Be Careful What You Wish For

by Gemma Crisp

  This was how Nina had ended up with a cracking shot of Hollywood’s Next Big Thing, Maia Rocket, on her latest cover. But it hadn’t come easily – despite Maia cultivating a reputation as the girl-next-door-with-a-wicked-sense-of-humour, she had been a total nightmare at the shoot. In a filthy mood – thanks to an epic public fight with her boyfriend the night before that had made headlines on all the celebrity blogs that morning – Maia had bitched and moaned her way through the day. Even though the stylist had stuck to the list of her favourite clothing labels supplied by her publicist, Maia had sniffed dismissively at the majority of outfits which had been pre-approved by Nina, insisting that she wanted to wear the clothes she’d turned up to the shoot in.

  If she’d been dressed in a bang-on-trend outfit of, say, J. Brand denim cut-offs worked back with a white tank and the cult Isabel Marant floral jacket that every celebrity was begging to sell her granny for, then it wouldn’t have been a problem. But no – Maia had been decked out in head-to-toe black. And as every editor knows, an all-black outfit on a magazine cover never works, unless the magazine is a high-fashion title and the outfit in question is a slinky Tom Ford number, preferably slashed down to the waist and up to the thigh to show some skin. Which explains why the panicked production assistant had bombarded Nina with phone calls, desperate to know how to handle the situation.

  The photo shoot had been in London, where Maia was promoting her latest movie, so with the time difference, the calls had started in the evening. Usually Nina would still have been in the office, but it had happened to be Jeremy’s birthday, so she’d booked dinner at Rockpool. She had been determined to be the perfect attentive girlfriend. She’d even managed to keep her drinking under control during dinner, helped by Jeremy watching every sip of wine she took with eagle eyes. But then her BlackBerry had started buzzing angrily in the buttery leather Chloé envelope clutch she’d bought in the last David Jones stocktake sale. At first, she’d forced herself to ignore it, despite no longer being able to concentrate on what Jeremy was saying. When it didn’t stop, he had sighed, looked pointedly at the bag that was gyrating around the table between them and asked resignedly, ‘Aren’t you going to get that?’

  Nina had needed no further prompting. Dashing outside, she had spent a good half hour talking the production assistant through her conniptions. After advising her to take Maia’s publicist aside to talk privately about her client’s attitude, Nina had arrived back at the table to find Jeremy staring into space, looking beyond bored.

  ‘Sorry, J, bit of a work crisis. We’re shooting a cover in London and the celeb is being difficult. But it should all be sorted now. How about a cocktail?’

  No sooner had they ordered a round of Negronis than her Blackberry had started up again. Shooting Jeremy an apologetic look, she’d grabbed it and run. She had spent so much time on setting up this shoot, she couldn’t risk it falling apart now, she reasoned with herself as she instructed the flustered assistant to put Maia’s publicist on the phone so she could speak to her directly. Thanks to Nina’s not-so-subtle threat to cancel the cover if her client kept refusing to cooperate, Maia’s publicist had promised to whip her into shape and keep her on the straight and narrow for the rest of the shoot.

  Back at Jeremy’s place after dinner, Nina had been in the middle of giving him a stellar birthday blowjob in an effort to make up for all the interruptions when she heard her BlackBerry’s siren song travelling up the hallway from the bag she’d deliberately left in the lounge room. The only person who would be calling at that hour would be someone from the cover shoot on the other side of the world. Trying to concentrate on the matter at hand, she had admitted defeat after five rings. Wiping her mouth on the sheet, she’d pretended to Jeremy that she didn’t want its incessant ringing to wake up the rest of the house, but had secretly been glad of the darkness which had made it impossible to see the look on his face as she’d practically sprinted out the door.

  Almost forty-five minutes later, she’d snuck back into bed, the adrenalin pumping through her veins as she dissected the update from the assistant in London. After her publicist had read her the riot act, Maia had apparently sucked it up, turned on the charm, and had blitzed her way through three of the approved cover outfits plus a couple of extras for the cover story that would appear inside the magazine. ‘Nothing like an ultimatum,’ Nina thought grimly, staring at Jeremy’s unforgiving back. She knew he wasn’t asleep and she didn’t blame him for being pissed off, but what did he expect her to do? It was a cover shoot with an A-list celeb on the other side of the world, and if she hadn’t been on call to solve any problems, there would have been hell to pay with Elizabeth.

  Now it was time to see the fruits of her labour. Opening the yellow envelope, Nina realised she was holding her breath as she slowly pulled out the cover. ‘Stop stressing,’ she reassured herself. ‘Elizabeth has already said she likes it, so at least that’s the biggest hurdle over and done with. And you were happy with the final image, design and colour palette – the only thing that could go wrong is if the printers have stuffed up the fluoros.’

  Nina flipped the cover over. She blinked. Then blinked again. ‘What . . . the . . . fuck?’ she whispered disbelievingly. Closing her eyes for a few seconds, she convinced herself she was dreaming. Then she looked at the cover again. Nope. Not dreaming. The cover in front of her looked nothing like the one she had sent to print. Fuming, she dialled Elizabeth’s extension.

  ‘Hello, Nina,’ her boss chirped, infuriating her even more. ‘Did you get my email? The cover looks great, don’t you think?’

  ‘What did you do to it?’ Nina managed to grind out.

  ‘Sorry? What did I do to it? Oh, you mean the couple of revisions I did after the dyelines came in? Did I forget to tell you about those? Silly me. Yes, I decided to make some small changes; I didn’t think the cover was as strong as it could be.’

  ‘Some small changes? Are you kidding me?’ Nina yelled down the phone, not caring how loud she was. ‘You completely changed the colour scheme, you’ve rewritten half the coverlines and Maia’s mini-skirt has magically become a maxi-skirt, thanks to the wonders of Photoshop. And you just forgot to tell me?’

  ‘There’s no need to get upset, Nina,’ Elizabeth replied snippily. ‘Remember that I’m the editorial director of Candy and if I don’t think the cover is working as well as it should, I have every right to make any changes I see fit.’

  ‘You had your chance to make changes when I showed you the cover BEFORE it was sent to print!’ Nina shot back furiously. ‘In fact, I seem to remember you asked for several things to be tweaked, as per usual, because no matter what I do you’re never bloody happy. You never respect my opinion, but I put up with it because I have to. But the fact that you went behind my back and made numerous changes to a cover that I sweated blood to organise is beyond insulting. I deserve better than that. And by changing Maia’s skirt, you’ve also jeopardised our editorial campaign in the issue that goes on sale next week – you know, the one where we’ve taken a stand against using Photoshop? Thank God the Maia cover is for the following issue, but it will still look like we’ve reneged on our own Photoshop ban if anyone realises what you’ve done. You need to get off your power trip or ditch whatever grudge you’re still holding from our Marie Claude days, Lizzie, because I HAVE. HAD. ENOUGH.’

  Nina knew she’d crossed a line, but she didn’t care. She slammed the phone down, ignoring Elizabeth’s outraged squawking on the other end. Immediately, the phone began to ring, Elizabeth’s extension flashing up on the screen. Grabbing her bag, Nina headed for the elevators. By now she was about to self-combust if she didn’t get a drink in her hand – all she wanted to do was to throw some hard liquor down her throat to snuff out the red-hot flames of outrage that were licking at her insides.

  ‘Nina, wait!’

  Quickly wiping her face clean of anger before turning around, Nina came face to face with Mel, Candy’s entertainment editor, who was waving the latest
copy of OK! at her.

  ‘What is it? I’ve got somewhere to be,’ she said, diluting the terseness of her words with an apologetic smile.

  ‘Sorry, it’s just that you know the celebrity photo shoot we’re scheduled to do tomorrow? The “at home” story with Aerin and Noah with their two pugs?’

  ‘Yes, what about it?’

  ‘It says in here that they’ve broken up. There are rumours that he cheated on her, although of course their reps are insisting that the break-up is amicable.’

  Nina struggled to keep a lid on her frustration – today was bad enough without this unwelcome development.

  ‘Please tell me you’re kidding. Their reps didn’t even bother to let us know?’

  ‘Nope. And I just confirmed the bookings for the photographer plus the hair and make-up team this morning, so their agencies will charge us for the cancellation.’

  ‘Great. Just what we need – a two-thousand-dollar bill for a fucking shoot that didn’t even happen! Sorry, Mel, I’m not angry at you – I’m just having a bad day,’ Nina explained swiftly when she saw the shocked look on her employee’s face. ‘I’ll call the publicists when I get back and give them a serve – hopefully I can back them into a corner and they’ll at least agree to pay for some of the cancellation fees.’

  ‘Sounds like a plan,’ Mel replied, scooting back into the office before Nina could blow up again.

  On her way to the nearest pub, Nina felt her phone vibrate. She ignored it – why bother answering when it would just be Evil Elizabeth demanding she come back to the office straight away so she could give her a written warning or, better still, sack her on the spot? She refused to give that bitch the satisfaction. When she saw Elizabeth next, it would be on her terms, after she’d had a chance to speak to Michael about the editorial director’s non-stop meddling and nightmare management style. She wasn’t going to go down without a fight.

  As she ordered a triple vodka tonic, she pulled her phone out of her bag along with her wallet. When the missed call flashed up on her screen, she was shocked to see that it hadn’t been Elizabeth at all. It was Johan. ‘God, it’s been at least three months since I’ve heard from him,’ she thought, thrown off by the random contact. While the phone was still in her hand, it beeped twice, signalling that he’d left a voicemail. Taking her drink to the darkest corner of the pub, she dialled in to get the message while sucking down the alcoholic nectar. Expecting to hear a longwinded message in his usual chirpy tone, she raised an eyebrow when she heard Johan’s hesitant, choppy sentences in a weird voice she’d never heard before – he sounded absolutely shattered.

  ‘Hi, fluffball,’ he started, using his old nickname for her from their London days. ‘It’s me. Um, I know it’s been a while since we last caught up but can you call me as soon as you can? Please? I really need to talk to you. Like, super-urgently. Okay. Call me. Bye.’

  Deleting the message, Nina made a mental note to call him on the weekend – knowing Johan, he probably just wanted to have a whinge about how he had busted Ed checking out other guys and, quite frankly, she had bigger problems to deal with at the moment.

  twenty-five

  Walking into Bills on Crown Street, Nina ignored the tables of tourists ordering the cafe’s famous ricotta hotcakes and the usual crew of fashion publicists schmoozing stylists over fat-free fruit plates. Sitting down on the chocolate leather banquette, she ordered coffee and waited for Johan to make his grand entrance. She’d eventually got around to calling him back three days after listening to his voicemail, but he’d refused to tell her what was wrong over the phone, begging to see her in person. The only time she could squeeze him in was just before she was due at the Channel 37 studios to do her monthly TV interview to promote the new issue of Candy. Not ideal timing, but he had insisted it couldn’t wait.

  Checking her schedule of back-to-back meetings on her BlackBerry, Nina didn’t notice his arrival until a shadow fell across her table. Looking up, her smart-arse comment about his lack of punctuality shrivelled on her tongue as she took in Johan’s appearance. Gone was the immaculately groomed god who’d had confidence dripping from every pore when she’d first met him back at the Bickford in London. In his place was a hunched figure whose clothes hung off him. If not for the green eyes that she knew so well, Nina could easily have dismissed him as a junkie who had wandered in off the street. Struggling to disguise her dismay, Nina pasted on a big smile as she leant over the table to hug him.

  ‘It’s been a while, huh?’ Johan croaked, as his eyes filled with tears.

  She nodded, not trusting herself to speak. She’d been expecting the old Johan – buffed to perfection and dressed in head-to-toe designer gear – to swan in, plonk himself down and immediately start gibbering on about whatever superficial drama he was having in his relationship with Ed. How wrong she’d been. ‘Looks like you’re not the only person with problems at the moment, Toto,’ she thought as Johan wiped his eyes with a napkin, then clenched it tightly in his hands.

  ‘How are you?’ she asked gently, not knowing what else to say.

  ‘How do you think I am? Don’t worry, I know I look like shit.’ He smiled weakly. ‘Bit different to last time we saw each other all those months ago. But things change, don’t they? Things aren’t always what they seem,’ he said, not bothering to hide the bitterness in his tone.

  Nina decided to bite the bullet. ‘Babe, what’s wrong? Please tell me. I know we haven’t been as close recently and a lot of that is my fault. But I’m here now, and you’re one of my best friends no matter what, so come on – out with it,’ she said firmly, aware that the clock was ticking and she was due at the TV studios in less than an hour, then hating herself for thinking about work at a time when anyone could see that he was obviously in desperate need of help.

  ‘It’s over with Ed. I’m moving back to London. I leave tonight,’ Johan said in a rush.

  ‘You’re what? Tonight? Why so soon?’ Nina stared at him, trying to get her head around the news. ‘Oh, and I’m sorry to hear about Ed,’ she said belatedly, trying to sound like she meant it.

  ‘Don’t be,’ he said shortly. ‘That bastard has ruined my life.’

  ‘What do you mean? What happened?’

  Johan paused long enough for the waitress to set down Nina’s skim flat white, before embarking on his explanation.

  ‘I’ll warn you now – it’s not a pretty story. I’ve done some things I’m not particularly proud of, but I guess I just got carried away. I lost sight of what’s really important and it’s come back to bite me on the butt, as you Aussies would say.’ He took a deep breath, looked around to make sure that the people at the tables next to them were deep in their own conversations, then continued in a low voice. ‘A couple of weeks ago, Ed and I went out with a bunch of friends. We’ve been partying pretty hard over the last few months, as you can probably tell from looking at me, but this night, things went a bit pear-shaped. We’d had a few lines of coke and some MDMA at home before hitting Oxford Street, and everyone was up for a big night. At Arq, one of the guys offered me some GHB and I thought, why not? I’d had it in London heaps of times before, so I didn’t think anything of it. But it must have been a lot stronger than what I’m used to, because the next thing I knew, I was waking up in hospital.’

  ‘Oh my God, Johan . . . are you alright?’ Nina gasped. She’d always known that Johan never said no when it came to dabbling in illicit substances, but he’d never suffered from anything more than a hideous comedown as a result. Noticing his jittery hands as he took a hit of caffeine, she guessed he’d graduated from dabbling to using regularly since landing on the doorstep of Sydney’s drug-infused gay scene.

  ‘Let me finish,’ he said grimly. ‘So I regained consciousness in St Vincent’s Hospital and the nurses had to fill me in on what happened, as Ed was nowhere to be seen. They told me I had overdosed on GHB, which is apparently easy to do, because the strength of the liquid varies so much and the drug depresses your respiratory s
ystem, so if you take too much, you stop breathing. Luckily, I had people with me who realised what was happening and the hospital was only down the road from the club. Of course, given the location, they see this kind of thing all the time. But while I was in hospital, they took a blood test. I didn’t get the results until after I’d been discharged. When I called up to get them, they insisted I had to go back to the hospital so the doctor could talk me through them. That’s when I knew.’ Johan’s voice cracked as he battled to maintain his composure.

  ‘Knew what?’ Nina whispered, as cold fingers of dread wrapped themselves around her heart.

  ‘That I was HIV positive.’

  His words slapped her across the face. Nina’s mouth opened, but no sound emerged. She stared at him, hoping that it was some hideous joke, that any second he’d reach across the table, poke her in the ribs and crow, ‘Ha ha, gotcha! Just jokes, darl!’ But he didn’t. Because it wasn’t. She reached across the table and grabbed his hands, which were now shaking violently. She realised he was waiting for her reaction and pulled herself together – this wasn’t about her, it was about Johan.

  ‘I just . . . Johan . . . I don’t know what to say . . . I’m so sorry . . .’ she eventually choked out. ‘What did the doctors say? Have you started treatment already? Do you have any idea how you contracted it?’

  ‘Oh, I have an idea, alright.’ The bitterness returned to his voice. ‘You know how careful I’ve always been – “if it’s not on, it’s not on”, isn’t that what people say here? But there was one time, after another massive night out, when I stupidly thought it would be okay. It wasn’t like he was some random I’d picked up at the Midnight Shift. Admittedly, we were both off our heads, so my judgement wasn’t exactly razor sharp, but I had no reason not to trust him . . .’ He petered off, lost in the memory of the night his life was given an expiry date.