Strictly Confidential (15 page)

‘Jazz . . .’ said Ben, leaning in to kiss me.

The phone wouldn’t ring much longer. Voicemail
had
to be about to kick in. Only my business sense kicked in first.

Holding Ben back with one arm, I bent down and reefed my ringing phone from my clutch with the other.

‘Hello, Jasmine Lewis,’ I rushed down the line.

‘Jasmine? Sasha here from the Hong Kong office . . .’

Got it in time. I breathed a sigh of relief. Ben, on the other hand, wasn’t so pleased. He ripped his arm away from my waist and stormed over to the piano to pour himself another whisky, clearly sore at losing out to my BlackBerry.

Moments later, my conversation with Hong Kong all wrapped up, I ventured over to Ben to make it up to him. Only he didn’t give me a chance.

‘Do you come with an off switch, Jazzy Lou?’ he asked, heading back to the couch I’d just come from and forcing me to trail behind him.

‘Hell no,’ I said proudly.

The look on his face told me this was not the answer he was hoping for. I was beginning to feel as welcome as a tweet at the Logies.

In the corner Tom Reynolds was persisting in his wooing of Anya. ‘Fly me to the – I know what we need!’ he warbled, disappearing momentarily to rummage around in the bar.

I turned to Ben. ‘Okay, this might be my cue to split. Much as I don’t want to leave Anya, it’s getting a little bit
Alice in Wonderland
in here and I’m late for a very important date with some sleep if I want to get up and work tomorrow.’ The sparkle of the suite that had so impressed me barely an hour ago was beginning to fade. Fast. What hurt a little was that Ben put up no argument.

‘Fine.’ He shrugged.

Our host, however, chose that moment to return, inspiration in hand. ‘Apple bong!’ he announced triumphantly, holding a Granny Smith unsteadily in the air with a baseball mitt, before returning to his piano stool.

‘Fly me to the moon . . .’

Here we go again.

‘Ooh, what’s that?’ Anya was now conscious. But barely.

‘This baby,’ said Reynolds, throwing the apple up in the air and catching it in his mitt while still playing the piano dexterously with the other hand, ‘is one fucking Granny Smith apple stuffed with the finest quality grass this side of Kingston Town.’

Anya snuggled up closer.

‘Fly me to the moon . . .’ came the familiar refrain, getting faster and faster each time, like some dizzying merry-go-round that just wouldn’t stop.

The air that had soured between me and Ben was now filled with the acrid scent of marijuana as our host sparked up. Here on the couch, however, sparks of an entirely different kind were beginning to fly as Ben had clearly decided not to go down without a fight.

‘What’s the deal, Jazz?’ he asked accusingly. ‘You act like you’re all interested and then, when faced with missing just one fucking phone call, you switch from the bedroom back to the boardroom in the blink of an eye.’

I grimaced apologetically. ‘I’m sor—’ I began, ready to explain that it
was
his account that I had been looking after, but – ego clearly bruised – Ben was having none of it.

‘You’re all batting eyelashes one minute then business plans the next. I can’t be arsed with that.’

In the corner the apple bong was being thrown up and down and up and down, despite the fact it was lit. Just what I needed. An insurance bill from Merivale when the Canuck burned the place down.

I turned to Ben. ‘Chill. It was just one phone call,’ I said.

Up and down and up and down. The apple continued to soar through the air, miraculously landing with a dull thud back into the baseball mitt each time. The room was spinning and I couldn’t tell if it was the incessant music or all those caprioskas I’d been downing, but one thing was for sure: Anya was being flown to the moon over there in the corner.

‘One phone call,’ Ben mimicked, bringing me back down to earth. ‘At exactly the moment I thought we were getting somewhere. I didn’t hang around all night to watch you be a switchboard bitch.’

Up and down and up and down. That apple just won’t stop.

I stared into my cocktail glass, willing myself to keep calm. Ben was totally overreacting. It was just one stupid work call. I couldn’t afford to lose my cool – or the Converse account – just because Ben was being a douche.

But why wouldn’t the damn music ever end?

My phone buzzed again:
Has the Rodarte worked its magic yet, babe?
Shelley texted.

I hit delete.

‘You know you’re more impossible princess than queen bee,’ Ben goaded me again.

I bit my tongue.
You’ve got to work with this guy, you’ve got to work with this guy
, I repeated over and over in my head. All thoughts of romance were now well and truly banished. Having seen Ben’s temper, I was suddenly not keen on seeing anything else he wanted to reveal tonight.

Up and down and up and down.

Anya was now sitting on Reynolds’ lap with her tongue down his throat and the piano was still playing the same damned refrain.

‘Am I wrong?’ Ben tried again. ‘Tell me I’m wrong, Jazzy Lou.’

Oh God, someone flip the record.

Up and down and up and down. Why wouldn’t the spinning stop?

And then the crash of shattering glass splintered the air and the spinning room came immediately to a halt. A half-full bottle of Kentucky whisky lay in a million pieces on the floor and golden liquid seeped away in all directions while Anya looked up in sleepy surprise, as if unable to connect her and Reynolds’ grabbing arms with the smashed bottle at her feet.

‘I think that’s our cue to exit stage left, babe,’ our star drawled drunkenly, before dragging Anya off in the direction of the sprawling bedroom. I raised my eyebrows at Anya on her way past but she flashed me a victorious smile and so I merely watched her go.

‘Well, now, haven’t you got a spreadsheet or a media list to update?’ Ben asked me, slurring ever so slightly. That last, fast glass of whisky had clearly kicked in. ‘I’d hate to get between you and your profit margin. Surely there’s some overtime you could be doing?’

Finally, this was too much. I felt fury rise in my throat. Sure, I’d chosen business over pleasure, electing
not
to drag Ben off to bed at the very moment it looked like I would. And sure, I’d taken a work call when he was trying to work me in other ways. But that didn’t mean we couldn’t have continued once I’d hung up. If only he hadn’t been such a dick about it all.

For a minute, silence hung over the room as we sat sans serenade. Then slowly, deliberately, as if watching myself moving in slow motion, I reached for my cocktail glass, lifted it as if to my mouth and then changed direction at the last minute and instead poured the entire sticky contents all over Ben’s crotch.

‘Faaaark!’ Ben swore. ‘What the hell did you do that for?’ Getting up, he stormed into the bar for towels.

I sat and contemplated my empty glass.
Well, Jazzy Lou, you may have finally done it this time
, I thought.
No man cops a caprioska to the crotch and takes it lying down.

And yet I can’t say I was entirely sorry. Even though the Converse account would surely walk out the door, even though my fling with Ben was over before it had begun, I’d do the same all over again. Because dismissing someone’s profit margin just ain’t funny.

I felt my fury rise again. ‘You know what your problem is, Ben Gorman?’ I shouted after him, summoning the very worst insult I could think of. ‘Your problem is you don’t appreciate the value of doing a little overtime.’

And with that I stalked out of the room.

I was jerked awake from a groggy, drunken sleep the next morning by the sound of my BlackBerry ringing. Throwing an arm out wildly, I knocked my copy of
Nice Girls Just Don’t Get It
from the bedside table before laying my hand on the phone.

‘Jasmine Lewis, hello?’ I managed, hauling myself awake.

‘Jazz?’ a voice whispered down the line.

WTF?

‘Jazz, it’s Anya,’ whispered the voice again.

‘Anya?’ I repeated, slowly coming around. ‘Sorry, I didn’t recognise you without your theme music. Where the hell are you, babe?’

‘I’m still at the Ivy,’ Anya whispered and then I heard that all-too-familiar warble somewhere in the background.

‘You’re still at the Ivy?’ I choked.

‘Uh, yeah. Tommy’s in the shower,’ she added unnecessarily. ‘Um, Jazz, what do I do now?’

OMG. ‘Do you think he’s waiting to invite you to breakfast?’ I asked incredulously. ‘PR 101, love: don’t sleep with the client. But if you fail that course, here’s what they’ll teach you at summer school: don’t hang around in the morning!’

‘Er, right,’ Anya said, sounding simultaneously disappointed and relieved at being given an out.

‘Get out of there now, babe! And Anya?’

‘Yeah?’

‘Down with love,’ I declared, raiding Reynolds’ back catalogue one last time before hanging up.

Later that morning, Shelley popped up in my inbox with the postcoital post-mortem I knew was coming my way:

From: Shelley Shapiro

Title: Best friend

Time: 10.23 am

Dah-ling? Where are you? Still lying in bed somewhere, I hope . . . S x

PS Did that Rodarte number pinch around the neck?

Popping a bunch of Nurofen to erase the final traces of last night, I smiled ruefully at Shelley’s message. I wasn’t sure what surprised me less, Shell’s unswerving faith in my love life or her complete inability to grasp the concept of a working week. Did she really think I might be sprawled out on a Sealy Posturepedic somewhere, my sexual conquest feeding me grapes and politely ignoring the fact it was 10.30 am on a weekday?

I tried not to dwell on the fact I’d been at my desk for over three hours already as I banged out a reply.

Hey Babe,

Um, I’d be lying if I said I was still lying in bed. In fact, I’d be lying if I said we ever made it there at all. Long story. Suffice to say, I thought Tom Reynolds would make for the perfect soundtrack to our romantic evening. Turns out The Kills would have been better. Don’t think I’ll be hearing from Ben again. But at least the Rodarte fits, right? And there’s always the
Coco
Man of the Year Awards kicking off tomorrow to cheer me up. Nothing says ‘I’m over him’ like parading around town with twenty semi-naked men! JL xxx

Persuading twenty of Australia’s hottest bachelors to take off their shirts and preen, pose and play up to the Sydney media should have been the easiest job in the world. My goodness, if you wander down to Bondi Park any day of the week, you’d have a hard time finding a guy with his shirt
on
. It’s not our glistening harbour that earned Sydney its nickname the Emerald City. More like the sun’s blinding rays bouncing off all those well-oiled, hairless metrosexuals standing round admiring themselves in their budgie-smugglers. So organising the PR for the
Coco
Man of the Year Awards should have been a walk in the, ahem, park. Right?

Wrong. So, so wrong.

Day one of the two-day Man of the Year Awards media juggernaut dawned wet and soggy, rather than hot and steamy like our guys. Still, us Bees weren’t going to let a little tropical monsoon rain on our parade. First order of business was to issue the press release announcing the finalists. But this was not just
any
presser. This was a laminated media release, meticulously placed underneath a decadent one-kilogram ‘bed’ of chocolate cake, complete with icing sugar bedsheets discreetly covering our pièce de résistance: a (never-nude) miniature Coast model in the form of a doll. This was sure to win over the hearts and stomachs of newsrooms all across Sydney. As long as we could deliver them in one piece. And that’s where things began to get tricky.

Launching myself through the doors at QB HQ I was greeted by an army of worker Bees, hair styled to perfection and stilettos sky high. Today was
Coco
Man of the Year day and these girls were taking no prisoners. The ever-reliable Em was leading the charge, ticking items off a checklist as I jumped into the fray and began shouting to be heard over the rain thundering on the roof.

‘Alice, you and Anya will cover the magazines at CCP media group. I’ll head there in a separate car too. Lulu, you and Holly look after the opposition at Media Central Magazines. And Lulu, did you double-triple-confirm with the Smart car delivery guy this morning? I’ve heard from Planet Cake that the cakes are on their way here now.’

On cue, a courier van beeped its horn out the front and I ran back out into the rain.

Despite the courier parking right out the front of our building, there was still a median strip, a footpath and a flight of outdoor stairs to be traversed in order to get twenty very delicate hand-crafted cakes safely into the building. And all during a flash flood. It was time to rally the troops.

‘Okay, loves, your country needs you!’ I announced, equipping each Bee with a Queen Bee-branded umbrella before grabbing one for myself and leading the way to the door. ‘And be careful in those shoes,’ I fussed before I could stop myself. Then added, ‘I can’t afford your workers’ comp bill.’ The last thing I needed was for someone to slip and break more than a heel. In fact, that’s why I always carry my trusty Chanel flats in my handbag. Sure, stilettos are required for my look when I’m with clients but who can run in heels all day?

Braving the rain and sacrificing our blow-waves, we filed outside to form a conga line of cake couriers. As each shiny white box filled with a culinary work of art was gingerly passed along the line from one Bee to the next, the troops gradually emptied the back of the delivery van and filled our reception with sweet treats. It was enough to make any general proud.

But there’s no rest for the wicked and no sooner had the cake delivery van left than a semitrailer carrying half-a-dozen Mercedes-Benz ForTwo Micro Hybrid Drives – or Smart cars – pulled up in its place. And now our day really started to get interesting. You see, Mercedes-Benz was the principle sponsor of the
Coco
awards. And as a key sponsor their Smart cars needed to have a huge presence at all things Man of the Year-related. So we needed to use Smart cars for every move we made. Having a media call? There should be a string of Mercedes Smart cars parked out the front of the venue. Driving a finalist to a press interview? Smart car it was. Delivering a press-release-slash-cake to all the major press outlets like we were this morning? You guessed it.

So my army of miniskirt-clad, stiletto-wearing, P-plate-wielding Bees and I were about to be let loose on six brand-spanking-new top-of-the-range Mercedes-Benz Smart cars in the rain. Weren’t nothing smart about that. Our delivery guy clearly didn’t think so either. His instructions were to have us drive the cars off the trailer ourselves, in reverse. But one look at me and the Bees and he decided he might do this for us. Smart man, that delivery guy.

‘I bags the red one!’ (Alice)

‘OMG! Have you seen the stereo in here? It has a remote!’ (Anya)

‘Who needs a remote in a car the size of a matchbox?’ (Em)

‘Is there enough room for the cakes?’ (Me)

‘Why are there three pedals?’ (Lulu)

‘Lulu, have you ever driven a manual before?’ (Holly, strapped into the passenger seat of Lulu’s car)

‘No. But I’ve seen my boyfriend drive one.’ (Lulu)

‘Check out the sunroof!’ (Alice)

‘I don’t care if it’s got airbags!’ (Holly, no longer strapped into the passenger seat of Lulu’s car)

Slowly, one by one, we manoeuvred the Smart cars out of the street and headed for our various delivery destinations. Parting ways at the end of Botany Road, we would all be meeting up at the Beresford Hotel in Surry Hills afterwards in order to prep the venue ahead of tomorrow’s media briefing. In the meantime, we had cakes to deliver.

Swinging the car up onto the pavement at Martin Place, in the heart of Sydney’s Calibre-clad corporate sector, I dodged a few lawyers with their trolley-toting lackeys and bunged on my hazard lights. Using hazards to park illegally might not be exactly lawful in the RTA’s eyes but, believe me, for a roomful of
Wake Up!
TV staff who had been on set since three-thirty this morning, the delivery of a sugar hit qualified as an emergency.

I abandoned the car – doors open and lights flashing – and headed straight for Channel Six’s main reception where Joe behind the front desk slipped me a visitor’s pass and waved me on through. Making my way through the rabbit warren of corridors and staircases at Six, I finally found myself in the producers’ suite, where they were planning tomorrow’s episode.

‘Cake delivery!’ I called, lifting the lid on the white box in my arms and revealing my mini Coast model in all his glory. Well, almost all his glory. Let’s not forget that strategically placed icing-sugar bedsheet covering his modesty (and my arse).

‘Cake? Are you serious?’ The exec producer, Bec, was first on her feet. ‘Jasmine Lewis, you are my hero. Whatever you’re spruiking, you can have the 8 am slot for it. Now come in here with that cake.’

And that, my friends, is how to get on TV. Skip the presenters and go straight for the engine room of production. Nothing you’ve ever seen when you switch on your flat screen has made it there without the approval of an executive producer somewhere. That television producers mainly live on a diet of coffee and deadlines is no revelation to cake-bearing PRs. Feeding sugar to producers is easier than taking candy from a baby.

I entered the room as people cleared a space on the boardroom table for me to place my sacrificial Coast cake. And that’s when they noticed him. ‘Check this out! There’s a naked man on the cake!’ someone called out.

‘LOL!’

‘Never nude,’ I deadpanned, before launching into my pitch. ‘Okay,
Wake Up!
, it’s the
Coco
Man of the Year Awards again and, just for you, I can do a couple of nice boys in-studio on the day of the winner announcement,’ I said. ‘The full list of finalists is underneath the cake and there are plenty of boys there who might tickle your fancy. Once you’ve eaten your way through the cake, just let me know which finalists you’d like and I’ll have them in the Green Room at 7.45 am on announcement day looking buff and ready to go.’

Piece of cake.

Emerging back onto Martin Place I bumped into the host of Six’s
Newsnight
on my way to the car. ‘Hey, Aaron,’ I called. ‘I just dropped off a ginormous chocolate cake with the
Wake Up!
production crew. If you’re quick you might just grab a slice before they devour it. I know what a sweet tooth you have . . .’

‘Thanks, gorgeous,’ he replied, winking and flashing his best TV-presenter smile.

It couldn’t hurt to have
Newsnight
and
Wake Up!
battle it out for exclusive coverage of my bachelor boys. A bit of intra-network competition never hurt anyone. Not to mention the rival networks that were also on my hit list. ‘Oh, and the boys will be appearing at a media briefing at the Beresford tomorrow, babe. You should come along. If you’re not too scared you won’t measure up,’ I added cheekily, knowing I’d just guaranteed myself a
Newsnight
crew at the event.

My phone vibrated inside my limited edition LV handbag (fluorescent graffiti style, of course). Whipping it out, I scrolled through my latest emails as I left the giant red Six behind me. Work email, work email, work email, email from Luke about lunch (yes, please!), work email, work email, work email. And an email from Ben Gorman. Faaark, here we go . . .

From: Ben Gorman

Title: Head of Sales, Converse

Time: 12.48 pm

Hi Jasmine,

Just checking we’re all square after the other night at Ivy? Sorry if I pushed your buttons. Insert lame excuse about being drunk here. You’re the best PR Converse has had in a long time and I’d hate to jeopardise that over some stupid argument. Can I buy you a drink next time I see you on Converse business? I seem to recall you lost your last one.

Cheers,

Ben

Yes, Ben. Yes you can,
I thought cheerfully. Because if there was one thing I
didn’t
plan on doing it was crying over spilt caprioska. Not when my account with Converse was at stake. Sure, my flirtation with Ben was definitely over. And all before it really began. But what would I have done with a guy who didn’t work overtime anyway? That sure as hell wouldn’t have boded well for the bedroom.

Reply:
Apology accepted. I agree nothing should get in the way of the Converse/Queen Bee dream team. And as long as you send me the bill for your recent drycleaning costs, then it’s a yes to that drink. I seem to recall you caught my last one.

I hit send as I arrived back at my car, where I whipped off my parking ticket and jumped into the driver’s seat. Honestly, who wrote paper parking tickets these days? Sydney City Council was so old-school.

Racing past CCP Magazines on my way to Surry Hills, I wondered how the rest of the Bees were getting on with their deliveries. As if reading my thoughts, Coast’s delightful PR, Amanda, chose that moment to call me and update me on the Bees’ handiwork.

‘Jasmine!’ her voice shrilled out of my hands-free. ‘I’m at a photo shoot and someone has just walked into reception carrying a cake with a naked Coast doll on top!’

Fuck me. ‘Keep your shirt on, Amanda. Your mini model might not be wearing his, but he
is
dressed in a bedsheet. And some very snug-fitting fondant undies if I recall,’ I said.

‘Jasmine! I don’t care what baked goods his boxers are made from. He looks naked!’ she shrieked.

I didn’t have time for this today. ‘Amanda, see for yourself. Just cut the damn cake,’ I interrupted and hung up. I’d deal with her tomorrow.