Friends & Rivals

by Tilly Bagshawe

  Hiding her pain behind the twin masks of her extraordin-ary looks and her razor-sharp tongue, Kendall was determined to prove her worth to the father who had dumped her, and to the rest of the world. TV success was a start. But she wanted more than that. She wanted lasting, global superstardom. She wanted to walk on stage in packed stadiums all around the globe and hear people chanting her name.

  No one was more surprised than Jack Messenger to discover that Kendall Bryce could sing. Her agent had practically laid siege to Jester’s LA office on Beverly Glen until Jack agreed to see her. Reality stars releasing records was really not Jester’s thing. Plus the Bryce girl had only just got out of jail for cocaine possession. Too much trouble by half. But Kendall’s agent was so persistent that Jack relented one Friday afternoon, and gave the kid five minutes. There was an upright piano in Jack’s office. He’d been an exceptional pianist in his youth and still found that playing calmed his nerves and cleared his head. He sat down and, rather meanly, started playing Christina Aguilera’s Genie in a Bottle, an astonishingly difficult song for an untrained vocalist. Kendall Bryce didn’t miss a beat. She opened her mouth and belted it out, pitch perfect and with the power and depth of a seasoned Gospel singer. Her voice ricocheted around Jack’s office like a sonic boom. After fifteen years in the music business it took a lot to surprise Jack Messenger. But Kendall Bryce had done it, in about two and a half bars.

  That meeting was two years ago now. Since then, under Jester’s management, Kendall Bryce had gone on to become one of the best-known and biggest-selling female artists in America. But she had also had to submit her entire life to Jack Messenger’s control. He’d refused to sign her unless she quit cocaine and alcohol cold turkey, and underwent regular drug testing. She had to join a gym, stop going to nightclubs unless someone from Jester accompanied her, and agree to make no comments to the press whatsoever, unless Jack had personally authorized them. The one and only time she was caught breaking one of these rules (she was photographed drunk on an unauthorized trip to the Chateau Marmont) Jack had forced her to give up the lease on her apartment and move into his guesthouse in Brentwood until her second album was in the can. Needless to say, Kendall had bucked and chafed against such draconian restraints. But she put up with them for two reasons.

  One was that she knew Jack Messenger could not only get her to the top but keep her there.

  The other was that she was madly, passionately and utterly hopelessly in love with him.

  Jack was everything that Kendall’s own father was not: decent, honest, loyal, kind and strict. He was tough on her because he cared, and though she fought against him tooth and nail, and was often so infuriated with him she wanted to cry or hit him or both, deep down she felt safe for the first time since she was eleven. Jack was also the first man who, maddeningly, appeared to be totally immune to Kendall’s celebrated physical charms. Since the age of fifteen, Kendall Bryce had been used to enslaving any and all men to her will – boys at school, teachers, producers on her show. In Jack Messenger, for the first time, she encountered indifference. Her initial reaction was to assume that he was either grieving too hard for his dead wife, or secretly gay. But, especially since moving onto his property, she’d been forced to abandon both these theories. Jack had a girlfriend, Elizabeth, an attractive, professional woman in her thirties who was about as far removed from Kendall as it was possible to be: discreet, together, undemanding. In short, a grown-up. Jack was never pictured with her in public, but Elizabeth seemed unfazed by this apparent lack of commitment. Nor did she complain about the fact that he still wore his wedding ring, and spent every Saturday afternoon without fail at his wife’s grave at Forest Lawn. If this was the sort of woman Jack was looking for, it was little wonder he failed to notice Kendall. But it still hurt.

  As with her father, Kendall tried to get Jack’s attention by acting out, in particular bedding a string of Jester’s male acts to try to make him jealous. As with her father, the strategy failed miserably. In recent months things had hit an all-time low between the two of them. Consumed with longing and frustration and fury, Kendall had started drinking again. Two weeks ago she was breathalysed on Sunset and slapped with another DUI, her fourth. She was lucky to escape jail time. Jack, needless to say, was furious, refusing to allow her to fly with him to London for Ivan Charles’s party, an event he knew Kendall had been hugely excited about, and forcing her to stay home with a sobriety-coach-slash-jailer instead.

  One day he’ll see what’s right under his nose, thought Kendall, bitterly. He’ll realize he loves me; that I’m the one who can help him get over Sonya. He’ll learn to love again. We’ll learn together.

  Until that day, however, she wasn’t about to let Jack push her around. In a week’s time she’d be in London anyway, performing, and there was nothing he could do to stop her having the time of her life. Meanwhile, Kendall had no intention of joining a nunnery just to make Jack happy. Sex with her sobriety coach might not have been spectacular. But it was two fingers to Jack holier-than-thou Messenger. That alone made it worth it.

  The next morning a perfect clear, blue-skied dawn broke over Los Angeles, just as Lex Abrahams was brewing his second pot of coffee on the stove. Lex rarely slept more than four or five hours a night and was always up before six. Years spent on the road as a photographer, flying from continent to continent at the whim of his famous, rock-star clients, had left him immune to jet lag and to exhaustion generally. Which was a good thing, as he now worked for Jack Whip-Cracker Messenger as Jester’s in-house photographer; a dream job as long as you didn’t mind insane hours, capricious artists and a pay packet that barely covered your rent and bills.

  Happily, Lex didn’t. Photography was his life, music his business, and Jack Messenger one of the nicest, most decent men he had ever met. All in all, Lex Abrahams considered himself one of the luckiest twenty-eight-year-olds on the planet.

  Especially this morning. This morning he got to see Kendall, to show her the first images from last week’s shoot for her new album cover. If Lex did say so himself, the pictures were awesome. For once in his life, he was actually going to impress Kendall Bryce. And, as Lex Abrahams knew perhaps better than anyone, that took some doing.

  Pouring molasses-thick coffee into a red tin mug, into which he had heaped four spoons of sugar and a generous dash of Coffee-mate, Lex wandered out onto his patio. He loved it out here in the early mornings. It was a small space, basically just a gravel courtyard with a table, two chairs and a lone orange tree, but it was a sun-trap and it made his bijou one-bedroom apartment feel twice its actual size. At Kendall’s suggestion, Lex had recently screwed a vintage mirror to the rear patio wall, to make the garden look bigger. He peered at his reflection in it now, not out of vanity but because it was there, and saw what he always saw: a stocky, slightly too short Jewish man with dark curly hair, a long but not unattractive nose, and light-blue eyes that looked as if they’d been stolen from somebody else, somebody Swedish and blond … a surfer, maybe. If it weren’t for the eyes, Lex Abrahams would have been the most Jewish-looking Jew he knew. Ironically, given that he’d been raised in a totally non-religious household, wasn’t remotely kosher, and didn’t know the inside of a synagogue from a packet of peas. Still, as a photographer with a rare gift for capturing the idiosyncracies and beauty of the human face, Lex was glad he had ‘a look’. Occasionally he wished it were more the sort of look that girls like Kendall Bryce swooned over. A taller, blonder, more regular-featured look. But, generally, Lex Abrahams was comfortable in his skin, a fact reflected in his never-changing wardrobe of faded Levi jeans, white T-shirt and Target flip-flops.

  Kendall’s pictures were on the patio table. In between sips of coffee, Lex leafed through them, trying to choose the best three for her perusal. Ever since his first job for Maroon 5, aged nineteen, Lex had learned never to give a client more than three images to choose from, especially for an album cover. Large files of JPEGs had a habit of causing major brain malfunction a
mongst musicians. They engendered indecision, irascibility and panic. Lex was a firm believer in physical prints laid out on a table, one, two, three. Of course, Kendall was a slightly different case. For all the dysfunction and imbalance of their relationship, Lex and Kendall were genuine friends.

  Friends. How Lex had come to loathe that word. The truth – the tragic, pathetic, undeniable truth – was that Lex Abrahams was in love with Kendall Bryce. Of course, he had never declared his love and never would. To do so would be as futile a gesture as shouting at the TV when your team was losing, or calling up Graydon Carter and suggesting he forget about Leibovitz and hire you to do Vanity Fair’s next editorial shoot with the Obamas. Wishing it were so was one thing. Announcing your hopeless pipe dreams to the world was quite another. Kendall was as far out of Lex’s league as an NFL career was out of the reach of your average high-school footballer. Friends were as much as they would ever be. He should be grateful.

  But, even as a friend, Lex yearned for Kendall’s approval. Deep down, part of him clung to a belief that if she truly valued him as an artist, a real talent, she might one day look past his mediocre exterior and see someone worth loving, worth being loved by.

  The three photographs he plucked from the pile were unquestionably works of art, although Lex hesitated to take full credit for them. Who, after all, could make Kendall Bryce look anything other than perfect? The first two were body shots. Taken in the desert at dusk, beside a lone thorn tree, Kendall’s torso and arms were twisted in a mirror image of the tree’s trunk and branches. You could make out her face in profile, but the key to the image was her bare back and the billowing plumes of black hair cascading over her shoulders. The third picture was a straightforward head shot. Shot on old-fashioned film, in black and white, it captured a side of Kendall not generally glimpsed by the public. With her eyes wide and her face free of make-up, she looked young, vulnerable, emotionally naked. This was Lex’s favorite, but he doubted Kendall would pick it and Jester wouldn’t force the issue. Subjects rarely liked the portraits that dared to tell them the truth.

  Lex walked back inside. Slipping the three prints into a fresh envelope, he carefully filed the rest and sat down to work on some editing. It would be four hours at least until Kendall was awake and up to receiving visitors, so he might as well get some work done.

  By the time he next looked up, it was noon. How the hell had that happened? Quickly brushing his teeth and spritzing on some aftershave (Kendall had once mentioned that she found CK One a sexy scent, and Lex had worn it religiously ever since, to no noticeable effect), he jumped in his leased Nissan and headed towards Brentwood.

  For once traffic was good. Ten minutes later, Lex turned the corner into Brentwood Park. Jack Messenger’s house was on a private road, but the security guard at the gate knew Lex well and waved him through. Every time he came here, Lex was reminded of the immense financial gulf that existed between music managers and photographers. Like Jack, Lex was at the very top of his profession, one of the most well-respected snappers in the record business. As well as countless iconic album covers, he’d shot Pepsi commercials and award-winning live concert footage for bands as diverse as Aerosmith and The Dixie Chicks. But somehow the great music industry money tree failed to drop riches on Lex Abrahams’ head the way it rained them down on the likes of Jack Messenger and Ivan Charles. And Kendall Bryce, of course, although nobody doubted that the artists would do well. They were the talent, the raison d’être.

  Kendall’s my raison d être, Lex thought idly as he pulled up outside the Messenger mansion. Jack’s house was an Arts and Crafts beauty, half-timbered and covered in climbing roses and wisteria, like an English manor house. The guesthouse was more open-plan, a converted barn separated from the house by a vast expanse of lawn and set back behind neatly trimmed topiary hedges. It opened directly onto the pool, which twinkled brilliant azure blue beneath the blazing midday sun as Lex walked by.

  ‘Knock knock,’ he said cheerfully, pushing open the unlocked front door. ‘Kendall? I brought over some pictures from the shoot. You’re gonna love—’

  The words died on his lips. Kevin Dacre, the sobriety coach Jack had hired for an extortionate fee to babysit Kendall while he was in England, staggered sheepishly out of the bedroom with a towel wrapped around his hips and two empty wine glasses in his hand. Behind him a visibly hungover Kendall, in a crotch-skimming kimono robe, carried an armful of empty bottles.

  ‘Oh, hi, Lex,’ she growled, her voice hoarse from the night’s excesses. ‘Lex, Kevin, Kevin, Lex. Kevin was just leaving.’

  The sobriety coach did at least have the decency to blush scarlet, scurrying past Lex with a pleading ‘I couldn’t help it. Don’t tell!’ look in his eyes. Lex felt as if he’d been punched in the stomach. Sometimes it seemed as if Kendall was determined to sleep with every man in Los Angeles other than him. Rock stars and actors were one thing, but this dweeb wasn’t even good-looking. It wasn’t until the sound of Kevin’s squealing tyres had died away that Lex recovered sufficiently to speak.

  ‘Jack’s gonna go ballistic. He’s not kidding about kicking you off the books, you know. He’ll do it if you keep pushing him.’

  ‘Screw Jack,’ said Kendall, lighting up a Marlboro red. ‘Managers are a dime a dozen.’

  ‘If you really felt that, you wouldn’t be living in his guesthouse,’ said Lex, grabbing the cigarette from between Kendall’s fingers and stubbing it out in one of the wine glasses. ‘Smoking fucks your voice. Don’t be an idiot.’

  Kendall pouted but didn’t protest. Lex Abrahams was her best friend, one of the few people she’d allow to boss her around. Besides which, she didn’t want to fall out with Lex today and risk having him spill the beans to Jack. For all her bravado, Kendall had woken up this morning feeling guilty and nervous. What if Jack got home early? She’d better replace the wine she’d stolen. And buy some mouthwash and air fresheners.

  ‘Go take a shower,’ said Lex, wishing he weren’t able to smell the sex on her body. ‘And open some windows up there. I’ll clean up this mess.’

  Kendall wrapped her arms around him. As she lifted them, the hem of her silk robe rode up, revealing two perfectly smooth peach buttocks. ‘You’re an angel, Lexy. I love you.’

  It was all Lex could do not to weep.

  An hour later, Lex dropped the car with a valet and he and Kendall walked into Joan’s on third. A well-known Hollywood hangout and brunch venue, Joan’s was a scene and the last place Lex would have chosen for their lunch date. But Kendall insisted, and when Kendall insisted, Kendall got.

  ‘I’ll have a big pot of coffee, cinnamon French toast and a side of bacon. And a blueberry muffin. And some frittata.’

  In black Ksubi jeans, a black L’Agence T-shirt and ultra-dark Oliver Peoples shades, Kendall looked even tinier than usual. It was hard to imagine how so much food was going to fit into such a bird-like frame.

  ‘And I’ll have an egg-white omelette,’ said Lex. ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Health freak,’ grumbled Kendall. ‘You’re just showing off to make me feel bad.’

  ‘You already feel bad.’

  Kendall groaned. This was true. Her face had turned a sickening shade of pale-green, her palms were clammy and her stomach kept flipping over like one of those wind-up toys kids get in their Christmas stockings.

  ‘You have to stop drinking, you know,’ Lex said seriously. ‘You can’t control it.’

  ‘I know, I know. And I will. I mean, I have. Last night was a one-off. You won’t say anything to Jack, will you?’

  Lex looked hurt. ‘Why do you think I cleaned up your entire house? So he could catch you?’

  ‘Thanks.’ Kendall reached across the table and squeezed his hand. Through the window, a lone paparazzi snapped the moment.

  ‘Fuck off,’ snarled Lex. He knew they shouldn’t have come to Joan’s.

  ‘Oh my God, that’s so funny!’ Kendall laughed. ‘Now US Weekly’ll run a story saying the two of us are togethe
r. How hilarious is that?’

  The food arrived and Kendall fell on it, shovelling down forkfuls of frittata and French toast like she hadn’t eaten for weeks. Lex watched her, picking intermittently at his omelette.

  ‘So,’ he said, changing the subject. ‘Are you ready for London?’

  ‘Sooo ready,’ mumbled Kendall through a mouthful of blueberry muffin. ‘I can’t wait to do those gigs, and I can’t wait to meet Ivan Charles. Everyone says he’s way more fun than Jack. Not that that’s hard. Root-canal surgery is more fun than Jack.’

  Lex was used to listening to Kendall complain about the man who had made her a mega-star. But over the years he had also provided a shoulder to cry on while she sobbed her heart out about her unrequited love for Jack. Lex knew that Kendall’s bitching was just displaced adoration. He sympathized. Unrequited love sucked.

  ‘I’m not sure there’ll be too much time for fun in your schedule,’ said Lex. ‘You’re rehearsing every day you’re not performing.’

  Kendall shrugged. ‘I’ll make time. I wanna see Buckingham Palace and the Tower of London. And I wouldn’t mind sleeping with Brett Bayley either.’

  ‘Brett’s married,’ said Lex disapprovingly.

  ‘Tell that to him,’ grinned Kendall. ‘How mad do you think Jack would be if Brett and I got together? We’re both Jester acts, after all; both Americans in London. Our paths are bound to cross.’

  ‘Stop being provocative,’ snapped Lex. Reaching into his messenger bag, he pulled out the photographs he’d brought her. ‘Take a look at these. You need to pick one for the album cover.’

  ‘Ooooo.’ Kendall leaned forward excitedly. ‘Has Jack seen them?’

  ‘Not yet.’ Jack, Jack, Jack. If only she knew how transparent she was.