by MV Ellis
Actually, that was a lie. Rome understood it to the extent that he knew it was a cultural norm, but he didn’t agree with it, or adhere to it. In fact he didn’t adhere to most social rules.
The only norm with him was that he marched to the beat of his own drum, and did whatever the fuck he felt like doing at any given point in time. That seemed to be another genetic trait he shared with his brother.
I decided to let it go. There was nothing more guaranteed to make him obsess about something than telling him to forget it. Speaking of which, I sidled another glance at the other side of the room, at the chick from the car park. She really was something else.
We saw pretty women all the time. It was kind of an occupational hazard, to the point where I, for one, had become a little blind to girls like Carolina from this morning’s bathroom episode. She was pretty in the way that models mostly were, but that was it. I appreciated her beauty in the same way I appreciated that paintings by the French Masters were “good”, but that didn’t necessarily mean I wanted one hanging in my home.
Carolina was pretty by accepted standards. Beautiful, in fact, but beyond that aesthetic, she did nothing for me. I’d gotten hard watching her and Rome together, because the scene was hot—two obnoxiously attractive people, naked and horny, was enough to turn on most people with a pulse, and I definitely had that. Still, I wasn’t attracted to her, necessarily, as much as the scenario.
The girl from the parking lot was different. She was objectively beautiful, yes, but there was also something about her, beyond simple beauty, that got my pulse racing. As I observed her, she raised her head and glanced sideways furtively. I wondered whether she’d looked up purely out of curiosity about what was happening on this side of the room, or if she’d felt the weight of my stare, even as I tried to be discreet. Either way, when her gaze hit mine, she turned away shyly, a deep blush blooming under her rich, golden-maple-colored skin. My dick twitched in appreciation.
Chapter 5
Rome
* * *
As I watched King watching her, I wondered idly why what I saw made me want to knock his head right off his shoulders. It was a free country. He was a free agent. I knew nothing about her, apart from what she’d felt like wrapped around my dick a year or so earlier, but even if she wasn’t free, there was no harm in looking. So why did that blush make my dick hard, but my hands involuntarily ball into tight fists again?
We were saved by the bell in the form of the receptionist calling out to the room, “They’ll see you now in the boardroom, if you’d like to follow me.”
I stood up, as did King and James, and, to my surprise, so did our uptight “friend,” and her flamboyant companion. I was guessing also a manager—though he and James couldn’t have been more different if they’d tried. Still, that wasn’t my concern at that point in time. What bothered me was the fact that they were clearly headed to the same meeting as us. What the actual?
We filed into the boardroom behind the receptionist, and I couldn’t help but feel like we were being marched before a firing squad, except that, instead of a line of cocked rifles, we were facing a lineup of label cocks. In many ways I’d rather the firing squad. At least I’d know where I stood. This was a row of smiling assassins, and we wouldn’t even see the end coming.
When the introductions were over and done with—a bunch of overdressed goons from Sonic Bully and a bunch from Audio Dissonance, the names of whom I didn’t even pretend to want to remember—I threw myself into the nearest chair, swinging my feet onto the table and crossing them at the ankles.
This time both King and James looked like they would happily have taken me out, if the firing squad didn’t. I flipped them both off in my mind, but resisted the urge to do it in real life. Instead, I made a mental note to tell them to go fuck themselves when the meeting was done.
One of the assassins across the table kicked off proceedings.
“Okay, so now that we know who’s on this side of the room, I guess you probably want to know who everyone else is. No fucking shit, Sherlock. “This is Quincy Copeland, otherwise known as Que Violin, and her manager Carson Daniels. As well as a violinist, Quincy is a singer-songwriter, and the jewel in Sonic Bully’s classical music portfolio crown, in my opinion. And not just in classical music, but across genres.”
“Yeah, we’ve ‘met,’” I air quoted, and all eyes in the room swiveled my way. Quincy Copeland looked at me like she wanted to gut me like a fish, and King raised a questioning eyebrow. I shrugged in response.
Label Guy, whose name I hadn’t bothered to listen to, recovered himself. “And over here, we have James Portmeirion and his clients, Anthony “King” Kingston, and Roman “Rome” Ivanenko, the virtuosic cellists who make up Bowed & Dangerous—similarly standout properties in Audio Dissonance’s catalog across genres—”
I had no fucking idea what was going on, but one thing I did know, was that I hated it. I looked around at the assembled suits—all trying way too fucking hard to be something they weren’t: cool, funky, young, hip, or whatever the hell they wanted to call it.
They were entirely too curated, too groomed, and trying to seem effortlessly authentic and cutting edge—or whatever people like that said about themselves—while probably consulting a stylist, hairdresser and fucking make-up artist before they left the house every day. The whole thing was so contrived that all they managed to do was look exactly like the dude sitting next to them.
I tried and failed to hide my disgust. Okay, so I didn’t really try very hard—or at all, in fact—but the thought was there. For a nanosecond. I’d zoned out of the introductions earlier: managers, A&R people, number crunchers, bean counters. ‘Colins’ and ‘Adrians’ that I didn’t want to need to know. My mind drifted back to the morning’s activities with Carolina, and I told myself that was what was giving me the hard-on from hell, not the sidelong glances I was giving Quincy Copeland.
Five, maybe ten, minutes in, my attention was abruptly brought back into the room by the scrape of chairs as King and James jumped from their seats with shocked and angry expressions on their faces.
“No!” King’s voice was firm and clear, if not a little too loud, bouncing off the polished concrete walls of the self-consciously urban meeting room.
“No. Fucking. Way.” He was as angry as I’d ever seen him.
“Dude, what did I miss?” I hissed out of the corner of my mouth.
“Fuck, Rome, can you not concentrate on anything other than your dick for more than ten seconds?”
Clearly not, because when I’d spaced out on whatever the fuck had just gone down in the meeting, that was exactly what I had been thinking about. I held back a grin. As angry as King was, a smug look from me would likely throw him over the edge.
“These geniuses, in their infinite wisdom, are suggesting that because she”—he jerked his head toward the Sonata Awards slash car-park chick—“is a classical musician, and so are we, we should collaborate—given that post-merger, we are essentially label-mates.”
“What?” I’d heard, but couldn’t believe my ears. “What does she even play?” I may have banged her, but I clearly hadn’t been concentrating enough to retain all the details.
“Violin.” She and King spoke at the same time.
“There’s a clue in the title. Que. Violin. What do you think I play, the accordion?”
I shot her a look that had her clamping her mouth shut.
“She does covers and rearrangements of soul and r ’n’ b hits. She’s like Rihanna, but with strings,” King jumped in, clearly trying to avoid an outbreak of all-out war.
“Apart from my skin tone, I’m literally nothing like Rihanna, unless you’re suggesting that all black women are the same?” She squared up to him like she was ready for a fight. So much for his diplomacy skills.
“What? Jesus. No, that wasn’t what I was saying at all.” He looked like she’d slapped him in the face.
“Good, I’m glad. And for the record, the covers t
hing wasn’t my choice. It was a decision made in a meeting not dissimilar to this. I fought against it and lost, so here we are. I write, and I have about ten album’s worth of originals that will probably never see the light of day.”
“Whatever. The point is that, apart from the fact that we don’t play fucking Vivaldi, we have literally nothing in common musically. They’ve just assumed some kind of similarity or cohesion, based on the fact that we all play strings, and don’t have the traditional classical music repertoire. It sucks.”
Chapter 6
Quincy
* * *
“Well, that’s one thing we can agree on at least. It’s like saying that because Gordon Ramsey is in food service, and so is Ronald McDonald, they should work together.”
“Wait. So who’s Ronald McClownface in this equation?”
The other one spoke this time. Rome. The one I’d drunkenly and regrettably fucked when I was at my lowest ebb, and who, until this point, had made it clear that he was not only totally disinterested in the meeting, but also utterly above even pretending to take part in it.
He’d sat back in his chair, feet up on the reclaimed-wood table that had probably cost more than my car, and blatantly ignored everything that was going on around him. Except me. If he thought he was incognito while he kept sliding glances my way, he was sadly mistaken.
Now it was my turn to return the favor, and look at him like he was shit on my shoe.
“If the clown cap fits…” I bit my lip as I watched the realization of what I’d just said dawn on him. His dark brown eyes blazed with anger, and I considered us even for the parking lot stunt. Good. “But, that’s beside the point. The point is that, musically, we’re as different as Gordon and Ronald, and there would be little or no overlap in our audiences. A collaboration, or worse still, a tour like they’re suggesting, would be suicidal for both parties.”
“Well, that’s convenient, as that’s how this whole conversation is making me feel.” This was King, the—ostensibly—more level-headed one of the two. At least, he’d seemed that way at the start of the encounter, though now I wasn’t so sure. He appeared to have lost his mind a little since the announcement of the collab plans. Not that I could really blame him. It was the dumbest idea I’d heard since those stupid stick-on bras.
“Listen. Let’s all settle down here and not get hysterical. I agree that on the face of it, this doesn’t sound like the best fit or suggestion for either party, but maybe we need to take a step back and listen to the offer being put on the table, and then consider our options.” Their manager was the voice of reason.
“Thank you James; that’s a mature approach.” This was one of the label execs, Marty Somebodyorother. “The thing is, we’ve already told you all of the options. Either the collaboration goes ahead, or both acts are in breach of contract and will be shelved, and, more than likely, litigation will ensue. We don’t have room for two modern classical acts, now that the rosters have merged, and this is the only way to retain both.”
“Why do we need to retain both? We’re the bigger act, with the bigger label. You do the math.”
I swear to God, if it hadn’t been a business meeting, I would have knocked his cocky head clean off his shoulders. What a raging asshole.
“Contractually, it’s not as simple as that. Trust me, the choices you’ve been given are the only options. Not to sound like we’re issuing an ultimatum, but we’ve already looked at this every which way, so… ”
Carson finally found his voice. “Well, gentlemen, I have to say that this is an incredibly disappointing turn of events, not the least of reasons being that we’ve all been totally blindsided, despite trying to find out what this meeting was about beforehand.” I knew my gut had been right—I’d had a bad feeling about this meeting from the moment it was scheduled.
“Quincy and I aren’t going to enter into further discussions, or make any decisions, right here and now. I suggest we draw a line under the subject for the moment, and we will come back to you when we’ve had a chance to discuss.” And that was why I loved him.
“What he said,” the other manager piped up. “When do you need an answer?”
“Twenty-four hours.” Marty was as cold as ice, while the other executives seemed to be nothing but table decoration at this point.
“Really? That’s not a long time for an artist to make a decision of this colossal nature. Ninety-six hours.” I loved it when Carson was in negotiation mode.
“Seventy-two,” Marty fired back.
“Deal.”
Three days to make a decision that could affect the rest of my life. What bullshit.
“Three-fucking-pissant days! Is that all our careers are worth? You people are a joke. Worse than a goddamned joke, actually. You couldn’t find good music if it took you into a back alley and beat you half to death. Look at you: you can’t even get dressed without looking like you swallowed a lame-ass fucking style-bible. I’m out.” Roman pushed away from the table angrily and stood up as though he was about to charge out of the room, either through the door or the wall.
As much as I hated to agree with the arrogant asshole, I had to. He was one hundred and fifty percent correct. It was the biggest bunch of crap I’d ever fucking heard. It was everything I hated about the “business” of show business: the bean counting, reducing everything down to the lowest common denominator—a figure on a balance sheet. The failure to remember that, though we all wanted to make money, we were creatives first and foremost, and sometimes—often, in fact—our creativity couldn’t be packaged up in a neat little box, or a tidy column on a spreadsheet. It just didn’t work that way.
Creativity was unpredictable, and messy. It was about real people, and real emotions, and didn’t always keep to a schedule, or meet expectations, or respect plans and protocols. Musicians weren’t robots or computer programs. We couldn’t be controlled, manipulated and merged like inanimate objects. Or we could, but it was only a matter of time before that shit blew up like a cheap firework.
I zoned out as everyone said their goodbyes, only bothering with the minimum level of civility required to get out the door. Not only did I hope never to have to deal with any of those fools again, it was one of the few times when I fell back on the fact that I was the “tortured” artist, and I had Carson there to be the people pleaser—the polished, polite and poised businessperson. I, for once, wanted to play the role of the pouty creative. After what had just gone down, I didn’t have the energy to pretend to be anything other than pissed off, from the top of my head to the tips of my sore and blistered toes.
After we filed out of the room, I walked out of reception, not bothering to say good-bye to the other two musicians or their manager. I left Carson exchanging details with the latter, and called out over my shoulder as the door swished behind me.
“Carson, I’ll call you from the car.”
Chapter 7
King
* * *
“This is some kind of actual bullshit. How the fuck can we be trapped in this deal we never agreed to? We're not even with Sonic Bully, so why should we do anything they want?” Rome jumped up and paced the room as he spoke to James.
“That’s the thing. I’ve talked with the lawyers at length, and the paperwork is watertight. The existing contracts transfer to whatever form the business entity known as Audio Dissonance takes; including new companies founded as a result of mergers. And furthermore, though we don't like what they’re doing, they’re not in breach.”
I just didn’t understand how that could be the case. What was the point of paying lawyers thousands of dollars to look after this shit for us, when, in the end, we’ve been locked into a dud deal. Surely we could have fucked that up ourselves, without making some fat cat brief richer in the process.
James carried on as though he’d read my mind. “As specified in said contract, and pretty much every other artist contract on the planet, they can choose to take the act in whatever direction they want, or shelve i
t if they want to, and those are the two options on the table. Those get-out clauses are there for a reason, and it’s to protect the label in exactly these circumstances. I know it sounds like a bunch of shit, but, unfortunately, this stuff is standard across the industry.”
“Well, then they can shove their contract up their hipster bean-counter asses, and fucking sue me. No way am I going out there with some kind of mishmash fucking-bullshit version of what we do, because those braindead morons can’t see that it’s nothing like Cue the Music, or whatever she calls herself.” Rome kicked at random pieces of furniture for emphasis as he spoke.
“Dude. Don't break anything. The last thing we fucking need is a bill for damage to the hotel room on top of everything else."
He sat down. Where he'd been mostly disinterested in the meeting, he was now totally engaged—almost too far the other way. He was simmering with rage, only a few moments away from boiling over, and all hell breaking loose. Like his brother, he was legendary for his temper, and not in a good way.
I was the opposite. I’d lashed out in the heat of the moment, but, after the initial flash of anger, I was back to my calm and considered self, trying to behave rationally instead of flying off the handle and acting on my knee-jerk reaction.
“Listen, we can’t afford to make a career-ending decision like this. Now, or ever. If we genuinely have no other option, then we’re going to need to look at ways to make this work for us.”
Rome looked at me like I was something a rat dragged in. “How the fuck can we make something so suicidally stupid work for us?” It was a good question, and not one I had a solid answer for at that point in time. “If we do it, it’ll be the end of our credibility, and therefore our careers, anyway. I’d rather go out in a blaze of glory, with my dignity intact, than slide slowly into oblivion on a sinking ship with her at the helm.”