Mistress of the Game

Mistress of the Game Page 15

PAOLO COZMICI BARKED IRRITABLY AT HIS BOYFRIEND: "SO? Are you going to tell me what it says?"

The world-famous conductor was having breakfast at his usual table at Le Vaudeville on Rue Vivienne in Paris. An Art Deco hangout popular with locals and tourists alike, Le Vaudeville was Paolo Cozmici's home away from home, a place he came to relax. Henri, the ma?tre d', knew where Paolo Cozmici liked to sit. He knew that Paolo liked the milk for his cafe au lait warm, not hot, that Paolo's pain chocolat should always be light on the pain, heavy on the chocolat; and that Paolo did not expect to have to move to a table near the window in order to chain-smoke his beloved Gauloise cigarettes.

Everybody who knew Paolo Cozmici knew that his Sunday-morning ritual was sacrosanct and unchanging. His boyfriend knew it best of all. And yet the unfathomable boy had arrived for breakfast late, distracted, still dressed in his jogging pants (Paolo deplored jogging pants), and bleating on about some ridiculous letter he'd received from his kid sister back home.

I suppose it serves me right for falling in love with an American, thought Paolo philosophically. Barbarians, all of them, from sea to stinking sea.

"She wants me to come to her sixteenth birthday party next month. Apparently my father's throwing her a big bash at Cedar Hill House."

Paolo blew a disdainful smoke ring in his lover's direction. "O��?"

"It's kind of like a family compound. It's in Maine on a little island called Dark Harbor. You won't have heard of it, but it's a magical place. I haven't been there since my mom was alive."

"You're not seriously thinking of going?" Paolo Cozmici sounded incredulous. "Robert, my sweet, you 'ave concerts booked every weekend in July. Paris, Munich, London. You can't just pull out."

"Come with me?"

Paolo almost choked on his croissant.

"Come with you? Absolutely not. Now I 'ave irrefutable evidence, mon amour. You have lost your mind."

"Maybe." Robbie Templeton smiled, and Paolo Cozmici felt his resolve melting like a bar of chocolate in the sunshine. "But you knew I was crazy when you fell for me. Didn't you?"

Raising Paolo's hand to his lips, Robbie kissed it softly.

"Hmm," Paolo grumbled. "Oui, je suppose."

The love affair between Robbie Templeton, the American piano prodigy and classical music's hottest male pinup, and Paolo Cozmici, the fat, bald, famously irascible Italian conductor, was a mystery to all who knew them, as well as to millions who did not.

It began six years ago. Robbie, then almost twenty, had just arrived in Paris and was living hand to mouth as a freelance piano player, moving from bar to bar and jazz club to jazz club, wherever the work took him.

"You're being stubborn, Robert. I've told you, you can have an allowance."

Peter Templeton had mixed feelings about his son's Great European Adventure. He and Robbie had been reconciled for less than a year. Now Peter was sitting across the table from him at the Harvard Club, being told that he was about to lose him all over again.

"I don't want your money, Dad. I need to do this by myself."

"You've no idea what the real world is like, Robert."

You'd be surprised how much I know about the real world, Dad.

"You don't even speak French."

"I'll learn."

"At least let me set up a bank account for you at Societe Generale. You can look on it as emergency money. A safety net, should you need it."

Robbie looked at his father and felt a stab of pity for him. Lexi's kidnapping had aged him permanently. The reality of caring for a deaf child, even one as determined and independent as Lexi, had also taken its toll. Every hour Peter spent away from his daughter was an anxious, guilt-ridden purgatory: he hadn't been there when Lexi needed him most. The least he could do was to be there now, protecting her, loving her, helping her cope with her disability.

The irony was that Lexi was coping just fine. It was Peter who was lost.

Robbie's fixed mental image of his father was of a strong, handsome, youthful man, a sportsman and a scholar. But the truth was that that man had died years ago. The face Robbie saw across the table from him now was broken and defeated, crisscrossed with lines and dark shadows under the eyes. It was a road map of suffering, a lifetime of loss. And it had all started because he married a Blackwell.

Kruger-Brent did that to him. The curse of the Blackwell family. Don't you see, Dad? I can't stay. I can't let myself be broken, like you were.

"Honestly, Dad, I appreciate the offer. But I don't want the money. I've only been clean for eleven months, remember? A big fat French bank account might be more temptation than I could handle."

It was this last argument that had finally won Peter over. He knew that if Robert ever went back to drugs or drinking, he would die. It was that simple.

"Fine. Have it your way. But promise me, when the romance of the whole starving-musician-in-a-garret thing wears off, you won't be too proud to come home. I...I love you, Robert. I hope you know that."

Robbie's eyes filled with tears.

I know, Dad. I love you, too. But I have to go.

The first few months were a living hell.

Dad was right. What in God's name have I gotten myself into?

Unable to afford even a shoe box in the city center, Robbie had finally rented a room in Ogrement, a run-down part of the suburb of epinay-sur-Seine. It was the most depressing place he had ever seen. Ugly sixties tenement buildings with broken windows, the stairwells covered in graffiti and stinking of piss, were home to a plethora of gangs and petty criminals. The gangs seemed to split along racial and religious lines. Ogrement was not a great place to be a Jew, that was for sure. But neither was it overly welcoming of preppy, blond Americans whose six words of French included foie gras and clavier (piano keyboard), but not percer (to stab) or filou (pickpocket).

The one language Robbie did understand was drugs. Ogrement was fueled by heroin the same way that China was fueled by rice. It was everywhere, calling to him, tempting him like the siren call of the sea.

It's like renting a room over a kindergarten class to a newly released pedophile. God help me.

Robbie was determined to stay clean. He knew his life depended on it. But it was tough. The loneliness was grinding, soul destroying, and ever present. Not being able to communicate was the worst part.

Why did I have to "find myself" in France? Why couldn't I have gone to London, or Sydney, or some other place where they speak English?

Of course, Robbie knew the answer to that. Paris was the musicians' mecca. The Paris Conservatoire, where Bizet and Debussy had once studied, was a place of mythical significance to Robbie. The newly opened Cite de la Musique, architect Christian de Portzamparc's celebrated ampitheater, concert hall, museum of music, and workshops in La Vil-lette, the old slaughterhouse district, had a new generation of musicians and composers flocking to the city.

The best musical talent in the world came to Paris. It was the center, the hub, the beginning and the end of everything for a would-be concert pianist like Robbie.

Unfortunately, would be turned out to be the operative words. Since he had no formal training or qualifications, the conservatoire refused even to see him, never mind hear him play. Simply finding bar work proved far harder than Robbie had imagined. The problem with moving to the most exciting city in the world for classical music was that everyone else had done the same thing. Paris was crawling with hot-shit piano players, and most of them had years of experience. Robbie was an unknown Yank whom no one could understand, who'd once had a job playing blues piano in a gay bar in New Orleans for all of three weeks.

Robbie did, however, have three things going for him. Talent, determination and looks. And the greatest of these was looks.

"Pay is fifty francs an hour, plus tips. Take it or leave it."

Madame Aubrieau ("Please, call me Martine") was a fifty-two-year-old ex-hooker who wore a blond wig to cover her bald patches, weighed approximately the same as a young hippo and whose breath smelled of a combination of garlic, menthol cigarettes and Benedictine that made Robbie want to gag. She wore a low-cut, cheap red top that exposed a quivering expanse of larva-white cleavage, and when she spoke to Robbie, she stared unashamedly at his crotch.

In addition to these attributes, Madame Aubrieau owned Le Club Canard, a dive bar in the twelfth arondissement whose piano player had quit the previous week in a dispute over unpaid wages. Madame Aubrieau liked the look of the shy young American. If he took the job, she would eat him for breakfast. Afterward, she would have him eat her. It was good to be the boss.

Robbie looked at Madame Aubrieau's Jabba the Hut body and felt sick. Fifty francs an hour was not a living wage. On the other hand, his current earnings of zero francs an hour were beginning to irritate Marcel, his Ogrement landlord. Marcel was not a man Robbie wished to irritate.

"I'll take it. When do I start?"

Madame Aubrieau clamped a fat, dirty-fingernailed hand on Robbie's thigh and flashed him a toothless smile.

"Immediatement, mon chou. Suivez moi."

Robbie first laid eyes on Paolo Cozmici at the Salle Pleyel concert hall on the Rue Faubourg Saint-Honore. Cozmici was conducting the resident Orchestre de Paris. And he was magnificent.

Like every other musician in Paris, Robbie knew of Paolo Cozmici by reputation. The youngest son of a dirt-poor family from Naples, Cozmici was completely self-taught as a composer, a pianist and, most recently, a conductor. Nicknamed Le Bouledogue - "the bulldog" - by the French musical establishment, Paolo Cozmici had famously won his place as conductor of the Paris Philharmonic by storming unannounced into rehearsals for Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 5 in E Minor, seizing the baton from a bewildered Claude Dechamel and displaying the sort of instinctive virtuosity that had since made him one of the most sought-after conductors in the world.

In the front row of the glorious Art Deco concert hall, Robbie Templeton sat mesmerized. Later, he would be unable to recall the specific piece that Paolo had been conducting. All he remembered was the beauty and grace of his movements, at one with the music, swept up in the same passion that Robbie himself felt whenever he sat at a piano stool. Robbie could see nothing of Paolo but his back - an ill-fitting tuxedo jacket stretched across broad, workman's shoulders - but it didn't matter. Just watching Cozmici at work gave him a sexual charge so violent it was all Robbie could do not to jump out of his chair and storm the stage.

Afterward he waited at the stage door for hours. When Cozmici finally emerged, tired, grumpy and more than a little drunk, Robbie found to his horror that he was completely tongue-tied. Staring mutely, like an idiot, he watched as his idol began to walk away.

"Arr��tez! Monsieur Cozmici. Je vous en prie..."

"I don't do autographs," Cozmici barked. "Please, leave me alone."

"But I..."

"Yes? What?"

"I love you."

Paolo Cozmici looked at the boy properly for the first time. Even through his drunken haze, he could see that Robbie was extraordinarily attractive. On the downside, he was clearly a lunatic. A sexy lunatic was not what Paolo Cozmici needed in his life right now.

"Get away from me. Understand? Leave me alone, or I shall be forced to call the police."

The next morning, Paolo found a handwritten note in his mailbox.

"I'll be playing piano at Le Club Canard tonight. My set starts at eight P.M. I'll understand if you can't make it, but I hope you can." It was signed: "Le garcon de la nuit passee. RT."

Paolo Cozmici smiled. He had to admire the boy for his tenacity. It was what he was famed for himself.

But no, he wouldn't go. The whole thing was crazy.

Sexy lunatic would have to find someone else to harass.

Robbie peered into the gloomy half light of the club, searching for Paolo Cozmici's face.

He's not coming. I scared him off. Man, of course I scared him off. What kind of fruit loop yells "I love you" in the street to a man he's never met before? The loneliness must be getting to me.

Madame Aubrieau was becoming impatient. It was time for Robbie's set to start. Launching into Bill Evans's soulful "Waltz for Debby" followed by a passionate rendition of "My Foolish Heart," he was embarrassed to find himself fighting back tears. Jazz was not Robbie's preferred genre, but no one could deny that Bill Evans was a genius. The fact that he'd been a heroin junkie, like Robbie, dogged by addiction and self-doubt for most of his life, made the emotional connection even stronger. Robbie closed his eyes and gave himself up to the music. He thought about Lexi and his mother. He thought about home. He wondered how long he could bear to continue in this half-life in Paris, with no friends, no family, no hope.

He heard the applause dimly at first, as if waking up from a dream. He had no idea how long he'd been playing. As so often with Robbie, the music had transported him into a trance-like state where time and space dissolved. But as the cheers and clapping grew louder, he realized that the usually somnolent Canard crowd was on its feet, roaring approval, begging him for more. Robbie smiled, nodding in shy acknowledgment. As soon as he stood up, he found his hand being shaken and his back slapped by a sea of strangers, men and women alike. Some of them pressed notes into his hand.

"Incroyable."

"Absolument superbe!"

"Twenty percent of those tips go to the house," Madame Aubrieau reminded him tersely. She considered Robbie her property and disliked seeing him mobbed by other, more attractive women.

"Good evening."

Paolo Cozmici looked even shorter and squatter than he had last night, scurrying away from the stage door at the Salle Pleyel. In a crumpled suit and tie, an incipient paunch spilling over the waistband of his pants, he could easily have been a decade older than his thirty years. But none of that mattered to Robbie. He was so awestruck he could barely force the words out of his mouth.

"I didn't think you'd come."

"Nor did I. You play beautifully."

"I...thank you."

"You realize you are wasting your talent in this dump?"

Paolo glared at him aggressively, as if accusing him of some sort of crime. Robbie could see why they called him Le Bouledogue.

"I need the money. I'd love to play classical, but I have no formal training. At least, nothing that's recognized in France."

"?a ne fait rien." Paolo waved his hand in the air dismissively. "You will play for me. You will play with my orchestre. Where do you live?"

"Ogrement."

Paolo looked at him blankly.

"epinay. It's a suburb..."

For the second time in as many minutes Paolo narrowed his eyes, his face alight with disapproval.

"People with your gift do not live in the suburbs. Non. You live with me."

Paolo turned and headed for the coat check.

"Qu'est ce qu'il y a? Tu viens, ou quoi?"

"Oui." Robbie laughed aloud. Was this really happening? "Yes. Yes, I'm coming."

The next morning, Paolo introduced Robbie to the Orchestre de Paris.

"This is Robert Templeton. He is the finest pianist in Paris. He will be playing with us tomorrow night."

A sea of bewildered faces looked quizzically at Robbie.

"But, Maestro," Pierre Fremeaux, the regular piano soloist, interjected meekly. "I am supposed to be playing tomorrow."

Paolo shook his head. "Non."

"But...but..."

"It is nothing personal, Pierre. Listen to Robert play. Then you tell me which of you should be onstage tomorrow night. D'accord?"

Fifteen minutes later, Pierre Fremeaux was packing his bags.

He was good. But Robert Templeton was out of this world.

"I told you, Paolo, I don't have time for this. I'm not gonna meet some unknown friggin' jazz pianist you met in a bar just because you've got the hots for him."

Chuck Bamber was an A&R man for Sony Records. He was responsible for the label's European classical list, and it was his job to discover and sign new talent. A fat, loud Texan with a passion for T-bone steaks and drag racing, he was as out of place among the Parisian musical elite as a hooker in a nunnery. Everybody in the classical world knew that Chuck Bamber had no soul. They also knew that his commercial ear and instincts were second to none. Chuck Bamber could make or break a pianist's career with a tip of his ten-gallon hat.

Paolo Cozmici was determined to have him meet Robbie.

"You will meet with Robert, or I will walk out of my contract."

Chuck Bamber laughed. "Right, Paolo. Whatever you say."

Two days later, Don Williams, head of the legal department at Sony's classical division, phoned Chuck Bamber in a panic.

"Paolo Cozmici's agent just sent me a fax. He's quitting the label."

"Relax, Don. He's bluffing. We've already paid the guy a three-hundred-thousand-dollar advance. He can't leave without paying all that money back. It's breach of contract."

Don Williams said: "I know. They wired the funds last night."

"Cozmici? What the hell is going on?"

"I told you, Chuck. I want you to listen to Robert play. If you refuse..."

"Yeah, yeah, I know, you'll quit. You're a fucking prima donna, you know that, Paolo?"

"So you'll see Robert?"

"I'll see him. But I'm telling you, Paolo, he'd better be good. A tight fanny and a set of six-pack abs are not gonna impress me the way they impress you. If this kid ain't piano's answer to Nigel friggin' Kennedy..."

"He is, Chuck. He is."

Robert signed a two-album deal with Sony.

The combination of his talent, film-star good looks, and famous family name was every marketing department's wet dream. The only question was in which direction to take him.

"I'd like you to consider a jazz piano album," Chuck Bamber told him over champagne in his palatial office overlooking Notre Dame. "It's sexier than straight-up classical. With your face we could easily brand you as the new Harry Connick Jr."

"Non." Paolo Cozmici shook his head. "We will not do jazz." He practically spat out the word, like rotten meat.

"Jeez, Paolo. Can't you let Robert speak for himself?"

"That's okay," said Robbie. "I appreciate your offer, Mr. Bamber, really I do. But I trust Paolo's judgment. I'd rather stick to classical, if it's all the same to you."

"Eighty percent of Robert's time will be devoted to live performances."

"Paolo!" Chuck Bamber lost his temper. "Give me a small break here, okay? I need him in the studio for at least six months. He should come back to America."

"Out of the question."

"Goddammit, Cozmici. What are you, his manager?"

"No," said Paolo simply. "I am his life."

It was true.

For the next five years, as Robbie's career blossomed and he became a bona fide star, his bond with Paolo grew ever closer. They synchronized their various concert schedules to make sure they traveled together whenever possible. When apart, they were resolutely faithful, calling each other on the phone six or seven times a day. Paolo was the best friend Robbie had never had, the strong, constant father he had lost. Robbie was the breath of life in Paolo's cynical, battle-worn, middle-aged body. His elixir of youth. They adored each other.

"You're really serious? You want to go to Maine for a teenager's birthday party?"

Paolo took a sip of his coffee and instantly spat it out again. Froid. Degueulasse.

"She's not 'a teenager.' She's my sister. I love her. And you know, it's been years."

"I know, my darling. And I also know why. You know how your father feels about your lifestyle. About me."

Peter Templeton was proud of his son's success. But he had never fully come to terms with Robbie's sexuality. Now that Robbie was famous and gave interviews in which he spoke openly about his love for Paolo, Peter's disapproval had intensified.

"It's your life," he would tell Robbie grudgingly, during their increasingly rare phone calls. "I don't see why you have to be so flagrant about it, that's all."

"I love him, Dad. The same way you loved Mom. You were flagrant enough about that, weren't you?"

Peter was incensed.

"Your involvement with that man bears no comparison to my love for your mother. The fact that you think it does shows just how far off course your moral compass has drifted. I knew it was a mistake, letting you go to Paris."

Paolo had never tried to come between Robert and his family. He didn't have to. Peter's attitude, combined with Robbie's own hectic life in Europe, made the growing distance between them inevitable.

"I wouldn't be going for Dad. I'm doing this for Lexi."

"But Lexi stays with us every summer. Can't you throw her a second birthday party in Paris, after the tour?"

Robbie shook his head. He didn't expect Paolo to understand about Dark Harbor and Cedar Hill House. About what those places meant to him and to his sister. How could he? But the time was right. He had to go back. Lexi's sixteenth was as good an excuse as any.

"You're sure you won't come with me?"

Paolo shuddered. "Quite sure. Je t'aime, Robert, tu sais ca. But a Blackwell family get-together on some godforsaken American island, making small talk with your homophobic father? Non merci. You're on your own."