Career Girls (52 page)

And now here they were, in his house, in partnership. Business is business, but still.., there was something strange about it.

‘She’s intense,’ Michael said, and Joe watched a strange expression come over his face.

Check it outt. This guy is her lover! he realized, in a sudden flash of insight. But Rowena Gordon was in the middle of the media romance of the year! Wasn’t she?

‘What’s Topaz Rossi like?’ Krebs wag asking him, equally curious.

‘She’s intense,’ Joe replied, and they exchanged glances. ‘Have you got croissants cooking through there?’ ‘Uh-huh. Let’s go eat.’

It was impossible to remain brisk and businesslike when’

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you were working eighteen-hour days. Something they all discovered over the first weekend, when the place was covered with empty pizza cartons and beer cans, and Matt Gowers was discovered with Josh Oberman cracking up to Beavis and Butt-head on the kitchen TV.

Edward had his Quotron terminal delivered to the house and hooked up. Harvey Smith started to take meetings by conference call in a spare bedroom. Rowena called Sam Neil and asked him to take over for a week. Josh and Matt worked by fax.

‘There’s a kind of sick pleasure in pushing yourself this hard,’ Topaz remarked at eleven thirty one evening, as Goldstein’s PowerMacintosh ran off yet another colour chart for Freyja Timber.

‘Yeah. It’s like Mods. Remember that? A huge pile of books, a huge pot of coffee and three packs of pro-plus,’ Rowena said to her.

There was a second’s complete silence.

‘Let’s get another pizza. I’m starving,’ Eli Leber butted in hastily.

Then there was the time that Joe had been mixing Bloody Marys and Topaz said automatically, ‘Rowena likes a lot of Worcester sauce, sweetheart.’

‘You haven’t changed at all, you know that?’ Rowena told Topaz one night when she was tapping away at the IBM. ‘You always used to crouch like that. Exactly like that.’

‘That’s right. And you always bugged the hell out of me by reading over my shoulder. The way you are right now,’ Topaz replied, and they actually laughed.

‘You know, I think this deal.might work. Did you hear that Steel, Roven bought in?’

‘For an equity stake, too. Not just debt,’ Topaz agreed.

‘What sex are your children going to be?’ Rowena asked suddenly.

‘No idea,’ Topaz replied, looking round. ‘Why?’

‘Nothing,’ Rowena said, and wondered why she was so close to tears.

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Once the final break-up analysis had been completed, Gerald Quin pushed away his charts with an exhausted sigh.

‘The numbers work,’ he said. ‘We need to find three billion dollars.’

There was an awed hush as the deal team tried to get their heads round that amount of money.

‘Great,’ Damian Hart said, with perfect deadpan humour. ‘Now for the good part.’

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It wasn’t quite that simple.

Maughan Macaskill, the lawyers and the two chief executives finally had some numbers worked out and an idea of who might want to come in with them. They stir had to hammer out a million little variables - tax problems, ownership regulations, SECC disclosures - and they also

‘ needed a creative plan that would sell Wall Street on the idea that Mansion House couldn’t be trusted. Only Musica management could run Musica. Only the present board could run American Magazines.

‘We have to split the team,’ Gowers said wearily at half eleven that night. ‘There’s just no other way to get this done in time.’

Oberman nodded. ‘Rowena, you and Michael should put some kind of document together for Musica. I don’t know who American want… ‘ “

‘Topaz Rossi,’ Gowers said instantly. ‘Harvey Smith. Damian should work with us.’

‘Am I needed?’ Smith asked, annoyed. He wanted to be in the real action. ‘LA can send up all the data through here by fax and I know some guys at RJR Nabisco we should pitch Natural Foods to.’

‘Topaz?’ Gowers asked.

‘Fine,’ she shrugged, seeing her colleagues’ eyes upon her. Why don’t you just say it? No way is she professional enough to work with Rowena Gordon? ‘It’s no problem,’ Topaz added, her face set in a mask of perfect indifference.

Rowena, is that OK for you?’ Oberman asked his president. ‘We really only have a few days on this.’

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‘Absolutely,’ Rowena confirmed.

Oh, bloody marvellous. Michael Krebs and Topaz Rossi. Just the two people I really want to be close to at the moment.

‘So that’s settled,’ Eli Leber said, his eyes sweeping the room cautiously. Rossi and Gordon both looked as uptight as Tipper Gore at a strippers’ conference, Gowers and Oberman were watching them with slightly nervous expressions, and the only person that seemed totally at his ease was Michael Krebs.

‘That’s settled,’ Krebs agreed, smiling.

Musica Towers was electric with rumours.

Rowena Gordon could feel it in the air every day when she walked through the doors, striding through the marble lobby where she’d been served her termination notice, walking up the stairs to a marketing meeting, dropping in on a sales presentation.., as soon as she appeared, staff ceased talking, studied their shoes or picked up the nearest phone.

Not that it was easy to tell. With Roxana’s Race Game crashing to the Billboard Hot Too at number one and the next Black Ice album due in a week, the entire building was frying ice in the rush. Sam Neil had been running the place for the year of her exile and he was in total control of the organized madness; suppliers were getting served; campaigns were being run, tours were being supported-so what if the new C. O. O. wasn’t in her office all the time? What was there to talk about?

Plenty, Rowena thought furiously. Evidently.

‘Sam, what’s going On?’ she demanded. ‘I can’t walk in on a meeting without feeling like the” eleph.ant woman. I’m the class freak here. What’s the score?’

Neil loosened his collar, sweating slightly, and looked his boss over with a wary eye. Rowena Gordon mad would give a charging rhino pause, even without those short black suits she’d taken-to wearing - little Richard Tyler skirts in snug wool, DKNY fitted tops, her long blonde hair swept back in a schoolgirl’s ponytail. That was Rowena’s idea of

dressing down. It was Sam’s idea of a heart attack.

‘Nothing’s going on,’ her division president replied, cautiously. ‘Maybe some people are a little curious about you, that’s all.’

Rowena fixed him with a steely glare.

‘OK, OK’, he added hastily, ‘I guess - uh-it’s just that you haven’t actually been around much since you took

over, and, uh, the staffare wondering why not.’

‘Go on,’ she said.

Sam Neil felt himself start to sweat uncomfortably. Hell, he’d taken great trouble not to show even a flicker of curiosity. If the new head of the company didn’t want to show up in the office, his not to reason why. But he suddenly had the sense that he was on very thin ground indeed.

‘I guess they’re wondering what you and Josh and Krebs are working on,’ he finished lamely.

Rowena nodded. ‘I see,’ she said. ‘What you’re trying to tell me, Sam, is that the whole building wants to know if we’re off devising some kind of secret buyout defence against Mansion Industries?’

‘Yeah,’said Neil, squirming slightly.

‘Is the whole company talking about this, Sam?’

He shrugged. ‘I don’t know, Rowena, I mean, I don’t have that much contact with the junior staff… OK, all right, I suppose they are.’

Rowena pushed a wisp of blonde hair away from her forehead, feeling the tension crunch round her skull like a vice. She simply couldn’t let this happen. If the staffin the New York office started to gossip about it, it was only a matter of time before her absence leaked to the trades. And if the same thing was going on over at American Magazines, it would take just one business reporter to put two and two together, and weeks of patient work would be blown sky high.

The whole deal depended on secrecy.

She had to get back to her office, and she had to come up with the creative plan.

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There was only one thing for it…

‘Well, they can lay that one to rest,’ she said firmly. ‘Our legal defences are in place, you know that. I’ll be back in the building from today … we just had some problems to do with the new Atomic Mass record, and you know Barbara and Krebs will only deal with Josh and myself on stufflike that.’

‘Do you want me to tell people that?’ Sam Neil asked, surprised. Atomic Mass were the Holy Grail around Musica Records. Even to imagine a problem with them was blasphemy.

‘Sure,’ his president said, expansively. ‘We have no secrets at Musica Records.’

‘OK,’ Sam said, leaving her office with some relief.

Rowena Gordon watched him go. Then she picked up her phone and dialled Topaz Rossi’s private line.

‘Topaz, we have another problem,’ she said.

American Magazines vasjust as busy and the rumours were just as wild. In fact they were worse. After all, investigation and exposure was what everybody in the building did for a living.

Topaz found that out the first day she came back to work. Sauntering into the Impact offices and feeling twelve pairs of eyes crawling over the nape of her neck. Dropping in on Girlfriend to find herself as out of place as a high-school teacher at a slumber party.

‘It’s what I’d expect, ‘Joe told her when she rang up to complain. ‘At least over at Musica only the chairman and the president took off. You guys had half the board playing hookey. Of course they’re talking:’

‘But we can’t let everybody gossip aout this! It’ll leak!’ Topaz protested.

‘Which is why you’re all back in the office, honey,’ Joe pointed out.

‘I can’t stay in the office! When am I gonria work on the creative plan? I have to present Rowena Gordon with something in the next few days!’

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‘I don’t know,’ Goldstein said as calmly as he could.Jesus Christ, she’s eight months pregnant! ‘Just try not to stress yourself out, sweetheart. iF i were you I’d talk to Rowena. It would be dangerous to be away from the office now.’

‘OK, OK,’ his wife soothed him. Try not to stress myself out? That’s real funny.

‘Topaz, Rowena Gordon is on the line,’ her assistant said. ‘Joe, I have to go,’ she told him. ‘I’ll call you later.’ Christ Almighty, Topaz thought, glancing down at the frantic rush of lunchtime traffic pouring along Seventh Avenue, sixty storeys below her. Compared with her own life, it seemed as calm as a monastic retreat. She hoped that bitch Rowena Gordon was taking at least a little of the same heat.

‘This is me,’ she snapped.

‘Topaz, we have another problem,’ Rowena said coldly, trying to hide her panic. ‘I don’t think I can get away from my building. The staffhere are beginning to talk.’

The either,’ her rival replied. ‘And we just can’t risk it getting out.’

‘Nobody can do a creative plan for Musica Records but me,’ Rowena said flatly. It wasn’t a boast, it was a statement of fact. She knew that it was her ideas about the kind of acts they should go for, her take on marketing and distribution, and her plans for buying smaller labels that made Josh Oberman give her her job back in the first place.

‘Yeah. I’m sure that’s true,’ Topaz said, forgetting to be icy. ‘I feel the same way about American. You know? Joe thinks I should delegate this plan, but I just can’t do it - it’s

not about the nuts and bolts of the business, it’s about ‘ ‘Vision?’ Rowena suggested. ‘Exactly,’ the other woman said.

‘So what do we do?’ Rowena asked. ‘We have to get this done - ‘

‘ - and we can’t do it in our offices because we have to go

back in to all the meetings ‘

There was a pause.

‘So I guess we’re gonna have to work together at nights

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and over the weekend,’ Rowena said eventually. ‘We could do it separately, but then how would we check with each

other over wording, the generallines of the document… ‘ ‘Come round at nine,’ Topaz said shortly.

So it was the only way. Well, she had to do it. But she didn’t have to like it.

‘And Michael Krebs?’ Rowena forced herself to ask.

‘If your Mr Oberman thinks you need him, bring him along too,’ Topaz replied.

There was another moment’s awkward silence, and then both women hung up, without further pleasantries.

Michael Krebs drove his black Ferrari Testarossa up to the Musica Towers executive car park and was instantly waved in by the guard. It was an early summer evening and Krebs was enjoying everything about it. The way the golden light fell over the trees and the sidewalks. The way the Tom Petty CD sounded in his top-of-the-range in-car system. The

way Rowena Gordon had sounded to him on the phone. ‘Michael? It’s Rowena.’

‘I know who it is,’ Krebs had said dryly.

‘There’s been a change of plan,’ she went on nervously, obviously trying to get off the phone as soon as she could. ‘We have to meet tonight, not this afternoon. Can you be at Beekman Place at nine?’

‘I don’t know. What’s in it for me?’

‘Michael, for Christ’s sake!’

‘I have some ideas I want.to discuss with you,’ Krebs said, oblivious. ‘If we have to be there at nine, I’ll pick you up at eight.’

‘OK,’ Rowena said, tensely.

Krebs smiled. He knew every into’nation of Rowena Gordon’s voice, knew it like his own. So she’d wanted to object, but she couldn’t - couldn’t admit that she didn’t want to be alone with him.

She wants to be all business, but she’s as scared as hell.

He was looking forward to this. t

49

Rowena had just sent her assistant home when Michael arrived.

She’d spent the last two hours trying to reach John

Metcalfin LA and getting the brush-offfrom his assistant. ‘The president’s in a meeting, ma’am.’ ‘Yes, ma’am, I know who you are.’

‘Yes, ma’am, I gave him all your messages.’

‘Uh, he went straight into a new meeting, Ms Gordon.