The High Notes: A Novel(29)

Clay was forty-eight years old, and was at the height of his own career as an impresario. He’d come a long way from the hills of Kentucky, and was polished and sophisticated, but had remained very modest, just like Iris herself. The temptations in his world were great. He’d been married twice, once to a singer he’d met on the road when he was singing in honky-tonk nightclubs in Nashville. They were both twenty-two years old, and she’d run off with a drummer who was dealing drugs and got her hooked. Clay had stayed away from that scene. He had no idea what became of her after they divorced, but he was sure it wasn’t good. Three years later, when he was starting to book talent in L.A., he had married Frances, an actress. It had lasted for four years, and they had two daughters, Ellen and Margie, who were now twenty and twenty-two, and lived in L.A. with their mother. Her career as an actress had gone down the tubes by the time she was thirty. She was one of those eminently forgettable ingénues of which there were too many in L.A. She ran a catering business now, and had been a decent mother to their girls, although she was sour about life, and eternally angry at Clay that he had become incredibly successful after their marriage and she hadn’t. As she put it, she was just a fancy cook now, doing Hollywood events and weddings and bar mitzvahs. She made a good living at it, and Clay was generous with her and his daughters.

They all lived in a beautiful home in Bel Air, which he had bought them. The girls had gone to the best private schools. His oldest daughter, Margie, had graduated from USC and was working with her mother. Ellen, his youngest, was studying at UC Berkeley, and wanted to go to vet school at UC Davis when she graduated. She was in her junior year at twenty. She picked up every stray she came across, and always had a flock of ragtag dogs around her, which drove her mother and sister crazy. She was more like her father than Margie was, who was more like her mother, always complaining about something, and jealous of others. Clay had a decent relationship with his daughters, although he felt he didn’t see enough of them. He had strong paternal instincts, and used them to his young protégés’ advantage, nurturing and helping them. He was almost like a father to them, and many of them had never had one, like Boy. He made the occasional subtle suggestion when he heard them perform, and they always found he was right.

Clay never took advantage of the young women he was shepherding and helping to launch their careers, which was unusual in their business. Most men his age, in his position, took full advantage of na?ve young women who were only too willing to be used so they could get ahead. There were gorgeous women flocking to him everywhere he went, usually for the wrong reasons. He spotted it easily. There was no lack of users and opportunists in every facet of the business. One of the things he admired about Iris was that she had remained surprisingly pure and innocent despite the life she’d led and the bad people she had met and worked for. She was passionate about her music and nothing else. Her innocence and humility made her even more attractive to him, more even than her delicate beauty. He could tell that she led a clean life, didn’t do drugs. He couldn’t figure out what her relationship to Boy was, whether they were lovers or just friends, and he didn’t want to ask. But either way, he never got romantically involved with his protégées. She was only five years older than his oldest daughter, who was twenty-two, but Iris seemed much younger with her simple, undemanding ways. His daughter Margie was decked out in Chanel from head to foot, even when working in her mother’s catering kitchen. She drove a red Mercedes sports car he had paid for, and she wasn’t shy about asking her father for whatever she wanted. Currently, she wanted him to buy her a house in Malibu. He wanted her to work for several years to earn it before he did, and she wasn’t happy about it. He thought buying a twenty-two-year-old girl a ten-million-dollar house was ridiculous and inappropriate. He wanted his daughters to have real values, even though their mother, Frances, urged both girls to hit up their father for anything expensive they could think of. Frances told them he could afford it. He didn’t think that was a good reason to go crazy.

Ellen never asked for the kinds of things her older sister did. She would ask him for donations to shelters for abused pets she was currently supporting, and was grateful for anything he gave her. The two girls were very different. Their father had a real sense of values, and was generous when it was reasonable, which a ten-million-dollar house in Malibu for Margie wasn’t. She was pissed at him for the moment and not speaking to him. She was pouting, as she always did when her father didn’t give her what she wanted.

Her mother was even harsher when she didn’t get her way, and Margie had learned it from her. Frances was livid that their marriage had fallen apart before he’d started to make really big money. She conveniently overlooked the fact that she was the one who left him. She thought he was wasting his time looking for young singers that he could develop in out-of-the-way places all over the country. He had turned his gift for spotting talent into a gold mine. He was now the hottest name in the music business, with the most famous stars on his client roster. Frances was furious that she hadn’t gotten a piece of that when she walked out on him, looking for bigger fish, but she hadn’t stayed long enough to cash in, lucky for him. He had never married again after Frances. They had divorced when he was twenty-nine years old, and just starting to become successful. He was somewhat suspicious now of most of the women who pursued him. They were transparent about what they wanted from him. At forty-eight, he had been single for nineteen years and liked it that way. He dated singers, models, and actresses. He enjoyed them, but no one had stolen his heart in twenty-three years. Frances had turned out to be a mistake. She was beautiful, but empty and greedy, but he was grateful for the two beautiful girls they had had during their brief time together. He tried hard to be a good father to them, and a responsible father figure to all the artists he represented.