The New Rakes (10 page)

‘Well,’ she said, ‘screw him anyway. He’s signed. And that means we’re in business.’ Raising her glass, she swilled the watery vodka in the general direction of the bar. ‘Here’s to The New Rakes. Let’s rock the fuck out of everyone.’

Lina bumped the door open with her hip and carried the hot paper cups over to Mike’s desk. She had a few files tucked under her arm and her top two buttons were carefully undone. She wore patent-leather heels, in a deep blood red, and walked as smoothly as a dancer.

‘Well,’ she said, dropping into a seat and blowing on her coffee. ‘You got her to sign. That’s great.’

‘Yes,’ said Mike, smiling at her. ‘Isn’t it?’ His eyes were dazzlingly blue, as though they’d been charged with cold, hard spring light. Lina noticed his shirt wasn’t ironed. Instead of cufflinks, he’d rolled his sleeves up in messy bunches, showing the tanned muscles of his forearms. A CD was playing on the
B.
& O. stereo in the corner – she recognised the flowing piano tune from long ago.

Mike was leaning back in his chair, with thin rays of sun bursting through the window and slicing the desk between them into bright lines. Something had shifted, Lina sensed. That gaze was shockingly familiar to her, that heady, intense, powerful way he had when he was fired up with something, someone. It hit her right in the solar plexus. She inhaled and shifted her hips so that she was sitting with her spine straight.

‘I’ve been thinking about how to do this,’ Lina said.

‘I’ve booked an engineer,’ Mike said. ‘We’re recording next week.’

‘Fine. But there are a few other things.’

‘Meaning?’

Lina pursed her lips. ‘Are we happy with how everything looks?’ She opened a file and placed a photograph on Mike’s desk. ‘This is what we have,’ she said. ‘Two girls. Attractive, good bodies, one particularly … ambitious.’ She paused to watch the smirk that rippled over Mike’s face. His hand moved to his chin in that gesture she knew so well. ‘Two boys, a little rough around the edges.’ She studied the picture of the band. ‘How will this work,’ she murmured. At last, she looked up at Mike, focused. ‘Who’s the most fuckable?’ she asked, bluntly.

‘Kara, of course.’ Mike gave her a full hard smile this time, his eyes flashing like he was daring her to disagree.

‘Of course. So we sell everything on her. More tit, more ass, more gloss.’ Lina tapped the table in time with her words. ‘How far will she let us push her, d’you think?’

Mike raised his eyebrows. ‘You’re taking quite an interest. I thought you couldn’t stand her.’

Lina shrugged. She let one long fingernail trace the outline
of
Kara’s figure in the photograph. ‘You want to fuck her, that’s your business. I’m interested in what we can get out of her.’

‘Intending to go to work on her, aren’t you?’

‘She needs polishing. We have to push that sex appeal that seems to have knocked you for six, turn her into a drop-dead irresistible product.’ Lina sat back in her chair. ‘Fuckable singers are two a penny,’ she said. ‘We need shock and awe tactics, here.’ She smiled, lifted her hair and stroked her neck. ‘I’ll turn your rough little slut into a gold-plated diva. Just give me some time.’

Mike nodded. He lifted his feet onto the edge of the desk and stretched out, swinging back and forth in his chair. ‘And the rest of the band?’

‘I’ll deal with them. Should be interesting to see how it all shakes down once I’ve licked Kara into shape.’

‘Now there’s a picture.’

Lina gave Mike a long smile, ran the tip of her tongue over her lips. ‘Isn’t it just?’ She leaned forwards and let her shirt fall open a little further. She placed one hand on Mike’s leg and stroked gently along his calf bone. ‘I do think we can have a little fun with this, don’t you?’

‘Sure.’

‘It could be just like old times.’

At this, Mike swung round to face her. His expression was blank and Lina’s hand curled automatically away from him. ‘Don’t,’ he said, curtly, and the smile dropped from her face.

‘Oversensitive.’ Her lip curled as she said it. ‘You do bury your grudges deep, don’t you, Michael?’

‘I don’t want to have this conversation, Lina.’

He was rifling through a drawer, head bent in concentration, and an onlooker would almost have believed he was ignoring her, so calm was his expression.

‘Oh, come on,’ she said, ‘I’m only playing. Don’t tell me you’d
turn
down a little ménage with your latest toy. And the lover that knows you best.’ She reached for the amber pendant that hung round her neck and toyed with it, listening to the faint sawing noise as it slid along the chain necklace.

Mike was turning out to be trickier than she’d anticipated. Still, there was colour rising in his cheeks. It could have been anger, but Lina guessed he wasn’t completely immune to her overtures. She’d seen his face when she’d walked in on him and Kara after all. It had that dark spark of desire flickering on it, even as he was inside Kara.

He tossed a piece of paper onto the table. ‘Kara’s number,’ he said. ‘Try not to frighten her off, will you?’ Their conversation was clearly over.

Lina nodded as she rose from her seat. ‘That’s sweet, darling. You care about her. Well, don’t worry.’ Lina lifted the pictures from Mike’s desk and slid them into a folder. ‘She won’t know what hit her.’

With that, Lina left, leaving a trail of Obsession in her wake and Mike with a strange twisted feeling in his stomach.

9

‘IS THIS A
bad time?’ Lina stood on the doorstep, shaking her car keys in one hand.

Kara, having just dragged herself out of bed, squinted at the other woman in the morning sunshine. Lina was dressed with a sharp, calculated sexiness that looked straight out of the pages of a Sunday style supplement. Designer trousers, designer shirt, designer fucking lipgloss, no doubt. Kara was damn sure that she spent more money on her appearance than Kara paid in rent.

‘I thought we’d best get moving early,’ Lina continued. ‘We’ve got so much to do.’ With this, she gave Kara’s faded-to-grey Goldfrapp T-shirt and bare legs a sly once-over, as though she couldn’t quite believe the new face of pop slept in such shabby gear.

‘Uh,’ Kara said, combing her hair with her fingers. ‘Shit, we’re not recording today, are we?’ She fought the urge to tug her T-shirt down further over the threadbare pink knickers she was wearing.

‘No,’ said Lina, flexing back and forth on her knee. ‘Today we’re branding.’

‘Which means?’

Lina gave her a smile as hard and fake as her impossibly pert breasts. ‘Shopping. Aren’t we a lucky girl?’

‘For what?’

Lina pursed her lips. ‘For the next big thing,’ she said. ‘For sex, in loud, bright, shiny, glittery packaging.’

‘I don’t quite –’

‘We need to brand you, Kara, before we can sell you. Add a bit of spin. So we’re visiting a good friend of mine, dressing you up and taking you out to play. Think of it as a crash course in pornification,’ she added, in a stage whisper.

‘But I’m not –’ Kara waved her hand in the air, at a loss for words. She had no idea what the crazy bitch was talking about, but it sounded like the wrong kind of wild.

Behind them in the hall, Ruby emerged from the bathroom and moved tentatively towards the daylight. ‘Morning?’ she said, blinking at Lina in confusion.

‘You must be the drummer.’ Lina nodded curtly. ‘Hi. Kara and I are just about to leave.’

‘But Ruby,’ Kara said, latching on to an idea suddenly. ‘Rube needs to come too, yeah?’

‘Not necessary,’ Lina called, already turning to descend the steps, waving one gloved hand in the air. ‘You’re the sex kitten, Kara. The others are just background.’

Kara cringed. She spun round to see Ruby drawing back into the hallway. Ruby was silent; the hurt showing in her hunched shoulders and a sudden coldness in her face, the way her rosebud mouth tightened.

‘I’ll be in the car,’ Lina was shouting as she pointed to a black Mazda double-parked outside the terrace. ‘See you in ten.’

Lina drove fast, but without ostentation. It took them ten minutes to slip through the early-morning traffic; they reached the Merchant City before Kara had time to rub the sleep out of her eyes. They pulled to a stop in front of a redbrick warehouse with a heavy steel door set between frosted-glass panels – unmarked and unremarkable. Lina was out of the car and already on the phone getting them buzzed in by the time Kara
got
a chance to register that this was not a shop, nor anything like one. She felt a mix of resentment and curiosity as she waited for a shadowy figure behind the glass to get to the door – she still had very little idea of what Lina was setting up, and Ruby’s displeasure had left a bitter taste in her mouth that wouldn’t leave.

‘Jerome!’ said Lina, pronouncing the name with a soft ‘J’.

‘Hi, hi, come in.’ A shaven-headed man with a wide mouth and a hurried, fretful air waved them in, kissing Lina lightly on the cheek and zipping his eyes up and down Kara’s figure. They walked swiftly across the marble hallway and into the lift, where Kara was free to look closer at their host in the mirrored wall. He was a strange-looking type – ugly in the conventional sense, with heavy-lidded, small green eyes and deep lines bracketing his mouth. Only there was something in his manner, in the tense, brusque way he ignored both women and held himself braced against the wall that intrigued Kara. Though his head was bald and smooth, dark wiry hair sprouted from his roll-neck T-shirt and his skin looked tough and leathery.

‘So,’ he said as the lift doors opened and they spilled out into a large airy studio flat overlooking the City Chambers, ‘what is your pleasure today, Lina darling?’

Lina launched into the same speech she’d given Kara earlier about branding and sex appeal, while the man, Jerome, nodded and hummed, with his glittering green eyes fixed squarely on Kara. Feeling uncomfortable under his critical gaze, she looked around. The space was a workplace as well as a home, a large table dominating the centre of the room, covered with sheets of tracing paper and sketches. Scraps of fabric were scattered on the floor and a rack of clothes was pulled close to the table. Jerome’s furniture was bright and modern and looked hellishly uncomfortable – turquoise plastic chairs and a clear Plexiglas coffee table sat on a zebra-striped rug that was placed, artfully
squint,
across the slate flagstones of the floor. Kara’s attention was immediately drawn though to the poster-sized photographs that hung on the bare brick walls. Mostly monochrome, at first they appeared abstract, but among the curves and shadows Kara picked out a few recognisable elements – the pointed tip of a tongue, curling upwards, the bony ridges of knuckles and scribbled shadows that on second glance revealed themselves as being body hair trailing across skin.

‘Help yourself, take a look,’ Jerome called to her, gesturing with a big pawlike hand towards the sitting area. Kara walked closer, leaving the others to talk in a low intense murmur while she examined the pictures.

There were women and men, hidden in shadows as black as pitch. Kara’s eyes followed the lines of their limbs: intertwined, wrapped in thin rope, crushed against other bodies. When she noticed a thick erect cock gripped in a fist and pushed against a mouth, Kara smirked, but she also felt the rush of wetness flowering between her legs. The photographs were beautiful and the more she looked at them, the more she saw: the silver stud in a tongue, glowing dully under a curved buttock; fingers sinking into mouths, crevices, hollows; the sheen of wet skin – fresh sperm or women’s secretions brushed against a thigh. And a recurring image, one that pricked her attention most, was the glossy wet-black fabric that clung to hips, breasts and stomachs.

‘Latex,’ Lina said in Kara’s ear. She seemed to have come out of nowhere. ‘It’s Jerome’s special talent. Come,’ she added, taking Kara by the elbow and leading her to the table where Jerome had looped a measuring tape over his shoulders and stood watching her with his hands on his hips.

‘We want something to shock, yes?’ he asked, directing the question at Lina rather than Kara.

Lina smiled in assent. ‘Absolutely.’

‘Full length? Sleeves? Hood?’

‘Hood?’ Kara said, too loudly. She looked at Lina, but the other woman’s face was perfectly bland.

Jerome approached and reached out to grip her waist.

‘Hey!’ Kara pulled back, only to hear Jerome make a guttural laugh in the back of his throat and see Lina roll her eyes.

‘Please, Kara, calm yourself. We need to take your measurements.’

Jerome’s froggish face became serious. ‘Don’t worry. You’ll find this an enjoyable experience if you just relax, I promise.’

Kara inhaled and let Jerome’s fingers scuttle over her body, pinching and testing. He whipped the tape from round his neck and looped it under her breasts; she tried not to flinch when his knuckles bumped against her nipples.

‘I think something slashed, yeah?’ he asked Lina, drawing a line from Kara’s throat to her navel with his fingernail. ‘Expose the breasts, maybe even a little snatch.’

Kara stood silently while Jerome drew imaginary lines on her body like she was a mannequin, putting a hand on her hip to turn her round and tracing across the very top of her buttocks. He made noises as he worked, little sucks and clicks of his teeth like he was beatboxing. Even through her clothes, it felt as though he were cutting her up into slices, portioning her like a butcher’s diagram. ‘Legs are good too, Lina,’ he said. ‘Hobble skirt maybe, something that clings to her arse and makes her wiggle. You like the sound of that?’ he said loudly, slapping Kara on the bottom and laughing like a drain.

Kara’s lips curled back to snarl at him, but she caught a warning look from Lina and managed to perk her mouth into a fierce smile instead. She focused on a fleck of spittle in the corner of Jerome’s mouth and watched his pointed tongue curl to lick it away.

‘I think I’ve got something that could work,’ he said, turning
to
the dress rail and flicking through the hangers. Each garment was shrouded in cellophane and labelled with a paper tag and, as he rustled through them, he called over his shoulder, ‘At the risk of sounding forward, darling, drop your clothes on the chair for me, would you?’