Loverman Page 6

  Hours later, when they broke for lunch, Kemp stared down at the iPhone in his hand, and scrolled through the list of contacts. He found the one that he wanted and hit Call.

  A moment later it was answered.

  “Stephen? How’s it going? Charles being good to you?” He paused, listened as he leant a shoulder against the wall. He smiled at that wry, hesitant voice. “Yes? That’s good. Oh yeah, Stephen. Charles is a good guy. One of the best.”

  And to Stephen, it seemed that was true enough.

  Leaving the warehouse clean-up behind, Kemp drove up the coast to unwind and hit the beach. The day was wound down, the sun weak by the time he got there, but it was still good to get in the waves. It had been so long. Too long. He stayed till dusk, unrecognised in board shorts and an old tee. When he got back to Balmain it was late, and he showered, drove to Viva and Red’s. Charles was still there, without fireworks from Viva, just chilling with Stephen.

  They left after dinner. Red would be taking the next day off work.

  In the morning Charles caught a flight to Milan.

  Kemp didn’t believe in this easygoing, approachable version of Charles any more than he believed in the Easter Bunny.

  Charles was away on that shoot for the rest of that week. He came back, spent the night with Kemp, and left again in the morning, probably with his body reminding him for days afterwards of just how thoroughly it had been used. Because Kemp had been relentless. Hungry. And Charles had wanted more of it.

  Kemp didn’t know what tore at him more: the townhouse when it was emptied of Charles and conflict, or waiting for that conflict to begin again. It had become almost addictive.

  The following week went by too fast. Kemp got back from band rehearsals, closing the heavy, weighted front door of the rental behind him to find Charles’ usual small suitcase just inside, a heavy camera bag the real treasured item beside it. Charles himself was seated on one of the big mismatched sofas he’d made it plain he despised.

  Christ, Kemp was sick of Charles’ casual contempt for his possessions.

  Somehow he shoved that resentment down. Coming back from touring, totally road-fucked, to find Charles had been playing ditch-and-replace with his possessions had driven him crazy a few times. He’d let it be. It was pick his battles or lose his mind.

  “Yes, that’s right.” Charles was intently scanning something on the tablet and talking into his smartphone. Typing on the tablet. “Yes, I’ve looked them over. The framing is excellent. So, you’re delivering the works Wednesday, correct? Morning, between ten and eleven.” He frowned. “Yes, I know it’s been short notice. Look on the bright side, they’ll be out of your hair and we’ll be done… Very good.”

  As he ended the call, Kemp looked at him enquiringly, jerked his head back towards the cases by the door.

  “You’ve just got back. Busy already?”

  “You mean you’re wondering how long before you’ll be free of me again?”

  Which should have made him feel like a world-class bastard, but Kemp refused, he damned well refused to. Setting his backpack down near Charles’ luggage, he prowled across the cool polished concrete floor.

  On any other day he would have put his foul mood down to the dying day’s sweat, for the heat wave had not yet broken, and the band time hadn’t gone well. He and Murphy, the two of them the songwriting heart of Isto, couldn’t get anything to flow. It had felt like dragging rocks up a mountain. More, Red was concerned by Stephen, who had moved back to house-sitting Charles’ Vaucluse place, but this time apparently he’d acquired a dog. A Rottweiler. Bloody hell.

  It was typical of Charles that once he took over, he’d stepped in and had his security people look at the situation. They’d supplied Stephen with a guard dog and god only knew what else. Was Charles truly still blaming himself for an attack that had taken place on his property? Probably. Kemp had misjudged him about that.

  Which left Kemp pissed off at his inability to help, yet unable to stop himself as he paced over to Charles and paused, very deliberately took the tablet, put it on the metal-strapped trunk, and sat down on the sofa. He reached for a small silver box on the trunk and opened it.

  “You’ve got an exhibition coming up, right? Opens Friday night?”

  Something flickered in Charles’ face, quickly gone. “Yes. The last-minute stuff is going on right now.”

  Kemp slid a joint between his fingers. Lit up. Usually he’d only smoke if it was being passed around. Thanks to his mother and her pre-Durant circles of friends, he’d grown up around chemical casualties. It had been a warning. Sex had always been his drug of choice. Didn’t mean he hadn’t found himself lighting up more and more frequently, though. Now he took another drag, eyes narrowed.

  “You’re never last-minute, Charles. In fact you’re the most terrifyingly organised control freak of a guy I’ve ever come across.” He exhaled a plume of smoke. “So what gives?”

  Charles shook his head. “Nothing.”

  “Uh-huh.” Kemp eyed him cynically, uncoiled himself, and crushed the barely smoked joint out in the ashtray. “Fine. So you’re going to be hanging around till then, I guess?”

  He was halfway to the kitchen and a glass of water before Charles spoke.

  “You’re going to the exhibition?”

  Kemp bit back the autopilot, snark of an answer. Whatever else he was, Charles was an artist. Kemp respected that. He knew the tough work that he put in.

  He gave him a backward glance, nodded, said with dust-dry irony, “I’m your boyfriend, Charles. Naturally I’ll be there.”

  Charles gave him a long, unreadable look and finally broke it to reach for the joint Kemp had crushed out. There was a faint tremor in his fingers as he pushed it into shape and reached for Kemp’s lighter, hit the blackened end with the flame. Kemp watched with some surprise. Charles didn’t smoke. Scarcely drank. The only vices Kemp had ever seen him display was a talent for vicious backtalk and a hunger for edgy sex.

  He raised his eyebrows. Charles gave him a cool smile.

  “I’m glad you’ll be there, Kemp. In fact I’m… well, just glad you’ll be there. But there’s something I need to tell you about the exhibition itself…”

  Chapter Six

  The crowd of well-heeled hipsters and the wealthy looking for a place to invest their money looked like… fuck, Kemp could expertly, split second, years of touring, read this crowd like a fortune teller. Idiots that had pencilled this in on their schedule as fashionable time-wasting, see and be seen, and accidentally found themselves at one of the shockwave artistic and social events of the year. All he felt in this room was bloodlust.

  Charles was being swamped by attention, and little wonder. Kemp stood close enough but wanted to give him his space even if, Jesus Christ, Charles and his goddamned camera had turned him into a sideshow here.

  Kemp had spent enough time as a performer to know that tonight was a performance. He’d schooled his face to impassivity the minute they’d walked in here late—Charles’ fault, not his—and felt the wave of attention hit them hard.

  That freakish wave of attention had been the first warning.

  Charles pushing leaving till they were late should have been a signal in itself. He knew his man well enough by now.

  Charles late? Never. He’d demand to be on time for his own funeral.

  A flash went off and Kemp blinked, irritated. Posing for shots was one thing. Some fucker hoping to catch an unguarded look was another. Charles reached for his hand, and he folded his grip around those tensed fingers.

  The public display of affection didn’t bother him, even if affection wasn’t exactly what they shared. What felt strange was the urge to reassure him.

  Charles was a cool, self-contained piece of work.

  He didn’t need reassurance about anything.

  So why was he holding his hand so damned firmly, willing his own strength into him? Was it because he respected Charles as an artist, and certainly, this event, this public self-di
sclosure—which was what all good art was—was ripping the surface off his nerve endings?

  Hell, why did he care? The fucker had brought it on himself, pulling this insane stunt.

  Charles had warned him about exactly what would be up on the gallery walls tonight.

  Yet he drew closer, pressed his lips against Charles’ ear so that he could catch what he was saying through the babble. “Relax,” he murmured, gaze sweeping through the crowd and devouring the glimpses he could catch of the photographs covering all the walls. Bloody hell, he’d known Charles was a workaholic, but this… Famous faces up there, mixed with the up-and-coming of the creative crowd. Kemp even recognised one of the subjects as an old, pre-Durant years, school friend of his, now a painter. And yep, there across the room was his old mate Dylan. The fucker threw him a cheeky wink.

  Piss-taking bastard. Easy to imagine what he’d just been eyeing.

  Kemp focused on the commanding images. “They’re brilliant, Charles.”

  Charles cut him a guarded look. “You don’t have to—”

  “I’m not just saying it,” Kemp murmured, still close enough that no one around them could hear. They were attempting to. Through knots of gossiping, well-heeled idiots he caught glimpses of the most incendiary of all the images: those of himself, image after image, frame after frame, stretching over two long, pristine white walls.

  Viva’s video shoot. Those photos Kemp had coolly posed for that hot, sweaty afternoon, both he and Charles knowing they’d drop an atomic bomb in the midst of Charles’ shiny career trajectory.

  They were also the images gathering the most attention. Little wonder.

  In the flesh, so to speak, the glimpses he was catching were…

  Fuck. Just sweet fucking hell—

  Those happy little red stickers were everywhere.

  Sold… sold… sold… sold.

  Yes, Kemp felt he was and had been. In every way.

  Pornography or art? Muse or publicity hungry muso? Stunt or truth? He could see the headlines already.

  It was genius. It was fucked. If it hadn’t been for every eye upon them, he would have roared with laughter.

  Watching Kemp’s face, Charles read every minuscule tensing of muscle, every flicker of the eye. Behind Kemp’s world-weary, hip boredom, a dark awareness glinted, and Charles read confirmation of exactly what he’d known all along, the instant he’d decided to do this, split second, a week ago in a plane hanging in the air over who-knew-where. He’d sat in that metal tube, scanning through the images in his mind’s eye, and he’d known.

  He couldn’t hide the images away. They were his truth.

  He’d also known exactly what putting them up on these walls tonight would mean. He didn’t need to look around this crowded room to know.

  He’d just blown up his carefully constructed career. Detonated it.

  All of his past would be scooped up and regurgitated through the media tomorrow… no, right now. The mining baron’s son and the rock star. That old headline would most certainly be recycled. Not to mention the truly repugnant stepbrothers line. That one had threaded like a dirty seam through the media buzz when they’d first gone public back in Europe.

  He suppressed the betraying urge to check his Twitter feed but knew it would be exploding, most probably with images caught on the sly here. Kemp’s cock, what they could see of it—Charles had been exacting in quite how much he chose to truly reveal of his lover—photographed for posterity and now up on the walls, caught on a smartphone, trending, hashtag labelled.

  It was one thing that he’d told himself these things. It was another to be surrounded by the flesh-and-blood reality of a gallery full of staring onlookers thinking just that. The stares, the smiles, and half-heard comments made Charles feel physically sick.

  He didn’t care that he’d understood, with one glimpse, that the show was a wild success.

  He was appalled. Utterly confronted with the consequences of what he’d done. He hadn’t simply come to a decision on that plane. He’d jumped right out of it.

  Kemp was saying idly, “This crowd are lapping it up. What a charge… If it had been the original exhibition, an extension of your editorial work, it would have been a hit, but… fuck. They get this instead.”

  Charles managed, “You’re not angry?”

  Kemp laughed and shook his head, glanced away. “You asked me if I minded you showing them publicly. I gave you the go-ahead. I knew what they were—I was there, remember? If I can ever catch a real look at the rest of the series, I’m sure they’re just as amazing. I trust your taste.”

  Kemp should have been angry. He’d been dumped into the middle of this. Charles didn’t know why, but instead, by some miracle he just seemed vastly entertained by it all. The circus. The shockwave of it. The buzz of the crowd.

  Maybe it was the performer in him. The rock star he usually saved for the stage.

  Charles’ own heart was pounding, his breath tight. His grip must be crushing Kemp’s. The man must see that he could hardly handle this madness.

  It was humiliating.

  He’d wanted to blow everything up. His entire carefully curated career. Every safe, boring decision he’d ever made. Every bland meaningless image he’d ever shot.

  Which was exactly why he’d asked Kemp to pose for his camera, naked, in that dying, steaming light and then put those ferocious images up on these walls.

  For the first time in his life, Charles felt raw, utter panic. He’d done the right thing, the only thing he could. He’d finally told his truth.

  He just had no idea how he was going to deal with the aftermath.

  Watching Charles’ scarcely contained panic, Kemp could have told him that if he felt bad now, tomorrow was going to make this look like a picnic. He’d lived through enough media storms to know. He would have, but for every listening ear.

  The gallery’s owner, Liz, came up to him. She’d greeted Kemp, earlier, but her attention had been focused on Charles and just getting his late arse in the door, getting him introduced to the right people. The people with money. The people into collecting art and the buyers for the big public collections. But now she gave Kemp a huge hug.

  It shocked him. She’d met him before, but she’d been no music fan and without doubt thought Charles could do better than a dirty, filthy rocker who drew more attention than he did.

  “Big turnout,” Kemp said neutrally.

  She ignored it. “Thank you,” she said. Her brown eyes were wry, cynical, assessing, and truthful all at once. Tough lady, Kemp thought, off balance and amused, and then she said softly, for his ears alone, “You’re so good for him. I could not… when he decided to throw out half of the works and bring in the new stuff, I thought I’d have a nervous breakdown. But then I saw them… Hell.” She grinned suddenly. “How did he persuade you to pose for them?”

  “I’m an exhibitionist. No persuasion required.”

  The brown eyes were businesslike but candid. “Lucky Charles.”

  “Lucky me,” drawled Kemp.

  And he hadn’t even fully seen what he knew was up on those walls.

  From the look in Liz’s brown eyes, she certainly had.

  Another flash of a camera.

  He knew what it would capture. Charles in washed-out jeans for once, a loose white shirt, all Nordic beauty, blond hair glittering under the fierce gallery lights, holding hands with the boyfriend whose naked images he’d just used to plant a nuclear bomb in the midst of his successful, carefully executed career. Kemp couldn’t begin to imagine where this would lead. And Kemp himself was a monochromatic study in plain black, fingers clutching the usual glass of paint-stripper wine these things handed out, no matter how upscale the gallery.

  Was he angry? Charles had asked.

  Hell, if it wasn’t for the attention he’d draw, he’d applaud. Tonight had taken sheer fucking guts. Charles had stopped playing safe with his talent.

  Pity he couldn’t get closer to the images without drawing m
ore attention. He felt that he was seeing them reflected back through the assessing looks others were giving him.

  The big question: What had Charles been thinking?

  The crowd parted for a second, and he caught a real glimpse of one. Rich, deep colours. Shadows, light like the chiaroscuro used in old paintings… Kemp stretched out, languid, cock half-hidden in the shadows, by the bend of his thigh, shadow of black pubes but flesh bared and body stretched back like a lover’s over the stinking beef carcass already occupying the chaise longue, maggots tumbling from the rotting meat and falling over his flesh.

  Not subtle, Charles, he’d thought.

  Kemp’s head had been tilted back, heavy eye makeup sweat-streaked and blurred, gaze slitted.

  The rock star daring the onlooker to want to fuck what was now unfuckable.

  There was something bruised, something transitory in the long, pale stretch of his body in the grim embrace of that rotting carcass. Golden, dying light gilding them, shadowing them. Both transitory, disposable objects, meat, both to be bought and sold, both at the mercy of time.

  It was genius. It was fucked.

  He wanted to laugh, because for all the pure heart-stopping poetry of the slices of images he could catch, all that most viewers seemed to be concentrating on was just how much of his cock or bared arse, depending on the pose, they could catch.

  He could not control his smirk even as he looked up, across the gallery, only to catch sight of Viva. She was standing with Red and a couple of friends.

  Invited by Kemp, they must have arrived after Charles and him and kept their distance, discreet.

  Viva’s face was stony. He slanted a brow at her.

  She gave the barest shake of her head. Maybe she’d checked her social media feeds. Maybe she’d just taken one step into the gallery and caught the whispers.

  No, Charles was not on her favourites list, and he guessed that, like him, she would not be spending time in front of those confronting images of her brother, only too aware of the eyes of others on her if she did so.