Devil You Know

by Bagshawe, Louise

  “Don’t go on about that again, mate,” said Tony, but he looked sheepish. “It was only a few fucking TVs and that.”

  “They wanted to charge you five grand.”

  “Seven,” said Poppy automatically.

  Leo glared at her. “In pounds, doll.”

  They were all Brits, of course. “Oh yes,” Poppy muttered.

  “Lippy little bit, ain’t she?” said Blaze.

  “I’m not fucking paying five fucking grand, fuck that,” said Tony, getting furious.

  “Well, you don’t have to, now.” He passed Tony the piece of typed paper. Poppy held her breath as he looked it over; then his face broke into a wide grin.

  “That’s one thousand pounds.”

  “For the whole band, not just you, Tony.”

  “How the ’ell did Mike pull that one off, then?”

  “Not Mike. Poppy here.”

  The band, who had been following this conversation carefully, all lifted their heads and looked at Poppy again. There was silence.

  “I hope that’s OK, Mr. Watson,” Poppy stammered.

  “Mr. Watson!” said Tony, to laughter. “You call me Tony, honey. Great job. Nice work.”

  “Yeah, well done,” said Drake. The others nodded. Poppy felt as though she’d just won an Olympic gold medal.

  “I still want to see your tits, though,” said Mark.

  She froze, not sure what to say. But then the guys laughed, and Poppy felt the tension dissipate. Mark slapped her on the back. “Welcome to the road.”

  *

  They put her up onstage during the gig. Poppy watched from the wings, in the gloom, staring at the band running around out front and the crew running around out back; how the drum tech crouched behind the riser, periodically fiddling with things, how the lighting guys sat up in the rigging, double-checking the large colored spotlights. She’d seen stages before, playing the bass.

  But nothing like this.

  Those had been sweaty, stinky, tiny little dives with a handful of teenagers out front and a tiny, cramped stage with a crapped-out PA. This, this was …

  Poppy hugged herself. This was heaven.

  It was dark outside now. The set was the famous Green Dragon logo. There were more lights than Times Square. The PA was so thick and rich and heavy that the sound was almost 3-D. Out front, the French summer sky was inky black, but the lights from the gig blocked out the stars.

  And then there was the crowd.

  They stretched out in front of the band almost endlessly, a great throng of humanity. They cheered and screamed so loud you could hear it over the crash of bass and drums and guitar; the electric excitement crackled from the crowd to the stage and back again, so that Poppy gasped and her skin prickled. Lighters were waved, punctuating the blackness, and spotlights swept across them, so she could see the fists thrust in the air, the forest of hands, the wave as sixty thousand kids all fought to get just a step closer to the stage, to the band, to the magic …

  “This one’s called ‘Force Ten!’” Blaze yelled.

  A roar from the crowd.

  Poppy sighed in sheer bliss. Her favorite song.

  I’m with the band, she thought. I’m with the band!

  Twenty-Eight

  For the first month, Poppy kept her head down.

  She learned the basics. Checking expenses, giving out per diems. Mike let her check the band and crew in and out of the hotels. She made coffee, she ran errands, she subtly disappeared when rows of groupies and strippers turned up. Poppy knew at once that that was important, if she wanted to stay on the road. Rock stars liked fucking easy women, and the girls liked to screw the rock stars. Sometimes, to get to a rock star, they would give head to the crew. There was nothing so debased that some chick wouldn’t do it; half the guys had albums full of Polaroids to prove it.

  As a woman, she had two choices. Be disgusted and quit, or ignore it.

  Poppy chose the latter.

  There was a double standard. The men on the tour regarded themselves as players but the women as whores. Poppy learned fast that there was no point in bitching about this. Nobody forced these girls to do what they did.

  She remembered her own teenage fantasies about sneaking backstage and making wild love to every guy with long hair and a platinum album and shuddered, just a little. But the truth was, rock was all about sex. And drugs. And she still loved it.

  Poppy found creative ways to write off the cocaine and poppers and other junk the band liked to use. At least they weren’t doing smack, she thought. There was no point pretending the stuff wasn’t out there. Some acts were destroyed by it. Not Green Dragon, at least not so far.

  The first time she was offered blow on the crew bus Poppy shook her head.

  “No charge, honey,” said the lighting guy, perplexed.

  “Not for me,” Poppy said simply.

  She had discovered something else. Drinking and drugs didn’t offend her, even groupies didn’t bother her all that much. But what excited her was the business of music. Taking the flights, organizing a big tour, like a marching army fighting battles. She was part of the logistics. Watching an expert crew raise the same stage with mechanical precision in thirty different venues, watching the production office being built like an ants’ nest, sorting the problems, climbing into the bus, rocking the house, then ripping it down again. Partying happened after the gig, not before it; a roadie who drank pre-curtain was unceremoniously fired.

  Poppy drank it all in. She learned. And she loved it.

  The crew tolerated her. Giving out per diems was a good job; people were always happy to see her. Docking a guy for every minute he delayed the crew bus was not so good. But they understood. The tour ran on a schedule, calibrated down to the minute. Joel Stein, the manager, was due to turn up on one of the Spanish dates; he’d review and check everybody’s time sheet, make sure they were running on time and under budget. Nobody wanted to run foul of Joel, when he did turn up. So if Poppy had to dock the daily allowance for lateness, the guys didn’t even bitch that much.

  Poppy also made sure the band would like her. She reduced all their personal hotel bills. They loved that; never underestimate how much rich people like extra money, Poppy thought. She also phoned ahead to warn their security when the wives and girlfriends were on their way into the stadium. Sometimes a wife would “surprise” her husband. It was Poppy’s job to see he was never so surprised he couldn’t get the groupies out in time.

  But there was one person who didn’t like her at all, and that was Mike Rich.

  Mike made her life a living hell. Poppy didn’t say anything about it to Joel. He called in to Production often, and she just told him everything was fine.

  The road had its own rules. One of them was that you didn’t squeal.

  *

  “Hey.”

  Poppy looked up from her table in the production office. They were in Barcelona tonight, one of the last gigs on this stretch.

  Joel Stein had just walked in.

  “Hey. I forgot you were coming tonight.”

  “Wouldn’t miss it,” Stein said. He pulled up a chair, turned it around and straddled it, looking her over. “You having problems, kid?”

  *

  “So it’s your last gig.”

  Poppy nodded. “Yeah.”

  Drake smiled at her. He had a new crew cut which was driving the girls crazy. They were sitting in the band’s enclosure backstage, in a field near Milan. Another open-air show.

  Poppy was leaving the next day. She didn’t smile. She was going to have a chance to get some rest, to do her laundry properly as opposed to washing her panties in the sink with handwash liquid, to report triumphantly back to Joel Stein. And all she felt like doing was crying.

  The crew hadn’t stopped ragging on her once. There were obscene songs on the bus … she knew most of them by heart now. She’d been tossed fully clothed into swimming pools, had eighty pizzas charged to her room, and her butt had been patted and squeezed
and generally assaulted. They called her names, “Miss Priss,” “the Virgin Mary,” whatever. And now she felt like crying.

  It was pathetic.

  Drake saw the redness in Poppy’s eyes and grinned.

  “Always the way, babe. First tour? Forget it. You think you’ll never forget these guys, that they’re your brothers in arms, whatever…”

  Poppy nodded and shook her head to get rid of the nascent tears.

  “Yeah, well. One week back at home and you won’t even remember their names. Trust me. It’ll all be a blur, until the next one.”

  “I guess,” Poppy said.

  “You can’t go on the road, anyway. Not like this. They should find you something else to do.”

  Drake was in the band, which meant Poppy had to kiss his ass. He was a client of her boss. But she fought to stop bristling.

  “I’m damn good at it,” she said shortly.

  He chuckled. “Prickly little pear.”

  “I didn’t mean anything by it…” Poppy said, panicking.

  “You don’t need to worry about me, love. I’m not gonna tell on you. You did fine. But that’s not the point.”

  “Then what is? That I’m a woman?”

  “That you’re a gorgeous woman,” Drake said. “That won’t work long-term. Trust me.”

  Poppy blushed richly.

  “Soundcheck,” said a runner, poking his head into the enclosure.

  “Later.” Drake walked out.

  Poppy went to the cooler and pulled out a bottle of Evian from the ice. The band liked her enough that she was allowed to pick at the food in their area. Normally that was absolutely off-limits. Being on the road was like a court that followed a king around; the band were royalty, and the others were just servants.

  The familiar sounds of soundcheck drifted back from the giant stage. “One-two. One-two.” Why couldn’t roadies find something else to say? There was a definite lack of imagination …

  The sun beat down on her face. She was leaving tomorrow. Poppy felt a lack of something, as if she had failed in some way.

  Not by anything she’d done. She knew her record was very good, for a rookie. The crew accepted her, even if they tormented her, the band was pleased, she’d run her errands with efficiency and even some flair.

  But it wasn’t enough.

  She desperately wanted to go back to Joel Stein in a cloud of glory. To show him why he should give her an act of her own to manage under his umbrella.

  The record business was a man’s world. Period. If you were a chick, you had to be more than just competent. You had to knock them out.

  But what could an assistant tour accountant do, exactly?

  She’d had an uneasy feeling about Mike Rich from the start. His hostility couldn’t be explained by her mere presence. Poppy knew all about soothing egos, and she’d done everything he asked, promptly and obediently. She even made his goddamn coffee, just the way he liked it.

  She sat and thought until the first support band was announced. Then she got up, and tucked her laminate into her T-shirt, so nobody could rip it off her, and headed out of the backstage compound into the front of the house.

  *

  It was early, but the place was already three-quarters full. This gig had sold out in half an hour when it went on sale four months ago; the promoter told Poppy it had melted a local phone bank. She remembered him rubbing his hands together gleefully.

  “Ch’e fantastico,” the guy had purred.

  Fantastic. Yeah, a bonanza for him.

  Poppy stared out at the sea of people. They were crowded into the standing area and filling the seats at the back. They were nodding politely as the first support, a local act, desperately ground out their best tunes in front of a backdrop of plain black drapes, set up to cover Green Dragon’s set.

  There sure were a lot of them. Lining up at the food stands, thronging the T-shirt stall, drinking the overpriced, watered-down beer.

  A little bell rang in her head. Something wasn’t right. What was it?

  Something’s wrong with this picture, Poppy thought.

  Then she found it. A section had been added. The crowd extended to the right of the stage, to the left of the stage. She focused and brought up the seating diagram in her head. No, they hadn’t intended opening those seats up. You were at a really bad angle, you couldn’t see a thing, and the PA sound would be tinny and off because of the acoustics.

  Other bands liked to gouge every dollar from their fans. Not Green Dragon. Not Dream Management. Not her boss.

  Poppy’s heartbeat accelerated. She marched back inside the backstage compound and threaded her way through the chaos directly to the production office.

  Mike Rich was sitting there with the promoter, drinking. He was laughing, too, as though he’d made a big score. Poppy saw there was a wad of notes in an envelope sticking out of his pocket.

  Surreptitiously she glanced at the seating diagram on the wall.

  Those seats weren’t there.

  “Hey, Mike.” Poppy kept her tone light and calm. “Where are the ticket stubs?”

  The two men’s expressions changed instantly.

  “Honey, wha’ you wan’ stubs for?” the promoter purred. “All is done auto, the band is gonna get paid, you think I don’ pay Green Dragon?”

  “I just like to be thorough,” Poppy said pleasantly.

  “I already counted the ticket stubs,” Mike said shortly. “Everything matches.”

  “That’s nice,” Poppy said. “What’s up with the seating at the side of the stage?”

  “All accounted for. Not your business. I don’t like your tone, missy,” Mike blustered. “You report to me, so why don’t you take that tight little ass of yours and get the fuck out of the office? You’re in the way.”

  She held her hands up. “OK, OK. As long as you counted it all, I guess I have nothing to say … see you guys later.”

  She went to catering to kill half an hour, then came back to the production office. There was a little dusting of coke on the tables where they’d been sitting; Poppy recognized the white powder instantly. Her heart was in her mouth as she dialed the office in L.A.

  “Dream Management.”

  “It’s Poppy. Let me speak to Joel.”

  “He’s in a meeting.”

  “Just put me through, Lisa.”

  That aggravated sigh at the end of the phone. Poppy didn’t give a damn.

  “Is this an emergency?” Joel’s voice snapped. “I’m in a meeting with RCA.”

  “Mike’s ripping you off,” Poppy said succinctly.

  A pause. “Extra seats?”

  “Extra sections, I think a kickback.”

  “Document it,” Joel Stein said. Then he hung up.

  Poppy smiled to herself and reached for a camera. She knew what was about to happen. She was gonna climb the second rung of the ladder, after only her first road trip. Six weeks to a promotion, Poppy thought.

  She loved the record business.

  Twenty-Nine

  “So,” Ted Elliott said. The superagent spun slightly on his modern, sleekly ergonomic chair, which perfectly matched his sleekly ergonomic offices. They overlooked the Thames, with vast floor-to-ceiling windows; interior design that looked as though it had come from someone hipper than Terence Conran; a kidney-shaped couch on which an utterly overawed Daisy was perched; a glass coffee table laden with copies of the Bookseller, Publishers Weekly; and publishers’ catalogs; a kilim rug, and a chrome-covered espresso machine.

  Daisy thought it was rather incongruous, because Ted Elliott was about her father’s age, and as upper-class as they came. He reminded her of Edward Powers, many years down the line. An old-fashioned gentleman. But the thought, for once, did not stab at her heart, because she was too jumpy to think about anything other than getting through this.

  *

  “Ted Elliott of Elliott & Russell?” Edward had asked, when she’d finally met him in the bar. “You’re not serious, Daisy. But that’
s fantastic!”

  “Is he a big agent?” Daisy had asked nervously, looking around for Edwina.

  “She’s not here, had to run,” Edward said, answering her unspoken query. “But as for Elliott, he’s the biggest agent in London, bar none. Represents…” and he ticked off a list of gargantuan bestselling authors. “No romance, though, as far as I’m aware.”

  *

  And now Daisy was here. She’d jumped on the bus to London, and she was actually in an agent’s office. A really big, important agent.

  Ted Elliott could make her dreams come true. If only he’d take her on.

  “Have you had any other interest?” he asked.

  Daisy nodded, blushing. It had been a week since the summons to Elliott’s office, and three other agencies had written to her asking to see more of her work. It was a great response to the chapter she’d mailed out.

  “Curtis Brown, ICM, William Morris,” she mumbled.

  His eyes were polite, but rather steely.

  “I’ll tell you what I am not interested in,” Elliott told her, “and that is a beauty contest.”

  “Right,” Daisy agreed, not sure what he meant.

  There was a silence. She had no idea what she was supposed to say.

  “So we’ll get this out to a few people. I know a couple of editors I think could be right for the material.”

  Daisy had no idea what was going on, and the superagent was pushing back his chair like the meeting was over. She couldn’t let it end like this.

  “Will you represent me?” she blurted out. Subtle as a brick, but she had to know. This was torture. She had no idea if she was supposed to walk out of here despondent or elated.

  “Yes, of course.” He looked at her as though she had just arrived from the planet Mars. “We’ll get contracts out to you tonight. What are you crying for?”

  “I’m sorry,” Daisy mumbled, because she wasn’t being remotely cool. “I’m just so happy.”

  The older man’s face crinkled into a broad smile. “No need for tears just yet, I imagine. Do you have a job?”

  “Yes, I’m a waitress,” Daisy said fiercely, “and I can’t wait to pack it in—”

  “Over my dead body.” Now he really did look like her father. “You have no idea if the book will sell.”