Midnight Cocktail

Midnight Cocktail - Chapter 10

It wasn't exactly a huge surprise when Dawn McNeal turned out to be a wanton exhibitionist.

"Dieter likes to show me off," she said.

We were all sitting in the spacious lounge of Dieter's apartment, listening to a soft rock album by his latest signing and drinking cocktails. Cherry wasn't drunk, obviously, but she was having so much fun that it would have been impossible to tell the difference even if she was. Dieter was having all sorts of problems keeping his eyes out of her cleavage.

He shook his head at his wife's most recent comment.

"Darling, please, that makes me sound like a pimp."

Dawn and I both looked at him, then at each other.

"Accurate?" Dawn asked.

"Definitely," I said.

"I am really pleased, seriously, genuinely pleased, that you two are getting on so well."

"I think we annoyed him," Dawn said.

"Looks that way."

"You can't really dance to this," Cherry said.

She stood up and demonstrated how difficult it was to dance to the music coming out of Dieter's unfeasibly expensive sound system. As always, she looked cute enough to eat.

"She's beautiful," Dawn said to me. "Almost makes me wish I went for girls."

Dieter was on his feet too, glass in his hand, gyrating in front of Cherry like a fucked up robot with a hard-on.

"I'd better rescue her," Dawn said. "You know, before you rip out his spine with your teeth."

"I could actually do that."

"I know."

She put her own glass down and sashayed smoothly between Cherry and her husband.

Cherry joined me on the comfortable two-seater sofa and we watched the McNeals dancing out of time to a band that I could tell was a yawning canyon of experience and talent behind Dieter's headline act, StakeHart.

He had been telling us earlier about the argument he had with Kelly Stakehart over the name of the band's fourth studio album, the one they were currently touring around Europe.

"You can't call it that," Dieter had told her, unable to keep the exasperation out of his voice. "Just having the F word in an album title will instantly close down a huge percentage of sales outlets, advertising, radio play, and it isn't even a good album title. It sounds stupid. You're better than this. The band is better than this."

"Fans like it," Kelly said.

She doesn't talk much, doesn't waste words. Sometimes she doesn't say anything. For days at a time.

"I can't force you to change it, but I will plead, I will implore, I will phone you every hour, on the hour, until you do change it. Call it something else, anything else. Just something that doesn't sound like you are more interested in offending people than making a great album."

"Band chose it."

She's pure second-gen, just like Cherry.

Same vamp turned her, too.

A long time ago.

"If you go against me on this one, I will quit. Seriously. I will walk away. I can't be associated with a band that has this kind of unprofessional attitude, that will jeopardise thousands of sales just to have a stupid album title. It's ridiculous. I'm serious. I'll walk."