Marty spotted Brock Wilde and nodded a greeting. Negotiations had started all over again–they had approached Chloe French with the contract earlier this month. He hoped Brock knew what he was in for with this. He wasn’t a power agent–yet–but he’d better be a fast learner.
They had been lucky with the Lana situation, real damn lucky. He felt for the poor girl, of course he did, but from Cole’s perspective it had worked out nice and neat. And, as he knew all too well, his client liked neat things.
As the lights dimmed, Rita looked to Lana. She prayed her friend was OK. It would be difficult to get up in front of the crowd here if she did take the Award, with everyone knowing what she had gone through. It had been a horribly public ordeal. But Lana was strong. She was a fighter. And she would get through.
Rita, too, had been amazed at how things had developed after the premiere. Not just for Lana and Cole, but for her.
Over the course of dissolving the contract, across late-night phone calls and impromptu meetings, during heartfelt conversations over Lana’s tragedy, she and Marty had–surprising no one more than themselves–become close. She had never found this rotund white man attractive until then, when suddenly something like Vegas happened and everything got re-evaluated. Marty had shown compassion, sympathy and, above all, professionalism.
They had just recently emerged as a couple–LA’s top power agents united. Love worked mysteriously. For Rita and Marty, it just seemed to fit.
Marty took her hand. ‘I’m the luckiest guy here,’ he said, meaning it.
She smiled back at him. ‘Damn right you are.’
‘Daddy, you’ve got fat. You’re taking up half my seat.’
Bernstein eased back, satisfied. ‘I’ve always been fat, kitten. You ain’t gonna change that.’
Jessica made a face. ‘You could look better,’ she snapped, pulling out a diamond-encrusted compact mirror and admiring her own reflection. She was clad in an all-gold catsuit, accessorised by a wide seventies-style belt and giant hoop earrings. Not traditional Awards fare, but she liked to bring a bit of Vegas fun to a place like this. Especially since everyone seemed so serious. She’d only just got over what had happened herself–it had been an appalling tragedy–but life moved on and you had to go with it.
Bernstein sighed. At least she wasn’t swearing. Those radically expensive elocution lessons must be paying off.
At first he had taken his younger daughter’s interest in the hotel industry with a great big bucket of salt, but in the aftermath of the Eastern Sky premiere she had proved herself to him time and time again. It was exactly the distraction he had needed. And it turned out Jessica was made for it: she was fearless in a pit-bull way; uncompromising and without mercy, a woman whose dick for business was as hard as any man’s. The family would love her.
As for his own family, it was just the two of them now. Two Bernsteins against the world.
Shortly after the premiere, he and Christie Carmen had parted ways. He had walked in on her giving an enthusiastic blow job to one of the showgirls–obviously they weren’t vetting them too closely these days. Christie was out the next day. ‘I knew it all along,’ Jessica had said dismissively, though he suspected she hadn’t. Jessica and Christie had struck up a sort of friendship–Bernstein wondered if she wasn’t more upset by the split than he was.
But Elisabeth.
He experienced a wrench in his gut when he thought of the daughter he had lost. His heart ached when he remembered how their last words had been spoken in anger. He could not dwell on it.
Nor could he dwell on the son he would never have. Remembering St Louis, he balled his fists. Fate was cruel.
It was a time for renewed focus. Life moved on, and nobody knew it better than him.
A dozen rows back, Elisabeth Sabell sat cloaked in shadow. She had almost convinced herself not to come–for weeks she had just stared at the invitation, too ashamed to contemplate a public appearance–but in the end some faint recollection of what pride felt like had persuaded her.
Nobody here knows, she kept telling herself, politely greeting acquaintances. Nobody except Frank Bernstein, and she had no intention of ever again speaking to him. His betrayal of her was beyond comprehension. He was nothing to her, she was nothing to him–they were strangers.
He wouldn’t have told Jessica, he wouldn’t have told anyone. She knew that because he