The Edge Read online

  But the location was perfect for a new breed of American record company. This was the land of vegan outreach centres and doggy day cares. It was the dizzyingly street-postered ground zero of tattoos, beards and cocktails-in-jam-jars. Rising above the stretch of Sunset that formed the heart of Echo Park, giant billboards bore the faces of smiling real-estate agents, or hyperreal photographs advertising the prowess of the latest smartphones. These eye-grabbing images would, if they worked, sell homes and products to the affluent, discerning hipsters that haunted the city’s fashionable inner-eastern side.

  The only real problem, Adam reflected as the noise of the Boulevard receded, was the unpleasant chain-gym on the corner of the street.

  To Adam’s mind, the place appeared to be essentially a dangerous cult – something to be feared and hated; in an ideal world, even legislated against. Above its frontage was a large banner, set in a totalitarian font and reading Pain is Weakness Leaving the Body. It made Adam shudder every time he saw it.

  And even now, having almost made it to work, he was greeted by a platoon of sweaty, psychotic-eyed people in Lycra, their bodies covered in improbable swellings, who seemed to expect him to get out of their way as they ran along the sidewalk, despite the fact that he, as a pedestrian, was surely using it in the way civic planners had long intended. Wasn’t there some unspoken rule, he wondered, that it was up to whoever was going fastest to go around? Was that rule even unspoken?

  ‘WALK,’ he felt like shouting. ‘SideWALK.’ But of course, he didn’t. There was something fearsome about the gym’s disciples – the hard core of them anyway, as this group certainly were. Adam quickened his step as he passed the little courtyard directly outside the place – a space reserved for the cult’s high priests, who exhibited themselves to passing traffic in skintight one-pieces while wielding enormous weights.

  Just you wait, their eyes seemed to say as he passed. One day soon, there will be enough of us. And when that day comes, we will crush you pathetic weaklings under the heels of our futuristic sneakers.

  Adam made his way up the steep external staircase beside the cactus garden, reaching the building’s door and digging out his keys. The elevator was tucked into the front right corner of the house, but it was too slow for Adam. Inside, he finally escaped from the sun and the body-cultists. Maybe one day, he hoped, as he closed the door behind him and switched on the air-conditioning, the gym, even just this one particular branch, might go out of business.

  He climbed the stairs to the upper floor, slumped into his chair, plugged in his laptop and watched the emails begin to pour in.

  4

  Among the release specification documents, production timelines, marketing reports, signing announcements, social media calendars and the odd, fraught, philosophical discussion about A & R, Adam’s inbox only held one worrying bit of news. The sender was the Autodidact, and the subject line simply Call.

  Jason was not a man known for calling with good news. Normally, Adam would have got it out of the way as quickly as possible, but another storm was clearly brewing. Scott, Adam’s marketing manager, was glancing at him meaningfully, eyes blinking above rigid lips, and generally giving off a strange vibe. The problem with open-plan offices, as far as Adam was concerned, was that vibes could be transmitted all too easily.

  He replied to the Autodidact, asking him to call at 6 p.m. GMT, and swivelled his chair around to face Scott.

  ‘Everything OK?’ he asked.

  ‘Not really, actually.’

  ‘Go downstairs for a chat?’

  ‘Yeah. That’d be good,’ Scott replied.

  Adam and his staff sat in one of the two vast upper cabins. The other was used as a warehouse and mail-order shipping area for CDs, LPs and merch. From Adam’s desk, he could just see the Hollywood sign, sitting like an unrealized dream beyond the tangle of billboards, scrubby hills and power lines outside the wide rectangular window.

  On the lower floors were a kitchen, a communal dining area, a lounge and a narrow, glass-walled meeting room that had been the original owner’s wellness space. Adam and Scott made their way down the stairs, the other staff’s interest prickling his flesh like airborne electrical currents.

  They went into the meeting room and slid the door closed. Scott slumped on the sofa, picking up a cushion and holding it across his stomach. He was a short, wiry twenty-something with lush, chin-length hair that he regularly ran a hand through. His eyes were slightly protuberant, their irises a penetrating blue, and the combination gave him a permanently intense look.

  ‘How was your evening?’ Adam asked him.

  ‘Awesome,’ Scott said, brightening at the memory. ‘My buddy organized a little secret show for Skrillex, like a friends-only thing?’

  ‘Sounds great,’ Adam said.

  ‘Yeah, it was dope.’ Scott grinned like a pupil whose holiday report had trounced all others. ‘Great to hang with the bros.’

  Scott appeared to revel in not inviting colleagues to events that his job had enabled him to attend, but telling them all about them afterwards. He wouldn’t, Adam knew, ask about his boss’s evening.

  ‘Great,’ Adam said. ‘So, what’s up?’

  The smile faded, and Scott’s blue eyes widened in a show of worry. Adam found it hard to look directly at them.

  ‘There’s two things really. First thing is kinda small. But, like, am I gonna be expected to lead the Disband campaign?’

  ‘Well, yes,’ Adam said. ‘It’s one of the biggest things we’ve got this year.’ He paused, frowning. ‘And it’s good, too. Don’t you like it?’

  ‘Sure, I like it. But if the title is like last time, I’m not gonna be comfortable working on it.’

  Disband’s previous album had been called BITCHMEAT.

  ‘What’s wrong with that title?’ Adam asked. ‘It’s a punk thing. It’s just designed to be a bit provocative, isn’t it?’

  Scott shifted the cushion, cocked his head and pouted. ‘It’s demeaning to women. Misogyny is a gigantic problem in this country, and I will not be a part of it.’

  Adam frowned. ‘But three of the four members are women. The title is a comment on this stuff itself, I think. They’re a feminist band. How is it misogynistic?’

  Scott shrugged. ‘If I’d put that album cover on my Facebook, it would have caused an outcry.’

  BITCHMEAT’s front cover image had been in the style of an internet meme: naked, bloodied women lined up in a slaughterhouse, the title blown up to fill the frame across two lines.

  Adam’s temper flared, and he tried to dampen it. ‘Really, Scott? An outcry, caused by your personal Facebook page?’

  ‘I have a lot of industry friends,’ Scott said.

  Adam took a breath. ‘No one is asking you to post about albums you work on on your own Facebook page.’

  ‘I post all the albums I work on on my page. That’s my thing. I want to help the artists and the company. All except that one, because I felt I couldn’t.’

  ‘You’ve heard that solo track that Crystal released?’ Adam said. ‘The lyrics are about a culture polluted by the stench of female fear?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Scott said. ‘But…’

  ‘I can’t imagine any artist making anything more obviously anti-misogynist. Maybe you could post that too?’

  ‘Look,’ Scott said, exasperated. ‘Maybe we can just ask them what the content of the record is gonna be like, and what the title is?’

  ‘Ah,’ Adam said. If his temper had been a Californian wildfire, it would have been thirty per cent contained. ‘So we should screen the work of women, to ensure that you, a man, are happy to work on it?’

  ‘That’s not what I’m saying at all. I’m a feminist, and I’m Jewish. I believe in intersectionality.’

  It seemed safe only to address the first of these statements. ‘It’s exactly what you just said. You do see the irony, Scott, of you, a man, threatening not to work on women’s music because of misogyny?’

  Scott pulled his best d
isingenuous look, mouth agape. ‘No, I don’t. It’s not ironic at all.’

  Adam leaned forward. ‘I’m going to press you on this point, Scott. It could be a textbook example of irony.’

  ‘Look,’ Scott said, looking frightened now. ‘This is getting like Fox News. Let’s just leave it. I’ll work on the record. I’m sure it’ll be fine.’

  ‘OK.’ Adam took a deep breath. This was only the small thing Scott wanted to talk about, and he’d already had a graphic vision of smashing in his skull with the starfish-like conference phone.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘And sorry for getting irritable. What’s the other thing?’

  Scott widened his eyes again. ‘So, something pretty weird happened with Meg yesterday.’ He put his feet up on the coffee table, pressing his knees together.

  ‘OK. What was it?’ Meg was a young marketing manager, who’d been at the company only a year. She’d grown up in northern England, beginning her career at a large management agency in London. Adam’s company had been impressed enough with her CV to sponsor a US visa. She was serious-minded and talented, and, with her tall, slim figure, soft Mancunian accent and long blonde hair, she’d quickly attracted male admirers in LA. Several unpleasant incidents had occurred with music industry men trying their luck.

  ‘Well, she was at KCXE?’ Scott began twirling the cushion in his lap.

  ‘Right,’ Adam said. ‘I remember.’

  ‘And she ended up meeting with Fischer, while the session was going on.’

  Fischer was an influential DJ on a big college radio station in Burbank, and one of the label’s main supporters in the city. The band who were due to play the showcase that evening – The Suffering – had recorded a session with him the previous day. Adam swallowed.

  ‘Well, he kind of showed her some pictures…’ Scott’s voice was deep and very loud, and he liked to speak slowly.

  ‘What kind of pictures?’

  ‘Well, at first it was, like, pictures of artists he’d taken. He’s, like, shooting pieces for the website or something?’ Scott screwed his face up, to show he wasn’t impressed. ‘Some bullshit.’

  ‘Right,’ Adam said. His patience was dissolving. He pictured a clear pool beneath a rocky waterfall. When a large, dark shape slithered under the water, he banished it, outraged.

  ‘Then they sort of moved into these, kinda erotic ones? Well, not even erotic, actually. More like obscene?’

  ‘Oh, Christ,’ Adam said.

  ‘Yeah…’ Scott widened his eyes further. Adam had the strong suspicion he was relishing this.

  ‘They were in that little tiny office of his. Y’know, the one with all the CDs on the walls? So she was, like, close to him.’

  ‘What were they of? How bad were they?’

  ‘Well, at first it was like they were arty male nudes apparently. I mean, this is just what she told me, on the phone. He sort of segued into them. And he was like, “and what do you think of this one? And this one? And then this one?” And they were getting more and more… explicit?’

  ‘Shit,’ Adam said.

  ‘And they were all zoomed in apparently, on some guy, and in black and white. And they were gradually zooming out. And then suddenly she sees that it’s actually him, in the pictures.’

  Adam felt strangely weak. ‘My God…’

  ‘And he’s there with this erection – apparently it was huge,’ Scott widened his eyes further still, ‘and he’s like “and what do you think of THAT!”’

  ‘What the hell was he thinking?’ Adam put his head in his hands and kneaded the flesh of his temples.

  ‘And in the next one, he was actually coming…’ Scott was saying.

  ‘OK.’ Adam looked back up at him. ‘Where’s Meg now?’

  ‘She’s at home. She said she’d work from there today.’

  ‘Is she OK?’

  ‘I mean, she’s pretty freaked out.’

  ‘Should I call her, you think?’

  ‘I’d give her some time,’ Scott said.

  ‘OK, let’s talk to her about it together, after we get tonight out of the way. Is she still coming tonight?’

  Scott shook his head. ‘She’s too traumatized.’

  ‘Of course,’ Adam said. ‘Well, we’ll be a pair of hands down then. Let’s make sure everyone else is around to help.’

  Scott curled his lip.

  ‘What?’ Adam asked.

  ‘Meh,’ Scott said. ‘You think many people are gonna come? Really?’

  Under the careful stewardship of the Autodidact, Scott had renounced his love of experimental post-rock in favour of more commercially rewarding projects. The Suffering had thus far failed to impress him on these terms, despite being one of the Autodidact’s personal signings. Adam wondered if Jason had inadvertently created a monster.

  ‘I am certainly hoping they will come, Scott,’ Adam said.

  ‘I just don’t know why we’re doing it. It feels like we got bigger fish to fry. The album just isn’t very good.’

  ‘Let’s just make it work please, Scott.’

  ‘I hear you,’ Scott said, looking as though he didn’t.

  5

  He sent Meg a text apologizing for her ordeal, and decided to take the Autodidact’s call in Echo Park itself. The privacy would be welcome, and it would give him an excuse for the walk. Lately, he’d taken to wandering around the park in the middle of the day, inventing meetings and disappearing for an hour. He was fairly sure his staff hadn’t cottoned on, but nevertheless it was becoming risky. He could just imagine a gleeful Scott making a concerned phone call to London.

  ‘Yeah, he’s been inventing these… meetings? And all he does is, like, walk around the park? We’re getting a little worried.’

  He’d given himself time to circle the park’s lake before the call came in. Finding himself once more at its northern edge, he paused for a moment and wiped the sweat from his brow. Bright pink lotus flowers had colonized this corner of the water, sprouting so thickly that it looked as though you could lie down on them. Adam peered at their leaves, on which, if he looked hard enough, he could sometimes make out one of the park’s fat bullfrogs, sunning itself. Not today, it seemed.

  Giant, skinny palms vaulted above the water, swaying gently in the warm breeze. A man with a long neck and a ponytail was doing yoga on the grass, and dotted here and there were women, lying on blankets, a few of them reading, more sitting playing with their phones.

  As ever, a small film crew was setting up on a patch of grass. In Los Angeles, Adam thought, you were rarely more than fifteen feet from a film crew.

  He raised his eyes, looking above the park’s human occupants and scanning the skies. It was possible, with a bit of luck, to see interesting birds above the lake and palm trees. A whole island had been cordoned off for waterfowl. There were egrets and herons, and overhead the occasional hawk. Just now, there was only a small flock of grackles, chattering loudly as they flitted between trees.

  His mobile’s artificial trill sounded from his pocket. Right on time, Jason was calling. Adam sat on a bench – picking a spot between splotches of bird shit – let the phone ring three times, then answered it.

  ‘Hello, mate,’ he said.

  The Autodidact’s trademark, throat-clearing cough scratched out of Adam’s phone, followed by his voice, which still bore traces of his Liverpool accent.

  ‘Hi, man,’ he said. ‘How you doing?’

  ‘Not bad, thanks,’ Adam said. ‘You?’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, all good. You in the office?’

  ‘No. Thought I’d step out and get some privacy. How about you?’

  ‘Yep, meeting room as usual.’

  ‘Right,’ Adam said. He pictured Jason, most likely standing – unless show-meditating, he rarely seemed to sit down – in the glass-walled room in London, where he could see out over the office. A short man with long, well-groomed hair, he was very muscular from the regular boxing classes he took. With his barrel chest, upright stance and urgent, s
hort-legged walk, he gave the impression of a cockerel, strutting around the hen coop of the office.

  ‘So listen,’ the Autodidact said. ‘We need to talk Falconz. I spoke to Roger earlier.’

  Falconz were, abruptly, the biggest act on the label. An earnest young girl/boy duo from Chicago who made sugary, ecstatic electronic music overlaid with eighties-style, soft rock guitar solos. Adam disliked their music intensely. Their name didn’t improve things. They had taken Adam’s favourite genus of raptor, and done something stupid with it. Roger was their manager.

  ‘Ah. OK,’ Adam said. ‘How’d that go?’

  ‘Well, not good actually, mate.’

  ‘Right. How come?’

  ‘He’s talking about finding a bigger partner for America.’

  The sweat on Adam’s back ran cold. ‘Shit,’ he said.

  ‘He’s worried we don’t have the, ah, capacity they need on the next album. There’s talk about looking for an upstream deal, or even a licence.’

  Upstream, licence. These were the euphemisms for when a major label came and stole your artists.

  ‘Shit,’ Adam said again, without really thinking.

  ‘Exactly.’ There was a chilly pause. ‘How’ve things been with you and him recently?’

  Adam hated Roger. The manager’s idea of a good conversation was someone listening intently to one of his monologues, and he wore the kind of un-tapered jeans that Adam associated with men who hung around playgrounds. He was very efficient, but stupefyingly arrogant, and delighted in interrupting Adam mid-sentence on conference calls.

  ‘Fine,’ he said. ‘They’ve been good.’

  ‘He said he hadn’t heard much from you lately?’

  ‘How could he, when he never stops talking…’ Adam muttered.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing.’ Adam sighed. ‘I’d better get a meeting in with him.’

  The Autodidact’s voice had cooled. ‘Listen, man, it took me a lot of work to get us where we are with them. If we lose them in the US it’s gonna cost us hundreds of k. And God knows what the Scandies are going to think. Falconz were the main reason they invested, a foothold in the American market. We need to convince Roger we can handle the album. ASAP. I’m a bit worried your attitude might be getting across to him.’