The Rumour Mill

by Roxy Jacenko

  ‘No, ma-aan,’ said Hunt. ‘Love is just love. You don’t pick it, it picks you.’ Yeah right. Reggie’s problem was that he had smoked so much Californian Gold, he was a walking fire hazard.

  Not only was Chelsea’s CD going nuts on iTunes but everyone was tuning into The Bel Air Life on Foxtel. All up, another win for Queen Bee. People hadn’t stopped talking about it for days. My phone had been going non-stop with TV stations trying to secure Chelsea for an interview on everything from Breakfast of Champions to the daily news. She was the most fascinating personality in the city for at least a day and a half.

  Of course I passed on all Chelsea’s interview requests to poor Eric, who had expected to be back at his favourite table in the Chateau Marmont by now, having a double vodka cocktail. Now he would need a Patrón tequila chaser as well. If only Chelsea would just answer her fucking phone. He’d also texted her a zillion times and tried to reach her over all of her social networking sites. He’d even tried to access her room via one of the room-service waiters, but when the doorbell rang and she’d heard that familiar American accent yelling out ‘Room Service!’ a tad too enthusiastically, she’d refused to let him in. Poor old Eric. There was just no end to his ingenuity; if only he’d had half as good acting skills as some of his clients.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ I consoled him. ‘By the time they do emerge, they could probably have their own Ellen DeGeneres-style talk show.’

  Eric’s face immediately lit up when he heard this. ‘Just how much money,’ he asked, looking ridiculously hopeful, ‘do you think the networks would be willing to pay?’

  LOL, I had created a monster – but at least Eric was no longer threatening to sue Queen Bee. That launch party at the Atlas was the best thing that ever happened to Chelsea – or at least it would be until Cleo showed her true colours and became the pain in the arse who we all knew and loved.

  But, for now, not since Paris Hilton came to Bondi to help find a Bondi Blonde beauty queen had such a fuss been made about a reality star with such a serious deficit of talent (at least Kim Kardashian had a decent set of tits and a bum). Chelsea’s girl-on-girl action was a true stroke of marketing genius.

  In fact, I would have been on Sweet Street if it hadn’t been for a few more nagging problems clogging up my inbox.

  Despite the fact that he was an undesirable alien (or however the Department of Immigration classified those who, for a number of reasons – and when it came to Ivan there were no shortage of these – were about as popular as Justin Bieber’s pet monkey flying in first class and trying to evade quarantine), Ivan Shavalik was still threatening to sue me for breach of contract – even though there was no contract signed. According to Marshall, he probably just wanted us to sling him a hundred k or for his trouble, but that was so not going to happen. This was problem number one, but as long as I didn’t have any close encounters of the Russian mafia kind, I was fairly confident I could get through this with a little legal muscle.

  Problem numero two was that Tod Spelsen needed to delay the launch of his beauty collection because there were apparently issues with the way the brilliantly designed packaging was being manufactured. Other people might have persevered, but ‘Spello’, as we now called him in the office, was particularly antsy about his ‘design signature’ being misread, so he’d thrown the lot out and started again. This meant we were going to get a little breathing space before the beauty launch to end all launches, but unfortunately the revised date was the day after my wedding to Michael. I would be on our honeymoon instead of spruiking Spello’s lotions and potions to tout Sydney. Changing our plans was out of the question, because the invitations had already gone out and the honeymoon to the south of France was booked. If I had suggested to Michael leaving on our honeymoon a day later so I could do the launch, I knew he would have refused to marry me. He had made it very clear that our relationship and our family had to come before my work – and (especially with Fifi now in the equation) this also made perfect sense to me.

  ‘Look, I’m really sorry,’ I said when I finally got Tod on the phone at the very start of the working day in LA before Jenna had taken up her sentry position, ‘October sixth is the day I’m getting married, so we definitely can’t accommodate your launch on October seventh.’

  ‘You’re kidding, right?’ He sounded shocked. ‘Can’t you cancel?’

  I did the old staying-silent trick – the one I employ when I need to communicate that a suggestion is completely beyond the pale.

  ‘Are you still there?’ he asked, agitated. ‘Jasmine?’

  ‘Yes,’ I responded curtly. ‘I’m sorry, Tod, that’s not an option. If you’re totally locked into this new, revised date, then you may have to use another public relations company. Of course, I would be happy to recommend one to you.’

  It was always better to get them on the back foot and pre-empt anything that might be thrown in about trying someone else.

  Tod recovered well. ‘Okay, I’ll get back to you and let you know how we wish to proceed,’ he said. ‘You’ll hear from us by the end of the week. Goodbye.’

  And with that he was off the line. The only brownie points I had missed out on was being the first to hang up. Of course everyone knew I didn’t want to lose such a potentially prestigious account, but Chelsea’s launch had already put us on the map in the US. The only thing we would be missing out on with Spello was a big fat cheque for our efforts – and no doubt a major headache. But I was definitely past getting in a schvitz about it.

  Problemo number three was that the lawyers and their investigators were getting close to discovering who had left the toxic messages about me all over town. Soon they were expected to press charges on my behalf, which meant I had to be prepared to go to court and testify against them. How much fun would that be, and how much would everyone be lapping it up? And what the hell was I going to wear to court? It meant precious time away from the business, and I also had to ensure the whole affair didn’t come to a head during my honeymoon. The good thing was that the legal system moved as slowly as Miranda Kerr when she had sniffed out a fresh photo opportunity.

  Oh, I almost forgot: the other situation clogging up Queen Bee’s inbox on a daily basis was the missives from the ultra-stuffy Atlas Board of Owners, who kept threatening to prosecute Queen Bee for conducting an unauthorised event on the rooftop. That was just de-bloody-luxe. And it wasn’t as if we could call on Juliet to back us up, as she had gone to ground faster than Richard Wilkins surprised by a gossip columnist out on a date with a new girlfriend. (If he ran into his nemesis Pamela Stone, you wouldn’t see him for days.)

  ‘How do we counter that?’ asked Lulu when we opened up the Atlas’s ninth official letter of complaint – or was it the tenth? Clearly the secretary of the owners’ board had devoted every waking hour since Chelsea’s launch trying to get even.

  ‘Easy,’ I said, moving the correspondence into Queen Bee’s matters-pending file (aka the Too Hard Basket). ‘We’ll just get the lawyers to inform the board that they’re looking at a charge of reckless endangerment for turning off the electrical switches in the foyer. The board will also have to wear some of the blame for allowing such a vital operations room to be unsecured. That’ll be such a shocker for them they’ll almost be begging us to have another launch there.’

  Lulu looked doubtful, and maybe she had good reason to be. My life was on steroids at the moment and I was in danger of totally losing my grip on reality. Events were speeding up faster than my mate Shelley on a new batch of herbal diet pills. But somewhere in the back of my mind I believed it would all work out okay. Maybe I was delusional from lack of sleep, which was compounded by Fifi’s latest unreasonable compulsion for being fed at three am, and sometimes four thirty am as well.

  Meanwhile, everyone in the exclusive eastern suburbs of Sydney was still preoccupied with what was going on between Chelsea and Cleo in that InterContinental suite. Would they emerge as lovers or would the clashing of those two egos be as dramatic as th
e seismic shift between two tectonic plates? Already, lurid tales were emerging of piercing screams of pleasure which could be heard all along the hallway.

  ‘They’ve got to come out soon,’ predicted Anya sagely. ‘Lesbian sex is just a punishment because it never ends. It’s absolutely exhausting. They’ll wear themselves out.’

  ‘Wha-at?’ asked Lulu, who couldn’t believe what she was hearing from the tiny brunette, one of the most demure of the Bees. Why, she never even had a drink at the end-of-year lunch.

  Anya went bright red. ‘Well, that’s what I’ve heard anyway.’

  Lulu and I exchanged slightly incredulous looks and she cocked her eyebrow in the way that always made me laugh. I called it her Inspector Clouseau look.

  ‘You know what?’ I said. ‘I bet that when they do emerge, it’ll only be a matter of time before Cleo proposes to her. Gay weddings are so hot right now. Besides she could work out an excellent deal with the Jewellery Concierge for matching diamonds. It’s her favourite jeweller.

  The next day was one of those days when everything seems to happen at once. Chelsea and Cleo finally emerged from their love nest and announced that Cleo would be joining The Bel Air Life as a special guest. Meanwhile, Eric requested that Queen Bee manage the media, which was a gift made in heaven with so many media outfits clamouring for them. Unfortunately, the only downside was that they were booked to fly out to LA in just two days, which meant there was little time to crank out anything much besides a morning slot on Breakfast of Champions, a mini interview on Channel 11 news and a fashion shoot for Coco magazine, wearing the hottest US Gen Y labels.

  But the serious money came from a deal I did with 90 Minutes, who would be following them all the way over to LA and filming them on the set of The Bel Air Life. It had only come about through a cross-TV channel promotion, and had earned Queen Bee so much in commission that my entire wedding flower bill – including an entire floral wall of phalaenopsis orchids by celeb florist Grandiflora – was well taken care of. It was such a coup that Cleo and Chelsea almost deserved a special credit on the wedding program.

  16

  I am happy to accept criticism because it helps me to develop as a human being and become a better person.

  I try to work harder each time I hear that what I have done is less than perfect. What I do not accept is a personal attack on my character.

  Of course I am open to negative opinion, but criticise what I do and not who I am.

  This was part of the victim impact statement I was asked to make in the case against the group of twenty-something-year-olds who had worked for me for a nanosecond and then decided to try to wreck my career. They must have cooked up their nasty messages to leave on different people’s message banks over a few litres of no-brand vodka at the Sheaf. For all I knew, there was an ‘I Was Dumped from Queen Bee’ support group who met there every week. The lawyers had been able to trace the group through the calls. No doubt they had thought they could get away with it because the calls had been made from a prepaid sim, but of course it was traceable. The investigators not only found out where it had been purchased but when, and then a review of the security footage at the shop where the sim was purchased almost certainly revealed Holly, who had worked for me for a short time before basically everything that was not nailed down went missing. Holly wasn’t smart enough to throw the sim away but used the phone to stay in touch with other members of the group, including Kelly Young. The investigators looking into the case said that the girls were almost shitting themselves about what they had done. Most of the group involved were former private school girls from good families, who were now definitely going to pay. It was just a question of how much.

  The lawyers had asked me to write the victim impact statement because it would help to put the slander into some sort of context for the courts. They needed to know that this was not just another case of tit for tat but something that cut much deeper. I had spent some time thinking about it and writing down how it had affected me.

  ‘Jazzy, you look as though you’ve just been told they’ll be finally winding up Chanel,’ Lulu wisecracked.

  I hadn’t noticed the small blonde entering the room where I had been working since sparrow’s-fart. We had arranged to meet in the office to put the finishing touches on the new proposal for Spello’s launch so we could make the working day in LA. (Spello had eventually decided that despite the date problems, we were right for the job, which may or may not have had something to do with the groundswell of publicity for Chelsea.) The launch of Spello’s beauty collection was now taking place at the beginning of November, right in time for Sydney’s pre-Christmas buying frenzy. We wanted the collection to be front and centre on everyone’s holiday shopping list.

  We would be setting up a marquee deep in the grounds of the Botanic Gardens with a theme of ‘Midnight in the Garden of Love’. Of course, it would only be a cocktail party that would be done and dusted by eight thirty pm, but all the guests would believe that midnight had just struck in the fucking Hanging Gardens of Babylon because the marquee would be lit a rich, deep, dark blue. Orchid trees would have a starring role, and by the time we had finished propping there would be none left in the markets. We also wanted to source some gardenias in full bloom. Our preferred florist, Grandiflora, was going to have a field day. Once we got the budget approved by Spello’s LA office, we could get Sydney’s best party engineers started on it.

  With the concept all sorted, I had time to work on my special statement. Yes, the victim impact statement – although a victim was the last thing I felt like right now. Harassed, yes; stressed, absolutely; but victimised? Please. At least not when I could see that the people behind this were basically pathetic. At a guess, my ex-employees’ summer breaks in Europe would be cancelled quick smart once their parents started to cop the court costs and the mega damages bill for slander. The only problem was that I couldn’t talk to anyone about the plans to sue or the identity of the people behind the obnoxious messages because it was going to be before the courts and so the names couldn’t get out in the media. My pal Luke had been nagging me about it for weeks but I had to keep changing the subject each time he asked.

  ‘It’ll be so fine, Jazz, I promise,’ he said last time he brought it up, over lunch at China Doll. ‘We won’t identify them, promise. Just give us the names and I swear not to publish them.’

  ‘No can do, Luke,’ I said, laughing as I speared a particularly plump prawn and put it on my plate. ‘I can’t do that, not even for you – but what I can say is that it’s def going to be almost as juicy as my chilli prawn.’

  Once Lulu and I had pressed the send button on Spello’s precious proposal, we decided to review some of the loaner cars, which belonged to our car client, Panther.

  Certain publications were loaned cars with the name of the magazine on the car doors – it was a genius way of publicising Panther cars and linking them to some of the best, most aspirational titles around. Plus it was a real bonus for some of our favoured clients in mag-land who got the use of a car for free and saved themselves a shitload of money each week. All they had to pay for was the petrol and any fines they incurred, which is where it all went wrong, especially when it came to Amber Jallani, fashion director for Chic magazine. From the look of the parking fines that were coming in on a daily basis, Amber didn’t believe in parking stations, or meters for that matter, since she routinely parked for hours in No Stopping zones.

  Amber’s sporty Panther 320 was currently in for servicing and to straighten out a few of the mysterious bumps that had appeared on the chassis. These had to be sorted out immediately because having a battered car out there was not a good look for either Panther or Chic.

  Unfortunately, all those parking fines Amber had accrued had landed on the client’s desk, as Panther was still registered as the owner of the vehicle, and they had shot them back to Queen Bee with the order that they be paid straight away.

  Now Frances, Amber’s PA, was getting stroppy on h
er behalf to have the car returned, but what she didn’t seem to grasp was that it couldn’t go back until Chic or Amber coughed up for the fines.

  At first the emails were civil-ish:

  Amber needs her car returned pronto because she’s going on a fashion shoot to Palm Beach this week and wants to drive it.

  Lulu, who was Panther’s account executive, told Frances that the car was ready to be collected or it could be dropped off at Chic, but first those pesky fines had to be sorted out. Frances chose to ignore this information. Please have the car sent around to Chic’s offices no later than midday today, she ordered.

  Certainly, Lulu responded. Once you pay the parking fines by cheque or credit card.

  There was a cessation of communication for ninety minutes. It looked like a stalemate.

  But no, Frances then came back online. I have spoken with Amber and she said she knows nothing about the fines. Please deliver the car pronto or Amber might have to consider going with another car company. Mercedes has been desperate to get her behind the wheel of their latest model.

  Bullshit. The way Amber drove she was lucky anyone gave her a car at all. But even Lulu wasn’t ready for the next development, when a flustered Carla from Panther Cars rang to advise that Frances was in reception and was apparently insisting on picking up Amber’s sporty wheels.

  ‘Tell her to pay the parking fines on the spot and please deal with Queen Bee in future,’ Lulu ranted.

  Unfortunately, Frances had no Chic credit card on her or the cash – in fact, she had only enough money to cover the cab back to the office. But all’s well that ends well. Magically, the fines were paid the same afternoon and Lulu was happy to drop back Amber’s shiny restored car herself with an extra-big smile for Frances. The accounts department for Chic was just lucky they didn’t have to pay for the repairs as well, although perhaps it would have taught Amber not to treat her wheels like a dodgem car.