Morgana's Gift

Chapter Five - Friday I'm In Love

For the next few weeks, Kevin simply went about his new life as best he could, trying to think of everything as normal when it was anything but. It hadn't been all that long ago that he'd been two bad weeks away from his life imploding. But since Morgana's gift had fallen into his lap, his life was a polar reversal of what he'd felt like it was before. He kept waiting for the other shoe to drop, and yet it seemed more and more likely it wasn't going to.

He'd split his time between making sure the studio was in working condition and getting the score done for Emily Rouchard's upcoming film, although Elizabeth informed him that he was going to need to attend some of the reshoots in a week's time. After that, he would give Emily a show of what he'd been working on overlaid on her footage, so she could get a feeling of how all the scenes were coming together. She'd loved the "Mind Heist" track and told him that not only was she going to insist it be the end crawl for the film, she wanted to put it out as a single as well, and do the full promotion behind it. She even wanted him to use the Truth Knife name for the track itself, something he was still giving serious consideration to. He

did

own the name, and Kerry had played on the track, so it wasn't truly a complete solo piece, but he wondered if the members of the band he'd kicked out would come crawling for a piece of the action. Elizabeth assured him it wouldn't be a problem, but he still wanted to take some time to think about it, something Emily told him he could naturally have.

Kevin was proud of his work, more confident now more than ever that the path of movie composer was a great fit for him, something that certainly made Elizabeth more at ease, as she was already starting to book him for more projects. In addition to the movie stuff, she also had a stack of twelve demo CDs he needed to listen to, a chance for him to decide which band he was going to be producing first, in between composing gigs. He'd asked her why it was so many options, and Elizabeth reiterated, as she often did, that he needed to make his own decisions in these matters, and where he saw potential, she might have accidentally overlooked it. She'd done an initial screening and thrown out all the duds and bad style matches, and had whittled it down to those twelve.

Ashley was getting more involved in her classes, something that Kevin actually found relaxing, and it made their encounters more intense, more meaningful, the distance acting as a bonding agent rather than pushing them apart.

Insisting that Natalie continue teaching her classes had also helped with that, as absence was indeed making the heart grow fonder.

Elizabeth always seemed to be around when he realized he needed something, but busy when he was just spinning his wheels, so he couldn't use her as a distraction for when he should be working.

And Miriam, it turned out, had two modes - working in public and relaxing in private. The two couldn't be much further apart than they already were. Whenever they were out in public, she was all business, no sign of their personal and sexual relationship, but when they were back in the relative security of the house, she opened up and warmed up significantly.

The press had tried on the idea that he was screwing Alice Karteaux, claiming it was how he had landed the gig, but Emily herself had gone on record saying that Hans Zimmer simply was taking the project in a different direction than what she wanted, and cited that old Hollywood chestnut - creative differences, although it was clear she meant it. Once the director had made it repeatedly clear that the decision was hers and hers alone, the story had almost died overnight.

He'd also gone and had his first couple of preliminary meetings with Robert Rodriguez about the "One Desperate Man" project he was lined up for next, and the conversations had gone remarkably well, with the two of them even spending some time jamming out together on a pair of acoustic guitars, something Rodriguez's assistant had filmed for eventual inclusion in the behind the scenes for the movie later on. They were talking about Pedro Pascal for the lead, and while the deal wasn't set in stone yet, Rob seemed to think it was only a day or two before the ink was drying on the contracts.

It had been rather a remarkable couple of weeks, and his second meeting with Rodriguez had ended at 6:30 on a Friday night, something that Kevin groaned about, as it meant Miriam would be driving him back to the house through LA's legendarily horrible Friday night traffic, but instead of heading up to the house in the hills, he noticed Miriam had taken the car southward.

"Aren't we heading back to the house?" he asked her.

"Negative, sir," Miriam said to him, her tone professional and in control. "You have a dinner appointment tonight that Miss Elizabeth told me about, so I'm making sure you get to that."

Kevin's face scrunched up in confusion. "I don't remember her telling me anything about it."

"I'm sure it just slipped her mind, sir."

"Do you know what it's

about

or who it's

with

?"

"I'm sure I don't know, sir."

Kevin harumphed, even if he was a little amused by the whole thing. "Some help you are. How the hell am I even going to know who I'm meeting?"

"You have a table reserved for you at Moonshadows, sir, so I supposed you'll find out when you sit down to eat," Miriam said. Kevin thought he saw a flicker of a smile on her face, but decided he must have been imagining it, because Miriam wasn't one for letting her guard down. "It's a 7:30 dinner, sir, and by the time it's done, I'm certain we'll have a much easier time coming back up the house, as traffic will have died down."

"Traffic doesn't die down until Saturday morning, Miriam," he grumbled. "You've been in Los Angeles long enough now that you should know that."

"Yes sir, sorry sir."

She certainly didn't

sound

sorry.

As the call pulled up to the parking lot of Moonshadows, Kevin was surprised to see it nearly empty, an impossibility on a Friday night. The place was one of the most popular restaurants in Malibu, and was always packed with customers. Miriam pulled the car up to the front of the place, as a doorman moved to open Kevin's door for him.

"Don't worry, Kev. You can go in safely. I'll just park the car and meet you inside in a little bit. The person you're meeting with, her security's already swept the place."

"Her?" Kevin said, starting to get out of the car. "I thought you said you didn't know who I was meeting with..."

"Mmm. I did say that. Be in in a few, sir."

The valet closed the car door, and Kevin could swear he heard Miriam laughing inside as she drove the car over to the parking lot herself. "This way, sir?"

Kevin followed the man up the stairs and to the front doors of the building, as the valet held them open for him, the maitre dee waiting inside for him with a giant smile on his face. "Ah, Mister Bishop. Perfectly on time, as expected. Your companion is waiting for you at your table out on the terrace, where you will have the best possible view of the ocean while you dine."

He chuckled, feeling more than a little under dressed for the fancy restaurant, wearing a Cure t-shirt and long black jeans, but if the staff wasn't going to say anything about it, he wasn't either. "Did you happen to catch her name?"

The man laughed a little nervously. "Mister Bishop, you truly are as funny as they said you would be. This way, please." Inside of the restaurant, there was only one table with place settings, a small circular table with two plates, apparently for whenever it got too cold outside to continue eating. He tapped the man, making him stop walking. "Yes sir?"

"Please set up another table so that my bodyguard and my companion's security detail can also have dinner. Whatever they want to eat, you can add to my tab."

He looked a little caught off guard and then shrugged. "Your companion is picking up the tab for dinner tonight, but if you wish us to cater to your staff, it would of course be a great honor for us. Once you're seated, I'll see to it."

They moved across the unnaturally empty room and over to the balcony terrace along the side of the building facing the ocean, where he could see a single woman seated at a table. As he approached her, he felt like he was expected to recognize her, but truth be told, he truly didn't.

She was dressed in a very expensive looking dress that was high cut at the top and low cut at the bottom, but with a long daring slit from the collarbone down to her naval, and matching daring slits from the ankles up almost to her hips. She was of Indian heritage, if he had to hazard a guess, her hair onyx black and her skin a coffee brown. Her brown eyes were covered by large octagonal shaped glasses that looked both trendy and still somehow perfectly matched her face. She was unlike anyone Kevin had ever had in his life before, and she was stunningly beautiful.

"So are you this mysterious appointment I have that somehow made its way onto my calendar without me knowing about it?" she said to him, her voice utterly dripping with a London accent. "They said I was likely to recognize you on sight, but I am afraid I simply don't."

"They told me the same thing, but I'm afraid I don't recognize you either," he said to her as she stood up, offering her hand for him to shake. He brought it to his lips to kiss instead. It was an utter cheeseball move, but he just couldn't help himself. "Kevin Bishop, musician, composer and general gentleman rogue, I suppose."

"Fatima Davies," she said, a tiny whisper of a smile crossing her lips when he kissed her hand. "But I'm sure you knew that already, and were just being courteous."

"Nope," he laughed, moving to sit down in the chair opposite her. "I honestly, genuinely have no idea who you are."

Fatima openly grinned at that, craning her head to one side, as if she didn't believe him. "No! Really?"

"Really," he said, grabbing the water glass, taking a sip from it. "Should I?"

"I was on Fortune's Thirty Under Thirty list for the last two years straight."

"Oh!" he said, nodding like it meant something to him. "Well done? I guess?"

She relaxed a little, as if suddenly she felt like she didn't have to put on an act any more. "You truly haven't the foggiest who I am?"

"You know what could fix that," he said with a laugh. "You could

tell

me who you are, and then I might know what the Fortune Thirty Under Thirty even is."

She began to laugh, shaking her head wildly. "Fuck no! We are going to have dinner like two regular normal people on a blind date, and we are not going to talk about my work until the very end of the evening, if at all. You hear me?"

He winked a little bit. "You're tempting me with a mystery you're dangling before me, and challenging me to be patient and allow things to unfold? Very well, Miss Davies, I can play your cunning game and allow you to work your feminine wiles upon my unwitting innocence."

"If you're innocent, I'm a slaggy wag from Cheshire," she cackled.

"I'm going to assume those words mean something to someone from the UK, but it's all just strange sounds to me," he said. "So, we're thinking our assistants set this up as a blind date, are we?"

"It's certainly well in line with the kinds of things my assistant might do," she said with a nod. "Yours? Sound like it's in her wheelhouse?"

"Sounds like it's the sort of thing she'd build a summer cottage around. But she's got my best interests at heart, so I shouldn't be too harsh."

For the next few hours, Kevin had what could only be described as his first real date in half a decade, as he spent time learning as much as could about Fatima without brushing her career. Her mother was from India, her father from London. She had a home there as well as one in LA, and claimed dual citizenship about five years back. And whatever it was she did for a living, it kept her mercilessly busy.

Fatima spent as much time as she could changing the subject from herself to him. She'd never heard of Truth Knife, and while she'd heard of Alice Karteaux, she seemed a bit unimpressed by Kevin's reveal that he was scoring her next movie, although the more they talked, he decided it wasn't that she was being dismissive, but more that she was interested in him without his career coming into it, as if it was a safety valve to prevent her from talking about her own.

There was an immediate spark of attraction, at least on his part, and he found that within the span of a couple of hours, they were already comfortable enough with each other to finish each other's sentences every now and then.

While she didn't seem to care all that much about his more recent time composing, after his first story about some of the nightmares of touring, it was practically all she wanted him to talk about, as if the life of a C-list rock star was the most fascinating thing she could hear about.

She confessed that ever since she had arrived in the States, first to attend university then later to live, she'd wanted to simply rent a car and drive from one ocean to the other, seeing as much of the country in the middle as she could. He told her that he'd done that drive, and while there were so many parts of it that were majestic and should not be missed, there was often a whole lot of dull nothing in between them. She said to him that if he went with her, she thought it wouldn't dare be a boring trip.

They'd gone through an appetizer and the main course before Kevin even noticed that Miriam was sitting at a table inside across from a rather large muscular black man dressed in a very expensive suit, while a white guy in a matching suit stood by the main door of the restaurant. Miriam raised a glass of red wine in salute to him, smiling his way, so he raised a glass of water back at her.

The waiter told them that they were working on the dessert, if they wanted to move their meal inside, at which point Kevin noticed the time, and that it was nearly ten o'clock. He and Fatima had been talking and laughing for hours, and the time had just blinked away.

When the two of them walked inside, the speakers inside the restaurant played a familiar little drum fill before a bouncy guitar riff cut through the tension of the air. "Would you like to dance?" he asked her, as she seemed to recognize the sound of The Cure's "Inbetween Days," an uptempo number far too fast to slow dance to, and yet not so fast enough to lose yourself in it.

She giggled, and the two of them started to wiggle their bodies and throw their arms around in shapes as the song's delightful chugging rhythm carried them along, moving together and apart again and again, as he clearly mouthed the lyrics and she started to doing the same.

"Come back come back come back to me..."

It was only a three minute song, so before they knew it, the song had climaxed and faded, as Miriam and the two other security guards clapped at them. Fatima blew a raspberry at them before she started laughing all over again, heading over to their table inside the restaurant, where two decadent chocolate lava cakes awaited them.

"God, this was

so

much fun," Fatima told him, digging into the lava cake. "I think my assistant's always been trying to set me up with real estate moguls and tech bros and movie stars, like I'm going to be fucking impressed by any of that lot, you know?" The more the evening had gone on, the more the ice queen demeanor had melted away to be replaced by the kind of girl he'd always expected to run into in any old London pub on a Friday night. "I could tell you who I am, and I bet you couldn't be bothered to give a damn."

"You could tell me and find out, I suppose," Kevin told her in between bites of the decadent chocolate. "I mean, I've been patient and haven't asked. The mystery is intriguing, but so many times when you know the magician's tricks, it loses some of the luster."

"Oh dear," she said in mock distress. "I certainly hope that won't happen to me. But I can't dance around it all night, I suppose. My father is Glenn Davies."

"Ah, I see, that explains everything," he lied. "The infamous Glenn Davies." He nodded. "Shipping magnate?" he guessed.

"Prick!" she cackled in amusement before she paused, looked at him again, as he shrugged at her, and she only laughed harder. "Omigawd, babes, you really don't know who he is, do you?"

He nodded with a smile. "I'm afraid I really don't know who Glenn Davies is."

"English footballer? Helped them win the World Cup back in 1966? I'm his youngest daughter."

"I don't really follow sports, I'm afraid," he told her with a sort of embarrassed smile. "I'm guessing by the name 'World Cup' it's a big tournament?"

She rolled her eyes, almost mind blown by his lack of knowledge regarding football. "Yes, dear, the biggest one in the world. That's why they call it the World Cup."

He shrugged a little bit, a wry smile on his face. "I know that baseball has the World Series, but you know which country's won that every year since it started? Shocking. So sometimes names aren't something events live up to."

"Yes, well, people seem to think that since I'm the daughter of football royalty that I'm going to have a deep interest in the game, when I really couldn't care less. He founded an athletic apparel company after he retired from football, and I think he always intended one of my older brothers or sisters to inherit it, but none of them seemed to make any good business decisions in their test runs at the company, whereas my first idea expanded our market nearly 50%."

"Oh yeah?" Kevin asked. "What was your idea?"

"I convinced Father to add sports bras to the company's lineup," she said confidently. "There'd been a sort of ingrained sexism in the company since it was founded, that only boys needed athletic gear, and when I told him that we should at least try testing the waters with gear for girls, I think everyone expected me to fall flat on my arse, but it was an overnight success, and now I'm in line to eventually take over the company. GDGear is one of the top five companies making athletic wear these days, and Dad's already turned down at least a couple of offers from UnderArmor to merge, so that should tell you something."

"It tells me that you're willing to stand up to your father and all the rest of the idiots at the company, and that's a very admirable and sexy trait," he told her. "I have to admit, though, I'm surprised a former footballer is that well known here in the States, even with having won the World Cup. '66 was quite a long time ago."

She reached across the table and playfully slapped him on the arm. "Yes, well, like I said, I'm the youngest of nine children, born in 1989, and Dad was 45 when I was born. Besides, most people know him these days from the telly rather than his footie days."

"Your dad's on television?" Kevin asked, finishing up the last of his lava cake. He hadn't meant it to be a gotcha question - he was just making conversation, but it seemed like the very tone of it confused her.

She looked at him in a combination of delight, surprise and awe. "You genuinely don't know, do you? How is it possible you live in Hollywood and have literally no idea about me or my family?"

Kevin shrugged a little. "One thing I've noticed having lived out here for a while - everyone always seems to think their reach is much bigger and broader than it is, because we all sort of live in an echo chamber. For a while, everyone I met was talking about how much they loved my old band, but at the end of the day, I know what the record sales were like. I remember what the turnouts for the shows were like. I have a much better idea of what the band's

actual

reach was, and barring some lucky breaks here and there, we were never even close to successful. We were a critic's darling band at best. But if I believed the hype of everyone around me, you'd think we were the next Rolling Stones, cut off before being allowed to mature to our prime. So I try not to buy into the bullshit people are selling. When someone says they're a fan of my music, I always just ask them which song is their favorite. If they can't list the title of even a single song, I know it's all for show. So I don't try and feed anyone's ego, and I never lie and say I'm familiar with shit that I'm not. The whole city could use with a bit of ego deflation if you ask me."