by Sam Hall
“This will be a coordinated series of album releases and tours incorporating the entire Avalon Records roster of artists.” Images splashed up of the different bands, my head skipping when I saw The Changelings lounging against a wall with a studied air of indifference. “Everything will be leading up to this—Crewefest. A massive music festival involving Avalon and other artists, coming together at my other property on the Crewe River.”
“Dick Francis from the Daily Enquirer.” A man in a shabby looking suit stood up, interrupting the proceedings. “The press release said to expect ‘a decadent array of the bad and the beautiful at play,’ When do we get to the bit when we shoot A-listers getting their tits out?”
I admired the guy’s balls, but as we all watched Dave pause, I wondered at the wisdom of it. For a moment, his smile didn’t change, just as wide and friendly and reassuring as he stared the man down.
“You don’t want the foreplay?” He looked out on the crowd to see if any responded. “You wanna get straight into it?” The offer hung in the air, but even Dick wasn’t enough of his namesake to reply. “Are you sick of slick presentations trying to spin you the same old bullshit about the same old tired ideas? Well, Avalon’s got you covered. The industry is fragmenting into a million, tiny, indie pieces. We’ve all seen Vinyl on HBO. You’ve seen what popular music used to be. A force for chaos, for social upheaval, for a damn good time. Now everything’s commodified into reality television sound bites, three minute and forty second, auto tuned, homogenised shit. This might be the death knell of Avalon Records. With the money I’m spending on this, it’s gotta turn a profit or it’s gonna break me, but I’m going all in. You come to the Garden of Eden, you’re gonna put those microphones down and take those suits off and you’re gonna jump on in, because shit’s about to get debauched. And recorded for posterity. You want to see the tits of that actress in the big budget flick you took the missus to on a Saturday night? It’ll happen.” He clicked a finger, and a rapid montage of disrobing women was shown across the screen. It was too quick to identify the individuals, but the journalists craned their necks to see if they could. “You wanna see Liam Hartley’s dick down Sienna’s throat?”
Another click, and a startlingly familiar face looked into the camera with a smirk as it trailed down his bare chest. Down, down, until you could see a flash of something. Was it the actress kneeling at his feet?
“Forty million people say they regularly visit porn sites, while going around pretending they don’t. Eighty percent of people between the ages of eighteen and fifty say they’ve watched porn. Thirty-five point three million people report having taken cocaine. There’s this whole world of people, pretending to be good and conservative for the sake of their families or jobs, while all the while letting loose on the down-low. Well, I’m bringing this shit out into the open. We had a sexual revolution, and look where it got us. We’re just as undersexed and overworked as before. It’s time to start breaking shit down and not using popular music as yet another prop for the establishment. But don’t take my word for it. Come, see for yourself, experience that perfect moment before the Fall.”
For a second, you could have heard a pin drop within the room, then finally, a woman in a very nice grey suit stood up. “Veronica Smith for the Reader. Where is your roster of artists for this…pre-launch?”
Dave’s smile was immediate and shone at twenty thousand watts.
“Hydrating, resting, preparing. The same thing they’d do before any kind of performance.”
His voice sounded like caramel tastes—sweet, sticky, and about to perform a beat down on your pancreas. The crowd went into an uproar.
“C’mon,” Jen said, tugging me over to a side door beside the screen, Mark looking harried as he ushered us through. We emerged into a smaller conference room with paper and laptops strewn across its surface, several assistants’ fingers clicking furiously on their keyboards.
“Miss Rutherglen?” one said, getting to her feet. “Come through. I have the photographic supplier in the next room.”
Photographic supplier? I mouthed at Jen, but she just hooked her arm with mine and marched me through the door and into heaven.
I stopped once we got inside, unable to believe what I could see in front of me. Everywhere across the massive table was more camera gear than I’d ever seen in my life.
“This is the lady in question?” asked a silver haired man. He smiled when Jen nodded, then held his hand out to me. “My name is Reg Clark, and I’m the national manager for Canon.”
“Hi?” I couldn’t help but say the greeting as a question.
“Kira, right?” I nodded. “Do you mind if I take a look at your camera?”
I frowned for a split second, then pulled my bag off my shoulder and retrieved it. It was a little difficult to let it go and put it in the man’s hands, especially when he turned it on.
Please don’t look at those photos, please don’t look at those photos, I thought, feeling a sudden flush. There was nothing really bad about them, just that frozen moment of feigned sensuality, but suddenly, I felt super embarrassed about them, which didn’t bode well for the actual event. Instead, he glanced at my settings and nodded his head.
“Definitely could do with an upgrade. You could look at the 5D Mark IV…” I watched in awe as he unboxed what was easily a five-thousand-dollar camera. “But I think this might be more your speed.” He unsnapped a blow moulded camera case and inside was something no one had seen yet—the EOS 1D Mark III.
I swallowed, stared, saw the dude, Reg or whatever his name, hold the camera out to me. This was like those moments when people hold their newborn baby out to you, expecting you to be all “Ooh, yes! I know how to hold a kid without breaking him,” and instead, you’re awkwardly trying to find a way to step clear of the whole bloody thing without dropping it. I looked up into Reg, Mr. Clark’s eyes, hoping he saw the mad panic there, and realised how unworthy of holding such a momentous thing I was.
“Go on,” he said with a warm fatherly smile. “Get a feel for it.”
I cradled it to my body, fingers instinctively going around the handgrip. It felt heavy, solid, like a comforting weight in my hand. Reg nodded as he watched my body language.
“Now, Miss Rutherglen mentioned you’ve a preference for Zeiss lenses? We think the—”
“Otus 100m lens…” I gasped as he unpacked it from a box. Basically, it was a cinematic lens made to fit a DSLR, and I went to wipe the saliva pooling in one side of my mouth but realised I’d have to let go of the camera body to do so. I’d rather wipe my face on my shoulder than do that.
“May I?” he said, gesturing to the camera.
“Of course, it’s yours,” I said, holding the body out.
“No, it’s yours,” Reg said, fitting the lens and then handing it back. “Take a look.”
With a little guidance, I worked out how to turn the thing on, as this was a massive step up from my little beast. I felt a bit disloyal, right up until I lifted the viewfinder to my eye.
There’s a saying amongst photographers, ‘all gear, no idea,’ referring to people that splashed ridiculous amounts of money on expensive equipment without any clue as to how to take a shot beyond auto-focus and click, but I found it hard to remember those warnings. God fucking damn. I looked at Reg down the lens, manually focussing it until all the details on his face popped up, clean and clear.
The grey and black stubble that covered his cheeks was clear down to the little truncated stubs of hair, the crow’s feet around his eyes a delta of age and experience. I watched them crease further as he smiled, the fine cracks in the enamel of his teeth and the greyish tinge where an alum filling had been added all apparent. I took my eye away reluctantly, then swivelled around to take a look at Jen.
Jesus. The lighting in the room was shit, glaring fluoro tubes masked behind shitty plastic diffusers, but if this was a predictor of what was to come, I was going to smash this brief. Jen positively glowed, looking like some kin
d of mythical ice goddess dressed in a nice sheath dress, come to earth to patronise the mortals. And Mark? He hovered behind her shoulder, leaning against the door frame, frowning as per usual, but the lens… It made him look just as I’d thought back at the caf. With his storm coloured eyes and knife edge bone structure, he was…beautiful. Then he looked down the lens.
My heart began to race, then slowed at the realisation that he couldn’t see me or exactly where the camera was aimed. His expression was raw as he stared, his eyes unblinking, burning with some kind of unholy light that I just stared at until the wiggles at the edge of my vision started up. I pulled the camera down and held it out to Mr. Clark. The damn thing sang to me with all the seduction of a siren. I wanted to look at the whole world from behind that lens, but I couldn’t.
“I can’t—”
“You will,” Jen said, suddenly imperious.
“Jen, that’s—”
“Less than Daddy spent on toilet paper for the night. He wants you to photograph the event. You need the best gear you can get, and the price is chicken feed to him. Take it out of your pay if you feel that worried about it.”
“I get paid as well?”
“Of course you bloody get paid! Even Marky here gets paid to stand around, looking like he just smelled someone’s fart.” The man himself blinked at that. “Kira…” She moved so her hand rested on my arm. “I wanted to dress you up, lavish you with jewels and makeup and fancy do’s, and make you see the beauty I see every day, but I realised, that’s not what will make you happy. This will. You’ll wear the dress for me, but you’ll be struggling inside every time someone takes a look at you, unless you have this.” She held out a hand for the camera, took it from Reg, and wrapped mine around it. “This is what you want, what you need, and I love you and I’m giving it to you.”
I looked up at her, my friend, the same woman I’d had countless sleepovers with, who’d climbed trees and dreamed of the future just as I had, and I felt my eyes begin to ache.
“Don’t cry!” she said, holding up a finger to me and trying to inject all of her lady of the manor persona into her voice, but failed when it began to crack. Her eyes welled when mine did, but we didn’t get to watch the other cry. Our arms went around each other, holding on tight, though one of my hands was held out stiffly to keep my grip on the camera. Mark moved in and took it from me with a nod, so I could finally lay my head on my best friend’s shoulder and just hug her.
Photography wasn’t supposed to be a serious thing for me, just as I wasn’t supposed to manifest some of the same symptoms as Nan. My parents had relented when they realised neither of their wishes would be coming true. Jen didn’t really get it. She knew it made me happy and supported me as best as she could, but talking about aperture and focal point with her? May as well have been in a different language. This, this gesture—which probably was chicken feed for her dad—was the most interest anyone had ever shown for my passion. My chest ached as I held on, my arms only tightening when I heard her sobs. This is why she’d always been my best friend. She might not understand what I was on about, but she saw me.
It took a while, but finally, we both pulled back, each laughing at the mess the other one was.
“Jen, I—”
“Don’t say it, you’ll trash even more of my makeup. Now, let’s get what you need from the nice man and a little bit more.”
“Jen…”
“It’s the Garden of Eden, where excess is encouraged and inhibition is discarded. Don’t worry about it. Daddy’d only spend it on blow for the talent, anyway.”
By the time I walked out, my camera bag had been replaced and I was laden down with more stuff than I could have ever imagined. I’d be spending the rest of the day working out the capabilities of each piece of equipment and shooting a bunch of test shots until I felt like I had a handle of them. Well, as long as my brain held out.
Excitement, surprise, stress, arousal—these were all possible triggers, and as I lifted the camera, unable to put off looking down that gorgeous lens in natural light any longer, I saw the squiggles pop up at the corner of my vision. I frowned, looking away from the camera, and oddly, the visual distortions disappeared. I looked back, and there they wriggled again, not my usual visual glitch but something that went as soon as pulled my eye away from the viewfinder. I looked at the beautiful, shining, hugely expensive camera. Like, there were new cars worth less than the gear in my hands, and I prayed to a wide range of deities that there wasn’t anything about the EOS 1D that would set off an attack. Which is perhaps why I didn’t see them approach.
“Bit early, isn’t it, darlin’?”
A guy with bright red hair that was mussed into erratic spikes strolled up, then struck an exaggerated pose, throwing out one hip and giving me fish lips. I took in the boots and the kilt, and for a split second, thought it was one of the guards. Then those green eyes twinkled at me when he saw I wasn’t taking any shots, and his face relaxed.
Oh, shit.
I took a step backwards, then another.
This was Jake fucking Riley, drummer for The Changelings.
No, no, no, no. I knew this was coming. I knew this was something I’d need to deal with, but not now, not yet. I thought I had a whole night to prepare myself to act like a professional and not a bloody fan girl!
“So where’re the nubile girls, ready to ride the Jake train?” the guy said, gesturing to his crotch. My non reaction didn’t faze him, and he moved in closer, towering over me, now that I noticed. His voice dropped to a low purr as he asked, “Or are we gonna start things off with some POV shots?”
Somewhere, deep in the recesses of my brain, a small part of me screamed what that meant—porn videos taken from the perspective of someone participating in the act. His hand went to the back of my head, and I could smell the fresh-cut grass and cinnamon smell of him as he did so, then he started to push gently down where he wanted my head to go.
“What are you…? Fucking hell, Jake, get your hands off the girl!”
I shook myself, reverting back to my previous ploy of backing up and away from the rock star. You shouldn’t, my mind said. If you want to earn this beautiful beast of a camera, you need to get more than up close and personal with these guys. I looked Jake over, saw how the late morning sun cast his skin pure white, the freckles standing out clearly in contrast. He had an extremely lean, angular face, his smile mobile and twitching as he noted my inspection. My finger slid to the shutter release, and I lifted the camera…
“Hey, sorry about my friend. I’m Johnno—”
“Hartley,” I said as my attention was jerked to the newcomer, the word blurted out automatically. Of course it did, I’d studied many a photo of him and his brother. The Changelings’ rhythm guitar player was standing just to one side of me, his broad brown hand hovering in the air as he waited for my brain to engage. Finally, it did, and I grabbed it, shaking it firmly.
“Kira Leigh,” I said as he stared at me expectantly.
Or did he?
His eyes roamed over my face, as if he needed to memorise each bit of it, and his smile was gentle as his gaze dropped down to my lips and then back again.
It would have been easy to mistake Johnno for the boy next door. He was good looking—it seemed de rigueur now for rock stars to have bodies honed by CrossFit, and he had the high cheekboned, full-lipped good looks of models everywhere. But with his mop of scruffy brown hair, a bit of stubble across his chin, and a smattering of freckles across his nose, there was something…sweet about him? Harmless? I frantically skimmed through adjectives as that gave my brain an activity to do rather than engage my mouth and embarrass me further. Warm, that’s what it was. His skin, his hair, his golden-brown eyes—he looked warm.
And felt it too. I dropped his hand belatedly, still feeling the heat from it across my palm, which was nothing compared to the flush on my face.
“I’ve got to go,” I said, shoving my beautiful camera back in my bag and zipping it up on
ce the lens cap was on. “It was nice to meet you. I look forward to shooting you at the party.”
“Yeah? You sure?” Johnno said, and that stare remained just as intense. “Jake and I, we’ve only just arrived for our wardrobe fitting, and we can’t find Marlow anywhere. We’re in The Changelings.”
I know who you are, I wanted to say, but didn’t. Instead, I nodded.
“Marlow?” Keep it smooth, polite, and professional, I told myself. “That I can help you with. Come this way.”
I started off at a rapid clip. It felt like all the pounding adrenalin that was coursing through my body had my muscles coiled and ready to spring. I shot a look over my shoulder to make sure they were following me and saw the two of them. They stood together like young gods, one bright, one dark, their eyes trailing over my butt. It took me spinning around, frowning, to get them finally moving. I walked on, not caring whether or not they were coming now, just marching up to the door Mark had directed me to and then pointing to it.
“Thanks, love,” Jake said, opening it and sticking his head in. “Ooh, hot nearly naked models. Me likey.”
An answering set of giggles came from within as an answer.
“So Marlow’s in here?” Johnno said, taking a step closer.
“Yeah, he’s got a couple of dressing rooms going on at first, but go through them and you’ll find one with lots of racks of clothes,” I said. “That’s where I saw him last.”
He was about to reply, say something, his eyes heavily lidded as his chest expanded to let a breath in.
“This it?”
We both turned to see a long, lean guy with an unruly tumble of black hair and a pair of silver aviators had appeared by the door.
“Yeah,” Johnno said. “This is Kira Leigh, one of the photographers. This is Billy Boyd, The Changelings’ lead guitarist.”
“Kira.” Billy said my name in a tone that was hard to determine. Amusement? Interest? Or disinterest, for that manner? It was made doubly difficult to identify with the mask-like sunglasses on. I didn’t get a whole lot of time to consider it further as he ambled over, taking my hand in his when I held it out, sandwiching it between his palms, and holding it. “Pretty name.” He turned to Johnno, as Jake had ducked inside and was having quite the time by the sound of the squeals. “Luc’s coming, Liam’s—”