Bad intentions, p.5
Bad Intentions, page 5
“What did you sing?” Vivienne rolls over to lie on her back, scooting up to put her head on the pillow and pulling the covers up to her collarbone.
Ruby turns her head as she chuckles at the memory. She wants to see Vivienne’s face when she hears this part. “Would you believe, ‘How Great Thou Art’?”
Vivienne narrowly avoids spraying champagne out her nose. “A hymn?” she manages, still half-choking on that last sip of champagne. “You. Sang a hymn?”
Ruby takes a swallow as well, laughing under her breath as she nods. “The band mostly knew old Motown stuff—which made perfect sense for where we were and all. But I was the new freckled white kid in town, and I wasn’t about to leap so far out of my lane. Besides, everyone knows the church stuff.”
“Okay, that makes sense.”
“And, as it turns out, in the audience there was an ambitious fellow who’d just got a job scouting for a Detroit label recently acquired by Goblin Records. He talked me into coming by for a studio test. I think he thought he saw ... I don’t know ... a kid he could groom? A teen with absent parents who was ripe for exploitation? What I saw was a possible ticket the hell out of Detroit.”
“I can imagine that was appealing.”
“Quite.” Ruby reaches past Vivienne to snag the champagne bottle and top off her glass. The flutes are too small for this conversation; a few more minutes of this and she’ll be drinking straight from the bottle. “I spent a few days in the studio with him, he liked what he heard, and that was that.” She raises her glass in a quasi-salute to possibly being done with this story.
“But that’s not that.” Vivienne sits up then and plants a playful kiss on Ruby’s bare shoulder. “Because that’s when you recorded Hold it Down and Something’s Lost.”
“Oh, no,” Ruby says, unable to contain her level of mortification. “You know.”
“Baby. I had the cassettes.” Vivienne beams and takes a deep breath. “Something’s lost that can’t be found—”
“Stop!” Ruby yells. She means it, but only so much. “Stop it.”
“A part of me when you’re not around—” She even sings with a passable Southern twang.
“Please don’t make me hear that song.”
“I close my eyes so I can see—” Vivienne gets more and more out of tune as she goes.
“I mean it, Vengeance,” Ruby says, “you’ve got to stop that.”
Vivienne shakes her head and sings louder. “THE PIECES THAT YOU TOOK FROM MEEEEEE—”
Ruby can’t stand it for another minute. She lunges forward, tackling Vivienne back onto the bed, pinning her shoulders and finding Vivienne’s lips with her own. They kiss for a moment; it’s nice, easy, sweet and playful. And when their faces part, Ruby is looking Vivienne square in the eye.
“No more singing,” she whispers. “Unless you want me to buy the rights to V for Valentine and re-release it.”
“You wouldn’t,” Vivienne says. “I was eighteen and drunk. It was very ill-advised.”
“Oh, I know. I could still make it platinum. Every little girl in America will be begging her piano teacher to let them play ‘heart full of hate.’ I hear emo girl rock is coming back into fashion.”
“You can’t,” Vivienne says. “I own the rights to that album.”
“Oh, bless your heart, you sound so sure.”
It’s not a question.
“All right.” Vivienne wraps an arm around Ruby and absently strokes her spine. “But only if you tell me the rest. What happened next?”
“You don’t really want to hear this.” Ruby has no idea how the boring details of her teenage years could possibly be of interest to anyone.
“Oh, but I do.” Vivienne lunges forward and kisses her quickly.
Ruby shakes her head and flops over, rather ungracefully by her own estimation, to lie on her back beside Vivienne. She’s glad now for the dwindling quantity of champagne in her glass; at least it didn’t slosh.
“They wanted to turn me into the same teen idol everyone else was,” Ruby says. “And I’d seen enough of how the label treated those girls that I wasn’t sure I was interested. So I was able, using not an inconsiderable amount of magic, mind you, to talk my management into letting me intern backstage on one of Cassidy Sweet’s mini-tours.”
“Cassidy Sweet. Shiiit.” Vivienne rolls onto her side, propping her head on her hand to look down at Ruby. “High school gyms, amusement parks, or shopping malls?”
“Malls.”
“The nineties were wild.” Vivienne takes a sip from her glass as Ruby rolls onto her side to face her, their bodies aligned.
“Yes, they were,” Ruby says.
“So you toured shopping malls?”
“At first, I just skulked backstage,” Ruby explains, frowning at the memory of how lousy that whole experience had been. “I think the label was under the impression I’d get one look at the crowd of screaming fans and sign up for whatever treatment they had in mind. But instead, all I could see was how aggressively they handled Cassidy. ‘Don’t eat this,’ ‘Don’t drink that,’ ‘Don’t go there,’ ‘No sandals on stage,’ that sort of thing. Infuriating. They were so focused on keeping her in check that the show wasn’t even very good. So.” Ruby takes another swig of champagne and shrugs. “And I cannot stress enough just how much magic had to do with this.”
“Yeah?”
“I—” Ruby waves her flute. “Took over.”
“You ... took over?” Vivienne’s lip quirks into a smile and she shakes her head a little. “How very on brand.”
“I suppose it was.” Ruby reaches over and tucks a stray lock of hair behind Vivienne’s ear. She’s grown her hair out since the evening on the boat. “But after all the work I put in to make that tour extremely profitable for all involved, it wasn’t a hard sell to convince the label I could make them far more money behind a desk than I could behind a microphone.”
“Made even easier with the assistance of magic.” Vivienne finishes off the champagne in her glass and scoots closer to Ruby. Now they’re practically lying next to each other.
“Less than you might presume,” Ruby says. “I am very good at what I do.”
“Oh.” Vivienne plucks the glass from Ruby’s fingers before rolling over and depositing both pieces of stemware onto the nightstand beside the bottle. “You are,” she says, practically whispering in Ruby’s ear. It makes her skin tingle.
“What am I?” Ruby asks.
Vivienne smiles. “Very good.”
Ruby reaches out, threading her arm around Vivienne’s waist and pulling her against her, leaving no space left between them. Their bodies fit together remarkably well. It’s one of the things she most appreciates about Vivienne—that and all the other things. “I am grateful for the positive review.”
She runs her hand up Vivienne’s back until her fingers tangle in her hair. With a faint sigh, Vivienne answers in kind, tracing her fingers up over Ruby’s ribs.
“I just have one more question,” Vivienne says, her words husky.
“And what’s that?”
“That is,” Vivienne says, leaning forward to nip at Ruby’s jaw lightly, “Do you, Miss Ruby Gendreau, former pop star extraordinaire, still take requests?”
Ruby slides her hand beneath the covers, finding the lapel of the robe Vivienne never bothered to tie. She tugs at the fabric as she moves her lips to Vivienne’s ear. She kisses it lightly then whispers, “Don’t touch that dial.”
Round Three: Sparkling
January 2020
January 2nd is not a workday for Goblin Records. Rock stars in particular need a few days to sleep off the raucous afterparties they tend to enjoy following a New Year's Eve appearance. Their boss, though, has insisted on coming into her office anyway.
Vivienne lounges in one of the Moroccan leather chairs opposite where Ruby is working--the self-same chair she found herself trapped in on her first visit to this office. Strange how she feels safe here now; a year ago, she'd have had her guard up and then some. Today she might even welcome being bound to this chair, under the right circumstances.
Ruby barely bothered to put herself together this morning, and Vivienne can't help but marvel at that. She's wearing yoga pants, for fuck's sake--the modal fabric doing things for her backside that may or may not be for Vivienne's benefit, but she appreciates them. Her blouse is unbuttoned to the sternum, her jewelry basic and understated, her makeup fresh and natural, and her protective magic missing altogether. She's even wearing her reading glasses, which Vivienne knows no other living soul has ever seen her wear. It's a level of relaxed Vivienne wasn't sure she would ever see from Ruby.
And she likes it. A lot.
Enough that she followed Ruby down to the office today instead of staying in bed or curling up in front of the TV. This, her unlikely love, unguarded and yet still somehow completely in control, is a lot more fun to watch.
But if "just a few minutes, darling" takes too much longer, Vivienne is going to insist on interrupting.
As though reading her mind--and really, Vivienne wouldn't put it past her--Ruby gestures to the ever-dwindling pile of papers on her desk. "I swear I'm almost done."
"Good." Vivienne puts every ounce of innuendo she has into that one syllable.
"Oh, is it?" Ruby glances at her over the rim of her glasses.
"That depends."
"On?"
"On whether you're going to make me crawl under that desk."
"Hmm. You know, I could look over these earnings reports once more--"
Vivienne is grinning. She probably looks like a lovesick fool, but she doesn't really care. This is fun, and she doesn't mind letting that show.
What she does mind is the knocking she hears on the door behind her. It's ajar, so she can only be glad whoever it is decided to knock before entering. That's probably best practice where the boss's office is concerned.
"I thought you said nobody was here," she says, straightening herself in the chair. Ruby doesn't mind Vivienne being so aggressively bisexual in private; in fact, she welcomes it. But she likes to maintain a certain decorum in the office. If they have company, the least Vivienne can do is sit properly.
"Arsho handles maintenance and janitorial," Ruby says, frowning. "Maybe they don't give their team the same holidays."
"Hrmph."
"You can come in," Ruby calls out to whomever is standing at the door, sliding her glasses off and setting them in her lap.
Vivienne turns around to look as Mike Stevens comes in the door.
It's been a few years since she's seen him--he's taller now, and more filled out--looking far too much like his father for comfort. Add the fact that he once had a teenage crush on her, that she's been to bed with his father rather recently, and that she is not at all supposed to be here, and things feel awkward before she's even sure he's seen her. She ducks down in the voluminous chair, abandoning all pretense at trying to sit properly.
"Hey, Miss K." If Mike has seen Vivienne, he's not saying so.
"Please don't take this the wrong way, dear," Ruby says to Mike, sitting back in her chair and folding her hands on her desk, "but what the hell are you doing here?"
"Um--" He wrings his hands as he comes farther into the room. "I asked security about something, and they said it had to go through you. So I stopped by upstairs and your butler said you were down here."
"That was more answer than I needed," Ruby says. "The security part seems the seminal matter. Come have a seat and tell me what's going on."
Mike comes around to the front of the chairs to sit beside Vivienne, who rights herself with a little curse and a glance at Ruby.
"Oh, yes, I presume you've met Vivienne Cain?"
Mike goggles. His cheeks turn pink, and he does his best to smile, but it's about as awkward and adorable as she guessed it would be. "Yes, ma'am," he says to Ruby, then to Vivienne, "Nice to see you again, Ms. Cain."
Vivienne smiles as best she's able. "You too, Mike. You're looking well."
"Um ... thank you."
"Should I go?" Vivienne asks. It's one thing to sit here while she signs papers, but if there's a security matter to be discussed ...
"You can stay." It's Mike who answers. "This will only take a minute."
"Might not even take that long," Ruby says. "Since I have a feeling running this past me is an edict left over from when you were first signed to the label. But you're a grown-up now; it's probably a non-issue, so let's get through it."
"Yes, ma'am," Mike says. "It's just that I want a venue credential for someone."
Ruby frowns and crosses her arms. Vivienne can feel her trepidation at the request--suddenly she's very interested in hearing the rest of this conversation.
"Seeing as you've been empowered to put anyone on a backstage list from the day of your very first nightclub show," Ruby says, "I can take this meeting to mean one of two things: either you're trying to get somebody approved who's been put on a no access list, or you're talking about a metal credential/all-access corporate badge?"
"It's the second one, ma'am." Mike is sitting forward in the chair. Vivienne can practically taste his hope-tinged anxiety as he looks back at Ruby expectantly.
"I see." Ruby's mouth is a hard line. "You know we can't just give those out, Mike. And every member of your immediate family already has one. So tell me who you think ought to be granted unfettered access to the backstage area of every venue we play?"
"Her name's Katy."
And there it is. The reason for his anxiety. The name washes it away in a rush of affection. Oh gods. The kid is hopelessly in love.
Vivienne looks to Ruby, curious how she'll handle this situation. Her posture is relaxing, but she's no less tense than before.
"And who," Ruby asks, "is Katy?"
"She's my girlfriend."
"That much I gathered. But I'm afraid it's not enough information. So I ask you again, Mike: who is Katy?"
"I mean ... what do you want to know?"
"Where's she from?" Ruby lists the questions curtly. "How'd you meet? How long have you known her? Who are her people? How sure are you that she's not chasing you for fame, money, or influence? Also." Ruby raises her chin. "Do you know her last name?"
"It's Wolsten. Katy Wolsten." Mike is offended, and Vivienne can feel it. It makes her cheeks flush and the hair on her arms stand up.
"Mm-hmm." Ruby writes a note. "Kathryn or Kathleen? Katarina?"
"Miss K," he says, with far less deference than he's used the diminutive up to now.
"Mike." Ruby's tone is a mild admonishment, but there's no magic in her words yet. "I understand you think this girl is wonderful and would never do anything to hurt you. But I know nothing about her save what you've told me thus far, which I think you will agree is inadequate to forming a proper impression. So how about you tell me some things to get me on your side?"
"Um ... uh--" Mike's anxiety is putting butterflies in Vivienne's stomach.
"Hey." Vivienne touches him on the arm. "Give us the pitch."
"Oh." His voice catches in his throat and he clears it. "Well, we met last year--when I was in New Orleans opening for Diesel and Stella. We'd gone to dinner the night before the show; we had a private room in the back of this big seafood place. And in the room next to us was a bunch of sorority girls on a bachelorette weekend from Mississippi. The bride thought she recognized Stella in the ladies' room--"
Vivienne was not expecting a whole story. Ruby listens with rapt attention.
"Go on," Ruby says. "And remember, this is a story about this Katy person."
"Right." Mike nods. "Katy was one of the bridesmaids, and when she saw me going to the bar, she came up and asked if that was Diesel and Stella in the next room because they had tickets for the show the next night--that was the whole reason they'd come to New Orleans--and they all thought it would be a really cool story to tell if it turned out they were having dinner at the next table over, even if there was a wall in between. And I told her yes, and she was really happy about that. And then I told everybody else, and Diesel and Stella both thought it was really cool that these fans only wanted to know so they could tell the story later and not so they could come asking for autographs and stuff, so we went over there and crashed their party for a while--"
"So she's a fan?" Ruby asks.
"It's not like that," Mike says. "I wound up taking a bunch of pictures for them, and I got one really good one on Katy's phone that I asked her if she'd send to me. She said 'sure' and had me put my number in her phone, and after she sent me the picture, I got their whole group on the list to come backstage the next night. And after that, we just ... sort of kept in touch."
"Hmm." Vivienne casts a glance at Ruby that the mogul pointedly ignores.
"Anyway, she graduated in December, and it turns out she got into a program up here," Mike says. "I'm actually on my way to get her from the airport."
"She just graduated?" Ruby sits forward and glares at him. "How old is this girl, Mike?"
"Oh," he says, sitting up straighter. "She's twenty-four. It was her master's degree. She's up here doing a PhD--in paleontological conservation; she's doing research on preserving dinosaur fossils."
"I see."
"Twenty-four," Vivienne says, trying to be helpful. "Very age appropriate."
Ignoring her, Ruby waves Mike to continue.
"And we ... things are getting serious," he says. "Her schedule's going to be real unpredictable here for a while, so I want her to have a credential to make it so there's one less thing to worry about. Any time she can get to a show, I want her to be able to just come and not have to deal with trying to get ahold of me when I might be busy or not have signal backstage. I just ... I want Katy to know she's welcome any time."
