She placed a brown leather photo album in his lap, and then she turned away, walked into the kitchen, and poured herself a glass of white wine.
He stared at the leather as if it covered a secret door. Beyond this point, he thought, there lie monsters.
His fingers were damp. He opened the book.
On the first page, under a thin sheet of plastic, was a postcard-size picture of a movie poster. The movie was titled Carny Girls, and showed a man and woman passionately kissing against the neon blaze of a carnival’s midway. Starring Tawnee Wells, Debra Rocks, and Cyndy Funn, read the credit line.
John turned the page.
The next facsimile movie poster announced Closest Encounters. Starring Paula Angel, Heather Scott, and Debra Rocks. He turned the page again.
Wild and Wet. Starring Cheri Dane and Gina Alvarado. Special Guest Star Debra Rocks.
Another turn of the page.
Darkest Africa. Starring Debra Rocks and Black Venus.
Oh, my Lord, John thought. He felt as if his lungs were being squeezed by the weight of heaven.
Super Slick was the next poster. Starring Cheri Dane, Debra Rocks, and Easee Breeze.
There were no actual depictions of sexual acts on these posters, but the poses, challenging stares, and red-lipped pouts were provocative enough. The bodies of the women were sleek and tanned, their faces and hair perfect. But there was something robotic about their expressions, as if they were staring at their own reflections instead of a camera lens, and mesmerized by what they saw. Even the face of Debra Rocks had that same blankness about it, a scrubbed sensual nothingness.
Cox Fox was on the following page. Starring Raven Xaviera and Debra Rocks.
His heart stuttered. Debra Rocks—Debbie Stoner—had just walked into the room and stood beside his chair. He dared not look up at her. He kept turning pages: She’s Willing; Acapulco Gold; Sweet Wet Honey; California Surfer Girls…
“You…must be very tired by now,” John said, his voice like the sound of air through a dry husk.
“I won’t do more than three guys at the same time,” she said quietly, as if reciting the terms of a contract from memory. “I won’t do bondage, or S-and-M. I won’t do animal acts, gangbangs, golden showers, or chocolate drops. I won’t do enemas or bi-threeways or TV-threeways. I like to have location control too. No greasy garages or woods. I’m real allergic to ragweed and poison oak.”
He came to the last poster, after what seemed like twenty-five or thirty of them: Animal Heat.
“That’s my new one. It just opened on the strip.”
He closed the book, and he sat there unable to say a word.
Her hands—oh, Lord, where had those beautiful hands been?—came down and took the book from his lap. He heard her walk back to her bedroom. Heard a closet door open and close. He felt lifeless, a puppet with broken strings.
“So what would you like for dinner?” she asked momentarily. There was just a hint of a nervous edge in her voice. “Ham or turkey?”
He stood up. It was time, now, for him to cast off his disguise as well.
But when he turned toward her he saw her not as a porno actress, a sex queen, a girl who survived by selling glimpses of false lust to unworthy strangers. Maybe he wanted to see her that way, so he could turn his back on her once and for all and grasp heaven’s ladder again for his torturous climb out of the basement. Maybe he did…but he could not.
He saw Debbie Stoner standing there, ponytailed and weary-looking. And there was fear in her eyes too; a sharp, awful glint of it.
“You’re gonna stay for dinner, aren’t you, Lucky?” she asked.
I love you, he thought. Oh, dear God… I love you.
“Ham,” he said. “That would be fine.”
She quickly turned away and took the dinners out of the freezer.
“Some guys might make a big deal out of it,” Debbie said as they sat at the kitchen table and ate their food. She’d lit candles, and the air was scented with vanilla. “You know. What I showed and told you.” Lucky hadn’t spoken much since he’d found out. She wasn’t sure he was all with her any longer, but at least most of him was still here. “I mean…it’s a job. Like anything else. Only…” She shrugged. “There’s not much of anything else I can do real well.” She ate a few more bites. “About the Mile-High Club,” Debbie ventured. “She goes a little crazy when the spotlight gets on her.”
“Her?” He looked up from the tasteless ham. “Who?”
“Debra Rocks. My actress self. See…sometimes I kind of feel like I can turn her off and on, like a switch in my brain. When the director says ‘Action,’ you’ve got to be right there, ready to go, because time’s money and…well…” Another shrug. “I’m a star.”
“How did you…” He stopped, altered his voice a little so the question wouldn’t sound so accusatory. “How’d you set into acting?”
“First off, I like sex. I mean, not twenty times a day like you might think. But it’s okay. I’d better like it, huh?”
He couldn’t suppress a quick smile.
“There you go! A smile makes you handsome.” She stared at the side of his head. “You’ve got nice lobes.”
“Pardon me?”
“Nice earlobes. They’re sexy. You need to have a pierced ear. I can do it for you, if you want.”
“No, I don’t think so.” That would be all the monsignor would need to see.
“How’d I get into acting?” she repeated, returning to his question after her brief avoidance of it. “I always liked attention, I guess. I thrived on it. I used to be a majorette. De Ridder High School. When I got out there and twirled, I could hear how quiet people got. Especially the guys. I knew I had a good body. Well, I wasn’t too pretty otherwise.”
“I can’t believe that,” John said. “I think you’re beautiful.”
“Nose job. Plus my hair was short and I didn’t wear it so good. Plus I had a lot of baby fat, but still I had a nice body. When you crave attention like I did, you do stupid things.” She stuck her fork into her ham a few times. “I had to get married when I was seventeen. I had two miscarriages.” She was silent for a moment. “He knocked me around some. Busted my nose and three ribs. Bastard was a truck driver. He went out on the road just before Christmas, high on coke and drunk too. Skidded across the interstate and went through the guardrail. Scratch one truck driver. Then all of a sudden I was a bad girl.”
“What about your parents?”
“I lived with my ma and grandmomma. My dad didn’t come around, and my ma…well, she kinda craved attention too. She still lives there, but I guess she’s older now. I went back home for my grandmomma’s funeral, but nobody recognized me. I just stayed one day.” She pushed the aluminum tray aside. “I loved my grandmomma. She was good to me. She’d say, ‘Debbie, you better stop readin’ them movie magazines! You don’t want to wind up in California, no ma’am!’ But… I always thought California was a place where it was easy to be loved. You know? Everybody in California was always smilin’ and dressed up so nice, and they all looked like they had money and lots of friends.” She took a quick sip of wine. “I was wrong.”
“Not everybody can be a star,” John said.
Debbie laughed, and there was some bitterness in it. “Try tellin’ that to a nineteen-year-old Louisiana girl standin’ in a bus station with ten dollars in her purse. I mean… I am a star!” she said, catching herself. Then her eyes hazed over again. “I could dance. Couldn’t sing worth a shit, though. And I had the country-girl look. You know? I swear to God, I got out of a lot of scrapes by the skin of my teeth. But then…bein’ wild got to be excitin’. And gettin’ paid for it too? Not a whole lot, but still…” She shook her head. “It’s a crazy world.”
“Do you send any money to your mother?” John asked.
“Fuck, no!” she said with a snort. “She’d just drink it up! And not Gallo white wine, either! She goes for the rotgut!” Debbie looked into Lucky’s eyes. There was some pain in them;
why was that? “How old do you think I am?”
He was reluctant to say, and he shook his head.
“Twenty-six. I’ll be twenty-seven next month. That’s old for this business. Younger ones ride the buses in every day. They start them off at eighteen, but those girls are just like me: by the time you fuck for a camera, there’s nothin’ you haven’t done.” She played with the stem of her wineglass. “Sometimes I feel real old, like old inside. You get old and start puttin’ on weight, they pair you up to scabs and the action gets rough. That’s why I’ve got to get this part down in L.A. on Thursday. I’ve got to.” Her eyes blazed with determination.
“Joey Sinclair told me about the audition,” John admitted. “He told me about…the work you do, too.”
That threw her for a loop. “You mean…you already knew about me? Uncle Joey told you?”
“Yes. Not in detail. Just that the audition is important to you.”
She didn’t know whether to be angry at him, for saying he’d never heard of Debra Rocks before and making her spill her guts, or pleased that he had waited for her. She chose the second. “Then you’re gonna go to L.A. with me? To bring me good luck?”
“I’ll go with you. I don’t know about the luck.”
“Great!” She clasped his hand excitedly. “If you’re with me, I’ll get the part! I know I will!”
He saw it then, and he understood it. That’s what this was all about; Debbie thought he was lucky for her, and his presence would somehow assure that she got the role in a legitimate production.
“Would you like to take a bath?” she asked him.
“Uh…” His gears were stripped again. “Uh… I don’t…”
“It’s a nice big bathtub. Come on, I’ll show you.” Debbie stood up, still clasping his hand, and pulled him to his feet. John resisted just a little bit, but not very much.
It was an old claw-footed white tub. She turned on the hot water and poured in some bubblebath for him that had the cinammony-perfume smell he remembered. The bubbles boiled up, white and frothy, under the flow of steamy water. She rubbed his tense shoulders. “You’re just full of kinks, aren’t you? Go ahead and get in, a good bath’ll do you wonders.”
“I’d better not.” He watched the water stream in. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d relaxed in a bathtub; his apartment’s bathroom was large enough for only a shower stall.
Debbie reached in and swirled the water, making the bubbles plump up. “I’m gonna go wash the wineglasses out. Go ahead, enjoy.” She kissed his cheek, her fingers caressing his chin; then she left him alone and closed the door. Alone, that is, except for Unicorn; the crab sat in a big detergent box full of sand over in the corner.
John sighed with relief. She wanted him to bathe by himself. Well, maybe that would be all right. Still, her touch and the idea of this bath had made his crotch stiffen and pound again. The smell was maddening, and deep down he relished the thought of wallowing in her scent. Steam welled into his face. He pulled his sweater off. Stop it! he told himself. He began to unbutton his shirt. No! You can’t! He shrugged his shirt off. The lathery bubbles had boiled up in waves. He unbuckled his belt, and he knew he had crossed the line.
He slipped into the hot water and winced as it embraced his testicles. He laid his head back against the porcelain, felt his muscles untense, smelled steam and cinammon.
In another moment the door opened, and she came in, nude.
He sat bolt upright, sloshing water out. Debbie had undone her hair, and it had fallen loosely around her shoulders. She had an all-over tan, and her body was magnificent. She was holding a straight razor and a can of Foamy. “I want to shave you,” she said.
“No!” he shouted. “For God’s sake, no!”
“You need a shave,” she said, somewhat taken aback. “I felt your beard when I kissed you.”
“Huh? Oh. That beard.” He touched the fine blond grizzle on his chin; he must’ve forgotten to shave this morning. His schedule was off, and his habits gone awry.
“You’re crazy,” Debbie said, and stepped into the water facing him.
14
SHE SAT DOWN STRADDLING his lap, her smooth thighs pressed up against his sides. “I’m not gonna bite you,” she said, because Lucky looked as if he were about to leap up to the ceiling and cling there like a cat. “You are shy, aren’t you?” She shook up the can and squirted a gout of lather into her palm. “Well, that’s really refreshin’.” Slowly, with tender attention, she began to smear the lather over his cheeks, chin, and throat. “Don’t worry,” she told him when he flinched again. “I used to be a barber. No foolin’. That was one of the jobs I had in L.A.” She leaned forward slightly, the razor ready, and her breasts brushed the hair on his chest. He dared not move, even as her breasts pressed against him, because she began shaving the left side of his face with long, slow strokes.
“You married, Lucky?” she asked him as she worked on his upper lip.
“No,” he said carefully.
“Got a girlfriend?”
“No.” He saw her look at him strangely. “I mean… I used to. What I mean is…we might be breaking up soon.”
“I figured you had to have a girlfriend. If you’re not gay, and you’re not bisexual, and I know you’re not neuter, then you had to have a girlfriend.” She focused on his chin and gently shifted her position. Her body was slick with bubblebath. “Is she pretty?”
“Who?”
“Your girlfriend. Man, you’ve got a concentration problem! Hold still, now.”
He did, as best he could. The razor slid over his throat like a feather. “Yes,” he said. “Very pretty.”
“What does she look like?”
“She…kind of looks like you,” he said.
The razor stopped. “You’re so sweet,” Debbie told him, looking into his eyes. “I swear to God, how come I never met anybody like you before?”
“I guess…we don’t move in the same circles.”
She started shaving the right side of his face, smoothly, slowly. “Well, we’ve hooked up now. Better late than never, huh? Believe it.”
He concentrated on staring at her eyes, shutting away the damp heat of her breasts against his chest and the firm pressure of her thighs on either side of him. The fire was still down in her eyes, but it was on a low bum now. Debra Rocks was sleeping.
Debbie finished the shave and washed the blade off in the bubbly water. Then she put the razor up beside the sink and slipped her arms around Lucky’s neck. “You can fuck me now,” she said softly.
“Please…don’t use that word.”
She frowned slightly. “What word?”
“You know. That word.”
“Oh. You mean fu—” He put a finger to her lips, and she kissed it. “Okay. Just for you I won’t, Mr. Shy.” Her hand slipped down through the suds to his crotch. And lingered there.
She blinked slowly, staring at him. “Tell me one thing: why do you still have your underwear on?”
“I think bathtime’s over,” John said, and he worked loose from her and got out, the water streaming from his soaked Jockey shorts. He grasped a towel and wrapped it around himself.
“Wait a minute. Hold on.” She lifted a finger, as if trying to mark a sentence in the air where things had slipped out of her control. “Are you turnin’ me down?”
“No. I’m just…” Think fast! “Like I said, I haven’t broken up with my girlfriend yet.”
“Wait. Just wait. You’re sayin’ you’re not gonna fu…not gonna be with me because of your other girlfriend?”
“That’s right.” He scooped up his jeans and got into them, wet Jockeys and all. He tried as best as he could to keep his eyes averted from her body.
Debbie laughed and smacked the water with her palm. “You are weird! I’m offerin’ to you on a platter what a thousand guys would die to have, and you say no! Man, I was right! You’re not from this world!”
“I’m not a thousand guys,” he said, putting on his shi
rt. “I’m me.”
“I thought you said I was beautiful.”
“You are. But…” He pulled on his sweater. “This isn’t right.”
“Who says?” Her voice had taken on a hint of acid.
“You told me you were hurting when you came in from…uh…your work today. So the only reason you want me to make love to you is that you want to make sure I’ll be back on Thursday.” He saw her face tighten as he hit the truth nerve. “I told you I’d go with you to Los Angeles, and I will. Trust me.”
She was silent for a moment, and then she also got out of the tub. John handed her a towel, which she wrapped around her body as gracefully as if it were yet another piece of sexy clothing. “Sorry,” she said quietly. “Debra almost got out.” She watched as he sat on the edge of the tub to put on his socks and sneakers. “I’ve never met anybody like you before. You know what I want. What do you want?”
The question was as blunt as a baseball bat, and it swung hard against John’s brain. “I don’t know,” he admitted, and that was the truth too. He laced up his sneakers. “I think I’d better go now. Thanks for the dinner. And the shave too.” He touched his smooth chin.
Debbie followed him to the apartment’s door. “Listen…you can at least leave me your telephone number, can’t you? If…like… I wanted to call you?”
John hesitated. He had his own private line, of course, but there was another problem to consider: if Debbie heard his voice without seeing his face, might she remember the voice of a priest in a confessional? “I move around a lot,” he said lamely. “I’m hardly ever at home.”
“Okay.” Again there was a spark of pain in her eyes; she wasn’t used to being rejected by a man, and it hurt like hell. “Then you take my phone number and you call me whenever you…like…get the urge.” She went to a desk, opened a drawer, brought out a little card, and gave it to him. On it was printed simply D. STONER and a telephone number. He tucked the card into his jeans pocket.
She caught his arm as he started through the door. “Lucky? You do…like me a little bit, don’t you?”