The Popstar

“This is a bad idea,” Victor complained, swinging on his chair as the pop artist moved across the screen before them. They had spent the day researching the artist, and a simple internet search had popped up a seemingly endless litany of drama. “She is a live wire.”

Vice blew out a breath. He did not disagree with his business partner, but their manager, Aaron, had offered them the opportunity, and they would be fools to turn it down. “She has been in the top ten for pop for six years, produced four multiplatinum albums, and one which went diamond, which is more than we can say,” he pointed out. “She has sold out eight tours in that time as well.”

“She has also been on every gossip mag cover for the last twelve months because of her lifestyle habits,” Victor argued. “Drugs, alcohol, rehab, eating disorders.” He ticked them off on his fingers.

“So, she is a hard-working screw up,” Vice shrugged. “She is pretty.”

Victor laughed out a sigh. “Filters.”

“No, I saw her briefly on the red-carpet last year.”

“With an inch of makeup, no doubt.”

“She just pulled up,” Vice saw the gate intercom light up and hit the release to open the gates. “Fifteen minutes early is better than fifteen minutes late.”

“Presumptuous,” Victor was determined not to be swayed, but stood and walked with Vice out of the studio attached to the main house and down the path the garden heavy with the scent of roses and honeysuckle.

“Drove herself, that is unusual,” Vice commented under his breath as they came around the side of the house. The woman pulled a suitcase out of the boot. A guitar case leant against the side of the non-descript black 4wd, and she dumped the suitcase beside it before retrieving a violin case.

“Interesting,” Victor agreed. “Nice arse,” he added when the woman dove deeper into the boot, pulling out a folder and a laptop bag. “Very nice.”

“Oh, hey,” she caught sight of them out of the corner of her eye, and turned, resting her hips against the car as she took them in, looking from one to the other, head to toe, with thorough scrutiny. Whatever assessment she was making, they passed, Victor thought, as she pushed off the car and straightened. “I am Mirage. You are Vice and Victor.”

Vice had not been wrong, Victor decided, about her being pretty. She had come dressed down, in tracksuit pants and a plain t-shirt, and wore her brunette hair back in a high ponytail. She wore no makeup beyond a dash of tinted lip-balm that he would bet was flavoured watermelon or raspberry. Good skin, a little on the pale side, and good bones. Her eyes were hiding behind oversized sunglasses.

“Welcome Mirage,” Vice stepped forward and brushed a kiss on either of her cheeks. “We are very pleased to have you join us, and happy that you have offered us this opportunity to produce your first rock album.”

“Sure,” she said, a little uncertainly.

She had not liked Vice getting into her personal space, Victor thought, was almost shaken by it, and offered his hand instead of moving in for an embrace, to spare unsettling her further. “Welcome.”

She gave the barest handshake, retreating almost before he released her fingers from his grasp. “Thanks.”

Not tactile, Victor confirmed his initial assessment. It was interesting considering the gossip mags had her ploughing through the ranks of the pop stars, as if her personal mission was to bed each and every single, and several married, man in the industry.

“Let us help you with these,” Vice said, taking the suitcase and handing Victor the guitar. Mirage took the laptop and violin case, closing the boot behind her, before following them up towards the main house. “Do you play violin?” Vice asked as he led the way to the guestroom.

“Yes.”

Hardly a conversation starter, Victor noted with amusement exchanging a look over the woman’s head with his partner.

“So, this is you,” Vice tried again, opening the door to the room. “Has its own bathroom of course.”

She walked in and put the guitar and laptop down on the bed, looking around. “It is great, thanks.”

Vice put her suitcase down to the side of the door. “Well, we will leave you to unpack, and meet by the pool for drinks in half an hour?” He suggested, still seeking to ease the stiffness.

“Half an hour is fine,” she agreed. “But I don’t drink.”

“Sparkling water?”

“Still only,” she replied firmly. “And I prefer in a bottle, unopened, if you have any.”

“Sure,” Vice gave a credible effort at not reacting as if her request was strange or diva-ish in the slightest. “Half an hour then.” He closed the door behind them and pulled a face at Victor. “Okay,” he said under his breath as they made their way back along the hall. “Perhaps you are right.”

“I don’t know,” Victor was thoughtful. “No track marks, and no drinking. Perhaps she is on a program, or…”

“Or?” Vice tilted his head as he drew the same conclusion as his partner. “Someone has roofied her before.”

“That is my take,” Victor agreed. It brought a bad taste to his mouth, but he knew that in the industry, it happened with frightening frequency. “The flat water, unopened bottle says to me she is making sure it doesn’t happen again.”

“Interesting,” Vice considered it.

They went their separate ways. Vice returned to the studio to close it up for the evening. They had to get a feel for Mirage before they could begin work on the album. All Aaron had been able to tell them was that she wanted to move to an edgier sound and already had songs she wanted to use. Getting the right sound for her relied upon understanding what it was that she was seeking.

As he returned to the main house via the back path, he heard guitar and a female voice. Their house guest was waiting for them at the table set just outside the pool area and had brought her guitar out with her. He paused a moment to listen. Not bad, he decided. They had debated how much editing had been done on the pop tracks they had listened to during the day, but hearing her now, he amended his initial assessment. She had an unusual voice, quite breathy but she worked it expertly and the effect was very sexy.

He spotted Victor just inside the doorway of the house, his head quirked as he listened, and he met his partner’s eyes and arched his eyebrows. Victor returned the look. It was promising that she sounded so good in person. Vice stepped up onto the steps, letting himself come into her range of vision. He saw her see him, and she finished the note she was on.

“You didn’t have to stop for me,” Vice told her, encouragingly. “We need to get a feel for your music, to try to get you the sound you want for this album.”

“The sound is pissed off,” she suggested taking off her sunglasses. Her eyes were green, he noted, bottle green, balancing on the edge of blue, and she had exceptional and entirely natural eyelashes. “Burn the house down, pissed off.”

“Alright,” he gestured for Victor to bring him out a drink; he sensed he was going to need one. So, the girl was angry, and probably with good cause. She had the eyes for it, a fine edge between vulnerability and hardness was contained within those blue-green depths.

They would make a good cover image, he speculated, but the entire package was nice. On the edge between curvy and athletic, as if she fought hard against her body’s natural inclinations and lost more than she won. Plenty of woman, he thought with a flare of heat that caught him by surprise, for a man to hold onto. “But there are different types of pissed off,” he added.

She struck a chord and then ran through it a string at a time. “Girl anthem, pissed off.”

“Okay,” he took a seat across from her and wished he had brought a notepad or a phone out with him. “There have been a few different types of girl anthems recently, many successful, all with a different feel to them.”

“A call to arms,” she said as Victor placed a bottle of still water, seal intact, before her. His partner, Vice thought with amusement, would of course fulfil the order with precision. Victor placed a beer in front of Vice, taking his to another seat. “This is my last album with this label under the current contract,” she cracked the bottle of water. “And they have spent the last year making it so no other label will touch me. If this is my last hurrah, I want it to mean something.”

Shit. Vice looked at Victor. What had Aaron signed them up for?

But then she strummed a chord and launched into a song. The lyrics were clever and held an edge of fury behind words sung between her teeth. She sang a section acapella before re-joining with the guitar, and Vice felt the hair along his arms stand on end.

There was a wildness behind her voice, the sort of throwing it all out on the table, going beyond politeness rage that made him, listening, want to take up a baseball bat on her behalf and smash the shit out of whoever had made her feel such a powerless anger.

The expression on her face held loathing.

Every line she sang was a derision, something said to women that would not be said to a man, the sort of veiled misogyny that had been featured on the media and podcasts recently. It was exactly what she had said, a call to arms, that women would rally behind, break up to, and work out with playing loudly in their ears. She had her finger on the pulse of a sentiment very relevant for the time, Vice thought, and it had the potential to be a hit, if he and Victor managed to match the song and lyrics to the right sound and image.

She finished on a harsh note, and picked up her water, taking a mouthful. “Does that help?” She asked, quietly into the silence that sat between them in the space left by that note.

“Yes,” Victor started out of his revery, and he took a swig of his beer. A muscle worked in the corner of his jaw as he contemplated the puzzle they had been handed on a platter by their manager. “That is… quite a song.”

She met his eyes. “Can you do something with it?” She asked. “I have heard your work, both for songs you have made as a duo, and producing for other artists. I like what you do. It is why I asked Aaron for you.”

“Yeah,” Victor drawled it. “Yeah, we can do some incredibly crazy shit with that. What else have you got?”

She was inexhaustible, Vice thought, as the evening progressed. She would have played and sung through the meal, forgoing eating, if they had not called a break when the caterers had arrived to serve them. She did not drink a drop of alcohol, nor any liquid not out of a bottle that she opened, even when Victor opened a good wine to go with the meal right in front of her.

She brought out her laptop after the meal as they sat on the couches around the gas fire and ran them through the rest of the songs. There was not a song that Vice thought did not have potential. She wrote for her own voice, he thought, playing to her strengths and weaknesses. He realised he was excited when he tried to drink out of an empty bottle of beer - he had been so caught up in her music that he had not realised he had drunk the bottle dry.

When she took a bathroom break, and he and Victor met at the fridge for a refill, he looked at Victor. “What the actual f-k?” He said barely breathing it, breaking two beers free of the card-board case, and passing one to his partner. “And Aaron passed her on to us?”

“I know,” Victor blew out a breath as he undid the lid. “She has got the package. The only thought is that someone high up in the label is trying to bury her.”

“F-k.” Vice considered it. “We are not going to let that happen, are we?”

“F-k no.” Victor grinned with the devil behind his eyes. “No, my friend. We are going to take this little gift that Aaron has dropped in our laps and polish it into another diamond album.” They clinked the necks of their beers. “I am thinking we pull in James to lay some beats,” he added.

“They are on hiatus waiting for the baby,” Vice agreed. “So, he will be free. Maybe Seb as well.”

“Take her into the studio tomorrow.”

“Call in Peter for image.”

“We want vulnerable rock chic,” Victor agreed. “With an edge of sophisticated punk, sexy but not overtly so, as she is playing for other women. We want them to want to be her, not to f-k her.”

She had returned to the couch and had began to play another song, the language in which made Vice raise his eyebrows and smother a laugh. “That one is a bit pop-rock,” he suggested. “It would be an interesting contrast to the language and tone.”

“I am not buying that she is into drugs and alcohol,” Victor said under his breath. “Too much drive for that, and no weakening on the bottled water policy.”

“No, not me either,” Vice agreed. “But something has gone down.”

“Yeah.”

They both returned to the couch and sat. She looked up at them, perhaps sensing that they had returned with purpose. Her fingers stroked the strings, whispers of sound.

“So?” She asked them, expectantly.

“We have some ideas,” Victor grinned, and held out his beer. “Here’s to a successful collaboration.” He tapped his bottle against her water.

Once she had retired for the night, as they put their bottles into recycling, Vice leaned his hip against the stone kitchen counter. “Besides the music, and the situation, what do you think?”

“She is a live wire,” Victor repeated his earlier statement. “But f-k man, I want to touch it.”

“No kidding,” Vice replied. “I think I have been hard since the first song.”

“I wonder how she feels about sharing,” Victor replied in an undertone.

Vice chuckled. “Well, we have two weeks to explore the outer limits of her interests.”