It Was Only Ever You (6 page)

‘It’s not just about the dancing,’ she insisted. ‘If we get in on the rock and roll scene we could back our own band. Make records. Make a fortune!’

‘We’re fine as we are,’ he said.

What did Sheila know about business? She was a woman. Albeit a smart one and, he had always suspected, a bit of a firecracker.

‘But if you don’t move with the times, Dan, we’ll get left behind and—’

‘I’ll tell you what, sweetheart,’ Dan said. ‘Why don’t you try and persuade me over dinner?’

‘It’s one a.m., Dan. There’s nowhere open.’

‘This is New York, doll,’ he said. ‘There is always somewhere open. Besides, I know a place.’

Sheila knew what place he was talking about. His place.

Dan was incorrigible but there was something irresistible about him. It was late but Sheila was wide awake and the adventure of doing something illicit was calling her. Maybe it was time to get to know the devil she already knew a bit better.

‘OK,’ she said, ‘but just dinner.’

‘Just dinner,’ he said. ‘I promise.’

Then he smiled and pulled up his crossed fingers from beneath the desk. She laughed.

T
HE
AFFAIR
with Dan lasted four years. If you could call it an affair. It was a casual arrangement based on attraction and need. There was a kind of fondness, by dint of having known each other for as long as they had and working together. The fact that he was married suited Sheila. When she was a kid, Sheila had known that staying at home making soup and rearing children would never be the life she wanted. The affair with Dan bore out that her early instincts then had been right. Although their affair was sporadic, this was the longest ‘relationship’ she had had with a man. It taught Sheila that she was too selfish, and not cut out for pandering to a man’s needs. Both Dan and Sheila knew that she would never be a threat to his marriage. She would have been horrified if he had left Angela.

Sheila was discreet and accommodating. Dan was great in the sack, and always on hand for company while Angela was tied up with her huge, Italian family.

She was not in love with Dan, nor he with her, but there was a kind of equality that suited her. Having worked with her through ten years, Dan knew her. He knew what she was capable of, what she wanted. There was loyalty and respect there. At least, that’s what she had thought until a week ago, when Dan had called her into his office and told her his fiery Italian wife had found out they had slept together. Sheila was horrified.

‘Just once,’ he said. ‘That’s all she knows about.’

‘How did she...?’

‘She got it out of me,’ he said. ‘She can be very... persuasive.’

Sheila closed her eyes and grimaced. She was sorry that she had betrayed Angela but mostly sorry that she had found out. She had known the woman, if not exactly liked her, for a long time. Angela knew that Dan was a philandering pig. He had slept with every bar girl, every waitress that had ever come through the door of the Twilight. In fact, his wife would have thought it miraculous that Sheila had managed to hold him off for as long as she had. And just once. That wasn’t too bad.

‘I’m sorry, Dan, that’s a bummer.’

‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘So we better, you know?’

‘No, totally. I get it.’

That was that. It was back to business and how it had been before. However, when you sleep with a man, even if he is your friend, especially when he is your friend, everything changes.

Today, less than a week later, Dan called her in to say he had brought a new manager in over her head.

‘Angela doesn’t like us working so closely together. She doesn’t mind you tending bar or being around, but not in a management position. I’ll keep you on the same wage but...’

Sheila was seething with hurt rage. She looked across at him. Her boss, her lover looked sheepish, small, scared – but at the same time his eyes were mean and determined. He meant it. He held all the cards.

‘You can’t fire me because I don’t give a rat’s ass about your stinking job! I’ve had enough anyway! I’m outta here!’

‘Baby, please – I wasn’t trying to fire you I just need...’

But he was trying to fire her. They both knew it. Dan had deliberately brought the new manager in. Sheila Klein was the feistiest, proudest woman he knew. He had known she would walk out.

Sheila stood and, arms folded, glared at him.

She wasn’t leaving empty-handed. She didn’t even need to say the word ‘severance pay’. Dan reached for his chequebook, and as he looked up sheepishly she just said, ‘Make it hurt.’ It sickened her to see him so pathetically sorry.

Sheila snatched the cheque out of his hand, and shoved it in her pocket without even checking the amount. Then she turned on her heels and stormed out of Dan’s office, slamming the door behind her.

Sheila ran out the stage door on to Times Square and immediately fumbled in her bag for her pack of cigarettes. As she found them, she realized she was still holding a lit one. The long ember nearly fell into her open purse. ‘Shit,’ she cursed, and threw it on to the ground. She pulled a fresh one out of the pack and shoved it in her mouth. Her hands were still shaking with rage as she shook and flicked the Zippo half a dozen times before getting a flame. Finally, she drew the nicotine down into her lungs and felt herself begin to calm down.

Sheila thought now of all that she had done for that man. All that energy to try and persuade his lazy ass to get with the times? She had actually cared about his business. It made her feel sick at how damned stupid she had been to believe he might think he owed her something for her trouble. Loyalty? Respect? No. They were things men gave to other men in business. Women were for waiting tables. Sure, make the girl a manager, give her a few extra dollars, but respect a woman for doing a man’s job? Nah. Never going to happen. And now he was flinging her out on the street like trash?

She threw her cigarette on the ground, lit another, and walked across to her apartment.

Inside, she went straight to the fridge and took out a cold beer. She flipped the lid of the bottle with her teeth then sat on her small bed, looked out the window and thought about what she was going to do next.

Part of Sheila was raging again at the injustice of having worked all of those years and leaving with nothing but some lousy cash. Money was never the point. Sheila knew that she had forgotten more about music than Dan and his ballroom-owning business buddies would ever know. Yet they were the ones who held all the power. She had tried to help Dan make more money by getting hip to the new scene, but he had laughed in her face. And, as she looked across at the sunlight flashing off the lit-up Pepsi sign, Sheila had a thought, as powerful as the revelation that night when she first heard Bill Haley. Rock and roll was here to stay and so was she. To hell with Dan – he had done her a favour. Losing her job at the Twilight was an opportunity. She was over thirty now. A spinster, for sure, but she wasn’t ashamed of the fact. Sheila had known from a young age that she couldn’t rely on anyone except herself. However, because she had been working for him for nearly ten years, she had come to rely on Dan more than she ought to have done. She didn’t love him, and had only slept with him out of comfort because he was there, and she knew him, and couldn’t be bothered to try and find a new, more exciting lover. Worse than that, she had become complacent about her work. Her passion for music had become dulled by time and familiarity.

In the ten years since she had left college, Sheila had never really thought about her life, where it was going or what she was doing.

But that, she decided, was all going to change.

Sheila had always wanted to be a music manager. Out there, on the scene – finding new talent, then bringing them along, turning them into stars, making hits and making money.

She was going to take this slap in the face from Dan as the kick she needed to make it work. There wasn’t anybody to push her forward, but that meant there was nobody there to hold her back. She’d flown in the face of convention already just by being a single Jewish woman working in a white man’s world. She was going to get herself out there, find herself an artist and start making hit records.

If she got to stick one in the gut to Dan McAndrew and his fuddy-duddy ballroom while she was doing it? Well, that would be a bonus.

She made a start the very next day.

Sheila made a list of all the great musicians who she knew were without formal management, or who would be willing to switch to somebody with her kind of fresh ambition. If she could manage a few established jazz musicians, offering them good bookings and better deals on their existing pay, Sheila believed that would give her the basis from which she could seek out and make investment in completely new talent.

She was delighted to see that the list was long, ten to fifteen definite-maybes – she knew a lot more people than she had realized. The list done, she washed her face, took off her bra and lay down for a nap. Seasoned night worker that she was, Sheila always rested in the afternoons so she would be ready to work hard in the hours when most other people slept.

But this time, she could not sleep. For an hour, she lay there, just staring at the heavy blinds. She noted the slice of sunlight at the sill that settled on the dusty floor like a ray of hope. Sure, she was alone – at thirty-one, Sheila figured that was, more or less, a given now. She had hoped to find love, just like everybody else, but she knew she wasn’t most men’s idea of romance. She was too tough, too outspoken. Plus, she liked sex for the sake of it, just like a man. Men loved her for that and all of her best friends were men, but they didn’t fall in love with her. How could they? She was too much like one of them. Some afternoons, lying alone in her single bed above the diner, Sheila felt sad about that. But not today. Today she was going to put them all aside and follow her dream. Her first love was music, it always had been. Until now she had been flirting from the sidelines; today, she was going to jump right in and join the game. Sheila Klein: Talent Manager. Hell, Sheila Klein – Music Impresario. She was only mad at herself for not doing this years ago, irritated by the part of her that had set her own ambitions aside out of loyalty to Dan and – yes – perhaps a bit of fearful laziness too. Those days were over now. All she had to do was find herself some talent, and if there was one thing New York had in abundance, it was talent. There was nothing to hold Sheila back. Not a man, or a job or responsibilities of any kind. She was as free as a bird to pursue her dream and, hell, was she going to fly.

She leapt out of bed and checked her watch. Four o’clock. Her friend Frankie the Sax had a regular gig playing with a five piece at a dinner club up on Lexington. Frankie was old-school. He had no manager – he worked all the time on word-of-mouth and more or less lived in the places he worked. He’d be up there now in the small club kitchen, eating his main meal of the day with the kitchen staff buzzing all around him. Then he’d march out to the bar and drink a few beers, followed by three whiskey chasers, then slide nice and easy over to the stage where he’d be mellow and smiling before the punters came in for the pre-theatre dinner bookings at six.

Frankie was a great place to start and with that knowledge Sheila felt a kick of excitement in her stomach.

*

Frankie was in the kitchen of the club, as she expected. His long black coat hung down over the edge of the tall barstool, his porkpie hat was perched on the side of his head, white hairs powdered his temples.

‘I don’t know if that’s such a good idea, honey,’ he said. ‘There’s already too many managers in this town.’

‘But I know music, Frankie.’

He laughed and shook his head. ‘I know that, girl, but I’m telling you – this town’s gone crazy. Everything’s changed. Soon as a boy opens his mouth to sing these days, there’s a man there wants to make money outta him. My day we played for love and whiskey – if the punters threw you a few bucks – well then we got to eat. Now they got every two-bit kid singing before they can barely talk. There was a kid here; I was bringing him along, slow like. He had some talent but I said, you gotta bide your time, boy, wait until your voice matures, until your soul matures. You know what I mean? He ran outta here in a huff. He had heard about some English kid who was writing songs in a “music factory” downtown. I swear, they producing music in a factory now...’ He shook his head in disbelief before continuing, ‘Would you believe that same kid came back in here last week lording it up in a Mercedes-Benz? Some man from Decca give him a deal.’

‘Who’s looking after you these days, Frankie?’ she asked.

The wily old charmer shook his head again and laughed her off.

‘I’m too old and ugly for you to manage, honey. Besides, I don’t need no management. I roll along just fine as I am.’

Sheila gave him a peck on the cheek. He helped her put together her list, but didn’t seem too hopeful about anyone taking her up on her offer.

However, she was undeterred, and spent the following week diligently trawling all her favourite haunts. She headed out at six every evening, and visited every club, large and small, on the island of Manhattan. She talked to every musician, those she knew and those she didn’t know. By Friday, to her disappointment, she realized that Frankie was right. All the great artists she admired already had management and all of the new, younger acts that were worth their salt had already been snapped up.

They were all really enthusiastic for her but nobody wanted to be managed by a girl with no track record and none of them knew anyone that was still looking for management. She talked to just about every musician in town, even the old jazz-hands, but even they had lost their laid-back edge. Suddenly, music had become all about the money. People had been buying records for years, but since rock and roll came along, they were buying a lot more. Music lovers were still packing the dance halls and they were still listening to music on the radio, but now, nearly every home in the country had a record player. This was not simply the ‘music business’ any more, it was now the ‘recording industry’. There was money to be made and, when it came to money, New Yorkers didn’t hang around. The club owners, the managers, the music producers and the record companies were all in cahoots with each other. It was one big boys’ club. There was a party happening and Sheila was not invited. Making money was a serious business and she knew that being a woman meant she would never be taken seriously. She began to see that while she had partied behind the scenes in the jazz and R&B clubs over the years, she had never actually worked in them. She was, after all, little more than a fan. A groupie. If she had left the Twilight all those years ago, when her instincts told her to, when she had first heard Bill Haley, she could have walked into any club and put together her own rock and roll band. But she hadn’t had the guts.