Friends & Rivals (18 page)

He reached for a half-full glass of liquid on the coffee table but Jack was too quick for him, snatching it up and sniffing it with distaste.

‘Tequila? It's eleven o'clock in the morning, Lex.'

Lex shrugged. ‘That makes it seven p.m. in England. I'm toasting Kendall in shpirit.' He threw his arms out wide. ‘To you and Ivan the Terrible. May you live long and prosper!'

‘Is that what this is all about?' asked Jack, throwing the half-drunk cocktail down the sink, along with what was left in the bottle, and hunting through the drawers for bin liners. ‘Kendall?'

‘I love her,' said Lex morosely, and with more than a touch of drunken melodrama. ‘She'sh the only woman I'll ever love.'

‘Baloney,' said Jack robustly. ‘There's more than one woman for everyone.'

‘There wasn't for you,' said Lex, with more insight than his inebriated state might have suggested him capable of.

‘That's different,' said Jack gruffly. ‘Besides, you aren't really in love with Kendall. You only want her because she's unattainable.'

‘Funny,' said Lex. ‘Thatsh exactly what I used to say to her about you.'

‘
Me?
' Jack looked at him astonished. ‘What do I have to do with it? Kendall was never romantically interested in me.'

Lex laughed, but it was a laugh without warmth or humour. ‘You know, for a smart guy, you can be a real moron sometimes.'

Had he not been drunk, he would never have spoken to Jack like that. They were friends, yes, but Jack Messenger was very much Lex's boss, and Lex had always treated him with a degree of deference and respect. Now, however, his guard was down, and the truth came tumbling out like lava from a freshly erupted volcano.

‘Kendall's always been in love with you. Crazy in love with you. The whole world knows it but you.'

‘That's ridiculous,' blustered Jack.

‘Yeah well, love is ridiculous. Just look at me! Pining away here for a girl who barely knows I exist. Kendall only signed the deal with Polydor to impress you, to show you she could make a success of things on her own, that she was mature enough to be dating you.'

Jack shook his head. This was a truly horrible thought; too horrible to entertain even for a moment. ‘You're wrong.'

‘I'm not wrong. I
know
Kendall, Jack. You think you know her but you don't. She's been in love with you for years. All those guys she slept with, dragged back to the guesthouse for sex … they were all meant to make you jealous, to get your attention. This affair with Ivan is the same damn thing. She doesn't want that guy. It's all for your benefit.'

Angrily, Jack started scooping up pizza boxes off the floor and stuffing them into the trash bag. If there was any truth to what Lex was saying, he didn't want to know about it. But there wasn't any truth to it. He'd have noticed, surely, if Kendall had had those sorts of feelings for him? She'd have said something, done something. No, Lex was seeing things through a double of haze of alcohol and his own infatuation with Kendall. He wasn't rational.

‘Take a shower,' he ordered, not unkindly, ‘and a couple of Alka-Seltzer if you have them. I'll clean up the worst of this shit and then I'm taking you out for brunch.'

Lex groaned. ‘I can't, man. My head. I need to sleep.'

‘Uh uh,' said Jack. ‘You've been sleeping too long. Perhaps we both have. You have twenty minutes to get washed and dressed or I swear to God I'll drag you into that bathroom and do it myself.'

Forty minutes later, Lex sat green and shivering at a corner table in the News Café on Robertson, slowly chewing a slice of plain brown toast and sipping black coffee. He appreciated that Jack was trying to help him, but the brusque military manner, combined with his insistence on eating a mountainous stack of pancakes and syrup washed down with some vile, green-looking juice right in front of him was failing to lift Lex's spirits.

‘Feel better?' Jack took another long swig of the sick-juice. ‘Are you sure you don't want any bacon? A good fry-up always helps me when I'm hung over.'

‘I'm not hung over,' grumbled Lex. ‘I'm still drunk.'

In fact, the shower had sobered him up considerably, although his head still ached violently from the booze and unaccustomed sunlight. Since he'd seen the first TV report on Kendall's affair with Ivan Charles, Lex had barely left the apartment. His so-called Christmas vacation had consisted of crawling under the duvet with a month-long supply of spirits, locking his door, and hoping for the waves of pain to go away. Just the thought of that middle-aged letch looking at her, never mind touching her, making love to her, made Lex's stomach heave. If he'd had work to do, if he'd been busy like he was this time last year, he might have forced himself to get it together, to put one foot in front of the other. But with his main employer, Jack, caught up in his own troubles, there was nothing and no one to save him from sliding into the abyss. If Kendall had been gone before, she was really gone now. Lost to him for ever.

‘Still drunk, eh? Well that's no good,' said Jack, with relentless good cheer. ‘I don't want a drunk for a partner.'

For the first time, Lex tuned out of his own misery and glanced up. ‘What do you mean, “partner”?'

Jack's grin broadened. ‘I mean,' he said, ‘that we're going to set up a new agency. The two of us, together. As partners. It'll be a fresh start.'

Lex almost choked on his toast. ‘That's … wow. I don't know what to say. That's incredibly generous of you, but I really don't have the resources … I couldn't put any money in.'

Jack waved a hand dismissively. ‘Of course not. I'll fund the thing, and I'll be senior partner. You'd bring your talent and work like a dog. How does twenty per cent equity sound?'

To his intense embarrassment, Lex worried he might be about to cry. The only thing worse than a drunk was an emotional drunk, but Jack's kindness was so unexpected, and what he was offering was such a lifeline, it was difficult not to tear up.

‘What, you want more?' Jack joked.

‘No! No, no, no. God no. I'm just … why would you give away twenty per cent of your business?'

‘I'm not giving it away,' said Jack. ‘Believe me, I expect you to earn it. You won't just be taking images any more. You'll be actively finding and managing new acts.'

‘I'm a photographer, Jack, not a manager.'

‘You're both. Think about how much hand-holding you did with Kendall, how much she leaned on you, relied on your advice. And not just with Kendall. I've seen the way you work with scores of Jester's clients. You build a rapport with them, part-friend, part-mentor, part-therapist. That's managing. You're so natural at it, you don't even know you're doing it.'

Lex took a long slug of bitter coffee and winced. There was some truth to what Jack was saying, and of course it was flattering. But did he really have what it took to co-run a music-management company? After what Jack had been through with Ivan, Lex didn't want to let him down. ‘There's more to it than that, though, isn't there?' he said.

‘Of course there is. There's the business side: the deal-making, the schmoozing record companies and PR people, all the endless organization of tours and publicity. But that's what I'm good at. Ivan was always better with clients, with the touchy-feely stuff,' he added, a trace of bitterness creeping into his voice. ‘At first I thought that was my mistake, letting my partner get closer to the clients than I was. But after a while I realized, I just picked the wrong partner. I need to work with someone I can trust. I trust you, Lex.'

‘Thanks,' said Lex quietly. ‘That means a lot.'

‘So, are you in?' Jack held out his hand.

For the first time in a long time, Lex smiled. ‘I'm in,' he said, shaking Jack's hand.

‘Great,' said Jack. ‘We're going to be huge!' Then, with a look of malice that Lex had never seen on his face before, he added darkly ‘And we're going to bury Ivan Charles.'

Lex walked out onto the master bedroom balcony and gazed out across the garden to the shimmering Pacific. A ruby-red sun was just beginning its slow descent into the horizon, bleeding a magnificent trail of pink and orange, purple and ochre into the deep blue ocean. Lex had bought the Malibu house last year and moved in six months ago, but he still had to pinch himself when he woke up every morning. Was this peaceful slice of paradise really his, with its flat, manicured lawn, its lemon and orange trees and beds full of ginger and acacia flowers, its spectacular views? It wasn't a grand house. In fact, it had been built as a farmstead back in the thirties, when Big Rock Drive and the whole of Malibu Canyon was still a working agricultural area. But with its five bedrooms, charming white-wooden interiors, farmhouse kitchen and now a fully kitted-out basement darkroom, it was a world away from the cramped, rented apartment in West Hollywood that had been Lex's home for the previous seven years. He still found it hard to believe just how much his life had changed in such a short space of time. And he owed it all to Jack Messenger.

Well, perhaps that wasn't strictly true. Yes, it was Jack who had founded JSM (Jack Sonya Management) and who had brought Lex in as a partner. But the new agency's phenomenal success, their rapid growth from a standing start to becoming one of the industry's major players, had been at least fifty per cent down to Lex's energy, drive and almost superhuman work ethic. That and the fact that artists, all sorts of artists, just wanted to work with him.

Lex and Jack were the ‘nice guys' in a business full of sharks. As it turned out there was a real gap in the market for a management firm based on decency and integrity, and JSM's reputation quickly grew. For every Brett Bayley, willing to sell his soul for a cut-price management commission, there were ten bands who were sick of managers treating them like a commodity, bands prepared to pay
over
the odds for personal, tailored service they could trust.

Building the business had been a crazy learning curve for Lex, utterly exhausting but also great fun. When they weren't scuttling back and forth between accountants and lawyers and PR firms in LA, Lex and Jack were on the road, touring the country looking for new acts to sign. It was an old-fashioned way to do business to say the least, showing up at small, live venues, following word-of-mouth recommendations or Facebook buzz, trying to unearth real, grassroots talent. And, of course, they saw a lot of mediocre acts, from Missouri to Michigan, as well as talented musicians who, with the best will in the world, just weren't commercially marketable prospects. But they also found some nuggets of pure gold. After more than fifteen years in the business, Jack was adamant that he wanted to build the agency on new acts, unknowns, rather than poaching established performers from rivals. In fact, they ended up with a client list that was a mix of both, not because they actively approached famous, big-name artists, but because those artists started approach-ing them.

It was a small list – JSM represented a total of twenty-five acts, half of whom would probably take years before they started making serious money – and in some ways a limited one. They had no classical artists, no folk, no rap. With the exception of two male country vocalists and one female rock band, they were exclusively focused on pop. Their two highest-profile stars were Martina Munoz, a young, very commercial Hispanic singer with a huge following in Latin America, but who was still trying to ‘break' the international market; and Frankie B, a well-known old-school soul singer and songwriter, who'd had a glittering early career then sunk without trace as he battled crack addiction in his thirties, ultimately winding up in a Georgia jail. There he got clean and found God, and when he got out laid down a few tracks of a new soul-slash-gospel album that were so good Jack actually cried when he heard them. With Jack's support, encouragement, and canny and relentless salesmanship, helped by the raw, iconic pictures Lex took to promote the new album,
Saved
, Frankie B staged one of the most spectacular comebacks the industry had ever seen.

It was
Saved
that had bought Lex this house. But he owed the album more than that. While shooting the cover in an LA suburb last spring , he'd met a funny, sassy and altogether gorgeous make-up artist by the name of Leila Browne. Lex and Leila had been dating ever since, and everyone agreed Leila had brought a peace and contentment to his life, a stability that he'd never really had before. Finally, and it had taken a long, long time, Kendall Bryce was out of his system. They were still in loose touch, an email every few months. In some ways Lex still missed her, but he didn't miss the turmoil she had brought to his life, and he no longer felt pain to see her on screen or read about her, or when her name popped up in his in-box. It was as if he had woken from a dream. His heart, his life were his own again. And it was a good life now, full of hope and promise for the future.

‘Come inside, honey.' Leila's voice drifted out through the bathroom window. ‘I need some help with my zipper.'

Lex wandered back inside. Tonight was a big night for Lex and JSM. Frankie B had been nominated for a Grammy for Best Album, and the agency were throwing a lavish party in his honour at The Four Seasons, for which Lex and Leila were now getting ready. In reality,
Saved
had little hope of winning. Frankie was up against the likes of Justin Timberlake and Madonna. But to be nominated at all was a huge achievement, not just for Frankie but for the agency, and it would further boost the record's already sensational sales.

In the master bathroom, Leila stood with her back to him, but he could see her smiling, freckled face in the mirror. Tall and athletic, with light-brown hair to her shoulders and a pretty, open face, Leila was the quintessential girl next door. Attractive rather than sexy, as a make-up artist she knew how to make the most of her glowing skin and wholesome good looks. With only a light dusting of peach blush and some rich black mascara, she'd brought her whole face to life. The strapless, pale-pink Vera Wang gown she was wearing accentuated her height and slender arms. Lex dutifully yanked up the zipper to the top, between her shoulder blades, and fastened the hook and eye.