The Devil You Know (54 page)

The fight had lasted into the early hours of the morning. Poppy was exhausted now, as well as weepy, but more than her tiredness was the ache in her heart, and the nasty feeling that she might not see Henry again.

‘At least you have no ring to give back to me,’ he said flatly, not wanting her to get out of the car and leave him, but also not prepared to buckle.

Poppy wanted to say, ‘Because you kept the engagement quiet,

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because you didn’t get me a ring,’ but instead just said, ‘Don’t be like that.’

‘What? After all we’ve meant to each other?’ LeClerc said cynically.

‘Haven’t we?’ Poppy asked, fresh tears coming despite herself. LeClerc looked at her and wanted to brush them away. But he knew if he weakened now he might start crying himself, and he was a man, and that was unacceptable. Maybe it was OK for therapyboys from Los Angeles, but not for a guy from the Bayou.

‘I obviously don’t mean as much to you as your career does, Poppy.’

‘It’s a free-speech issue,’ she half-shouted.

‘Bullshit.’ He shook his head. ‘It’s a spoilt brat issue. I have never tried to smother you, or make you the little woman, or stop you working. But you putting these scum before me …’ He shrugged. ‘I’m not a caring, sharing New Man, sugar. If that’s what you want, you need to look elsewhere.’

‘You do want to ruin my career,’ Poppy said furiously.

‘Well,’ LeClerc said, reaching across her and opening the door, ‘you’ve done your damnedest to ruin mine. I’m not interested in being your house-husband. ,The offer was for you to be my wife.’

‘You’re a sexist pig, Henry LeClerc,’ Poppy snarled, getting out and grabbing her carry-on case.

He grinned for a second, and it tugged sharply at her heartstrings;

that old, sexy, confident grin of his!

‘So I’ve been told.’

‘Go fuck yourself,’ Poppy snapped.

He touched his forehead. ‘You have a good day, ma’am,’ LeClerc said, closing the door and driving away from the kerb in a screech of rubber.

Arrogant, self-centred son of a bitch! Poppy thought, striding into the terminal with such fury on her face that the Skycap luggage handlers didn’t even bother approaching her. There’d be no tips there, that was for sure.

Well, screw Henry LeClerc and his slow hands and fast Southern ways. It had been a crazy idea from the start, Poppy thought. She was far too young for him, and too urban, and she was a career girl and he just thought she should stay home and bake cookies.

Time to get out of Louisiana. High time, Poppy told herself.

She marched furiously up to the Continental ticket counter and flashed her platinum OnePass card.

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‘What time is the next flight to New York?’

‘Twenty minutes, ma’am.’

‘Great. I just have carry-on,’ Poppy said, ‘so get me on it.’

She seethed for the entire flight, and no glasses of champagne or soft first-class seats did anything to help her mood. Henry wasn’t worth obsessing over, Poppy told herself, but it didn’t stop her from doing just that.

Well, she thought when the captain announced the descent and they started to bank and turn above Manhattan, never mind. She had things to do in town. Meetings with Sorry, Menace’s record company, for one thing. Poppy would review the sales, see how her controversial First Amendment poster-boys were doing. Because that was what it was about, she told herself self-righteously. She was a champion of free speech and a warrior against censorship.

And she would pamper herself. No more of the conservative, dull little outfits she’d been shoehorned into on the campaign trail. No, she was looking forward to wearing some cool-ass black leather pants and a tight little cashmere top, and spiky ankle-boots. It’d be freezing in New York in winter, but that wouldn’t stop Poppy from be.ing stylish. That was what the record industry expected of her, and it as time to show everybody that she was more than some smiling ad waving political girlfriend.

Poppy Allen and Henry LeClerc. Oil and water. What the hell had she been thinking?

Poppy arrived in New York, checked into the Victrix, and went about her business. She called the recording studio where Menace was laying down its new tracks; she set up appointments at I

‘Hey, baby,’ Travis said. But he had that whiny tone she’d come to dread lately whenever she called him up. ‘I’m not happy … did you see all the play that Shania Twain is getting.., why can’t I have Mutt Lange produce my shit, Poppy …’

‘Shania is married to Mutt,’ Poppy said patiently, ‘and he’s a little busy with her career right now. Your sales are amazing, Travis.’

‘I want Mutt,’ he said, insisting on the famously reclusive super producer, ‘or maybe Michael Kravis, can you get me Michael Kravis…?’

When she was done with the litany of complaints from a guy that

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had just gone sextuple-platinum, she called her hair bands. More whining. Poppy was soothing, but she felt sick of it, sick of them. A manager now was half a babysitter, which she’d never signed up to be. Her acts these days wanted Poppy to bail them out of jail, to find kennels for their pets, and to hear their incessant moaning that somebody else was doing better than they were … which was always management’s fault, never the band’s fault …

As she prepared to catch a cab downtown to visit Menace in the studio - they were at a high-rent place in Soho, and it was a good job they were selling to pay these bills - Poppy thought that her client roster suddenly reminded her of Silver Bullet. Was there ever an act that blamed a drop in fortunes on themselves? No way. It was always the record label, the manager, the touring crew. Never that their songwriting skills had dropped off, or they needed to lose a few pounds or play some gigs more passionately.

Poppy climbed into her cab, tipped the doorman five bucks, and gave the driver the address of the studio.

I’m too young to be sick and tired of these guys, she thought. If I feel like this now, how will I react when I’m forty?

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‘Well, look who it is,’ said Tyrone, leering at her. ‘What’s up, sweetness?’

‘Hey, guys,’ Poppy said easily, dropping her Prada purse and sliding into the producer’s booth beside Jake Ritter, who was working the controls.

Menace raised hands to her. A few of the guys smiled, really just

baring their teeth. Two of them didn’t even look up.

‘Got any blow?’ Keith said.

‘Not on me,’ Poppy replied, unfazed. ‘Sorry.’

He looked at her as though she were less than useless. P0ppy pressed on; she had always believed you didn’t have to be bst buddies with your clients. Menace had hired her on their lawyer’s recommendation. They just expected her to make them money, arid that was fine with Poppy.

‘What are ya here for, then?’ Tyrone demanded.

‘Hmmm, let me see. What am I here for? Oh yeah, to hear the new shit. You boys are carving up the charts right now, programmers want some more.’

That got their attention. They started high-riving each other, grinning and whooping. Good sales were always welcome news, whether you were in hip-hop or country.

‘Lay that shit on her, Jake,’ leese told him.

The producer hesitated, looking at Poppy. ‘Maybe we should…’ ‘Fuck that. Just play it for the bitch,’ Tyrone said.

Poppy stiffened. She wasn’t going to let this guy call her a bitch. But before .she could call him on it, Jake litter had sighed … why sighed, their productions were usually spot on… and started to play the new track.

Poppy listened. And then her mouth dropped open.

‘No means noAin’t m)e showthe bitch was cryiny, but she wanted to Got her on the floor, make her beg for more/HZhen I’m done Reese runs the

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back-doorThe boys queue upWhile she lays downStreet ho runs a train…’

Poppy reached across Ritter and pressed a button to stop the filthy

sound from polluting her airspace. She looked at her act, sickened. ‘What the fuck is this?’

‘Fuck you talkin’ bout, bitch?’ Tyrone asked angrily. ‘Nobody asked y’all for critical judgement, fuckin’ Tipper Gore.’

‘This song is about gang-rape. You’re talking about gang-raping a

woman. ‘

‘So what? It’s rap.’

‘Song say she axin’ for it,’ Reese said, and laughed unpleasantly, which they all thought was highly amusing.

Poppy felt her cheeks burning red. ‘You can’t write that kind of dirt.’

‘We can do whatever we like,’ said Tyrone. ‘This is black culture, no cracker gonna tell me what I can and can’t do.’

Poppy stood up. ‘Screw you, Tyrone. Like hell that’s black culture. I work with black people and this crap isn’t their culture. This is slob culture, gang culture, scumbag culture. If it’s culture at all. I just call it trash.’

‘You know? You weren’t upset when we wrote a song about killin’ a cop. That you don mind, huh? But rape bugs you, lady? Killin’ is OK, but rape …’ He whistled through his teeth. ‘Maybe y’all had some experience, maybe it hit home …’

‘You fucking gross disgusting bunch of animals,’ Poppy said, ‘find yourselves another manager.’

‘Bitch, you fired!’ Tyrone screamed at her departing back. Poppy got outside. She was so overcome she had to walk six blocks gasping for air before she felt she could even hail a cab. It was so sick that they thought that was entertainment. Sicker still that she’d ever had anything to do with them. And sickest, sickest of all was that Tyrone, that evil luck, had a point.

She was a hypocrite. Rape threatened her, like every woman, and of course she wasn’t gonna work with a band that promoted it. But she’d been happy to work with an act that wrote songs about how to kill cops …

How could Menace have thought she’d stand to work on that ‘song’? Well, maybe because she’d worked on the last one.

Poppy flagged down an approaching cab, jumped in, and let it take her to the Victrix, where she stumbled into the elevator, making it back to her room on autopilot. Dear God, she thought.

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Henry had been right. Absolutely right. Of course it wasn’t a free speech issue; if it were, she’d have been willing to promote the current piece of filth. And she wasn’t. No, the real issue had been that she’d resented doing anything for him. Henry had never asked her to give up her job; but she, Poppy, had asked him to pretty much give up his.

No politician could be elected with a spouse who condoned cop killing.

LeClerc had called her a spoilt brat. And maybe she had been, maybe she’d gone and thrown away the best thing in her life over a dumb temper tantrum.

Poppy sat down heavily on the bed. It was eleven, too late to call him, and he’d most likely be at a campaign dinner anyway, raising money. She felt sick, stupid and tired. It wasn’t just Menace either. Even Travis was bothering her. She suddenly felt a wash of nausea come over her, as though she just couldn’t be damn well bothered to hold hands and wipe noses for one more second. She was tired of being mother-hen, scapegoat, lawyer and guru all at one go.

But this was her career. If she didn’t do this, what would she do? Poppy peeled her clothes off and headed for the shower. She was too tired to answer that question right now. She’d sleep on it, wtke up and call Henry, apologise to him … things would be muh better in the morning. “

It didn’t quite work out like that.

Poppy woke groggily when her wake-up call came through at eight. The first thing she did was call the Executive VicePresident at Sorry to announce that Menace was no longer an Opium act, effective immediately, and that she was cancelling her meeting. The rest of it she’d figure out later. She left messages on the office machine in LA, dictating a statement for Billboard and Variety. It was short and harsh: Poppy Allen of Opium Management announces she is severing her managerial relationship with Menace. Due to the nature of the act’s lyrics Ms Allen no longer wishes to have anything to do with them. Yeah, that was a little better than the regular industry platitudes about ‘parting of the ways’ or ‘musical differences’. Let them know what she really thought.

That made her feel a bit better. And then she picked up her morning papers. Poppy had subscriptions to Variety, Billboard, and The Economist, but when she was in hotels, she settled for USA Today, the Wall Street Journal, and the Financial Times. She almost

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didn’t bother with the FT this morning, but decided to skim through it, out of habit. Poppy shook out the pink pages over her steaming cinnamon coffee and toasted bagel, flipped over to the features section, and felt her entire universe crumble around her.

Her face was staring up at her. Poppy jumped out of her skin, sending her coffee cup crashing to the floor, delicious cinnamon brewed Colombian now nothing more than an ugly stain on the pristine white carpet. But she barely moved. She simply stared, rooted to the spot.

At first she’d thought she was having a drugs flashback or something, even though she’d only really done the odd joint, and not even that any more. But once Poppy had done most of the same things that Rose had done … once she’d stared at the picture, examined it from all angles, and then walked into the nearest bookstore to buy a copy of the book, she was still mystified.

She was the daughter of the Allens of Beverly Hills. This was just some freakish coincidence, something you saw on Ripley’s Believe it or Not. Wasn’t it?

Poppy cancelled her meetings for the day and called her parents at nine-forty-five, a quarter to seven on the West Coast.

‘Poppy? You know what time it is?’ Marcia Allen asked crossly. ‘I need my beauty sleep, young lady …’

‘Morn,’ Poppy said, now suddenly, ridiculously nervous, ‘this is going to sound like a very strange question. A real weird question…’

And then she heard her mother’s sharp intake of breath, as though she’d been waiting for this moment for her entire life, and Poppy instinctively knew that Marcia Allen knew what she was about to ask, and she also knew what the answer was, but she asked the question all the same.