November 22, 2005
Fiction
Comeback
The big shindig was at Bruce Glasser’s house in Tarzana, the only part of the Valley I don’t consider a shithole. It’s the same house where we shot a lot of my movies when it belonged to Ricky Samson, owner of Luscious Video back in the Eighties. The Virgin High series had turned Bruce into one of the biggest adult film producers in the country, making him rich enough to buy it when Ricky died from screwing the wrong junkie. (Ricky always liked it bareback, and everyone knew it would get him in trouble one day, either dead or a daddy.) It was weird being there for a party instead of a shoot. I kept expecting the doorbell to ring and the late, great Johnny Calzone to come in dressed like that fucking pizza delivery boy from Who Ordered Sausage? I still can’t believe that’s the role that got him famous. Though I guess I’m still best known for playing a high school girl who fucks her gym teacher on the parallel bars, so maybe I shouldn’t talk.
Bruce only invited me to the party because he was giving me a role in his newest film, mostly out of pity, I suppose, but I wasn’t about to say no. It’s hard being a former starlet who’s crossed to the other side of forty. Everyone thinks you’re too ancient to be in their movies anymore, or you’re only good for the granny porn sites, so I’d mostly been doing dub work on Japanese anime, the ones where girls get fucked by demons or whatever. The money’s all right, but the job’s kind of limiting. There are only so many ways to make that surprised gasping noise when the tentacles come out of nowhere and Little Miss Wide Eyes gets one in every hole.
I felt like a visitor from another planet standing there in Bruce’s crowded living room. Everyone knew everyone else, they all had their arms around each other and were laughing at private jokes, but I didn’t recognize anyone. A whole new generation of filmmakers had sprung up since the last time I was there. I guess I’d expected to sign at least a few cocktail napkins — Stay tight! Love, Amber Fox, just like in the old days when everyone asked me to sign video boxes — but no one seemed to remember me, or if they did, they didn’t give a shit. I was just some old lady to them, not worth their attention when there were so many young hotties in the room.
I flashed for a moment on Jay, my ex-boyfriend, the night he packed his bags and took off, our two-year relationship dead all of a sudden because he’d found someone else. Someone younger. Standing at my door, confused and hurt, I caught a glimpse of her as Jay tossed his suitcases in the back of his Ford Expedition. Just a slim, tanned arm poking out of the passenger’s side window, the tattoo of a daisy on her shoulder, her fingers decorated with silver rings. Not a wrinkle or an ounce of fat on that arm, just the smooth, golden skin of a twenty-something beach bunny. Inside the car, the round tip of a cigarette glowed, briefly revealing an orange-tinted hint of a button nose and curly hair before it faded.
A high-pitched squeal pulled me out of my memories. “Amber?” A girl I’d never seen before ran up to me. She was a skinny, tiny thing with big blonde hair, tight bellbottom jeans and a cropped t-shirt that barely covered her melon chest. She didn’t look more than eighteen.
“The one and only,” I said, perking up a bit. It’s an old joke. Half the women in the biz call themselves Amber.
“Oh my God!” she shrieked, giving me a peek at the metal stud through her tongue. “Amber Fox, I can’t believe it!”
“In the flesh,” I said. I was relieved someone had finally recognized me, even if she was probably one of the younger stars I’d been losing roles to for the past six years. I tried not to look at how toned and tight her stomach was, but the glittery string of diamonds dangling from her pierced bellybutton kept drawing my eye back. I felt like a whale all of a sudden, so I sucked in my gut and made a mental note to avoid the hors d’oeuvres table for the rest of the night.
“You have no idea how big a fan I am!” she cried, her eyes wide and crazy-looking.
“You’ll just have to tell me then,” I said, laughing my party laugh. Behind her, someone spread lines of coke on the coffee table. Suddenly it felt like no time had passed — it was still 1986 and I was the hottest adult film actress this side of Seka.
“I’m Krystal Lynn,” she said, extending one remarkably tiny hand. Her nails, though, were enormous and had green dollar signs stenciled onto the white polish. I winced in sympathy for any guy unlucky enough to get a handjob from her. “Maybe you saw me in Ready, Willing and Anal 5? I won an AVN Award for that. Best Ass to Mouth.”
“Congratulations,” I said, shaking her hand. “I have an AVN myself.”
“I know, Lifetime Achievement!” Krystal squealed. “I know, like, everything about you. You’re my hero. You’re totally why I got into the business.”
I grinned. “Really?”
“Totally! My father had, like, all your videos. I found them under the sink in his bathroom, and this one time when he was out of town I invited over all my friends from school and we had an Amber Fox marathon. You were so cool.”
Her father? She might as well have stabbed me in the heart. Sometimes I forget how long ago the Eighties were.
She turned around and shouted into the crowd, “Hey, Terry, get your ass over here! You gotta meet someone!” A tall, chunky man closer to my age than hers, with a fuzzy handlebar mustache, a ponytail sticking out the back of his trucker cap, and a big blue knapsack slung over one shoulder, made his way over to us. “This is Amber Fox.”
“Yeah?” he said. Not hi, not pleased to meet you, just yeah. “Terry Left. I own Sunset Auto Parts.” He said it like I ought to be impressed, then shook my hand with an overly strong grip. I knew his type immediately: the small-time, loud-mouth loser who’d managed to catch a hot, young pornstar girlfriend with daddy issues and thought it made him big shit. I knew the type because that was every boyfriend I’d ever had. They drove me crazy, but sometimes you need to come home to someone who still wants to be with you after you bitch about how a costar got jizz in your eye when he came on your face.
Every boyfriend except Jay, that is. He was the only one I ever really cared about. But he’d been disappointing in a different way. Like the car enthusiast he was, he couldn’t resist trading in his old ride for a shiny new one.
“You remember those Virgin High videos I told you about?” Krystal asked Terry.
“What, with the chick on the balance beam?”
“Parallel bars,” I said.
“This is her!”
“No shit,” Terry said. He put his arm around Krystal’s shoulders and crushed her to him. “I bet you could fuck on the balance beam no problem, right, baby? Maybe you should do a remake.”
I kept the smile on my face, but inside I cringed. There’s a superstition in movies, in all entertainment probably, that once an idea is put out there, even as a joke, it will inevitably become a reality, as if somebody could pluck it right out of the air. If a remake of Virgin High happened with some new starlet in my signature role, I would personally hunt Terry down and kill him for bringing it up. Not that I’m a superstitious woman, but Virgin High was all the cred I had left.
“You still got that marker in your bag, hon?” Krystal asked. Terry swung the knapsack off his shoulder, rummaged through it and pulled out a black Sharpie. She snatched it out of his hand and put it in mine. “Do you mind?”
“No, sure, do you have something for me to sign?”
I expected her to produce a cocktail napkin or even one of her father’s old video boxes, but instead she lifted her t-shirt up to her neck with both hands. “To Krystal,” she said, “with a K.”
Her breasts were enormous, way out of proportion with her tiny body. I was afraid the Sharpie might accidentally pop her implant when I pressed it to her left breast, but the opposite happened. As the felt tip of the marker squeaked over the skin just above her stretched nipple, it didn’t even indent the flesh. I’ve signed a lot of tits in my time, but I’d never seen anything like that. It was like writing on a bowling ball. She should sue her plastic surgeon.
“Get the camera,” she told Terry. He nodded and pulled out a sleek, silver digital number. “Can I get a shot of this?” she asked me.
“Sure,” I said, “but I finished signing my name.”
“Pretend you’re still writing.”
I held my hand over her breast, keeping the Sharpie’s tip just above my signature. My arm began shaking with fatigue. As I watched my wrist tremble, I wondered what had happened to me. Time was, I could maintain a split on the parallel bars for fifteen minutes without so much as breaking a sweat, but now I was shaking like an old junkie just from holding a pen above some girl’s tit while her mongoloid idiot boyfriend tried to figure out how to press a fucking button.
Finally, the flash went off. Krystal thanked me, and she and Terry wandered over to the coke table. She kept her shirt up to show off my signature. I needed to get away for a minute, so I went out into the back yard. No stars came through the smoggy night sky, and the moon was just a bright smear on the clouds. Bruce had set up tiki torches on the lawn, but that was more for effect than anything else, since the muggy night was keeping everyone inside with the air conditioning. I was alone in the orange glow of the flames.
I reached into my bag, fumbled for my pack of Newports, and lit up. My hand was still trembling. After being accosted by Little Miss Rock-Hard Abs, I felt old as dust and about as sexy. Maybe there was no place for me in the industry anymore. Part of me wanted to walk away and leave it all behind, forget Bruce’s new movie, forget all hope of a comeback. How could I compete with the Krystal Lynns of the world?
But porn was all I knew and, frankly, all I wanted to know. The job only asked you to fuck some broad-shouldered hunk you’d probably want to fuck anyway, and by the end of the day you had enough money to make two months’ rent. Everyone always said I was too smart for this business, but what else was I qualified to do? Waitress? Run daycare? Hey, kids, did I ever tell you about the time Ron Jeremy shot his load on my tits and couldn’t stop giggling?
More than that, I didn’t want to be just some grande dame with a Lifetime Achievement Award. I wanted to be the fantasy of pubescent boys everywhere, I wanted guys on their commutes to think of me and have no choice but to pull their cars over and jerk off. I wanted to be wanted again. Dubbing hardcore anime wasn’t going to make that happen. Being back in front of the camera would.
I stamped out my cigarette and started toward the sliding glass door that led to the kitchen. But before I reached it, I caught sight of shapes moving in the darkness of the yard, and I stopped. A couple I hadn’t noticed before stood just beyond the glow of the tiki torches and the light spilling out from the house. The man was tall, slender, and stood as straight as a board. He wore a finely pressed suit and a tieless dress shirt, with one arm around the shoulders of the petite woman in a dark, slinky dress next to him. They were both looking at me. I felt uncomfortable, strangely embarrassed by their attention. Normally I want people’s eyes on me — nobody gets into adult films because they’re shy — but this was different. They were staring at me so intensely, like they were trying to see the bones beneath my skin. I hurried inside. I wanted to find Bruce, get the script from him, and pour as much Cristal down my throat as I could before going home to my empty little apartment with its reminders of Jay everywhere.
Rounding the corner from the kitchen to the living room, I found him. Bruce was leaning against the wall with a glass of white wine in one hand, some rolled up papers in the other. He was surrounded by a gaggle of starlets who laughed at everything he said and touched his arms and chest every chance they got. Bruce was never a handsome man, not even back when he didn’t have to dye the gray out of his hair. He’s got one of those noses that looks like it’s been broken a few too many times, and a bushy mustache that looks like a fat caterpillar died on his lip. Still, money is money and power is power, and these girls could smell both on him. They would do anything for him, and he knew it.
When he saw me, he shouted over their heads, “Amber!” He waved me over. The girls reluctantly parted to let me through. A few of them looked me up and down with one of those Who’s this bitch? expressions that comes with being cock-blocked. Bruce handed me the papers. “Here’s the script,” he said. “We start shooting tomorrow night.”
As with most scripts for adult films, it was really just an outline. The movie would probably run an hour, but the script was only six pages long. I sat down on one of the Italian leather chairs in the living room, blocked out the laughter and clinking glasses, and read it. It was called The Big Cumback, about three slutty female gangsters, Sabrina, Katie, and Jess, who escape from jail and fuck their way to the top of the male-dominated criminal underground. I had to flip through it three times before the part Bruce had in mind for me even registered.
I jumped out of the chair and stormed all over the house looking for him. No one knew where he was. That meant he was in the bedroom with someone and didn’t want to be disturbed. I didn’t care, I threw open the bedroom door and marched right in. Bruce was sitting naked on the king-sized bed, his back against the cushioned headboard. Some starlet’s head was between his legs, a cloud of blonde hair bobbing over his hairy gut like a poodle dancing for scraps. I couldn’t see her face, just her bare ass in the air and, beneath it, the snake eye slit of her shaved pussy.
A momentary pang of jealousy hit me — I used to be the one he took to the bedroom at parties — but I shrugged it off and shook the script in the air. “What the fuck, Bruce?”
He didn’t flinch or yell or even tell the girl to stop. He only sighed and played with her hair when he said, “What’s the matter now?” His unfazed reaction only infuriated me further.
“I’m playing Sabrina’s mother?” I shouted. Bruce’s cock slid out of the girl’s mouth with a wet pop, and she glanced at me over her shoulder. It was Krystal Lynn. Why wasn’t I surprised?
“Oh my God,” Krystal said, “you’re playing my mother? How awesome is that? We’re going to be in a movie together!”
I glared at Bruce. “She’s Sabrina?”
Bruce put a hand on Krystal’s head and pushed her face down again. “Did I say you could stop?” Then he turned to me. “Relax, babe, it’s a part, isn’t it? You’ll be on camera again like you wanted.”
“I don’t even have a goddamn sex scene, Bruce. I just come out of a shower and walk in on her and a guy—”
“It’s not sex, but you’ll still be naked. Everyone will see your tits, everyone will see your bush, I promise you. That gets you back in the public eye. And it’s a funny scene, too. You do comedy well, I’ve seen it.”
I shook the script at him again. “This is bullshit and you know it. I can do more than this. You owe me, Bruce. I put Virgin High on the fucking map, I made you who you are today.”
He sat up, and Krystal made a little gagging sound as she readjusted. “I’m the one sticking his neck out even putting you in the movie at all! The real bullshit here is thinking our audience wants to watch a forty-year-old woman fuck. Have you seen the new movies Marilyn Chambers is doing? They’re shit and they do shit business, but even she knows she’s better off hosting them than having any sex scenes.”
“I’m not Marilyn Chambers, I’m Amber fucking Fox! Do you know how much fan mail I still get?” It was a lie, I didn’t get much at all, maybe a letter every couple of months, but I was hoping Bruce didn’t know that.
“The audience has moved on, Amber. Your DVD reissues aren’t even selling. They don’t care about you, they want new girls like Krystal here. She’s going to be huge. Bigger than Chasey Lain, bigger than Tera Patrick, she’s the next Jenna Jameson, and I’m not going to fuck up her big break by putting anything in the movie the fans don’t want to see.”
“The next Jenna?” Krystal asked. “You really think so?”
“You know it, babe.” He guided her head down again.
“Bruce,” I said, “just give me a chance—”
“Enough, Amber. Get this straight. Most of our customer base is in their teens and twenties. It’s not that they don’t remember you, they’ve never heard of you. You might as well be their mother, and no one wants to watch their mother fuck. The script is what it is, there won’t be any changes. If you don’t like it, find someone else to put you in a movie. Oh, that’s right, I forgot. No one else will.”
I turned on my heel and stomped toward the door.
“One more thing,” Bruce called after me. I half-expected him to say, I’ve decided to remake Virgin High and give Krystal your role — I plucked the idea right out of the air, but instead he motioned toward my crotch and said, “Be sure to trim your pussy before we start shooting. Or better yet, shave the whole thing clean. This isn’t the Eighties anymore, no one wants to see a jungle down there.”
I slammed the bedroom door behind me. I could hear the party raging, laughter and popping champagne corks and a loud, arrogant voice somewhere announcing, “I own Sunset Auto Parts,” but I didn’t want to deal with the crowd. I ducked into the bathroom, locked the door, and ran the faucet into the shell-shaped marble sink. I splashed bracing cold water on my face, then scrutinized myself in the mirror. I looked myself up and down, turned to the side to check my stomach, turned around to check my ass. I’d taken care of myself over the years. I hadn’t turned into a cow like Marilyn Chambers, or gone craggy and gray like Georgina Spelvin. I looked good. So what the fuck was Bruce’s problem?
“Keep your eye on the goal,” I muttered to my reflection. I was going to be in front of the camera again. Bruce might have cast me thinking it was a kitschy cameo, but for me it was a whole lot more. It was the start of my comeback. I wouldn’t let it be anything less. I’d do whatever it took to stand out, to be noticed in this role so people would say, Holy shit, Amber Fox is back? I can’t wait to see that!
But first I had to get the hell out of this party. If I had to look at Bruce or Krystal Lynn one more time tonight, I’d go ballistic. I opened the bathroom door, stepped out into the hall—
And nearly bumped into the couple I’d seen outside. They were standing in the middle of the hallway, blocking my path. In the light, I could better see the olive complexion of their skin, the pitch blackness of their hair.
“You are Amber?” the man said. He had a slight accent I couldn’t place.
“The one and only.” I was nervous because they were staring at me with the same intensity as before, so the old joke came out of my mouth automatically. I tried to move past them, but they wouldn’t get out of my way.
“Allow me to introduce myself,” he said. “I am Ashraf Hammad, and this is my wife Raha.” The woman nodded, her dark eyes glistening, but didn’t say a word. “We enjoy your movies.”
“That’s great,” I said. I felt bad for blowing off fans, but I was so desperate to get out of that house I’d stampede over them if I had to. “Excuse me—”
Raha raised one small tan hand, her palm an inch from my face. I froze, thinking the crazy bitch was going to slap me, but then something happened. The space between her hand and my skin suddenly felt like it was inhabited by a thousand tongues, a thousand caressing lips. She moved her hand over my face and down my neck.
“No, I . . .” But I couldn’t finish protesting. Instead, I closed my eyes and gave in to the sensation. I couldn’t help myself.
“We were hoping to find you here tonight,” Ashraf said softly. “You are more experienced than the others. You have what we need.”
Raha moved her hand over my breasts, and though she never actually touched me, the sensation coaxed a loud moan from my throat. I leaned back against the wall and put my hands in my hair. Raha moved her hand lower.
“She likes you,” Ashraf told me. “You should be honored.”
“I . . .really have to go,” I managed to say.
Raha cupped her hand at my groin. I gasped as those thousand invisible tongues stroked between my legs. I felt myself getting wet.
“No,” I said, pushing her away. There was something unnatural about this. Who were these people? How was she doing that with her hand?
“Why do you resist?” Ashraf asked. He sounded genuinely confused.
“I don’t understand what’s happening to me,” I said, trying to catch my breath. I still had to lean against the wall for support.
“You do not need to understand,” he said. He started unbuttoning his dress shirt. “All you need to know is that you have been chosen.” He pulled the shirt open, and there on his chest, hanging from a thin chain around his neck, was a gold medallion. At first I thought it was an eye like the kind you see in Egyptian hieroglyphics, but as I looked closer I saw it was made up of smaller geometric shapes, triangles and circles. The center seemed to be moving, swirling, as if an entire galaxy of stars were hidden inside it.
“Your necklace,” I said. I felt warm, feverish, dizzy. “Moving . . .”
“It is not the necklace that moves,” he said. “It is the Eye.”
Raha smiled. It was the most beautiful smile I’d ever seen. The desire to kiss her came over me without warning. I wanted to see what was under that dress, run my hands through her thick black hair, my lips over her bare skin, kiss every inch of her. And when I looked at Ashraf, I wanted more than anything to please him. I would do whatever he wanted. The need for them both burned inside me like an unquenchable fire.
I went with them to their car. I let Raha run her hands all over my body in the back seat while Ashraf drove. I didn’t care where we were going. I never wanted the ride to end. When it did, we were in an enormous house in the Hollywood Hills. I didn’t remember leaving the car or walking inside, I simply found myself lying on a luxurious bed in the middle of a room with big stone walls. My dress and underwear were on the floor, but I had no memory of taking them off. Raha appeared above me, nude, straddling me on her hands and knees. Her midnight hair cascaded around my head. When I reached up for her, my hands cupped soft, pointed breasts with hard, dark nipples.
Ashraf walked around the bed, still fully clothed. He looked at the stone walls and the symbols etched into them. I didn’t recognize any of the carvings, except the same eye he had on his medallion was on each wall.
Raha bent down and kissed my breasts, suckling the nipples until they stood almost painfully erect. I arched my back in ecstasy and wrapped my legs around her. I was so wet I thought a flood would pour out of me.
Ashraf’s voice floated through the room, echoing off the stone. “It is said that in the time of the Ancients, Ra, the greatest of all the gods, grew disgusted at man’s disregard for his laws. In his anger, he created Sekhmet, the Eye of Ra, the goddess of destruction, a bare-breasted woman with the head of a lioness, and unleashed her upon man to reap vengeance.”
Raha moved lower, kissing my belly. I squirmed and moaned on the bed. The inferno raging between my legs could only be extinguished by her tongue.
“The Nile turned crimson from all the blood she shed. When Ra saw the horror he had created, he regretted his actions. He laid a trap for her, hundreds of barrels of beer stained red with pomegranate juice to resemble the blood she enjoyed drinking.”
Raha ran her tongue lightly over my pussy, from bottom to top. I shivered and arched my back again. It wouldn’t take much more to make me come. I could feel it building already, dancing on the cusp of onset.
Ashraf appeared behind Raha. He removed his shirt and let it drop to the floor. I couldn’t take my eyes off the medallion hanging over his chest.
“Ra’s plan worked,” he continued, undoing his belt. “Sekhmet grew drunk and fell asleep.”
I ran my fingers through Raha’s thick hair. “Oh God, don’t stop.”
Ashraf bent to remove his shoes. I watched the well-defined muscles move under the skin of his torso. I wanted him inside me so badly. Raha’s lips on my clit made me gasp.
“While she slept, Ra made it so Sekhmet forgot who she was and the destruction she spread across the Kingdom.” Ashraf hooked his thumbs inside his pants and pushed them down. He wasn’t wearing anything underneath. “Ra changed her name to Hathor so she would never have to remember her deeds. Her nature was changed also, to the sweetness of love and the strength of desire.” He stepped toward the bed, his heavy cock growing bigger, stiffer, as he approached. “And henceforth Hathor laid low men and women only with the great power of love.”
I looked at Raha between my legs again, but my vision blurred and for a moment I didn’t see her, only what looked like the shaggy pyramid ears and tawny pelt of a lioness, black-and-yellow eyes hovering over my pubic hair like twin moons. I closed my eyes, letting the feel of her tongue take me to the very edge of climax.
And then she stopped.
Panting for breath, I opened my eyes again. Raha crawled up the bed to lay down beside me. She kissed me, her mouth flavored with the vinegar tang of my pussy, and her fingertips played lightly over my nipples.
“That is the story they tell,” Ashraf said. He grabbed my ankles and pulled me down until my ass was at the bottom edge of the bed. Raha turned, kissing me upside-down. “But it is not the whole story.” He pushed my legs up and apart. “How is it, do you think, that Ra really tamed a woman as wild as Sekhmet?”
I started coming the moment he slid his cock inside me, wave after crashing wave of intense orgasms. I thrashed on the bed, made noises I’d never made before, as he slowly pulled out, almost to the point of exit, then rammed it back in. Every time he did, I shuddered with a new climax.
“What incentive do you think Ra promised her to keep the goddess of desire from turning back into the goddess of destruction?” he asked.
Raha crawled on top of me, still upside-down, spreading her thighs over my face. Between Ashraf’s slow and steady thrusts and Raha’s tongue on my clit again, I came so hard I thought I might pass out. Little white dots exploded behind my eyelids. I wrapped my hands around the smooth skin of her ass and eagerly pulled her cunt down to my mouth. She didn’t make a sound, only ground her hips above my head and continued licking me.
“It was Isis and Osiris who valued virgins, not Hathor. Hathor had little patience for teaching them the way of pleasure. She treasured experience above all else.”
Raha shuddered hard, pushing her cunt right up against my face as she came. Now, finally, a sound escaped her throat as the orgasm steamrolled through her, a low, guttural cry that echoed off the stone walls like a roar. Hearing her come made me so hot I thought my skin would burst into flames.
“Ra promised her lovers of exceptional experience. He fashioned the Eye of Hathor, a powerful symbol that awakens in all who see it an irresistible desire, in order to procure lovers for her.”
Raha lifted one leg and swung herself off of me. Ashraf pulled out, his cock dripping wet. I moaned in disappointment, but Raha silenced me with a deep kiss, our tongues dancing around each other like frisky cubs. Ashraf took hold of each of my legs and pushed them up until my knees were against my chest. Then, effortlessly, he thrust his cock into my ass.
I’ve done a lot in my career, girl-on-girl, two guys at once, bukkake trains, you name it, but the one thing I never did was anal. It’d always been off limits, even in my private life. But I was so hot, so willing to do anything he wanted, that I didn’t care. It didn’t hurt like I thought it would, either. His cock slid right in on the natural lubricant from my sopping pussy. It was the most incredible feeling. Raha kept kissing me, working my clit with her finger until I was on the brink of orgasm again. Then she stuck her finger inside me, and I came harder than I had all night.
Ashraf’s breath caught in his throat. He tilted his head back, his mouth hanging open. I felt his cock stiffen in my ass, then pull out. He climbed onto the bed, holding his prick in one hand, and positioned himself on his knees above Raha and me. The first hot spurt of semen hit my face, cooling immediately as it rolled down my chin. Raha opened her mouth to receive the second, and I did the same. A few moments later, his cock drooped, spent, and our lips, chins and cheeks were coated in a thick white goo. Raha kissed me once more, her mouth slippery and salty.
I looked at Ashraf above me, the golden Eye of Hathor glittering on his heaving, sweaty chest. I stretched out on the bed, a satisfied hum buzzing through my body. I’d almost forgotten what it’s like to be so wanted.
My eyelids drooped as the afterglow pulled me toward sleep. I saw Ashraf bend over me, the medallion flashing, then there was only a warm darkness. And yet, I could still see the medallion burning brightly in my mind, in perfect detail. I felt arms around me, as if I was being carried, and when I opened my eyes we were in the car again. My clothes had reappeared on my body. I closed my eyes, wanting to sink back into the comfortable blackness, and saw the medallion once more behind my eyelids.
“The Eye,” I managed to say, little more than a whisper. “It’s in my head . . .”
“Our gift to you, in thanks,” Ashraf ‘s voice replied. “Any who gaze upon it will be yours. Choose wisely.”
I opened my eyes once more and saw Raha sitting next to me. I put my hand to her cheek. “Will I see you again?”
She shook her head, and from the front seat, Ashraf said, “We will not meet again, nor will we be here if you come looking for us. It is the way.”
I nodded sadly, closing my eyes only for a moment. When I opened them again I was slumped in the driver’s seat of my car on the empty street outside Bruce’s house. The sun was coming up, tinting everything gray. I shook the cobwebs out of my head and drove home. The Eye of Hathor burned in my mind the whole way there. It was there when I collapsed onto my bed, and when I woke up a few hours later with Bruce’s words circling my brain like song lyrics that get stuck in your head: ”Everyone will see your tits, everyone will see your bush, I promise you.”
If he wanted me to trim my pubes before the shoot, there was only one man in all of L.A. for the job. He called himself the Gardener, and everyone who was anyone used him when it was grooming time. After calling to make an appointment, I drove to his home office in Orange County.
“Amber!” he exclaimed, greeting me at the door in an orange Polo shirt that almost matched the color of his Irish hair. “How long has it been?”
“Too long,” I said, hugging him. He invited me into his living room, where big glossy photos of his work adorned the walls, women’s nude crotches with all manner of shaved pubic hair: the standard landing strip, a Valentine’s heart, a jack o’lantern, a Christmas tree, a lightning bolt, even the Gucci symbol. When I told him what I wanted and asked if he could do it, he spread his hands and said, “Hey, I’m the Gardener, aren’t I?”
He brought me into the brightly lit, white-walled room in back, where there were two tables of shaving equipment and, in the center, a large barber-style chair tilted back with two silver stirrups protruding from the seat. I dropped my skirt, my panties, and sat, nude from the waist down, on the chair. I stuck my heels in the stirrups and rolled my blouse up a bit.
The Gardener knelt down on the floor between my legs, first trimming the hair with electric clippers, then dipping his fingertips in a jar of petroleum jelly and gently smearing a thin layer over the fine fuzz in slow circles. Finally, he picking up his trusty straightedge. I painstakingly guided him through the process, describing everything down to the minutest detail. Two hours in, my cell phone rang. I fished it out of my purse and looked at the caller ID. It was Bruce.
“So,” he said, “are you all set for tonight?”
“You bet. I’m at the Gardener’s now, getting a shave just like you said.” I felt the blade clear away the last of the extra hair. He was finished.
“How’s it look?” Bruce asked.
“Hold on, I’ll find out. How’s it look?” I asked the Gardener. He didn’t answer. He stared at my crotch, transfixed. Under his belt buckle, I could see his cock stiffening, straining against his fly. “I’d say it looks pretty damn good,” I said into the phone.
“Great,” Bruce said. “The camera is going to love you, babe.”
The Gardener couldn’t control himself anymore. He leaned forward, put his hands on my thighs, and started eating me out, his tongue disappearing beneath the Eye of Hathor shaved into my pubic hair.
“Bruce,” I said, “once this movie comes out, everyone is going to love me.”
• • •
stories have been published in numerous magazines and anthologies, including City Slab and The Mammoth Book Of Best New Erotica 3. His story collection, Walk In Shadows, is out of print, but you can probably find it somewhere online if you dig deep enough. Visit him on the Web at http://www.nicholaskaufmann.com.
