryan Myers stood, closing his files. “We’re done here. Ms. Drazen, you and your client can consider our offer. Get back to me when you have an answer. The photographs still stand, as well as the possible pattern of abuse with his current girlfriend, which we’ll be sure to mention to the prosecutor.”
“Thanks for the warning.” Margie stood and shook his hand. Meeting over and, as usual, only the lawyers walked away unscathed.
Chapter 29.
MONICA
I wore bruise-hiding clothes for the meeting, but as I wrapped my scarf around my neck, I wondered if Jonathan would come back to me before or after they were gone. My eyes welled, but I choked it back. Self-control. A woman of grace. I had to be that. I could crash after the meeting.
The car was, in a word, themostfantasticthingever. Fuck Jonathan. I got to the meeting feeling as though I was the architect of a major planetary takeover. I would return the car as soon as I was done there, but until then, it was like a space pod in a science fiction movie. Up the elevator, I told myself the usual. My name is Monica. I stand six feet tall in heels. I am descended from one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century. I sing like an angel and growl like a lion. I am music. I am a goddess. I choked on the last word because it was his, but I believed it. I didn’t think I ever had before.
I expected to be awed by the size of the lobby or the glass-enclosed conference room, but I wasn’t. The dark wood floors, the receptionists’ desk that put their heads six inches above the person they were talking to, the marble staircase to the executive offices, all of it would have given me an anxiety attack six months earlier. But on the day I actually had a meeting that would have sent my friends into fits of envy-laced congratulations, I felt not a bit of tension or worry. Everything was in its box. Every emotion, positive or negative, was put away.
I understood what Jonathan found so appealing about self-control. I was the master of my body, my feelings, my words. I was fully in the moment, keeping my shit together. I was unattached to the results of the meeting. I was only concerned with being in it.
I’d heard those sentiments before, but I only realized that I had internalized them as I waited to be brought to a meeting where I was but a single, struggling singer in a room full of people who could make my dreams reality. I had what they needed. I had the music.
Carnival Records didn’t have a cutting edge reputation. They weren’t “street.” They recorded gangsters and drug addicts, same as anyone, but internally, they were old school and buttoned-up. The office was all business. They weren’t there to create or be part of an arts community. They took care of business. That was all. So though I’d worn a yellow dress with cream shoes, a cream scarf to cover Jonathan’s marks, my hair in braids, and red lipstick bright enough to stop traffic, the employees kept the colors toned down, the lipstick nude, and the arty affectation to a minimum.
I wasn’t waiting long before the receptionist brought me up the stairs, her ass swaying like a pendulum in her Robert Rodriguez skirt, big cloppy shoes silent from practice. She led me into the conference room. “Would you like some coffee?”
Again, Los Angeles was spread before me from Wilshire to the haze of the horizon. “Tea would be great. Just plain.”
She smiled and left. I didn’t sit but looked out the window onto the city of Los Angeles and the miasma of smog over the east side. Windows looked out into the hallway and all the blinds were up, so everyone in the office could see where Harry was and who he was talking to. He came into my sight, flanked by an entourage, mid-conversation. He smiled and waved through the window to me, stopping to finish talking to Eddie Milpas and an older woman who had a very important point to make, apparently. Two younger women flanked with notebooks and smart suits. A young man with three days of facial growth and a plaid shirt with slacks, an intern from the looks of him, opened the door when Eddie pointed to it. The gaggle of them strolled in.
“Ms. Faulkner,” Harry said.
We had handshakes and introductions. Eddie and I exchanged a meaningful look that acknowledged we’d already met. I tried to put an innocuous expression on my face to tell him I wasn’t going to wrestle with him over Bondage Girl in front of his boss. Everyone sat.
We had almost exactly the same small talk as every other meeting I’d attended. Traffic first. Los Angeles neighborhoods next. Some personal family stuff from Harry about his kid’s Little League. I avoided a conversation about baseball that could have gone on for days.
“Well,” Harry said as if he was cutting in on his own conversation, “it was something else to hear you perform last week. Wasn’t what I expected to see when I came out there.”
“I’m glad you enjoyed it.”
Jerry, the producer who first recorded me playing “Collared” with a theremin, blasted in wearing a navy jacket and a windowpane shirt with the top three buttons undone “Sorry, sorry.” He winked at me.
Harry gave him a smile that could have been swapped for a glare with no change in the message, then turned back to me. “Everyone in this room has seen you play.”
I hadn’t expected that. I thought they might have all heard Jerry’s recording, but apparently, they all stopped by Frontage at some point. Of course, Harry had heard me play the B.C. Modern.
“We’re all very impressed,” he said. “Eddie and I have been discussing some marketing strategies, and he’s come up with some ideas that are out of the park.”
Customer service smile.
If it was Bondage Girl, we were going to have a very short meeting.