Come Dancing (23 page)

Sammy stared at Freeman. “This is him?”

“I didn’t know Freeman Fyfe was friends with Jack Kipling,” someone said in a hushed voice.

“So you’re in from San Francisco?” Jack asked.

“Yes, I’ve lived there for thirty years.”

“It’s a great town,” Jack said. “Well, I know you’re in demand tonight. Congrats on your new book.”

“Thanks so much for coming,” Freeman replied.

Jack turned to me. “You little bitch,” he said, grinning. He took my hand and motioned for Sammy to follow.

“Where are we going?” I asked as Jack pulled me toward the door. He continued down the hall to the cloakroom, his grip firm on my wrist, Sammy trudging behind us. Jack fished out some bills and gave them to the coat-check girl. “Take the rest of the night off, sweetheart. We’ll handle it from here.”

She stared at the money in her palm. “Thanks!”

“Coatroom’s closed,” Jack said to Sammy. “Stay here and stand guard.”

He opened the lower partition of the doorway, hustled me through, closed it, then shut the top half and locked the bolt.

“What are you doing?” I said.

Jack took off his suit jacket, tossed it over a chair and grabbed me, holding me tight. “’All the girls think he’s so sexy,’” he said in his high-pitched Julia voice. “’Then I realized he was just a playboy’… That guy must be seventy if he’s a day!”

“Were you a little jealous?” I asked, laughing.

“Was I jealous? What do you think? You’re gonna pay for this.” He swept a bunch of coats off the rack and dumped them onto the floor, the empty hangers jangling.

“Hey, those are people’s things!”

“This looks comfortable.” He seized a big mink and threw it onto the pile. “Now …” He spun me around and tackled me face-down onto the fur.

“Jack, we can’t do this here!” I cried, my cheek against the plush mink.

“Want to make a bet?” He lifted the back of my dress. “What’s this, garters? That looks so … My god, you’ve got no underwear on.” I heard the sound of his zipper.

“I was going to surprise you at your place tonight,” I gasped.

“I had no idea you were such a naughty girl,” Jack said. “Now you’re gonna pay for what you did.” He slid his hand underneath and played me as he thrust from behind, eventually strumming sounds out of me that I’d never heard before.

We lay there on the coats, panting. I heard Sammy arguing with someone outside. “It’s closed for now. Come back in twenty minutes.”

Jack gave a wicked laugh and pushed up from the floor, rearranged himself and helped me off the mink, which looked a little worse for wear. He knelt and clasped one of my garters that had come unhooked, then pulled my dress down over my hips.

“How’d that feel?” he asked.

“Incredible. But I hope I still have a job after this.” I tried to finger-comb my hair.

“Don’t worry. Just wait here and get yourself together. I’ll go out and be nice to all the old bags so they can talk about it to their friends. I’ll give them lots of signage too,” he said, making an autographing gesture. “You won’t get in trouble.” He unlocked the top partition and stuck his head out. “Sammy, we’ve got some coats that need hanging up in here.”

When I made it back to the party, Jack was in the middle of the room with his arm around Freeman, being photographed. Then he sat at the table, autographing each book and handing it to Freeman to sign. We sold more copies than we ever had at a publication party in the history of the company.

The whole time, Harvey looked like he was about to choke on his martini olive.

“Maybe that yobbo will leave you alone now,” Jack said as we rode to his place.

When we got inside, I opened my copy of Freeman’s book and showed him my name in the acknowledgments. “It’s my very first one.”

“That’s fantastic, Julia. You’re going to be a top editor. He’ll have to promote you now.” He looked at me for a moment. “We leave for the coast in a week and a half to do the mixing. We’re doing those concerts while we’re there too.”

My heart sank; I had wondered when they were going.

“It’ll be good to be onstage again,” Jack added. “Everyone claims to hate L.A., but I always have a great time out there. All kinds of crazy situations come up when we do a show.” He raised an eyebrow and grinned at me. I couldn’t believe he’d be so blatant about what he was planning to do, but I wasn’t about to give him the satisfaction of acting like it bugged me.

“That does sound like fun. I guess I’ll set up some things for that week, too. There are a couple of people I’ve been meaning to get together with, but I’ve been so tied up lately.” I sighed. “Sometimes I wish there were two Saturday nights a week.”

Jack eyed me. “I thought you said you didn’t go out that much on weekends.”

I smiled. “Not unless there’s something I really want to do. It’ll be nice to have a little space though; I hate feeling like I’m in a rut. I’m sure you feel the same way.”

“Yeah. You could say I like my space.”

I dreaded seeing Harvey the next morning; I suspected he’d have some caustic comment about Jack, and he didn’t disappoint. When I went to empty his outbox, he glowered at me, the skin around his cold little eyes puffy from all the drinking the night before. “How on earth do you know one of the Floors?” he asked. “I didn’t picture you as a groupie type.”

“We met through a mutual acquaintance. We’re just friends.”

“I see.” He watched as I backed out of his office.

At lunchtime, Erin and Rachel crowded into my office, wanting to know how long I’d been seeing Jack. Again I played it down, saying that we were just acquaintances. They seemed to accept the explanation—and why not? It was more plausible than thinking a rock star would be romantically involved with a lowly publishing drudge.

When I went to give Meredith some flap copy, she gestured for me to shut her door. “So
that’s
who you’ve been seeing. I’m so impressed; I love their music. Is he nice? He has such a wild reputation.”

“I don’t know about ‘nice’. He’s definitely one-of-a-kind. I’m trying not to get too carried away.”

“Well, good for you. I heard Briar interrogating Erin about it this morning; she seemed to believe Erin had mistaken him for someone else. She kept saying, ‘You think Julia is going out with
Jack Kipling
?’”

I had to laugh at that. “I keep asking myself the same question.”

Talk of the Town

Twice I’d reminded Jack about watching the band rehearse. At first he told me he’d be too distracted with me there, but finally he said I could come. After work I swung by my apartment to change into jeans, and then walked up to Eighth Street. I heard the entwined jangle of guitar and bass as I followed the guard inside. Jack came out looking tired, his shirt wrinkled, hair standing up in back. “C’mon, you can sit with Mary Jo. I asked her along to keep you company.”

My mood plunged at this; I didn’t look forward to another run-in with his manager. We went into the studio, where several people were sitting on the sidelines. Mary Jo nodded as I took a folding chair next to her. Jack put his Gibson strap over his shoulder and held the pick in his mouth as he tuned the strings. Patrick, wearing a silk shirt that looked as if it had just been pressed, not a blonde hair out of place, was laughing with Sammy as he poured a glass of orange juice and vodka from the array of bottles on top of the keyboard. Mark sat at his drums, creating a whispery beat.

“How is it going?” I asked Mary Jo in a low voice, hoping to start on a friendly note.

“They bicker a lot, but it’ll be unbelievable when they’re onstage.”

“So where were we when we got interrupted?” Patrick asked in a petulant tone, picking up his bass.

“You’ve been interrupting all day. We were at that bit in the middle of the five bars,” Jack said. “We should do it as it was originally.”

“Do it my way again,” Patrick said. “Dropping back to the fade.”

Jack made a face at Sammy, who grimaced and stubbed out his cigarette. Jack hit a few chords, Sammy fingered an octave, and they swung into one of the tunes I recognized from the Mudd Club tape. Mark came in on the backbeat as Patrick strummed his bass and belted out the lyrics. Seeing Patrick perform blew me away; the minute he opened his mouth, his presence took over the room. His voice was at once insinuating, insulting, arousing; one moment velvety, the next a snarl.

When he suddenly stopped singing, I realized I’d been holding my breath. Patrick stepped back from the mic and shook his head. “It’s too fast. You’ve gotta slow it down.”

“That’s how we did it for the album,” Jack replied.

They argued for a minute, then seemed to reach a compromise and ran it at a more moderate tempo. Patrick gyrated before the microphone; Jack paced, crouched on the floor, took a belt of whiskey, all the while teasing out a complex tangle of notes. Mark gazed at the ceiling as he played, Jack shut his eyes, and Sammy kept his glued to Patrick.

“Let’s move on,” Patrick said after the fifth repeat, his voice raspy. “Can someone bring me a tea with honey?”

“Lillian,” Mary Jo said over her shoulder.

A girl sitting behind us jumped up to fetch it. Jack unplugged his guitar from the amp and batted at the strings, making a scratchy noise.

“I’ve got to rest. Why don’t you do one of yours?” Patrick put down his bass and went to sprawl on a couch.

Jack approached the microphone, lean legs apart. He readied himself with a little hip shimmy, and I gripped the edge of my seat. He struck four razor-sharp chords and plunged into one of his hits from a few years ago.

Without Patrick haranguing them, Sammy and Mark were in their element. The keyboard and drums seemed to be in a race as the song escalated. Once or twice Jack looked in my direction, each time jolting a thrill through me. The acoustics of the room took effect again, but this time it was much more intimate. Jack’s voice was in my ear, vibrating in my throat, deep within me. They pounded into the last verse, with a final resounding twang from Jack.

I clapped and yelled “Bravo!” Mary Jo frowned, as if I’d broken some cognoscenti rule of cool. Jack took a quick belt of Patrick’s juice, and immediately they flew through the song twice more. Finally he lifted the strap over his shoulder, propped his guitar and snatched a towel off the stand. Vigorously mopping his face, he came over and sat in the empty chair next to me. “How was that?” he asked, putting his hand on my knee.

“Fantastic! I love that song.”

“You said you liked the hard-driving ones.” He angled back and stretched out his legs. “I was up last night going over the lyrics so I wouldn’t screw it up.”

“You sounded great,” Mary Jo offered from her seat. “Better than ever.”

Patrick ambled over. “It’s … Julia, right? Hard to keep all of Jack’s girls straight. Although you’re certainly more memorable than some.”

His gaze drifted to my chest as Jack scowled. Patrick turned to him and pursed his lips. “Why don’t you set up a few sessions with my voice coach? That was rough around the edges.”

“It isn’t meant to be smooth,” Jack retorted.

“It’s gonna need a lot of work before it’s road-tested,” Patrick said disdainfully. “You done with your gabfest here?”

Jack glanced at him. “Just about.” He leaned over, put his hands on my waist, and to my dismay gave me a deep, tongue-thrusting kiss. “Now I’m done.”

Patrick stomped over to the mic, and Jack sauntered to his guitar. My face was flaming from the public display, but no one else seemed to have noticed it.

Mark said something and they all burst into laughter. By the time the session wrapped, Patrick had his hand on Jack’s shoulder, speaking into his ear and making him grin, so it seemed their moods had been sorted out.

“That’s it for the day. Don’t forget to punch your time cards,” Jack quipped as they hung up their instruments. I was melded to my chair, I’d been holding still for so long. Mary Jo introduced me to Lillian, her frightened-looking assistant. Jack came over and put his arm around me.

“Sammy and I are gonna take a quick shower, and then we’ll bolt. Patrick said you reserved Caliban,” he said to Mary Jo.

“I thought we deserved a treat after all the hard work,” she replied.

“I’ll be done in a sec. I brought a change of clothes.” Jack pulled his drenched shirt away from his chest. The others cleared out and I sat alone, wishing I’d known about the dinner plans so I could have worn something nicer.

A few minutes later, two extravagantly dressed women came into the room. “Are they done already?” the first one asked. I could smell her perfume from six feet away.

“They just finished.” I wondered who they were.

“Is Jack still around?” I looked at her more carefully; a statuesque blonde with luxurious hair, she had a studied pout below calculating green eyes.

“He’s showering now.” My mind raced.
Has she been coming to the studio all this time?
“Are you a friend of his?”

“Who wants to know?” she said in a haughty voice.

I stood and crossed my arms. “We’re going out to dinner. Do you want me to give him a message?”

She smiled condescendingly. “I’ll catch up with him later. Just tell him Trina came by. And he owes me one for the last time.” They flounced out.

So that’s why he didn’t want me to come; she’s been meeting him here!
I snatched up my backpack as Sammy came in toweling his hair. “Jack’s still prettifyin’ so he can be beautiful.”

“Who says my natural self isn’t beautiful?” Jack walked over in clean jeans and shirt. “You accusing me of primping?”

“Far be it from me to accuse you of that,” Sammy said. “Let’s high-tail it over to this place. I’m gonna chew my own shoe leather if I don’t get somethin’ in me soon.”

Jack looked at me. “What’s up?”

“Some friends of yours stopped by,” I said frostily. “Trina and another woman.”

Jack met Sammy’s eyes. “Want to wait for us in the car?” he said, and Sammy scooted out. “What did Trina say?”

“That you owe her one for the last time.”

Jack drew a pick from his shirt pocket, glanced at it and put it back. “She’s just someone I fooled around with a while ago.”