The business of dreaming in the daytime, while standing on your feet in front of a camera, makes insomniacs of those who do it. When they do sleep, it is because of drugs, and they sleep fitfully, anxious to return to the daytime dream.
In Hollywood, it's always 3 a.m. Another movie land chronicler called it the "dark night of the soul," and he died of it. Thousands of young women still arrive there each month, fresh from the backseat of dreaming in some Midwestern drive-in, eager to make the big time. To walk into the screen and touch the heroes they grew up with. To fall in their arms and drift off to immortality, unaware their brief scene will call for a dozen takes under the hot klieg lights.
* * *
The woman spread across the big round bed was only pretending to be drunk. "Action," she called in a warm caramel voice. There was only a trace of the Midwest left in it; most of it had been strained out by voice lessons.
-So she wants action, Hoggart thought as he sat on the toilet doubtfully fingering his limp tool. She's probably popped some pills. She can't really be a drunk. He used some of her pink, silver-edged toilet paper on himself and let the water suck it away. Then he stood looking at his body in the oval full-length mirror over her sunken bathtub.
-Where am I? I've got to be nuts to get into things like this. He just wanted to go home and sleep it off. If he couldn't sleep, he'd give some of the freaks he knew a call. Get them out of bed in the middle of the night. That'll make them mad. The rawboned redhead waiting in the enormous bedroom had made a stupid play for him outside Romanoff's. But it had worked. She just ran up and threw her arms around him. Naturally someone had been there to get a picture. If he hadn't been drunk, she couldn't have gotten away with it, but she had a car waiting and they were off to the races. They went to her place to talk it over. In the car she played with him until her fingers got wet. He had to keep telling her to watch the road.
She said her name was Estelle, Estelle L'Amour, and she had been dying to meet him. They all were dying to meet him, after American King came out. She was a big bitch with a loose, hot mouth and coarse red hair. From Chicago, she said, and he guessed south side. Not enough accent to be real, though. She was an inflatable rubber doll like the rest.
"You're good," he said, standing at the foot of the bed looking down at her. "You're awful good." The sheets were violet, and smelled of musk. She had wrapped herself up in them, still dressed. She was smiling at him, waiting.
"Don't bother to get excited, kid. I'm going to take off."
Estelle wasn't about to let that happen. She had dreamed for months of meeting Hoggart, since the time she first saw him in Romanoff's. She had gone there in answer to an ad for a cigarette girl. Two dozen hopefuls had gotten there ahead of her. Hoggart was falling out of his chair and laughing maniacally. When she saw him that night, weaving across the sidewalk to a cab, she decided to play her role to the hilt. She had already been in Hollywood six months and she was a little depressed that no one wanted to take her ambitions seriously. The one casting director she had been able to see took one look at her lush figure and shook his head. "Look, honey, this ain't Irma La Douce." Why did they all have to be fags? She had tried sitting around in Schwabs in a tight sweater. That was the way Lana Turner had done it. But all that happened was that the waiters, incredibly sophisticated young men, had pestered her for dates.
Hoggart walked across the room to the door. He was leaving. She jumped up and ran after him. "Come on, lover, give me a chance."
"I don't feel like it, baby," he growled. She had to take firm and direct action. She grabbed him from behind. He was still unsteady on his feet, and they fell to the floor together. She rolled on top of him to hold him down, and ran her hands over his chest, her mouth coming down on his ear.
"Get the hell off me," he ordered, but he was content to lie there, too drunk to rise, as her fingers roamed over his chest. "It's not up there, baby." Her fingers moved down to his zipper. It was evident that he wasn't completely turned off by her. She quickly undid him and fished it out, a long brown organ she held in her five fingers and played expertly, applying pressures she had learned at the age of fourteen in the backseat of her father's car. In a few minutes it was a hard rod, beating against the prison of her hand. She began to get excited, something she hadn't expected. Lying on top of him was like lying on a movie screen. She felt his hands move up the back of her thighs and clutch the soft cheeks of her ass. Now she was getting someplace. She didn't like having to seduce him, though. It put her off her stride. His fingers were under her thin panties, opening her buttocks and drilling into the tight little hole between them. She began to pant, an ugly, excited sound, like a dog in heat.
Then he was on top of her, fucking her dress up around her waist. She raised her bottom so he could pull her panties down. They were around her ankles when he forced her legs apart and pushed them up in the air. His finger was turning her bowels to water.
Then she made her first mistake. She said, "Let's get on the bed," and twisted out from under him, just as his big rod brushed the wiry hairs around her wet crevice.
"Oh Christ," he groaned. She flopped on the bed with her legs apart, and he followed her. But his erection had wilted to the size of a museum miniature. She was dismayed. If all the men in Hollywood were this easily discouraged, she had her work cut out for her.
"Don't worry, I'll fix it," she crooned. Failure was out of the question. She grabbed him around the hips and worked his trousers down. She caught the limp member between her teeth, and gave it a playful bite right under the soft head.
"Ouch. Cut that out!" he yelled, and slapped her ear, so she became gentle, sucking at it like a baby at a nipple, taking his wrinkled scrotum in her mouth at the same time. It grew by leaps and bounds. He cupped his hands around the back of her head, his thumbs in her ears, and held on until she let go with a loud popping noise.
He bent his head to the lips between her legs, but she stopped him. "No, it's my period. I have to take the tampax out." She sat up for a minute, reached between her legs, and pulled out the little plug. When she turned back to him, he was limp again.
"This is disgusting," he growled, meaning both of them.
"You've got a problem, don't you, honey?" she said. He was desperately using his own hand to bring himself back to life. "I hate you," he said, but he was caught up in the game she had started.
He sat on the edge of the bed with his hand between his legs, looking at her. She lay in the center of the round bed with her skirt bunched around her waist and her legs held wide apart by her hands, juices flowing from between the dark red lips like syrup from a maple tree. With the other hand he touched the big, aroused lips, then slipped three fingers in. She clamped her legs shut on his hand like a purse. Her eyes were closed, waiting for him to decide what to do next. She opened them just for a minute to look up at the skylight above the bed. She thought she saw a shadow moving up there, but that was impossible. She closed her eyes again. Just as she did, she felt something soft move against her clitoris. She blinked. Hoggart had his head between her legs, licking up the jam there with a tongue as rough and insistent as a cat's.
Ten minutes later, she was in ecstasy. Her hips bucked against his face. His hands were hurting her hard breasts, which he had pulled out of her dress blindly. Then he rose up on his knees and shot his semen into her face, following it with a hot stream of urine.
* * *
Two nights later, Estelle's doorbell rang. She wasn't expecting anyone'-she didn't know a soul in Hollywood, really. No one had ever noticed her, except for the usual leers from a lot of guys who were only window shopping. She thought she was completely alone. She had gotten a nice apartment in an expensive neighborhood so she could indulge her fantasies by living the way she thought movie stars did while waiting to become one.
She looked out through the two-way mirror peephole in her door. An eye was pressed right up to the glass, and all she could see were some red lines.
"Who is it?" she asked. The eyeball moved back from the door. It was owned by a dark, strongly-built young man with a large nose and a devilish expression on his face.
"My name is Zack Stuart," he whispered, "and I'm in the movie business. I think I have a part for you." Estelle gasped and hurried to get her robe. The word "movie" caused an automatic reaction in her that she couldn't control. She put the chain-lock on and spoke through the crack:
"No tricks now. Are you really making a movie?"
"I've already started making it."
"Who's in it?" She didn't want to be in just any old movie.
"You and Mr. Hoggart, so far."
"What are you talking about?"
"Well, I'm your next door neighbor." Estelle had never seen any of her neighbors. She raised her eyebrows, as if to ask where he'd been all the time.
"I saw you coming in with Hoggart. I've been watching you because I knew that sooner or later you'd hit pay dirt. So I went up on the roof with my camera,"
"You mean you were up there taking pictures while...."
"Not pictures. Shooting a film. Say, can I come in?" His smile seemed to have a hypnotic effect on her.
"Yes, I mean no ... what is this, blackmail? Listen, honey, I'll have your ass hauled off to the nearest police station before you can...."
Despite herself, she opened the door to him.
"Oh, cut it out, woman, and get me a drink. I do have a proposition for you." She got him a beer from the refrigerator, and a Diet Pepsi for herself.
"O.K., buster, let's have it. It better be good."
"Don't talk like that. I don't like it."
"Sorry. I just don't know how to talk to a blackmailer. You dirty little sneak! Getting your jollies on my roof!"
Zack sighed. "You're going to have to learn to take direction if we're going to work together." He chugged half the bottle in one tilt. "Who said we're going to work together?"
"Listen, Estelle, I can make an actress out of you. We're going to make a film together." It occurred to her that she should ask for the film back. She knew she couldn't call the police. They'd want to know what was on the film, and once they found out, she'd get the old heave-ho. Zack just sat on her best chair with a mocking smile on his face, completely at home in her living room, telling her what she was going to do. She was uncomfortable anyway. She pulled the robe more closely around her legs and tried to smooth back her tousled hair with the other hand.
"You know, that was quite a performance," Zack said. "Hoggart should get another Oscar for it. I'll bet you're the first real woman-meat, you know-he's had in a long time."
"Get to the point," she said irritably, pleased despite herself.
"Like I said, I'm a director. Not a bad cameraman, either."
"I've never heard of you."
"Didn't you ever see Juvenile Werewolf? I did that. It went over big in the drive-ins. I did some other films, too, but I was what you might call ghosting them."
"That's not a hell of a lot, is it?"
He grinned. "It's not much, but you asked. I'm usually too ashamed to tell people about it. What counts is what we're going to do now."
"I want that film back!"
"Now you're being stupid. It's my film. If you want to see it, come over to my place, and I'll run it for you."
She followed him across the hall to his apartment. It was like stepping into a small studio. It was full of still photos, books, cans of film, cameras, microphones, lights, and a projector and screen. He flicked a button and there she was on her bed with Hoggart above her. She had to admit it was well-shot. She felt the thrill of seeing herself on the screen for the first time. It was like a drug acting on her. She stared at herself, entranced, for the half-hour it took to run the film. At the end she was weak, and she felt hot and moist all over. Chills played up and down her back.
"Well, there you are. You're going to be a star," Zack said.
"I think you're serious!"
"I'm always serious."
He moved forward in the dark, and his hands came from behind to cup her bulbous breasts. "It's time you started taking some direction," he said into her ear.
"Where's your camera?"
"This is just a rehearsal."
* * *
Zack Stuart was born, he sometimes thought after a day of shooting, in a darkroom with a movie camera in his hand. He saw everything in terms of the right shot. His eyes protruded slightly from his high forehead as if they too were lenses. He had carried some kind of movie camera around with him since he was fourteen, when he began his career by shooting home movies of his neighbors' picnics and weddings. In a few years he had graduated to making pornographic films, having found his market in the studios. There were many executives, he found, who wanted a little more life in their private film viewing than what they were willing to give the public. He had realized a few good contacts through this, but they hadn't gotten him very far. As he told Estelle, he had made one low-budget film for the drive-in market, and that was the extent of his public film career in Hollywood.
"But you're farther along than I am," Estelle said, hearing this in the comfort of her bedroom that night, after Zack had pinned her to the mattress for three shattering orgasms. The bed was a mass of potato chips, bobby pins, and stains from various sources. She was beginning to listen with both ears to his idea, he was so desperately serious about it.
"Farther along? You mean up the ladder to success?" he asked. He was grinning that devil's grin at her, as if everything she said or did was a surprise to him.
"Yes, I guess that's what I mean. Don't you want to be successful?"
"Oh sure, honeypot. But I ain't got the equipment for it that you've got, now do I?"
"But no one would ever see this thing if you do it. Even if you don't get locked up."
"I could see it. You could see it. We could eat popcorn and pet while we watched it." He stuck his tongue in her ear.
Estelle giggled. "Oh, I don't know. I guess I just want to be a movie star. Real, not just a broad in a dirty movie."
"Well, how do you think Marilyn made it? Or Jayne? They had to show the public the goods, right?" He winked at her and pinched her nipples until they stood out red and angry.
"Ouch! That hurts! Don't do it, Zack-you'll give me cancer of the breast."
"You mean you don't like it?" he murmured into her armpit, where he was exploring with his tongue.
"Well, yes I do. You can play with them all you like, but you have to be careful."
"Like this?" he asked, breathing into her other ear and gently pulling on them.
"Oh, don't, you're getting me all hot," she giggled. His pole was sticking straight up again, making a sharp mountain of the sheets.
"You're sexy as hell, Zack," she said, sounding like a teen-ager in heat as she reached for his prick.
"Just give it a little massage, honeypot. We've got lots to talk over." Zack felt like a pasha looking around at the luxuriousness of her bedroom, the deep rugs, the marble vanity tables, the crystal chandelier.
Estelle sat up and reached for a cigarette. She didn't talk business without one. "You really want me to sign that contract, Zack? It's so tempting."
"I do indubitably, babydoll. You're going to be a star. Your name will be on the front page of every newspaper in the world someday. It'll be the biggest scandal the movie world has ever known-it might bring everything down on their heads. Fatty Arbuckle will look like a saint after it, believe me."
"But I don't know whether I want to be famous for a dirty movie!"
"There's no such thing, lover. No such thing. Everybody screws, and you can bet they don't think it's dirty while they're at it. So of course they'll want to see how their favorite stars screw."
Estelle was beginning to believe him. She was still incredibly naive about people, but in addition, what he had been saying was something she wanted to believe. Zack, even though he was only twenty-four, had a dedication and drive she had never seen in anyone. She was sure he would make out, that he would get what he wanted. He was simply offering her a chance to get on the bandwagon, as he said. She liked the way he pushed himself, instead of her. It pulled her along.
She was beginning to think, before she ran into Hoggart, that she should give up her hopes and leave Hollywood. That she'd always be a round heels. Certainly no one had ever wanted to watch her act anywhere but in bed. Even in her high school play, the audience had laughed every time she opened her mouth, but they (mostly boys on the football squad, who sat in the front row) gave her a standing, wolf whistling ovation when one of her breasts popped out of the costume she was wearing for the small part she had landed.
She had only gotten the part because of Mr. Antonio, the dramatics teacher. He had admired her body, too. In a way, Zack reminded her of Mr. A., as the kids had nicknamed him. But Mr. A. was a failure, settled comfortably into it despite the attacks of ambition that seized him. A married failure with two kids to call him Daddy. (He enjoyed it when fifteen-year-old Estelle called him that, too, but in a different tone of voice....)
She was bored with the pimple set by the time she met him. She already considered herself an experienced woman. She liked the sound of that phrase, the feel of it in the mirror of her mind, where she lay on a giant bed all day, attended by dozens of maids. It stood her in good stead around her family. There were five other kids to look after-a job that usually fell to her-and her mother changed her boyfriends once a week on the average. They almost always smelled of grease and gasoline, and had to be either picked up after or dodged.
Mrs. Poniatowski handed the family reins over to Estelle every evening after she came home from work. Then it was Stella this and Stella that.
"Keep them quiet Stella, O.K.? Your mother's got a splitting headache-a migraine. The boss was on my tail all day today. I'm going upstairs to lie down."
She'd put on her old terrycloth bathrobe and shuffle through the litter of toys and dirty diapers on the floor, calling for one of the smaller kids to bring her some aspirin. Two hours later she'd come back down, the fat tucked into her new girdle, fit for the hunt. If it was a weekend, Estelle could count on her bringing home a new man later, some grease-monkey with a beer gut and a down home accent. They all looked at Mrs. Poniatowski's daughter when they woke up the next afternoon, but it wasn't until Big Jim Benway came along that anyone touched her. That was the first time her mother threw her out of the house.
She was wringing out some diapers in the bathroom, bent over the toilet, when he walked in on her, scratching his chest and already unzipping his pants. She was wearing a pair of faded white shorts that fit her like a rubber glove, and a man's T-shirt. She heard him come in, but she kept her head down.
"I'll be done in a minute. Can you wait, please?" she said. She was embarrassed because of the turds floating in the toilet. It had stopped-up overnight.
"You're a beautiful child, girl." He toed her behind with his bare foot.
"Back off now. Let me finish or I'll yell for Mom."
"I have to piss, girl, and you're in my way." She smelled the rank odor of beer and man-sweat and something unfamiliar. It must be that sticky stuff they squirt, she thought. She pulled the lid down and turned around to face him, still kneeling. He was standing so close she couldn't get up.
He lifted his hand, and she was staring at the head of his piss-swollen prick. The rest of it was hidden in his hands. He shook it for her.
"I'm gonna piss right on you, girl," he said, grinning. "I'll fill that bathtub right up to the top." Now she was scared. He clearly wasn't going to let her go and her mother would never hear her; she slept too soundly. The kids were already out on the street playing.
"Let me by, now," she said weakly, holding her breath. She knew if she breathed, he'd feel it on his thing.
"Or maybe I'll beat you over the head with my dick. Would you go for that?"
"I'll scream. I'm not kidding, Mr. Benway." She stared, hypnotized, at the blue-gray tip of his prick. The little lips were opening and closing.
"You want it, don't you, you pig?" His hands went around her head, and pulled her face closer to it. The swollen prick jammed bluntly against her cheek, blindly looking for a hole. It seemed huge, covered with big blue veins, and dark (from blood? she wondered). Then he slapped her on the ear, and she opened her mouth. It knocked against her teeth, and rammed through.
"If you bite, I'll choke you to death. Just suck, and use some tongue."
She thought she would vomit. She choked on her own saliva as he slipped it further down her throat.
"I told you to use some tongue. Make believe it's an all-day sucker." She closed her eyes and began to lick and suck the stiff flesh filling her mouth. He kept moving in and out, but it seemed to go on forever. Then he jerked, when her jaw muscles were aching, and a flood of greasy syrup filled her mouth. She choked and tried to get away, but he held her head to it, still spurting. She passed out.
When she came to, she was on her belly on the bathroom floor. Her face was covered with his goo, and her T-shirt was soaked. Apparently he had pissed on her after his release. She looked up, spitting out gobs of his stuff. He was still there, red-faced, bent over her, and he showed her his stiff middle finger.
"I've gotta get in that little pussy of yours," he told her, very seriously, as if asking for help. He bent forward and pushed the finger under the tight edge of her shorts, and toward her crotch. She was numb. Then she felt a splitting pain, as he forced the finger into her, pushing it in her tight crack like a stick. She screamed with pain, and he kicked her in the side.
When he pulled his finger out, he showed it to her. It was covered with blood. He wiped it on her shorts, and licked the finger clean.
"I didn't think you were cherry." He seemed apologetic. Her mother finally got up and found her still on the floor. She was lying there staring at the pieces of plaster and dead cockroaches under the bathtub.
"You're a fine one. My own daughter," her mother said, and sat on the toilet to weep. Estelle tried to pretend she didn't hear her.
After that Big Jim never came back, and she felt permanently changed. She had expected fireworks when she lost her virginity, but Big Jim's finger, so casual and prosaic, made her feel even more jaded. He had left her with a life-long itch.
In school she found herself staring at the teacher's fly as he talked, and pressing her thighs together until they were damp. On weekends it was almost too much to bear, waiting and hoping her mother would bring home a boyfriend who would be uninhibited enough to notice her. She slept in her baby-doll pajamas, both hands pressed tight between her legs. In their efforts to construct a desired reality, children by themselves go to absurd lengths. One day Estelle found herself grabbing a particularly large banana and stuffing it into her mouth, moving it back and forth like Big Jim's cock. But even that wasn't as good as what she did that night with it. It hurt, but that wasn't what she minded; she realized she didn't know what a cock in there would feel like.
That spring she began to be invited to go to the drive-in on weekends, sometimes three nights in a row, by different boys, after her reputation spread. Usually something like Zack's Juvenile Werewolf was being shown. But the important thing was the performance in the car, not on the screen. Occasionally a very romantic picture would be on, and she'd ask especially to be taken to it. The boys were happy to be able to please her so easily, at least as far as entertainment went. Their love-making was something else, and she became something of a critic of the various techniques tried on her while she sat eating hot buttered popcorn and watching the movie. If the boy she was with had her skirt up and her colored panties down around her ankles by the time the first movie was ending, she considered him a real lover. If not, she played games. To the clumsy ones went the straws-if they were too hesitant, or too shy, she might jerk them off before they took her home, but certainly allow them nothing else, except for a few exploratory squeezes of her titties, which were encased in special pointed bras with uplift and padding, poking through one of her tight sweaters.
She allowed them to play with her while she watched the movie, transposing her emotional presence from the car to the screen, even while her body remained in the front seat and some boy's hand was in her pants.
She took dramatics because she thought she wanted to act, that being what the figures on the screen supposedly did. At that age she didn't realize that was magic and could not be learned.
Mr. A., the dramatics teacher, was short, thick of chest, virile and theatrical, with his booming voice and his way of poking fun at some of the minor institutions of high school life. His classes were so popular they were held in the school auditorium. Rehearsals for school plays were also held there. Estelle sat so far back she was sure he wouldn't notice her. Not that she was sure she wanted him to. He frightened her.
What she didn't know was that he had had his eye on her for months. He made sure she was there when tryouts for the senior play were held.
When her turn came, she very nervously stumbled over a few lines of the script and broke down. His reaction was to applaud:
"Beautiful, darling. Very dramatic."
Much to the consternation of the student director, who wasn't interested in the size of Estelle's breasts, but in Art, she was given a minor role; and then he studiously avoided her for a while. It was a game he wanted to prolong.
Then one night the whole cast was rehearsing late in the auditorium. She had forgotten all her lines and everyone was disgusted with her. Mr. A. saw his chance. He had the student director ask her to stay behind for more work after everyone else left.
When they were alone on the bare stage he dragged a folding chair over to where she sat on a couch that was being used in the play.
"God, I'm tired," he said. She couldn't think of anything to say, so she decided to play her woman of the world role and breathe a little more heavily. The poor man was tired, but exciting, even so. He was a director. Men should be directors. It was so nice to be told what to do; that meant the man had to care.
"Do you want me to rub your neck?"
"Oh, that would be great." He kept his eyes closed, rolling his head around while her fingers dug into his thick neck.
"Say, honey, where'd you learn how to make a man feel so good?" he asked finally, after she had massaged him for a while. She had the thrill of feeling his whole body relax under her hands, shudder, and give up its tension. He was so big and solid. She realized again that she was afraid of him, as she had been of Big Jim.
He straightened up and opened his eyes. "Whew! That was great, Estelle. I feel brand new." He looked at her with bright eyes. They were a little red-from lack of sleep, he told her.
"Yes, it's true, I haven't been getting along very well with my wife. She doesn't know how to make a man relax, like you." Then he caught himself. "But I shouldn't be talking like this to you, should I?" He winked at her. "Well, let's get on with it, Estelle. You just don't seem to be picking up on your part. We have a show to put on this Saturday night. What's the matter?"
"I don't know, Mr. A., guess I'm just scared, you know," she answered, her words all run together.
"Scared of what, in heaven's name?"
"I don't know ... the people, maybe."
"People? What people? You call those idiots out there people?"
"Sure, I guess. You know, they don't exactly like me."
"What do you mean? That's a strange thing to say."
"I know, but it's true; they don't like me." He patted her knee. "That's not true. I don't even know why you say a thing like that. I mean, you've got it, kid, you really have."
"Oh, you mean the way I look. Sure, they all like that-at least the boys do-but they think I'm strange."
"And what do you think of them?"
"I think they're schmucks."
"What's that?"
"It's a word I read in Marjorie Morningstar.
It means idiot, you know, boob."
"You mean you don't go out with them?"
"Sure! But all they want to do is feel me."
"Well, what do you expect?" He was pacing back and forth in front of her, obviously very interested in what she was saying.
"Oh, I don't know, just not act like such apes ... like such children." She felt that she could talk to him, that he was different. He was a man, the kind of man a woman of the world would welcome in her boudoir. But he laughed.
"And how old are you, beautiful? You just got out of the nursery yourself." She didn't answer. He handed her the script. "O.K. Let's go through it. Take it from, 'Rodney, I think there's a man in the cellar.' "
She stood up and walked across the stage. "Rodney, I think there's a man in the cellar," she said, as animatedly as a cigar store Indian. He did a double take.
"Oh, come on, you might as well be a door. Open up." He had her do the scene over again, but she was even worse the second time.
"Just say it naturally. Forget where you are. That's all you have to do." But she only got worse, because he was watching her. Somehow, reality didn't correspond with her dreams. It was difficult and embarrassing to be an actress. After another three readings of the same lines, she flopped on the couch, exhausted.
"Oh, it's so boring," she said. Mr. A. was still pacing. Something besides her reading of the lines was bothering him. She read woodenly, but the way she moved her body was not wooden at all.
She played it dumb. It was always sure. She smiled at him and put down the script. He smiled too and sat down next to her. One, two, three, she thought. The bigger they are, the harder they fall.
"Well that's enough for one night," he said. "Like I say, you'll do all right, no matter how the lines come out. Just wear that low-cut gown." His face was almost as red as his hair. When she noticed that, she knew it was her move.
"I don't know how clothes are going to help me," she said despairingly. He put his arm around her shoulders.
"They'll like what they see, believe me." It had become a game to play. Both of them were smiling now. "They're going to see these, for instance," he said, waving his hand to indicate her breasts, which poked impudently through her powder-blue sweater. She caught his hand and pressed it to them. At first he was numb, not moving, and then his fingers began to walk around her body, saluting it through exploration.
Her head lolled back against the couch as his hands covered her body. This was stepping into the image. Mr. A.'s hands knew what they were doing. When she felt them under her skirt, she opened her mouth and began to moan. Like a fish out of water, her lips opened and closed as she felt his hand move up her legs to her crotch. She tried to keep a clear head despite her excitement. She wanted to be able to remember what a real man could do to her-to feel as she had with Big Jim. She felt his hand grip both her thighs and play with the fat there. She knew they were warm, and probably moist, that far up. Then his fingers were brushing across her panties, pressing into them to find her cleft. She shivered, a delicious shiver that usually came only when she peed. Then she could feel his fingers pushing under the tight edge of the rayon and stroking the delicate young hairs of her pubis.
She opened her eyes and looked out at the empty seats of the auditorium. On a school day, every seat would be filled. Now it was empty and dark, but the seats intimidated her. She grabbed his arm. "No ... not here." He was surprised, but so relieved that she wasn't saying no to him that he didn't object.
"Well, where?" he asked. "There's no place else I can think of."
"Why not out there?" She pointed to the empty auditorium. The symbolic nature of the change of position escaped him, he was so wrapped up in her. They went down the steps to the darkened seats. "Let's get on the floor," she said, pulling him into a row in the front of the auditorium. It was cold concrete down there, but he was past caring where he was. He was high, the feeling a man gets when he is accomplishing a seduction he hadn't even counted on. It was like a gift from heaven. They folded back the seats and got down on the floor. As soon as he was down on the floor, she was on top of him, her tongue snaking out to find his in midair. Feverishly (she wished he would go slower) he pulled up her skirt and began to squeeze her all over, his strong insistent fingers digging into the wet crevice of her buttocks, and squeezing so hard she felt like a bruised fruit. She yelped, "Don't break me, Mr. A.!"
"I'm sorry," he apologized, moving his hands to her breasts, pulling at them more gently, rubbing her nipples until they were hard. She took her hand from around his neck and went for his zipper, undoing it as quickly as she could. Then her fingers went inside for his cock, which was short and stubby, but very thick. She had a small cannon in her hand, which she wanted to fire. She jerked it up and down in her hand until he began to grunt. "Watch it, baby, or I'll come in your hand. I haven't had a piece in a month." So she held him quietly, while his hands ransacked her body.
She pulled his shirt out of his pants and ran her hands over his thick, hairy chest. He was like an island she could rest on. She wriggled her hips against his, feeling the tip of his prick press against her clitoris. He rubbed it against the sensitive little button, and then placed it against her hole. It tickled, and felt so big. She spread her legs to encompass it in her wetness, and just as she did that, he bucked upwards and rammed it home. She let out a little scream. He whispered in her ear: "You're not a virgin, are you? You can't be a virgin."
It was tearing her apart, it was so thick, but she clung to him as he braced his legs against a seat and shoved it into her.
It was like being a horse on a merry-go-round, with one of those poles that went up and down going into her. His hands gripped the cheeks of her ass and pulled them apart.
She felt her flesh ripping apart as his hands kneaded the soft globes. It was cruel, and not pleasant, but it excited her. He was straining for his orgasm; his face was contorted, like a little boy's when he tries to shit. His stroke inside her was so hard she grimaced.
Then they heard the sound of metal clanking and banging on the concrete. It was Hogan, the janitor. Even if he didn't see them, he would probably wonder why the stage lights were still on. Mr. A. stiffened and stopped his movement. They held their breaths as they heard the old drunk swishing the mop around in the aisle near them. Estelle moved around to get more comfortable while they waited for him to leave, but her movement brought him off; she felt a surging in her cunt, and then Mr. A. groaned as he shot his load into her cunt. He tried to stifle it, but by then it was too late. They heard footsteps, which stopped close by.
"Now ain't this cute! You goddamn kids! Catch my girl down on the floor and I'd skin her alive. I mean it. Who's that under there? I know you, Estelle."
Estelle got to her feet and pulled down her skirt, feeling the come run down her legs.
"Mr. Antonio!" Hogan exclaimed. "Shit ... I've never ... I mean, a teacher! Boy oh boy, your wife must be hell, I don't know...." He couldn't seem to get over his own astonishment.
"Shut up, Hogan. I was just rehearsing with Estelle, showing her a scene."
"Shit fire! I guess Mrs. A. knows all about it, huh?" The three of them stood looking at each other.
"You're not going to mention this, are you?" Mr. A. asked.
"Maybe. Maybe not. I ask myself: why not? What do I owe you?"
"You can't, Hogan." Mr. A. was busy buttoning himself up, almost ready to start pleading. Estelle stood there, waiting to see what Mr. A. would do. But it wasn't Mr. A. who decided, but Hogan.
"Come here, girl," he ordered. She went over to him and he reached for her breasts, holding her to him with one hand over her buttocks. He unzipped his pants and took out a big horse cock. "I'm gonna put this in you like I've been wanting to all year."
"You can't do that," Mr. A. protested, but Hogan ignored him.
"You want everyone to know about you and this Romeo?"
He pulled her skirt up again, turned her around, and forced her to bend over a seat. While her eyes pleaded with Mr. A. to do something, the janitor positioned his cock between her legs and pushed it in through the tight wet folds of her cunt.
* * *
That was what it was like when she was a kid. Not exactly Shirley Temple-ish. After that, she saw no sense in giving it away. But the acting bug, the need to exhibit herself, stuck with her.
Her reverie was broken by Zack's voice. It was harder, more business-like.
"I'll draw up your contract tonight. We're in business."
* * *
For the next few weeks, Zack was busy with Estelle's education as a starlet. He found out that despite her recently acquired fondness for good living, she was basically a raw and unfinished girl, still crude enough to retain a kind of exciting toughness that could be converted into pure gold if toned down, he suspected. He showed her how to talk, told her how to dress, what kind of makeup to wear, how to fix her hair; but most of all, he took pictures of her. She submitted, like a little girl playing house. He did conventional figure studies, shots of them in bed together, and even a movie of her crotch, in color, with her red-nailed fingers stabbing in and out of the red, swollen lips, working up a lather. He made her stroke herself so much she was sore and tender for two days in that sensitive region.
Then one day he pronounced her ready for a full-fledged screen test. He had even written a script for her, which he had her study for hours in preparation for the big day. The day before, he was busy putting up lights, mikes, and cameras in her bedroom, where the scene was to be shot. He even called up an acquaintance of his, Denis, to ask him to do the camerawork for it. Finally everything was set. He ordered her to get a good night's sleep, because they would begin shooting at nine the next morning. She had to be up at seven to have him apply her makeup and help her with her costume. Zack had decided to make her big scene a period piece. In line with this, he had, with a few simple touches, converted her bedroom into an 18th century French boudoir, complete with china bidet.
The big day began with a loud knocking on the door of her apartment. She answered it in a skimpy nightgown Zack had bought her, which only came down to the tops of her thighs. Standing behind Zack when she opened up and made a playful grab for his peter (which he managed to dodge gracefully and cover with a little bow) was a thin pretzel of a boy whom Zack introduced as Denis. Denis had a small hump on his back, and he was missing one buttock. It made his walk a travesty of motion. His pale, delicate face wasn't unhandsome, though. He gulped out a fast hello and they discussed the day's schedule. Estelle noticed that Denis kept trying to look down the front of her gown. He was rewarded when one of her firm melons popped out of the lace as she was clearing the table afterwards. Zack laughed and Denis blushed, choking on his coffee, as Estelle stuffed it back in.
"You'd better go get set up, Denis," Zack said finally. "The bedroom is in there. You'll see her soon enough."
"Is he going to be here all day?" Estelle asked as soon as Denis had left. She didn't relish the thought of putting on a show for a kid like Denis.
Zack patted her bottom reassuringly. "Ignore him. He's only a kid. I don't pay him-I just let him look, so we're getting ourselves a bargain."
Zack spent the next two hours applying makeup to every part of her body. She teased him a few times, but his concentration was that of a mechanic who gets a chance to work on a Rolls-Royce. Her hair was piled on top of her head in ringlets, her skin had tan body makeup applied to it, her nipples were rouged and lipsticked, her armpits were shaved, and finally, the lips of her cunt were smeared with lipstick and vaseline. Zack had shaved some of her coarse pubic hairs so that the lips stood out prominently. Then the dress with the hoopskirt was pulled over her head and adjusted. It was a mixture of eras, but Zack wanted to get the classic effect of a French dirty postcard. He told her that he would dress as a sailor. At nine o'clock they entered her bedroom. Denis was fooling with one of the lights.
"Ready, Denis?"
"In a minute, Zack." After a few more adjustments, they were ready to begin. The first shots would be straight, with Estelle waiting for her lover and talking to herself about the pleasures to come. Then Zack was to come in as the lover.
"Action!" Zack called.
"Oh my lover will be here in a few minutes! I can't wait for him to take me in his arms and let me feel once again his big strong prick. Oh, here he comes! I hope my husband doesn't return unexpectedly."
(There is a soft knock. The lady goes to the door and whispers: "Who's there?" and then opens the door, her arms wide.)
"Cut!" Zack yelled. Estelle was fighting the advances of Denis, the hunchback.
* * *
Zack had decided that a rape scene featuring a hunchback would be a much more effective advertisement for Estelle's abilities than a conventionally pornographic scene with him. He thought of it as a necessary trailer. He had to impress a very tough man whom he had talked to about his scheme, a one-time Hollywood king whose partners had been able to wipe him out because of the extravagant life he had led in the Hollywood of the thirties. Now the old man was back, and he wanted revenge-on his partners, who were now the big men in Hollywood, and on his former stars, who had all deserted him. Zack was afraid of the old man, but only he could finance the film Zack wanted to make. Estelle had been heaven-sent. She was built to cinemascope proportions, but best of all she was dumb. He could control her. At least he had been able to so far.
She was out of control at the moment, however; running around the set screaming as Denis chased her, with Zack urging him on from behind the camera, getting it all down on film. Estelle ran out of camera range and right at him, cursing, her nails ready to scratch his eyes out for tricking her, but fate had decided differently. She tripped over a cable, and Denis was on her in a flash, his hand snaking up under her dress as she lay there, the breath knocked out of her.
"Move her, for God's sake!" Zack yelled. "She's not in camera range!" Denis obligingly pulled her by her feet back into range again, where he yanked up the stiff hoopskirt and went for her panties and garter belt. They were black lace for the fetish crowd. Denis was trembling uncontrollably; it was obvious he didn't know what to do next.
"Take out your prick, damn it!" Zack yelled at him exasperatedly. Denis sat on Estelle's hips as he fumbled with his trousers and finally managed to pull out a long, pencil-thin dick which was soft as putty. Moaning and dribbling spittle down his chin, he rubbed his limp front against Estelle's legs and hips. But she had recovered by the time he was hard, and crawled away on hands and knees to the bed.
Unknown to her, the plump, quivering cheeks of her ass were in full view as she crawled, the little tuft of hair in front showing through her legs and her asshole winking, a dark ring of desire. Denis was upon her once more, crouching behind her as she presented her target for his pencil. He sank it like an amateur, and Estelle, who was unprepared for the assault and still stunned, screamed like a cat in heat.
"Oh, you fucker!" She bucked backwards with her hips, but Denis was too well lodged inside her to be knocked off. He didn't even move, but just held on for dear life, his hands using her breasts as handles. She was groaning and tossing her head back and forth in her passion. Her hunchbacked rider was beside himself, emitting little shrieks like a bat as he came.
By this time Zack's big machine was leaping in his pants. He was trying to control the camera and his own lust at the same time, and then he lost the contest. Denis was lying in a heap on the floor, twitching spasmodically as his semen ran out from between Estelle's buttocks and down the backs of her legs. Zack grabbed her under the arms and threw her on the bed. She was whimpering as another orgasm hit her, massaging herself between the legs with both hands. With his two fingers he spread apart the greasy lips of her pussy and with the other hand he put her hand around his prick. She stuffed him in, and in one surge he was swallowed. Her cunt was tight, gripping him like a mouth. Then he drew back, fighting her tightness until just the tip of his prick was in her, and rammed it home again, crushing his face down on her breasts and taking her long nipple between his teeth. His huge testicles were aching as they beat against her buttocks, and Estelle's hand went down and cupped them gently, milking them. When the explosion came, he thought the top of his head would come off.
REEL TWO
They called the old man King Gass in the days when he was King of Hollywood, when his studio ground out three hundred films a year, and every one of them a money-maker. His downfall began when he started to enjoy the prestige and power, and not the least, money, that went with his position. All the other tycoons had their mansions, their peccadilloes, but they were cautious enough to pretend to lead the lives of quiet accountants. Too many scandals became connected with the Gass name and the patient accountants were able to move in on him like sharks.
He never knew what hit him until years afterwards. He woke up one sunny morning in a sanitarium and remained there for years. Gass Studios changed hands and his stars let other studios buy their contracts for pennies. When he was finally released from the sanitarium, because he couldn't pay his bills, it was right after the war. The former king was penniless.
He was a broken man. Despite the care he had received, he had lost weight, and his face had taken on an unhealthy pallor.
The first thing he did was to go back to the golden town, where he tried to collect on some old obligations. But Hollywood had changed; it was a bread and butter town, a factory, and memories were shorter than a Looney-Tunes cartoon. He couldn't get past the secretaries of his former assistants on the phone, and when he tried to get through his own studio gates, the guards stiff-armed him down the street. His suit was years out of style, and his shirt was dirty; he had been sleeping in the men's shelter since he first got in on the bus.
One man hadn't forgotten him, a rubber faced comedian named Blondie Helton who had been Dean Pelfry's comic sidekick in the singing westerns of the thirties. Blondie was doing well on the radio now-he had his own show and his brand of sentiment and bad jokes had made him a national favorite. When Gass called, Blondie invited him out to a party he was giving for some charity or other.
"Yeah, they're shits, extortionists, but that's what my public wants. You know, keep up the image."
Gass arrived early; he had no place else to go. He had expected a small, private party, where a face from the past might renew some contacts, but apparently it had been opened up to anyone with the price of admission.
Nevertheless, a few of his old stars were there, accompanied by their entourages. He noticed Hester Millions in one comer, surrounded by a covey of good-looking Italians. She had just returned from making Pluto's Daughter, another one of her swimming pictures. Gass had discovered her in an amateur swimming contest and he had always suspected she was at least half male. He waved to her and she did a double take.
"Clear the waves, boys! I spy an old shark I thought we'd harpooned a long time ago!" She embraced her former employer and gave him a big aquatic kiss. "You're a little behind times in style, aren't you, pop?" she said to him.
"Say, Hester, could I see you a minute?"
"What about, sweetie?" she patted his head. "What you want, you want to make a touch?"
"Well, more of a business deal."
She went on as if she hadn't heard: "Because if you are, forget it. This ain't Russia." She laughed and smacked his cheeks. "This old fart wants to touch me, boys. Would you believe I used to work for him? He blew his dough on the sluts and now he wants to put the touch on me." She laughed again and turned away from him. He was dismissed.
He went to Europe to start all over again. He started out small, making westerns in Germany. A boy he took with him named Gant became a star in them. He had met Gant at the same party, parking cars. The giant offered him a place to eat, mainly because he recognized Gass, and he wanted to be in movies. He knew Gass' picture from movie magazines he'd thumbed as a boy; he wasn't astute enough to know a past success from a current failure.
They made two dozen cowboy epics starring Shotgun Gant and the beaten Germans flocked to the theaters to see Gass' dramas of power and blood.
Shotgun Gant became a mythical figure. He stood 6'6" and weighed over 250 lbs. His shotgun was made to order for him-four feet long, so his build wouldn't dwarf it. Gant wasn't like the other stars Gass had developed; he was child-like, and in his innocence he was loyal to the old man.
They returned to the States in '55 and set up operations in New York. Gass took on the name Condor. Condor Productions made nudie films exclusively and Gass salted away his tremendous profits with care, living frugally in a furnished apartment on Third Avenue. Gant became the hero of the exploitation films-using a bullwhip on old burlesque queens and young waitresses in such thrillers as Revolt of the Sex Queens, and Lust at Lousy Luke's' Place.
When Gass felt they were ready, he returned to California and built himself a small, well-guarded studio in the hills above Los Angeles. He stole the best technicians from the big studios with offers of better pay and a share in the profits. He didn't sign one actor, however.
Gant was in his late thirties now and he became Gass' right-hand man in charge of the studio. In six months, Gass Studios opened again, after an absence of more than twenty years from the scene. The old man moved cautiously at first. People would be curious, so he decided to use the studio for making half-hour comedy features with the Smash Brothers, until he could decide the best way to take his revenge.
It was at this time that Zack came to see Gass about a job. Gass interviewed every job applicant personally, after they passed through Gant. He wanted to be sure of the loyalty of every employee. Zack said he was looking for a job as a grip, but he had heard of Gass and in the back of his mind was the hope he would get a chance to broach his idea.
The executive offices of Gass Studios consisted of a small anteroom, occupied by a bored secretary, and a much larger office for the old man, who received visitors while seated behind an oversized desk made of solid oak. There were two file cabinets in the corner and thick rugs on the floor. On a shelf were two Oscars the old man had picked up in a bygone Hollywood. When Zack entered the office, the old man, who had the anonymous face of an Orchard Street peddler, was talking to a Mexican boy of thirteen, who was dressed in T-shirt and shorts. He was perched on the edge of the old man's desk, an impertinence Zack thought might come from a son, but as soon as he was seated, the boy hopped down and disappeared underneath the desk.
The interview was a success. The old man saw through Zack's story about wanting a job as a grip immediately, and then he asked Zack what he really had on his mind.
"I know enough to see you don't want to work as a grip, my boy," he said, assuming a fatherly tone. "You look like you've got something on your mind. Got an idea for the old man?"
"Well, yes sir. But I'm almost afraid to mention it."
"What's wrong? Can't be that bad." He was grinning, satisfied, inviting Zack to continue. "I've got an idea for a blue movie."
"You mean a dirty picture? Boy, I'm not in that business." He sounded as if he wanted to be mad but was too happy for that. Zack got up to leave. "No, no. Stick around. Let me hear your idea. I'm in the mood."
"Well, it's like this: you take a hidden camera along with a sexy girl, and have her get into compromising positions with a lot of stars-you've got a movie that people will pay plenty to see."
"Ahh." He made a strange sound. "But we'll never be allowed to show it. Let me think. Just let me think. Ahh...." He sat staring excitedly at a point behind Zack's head, continuing to grunt and gasp as if his brain was working overtime. For a minute, Zack was concerned for the old man. He began grunting, and his face turned beet-red. He got so excited that he got up from his desk and strode to the window, forgetting that his cock was dangling in the breeze, heavily veined and red, still dripping semen. "I've got it! I've got it! We have a deal, young man."
Zack watched as the little boy crawled out from underneath the desk and left the office grinning and wiping his hand on his pants.
When Zack left Gass Studios half an hour later, he had Gass completely sold on his idea and had an advance check for $5,000 in his wallet.
When Estelle awoke the next morning, she was ready to go back to Chicago and give up her hopes of becoming a movie star. The area between her buttocks felt split and sore and as she looked around her bedroom the cameras and lights still there reminded her of Zack's betrayal. When he entered her bedroom, whistling gaily and carrying a breakfast tray for her, she wanted to throw something at him.
"Good morning, sweetheart," he said in the best of spirits.
"You lousy bastard, if I could move my ass I'd kill you. You tricked me."
"No, you wouldn't kill me. I've made you a star."
"Would you climb down off that horse, Mr. Big Talk?"
"Swear to God, Estelle, and cross my heart." He crossed his chest with his fingers. "I took what we shot last night over to Mr. Gass and he loved it. He almost creamed in his pants when he saw you. You're in, child." She wouldn't believe it and sat there eating her omelet and frowning at him, mainly because she had never heard the name Gass before. "Who's he?"
"The head of Gass Studios, who else?"
"Never heard of it. I knew you were lying to me."
"But I'm not! Eat your breakfast, put on something that shows you off, and we'll go see him. He wants to meet you."
An hour later they were on their way in a taxi to Gass Studios. Estelle rode with a little cushion under her still sore behind. She had never seen Zack so gay.
At the studio the secretary let them go right in to Mr. Gass, who was sitting behind his big desk watching the film of Estelle and the hunchback. Daylight filtered through the drawn blinds. When he saw them he jumped up and ran to Estelle. "My dear, you're simply wonderful! You'll be a great star, I promise you."
The little bald man with the face of the guy behind the counter at the delicatessen seemed to swarm over her. His enthusiasm was that of a puppy who hasn't seen its master in a long time, and it was infectious. She knew she liked Mr. Gass right away, perhaps because he seemed so harmless. Behind them the silver images of the awkward hunchback buggering her flickered, creating a weird light.
"Let's talk," Mr. Gass said. "Sit down here." He motioned for her to sit on the edge of his desk, where Zack had seen the little boy sitting. Zack sat in front of the desk in the only other chair in the room.
"Zack, you've got an eye, boy," Gass said appreciatively, reaching up to stroke Estelle's thighs as if she were a doll on display. "We're going to do alright together." Estelle was nervous but she saw no reason to object to the old man's touch. Gass switched off the projector.
"Well, we should have champagne, but it's too early in the day, isn't it?" Estelle didn't think so, but she didn't say anything. She smiled at him. He was perspiring, despite the air-conditioning.
"Well Zack, you know how important this meeting is for me. I'm on the brink of something I've wanted for twenty years."
"You mean you don't think Zack's idea is crazy? I can't believe it, Mr. Gass," Estelle said.
"I think Zack's idea is absolutely splendid, my dear. It's what I've been waiting for. But what do you think? It will make you a star, you know."
"Well, you know, I'm nervous, but if it's going to make me a star, it's worth it, isn't it?" she said brightly.
"That's the right attitude, I can assure you of that, Miss L'Amour. This will be the most important film I've ever made, and you know I've made some 1200 films in my time. Zack will have all the resources of the studio at his disposal, and an unlimited budget." He said the last recklessly, as if it had been a struggle to get it out. "Of course, Zack and I will be working closely together on every aspect of the production."
"Where do we start?"
"Well, because of the nature of the film it really doesn't matter. It'll all be edited together afterwards. Your job is to in some way establish intimate contact with a number of stars-I'll give you a list-and maneuver them into compromising positions. It doesn't matter who you start with, or where, but I think you should begin as soon as possible."
There was a silence in the room. Estelle noticed that Gass was staring at her legs, which, because of the tightness of her dress, were exposed to mid-thigh. He was breathing heavily.
"You can touch them if you like, Mr. Gass. We're friends," she said, trusting her instinct. She didn't expect the storm of indignation that greeted her very sensible offer.
"No! Certainly not. In all my years in this business I never...." he gasped. Estelle almost decided she didn't like him, right there, but he didn't keep it up for long. She didn't know that his reaction was a throwback to those days in the thirties when he had been attacked on all fronts for that very thing.
All she knew was that he was suffering, and she knew only one way to assuage suffering. She stood up and pulled her skirt up around her waist, and stepped out of her bright yellow panties, leaving her garter belt on. Then she mounted his desk again, and settled her tender behind on his desk blotter, spreading her thighs as wide as she could with her hands, bringing the red, wet melon of her sex within six inches of his face. He stared at it, transfixed, and then with a sigh he sank his mouth in her, sending his tongue snaking up her vagina, using his thumb on her clitoris, which was beginning to peek out from between the flanges of her sex. He rolled it around like a marble while his tongue explored the sandy walls inside her. The room began to swim after a while.
"Suck it!" she cried, hot already. He moved his lips to her clitoris and began sucking on it like a calf at his mother's teat. When she couldn't stand it any longer she wrapped her legs around his neck and lay back on the desk, writhing as she came. When she looked up again he was sitting there, juices still on his chin and lips, smiling beatifically.
"I've got to have you," he said. She got up on her knees to give him room to get up on the desk too. Her hand went to his fly and found his old cock, which to her disappointment was unusually small.
"My, what a teensie," she said. She moved her fist on it as if she could stretch it and make it bigger, but it didn't work. The shaft was full of purple veins and was almost black from use, the knob at the tip leaking from what had gone on before. Oh well, she thought, and climbed on top of the old man, letting his little rod push slowly up the tight, granulated walls of her vagina until she felt his balls. And then she jumped, impaling herself on it as she came down. Her victim gasped. She squatted above him and moved around on his little candle as fast as she could, wanting to get it over with. His hands grasped her breasts, which were molded in a tight yellow sweater, and weighed them tenderly, bouncing them in his palms as if unable to believe their weight. Estelle felt cheated, but just then she felt Zack's strong hands on her back, pushing her down flat on the old man. She reached blindly behind her and felt Zack's huge, cool prick. In a minute he had placed it in from behind, adding his efforts to the old man's in the same channel. Electricity hit both her and the old man, whose prick was being rubbed by Zack's heavy member. Estelle closed her eyes in ecstasy. She no longer felt cheated. Both men were like racing engines in her cunt, and she could just manage to grind her pelvis very gently, she was so weak with pleasure. Gass was gasping from the weight on top of him, but he was too busy to complain.
The little Mexican boy walked into the office at this moment. He had come to ask the old man for some money so he could go to the movies, but when he saw the three of them sandwiched together on the desk he felt an immediate painful throbbing in his trousers. He took out his enormous adolescent tool, which was still thin but so long it sprang up to his belly button. He ran both hands over it, pulling the foreskin, wondering how he could get in on the act. He walked closer to the desk to watch the delicious redhead take both pricks in her cunt at once.
Estelle felt something soft rubbing her lips. She opened her eyes to see the large flat head of an enormous, thin prick which belonged to a young boy who was kneeling by her head on the desk. His small hands were pulling at her breasts, trying to get a grip on them, and he was smiling. Estelle smiled back at him. He looks like an angel, she thought. In one motion she opened her mouth, and the boy thrust the length of his shaft in. She felt the broad, soft head of it ram against the back of her throat. It lay on her tongue like a huge finger, completely filling her mouth. Three inches remained outside, and she brought her hand up to stroke it, taking his large balls in her other hand and squeezing them gently. Her tongue ran up and down the glans and poked its way into the slit at the tip. Slowly he began to move it in and out of her hot mouth as she licked and sucked it, nipping it with her teeth when he pulled back.
When Zack looked up from his labors and saw the long brown prick of the Mexican boy plunging in and out of Estelle's mouth his excitement was doubled and he began to drive in and out of her cunt furiously. His prick felt like a log with a tingling in its center. He was so excited he thought he could feel it swell another inch, as he battered it into her. The old man must have felt it too, because it whipped him to his climax; grunting between clenched teeth, he sent his charge deep into Estelle's belly. Zack followed him a minute later, plunging up her so deeply she was moved two feet by the force of it. Her head hung over the edge of the desk. The feeling that shot through her insides when the hot liquid of both men spurted made her redouble her efforts on the boy, who was jerking back and forth like a dervish. As the two men lay spent in her and exhausted, she felt the boy coming from way down at the base of his prick, and then a minute later he exploded in her mouth, the syrup sliding easily down her throat as she gulped it greedily, holding his throbbing prick with both hands and squeezing it in order to get the last drop. The smell of semen drove her wild.
* * *
She had finally been able to get an invitation to dinner from Van Pire through the efforts of Mr. Gass, whose studio had produced the early Van Pire films. Mr. Gass told the star, who was in semiretirement, as he called it, that Estelle was a reporter who wanted to do an article on the old horror films. Zack had gotten a small truck, which he disguised as a diaper delivery service, to hold all the equipment needed. He had attached a small microphone to a brief brassiere which she was not to remove. She could tell him where to come to set up his equipment on it, and he could record their conversations.
Zack spent two days before he sent her out, filling her in on the man she was to seduce. He lived in a small castle on a hill in Brentwood. The castle had been moved brick by brick from Hungary and reconstructed thirty years ago. There were two servants in the house with him, but most of the time he was alone. He slept in the daytime and rose at about eight o'clock every night, as soon as it was dark. He was in his sixties by this time and gossip had it that he had been addicted to heroin for the last fifteen years. He hadn't made a movie in the last four years-directors claimed he was unreliable. Privately, they said that he had begun to believe his own legend, the characterization which had made him famous. He believed, or pretended to believe in public, that he was a vampire, and that he had magical evil powers. Rumor also had it that he was practically penniless and lived off the bounty of certain ladies, who seemed to be under his control....
Estelle was nervous about seeing him. Zack had run the old Van Pire movies for her and that hadn't made things any better. Only the thought of stardom finally persuaded her to go. She remembered too well the fright she had felt as a kid watching this man in the second balcony of Loew's.
So one dark night, she arrived at the entrance to the castle in. a rented limousine, dressed in a tight black gown slit up to mid-thigh at the sides. Zack had applied white makeup to every part of her body. The truck with the equipment and the waiting technicians in it was parked down the block.
She rang the bell, and the door was answered by Van Pire himself. She grew apprehensive as the massive wooden door creaked open, inch by inch, and the dim light from within struck her eyes. And then when she saw the famous, familiar figure standing there she stopped dead in her tracks. A clear, sepulchral voice with a pronounced Hungarian accent said, "Don't be afraid of me, Miss L'Amour. Come right in. I've been expecting you." She hadn't expected such gracious manners. It soothed her nerves and she stepped inside. The floor was built of rough blocks of stone and torches stuck in the walls were the only lights in the hallway. His slim, militarily erect figure, dressed in a tuxedo, led her into the drawing room.
She noticed the cold right away. Outside it was a warm California night, but in the castle it was very cold. She rubbed her arms. A strange, dank odor bothered her.
"Are you cold, my dear? My guests usually are, at least at first. Here, you can put this on." He handed her a cape to throw around her shoulders.
"Your dress is most lovely," he said, as he helped her with the cape. "It is very becoming."
They sat opposite each other before a huge fireplace. When a butler walked in, Van Pire ordered martinis for both of them. She could see him now. The light was better. His face was old, but it was covered with a flat white pancake makeup. His lips were rouged, and his fingernails had been painted a scarlet red. His hair was straight and coal black, so black it gleamed in the firelight.
Must have a pound of grease on it, she thought. Otherwise his appearance wasn't so much unusual as old-fashioned. His scrupulously clean tuxedo, for instance, seemed to be from another day and it was worn and frayed around the edges. He stared at her, apparently entranced, until it made her so nervous she had to say something.
"You look just like you did in your movies." Then she heard his hollow, booming laugh, which stretched his lips back so that his teeth showed.
"Hardly, my dear. Those days are gone, I'm afraid. But thank you for saying so." He leaned forward and took her hand in his, caressing it. He continued his slow stroking of her hand until the butler brought them their drinks. It wasn't until then she noticed how horribly eaten away the butler's face was. The butler silently withdrew. Van Pire didn't seem to notice her look of revulsion, despite the intensity of his stare.-Estelle had never been able to stomach sick people'. Even when her father was in the hospital back in Chicago, dying of cancer, she could only force herself to visit him once.
The hands that caressed hers were like slabs of ice. He had taken both her hands in his and was smiling in the way she remembered from his movies.
"You know," she said timidly, "you're not as scary as I thought you'd be."
"I'm glad you think that, my dear." They had their drinks and when it was time they went in to dinner. Her host didn't talk much, but his eyes, which she noticed glinted despite the dim light, seldom left her. Dinner was served on a long, highly polished mahogany table, with him at one far end and her at the other. A silver candelabra cut off part of her vision of him. The utensils and plates were of the best make-evidently he hasn't reached the point of having to sell them, she thought. The food was good-a chicken cooked in wine, but it was a very small chicken.
Afterwards, as they were returning to the drawing room, he apologized. "I'm afraid there wasn't very much food. I hope you're not still hungry." There had been almost no conversation at dinner, so she seized upon this chance to dig into him and get under his reserve.
"Yes, Mr. Gas mentioned that you've been pretty hard up lately. Is that true?" Zack had counseled her to sound like the real thing, a hard-boiled girl reporter.
"All the truth in the world. You see, I haven't made a motion picture in four years. They wouldn't give me a decent role. I ended up being the bogeyman in a lot of moronic films before I put a stop to that nonsense."
"I hope you don't mind my being so blunt," she said.
"Why of course not. I appreciate your frankness." He smiled at her again. It made her shiver inwardly whenever he did it. She noticed that his smile was almost a glare.
"How do you manage to live now?"
"Well, of course, I have some money coming in from TV, and some stocks, but I really depend on friends."
"Friends?"
"Oh yes, there are people who believe in me, who are willing to see that I don't starve." He almost leered at her.
"But why?" He raised his eyebrows at her impertinence, the first sign that evening that she had gotten through to him.
"Why? Because they believe in me, as I said."
"What is there to believe?"
"You are hard to answer. Well, never mind, I think I can let it out now. It's about time the world knew what happened to me." He paused, waiting to see the anticipation in her face before he continued. He had an excellent sense of timing.
"Some time ago I organized a group of people whose interests were similar to mine. It takes a very special person, one interested in the occult, and the black arts." This last he gave a special intonation to. It made Estelle's heart go pitty-pat. She remembered when he had used that tone in a movie, and then changed into a bat.
"The black arts? What do you mean?" Her voice trembled a bit.
"We practice the old rituals. Our ceremonies call up the magic deep in the earth and the blood."
"Oh." She didn't know what else to say. Zack had only given her so much preparation. On her own, she hadn't a glimmer as to how to continue the conversation. She was wondering if perhaps she couldn't ask to use the bathroom or something and talk to Zack on her microphone, when he took her hand in his again.
"You have such white skin. You're a lovely woman. Perhaps you'd like to see for yourself what we're doing."
"Oh yes!" she agreed, so happy to have her problem solved for her that she didn't really think about what he said.
"Follow me then."
"Where are we going?"
"Oh, we have our meetings in another part of the castle. It's not far." He turned and went to the hall. She followed him down the long hallway until they came to another heavy door. The butler whose face was eaten away was there to open it for them with a large old key he carried with the others on a huge key chain.
The door boomed shut behind them. Estelle was more frightened than she had ever been in her life. Van Pire took a torch from the wall and led the way down a long flight of steps. Cobwebs brushed against her face. The air was dank and even colder than in the main part of the castle. When they came to a second door, he lifted the bar on it himself. It creaked when he pulled it open, as if it hadn't. been used in years; the dust came exploding out at them along with a frightened bat. Estelle screamed when she saw it. Her host laughed his peculiar, deep-throated laugh at her fright.
"It's only a bat," he said into the darkness. They descended more steps. She felt a cold wind blowing at her from one side and she heard the gurgle of running water somewhere below her.
"We're almost there. Be careful of your step. These stones are old." They walked down so many steps she became dizzy from keeping her eyes focused on his back. It was like descending into hell, if hell is that deep. Finally they came to a stop and he turned to her, the torch in his hand flickering wildly because of the wind.
"This is where we have our meetings. Stay right there and I'll give us some light." When he left her she was in complete blackness. The only light was the dot his torch made as he walked away from her. She decided she'd better call Zack. She told him roughly where she had been taken, whispering with her chin sunk into her chest. She knew Zack had a map of the castle, so he should be able to find it. He had mentioned a cellar which opened into some old Indian caves to her, but she hadn't paid any attention at the time.
Other lights began to flicker on. Soon there was a dim, uneven light in the chamber which enabled Estelle to see what it contained. It was a low-ceilinged cave with a sandy floor. She looked back up toward the steps they had come down. They seemed to stretch off into infinity, like an optical illusion. Above her head the ceiling was honeycombed with thousands of bats hanging upside down. About ten feet away from her stood Van Pire, his arms folded and a cruel smile on his face, one that drew the corners of his mouth up unnaturally. Behind him on the floor of the cave were a row of coffins. The lids were standing open, and each one was occupied.
"So now you see that vampires are real." He paused, waiting for the spectacle she had seen to take effect on her. "These are also my friends." He indicated the bats with a sweeping gesture of his arms, which made his cape fly out from his shoulders.
"But this is like your movies," she said.
"Bah! The movies are like me. When Jed Downing made that-it was in 1931, I think-he was just copying me as I was. He believed! That's why he gave up making films-none of them could hope to compare with the reality of my life!" He was preaching now, a strident tone in his voice as if he were trying to convert her to a new religion. "How do you think I've been able to survive all these years? By sleeping in the daytime and going forth at night. Seldom have I been lucky enough to have a victim come to me, as you have tonight."
"A victim? But...." Estelle's throat was tight with fear.
"No, I won't harm you. That was an unfortunate choice of words. However, you are in my power now. I must warn you to do exactly as I say." He came closer to her and stared into her eyes, as if he intended to hypnotize her. But that was unnecessary. The act had been so good she was paralyzed with fright. What if all this is for real, she thought.
As she stood there staring at them, the bodies encased in the white velvet lining of the coffins began to move. She heard murmurs, and sleepy groans. Van Pire stood perfectly still, as patient as a statue. There was apparently something he wanted her to see. It was the bodies in the coffins. As she stood frozen, they began to climb out of their beds. They wore hoods, so it was almost impossible to see their faces. The figures stood up and stretched, closing the lids of their coffins as if they were making their beds. Soon they had gathered in a loose semicircle around Estelle.
"Ladies," Van Pire said mockingly, "we have a guest. Show your faces, please." Silently, they removed their hoods. Estelle just stared, her mouth agape. She was good at naming movie actresses and she recognized most of them from old movies on television. She stifled a gasp when she recognized the tall, blonde-haired woman on the end. Her face was old, but it would never change that much : it was Lilli Rommel, Estelle's model for her "woman of the world" pose as a child. What was she doing here? They said nothing. And who was the one next to her? Wasn't that the famous recluse, the one who quit making films at the height of her success? All of them were actresses who were no longer making films.
"Your face doesn't conceal your emotions very well, Miss L'Amour. Just stay there and everything will be answered. I've decided to allow you to witness one of our ceremonies and carry the news to the outside world. That should silence the unbelievers!" He stared coldly at her, and took down a whip from a nearby hook. "You shall see," he said.
"Really, darling, what does it matter? You have a tremendous ego," Lilli said, in a low, husky voice that was instantly recognizable. Van Pire looked at her and smiled-it stretched the skin of his face so tight it looked like a skull. Then his arm lashed out and brought the whip in his hand down on her shoulders.
"Here I talk! Have you forgotten? You are mine." He was enraged. Forgetting Estelle, he herded them to the middle of the cave and gave one of them a torch to start a fire with. As Estelle watched, fascinated, a fire was started, casting weird, flickering shadows through the cave. The women threw off their robes and their naked bodies shone like gold. Van Pire stood near the fire, exhorting them. She could only make out snatches of what he said, his voice became so low and guttural:
"Rise up in the night, my little ones! Come ... dance!" They began to dance around the fire, raising their hands and making claws of their fingers. Most of them were old, and if not fat, their flesh still hung limply from their lean frames. As she watched, though, they seemed to come to life. Their faces brightened and lifted; some of them chuckled and uttered strange inhuman sounds as they whirled around. Despite their age, they didn't seem to tire easily. They shambled around the fire like puppets, their breasts flapping, their buttocks jiggling like loose putty. Then Van Pire left the circle and went off through another door. Estelle heard the sound of an animal, but it was muffled by a low humming the women had begun. Van Pire came back tugging at the leash of a collie that looked very much like the movie dog Paddy. The dog was growling low in his throat and straining against the leash, which Van Pire used to beat him with. Finally he managed to drag the animal into the circle of women. They were still humming. Van Pire tied the dog to a stake and made him sit. He was whining and growling as if he was terrified. As the women passed him, he would break out in a furious bark, snapping at their legs.
Van Pire knelt down to gentle him, his hand going under the dog's body to find his genitals. The dog's penis was red and slick-looking, growing as the white hand rubbed it. Soon it was the size of a man's prick, throbbing in the firelight. He was whining piteously, as if he knew what was coming; but he didn't try to bite his master.
Then one of the women dropped down to her knees by the dog, while Van Pire held him still. She grasped the dog's organ in her fist and began licking it, sticking her red tongue far out so that her lips didn't touch the rigid, cringing flesh. The dog was panting, and jerking his hips. When she stopped, she straddled him and lowered herself on his penis, moving up and down with the animal pinned between her legs. The other women continued to dance.
The woman began to make strange sounds and cry out as the dog's hind legs moved up her back and over her buttocks, digging his nails in as he jerked his pelvis. The other women began to make incoherent, animal-like sounds, barking like dogs, whining, mumbling to themselves.
Suddenly the woman on the dog began a hideous keening, a wailing that ceased only when she fell off onto the sand, unconscious. Another figure took her place, settling her flabby haunches on the dog's glistening machine and grunting with satisfaction as she pushed it in. Then Estelle saw Lilli leave the ring of dancers and go to the dog and the woman.
She knelt beside his head and grasped his jaws in her hand, striking him on the nose with the other hand. When she had him cowed she straddled his head, those famous legs flexed over the dog's ears as his long tongue came out and began licking her cunt. She moved her hips back and forth as if she were still dancing.
That was the signal. They all crowded around the two women on the dog, kissing and pinching each other, shrieking like madwomen.
When four of them had used the dog, he came. The woman on top of him at the moment jumped free as his semen leaped like a small geyser. When that happened, his teeth clamped shut on an old woman's cunt; she screamed hideously. Most of them moved away from her, but Lilli knelt quickly and squeezed the dog's genitals until he let go with a strangled bark. The woman collapsed, running blood.
Another woman held the dog down as Lilli kept up the pressure. He howled, and shit in his agony and fear. Then another brought a rock down on his head, crushing his skull.
Silence. The woman who had been bitten sobbed; she was almost unconscious and still losing blood. They knelt around the smashed dog.
As Estelle watched, one of them went down on all fours and began barking like a bereft hound. She waddled over to the dog's body, her flab shaking, and sniffed the dog shit. Estelle turned her face away when she began eating it. When she looked again, they were all around the dog, ripping it apart with their bare hands and throwing it in the fire, after first sucking the blood out. Soon all of them were kneeling, watching their piece of meat. Van Pire stood over them, arms folded over his chest, smiling and winking at Estelle.
"They do not know what they are doing at times like this-one night they went after my bats, can you imagine?"
Estelle shuddered. "Was I seeing things? Was that...?"
"Yes, it was. They've found happiness with me, after the outside world rejected them."
"But it's horrible. I like to see people enjoying themselves, but...."
He smiled condescendingly. "To each his own. You are young yet. When you are as old as they are, when you have lived as long as they have, your tastes may change. These are women who at one time would only eat from silver and gold utensils. Now they eat the excrement of dogs. Like old cheese, they've found that some things other people would find repulsive are more to their tastes. Call it a jaded palate if you will."
"Look, could I go? I think I've seen enough. This will give me nightmares."
"Certainly you may go-but please, wait awhile. You're still an outsider, an observer. Unless you sample certain things for yourself, how can you write a good story?"
"Such as what?" He was glaring at her. His eyes had a hypnotic effect on her. He led her to the open coffin.
"Lie down, my dear. You'll feel so much better lying down." She got in obediently and he helped her to lie down, crossing her hands over her abdomen.
"You look perfect. I only wish you could see yourself lying there, your black dress against the white of the coffin, and your white skin." She wondered how far he intended to carry this nonsense. Straight above her head a bat fluttered its wings in sleep-but weren't they supposed to sleep in the daytime? She had visions of them all suddenly waking up and descending on her-getting tangled in her hair, flying up her dress, flying away with her. She shivered.
Then Van Pire leaned over the coffin and she knew she'd have to scream. When she did, she put all her terror in it and his hand came down to clamp itself over her mouth.
"Don't scream, there's nothing to be frightened of. No one can hear you anyway. I simply want to make you one of us." She struggled against his hand and bit it, tasting blood. He jerked it away, cursing, and then stared entranced at the blood. "Why it's my own blood," he said. He put the injured hand to his mouth and sucked the single scarlet drop greedily. Then he leaned down toward her again.
"I want your blood now." Estelle didn't know what to do. In the movies, this was the big moment. Now she was the endangered heroine up on the screen. She did the only thing she knew how to do, despite her fright. She reached up and felt for his penis through the cloth of his trousers. He sucked in his breath as he felt her hand find his limp member. Quickly the hand unzipped him and pulled it out. Her hand moved up and down the shaft, squeezing blindly, rolling the skin back and forth, caressing the glans with one finger in order to get him excited.
"Oh!" he moaned. And then, lamely, as he leaned forward so she could get a better grip on it: "It's wicked." He was shuddering with pleasure, and then she felt the preliminary lubricant emerge from the tip and sprinkle her hand. She attempted to rise from the coffin, but he pushed her back down in it.
"No, stay there." His legs straddled the coffin, and his penis was dangling in her face. She was relieved that at least it was ordinary. She took hold of it with both hands and touched the tip of it with her tongue, but he didn't want that. He guided his organ to her neck-to the crevice between neck and chin, and pushed her head against it to tighten the pressure. Then he began moving back and forth, the dry penis rustling against her dry skin. His eyes were kept straight ahead, not watching his own manipulations. She attempted to help him by rubbing her cheek against the length of it, but he didn't need any help. He came in a few seconds, spurting the gluey stuff into her ear and down her shoulder. Then he stood up and quickly buttoned himself, as if he were ashamed.
"You evil bitch," he said, suddenly looking old and very human.
* * *
"That old bastard sure was kinky," the cameraman said as Estelle drove away with Zack in the truck. Zack smiled, but he kept his thoughts to himself. Estelle shivered.
"Oh, Zack, he was so creepy. Even the way he came was so disgusting, not like a normal person."
"He wasn't a normal person, honey," Zack said.
* * *
After that experience, Estelle and Zack spent a quiet week at home. Zack would finger her occasionally, but he seemed more interested in the footage they had gotten. Gass was in touch with them every morning by telephone. Once he sent the giant, Gant, with some extra money Zack had requested. Zack said the shots would be pretty dim, but a new infra-red process he had used had been a great help in the cave.
Estelle spent a lot of time writing to friends in Chicago about her progress in movie-land. She was just worried that none of them had heard of the stars Mr. Gass and Zack were having her meet. Most of them were from another age in movies. But Mr. Gass had promised that she would meet Agent 69, Jimmy Bondige, before long. She spent a whole afternoon in Beverly Hills buying a new outfit, courtesy of Mr. Gass, who seemed to be terribly fond of her.
It was late one night, snuggled in Zack's arms, when Estelle learned whom she would costar with next.
"Hester Millions? But Zack, I can't swim."
"You probably won't have to. What about me? If you have to go in the water, I have to get in there too. We'll try to have you get her on the beach, anyway, but I hear the bitch's lungs collapsed and she breathes through gills like a fish now."
"Where do I have to go?" Estelle was having second and third thoughts about this whole movie business. Why couldn't she get someone nice, like Chip Ohio? That wavy black hair, and his build? He wasn't a creep.
"She'll be on location at Calico Beach tomorrow. She's making something called Neptune's Harem. Tomorrow's the last day of shooting, so she'll probably be in a good mood." Estelle had thought of another objection: "But Zack, I don't like girls."
"How do you know until you try them?" he asked, rubbing the evidence of his masculinity between her thighs until she opened them and scissored him in.
* * *
Calico Beach was a beehive of activity when Estelle arrived bright and early the next morning. Zack had told her to slip in with the other girls in the harem, and had dressed her in the white robes they wore in the movie. Estelle had cheered up somewhat when she learned that the male lead was one of her favorites, a hairy former opera star named Harold Neal. Estelle was secretly happy that she might be in a real movie, even if it was only Neptune's Harem, in the process of making the one with Zack.
When she walked on the set, her big breasts bouncing because Zack had told her not to wear a brassiere, she expected some kind of recognition, even if she had done nothing to be recognized for. It was a movie set, after all. But for two hours she was treated like a cow, part of a herd of girls, who, she had to admit, were just as pretty as she, with perhaps even better shapes. There were two large trailers on the littered beach which served as dressing rooms-one for Miss Millions and Mr. Neal, and one for the rest of the cast. She was put on an assembly line in the dressing room almost as soon as she arrived, having her hair done, makeup applied, and her gown rearranged, until she was sent out into the lineup for the assistant director's inspection. Shooting was to begin at ten, with a brief scene in which the harem would throw a ball around so the movie audience later could watch their bodies move under the flimsy gowns. After that they were to sing one of the numbers in the movie while Miss Millions and Mr. Neal swam out to sea for a final duet, during which the ocean would be set on fire. Estelle was so rushed all morning she only saw Miss Millions once, when she threw her hairdresser out of her trailer bodily. The scene in which the girls threw the ball to each other had to be done over and over, until Estelle was exhausted. The other girls seemed to be used to it, however, and sat quietly-sipping Cokes between retakes. One of them flopped down on the sand next to Estelle during one of these free periods and struck up a conversation with her.
"You look all in, kid. What's the matter, the boyfriend keep you up all night?" She was a big-bigger even than Estelle-rawboned girl with platinum blonde hair, who talked, Estelle thought, like a gangster's moll. She had been around, and it showed on her face. She must have been about 35.
"No, it's not that. It's just that this is my first day making a real movie. I mean I never knew it would be such hard work."
"Izzy-that's the assistant director-is a slave driver. In more ways than one. He's my boyfriend, see, and he keeps my ass dragging. But better that than I should have to stay at home by myself, you know?"
"Oh, I know what you mean. My boyfriend's built big too."
"No, that's not exactly what I meant, but you're in the spirit of things. My name's Goldie. Cause of my hair, see?"
Estelle decided she liked Goldie's frankness; she was like one of the girls back home. She felt she could relax with her. Maybe Goldie could help her to get to Miss Millions.
"Say, Goldie, do you know Hester Millions?"
"Not to speak to, honey, but I know her all right."
"What's she like?"
"To speak frankly, 'Stelle, just between you and me, she's a muff-diver."
"No, I'm embarrassed to say it, but what's she like sexually?"
"What I said. She digs girls. I stay away from her. Izzy'd kill me. The boys hate her too. They call her The Shark. Mr. Neal, poor thing, hates her so bad he threatened to kill her once the picture was over. Now he's some hunk of cheese. He may be a singer, but Izzy says he's hung like a horse."
Just then the harem was called to do the scene with the ball over again and Estelle had to hurry alongside Goldie to ask her about a plan that had just popped into her head.
"Goldie, would you ask your boyfriend how I could see Miss Millions? I'm just dying to meet her." Goldie agreed to ask him at lunchtime. Maybe she could get in then, but not after that, because everyone would be too busy shooting the final fire scene on the water.
By lunchtime Estelle was ready to go into the hospital for a long rest. She met Goldie and her boyfriend Izzy at a refreshment stand up the beach.
"This is the slave driver, 'Stelle. Izzy, this nut wants to meet La Millions."
"How come?" Izzy looked quizzically at her through his thick glasses. "She'll eat a peach like you alive." He was shoveling in some yogurt while Goldie slurped a malted.
"Oh, I just always liked her movies and I'd like to meet her." Her voice dropped and she couldn't look at either of them. She bought a foot-long hot dog and another Coke and stood there waiting.
"I think you're full of shit, myself; if that's what you want, Izzy will take you to her lair.
O.K. Izzy?" Goldie said. Izzy said it didn't matter to him, but they gave her funny looks. She wondered how bad the movie star could be. Izzy went in the trailer first, while Goldie and Estelle waited outside. He was back in five minutes. "She says it's okay for you to come in for a second."
"Thank you, Izzy."
"Don't bother. We'll send flowers." They walked off down the beach together and Estelle felt deserted. This must be what it's like to be a star, she thought sadly. You're all alone. She knocked on the screen door of the trailer but there was no response, so she pushed it open and went on in.
Estelle's first surprise was that Hester Millions had the voice of a witch.
A hideous high cackle greeted her as she walked through the dark, crowded trailer to the back, where she saw a light. All the windows were kept closed and the blinds were pulled down. "Is that you, Izzy? Where is the little bitch? I'm losing my patience with all the stunts you've been pulling."
Estelle parted a beaded curtain, and there was Hester Millions, seated before a huge mirror picking blackheads from her face with a little tube.
"Oh! You startled me! Can't you knock? You must be the femme who wanted to see me. Well, here I am."
"I knocked, Miss Millions, but I guess you.. "Don't be timid, kid. Your line is 'you were too busy looking at yourself'; never be timid. You'll never get shit that way." She applied cold cream to her face while Estelle waited.
"Say, you're not bad-looking. 'Course, none of you girls is ever ugly. Might be a nice change if one of you were, as a matter-of-fact, I think I'd like that fine."
Estelle expected her to take out a cigar and light it. She was afraid to sit down but she felt awkward standing up in such a tiny place.
"Show it to me, dear. Let's see what you've got."
"I beg your pardon?"
"I want to see your box, honey. Raise your skirt. I took one look at you and I knew you didn't come in to get my autograph." Her eyes watched Estelle in the mirror. Estelle was afraid to look at them. They seemed to be made out of metal. Slowly Estelle brought up the folds of her gown. Since she wasn't wearing anything underneath, that was all she had to do. Miss Millions had stopped applying the cold cream and was watching the slow striptease Estelle had unconsciously made her act into.
"Come over here. I won't bite." Estelle walked over so that she was standing right behind the star, who turned around and in one quick movement had inserted her finger into Estelle's tight pussy. She moved it around like a doctor giving a vaginal examination, until Estelle felt herself dripping.
"You'll do."
She arranged to meet Estelle on the beach that afternoon, between takes. Lunch hour was over, and she said she didn't want to rush with such a delicious morsel. Estelle went out to rejoin the girls in the harem. They were rehearsing the number they would sing while Miss Millions and Mr. Neal did their duet in the water. No one had seen Mr. Neal all day, Goldie told her. Goldie didn't bother to ask how Estelle's interview with the star had gone. She had other news.
"Guess what? Izzy asked me to marry him," she said, seeming to expect Estelle to make a negative comment.
"Why, that's wonderful, Goldie," Estelle said. "Not half. But he's the best that's come along in a long time, and I ain't getting any younger."
"Well, do you like him, even a little?"
"Oh sure, but I'm more like a momma to him. You know what he had me do to him today, at lunchtime? We went off down the beach, right? I'm feeling kind of hot, so I work him up, and then bend over-he likes it that way-and it saves me looking at his face. He's like a kid. I didn't even get a chance to get wet before he's dribbling down my legs."
"I wouldn't worry about it, Goldie. That happens to a lot of men."
"It's not that. That bothers me, but I can live with it. What gets me is that he wants me to punish him for it afterwards. I had to take him on my knee and spank him! What kind of guy is that to marry? I mean I like to tell him what to do, but I don't want to be his mother, for Christ's sake."
After about two hours work, the crew had managed to set fire to part of the ocean by throwing oil on it. Things were about ready for Miss Millions and Mr. Neal to do their scene. Estelle watched outside of the star's trailer for her to come out. The crew wasn't sure how long it could keep the blaze going. Everyone y on the set waited. Ten minutes, fifteen minutes, then an old man in white tropical clothes came striding determinedly through the crowd. He stood at the door of the trailer, his fist upraised to knock on it, when everyone heard a great crash from inside. Mr. Neal was bellowing at Miss Millions. Then the door was flung open and Miss Millions came running out, her clothes disheveled and a wild look on her face. "The bastard tried to rape me! He's drunk as a skunk!" she yelled. No one said anything. The man in white, who was the director, picked himself up from where Miss Millions had knocked him down when she came running out, and went over to try and talk to her.
"Get away from me, you old creep!" she screamed again. Casting her glance around the onlookers, she saw Estelle. An idea seemed to come to her. She grabbed Estelle's hand and pulled her with her. "If you want that fucking shot, take it now!"
Estelle was being pulled along down the beach, and the crowd followed. The director was frantically yelling directions to his camera crew. Estelle was being pulled into the water. She felt it splashing against her knees.
"But I can't swim!" she protested.
"Don't worry about that. I've got you," her captor yelled back over the noise of the breakers. Keeping one hand clamped tightly over Estelle's wrist, she dived into a low wave and began swimming strongly out to where the fire was still blazing. There was an opening in the middle of it where the scene was to have taken place. Estelle committed herself to the gods of the deep and paddled along behind. She caught glimpses of two boats full of cameras near the burning water and hoped Zack was on one of them. The fire was right in front of her, and she was being pulled under the water to the center of the ring. She surfaced gasping, frightened to death. Miss Millions held her with one hand while they both dog paddled.
"Gee honey, I didn't know you couldn't swim, but don't worry, I'll take care of you. Just don't fight me." Her voice had changed, almost her whole personality, in the water. She sounded like a patient swimming instructor, someone you could trust.
"What's wrong?" Estelle asked. "Mr. Neal should be here with you."
"I had to have someone with me, kid. That ape was going to rape me." She looked around for the cameras. "It's you and me, kid. If they don't like it, they can finish a day behind schedule."
"But I can't do anything," Estelle pleaded. This woman was mad.
"Hell you can't. You can do what I brought you out here for," she said, and tugged at the bottom of Estelle's robe. The waterlogged garment pulled off like a second skin, and then she took her own off. Estelle closed her eyes and tried to keep her nose above the water. Her teeth were being forced apart by the star's salty tongue, and she felt a hand drifting between her legs. Then the other woman turned herself upside down in the water, and Estelle felt her mouth on her crotch, like a fish nibbling. The strong hands held her legs apart, and the vee of her own legs was presented to Estelle's mouth. Estelle gripped the star by her brown, tanned thighs, which were as muscular as a man's, and plunged her mouth down on the watery crack there. Her fingers forced apart the flat boy's buttocks and one of them poked into the tight ring of the anus, which looked like a tiny starfish. Her tongue ransacked the streaming cranny, pausing now and then to spit out the saltwater which washed it. The water was warm, and as she kept it up, she began to lose her fear of drowning. The star's hips began to thrash the water, and then she had kicked free of Estelle's grip, and come up for air.
"You're a good kid, keep up that action," she gasped, and dived under again. Estelle could see her body hanging upside down in the water, now that it had cleared a little from their first exertions. Her tongue went back to the other woman's crack, exploring it from its start at the base of her spine clear around to the clitoris on the other side. Then she began to concentrate her efforts on the big cork-like clitoris. After a while she couldn't make out the body beneath her, it was thrashing around so much. The rest of her own body seemed to be a million miles away, although she could vaguely feel that the star had both hands in her pussy and was holding it apart so she could use the tremendous pressure of her mouth on every part of it. Suddenly the thighs scissored away from her with great force, and the star's body came shooting up out of the water, whimpering in ecstasy as she came. She landed on her back, still throbbing, and after a minute began moving away with a vigorous backstroke, diving backwards under the ring of fire when she came to it.
Estelle was left hanging in the water, unsatisfied. Then she remembered that she couldn't swim. "Help! Help!" she shouted, needing it badly both ways.
Then strong male hands were gripping her around the waist, and she felt the blunt end of a huge boom of flesh bump against her behind. She looked around to see Mr. Neal smiling at her. "Just hold still, that's all you've got to do," he promised, whisky fumes rolling from his mouth. She relaxed in his muscular arms as he forced her thighs apart with his leg and then jammed his prick between her legs. Her hand felt around in the water behind her till she found it and placed it for him. His entry was slow, because of the water, but it was so big that for a minute she thought it was his leg he was trying to get into her. His big hands moved from her waist to her breasts, and began kneading them so that she had to cry out. The nipples were two hard strawberries his mouth came around to feast on. Then he was ramming it home in strong thrusts that would have split her if they hadn't been slowed by the water. The water distorted the sensations she received until she thought for sure she could feel his huge battering ram knocking against the walls of her stomach. He was as big and all-powerful as Neptune himself.
* * *
Evidently she had passed out, because when she opened her eyes again she was on board a boat and Zack was kneeling above her, his hair still wet from diving in to rescue her.
"It was a beautiful scene, darling," he whispered. She lay there looking at him, feeling waterlogged. She was vaguely surprised she was still alive. And then she turned her head away from him and was sick all over the deck.
When she awoke the second time, Zack gave her a shot of brandy, and she felt fine-very clearheaded, as if she had been washed out.
"I feel like the goddess of the sea," she announced grandly.
"After that performance, you have every right to. No actress I can think of could have done a better job."
But a few more shots of brandy while she lay in a deck chair and recuperated dulled her excitement, and induced a hazy depression. It was all such a letdown. These people, like Hester Millions, who looked so great up on the screen, were more fucked-up than anyone she knew back in Chicago. Being in movies didn't seem worthwhile. It was all sex, after all, and little besides that but a few petty illusions. Why, she thought, these people spend most of their lives trying to be like they are up on the screen for an hour and a half. It made her sad to think that they were no better, after all, than she was, but she didn't tell Zack that.
"So what did you think of Hester Millions?" he asked.
"Well, I think I learned how to swim from her," was her answer.
* * *
With all the money she was making, Estelle decided she wanted to move to a nicer place-she heard about a house in Beverly Hills that could be had for $2,000 a month, and she signed the lease. Zack was against the move, but Estelle was no longer listening to him. She was beginning to realize the power she had over Zack, and to a certain extent, over Mr. Gass, who appeared to be trying hard to keep things on a business-like basis between them. He was taking no chances of a scandal.
She was kept happy because he had promised her a scene with Chip Ohio. He was making a western with Big Jim Paine, one of Paine's countless raids on the American legend. Gass had heard that Paine was dissatisfied with Ohio's work-rumor had it that Ohio wasn't a believer, politically, and Paine always came down hard on dissenters. All the gossip columns were full of the fights between them on the set and reporters had been barred, so it would take some work to get Estelle within range of her target.
But finally, one afternoon when she had almost given it up, she and Zack were awakened by the telephone. When she recovered it from under some clothes in the corner, she still wasn't fully awake.
"Estelle?" It was Mr. Gass, sounding irritable. "Don't you two ever get up? I've been calling all morning."
"I'm sorry, Mr. Gass. Zack and I had a little fight last night."
"Well, you can't let your private life interfere with business. You've got to be on your toes. I finally got you into the Jim Paine set. You've got to be over there in an hour. A guy named Hoss, an old bit player, will be waiting for you at the gate."
"I don't have to do anything with that pain-in-the-ass, do I? I want Chip Ohio."
"If you mean Paine, yes you do. You take both of them, and you have to do it all this afternoon. They're going on location tomorrow, and there, I'm helpless."
"Oh, Mr. Gass, you're a slave driver."
"I know you can do it, darling. Now let me talk to Zack." She threw a pillow at Zack's sleeping head and gave him the news.
An hour and a half later Zack dropped her off in front of the studio gates.
"How will you get in, Zack?" She asked.
"Oh, Gass fixed that up too. Don't worry, I'll manage. Good luck now."
A crumbling mountain of a man dressed in holey buckskins and a big coonskin cap was waiting at the gate, pitching pennies with the guard. He had the squeakiest voice she had ever heard from a man, like a giant eunuch. Seeing her, he smiled and fidgeted nervously.
"Miss L'Amour? I'm supposed to take you to Big Jim. Golly, I wish you wouldn't have been so late-I lost twenty-five cents." He looked her over out of the corners of his eyes. She was wearing a simple white frock with a high neckline. Her attributes were hidden because Mr. Gass had told her Paine liked women who dressed demurely, but they were working hard to make their presence felt through the tight cloth.
"You ain't carrying any weapons, are you?" the fat man whined. "I'm supposed to frisk everybody who comes to see Mr. Paine, but seein' as how you're a girl ... just tell me the truth: you're not carrying any weapons, are you?"
"Just what you see, partner."
He looked at her: "Oh." They rode in something like a golf cart until they came to a dusty western street, bounded on both sides by the false fronts of what looked like Tombstone, 1870, prime time in the American legend. The street was empty. There were a few horses tied in front of the saloon, and a truck with cameras mounted on it parked across the street.
"It's a break for you, girlie," Hoss explained. "Mr. Paine is in the saloon and Roger Ragland is with him. You might get a chance to meet him." Roger Ragland was a former movie actor; he had been typecast as the eternal good guy, the boy-next-door in a losing string of pictures through the forties. Now he was about to enter political life.
Hoss led her into the saloon. There was a crowd around a table in the corner of the set. She heard a lot of raucous laughing, like a Texan on a drunk. Hoss parted the crowd and pushed Estelle forward. She was standing in front of Big Jim Paine. He had a face like the ones carved on Mount Rushmore, constructed of granite and lined with years. He smiled at her, that peculiar twist of the lips she was familiar with from a hundred movies. She smiled back, timidly; he was awesome.
"Glad to meet you, Miss ... L'Amour, isn't it? Where'd you get stuck with a name like that?" His smile was lopsided again.
"Oh, it was an idea my agent had, Mr. Paine."
"So you're going to watch us shoot, huh?
Well, if you're patient, you might not find it too boring. Hell, you might even learn something."
"Learn something?"
"Sure, miss. Learn something. Every one of my movies has got something to say to the American public."
"I don't understand." She had never guessed that movies might have something to say to her.
"You know what I mean, Miss L'Amour. Something to say about this country of ours. About the way the country got started. It's a wonderful story, let me tell you. It's what all my pictures are about." The group around him had grown silent, as if he were praying. One of them stood up.
"You have to leave, Rog? Well, good luck, anyway." Estelle had a glimpse of Roger Ragland's back as he strode off, two assistants tagging along behind him.
"Boys, clear out now. I want to talk to Miss L'Amour alone. We've got some talkin' to do." He flashed the famous grin again, and waved his arm at them, as if he were knocking away a swarm of bees. When everyone had gone, she was seated across the green-topped table from him, wondering why he wanted to be alone with her.
"I ... uh ... got a call from old Gass today. He asked me for a favor. 'Course I said sure; I owe that man a lot, let me tell you. Favor was to let you watch us shoot." He paused, looking at her with steely eyes, eyes that had stared down many a villain on a dusty western movie-set street.
"Now I want you to lay your cards on the table, Miss whoever-you-are. What are you really doing-here? Everyone's heard about that jerk-off-excuse my French-Chip Ohio giving me trouble, wanting to make this picture a pinko-fag production. And everyone also knows I do some work for our country right here in Hollywood, U.S.A. So what are you? A reporter? Or a spy? You going to run back to your liberal newspaper and put some dirt in there about me, or just go back to the Party boss and tell him?" It was practically an oration, and he wasn't smiling, anymore.
She was so nervous she stuttered: "M-Mr. Paine, I swear I don't even understand what you're talking about. I just always liked you and I wanted to meet you in person." He stared at her. His expression hadn't changed since he began talking; it was rock hard. She felt like ducking, she was so frightened. She was aware of his enormous strength from movies like Run from the Alamo, where he had thrown 200-pound men through windows, despite his age. She was nearly paralyzed, but she decided that the best defense was a good offense. She stood up and went around behind him. "I'm just a fan," she said bravely, huskily, pressing her breasts into his square back and breathing into his ear.
"You mean you just want...?" he guffawed, then his eyes narrowed again.
"I get it-blackmail. O.K. You'll get what you came for, baby." He stood up to face her, knocking over his chair. He towered over her. And then one of his big hands came up and slapped her on the jaw, knocking her down. She lay on the floor, whimpering, as he un buckled his pants and took his belt out of the loops. From her position on the floor, he looked as big as an oil derrick. She gasped when she saw his prick flap loose from his underwear. It was as long as the barrel of a Buntline Colt, and gunmetal dark. Even limp, it swung in front of him like a weapon.
But that was all the time she had to gauge the size of his tool, because then he cracked the belt down on her hips. She began squirming across the floor, too frightened to make a sound. The heavy belt came down on her again and again, mechanically, until she was on fire and writhing with pain. Then he picked her limp, elasticized body up and propped it against the bar. She slouched against it while he spread her legs and anchored them around his waist. His prick was massive now, a small club that flailed her breasts in its excitement. She almost blacked out when she felt him trying to shove it into her. All her delicate tissues were dry and hot, resistant to the club he was trying to mutilate her with. She felt him brace himself, then ram it up her like a punch from his fist. She screamed as it touched her womb. It was tearing everything. She was like a rabbit in his hands, a hole being used. He banged away between her thighs interminably, and then she felt him coming. She felt it as if it were a cannon going off and cringed at the impact, which she knew would kill her. Just as she was saying her prayers, she heard a terrific crash and Paine's hands let go of her. He fell away, hitting the floor like an oak crashing. As he lay there he came; it was more an eruption than a human orgasm. Some of it spattered her bare legs. Before she passed out, she looked up to see Chip Ohio, who had chopped Paine down by breaking a chair over his head.
When she came to, she was lying on the bar, and Chip Ohio was smiling down at her. She thought she was still dreaming, she had dreamed about his coal-black hair and perfect features so long.
"Hello," he said. "I'm...."
"Oh, I know who you are. Who wouldn't? Thank goodness you came. How can I thank you?" She expected him to say, "By allowing me to take you to dinner," as he had said so gallantly in the movies she had seen. She waited for him to say it, but all that happened was that she felt a sensation in her crotch, a tickling. She raised her head and looked down there to see Chip Ohio's fingers in her poor torn cunt.
"But Chip ... Mr. Ohio," she gasped. He smiled guiltily.
"I won't hurt you. I'm not like him. I just want to make you happy."
So she lay back, too tired and disappointed to resist. They were like dogs, all of them, always wanting to smell her tail. There was no such thing as a romantic lover left in the world. His head went down to join his fingers, and she felt his hands gently spreading her legs, and then his fingers parting the tangled hairs.
"Be easy. Mr. Paine hurt me." He was easy. His tongue licked shyly, like a baby's, at her quim, arching up to explore the ravaged tunnel of her vagina. His lips nibbled at her clitoris, sucking it, rolling it around between his teeth, and then his fingers went into her slimy hole, throbbing like butterflies. She began to move her hips very slowly, caught up in the sensations he was causing down there. Her hands went down and curled in his hair, holding his head against her. It was a cool liniment being applied after Paine's barroom brawl attack.
* * *
When Goldie called her and invited her to a party, Estelle couldn't wait to go. She decided she wouldn't even tell Zack about it. The two women chatted for hours, the first time Goldie called.
"You knew I got rid of that creep Izzy, didn't you?"
"Now how would I know that, Goldie? I haven't even seen you since...."
"Since your big scene, huh? Hell, I thought everybody knew me. My place's like Grand Central. I've gotta go to my beautician's to get some sleep. He's the only man I trust when the old box's run dry."
"Goldie! Somebody might be listening," said Estelle.
"Let 'em-Confidential's not about to put my picture on its cover."
"Who's going to be at this party?"
"Strictly trash, kid, but they're fun. Last time I got a dingus in my ear, believe it or not. Guy had a thing for wet earwax."
"Well, I'm going to come. It sounds like fun. I haven't been out of the house in days. Zack doesn't even come near me anymore."
* * *
Estelle could hear the noise of the party as the cab pulled up the block Goldie lived on. It was so loud she thought it must be almost over, (it had an end-of-the-party crescendo to it) even though she had carefully planned her arrival so she wouldn't be more than two hours late. She had decided to wear her red silk pajama outfit and a big flowery gay nineties hat. She was a knockout and she wanted everyone to know it.
Everyone did. Not that the noise stopped, or even diminished in volume, but she immediately had three men descend upon her as she entered the door, their hands outstretched. The attention flattered her. It was like being the most fashionable dress hanging on a rack.
"I'm not too late, am I?" she asked the man at her right elbow, a fat comedian-type dressed in a loud sports jacket which lay on him like a tent.
"Late? You're right on time, baby. Friend of Goldie's?"
"Yes I am. We're not old friends, but . .
"Uh huh. I see." He wasn't very polite, she thought, but she could always ditch him later. She was going to have a fling tonight. He took her into the living room where a couple of 'Japanese lanterns with red lights in them created a sultry, erotic atmosphere. Couples were dancing, or just walking around, their bodies pressed against each other so tightly you couldn't tell where male left off and female began. When things got too urgent, a couple would leave the dance floor and make their way upstairs to the bedrooms.
The fat man danced with his hands on the cheeks of her ass, pressing her against him. Estelle allowed herself to be rubbed until she thought she had the lay of the land. He couldn't get quite close enough to her because of his huge belly, which kept their loins apart, but he continued to move his hips, and then she felt him jerk, and his hands clenched her buttocks convulsively, twisting the flimsy material as he came in his pants. Estelle decided this was a hell of a way to begin a party, and then she heard Goldie's hoarse voice near her. She was trying to beg off dancing with a mean looking man who looked like he might sock her if she refused him. Goldie saw Estelle at the same moment and recognized her escape route.
"Look, honey, there's a friend of mine, she just got back from having an abortion, and I have to talk to her. You understand, don't you? You don't? You big bum...." She kicked him in the shins and beat it over to where Estelle was holding off the fat man.
"I'm so glad you could come, 'Stelle."
"I'm not too late, am I?"
"Hell no, these orgies go on for weeks-until the cops come. Who was that you were dancing with? Oh yeah, I know him; he likes to rub up against you-gets his kicks that way. Last time he did it to me I invited him to come upstairs, so we could really tear one off, but he chickened out."
Estelle didn't know what to say. She was usually at a loss for words. She felt close to Goldie, but she suspected that was her background in Chicago and had nothing to do with her new life in Hollywood.
"Let me fix you a drink," Goldie offered,. and they went out into the kitchen. The kitchen table was occupied by a threesome-a young girl was spread on top of it, her thighs dangling off the edge, panties around her ankles, while a man stood in front of her jamming a very thick tool into her with the rhythm of a boxer. An aging blonde was standing behind him, tickling his balls as he grunted and exerted himself. He was barking at the girl: "Now I've got eight inches in you. Can't take it, huh? Too big? Too hard? So I'm too old for you, huh?" And he whacked it into her. Goldie fixed Estelle's drink and they returned to the living room.
"That skunk's a boxer-would you believe it? Whatta fatso."
In the living room a seventeen-year-old was beginning a very amateurish strip. She had collected an audience of about ten, but the rest of the dancers just ignored her.
"Your party certainly seems to be exciting," Estelle said. "Isn't she awfully young, though?" Goldie gave her a funny, defensive look at this.
"Hell no-that's my daughter Janice. I keep a good watch on her, don't worry. She needs good clean fun like this, after what Jimmy did to her."
"Who's Jimmy?" Goldie certainly sounded like she had led a colorful life.
"That's her old man. I married him when I was a dumb kid of fifteen, you know, I was just givin' it away, and along comes this jerk sayin' he's a Hollywood press agent and tells me he's gonna make a Lana Turner out of me.
I fell for it-can you believe it? But the guy was twisted. What he did to Janice . .
"Oh, Goldie, don't tell me, it sounds horrible."
"Well, it is," Goldie said, with conviction. Janice had stripped to the waist and her little dugs with their bright red points looked hard and sharp as nails. The fat man had her brassiere in his hand, rubbing it against his crotch and grinning up at her. He looked like a rube in the front row of a small town burlesque house, but Janice grinned right back at him.
"She's been taking those pills again," Goldie moaned. She turned to Estelle and buried her head in her shoulder, sobbing. "I tried my best, 'Stelle. What can I do?"
Janice had attracted more of an audience. Most of the women were urging her on. The girl's hand unbuttoned her skirt, and she stood there, waiting. Then she plunged it down into the depression between her thighs, twisting the material as she dug her fingers into herself.
"Oh the poor kid," Estelle said involuntarily, still comforting Goldie. It was like seeing herself again, trying to gain attention at one of her high school parties.
The skirt came off, and Janice stood there in childish cotton panties, her slim golden thighs pressed tightly together.
"Let's see what you got, baby," the fat man yelled. Her long fingers hooked into the elastic and pulled them down. It was a schoolgirl's performance, and that made it all the more exciting for the jaded eyes that were watching it. In a childish voice, her eyes closed, the girl whispered, "I need a dick."
It brought the house down. The men began howling and the women laughed. Goldie raised her head and screamed: "Janice! Get upstairs!" But the crowd protested at losing their entertainment. The fat man had unzipped himself, and was waving his prick in Janice's direction. It was then that Estelle decided she had to act like a star and help out in a tense situation. She could help Goldie and appease the panting audience. She ran past the fat man, giving his white vegetable-like prick a squeeze as she passed, and got up on the couch where Janice was standing.
"I'll take over from here, Janice. You go see your mother," she whispered. Janice opened her eyelids at this, and looked at Estelle with eyes that were seeing another world. But she did as she was told and ran to her mother, who hustled her upstairs, all the while cursing the crowd.
"All right, just shut up!" Estelle commanded.
She waited until they got quiet, her hands on her hips. She had never been the center of so much attention. They were all wondering what this big redhead was going to do, curious enough to settle down. When she had their attention, her hands went behind her head, and unloosed her long hair, which fell to her hips in shimmering waves. That caught them. They were wondering already if the fur between her legs would match it.
Her hands molded her body, moving over the firm breasts which jutted out like footballs, her nails flicking the nipples erect until they threatened to pierce the thin material, going down to her fat belly to play with the deep navel, tightening the cloth so the hair of her crotch was revealed, both hands gripping it, and then the big hips jerking forward, throwing a kiss to the audience. She laughed, and then unzipped the garment and let it fall to her feet. A large yellow bruise stood out on her thigh, but otherwise the big body was chalk-white, red dabbed like paint on her head, lips, nipples, and crotch.
"She's going to need ten dicks!" a woman in the audience yelled, but none of the men laughed.
Slowly Estelle bent her body backwards, until her hands touched the back of the couch. She spread her thighs as wide as they would go, and the gleaming perfect lips of her sex opened to the audience through the strawberry patch of hair. Then her hands came back to her breasts, and squeezed them, massaging them tenderly. A drop of liquid appeared at the tip of one nipple.
She could hear moans from the audience, but they seemed so far away. She felt in control of the universe. Then she raised her head and looked straight at them. Every eye was on her. She saw women unzipping their escorts to grab the hard flesh, hands squeezing breasts, and one woman was simply bent over a chair, one man pulling at her breasts, while the man behind her had inserted his prick in her behind, trying frantically to find any hole, while his eyes remained on Estelle.
She looked at the man nearest her. "Who wants me?" she asked. She brought her hands to her pussy again, and held the lips apart with the fingers of one hand while her other hand grabbed the man's and placed it between her legs. He had his prick out in a minute, and was stabbing frantically at her belly while she tried to put it in for him. He was a complete stranger, a tall good-looking man with a goatee and the look of a psychiatrist. She grabbed his buttocks and pulled him into her.
The rest of the room was a sea of moving bodies. Someone turned out the lights and lust closed completely down. She felt hands pulling at her and then something hairy against her face. A woman was standing above her, bringing her sex down on Estelle's mouth. She was dripping wet. Estelle sucked blindly, running her tongue into the woman's hole. Then the man on top of her came in a mighty burst of energy, and other hands were pulling her legs apart.
She took on at least eight men in the space of a half-hour. They were all so primed by her strip that none of them could last long. She wanted more and more. She wanted everyone in the room to have her. Cocks were thrust into her mouth and she sucked until they came, and drank the semen. She cried for more. One man nearly pulled her breasts off, twisting them, holding them together and rubbing them against his stiff flesh. Another man found her anus and began using her there. None of them cared whether she lived or died. They mauled her, pulled her open, thrust their broom handles into her, slapped her, and still other men were there to climb into her. Her body was covered with saliva and sweat and semen. Pools had formed between her thighs and on the floor; it ran down her neck and between her breasts. Every part of her ached. Finally she fainted, as the last man came into her hand because nothing else was available.
* * *
She woke up late the next afternoon. Someone was kneeling by the side of the bed, sobbing. The sound was so fierce it scared her. "Who ... who is it?" Her hand reached out and touched coarse female hair. She opened her eyes, and saw Janice kneeling there. "What is it?" Estelle asked sleepily.
"You're a whore aren't you?" the teen-ager asked between sobs. Estelle sat up and rubbed her eyes.
"How'd I get here?"
"One of mom's friends dragged you upstairs last night. You look terrible. You had that sticky stuff all over you. Mom washed some of it off." Estelle noticed that she was naked.
"Hey, you better not run around bare-ass, honey, you'll catch a cold." Janice looked down at herself, as if noticing for the first time that she was naked, and recoiled.
"Oh, I'm so bad, just like you." Estelle took a sheet from the bed and gave it to her.
"Here, put this on, and stop bawling. It's not so terrible. You've got a nice figure."
"I hate it!" She took her little breasts in her hands and pulled at them, twisting them as if they were light bulbs to be unscrewed.
"You've really got problems, kid. You know you've got nice ones. They're little, but they'll grow." She patted Janice's behind.
"You ... think so?" she asked, rubbing her eyes. She looked about twelve when she did that. Then the night before came back again. She stood up angrily. "You're nothing but a whore! That's all you're interested in!"
"Look Janice. O.K., you've got problems. If you want to talk, that's fine. But lay off those names. What I did last night was partly because of you, you know. I mean, show some gratitude. Those jokers would have gang-banged you all night if I hadn't put my pussy on the line for you."
"I wish you hadn't! Maybe they would have killed me!"
"What is eating you, Janice?" The sheet had dropped to the floor. She stood at the foot of the bed clad only in brief cotton panties. Her hard little breasts poked out like bullets tipped in blood. They were red and swollen from where she had pulled at them. She was slender, and brown all over.
"Come here and talk to me." When they were sitting together, Estelle began to stroke Janice's pliant young body, hoping to soothe her. She was a strangely erotic little child. Her body began to relax and lose its tenseness as Estelle caressed it.
"Your mother told me a little about your old man. He sounded like a real loser."
"Please, Estelle, don't talk about him. I don't like it."
"But honey, sometimes it helps to talk about it. Don't you ever talk to Goldie ... your mother?"
"I can't. I just can't. She's nice, but I just can't talk to her." Estelle's fingers were rubbing her nipples.
"Oh, that's so nice. I hate it when men touch me there."
"Why?"
"Oh, you know."
"No, I don't. I love it when men touch me there."
"But you're different." She snuggled closer to Estelle. "You're so warm." Estelle wondered if the girl knew what she was saying.
"Tell me about it, Janice."
The story Janice had to tell reminded Estelle of stories she had read in both True Confessions and Modem Screen. Janice's father, one of the old Hollywood press agent types, had built her into a child star. At the age of ten, Janice was one of the Mice on the popular Three Mice TV show for kids. And as she grew into adolescence, she began to make movies, the teen-age romances that her generation clamored for. Then when she was sixteen, her father committed suicide and she had a nervous breakdown.
"Did you love your father?"
"I don't know." As she told the story, she responded to Estelle's caressing like a young colt under his master's hand. Her father wasn't a brutal man, he was too weak for that but he usually had things his own way. He was like a child, getting all the ice cream. It was his job to handle both her and her mother's career; Goldie was usually too busy with her work, or other men, to notice what went on.
She had been feeling sick all week. Late one night, she had gone to bed early. She had just been in the bathroom, and she had noticed blood between her legs. She knew it must be her period, but she was so young. She hadn't expected it. Still, she knew her body was more developed than most nine-year-old girls. There were even a few hairs on her soft little mound. She cut them off, but they grew back.
Her father was drunk when he stumbled into her bedroom.
"Janice? How you feelin', baby?"
"I'm O.K., Dad." He switched on the light and sat down on the bed beside her, putting his hand on her forehead.
"Where does it hurt, chicken?"
"Nowhere, Dad. Just let me sleep, okay?"
"But you should let your old dad help. You don't have a fever. Here, let me feel your heart." Before she could stop him, his hand had slipped in between the buttons of her pajamas and was moving over her chest.
"What's this? Your secondary sex characteristics are really developing, my girl! And they're so hard." His fingers tickled her nipples, causing a burning sensation that made her gasp.
"Daddy, you're not supposed to touch me there."
"Oh, come now. You're still my baby. I changed your diapers when you were little. Daddy is going to take care of you ... good care." His face had become obscenely red, and he was breathing funny too, she thought, "Daddy, go away! You're drunk!"
"No, not until you tell your daddy what's wrong. I want to take care of you. Your mother won't be back till Saturday. So you see, I have to take care of you. We're all alone, and we're going to be good friends. Now tell me what's wrong, come on."
"I can't." He had opened her pajama top and was pulling it off.
"Sit up now, let me see what's wrong. Did you know I once wanted to be a doctor? Can you imagine your old dad a doctor? I wanted to be a female doctor, you know what I mean? You don't? You know, take care of a girl's problems."
As he talked, his hands went all over her body until she was stripped and shivering. "You know, you're grown up. I never realized." She jerked each time he touched her. He explored her everywhere: her neck, under her arms, down the sides of her ribs, under her buttocks, cupping the tight, sweet flesh in his hands, down her thighs, and finally between her legs, very gently. "Hey!" He withdrew his hand as if it had been burned. There was blood on it. "You tramp! What is this?"
"It's my period, darn it! I said leave me alone!" He stared at the blood on his fingers, unbelievingly.
"You're a woman."
"Daddy, go away!"
"No. Stay where you are." He stood up and took off his jacket, and then sat down beside her. "Don't worry. I'm going to take care of you. This happens to every girl. Come on-don't be afraid." He stroked her hair to quiet her. "I'm your father. You must trust me." He took her hand. "You're so beautiful. You've excited me. I need some help."
"No, Daddy."
"Please, baby." He took her hand and placed it over his zipper. Janice felt something hard, but soft too. It jumped under her hand. "I just need you to touch it honey, and you'll make me happy." He unzipped himself and pulled out a long dark organ, covered with black hair. "Put your hand on it. I just want you to hold it."
"No. I don't like it. It looks ugly." His face became purple and he showed his teeth.
"You have to. You're a big girl, now."
"Please, no. It's awful." He grabbed her hand and put it on his prick, and began to jerk back and forth, keeping his hand on hers. She started whimpering, "I don't want to."
"You have to!" His other hand came up and smacked her. Now she was bawling. "All right! All right!" He stood up, away from her, and hit her again. "Spread your legs!" He yanked them apart.
"No, Daddy." That was all she said before he fell on her like a stag on a doe. Her slim legs were like brittle wood. He ripped them apart.
"Hold them up, goddammit!" She did as she was told as he plunged into her again and again.
* * *
When Janice finished with her story, she was almost asleep, caressed by Estelle's willing hands.
"Well, what are you two doing? Or can I play too?" Goldie was standing in the doorway, looking like she had just gotten up.
"Are you finally up, Goldie?"
"I'm up, I'm up." She crossed the room to get a better look at her daughter. "Say, I heard some of that stuff. She shouldn't have told you."
"Who should I have told? You?" Janice opened her eyes.
"Oh Janice, I'm sorry."
"Don't be sorry, Mother. You and Daddy made me what I am." She jumped out of bed and stepped out of her panties.
"Just fucking, that's all I'm good for." Her hands went between her legs, spreading the lips and squeezing the flesh until it protruded. "You want to fuck me, Mama?" She danced around her mother. "This whore friend of yours has got me hot, Mama. C'mon." She knelt down and crawled over to where Goldie was standing. As Estelle watched, she grabbed her mother's thighs, pulling her off balance. Soon she was between her legs, licking her like a dog.
* * *
When she tried to tell Zack about her experience at Goldie's house, he wouldn't listen to her.
"What do you want from me, Estelle? So you got gang-banged, and you think you had a religious experience or something. And that girl. She's crazy-it's sad, but what can you do? You women act like a cunt is equal to everything in life. Are you becoming some kind of nut, or something? That pretty pussy of yours is valuable, honey. You've got to save it for what's worthwhile, sob story or not."
"You're the one who sounds like a priest, Zack. You've certainly been acting like one ever since we moved here." They were sitting outdoors by the small, kidney-shaped pool that went with the house Estelle had rented. Zack leaned over in the chaise lounge and kissed her. It was a brotherly kiss.
"I'm sorry, baby, but I've been so busy looking at those wild shots of you with Paine, I haven't had time to think about sex. I guess I've been neglecting you, huh?"
He put his arms around her and tried to undo the top of her bikini.
"You're all wet. Why don't we go in the house and dry off and then climb into bed? I think I've got time before Mr. Gass is supposed to call."
"Oh, Zack," Estelle said, and walked back into the house. When Zack came after her, she had already begun to do the dishes, something they always left for the maid to do.
Estelle's feelings about Zack had undergone all kinds of changes since he had first poked his camera down her skylight. At first she was awed by his ambition and the ease with which he had opened doors for her, but lately she had begun to look more critically at him. He seemed to regard her only as a prop in his life, a subject for his camera. She began to understand that his camera was in his head now, that his eyes were lenses and didn't see the real world but a perfect imitation of it. Perfect, but an imitation.
"You're about as passionate as a caterpillar," she said to him one day, frustrated beyond endurance, showing her brightly painted claws like a cat in heat. Until recently, she used to spend days teasing him, trying to get him to pay attention to her. His usual reaction was to retreat to his darkroom and seclude himself for hours. They lived together, but more like roommates than lovers.
"I don't want a roommate, damn it! I want a man who's got a prick and knows what to do with it." She had a drink in her hand at the time. He knew enough about her to watch carefully when she was in one of her "not getting enough" moods-he might have to duck a flying glass at any moment. If he wasn't close enough to his darkroom to make a convenient exit, he'd sit on the edge of the couch and watch her very carefully, trying all the while to prevent an explosion.
"Look, Estelle, you know I've got my work. I can't let anything interfere with that. I don't care if you have other men."
"Oh ... you pimp! You Peeping Tom! Mr. Gass would know how to satisfy me!"
"So go to him, bubbie. Leave me alone. I've got enough trouble."
Months before, that might have been all he needed to say to her. But she was on her feet again, the way she had been at fourteen, the bitch of the block. And the bitch wanted his prick in her cunt; if she couldn't have that, she wanted his balls in her hand. She threw her glass at him. He was able to duck in time, as usual, but its contents sprinkled over him. He shook his head, instead of reacting; as she stood there expecting him to hit her (although she should have known better) he took advantage of her pause, as he usually did, to move quickly to his darkroom. She heard the lock click behind him.
Estelle felt like bawling. She went to their bedroom and found a small brown envelope. Carefully removing some of the green tobacco-like material, she rolled a thin cigarette, pinched it at both ends, and lit it. Then she lay back on the big double bed and started to dream.
It was an old habit of hers, but the addition of marihuana was new. She let it take her into her private movie, one of soft colors and lights, laughing people and faint music. The stars were no longer allowed in that fuzzy world behind her eyelids; she had run through them and discovered they were made of clay. So now her co-stars were almost faceless. It was like seeing them through gauze. Usually the men were handsome enough, but she didn't dare take away the gauze in front of the lens. She preferred this dream to the reality she was operating in with Zack and Mr. Gass. In it, there were no disappointments and nothing went contrary to her expectations.
She was nearly asleep from the pot when she felt a hand tug at her foot. Sleepily, she turned over to look for the people with gauze faces. The hand pulled again and her eyes popped open like a doll's.
Shotgun Gant was standing above her, swaying like a tree about to fall. He was dressed in his full outfit: boots, leather, and a silk shirt, topped by a ten gallon hat. Through her high, he looked like one of the gauze people.
"Yes?" she breathed, waiting for him to kiss her. That was what they did. Gant just burped, and then came crashing down on her, spewing vomit over her legs, and on the bed. She jumped up and started yelling at him: "Goddamn you to hell, Shotgun! What are you doing here? Did Zack drag you in? Is he goin' in for boys, now?"
"Hell no, 'Stelle. I'm sorry about your bed," he croaked. "Gass sent me over to get you, but I got kind of tanked up on the way, I guess." When he finished, he gave up some more of his dinner.
"You slob, get out of here." She tried to push him off the bed, but he wouldn't roll. She had to sit down in a chair by the door, and keep a tight hold on its arms. She was afraid she might fly up to the ceiling like a gas balloon. She drifted in and out of one world into another.
Gant was snoring. He had dropped off as soon as his stomach had stopped rolling. She had always hated him; he was too big and too dumb for her to affect. One minute, however, the figure on the bed looked like Gant to her, and the next time she looked he was the gauze faced man from her other world. She sat there waiting for the two worlds to fit together, until ... She didn't know when that was; she was unaware of time passing.
"Estelle? Where are you?" His voice was like a foghorn and came to her from a great distance. He sat up. "I said where are you, girl! I got to get you? You playin' games now?" He tried to stand up, but fell back to the bed, shouting: "Come here, 'Stelle. I can't see you in the dark."
She watched him, all of a sudden feeling confident, like a tiger watching a sheep; in this case, a goat.
"I'm over here in the corner, you telephone pole. If you want me, you'll have to come get me, because I feel like flying away." She felt rolled in cotton, or underwater. He stood up again, and blundered to her, stumbling on the rug. He took her hand.
"C'mon."
"I'm not going to Mr. Gass. Why don't you work for yourself instead of pimping for him?"
"You hate my guts, huh?"
"So what?" Her hand tugged at the belt of his pants, to which were attached his two guns.
"Watch it now. I'm touchy about that," he warned her. She caressed the pearl handles of the pistols.
"I like guns. These are your pricks, aren't they?"
He slapped her. "I told you to leave them alone." She laughed hysterically, still sitting there. "Stop laughing, too, you Chicago whore!" He put his fingers in her hair and pulled her face up.
"I'm gonna brand you with my cock. You got that? When I'm done, no man will want to do anything but piss on you." His voice had grown hoarser. She was struggling hard to take him seriously.
"Whee," she answered, and flapped her arms as if they were wings and she could fly. She jiggled up and down on the chair. As her arms went up, he caught her and threw her across the room to the bed. He was on her in a minute, his knee between her legs, his great weight crushing her. She wanted it; something to anchor her. Her hands went around his back, digging in with her claws, and she felt the stiff flesh gouge her belly. Feels like a longhorn, she thought. She moved her hands down his hips, but she found only empty holsters.
"I got them right here, baby. Thought you might grab 'em, huh?" His six-guns were in both hands and his weight rested on his elbows.
"I'm gonna' shag with my guns, honey, after I get through dippin' my wick." Then his plow went up her moist, loamy furrow, hurting her until she came and knew she was back on earth. "Now you know what a cock is, you teaser. Just hang on."
* * *
"You look funny, doing the dishes in a bikini," Zack said behind her. She snapped out of her reverie. Her hands were immersed in hot, soapy dishwater which was getting tepid. She wouldn't answer him. They fretted around all afternoon, until the call from Mr. Gass came in. When Zack answered, Estelle picked up the extension.
"Mr. Gass?" she said. "I've just got to see you."
"Put that extension down, Estelle," Zack ordered.
"Now wait a minute, Zack. What's the matter, have you two been having a lover's quarrel? Tell papa. I wanted to see you last week, darling. What did you do to Shotgun?"
"Oh, it's such a drag, Mr. Gass."
"What, baby? I don't follow you. Zack is a drag? The weather? I know Shotgun is."
"What you've got me doing is. I feel like a whore or something. I want to see the exciting side of movie life."
"But it's not exciting, dearie. It hasn't been for thirty years."
"Well, I know. But you know what I mean too. Just something to do, to make me feel like I'm here, you know?"
"All right, sweetheart. I have an idea that'll make everybody happy. You listening, Zack boy?"
"Yes, Mr. Gass."
"Tomorrow night you've got a scene to shoot. I'm going to take Estelle to the premiere of Even Angels Have Horns...." He was interrupted by the sound of Estelle's excited squeal.
"Oh, Mr. Gass, you make me so happy sometimes I could kiss you!"
"I think you'll enjoy it, dear. An old friend of mine-a few of them are coming back-sent me the tickets. No sense wasting them, is there? But I'm afraid we'll have to combine business with pleasure."
"Oh, that's all right." All of a sudden she felt very generous-even toward Zack, who had put down his receiver disgustedly.
"And dear, you might as well go shopping for something to wear tomorrow night. Charge it to me again. I like to have you look your best."
When Estelle hung up, she was already planning where to go shopping for the day. Zack looked glum.
"What's the matter, Zack? You got a scene to shoot and I'm going to a premiere. Who's in Even Angels Have Horns, Zack?"
"Roger Ragland."
"Oh, he's so square looking. I told you I saw him with Big Jim Paine, didn't I? That's all right. I'll stick a lighted match in his zipper if he doesn't give a good performance." She looked toward him, hoping that last sentence would cheer him up, but he remained dejected.
"What is it, Zack?" she finally begged when he wouldn't speak to her.
"Nothing. Except I always kind of respected Ragland."
"Now that's a switch. Come to mama." She held out her arms to him.
* * *
The premiere was held at the Majestic Theatre, where for years the great and near-great had put their palms or their legs or their butts in the concrete out front so pilgrims could step into the dinosaur tracks and feel a surge of excitement as they waited to buy their tickets. Mr. Gass picked her up in a rented, chauffeur-driven limousine. He had chosen to wear a tuxedo, probably rented, she thought, because it fit him so badly. She had bought a sable wrap for the evening, deciding to spend Mr. Gass' money on that and wear a gown from her own closet. It was white and very ordinary, except for the neckline, which was slashed to the waist. The effect was that her red, bourgeoning nipples popped out every time she leaned over, even to get a light for her cigarette. She had seen a picture of Jayne Mansfield in the same kind of dress and she had always wanted to try it. Mr. Gass' only comment was to avert his eyes and say: "I don't believe you sometimes, Estelle."
A small crowd of fans had gathered around the roped-off entrance to the theater. There weren't as many of them as Estelle had hoped there would be, but even so, the noise from them gave her goose bumps. They wanted her, she dreamed, as their car waited in line to draw up to the red carpet which led to the theater. Estelle looked around for the TV cameras, but she could only see one, and that from a local station. She felt a moment of disappointment at this, a feeling of being cheated, but then the door was being opened and a guard was asking their names. Well, she'd show them, she thought. It would be their tough luck that they missed her.
Mr. Gass got out of the limousine first and held his hand out to help Estelle. Calculating every move for the lone TV camera and the press photographers who were looking their way, she slid her legs out first, revealing both thighs almost to the edge of her panties. She held that pose for a second, until she was sure she had everyone's attention, and then she got to her feet, in the process bending over just enough so that she was exposed to the navel. Then she heard whistles from the crowd and excited whispering; so many flashbulbs popped she was temporarily blinded and Mr. Gass had to lead her into the darkness of the theater. He was smiling wryly. This was just the kind of thing he didn't need, he thought. But it was so much like the old days he felt a faint stab of jealousy, and then pride. What the hell do I care, he decided. He wouldn't be around again in public for a while, and probably there was no one there to recognize him anyway.
They had seats for the first section, reserved for the stars and people who had worked on the movie. When they were seated, the first thing Estelle did was to take a discreet look around at her neighbors. There, in the next row, was Roger Ragland. He looked older than she remembered, like a businessman who is a scoutmaster in his spare time, and buggers the boys in his flock. She thought that because he looked so hypocritical, somehow. Perhaps it was the way his handsome face hadn't grown older, only lined. Was that his wife with him? Estelle hated her on sight. She looked like Betty Furnace or somebody on television who tries to sell you something. And Betty Furnace in turn looked like those girls in her high school class who were cheerleaders and belonged to some snobby sorority. Perpetual cherries, she had called them, who would marry hidden fruits and live in better homes and gardens.
"Well, here you are, my dear. This is the night life of the gods," Mr. Gass whispered to her, slipping his hand to her knee. She removed it.
"Let's wait till it gets dark, okay? How do I look?"
"You're the most stunning creature here." He smiled to himself. She was so much like all the others, hard yet naive, able to exist within her own little world, which was bounded by her dressing-table mirror and a bundle of celluloid illusions. He wished he could find that little world for himself. At least he could get close to it. He had decided he wanted her for himself.
The movie began. It was a story of married life and the trials Roger Ragland undergoes when his wife leaves him and the girl next door (played by Hannah Lerner) moves in on him in her absence. He spent the first half-hour of the picture holding her off. By that time, Estelle had stopped watching. She was dimly aware of Mr. Gass' hand moving around on her legs but she paid him no attention. She was projecting her own movie on the walls of her mind, one in which she was the girl next door with the white convertible and not Hannah Lerner. The entire atmosphere of the dark theater, from the white images flickering up on the screen to the faint smell of popcorn wafting down from the lobby, was conducive to this kind of dream. It was of a different kind than the ones she had outside a movie theater. She had had them three times a week since the age of fourteen. Usually there was even a hand moving around on her, as there was now. Everything was so intimate and comfortable and safe.
The hand moved slowly from her knee up her leg to the softness of her thighs above her stockings. It kneaded the fat there, digging its way between the warm pillars of flesh to the triangle of hair covered by her panties. The fingers of the hands pushed inward until they were rewarded with moisture. Flushed with success, they pushed their way under the elastic and through the tangled hair. An index finger found its way into the hidden tunnel, and began moving around, pushing against the elastic walls. Estelle moved her buttocks up and down on it as it moved back and forth inside her.
Gass' face remained fixed on the screen. It was probably a slight gasp from Estelle which made Ragland turn around. He glared at Gass for a minute, then blushed and turned back around. Gass withdrew his hand from Estelle's damp spot, and roused her doing it.
"What's the matter? I like it," she said dreamily. "Makes me think I'm sixteen again."
"Ragland spotted us. But never mind. I wish he'd leave his seat, then you'd have your chance. You've got to get to work on him anyway." He was angry at himself for letting that pompous ass freeze him up.
The thought of going after him made Estelle tired. She looked at Ragland's corrupt All-American face on the screen and compared it to the real man sitting right in front of her. Neither image appealed to her. I'll bet he never groped a girl in a movie in his life, she thought. Just boys. Movie stars were just as dull as everybody else. At least the ones she had met so far were.
When the movie had about fifteen minutes left to run, Ragland rose and strode up the aisle.
"He's not leaving, is he?" she whispered to Mr. Gass.
"Him? No. He's just on his way to the john or something. He'll be back. But you better follow him now. It looks like your chance. Zack will be right behind you."
The theater was one of those magnificent edifices built to look like a temple during the Babylonian Empire. Three balconies, huge chandeliers, deep rugs, and ushers in red uniforms who looked like Her Majesty's Guards. Ragland went up the stairs to the lounge on the second balcony where the men's room was. Estelle stood and waited. No one seemed to be around, except Zack over there in the corner with his camera. What if she just followed him into the men's room? What better place in the whole theater? The idea of invading a movie men's room in order to seduce Roger Ragland tickled her sense of humor. Why not?
It was all white tile and gleaming dark wood inside, with a smell of disinfectant coming from the line of urinals that excited her. Ragland was nowhere to be seen. Her high heels clicked on the tile floor. On the other side of the restroom were a series of booths, with all but one of the doors open. She bent her head and made out a pair of well shined shoes with some gray material bunched around them. Those must be his trousers, she thought. She stood still. What if someone should come in? The only hiding place was in those booths. Once she was in there with him, he wouldn't dare give her away. She took off her shoes and tiptoed over to stand in front of the booth. It looked unlocked. She gave it a slight push, and it came open.
Consternation flushed the movie star's face. "What ... how...?"
"Hello," Estelle cooed. "You're so cute sitting there. Don't let me disturb you."
"Get out of here!" As he said this he stood up, pulling his pants up in the same motion, but exposing his front to Estelle. She didn't waste any time, but grabbed his long, fleshy penis and pressed herself against him. "What's the matter? You're all soft, poor boy." He looked frightened to death, as if he had been cornered by a lion. He gave a frantic push that knocked her back against the door, but she held onto his penis and pulled him with her.
"Now don't get violent, lover. I'm not going to hurt you." She took his hand and placed it on her breast inside her dress, and then pushed the flesh against his hand.
"See how nice I feel?"
"What do you want? Money?" he asked frantically, jerking his hand away from her breast as if it were on fire.
"No, no. I just want you to fuck me."
"Well, I'm not going to! I've got a career too...."
"I know, and a wife, too. Now be nice, or do I have to rape you?" She backed him up, still holding his penis, which, despite its owner, was growing until it filled her palm. She pushed him down on the toilet again.
"Please, please. Leave me alone," he pleaded. Estelle was so annoyed that she slapped his face.
"Stay there and shut up!" she ordered. There were tears in his eyes. She pulled up the skirt of her dress and stepped out of her panties. When he saw her rosebush in front of his nose, Ragland shut his eyes and covered them with his hand.
"Help me, God," he groaned. But his prick gave the lie to his lamentations. It was sticking straight up out of his lap like a spear. Estelle straddled the traitor and impaled herself on the head of it, gasping as her sex stretched to take it all in.
"You've got a big one, Rogie," she whispered to her victim. For the first time since she had agreed to take part in the movie, she wanted to hurt someone.
"I don't like it ... don't like it ... don't like it!" he was insisting as she began to move around on his tool. She used her vaginal muscles on the flesh in her, contracting, moving quickly up and down, contracting. He grunted. She pulled his hands away from his face and forced her big nipple against his mouth. In a few minutes he was sucking on it. Probably pretending he's a kid again, she thought. Sucking on the titty and grunting on the toilet at the same time.
It was as if his prick were made of wood. Ten minutes went by, ten minutes of solid work for Estelle, and nothing seemed to be happening. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Zack come in and block the door, and then go into the booth next to her. Roger was just hanging on, gritting his teeth. Then she had an inspiration. She reached behind him and flushed the toilet. The sudden whirlpool of water made him scream; she felt his hips jerk and he came before the noise had stopped. Water from the toilet splattered her on the undersides of her thighs where her legs were locked around his waist. They clung together like two drowning persons, and then he seemed to recover. He looked at her with the same cold eyes that had glared at Gass.
"Get the hell off of me, young lady!"
Estelle shrugged. "All right, pop." With an effort she unwrapped her legs from around him and stood up. As she did, she looked down to see his semen running out of her and down her thighs in great gobs.
"That's all you, daddy. You may not be much of a man, but that's some prick you've got, I don't care who you are."
"Shut up that filthy talk." He stood up, his limp, half erect penis pronging out at her.
"You know, I wish that could talk instead of you," she said, indicating his penis. "I bet it wouldn't talk that way."
He hit her with his fist, and knocked her against the wall. "I warned you not to talk that way," he said. He still hadn't pulled up his pants. "I'm going to have to give you a spanking. I'm going to have to teach you a lesson, I think." He reached down and pulled his belt out of the loops. "Turn around."
Now it was Estelle's turn to be afraid. "No! You're a crazy pervert!"
"Me a pervert?" he asked. He was smiling, but it was just another line in his face. "Did I come after you in the restroom and rape you?" He grabbed her around the waist and pulled her to him. The belt went up and came down on her thigh:
"Ow!"
"I told you to turn around." The next blow from the leather strap hit her buttocks. He cracked it against her plump cheeks. Again and again. It felt like someone was using a hot iron on her behind. She screamed and he clamped his big hand around her mouth. She was on her knees, buttocks up in the air, her arms embracing the white toilet bowl. She watched the clear water beneath her face with desperate, frantic eyes. Was 'he going to kill her? The whipping went on and on. It felt like she was bleeding. And then he stopped.
But it was only for a second, and then she felt his hands pull the flesh of her buttocks apart, and something red-hot and iron-hard was being rammed up her other passage. It was way too big for that little orifice, and she felt as if she were being ripped open with a soldering iron.
* * *
She wouldn't speak to Zack for a week after that. All the time she was being beaten and sodomized by that All-American, Zack had been standing on the toilet in the other booth, poking his camera over the partition and shooting it. It hadn't even occurred to him to come to her aid. After Ragland left, he picked her up and made her presentable enough to take downstairs to a taxi. Mr. Gass had left in the limousine.
This time she couldn't forgive him. "You could have helped me," she accused.
"And give away the whole show? Don't you see I couldn't have done anything if I had wanted to?"
"You think more of your lousy movie than you do of me!" she shouted, and threw her shoe at him.
"You're being unfair, Estelle."
"Shit I am! I tell you one thing: no more of that creepy stuff from anyone-not even Jimmy Bondige!"
* * *
She should've known better than to mention the famous secret agent's name, she reflected later. She knew the laws of chance: if you're waiting for a bus, the way to make it come is to light a cigarette; if you're anticipating an important call, go to the bathroom and get settled on the toilet-it will ring right at that moment.
It was about two weeks after her encounter with Ragland. She was sitting in a restaurant on Hollywood Boulevard after a trip to the beautician's, playing the jukebox and vacantly stirring her coffee, when a Chinese gentleman sat down at her table. She looked up and noticed that the place was crowded, glanced at him, and looked away again, deciding to ignore him. Zack was supposed to pick her up at any time. One look at her tablemate had photographed him in her mind, he was so unusual. He was old, perhaps fifty-five, with a short haircut and a long mandarin moustache. When she looked at him again, a quick peep this time, she noticed his hands, which he was holding near his face in contemplation. The sides of them were calloused and almost black. He was dressed in a very sober New York business suit. Somehow, his presence made her nervous.
"You are the one he wants. Without knowing it, you are a lucky woman." His English was excellent, except for a faint shadow around beginning consonants.
"You talking to me?" Estelle asked, shocked. "You are Miss Estelle L'Amour?"
"That's me. But I don't know you."
"Naturally. You are not expected to. I am merely doing an errand."
"No, I think you've got the wrong girl." Estelle reached for her purse, ready to get up and wait outside for Zack. The Chinese gentleman did not move.
"I must insist that you stay right here, please." There was no threat in his voice, but she stopped and looked at him. He scared her; she had already decided that before she had made a move to leave.
"What do you want? Who sent you?" she asked.
"All will be told. In exactly three minutes and forty-five seconds, we must leave this restaurant. It has all been worked out with customary efficiency." He put a hand on her wrist. He watched the time without removing his hand from her wrist. He pulled her to her feet when the time came and, still holding her, led her toward the door. On the way out, she saw Zack coming in. He was about to greet her when he noticed her companion. Estelle expected him to stop them; she was anxious to be saved. But instead, he winked at her and passed on. What was this? She had no choice but to follow.
Outside, they waited under the canopy. A haze had settled over Los Angeles. When a black limousine drove up in front of them, the Chinese opened the rear door for her and helped her in. Inside it was dark. She settled back on the leather. The Chinese drew the blinds all around.
"Now take off your clothing, please, and give it to me."
"What? Now wait a minute, buster. Let's not carry this little game too far."
"It is not a game. Please undress. If you are really as modest as you say, I will not look."
Again, there was no threat in his voice. She worried about his hands; she felt the sweat begin to drip over her ribs from her armpits.
"All right. Unzip me." It was done, and she peeled off the dress she was wearing. The bra was built into the dress; she rolled down her stockings, and then wriggled out of her garter belt. That was all she had been wearing. The leather was cold against the backs of her thighs. It was like being on a doctor's examination table, for all the interest the Chinese took in her. She couldn't see the chauffeur because there were shutters dividing the front seat from the back.
"Now put this on, please." The Chinese handed her a short oriental robe. It came down to mid-thigh. Once she had the robe on, he seemed to feel that his duty had been discharged. He settled back and did not look at her again. It wasn't long after that that the car stopped. She heard the chauffeur talking to someone and then the Chinese opened the door on his side in response to a buzz from in front. A man climbed in, a well-dressed, athletic looking man carrying a black briefcase. It was so dark she could scarcely notice his features, but he seemed to have an amazing tan. He sat between Estelle and the Chinese, holding the briefcase on his lap.
"Well, Miss L'Amour, I've heard a lot about you from my sources. They underestimated your beauty." It took Estelle a minute or two to place the voice, which was smooth, with a Scots burr in it.
"Jimmy Bondige!" she exclaimed, opening and closing her mouth like a goldfish or an awestruck teen-ager. He clamped his hand over her mouth: "I'd prefer it if you'd call me something else. My car may have been bugged." When he took his hand away, her mouth still gaped.
"You see, I wanted to meet you, but it's dangerous for me to be seen. That's why I had Chee-Ta pick you up. He's my valet and personal bodyguard. I hope you don't mind." Even in the dark, she could see him smiling at her. She could feel herself melt inside. Jimmy Bondige! The very thought of meeting him had made her drop her popcorn back in Chicago. He was so cool, so masterful. She had seen him in a half-dozen Agent 69 movies, and now here he was, sitting beside her.
"Why is it dangerous for you here?"
She heard him chuckling in the dark. "Miss L'Amour, do you really think it's as easy as all that? I have to be on guard constantly, not only in my films. They're inadequate to show the dangers I'm continuously faced with." Estelle's answer was a soft "oh." She didn't quite know how to respond.
"Actually, I'm sorry Chee-Ta picked you up today, because we may be in for some trouble. But it was on my schedule and I don't break it unless I can't help it."
"Oh, I understand. Don't worry. I know all about that," she giggled. Just then a spectral voice broke in on them. It was the chauffeur, talking on the intercom:
"Blue Dodge following us for the last five minutes. Three men. They're armed."
"Step on it. Plan 23-49. If they don't fall . back, push button 'A'." The voice was the same voice she knew from the movies, suave, controlled, but it was different hearing it come from right beside her. His fingers drummed on the briefcase.
"Can I help?" she asked.
"Yes, you can. Just be quiet right now. When the time comes-if the time comes-I'll tell you what to do."
The car increased speed at the same time she heard sounds in back of her like rocks hitting the car. She grabbed Jimmy Bondige's arm.
"Are they shooting at us?"
"Don't worry about it. They'll be gone in a minute."
She tried to believe him, feeling the car beneath them increase to an unbelievable speed. She noticed that he was still smiling. He was just like he was on the screen, but it scared her. It was different. Then the car swerved; even back there she heard a screech of brakes and when they all lurched forward, she was prepared. Over the intercom, she heard the chauffeur:
"It's them. Have to stop." They heard his scream, and the pounding of machine gun bullets. Bondige grabbed her, pulling her robe off.
"Take it off. You get out first. Don't worry, we'll be right behind you. Ready, Chee-Ta?" Chee-Ta opened the door, and Bondige pulled her across him, and pushed her out the door. She closed her eyes and tensed, waiting for the bullets to hit her.
Nothing happened. She trembled in the cold, but nothing happened. Then she heard a chuckle and someone clapping. Cautiously, she opened her eyes. It was still dark. Jimmy Bondige was standing beside her, smiling. They were in a garage-or that was what it looked like to her. She was so confused she didn't know what was happening. She saw Chee-Ta and another Oriental standing next to Bondige, both grinning.
"Wasn't that a lovely performance?" Bondige asked.
"P-performance?"
"That's right. I arranged it just for you. It was all done with sound effects-see?" He indicated the front seat of the limousine. She could see that part of the dashboard was open. It looked like a tape recorder had been installed.
"That was a rotten trick. I was scared to death."
"I'm sorry. I thought it would amuse you."
"You're crazy. Bats. That's all I've got to say."
"Park the car, Ito," Bondige ordered. Ito was the other Oriental, the chauffeur. "I'm sorry you didn't enjoy our little spectacle, Miss L'Amour. It keeps me in form." He led her to an elevator, which took them up ten floors. They stepped out into Bondige's living room. She stood in the foyer, looking at the paintings and catching her breath as Bondige gave Chee-Ta his orders. Bondige's living room was what she had expected: all plush and chrome. The furniture too was glittering chrome. The room seemed to be enormous, perhaps because of the picture window overlooking the ocean at its other end. What puzzled her were the strange metallic objects around the room. She assumed they were statues, knowing nothing of modern art.
"Well come on in, don't be shy. You know, I've heard about you, but I thought you'd be more sophisticated."
"Well, people usually like my animal qualities."
He excused himself to get their drinks. While he was at the bar, she had time to look at him in good light. He was dressed in evening clothes for some reason. He was taller than she had expected, but just as handsome; no disappointment at all, as far as looks and manner went. When he brought her her drink, she was ready for him.
"Now suppose you tell me what that was all about."
"Just as I said. Were you frightened? I enjoy games like that. Most of the girls do too."
"Say, are you really as good at it as you look?"
"Now that's hardly a proper question," he answered, but he was smiling again. "I'll give you an opportunity to find out, however." He moved closer to her, and put his arms around her.
"You're too sure of yourself. I guess that really turns me off."
"When did you decide that?"
"Just now."
"Well, don't make an exception for me." She struggled out of his embrace, not realizing that he was backing her toward the comer of the room and a large leather chair that would conveniently hold two.
"Stop it. I'm not one of your girls."
"All right, just sit down over there so we can talk about it." She turned to look where he meant, and he pushed her down into the chair. As she fell, her robe fell open, exposing her from the navel down. She quickly jerked the robe closed. He stood there, grinning at her. He never seemed to lose his composure.
"Why don't you stop being silly and relax? You know it's not going to hurt." Maybe it was the way he said what he said, but his approach made her sick.
"I guess your charm doesn't affect me, Mr. Bondige."
"Give it time." He lunged for her; one of his hands cupped a breast. She surprised herself by bending her head and biting the hand.
"Ouch! You little bitch." He stepped back, and reached behind him to the mantle. The chair lurched back; the section of the chair under her legs folded up, and her legs were dangling in the air. She was too surprised to do anything but screech.
"You rat! Is this how you get your women?" He didn't answer. He seemed to be waiting for something. She heard a slight hiss, like escaping air from a balloon. The gas made her head roll. By the time she realized what it was, she couldn't raise her head.
From a long distance away, she saw him leave her range of vision, and return with his black briefcase. He dragged a chair close to her and sat there with it in his lap, unlocking it. She giggled.
"I knew you'd enjoy my games," he said. He took a little machine that looked like a metal finger from the briefcase; an electric cord ran between it and a large suction cup. He approached her. "Just think of me as your dentist. Spread your legs-you'll like this."
She couldn't resist. Weakly, she felt her legs being pushed apart. Out of his briefcase he took a jar of vaseline.
Like a surgeon, he thrust two fingers coated with the lubricant into her. He sat opposite her, and took out his cock, after a lot of fumbling in his zipper. He couldn't seem to find it. When he finally managed it, she saw why; his penis was no bigger than her little finger. Working quickly, he applied the rubber suction cup to the end of it. When he was ready, he threw a switch, and approached her with the vibrating finger. She had to giggle again when she saw the little instrument moving so industriously. He walked it up her thigh, making her tremble, and then introduced it inside her. She was so excited, she came as soon as it touched her. Through the slits of her eyes she watched him jerk, still fully dressed, as the suction cup pulled on him, in accord with her movements. She heard a shrill, whining sound, and the lights dimmed; there was a flash, and she felt a piercing stab of pain in her groin.
"It's shorted!" Bondige yelled, jumping around in a squatting position as the electricity fizzed. Mercifully, she passed out.
REEL THREE
When Estelle decided to leave Zack, the way had already been prepared. They had both known all along that it would have to happen someday, because it is the way things are in movie land. Estelle was ambitious and Zack had done all he could do for her. Despite that, Estelle thought it was less her career than Zack's single-minded devotion to his which broke them up. She managed to ease her conscience somewhat by making believe that she hated him and that he had done cruel things to her. Zack didn't seem to care one way or another and Estelle couldn't decide whether he was just being fatalistic or if he had planned to get rid of her all along. He seemed pleased that Mr. Gass would be his successor when she told him she was leaving.
The morning that Shotgun Gant came to get her would have been a natural for a scene with anyone but Zack. He kissed her on the cheek and told her that he would be seeing her soon, since he would continue to be the director of the picture. He was moving back to the old place but he would come to see her from time to time in the Gass mansion. "To discuss the movie," he said, a wistful smile on his face. She got mad at him all over again for saying that, and drove off without looking back. How could she have fallen for such a cold fish, she wondered.
Mr. Gass was just the tonic she needed after those months with Zack. He had rented the mansion of a cowboy star of the twenties, and lived lavishly, but quietly, in accord with his new policy. He knew just how to treat a woman, she thought. His clerk's face with its bald dome lighted up whenever he saw her and he loved to see her have fun. Since he preferred not to be seen in public, a host of young men were in and out of the house, escorting her to parties and nightclubs. She began to live the kind of life she always dreamed that stars led. The only shadow in her new life as Mr. Gass' mistress was Shotgun Gant. She still ruefully remembered that night with him.
Gant occupied a special place in Mr. Gass' favor. He was his second-in-command and his only friend. Estelle never got over the feeling that if a choice had to be made between them, Mr. Gass would sacrifice her in a minute. The old man was kept very busy setting up his own distribution channels for the day when their movie would be ready for its release, and because of this, Gant was assigned to look after Estelle. Wherever she went, the big man with his bowed legs was sure to be somewhere near. He seemed to take a proprietary interest in her, as if he wanted to extend that one night into something more lengthy.
She usually spent her days shopping or beside the pool in back of the mansion. Mr. Gass sent for her three or four times a week to spend the night with him, but otherwise she was free. Freedom for some people just means blankness, and Estelle began to fidget. She learned about boredom, something she had never felt before. In consequence, she began taking all kinds of little pills which her various escorts would pick up for her. Pills to speed her up, pills to slow her down, pills to make her sleep. After a month of living in the Gass mansion and not doing anymore scenes she was tearing her hair out with boredom. This was certainly not what she thought being a movie star would be like, but she was learning.
The tempo of success was slowing down. She had time to look at herself for the first time since her encounter with Hoggart and Zack had started the ball rolling. She realized that the rewards of stardom didn't satisfy her. Swimming in Mr. Gass' big pool, a new car, clothes-none of it was what she really wanted. It was difficult to define, but what she wanted was for the dream to be made real; a simple, impossible request. She didn't really want Zack or Mr. Gass or Shotgun, but Hoggart and Chip Ohio-not as she knew them, but as they were in their films.
One night at a party given by a rising young comedian, she thought she had found the answer to her problems. She learned about analysis. She learned about it from the lips of a very handsome man in his thirties, who looked like he should have been an actor instead of a doctor. He was built like a quarterback, and at the time she learned he was a psychiatrist, he was straining all those beautiful muscles to hold Estelle in a little corner of the room while he tried to hypnotize her into going upstairs with him. His name was Kenneth Walker.
"Kenneth," she protested, catching his arm, "you know I can't. Shotgun would kill both of us."
"Who's that? Or did you say you had a shotgun with you, hmm?"
"Shotgun is 6'6", and he used to make cowboy movies. See him? He's sitting right over there." Kenneth looked and dropped his arms. "Zowie. Too bad I'm a man of peace."
"I'm sorry, but you know...."
"Oh sure. Well, back to the stable." He made as if to return to the living room, where dozens of unattached young starlets were milling around.
"Hey, don't go just yet," she said, and caught his sleeve. He looked at her with realistic, appraising eyes.
"And why should I stay here and frustrate myself, when none of those chicks have a 'Shotgun' riding herd on them?"
"Well, I'm lonely ... it's the truth!"
"So, what's new? I'm sure you are. Drop by my office someday and we can talk about it, on your time."
"Your office?"
"My office. I'm a professional listener. I get paid $100 a session to listen. How's that for a racket? And I work harder than anyone here."
"Oh-you're one of those psycho-whoozies. You mean a good-looking guy like you takes care of crazy people?"
He grinned at her. "You know, you fascinate me," he said. "You're a real primitive. A body like a mattress and a brain that stayed out in the rain too long. As a matter-of-fact, you come and visit me anytime. The first hour is on me." He handed her a card and walked away.
"I may take you up on that, wise guy!" she said to his back. She wanted to get mad at him, but she couldn't. He's right, she thought. I wonder what is up there. I should be happy now. The question occupied her for the rest of the evening She even spoke to Gant about it on the ride back home.
"Shotgun," she asked, "do you think I'm as dumb as I look?"
"My unqualified opinion is that you're dumber than you look," he answered, after thinking it over for a few minutes. He grinned at her. He liked to put her down. Tonight, though, it didn't bother her. She wanted to talk to Gass about it, though.
"Shotgun, I want to see Mr. Gass tonight."
"Not a chance. He's out of town. Besides, he ain't got you scheduled until tomorrow night. What's the matter? You got hot pants?" He grabbed his crotch. "I got something here for you, if you're interested."
She stuck out her tongue at him.
* * *
Dr. Kenneth Walker's offices were in the Lamar Building in Beverly Hills. She drove there the next afternoon after an appointment with her beautician, managing to give Shotgun the slip in traffic. Maybe her head could stand a good going over.
She swept into his office like Vivian Leigh in Gone with the Wind. His receptionist, a pretty little blonde in a very tight red sweater, protested that she didn't have an appointment.
"I have an open invitation, honey," Estelle said in her haughtiest tones. "Now let him know I'm here before I twist those pointy tits of yours right off," she whispered in a more natural voice. She had learned that you had to make clerks respect you right away or half the reason for being an important person was lost.
Kenneth's reception was enthusiastic. "So you decided to come after all! That's wonderful." He shooed an old lady out of his office with a pat on the behind.
"That's Gloria Sutra. She's quite a girl-used to make films with Douglas Fairbanks. She's dotty as a dodo."
"I came to let you see if there is anything wrong with my head." She stood there expectantly, looking like she expected him to roll in an X-ray machine for the job.
"Oh you did? But I didn't say anything was wrong with your head."
"You said I had a brain that had been left out in the rain too long. I remember."
He laughed. "O.K., but I'm strictly a Freudian. You'll have to hop on the couch over there."
"What's that?"
"Oh, it's just a way of looking at your problems. I want you to tell me everything about your childhood. The couch is just so you'll be comfortable."
She walked over to the big leather couch and lay down, pulling her skirt primly down over her knees. She lay there rigidly, as if she were going to have a pelvic examination.
"Relax," he said in a strong, soothing voice. His hand pushed her knees downward, until she had to relax her legs.
"Now we'll start off by just having you tell me the first thing you remember from your childhood."
Estelle closed her eyes. Is he kidding? she thought. Who wants to hear about my lousy childhood? The quiet of his office, the comfort she was beginning to feel, was just like sitting in the movies. Her mind went back to her childhood, selecting and discarding, trying to find something interesting to tell him. She decided to see if she could shock him.
"Well, I guess my first memory is the time I saw my father fucking my mother. It made a big impression on me."
"Oh stop it. You can do better than that." His voice was faintly bored. He's probably just pretending not to be interested, she thought. She honestly couldn't remember anything that had happened to her before she was seven years old. It had all been too drab to remember, as far as she was concerned. She was interested in the story she had just constructed, though, and she continued:
"It's the truth, I swear. When I was a baby we lived in rooming houses a lot until the other kids came along. My crib was in the same room they slept in. One night I woke up and my mother was crying-I thought it was crying then, see? My father was drunk, and he had this big thing out I had seen him peeing with, and he was holding it in his hands like a club, hitting my mother across the face with it. Then I remember him pulling at her nightgown and ripping it off in big hunks. His thing was so big and red I thought he was going to stab her with it when he tried to put it in her belly. 'Now he's going to pee in her where she pees,' I remember thinking. When he got it in her, she gave a kind of little scream, and I thought he was killing her, so I started crying As soon as I did that, he swore, then got up and came over to my crib, that big hatchet of his sticking straight out at me. I thought he was going to kill me too, but all he did was talk to me, and then he even sang to me. I liked my father a whole lot after that. I'd wonder what it would be like if he put his thing in me. Even then I was playing with myself." She stopped for breath. She felt like she could go on forever with this imaginary past. It was the first time in her life she had ever made anything up. Like many people who spend most of their time dreaming, she didn't have much of a real imagination. The story she told him was from a book she'd read. She still had her eyes closed. She wondered why he wasn't responding to this wonderful story, and then she heard his heavy breathing. Very carefully, she opened her eyes just enough to see what he was doing. He was sitting in the chair right beside her, his shoulders hunched forward very strangely, and his hands were in his lap. His eyes had taken on a glazed, faraway look that she recognized. He was rubbing himself through his trousers. Wow, she thought, I need my head examined? He gets his kicks just listening to me. She felt sorry for him, but didn't know quite what to say.
"You like that story, huh?" she finally said. His head jerked up and he blushed a deep red when he saw her looking at him.
"Don't get embarrassed. It's kind of nice to be able to turn a guy on just by talking."
"I'm ... sorry. I couldn't help it."
"It's all right." She sat up and reached out to pat his hand. "Poor guy, you must have an awful load to shoot. Can't I help?"
"No, let's forget it."
"Nonsense. Now don't you be crazy. When a guy needs it, he needs it. I know, women are the same way." She unzipped him.
"What do you want me to do? French? Or you just want to get on top?" He stared at her. Her offer seemed so natural, so kind. He could hardly get the words out.
"No, I'd really rather just continue as we were," he said, mixing up his words. "I mean, let's just go on." He had his prick out, caressing it in the sensuous way one does with one's own intimately known flesh. So Estelle closed her eyes and lay back on the couch.
"I can't think of anything else to say," she admitted, after thinking for a few minutes.
"Just say the words then, please," he grunted.
"If that's what you want...."
"Please."
He sounded like he was in pain, so she began: "Fuck. Prick. Look, this is ridiculous. I can give you a hand-job."
"Please, go on-don't stop!"
"Cunt." His breathing came faster and faster.
"Tits."
"Fuck me in the cunt."
"Asshole."
"Suckadick."
"Shit." It was a boring game to her, but the atmosphere in the room seemed charged with more pure sex than it did when someone actually fucked her. Her wet spot was tingling.
"Say 'pussy' please," he begged her. "I can't get enough of that word. It's what all the boys in my sixth grade said."
"Suck my pussy. Pussy, pussy, pussy, pussy...." the words became meaningless with repetition, but her hands went down to her crotch and began pressing on her clitoris. She heard him groaning. He was coming-the milky stuff sprayed all over her arm as he gasped in ecstasy. By this time her hands had gone under her dress and were rubbing her clitoris frantically. It was the most wonderful sexual experience she had ever had-all she had to think about was herself.
Gant was waiting for her in her car, his big legs jackknifed up against the dashboard, and a knowing smile on his face.
"You were playin' games with me today, honey. That ain't very nice. You get your tail tied up there in the doc's office?" he said in a slow drawl.
"Dr. Walker never touched me," she answered, smoothing her dress.
* * *
It was after this episode that Estelle began toying with the idea of entering a convent. The same impulse overcomes most entertainers at one point or another in their lives; in fact they are more vulnerable to it than their audience is. The members of the Great Audience have usually already given up hope for themselves, resigned to the fact that there is no answer, that their lives are dull and meaningless; but their consolation lies in the fact that somewhere-on a stage, a movie screen, the pulpit, at a government desk-there is still meaning. That while they may not have the answer, they are not high enough up in the world to know absolutely that there is no answer. That is why we allow leaders in every field to be leaders, and that is how the world is run, on the consent of the hopeful. Estelle had always been a member of the Audience, the mass, the voting public, and she had hope. Now that she had become part of the elite, she knew there was no hope anywhere, except perhaps in religion.
She knew it would take her awhile to work up to such a final step, so in the meantime she drank and gossiped with Goldie. She was bored to death, and so one night when Goldie suggested they go to see Willie Haste at one of the clubs on the Strip, telling Estelle that she had known him in burlesque so they might get to see him after the show, Estelle jumped at the chance-more to get out of the house and away from Shotgun, who was her self-appointed chaperon, than to see Haste. Not that she hadn't heard of Willie Haste-who hadn't? He was the young comedian who had been arrested four times in Los Angeles alone on obscenity charges. Everyone she talked to had either seen him or heard his records. He talked with acid brilliance about anything that came to his head, usually attacking some sacred cow that had run out of milk years before.
The action on the Strip that night was frenetic; it looked like the main street of a western town after a big cattle drive: motorcycles roaring, limousines pulling up at the various clubs, teeny-boppers on the sidewalks and in the gutters. It was neon and loud, and Shotgun, who had driven them, was disgusted.
"This ain't a place for you to be seen, 'Stelle. Look at those jerks."
"I didn't come to see them, Shotgun, I came to see Willie Haste-and besides, who's going to recognize me?"
"Lookit, you want to hear a guy talk dirty, I'll do that for you."
"No thanks." And she slammed the door in his face.
The club was called The Moby Dick, and in the six months it had been in operation, it had become something of a cause celebre on the Strip, having been closed four times by the police. The hip younger set swarmed to it, and after awhile their parents began to follow. All to hear Willie Haste hold forth on contemporary mores. Inside, Estelle and Goldie were led to a table quite near the raised chair where Haste sat when he talked. They ordered screwdrivers from a kid whose gender was so ambiguous it made them nervous. All the tables around them were already filled, and as they waited the place began to get so packed the temperature shot up along with the volume of noise. Already lines were forming on the sidewalk.
In the midst of all this din, a man appeared out of nowhere, walked up to the platform and sat in the chair, drink in hand. He wore a black T-shirt with a pocket in the sleeve for cigarettes, and dungarees. He was lean and muscular-looking, and the tattoos covering his arms told them he had been in the navy. He was handsome, Estelle thought, in a darkly Italian way. He sat looking quietly out at the audience, finishing his drink, and chain-smoking. One by one, the occupants of the tables near him grew quiet. In ten minutes, without his having said a word, the whole room was still, except for the clinking of glasses in the background. When he began speaking, it was in a mumbled whisper that Estelle and Goldie, who were not four feet away, could barely hear.
"Why you should pay money to hear me is something I never could understand, unless you feel guilty about not paying your taxes. Maybe that's it-you don't pay your taxes, so you come to hear Willie knock the Federal Government. Well, not a chance. Not a chance. I'm in clean with the Federal people. They've got my fingerprints, two years of my life, and a lot of publicity out of busting me. But I've gotten certain things out of them, let's not forget: they defend me from those runty little kids in pajamas in Asia, they protect me from myself, you know, if I start to light a cigarette, some Fed will be there to snatch it out of my mouth and say 'that's an illegal, unhealthy weed' so I don't get lung cancer. I tell them it's grass, baby, like we all used to smoke behind the barn, but I guess they grew up in the city, with their thing-which was probably ganging up on some spade kid because they figured he jazzed more, and cutting off his balls. They call me a sick comic. I guess after hearing that, you'll believe it. Well, go ahead,, because it's true: I'm sick-of all this shit they're putting down on us-and I'm a comic, or I used to be. They're not mutually exclusive, because if you're as sick as I am of so many things, you've got to be able to laugh at things-like getting your teeth knocked out by the fuzz because they think you called them a dirty name when you called them mother-fuckers. I really do apologize for that, here and now: your mothers never got fucked, but that doesn't explain you."
It was more vituperative than funny, Estelle thought, when the comedian paused to get a fresh drink. "Vituperative" was a word Goldie had taught her. She knew them because she worked crossword puzzles all the time. Goldie had told her before they came that Haste was reported to have gone off the deep end because of police persecution. There were still occasional funny spots, however.
"Well, leave the Feds and the cops alone. I just had to say a few words to those uniformed members of our audience, there are so many of them. I feel like the Communist Party when I do my show now, because there are usually more cops in the audience than people. But let's talk for a minute about sex, a universal denominator. Tell me the truth, you guys in the audience: how many of you brought your dates here for me to get hot by saying a few Anglo Saxon words? Chickens. I've got a surprise for you tonight: I'm not going to do it, so you cops can put away your notebooks and quit trying to steal my act. 'Fuck'-now that's a silly word, isn't it? Why not say 'I want to put a part of my body in yours, I like you so much'? Why not? Getting back to that four letter word, just to show you how silly it is, and obscenity in general, try saying it more than five times in succession. It doesn't mean a thing to you then. You got rid of a hang-up. Come on, let's all say it together, don't be chicken: 'fuck.' "
"Fuck!" the audience said, half of them not joining in.
"Fuck."
"Fuck."
"Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck!!!!" Everyone was doing it the fifth time around. They roared the word so loudly it sounded like they wanted to wake the whole town up with it. Estelle looked around and saw some men she was sure were plainclothes cops yelling it out too.
"Don't it make you feel clean?" Haste yelled when the noise died down, and then jumped out of his chair and vanished toward a door in the back.
Estelle was floored. She didn't know what to say, but she knew she wanted to meet the comedian. He was like a priest, and a hustler too. She felt that he was the one she should ask about entering a convent.
"How'd you like him, hon?" Goldie asked.
"I don't know what to say. He wasn't especially funny-he was better than that."
"I know what you mean. He's like a preacher or something, but he talks our language. Even so, I get tired of preaching-even his kind. He wasn't like that ten years ago. We used to work a burlesque house in downtown L.A. together. He was the M.C. and I was one of the acts. He married a friend of mine-the star of the show as a matter-of-fact. What a pair of knockers she had!"
"Goldie, do you think I could meet him?"
"You really want to? He might be a disappointment to you."
"I've had plenty of disappointments in the last six months-I guess I can handle it."
"O.K., let me finish my drink and we'll see if we can get back to his dressing room."
It was easier to see him than either one of them had expected. They knocked and no one answered, so Goldie turned the knob and opened the door. He was sitting in his underwear watching television. The President was giving his State of the Union message. He looked up, seemed to recognize Goldie, and flicked the set off.
"Want a beer, Goldie? I always watch him-he's one of the greatest comedians of our time."
"Yeah, I'd like a beer, Willie. But I want you to meet a friend of mine, Estelle. She just got religion, and she wants to confess to you, I think." He got beers out of a small icebox for all of them and asked them to sit down on a dilapidated sofa across from him.
"Well, I worked that priest gig for awhile, but I forget the language."
"I really liked your act, Mr. Haste," Estelle said.
"Good. A lot of people think Haste only makes waste. Where'd you come from, anyway?
I thought Goldie only knew candy butchers and strippers."
"I'm making a movie."
"I should have guessed you wouldn't be wasting your talents at the Salvation Army."
"As a matter-of-fact, I've been thinking about religion a lot. I was thinking of maybe becoming a nun."
"Why? Who are you dodging?"
"No one." Despite the way he talked, Estelle didn't think he was making fun of her. She trusted him instinctively. "It's just that I thought, back in Chicago, that things in Hollywood would be so different. And they're not."
"What did you expect?"
"That things would be true-you know."
"No, I don't, but I have a glimmer. Get me another beer, would you Goldie?"
"Anyway, I thought what you said was awfully honest, and I don't know too much about honesty."
"You think I do? Listen, whatever it is you're into, you can make it more honest-at least so that it doesn't stink so much-just by taking some responsibility for it yourself. Even if it's some crappy western, give it all you've got." Zack and Mr. Gass had warned Estelle repeatedly not to tell anyone about the project she was working on, but she felt that she had to tell someone; it was getting to be too much for her to keep to herself. Why not tell him, and Goldie?
"I'm not making a western-that's just the problem. I'm making a dirty movie."
He whistled between his teeth. "That's your bag huh? And you look so clean-cut. My, my That's a groove, really. Making a film like that in itself is honest, you dig? You're not shooting anybody, or being a bitch, you're just putting out. That's fine-why knock it?"
She wasn't prepared for his response. If you put it that way, what was wrong with it? "I don't know. I have to think about it. I guess it's just that I don't expect people like Jim Paine or Chip Ohio or Jimmy Bondige to be the way they turn out." She noticed that Goldie was frowning at her. "What's the matter, Goldie, don't you approve?" she asked her friend.
"Give me time, kid. Give me time. I've seen those stag films, but it's a shock to find out that a friend of yours is in them."
"I think it's great, anyway," Willie offered. "In fact, it gets me horny, sitting this close to you. But I'll restrain myself." He made a comic grab for her breasts, and patted her on the shoulder. "No kidding, don't worry about it. It's clean and it'll shake people up, so how can you lose?"
After he said that, Estelle decided she was glad she'd told him. She also decided she wished he hadn't been kidding when he grabbed for her breasts. He was more attractive to her than any man she had met since Zack. It didn't take her long to decide this. She looked at Goldie to give her the high sign but Goldie was drinking her beer and looking off into the corner, lost in contemplation.
"It's awfully quiet all of a sudden," Estelle said.
"Silence isn't so bad sometimes," Goldie said, but as she said it, there was a knocking on the door.
"But it never lasts long," Willie said, as he got up to answer the door. "It's the fuzz," he said calmly.
Two plainclothes cops stood in the doorway. "Mr. Haste, we want to talk with you about your act just now. We got another complaint about your language."
"Come on in, boys. We were just talking dirty, me and these young ladies." The cops stood there awkwardly, their hats in their hands. "You want a beer?" Willie asked them.
"No thanks, Willie," the shorter one said. He seemed to be in charge.
"You know, Lieutenant, you look more and more like Joe Friday. Estelle, Goldie, these are my friends McGuire and Mudd. You might call them my personal escorts, they're with me so much."
"Why don't you leave him alone?" Estelle asked.
"We got a complaint, like I said, ma'am," McGuire, the shorter one, said.
"What complaint? From a parking meter?" Willie asked.
"Willie, you know we're just doing our jobs."
"Yeah, but the trouble is, I think you should quit. What is it going to be this time?"
"You've gotta come downtown, Willie. You can call your lawyer from there."
"You know they'll throw away the key this time, McGuire."
"Can't help it, Willie. Now come along." Estelle decided she had to do something to stop them.
"You didn't actually hear him break the law, did you?" she asked.
"No, but that doesn't make any difference."
"What if I were to break the law right now, right in front of you? You'd have to arrest me first, wouldn't you?"
"Not necessarily, but you're not going to do anything like that."
"I will if you don't leave Willie alone. Can't you just give him a subpoena or something? He's got an act to do. Let him do his act first, and then you can take him."
"Sorry." McGuire put his hand on Willie's arm. "Come on now, Willie."
"Don't touch him! I warned you!" Estelle was mad, madder than she got in her fights with Zack; she wasn't about to let them take Willie away. Her fingers got busy with her buttons, opening the back of her blouse.
"Hey, stop that! You can't do that!" the other cop yelled.
"Oh I can't, huh?" Her zipper was stuck, so she tore her skirt off. She was standing in front of them in bra and panties.
"Now get out of here, before I start screaming. I'll tell everyone you tried to rape me." They stood in front of her, stunned, as if they couldn't believe what was happening to them. Then McGuire acted.
"You're not going to throw a phony stunt like that and get it on my record," he said, and grabbed her, the blouse in the other hand, trying to force it back on her. That did it: Estelle began screaming as loudly as she could. "Rape! Help! Rape!"
She kicked him in the shins. Goldie decided to join her in the chorus, ripping her clothes off and yelling even more loudly than Estelle. In two minutes a crowd had gathered at the open door of Willie's dressing room, and two men had grabbed the cops.
"Christ, what a great show!" Willie said.
"Get out there now and finish your act," Estelle told him. The crowd held the two cops as Willie went out to do the second half of his show.
She and Goldie went downtown with the two cops and some witnesses. After a long night, Mr. Gass was able to get her out of the situation, although he was angrier than she had ever seen him before. "He's not even in the cast of the movie! Zack wasn't even there! What are you trying to pull?"
She felt better for weeks. She didn't even try to contact Willie, even though he had been busted the same night she fought with the cops. A month later she read that he had jumped from a window in downtown San Francisco.
* * *
Over the months Estelle made scene after scene with the biggest names in Hollywood. During the same period of time, she ran through two more analysts, changed her beautician, flew to London for some shopping, and bought four Pekingese poodles, which she had dyed pink. Mr. Gass continued to see her three or four nights a week but she was disgruntled to learn that the little Mexican boy was still a fixture in his studio office. As far as the movie was concerned, he had decided that Zack should wrap it up in September. The Night Life of the Gods, as it was to be called, already had an all-star cast of over a dozen movie idols. Mr. Gass assured her that she would get top billing, however. Estelle had changed remarkably in the year she had been working for him. She was no longer a movie-struck round heels from Chicago; she thought of herself as a star and lived accordingly, although she wasn't satisfied with anything for long. Her extravagances cost Mr. Gass more and more, but he never complained. In fact, he hardly ever talked to her anymore, he was so busy making sure that the movie received the best launching it could possibly get. Already billboards across the nation announced just the name of the film, on a pure white background, arousing public anticipation. Two press agents were working full-time on all possible publicity angles, and since they knew nothing about the film except the name of its maker and its title, they played with that, attempting to pique a nation's curiosity.
August came, and one morning Mr. Gass summoned her to the studio.
"Well, Estelle," he began, "today we shoot the last scene. After that, Zack will finish putting it together, and the premiere is set for September 28th." He beamed at her, expecting her to be as excited as he was.
"Oh, Mr. Gass, I can't work today. My horoscope says I should refrain from exerting myself today; can't it wait?"
"No, I'm afraid it can't. I've already made all the arrangements, and Zack is waiting outside in the truck, ready to go." His voice was kind, but firm.
"Who's it gonna be?" she sighed. In answer, he took a box from his desk and handed it to her.
"Take a look at that costume-I think you'll get a kick out of it." She opened the box. Inside was a flashy cowboy outfit.
"Oh no, not Lana. Bevins!" she exclaimed. "She's . .
"No, not her. You're going out to see Dean Pelfry today."
"Oh, for Christ's sake!"
* * *
An hour later she was in a chauffeured limousine on her way to the Pelfry ranch in northern Nevada. Mr. Gass had told her how rich the former cowboy star had become and that had cooled her down a little. Despite herself, she began to enjoy the idea of a weekend vacation on a ranch, especially after Mr. Gass had described to her the palatial way in which the old cowboy lived. She kind of liked the way she looked in the dude outfit, anyway. Maybe she would even learn how to ride a horse.
The Pelfry spread was located in beautiful country. "Real wild west country," Mr. Gass had called it. It was so large that they had to drive another hour after going through the main gate before they got to the house. As they drove along, even Estelle noticed how prosperous the setup looked, how many cows were grazing on the rich high grass. Way off to the west she could see the beautiful Sierra Nevada mountains.
Because of this, she was shocked when they finally arrived at the ranch house. It looked so small, and even though well-kept, poor. There were a few buildings around it, but they were even smaller. It did not look like a real ranch-at least not like the kind she had seen in the movies. The limousine threw up a cloud of dust as it stopped in front of the house. She saw a couple of men leave the porch and approach the car. When they got close enough, she could see that they had their pistols out. One of them yanked open the car door.
"All right! What's your business here?" the older one demanded. He wore faded Levi's, a Levi jacket, and a ten-gallon hat.
"I'm Estelle L'Amour," Estelle said, hoping they would recognize her name.
"Ne'mine that! We can see you're a whooer. What you doin' here, that was my question, if I remember right."
"That was your question, Lem," the younger one said. He was holding a gun on the chauffeur.
"Mr. Pelfry invited me to come and visit him," she answered.
"He did, did he?" the older one repeated, but he lowered his gun. "All right boy, let's take her to Dean and see if he knows her."
They escorted her into the small wooden house. Inside, in a kind of den, sat a figure in a T-shirt and Bermuda shorts whom she recognized as Dean Pelfry. He was watching a baseball game on TV. "Who's this, Lem?" he asked, when he saw Estelle. "I told you I didn't want to see any tourists. I'm going to have to give those boys at the main gate a piece of my mind, I swear."
Estelle spoke up: "I'm Estelle L'Amour, Mr. Pelfry. You invited me here. A friend of mine, Mr. Gass, called you yesterday and asked if I could rest up here."
The old cowboy stood up and turned off the TV set. He squinted at her, his lined bronze face tightening in thought.
"Gosh, I'm sorry, Miss L'Amour. You sure are right at that. Forgive me, my mind's been wanderin' lately. Yeah, I remember that call. Sure was strange hearing from the King after all these years." His eyes brightened as he thought about the past. "You know, Mr. Gass gave me my first job. I was sure sorry when he went downhill." They waited as he stared into the past. "Those were the good old days. Why Challenger and I, we ... but you don't want to hear me sounding off. You must want to get freshened up after that long ride." He turned to his two ranch hands. "You boys take good care of Miss L'Amour's horse. Then you can ride into town if you like, we won't be needing you."
He showed her to her room. At least it has a connecting bath, she thought. The room was clean, but almost bare. It contained a single bed and a rocking chair.
He's flipped, she decided. Take good care of my horse, my ass! The old skinflint. She'd get this job over with in a hurry. When she got back to Hollywood, she was going to give Gass some hell. How was Zack going to bring that truck in here with those two idiots on guard?
She lay down to rest for awhile on the bed (the mattress was thin as a rail).
Later that afternoon he knocked on her door. She had fallen asleep. He was dressed in the kind of outfit he had worn in his movies-a yellow shirt and white jeans with beautifully engraved boots on his feet and a big white ten-gallon hat on his head. "Excuse" me, Miss L'Amour, but I thought you might want to go for a little ride. I'll show you the ranch-it's mighty pretty country."
"Oh, I'd love to, Mr. Pelfry, but you can call me Estelle."
"I'm glad you're not the formal type, ma'am. I never like to stand on formality." He took a pack of chewing gum from his shirt. "How about a stick of Doublemint, Estelle?" he offered shyly.
Two horses were waiting for them outside. One was an all-white mare and the other was a brown stallion with white markings on its face. The white horse was for her.
"The other one's Challenger the Second," he explained. "Would you like to see where the original Challenger is buried?" His voice took on reverent tones she hadn't heard since the last time she was in church. "This little fellow knows his way to the spot blindfolded." While he was talking, Estelle was trying to mount the white horse.
"Here, let me give you a hand," he finally said when he noticed her predicament. "I guess you're kind of a dude, aren't you?" She let her weight go in his arms, but he didn't take advantage of it. When they were both in the sad-. die, he said, "That's a real gentle horse-just let him have his head and you won't have any problems." Off they trotted, kicking up a dust storm which soon covered Estelle from head to foot, The regular, rocking motion of the horse made the insides of her thighs tingle. All around them was the breathtaking western landscape Pelfry's pictures had been full of. The sky above their heads was cloudless, a deep blue ceiling which made the landscape seem even more immense. Soon the ranch house and its outbuildings were nothing more than little dots on the plain as they got higher and higher up. She began to enjoy herself, even though her hips were beginning to feel like they would fall off from the pounding the horse's movement gave them. Here she was, in a Dean Pelfry movie-maybe he would even sing. She decided to ask him if he would, once they stopped someplace. She glanced over at him jogging along beside her; occasionally he would catch her eye and smile bashfully, but he seemed to have no inclination to talk.
They came to a small copse of woods high on a mesa overlooking his ranch, and dismounted. In the middle of the woods was a large tomb, enclosed by a high wooden fence to give the effect of a corral. The expression on the old cowboy's face was one of deep solemnity. "This is that last corral, Estelle."
"It's ... very impressive, Dean."
"Well, it cost me close to $50,000, but I figured hang the expense, this is my best friend they're burying here, and it's going to be where I rest my bones someday, too."
"You were very wise to look at it that way."
"Do you think so? You know, I haven't shown this to very many people, but somehow I was sure you would understand."
He led her to the entrance of the tomb, which was carved with relief figures of rearing horses and cowboys. When he opened the door, she heard the deep tones of an organ start up. She was startled.
"I should have warned you. It's all automatic. I think it gives the right touch, don't you?" Inside, in the dimly lighted chamber, a horse was standing, perfectly natural, his head thrown up and his nostrils flaring. Pelfry went over to pat it, talking gently in its ear.
"This is Challenger," he said to her. "Come over and meet him." The famous horse was in a state of perfect preservation; with the silver saddle over his back, he looked ready to ride.
"Why, this is touching, Dean," she said. He smiled.
"Want you to meet a real nice lady, Challenger. Be nice to her," he said to the horse. Estelle advanced and timidly patted the stuffed animal.
When they were outside again and Pelfry had carefully relocked the tomb, he said, "That old horse made me a lot of money in his time. I guess he was the brains behind the act. Hadn't been for him, I wouldn't have gotten anywhere."
They walked over to the horses and sat down on the grass near them. Pelfry seemed to be filled with nostalgia.
"Yes sir, those were the days. Yes sir," he said. Estelle moved closer to him on the ground.
"Dean, would you do me a favor?"
"Anything, Estelle. You name it."
"Would you sing one of your old songs for me?" She could see him blushing.
"Gosh, Estelle, I don't know if I could or not."
"Oh, please, go ahead and try. For me."
"Well, okay, if you say so." He cleared his throat, and then began to sing Ghost Riders in the Sky. His voice was almost gone, but the song sent shivers up her spine as she listened. It made her think of the Lyric Theater in her old neighborhood in Chicago, where she once sat in the balcony listening to the same old song from the celluloid Dean Pelfry. As he sang, she pulled his head into her lap, and let her long hair blow in his face. He smiled with happiness. It obviously brought back pleasant memories to him too.
"Gosh, that was nice, Estelle. This is the most fun I've had in a long time." Estelle managed to blush. She knew she would have to play the part of an innocent cowgirl if she were going to succeed in seducing him. But she would have to be direct.
"Dean, I don't know how to say this, but I think I'm in love with you. No-don't say anything! It's so wonderful up here, this is the first time I've felt like this. I'm just melting inside. You could do anything you wanted to with me and I wouldn't care." She looked at him. He didn't seem shocked. Maybe he wouldn't be so difficult after all.
"Anything?" he asked. "Estelle, you've got to be careful who you say things like that to.
Some men might take advantage." But he seemed interested, as if awaiting a sign from her. She took his hand in hers.
"Dean, I want you to take advantage of me! I love you!" She crushed his head against her full breasts. She hadn't worn a brassiere. She decided to wait for him to take the lead. His slow hands came up and unbuttoned her blouse, revealing two firm white mountains of flesh with cherry-hard nipples springing into his hands.
"You've got nice ones," he said bashfully. His mouth closed on one of the nipples and began sucking while his other hand played with her other breast and then roamed down her body to the vee of her crotch. She brought her thighs together on the hand and held it there until his other hand unzipped her pants and started pulling them down. She raised her hips to allow him to pull them off, then his hand found her cunt again and his middle finger began moving in and out of the tight hole while his thumb stroked her clitoris. Soon she was so greasy down there he was able to push three fingers inside her. She allowed him to strip her before she touched him. When she was naked on the grass, her hand went out to find his penis through his jeans. He wasn't even hard. She unzipped him and slipped her hand in his fly, searching for his manhood. Her fingers finally found a chewed-off pencil of flesh about two inches long. She managed to pull what there was of it outside his zipper. He looked at her apologetically. "I never grew. What happens...." It was too much for her. She started bawling. All she ran into were crippies or creeps. The movie world was a pack of lies! Everything was made up.
While she was crying, she felt his head move between her legs. His teeth encircled her clitoris and began nibbling. Wildly erotic sensations shot through her body. Automatically her hands went down to his head and pressed him into her. She writhed and tossed her hips, gasping in delight, and then when she was about to come, he removed his head and stood up.
"Finish me!" she begged.
"Come on over here, Estelle. I know you're not happy with my equipment." He helped her to her feet. She was hysterical with lust as he pulled her after him toward the horses.
"The horses?" she gasped, beginning to understand. He walked around to the rear of Challenger the Second and grabbed the big horse-cock dangling there. Expertly, his hand moved on the horse's genitals, working it up until it hardened. He pushed the skin back. He looked at her. Her eyes were wild. "Yes. Yes...." she moaned, and knelt under the horse, slipping her arms around it from underneath. Then she pulled her legs up and into position. Pelfry was holding the nervous horse for her, gentling it. She spread her legs as wide as she could and swung her pelvis at the big penis, impaling herself on it in one violent push. She screamed with pain as she felt the hard flesh enter her halfway. It was as big as a man's leg. Then, slowly, very slowly, she began to push herself against it. The horse was getting excited. Once it reared, but she kept her grip, moving more quickly now. When she came, she rammed herself down on the giant penis so hard she thought she had split herself wide-open. She fell to the ground, exhausted and sweating. Dean Pelfry moved the horse away from her.
"How about a stick of Doublemint?" he asked, smiling.
REEL FOUR
Once an image is transferred from drab, disappointing reality (and all of Estelle's experiences were disappointing) to the screen, it becomes a dream. It never happened, but it could happen, and that's why the theaters are always filled, like churches, with nightly worshipers who wait patiently for that miracle, life to reoccur. Dreams are the only things that give them enough ambition to continue.
Gass was certain that the erotic dream he had manufactured would cause the organized order of movie land to topple in the face of its great scandal, allowing him to step in once again as King Sandman. Long ago he had realized that Hollywood dreams were the only real religion Americans had, the touchstones of the nation's psychic life.
Zack had less grandiose ambitions. He moved in his own world. It was the immediacy of the images, the dreams he could actually spin, that interested him. He had the artist's eternal craving to create his own universe and Gass' motives for enabling him to do his work were of no concern to him.
And Estelle, being a mythical erotic figure, like Helen, was the stuff dreams are made of.
She felt like an old lady inside now, but on the surface she had become even more beautiful, even more lush. She was not only a central figure in the making of the dream, but a believer, part of the audience out front. Or she had been. After the scene with Pelfry, her work on the film was finished. Gass began to spend all day and most of the night at the studio with Zack, editing the film so that it would be ready for the premiere. She was at loose ends. She felt empty, so she spent most of her time at the movies, trying to recover her old belief in them. She found, however, that her work in constructing the dream had killed their magic for her. When she saw an actor on the screen she admired, she couldn't stop herself from imagining what kind of prick he had, his tastes in sex, and even whether he was stingy or expansive, sentimental or hard. She wondered about the kind of house he had, what his hobbies were, how many mistresses he had. This is tantamount to wondering, when you see a picture of Christ on the cross, if he had had an orgasm while he was up there, as executed men are rumored to have.
Nevertheless, she went every day to some theater or another. She had nothing else to do. Sometimes she would see five or six movies a day, going out for food and then returning. She found herself envying those in the audience who could weep during an emotional scene or cheer at a bit of action. She sat in our 20th century cathedrals day and night, trying to recover a lost faith in Dean Pelfry, Big Jim Paine, or Chip Ohio, chewing hot-buttered popcorn and drinking soda, the bread and wine of the new religion.
* * *
The week of the premiere arrived. Estelle was scheduled for some press conference, radio or TV show every day. Mr. Gass had coached her personally concerning her answers to questions about The Night Life of the Gods. Her special job, however, was to attract as much attention to herself as she could in that week. Since she was the only publicized performer in the film, any stories she garnered for herself would also help the film. She was pretty much on her own, because Mr. Gass was too cautious to hire any outsiders, even a press agent, so close to the premiere.
Estelle enjoyed the work she had to do. When faced with one of the trappings of stardom-publicity-she was able to snap out of her depression. There was a series of press conferences, each of which had a theme: the movie, its stars, her boyfriends; however, she was instructed not to give a straight answer in response to questions about these themes. Her first press conference for instance, was about the movie. She wore a black sequined dress with a transparent top, in line with the new topless craze. She rouged her nipples and pinched them so they would stand out.
She caused a small riot. Press photographers and TV cameramen fought each other to get shots they would never be able to show; reporters slugged it out in order to get closer to her.
Gass had sent two private cops along, but the police were also on hand to hold the mobs back. A microphone was thrust in front of her.
"What do you think of the reaction you're causing, Miss L'Amour?" a reporter from a wire service asked.
"Well, all I can say is that you boys act like you've never seen a girl before."
"What is your movie about, Miss L'Amour?"
"Oooh ... about the birds and the bees ... you know."
"Do you have a steady boyfriend, Miss L'Amour?"
"Oh no, that would be too boring. I change them every day, like underwear."
"What underwear, Miss L'Amour?"
"You're naughty, aren't you? Of course I wear pants whenever I go out of the house."
"What about in the house?"
"In the house, I like to be free. Clothes just get in the way, you know what I mean? Besides, people don't recognize me if I wear a whole lot of clothes."
"Miss L'Amour, is it true that your current love interest is your producer, Mr. Gass?"
"Oh no, I just sleep with him sometimes." Estelle blushed prettily and pushed out her breasts when her audience roared with laughter. "Well, I do live with him, you know. But really, we're just good friends. My real love is a man I met a long time ago, a boy back home."
"Is he here with you now?"
"Oh no, I don't know where he is. But you know, a girl never forgets the man who makes a woman out of her. It's the greatest gift a man can give a woman." At this, they stamped their feet and roared again. She heard wolf-whistles. The men in front crowded closer to her.
"What are your measurements, Miss L'Amour?"
"Oh, I really don't know. I'm not worried about them, though. I guess you might be able to see why," she smiled.
"Can you give us any figures on them, Miss L'Amour? The people back home will want to know."
"Gee, I wish I could help you. I know! Why don't one of you cute little bald-headed men come up here and measure me?" She stretched her chest as if the tape measure were already around her. It touched off several fist fights. Grown men cried because they were in the back of the room. Those in the front lamented the fact they were married. Finally a girl reporter was found from Women's Wear Daily. She stepped up to do the honors.
"I'm disappointed in all you big strong men. You act like I'm poison or something," she pouted. The girl slid the tape over her body as the men gaped. Then the announcement came:
"40-24-38 is what I get."
Silence, after a few gasps, while everyone wrote the important statistics down. These were figures a whole nation could take pride in. It took an eager Playboy correspondent to ask the question of the evening, though:
"Miss L'Amour, what do you think of this new treatment we've been hearing about, whereby women with small busts may have them enlarged through silicone injections?"
"Well, I haven't given it much thought. It seems kind of unnatural to me, but a girl certainly has to take care of her bosom if she's going to get along. It's a man's world, you know."
"Would you consider having the treatments, Miss L'Amour?"
"Now whatever for? Mother Nature has been good to me."
"Well, suppose...."
"This man must be blind!" Estelle exclaimed. The crowd laughed but a wise guy in the back piped up with another question:
"How do we know you are real, Estelle baby?" Estelle flared up, losing her temper.
"If you don't believe your eyes, step right up. The proof's up front!" she yelled back. "Teaser!" the same wise guy yelled.
"All right, damn it, here they are!" Estelle tugged her snowy mammaries out of her dress with both hands and held them out. She was really angry and she didn't even know why; she could have gone on teasing them, but damn if she was going to put up with being called a phony, after all the phonies she had seen. The small room was in an uproar. What happened next, no one expected. The same girl reporter who had taken Estelle's measurements stepped up to the microphone.
"It looks like one woman is going to have to come to the rescue of another woman, honey," she whispered to Estelle, and then spoke to the men around her:
"All right, you bastards, I'll check for you." She was reaching out gingerly to touch one of Estelle's breasts, when she was pushed aside by a small bald man with a cigar in his mouth.
"Hell you will, you dyke! Let a man do the honors!" And with no further ado, he grabbed both of Estelle's swollen titties in his hands, squeezing hard. "They're genuine, all right!" She thought they would tear them off before the police rushed in and formed a cordon around her; she panicked and began to sob uncontrollably. "I'll get a cancer! No, no, not my breasts!"
After that, it took a lot of talking and finally a new convertible before Gass could persuade her to make any more public appearances. She absolutely refused to display her breasts, however, and he couldn't get her to change her mind. "So all right, we'll switch to your legs," Gass said, in desperation. Estelle was agreeable. She had her skirts shortened to mid-thigh for the remaining series of interviews and TV and radio appearances. She sailed through them like an old trouper, with Zack or Mr. Gass standing backstage to buoy her confidence. On the Good Morning show she made her singing debut with a song of her own composition: He Put His Pole in My Fishing Hole, at the end of which she did some sit-ups along with the program's physical fitness director. The sit-ups ripped her tight skirt right down the side, so that when she stood up again millions of Americans at breakfast watched a rising young starlet peel like an overripe banana. By Wednesday of the week of the premiere, Estelle, like so many famous bombshells before her, had captured the hearts-and genitals-of a nation.
The premiere was set for Saturday night.
The official opening would be held at the Imperial Theatre in the center of Hollywood, but Mr. Gass had cleverly arranged it so that the film would open simultaneously across the nation the following Monday. Within two days, all tickets for the first night were either sold-at premium prices-or had been sent gratis to unknowing "stars" of the picture.
Friday morning, Mr. Gass called Estelle into his office and told her that she had to do something extraordinary, a final grand effort, because it was the last day available to them for publicity purposes. Zack's idea was that she go up in a balloon over Griffith Park dressed in a red bikini, but Estelle quickly vetoed that idea. She wasn't having any of Zack's ideas anyway. Some of the other ideas Zack and Mr. Gass had were that she get herself kidnapped, that she reveal to the nation that her father had raped her when she was five, and that she stab somebody, a la Hannah Lerner's kid. She turned thumbs down on all of them.
"They're too old-fashioned," she objected.
"Well, do you have any ideas, Estelle?" Mr. Gass finally asked in exasperation, after she had refused everything suggested.
"Yes, I do. I think once in awhile. You remember the mail we got after that Good Morning show, don't you? Well, I'm going to be on the P.M. show at eleven-thirty. It's going to be done live because it's an anniversary show. You just keep your eyes glued to that box tonight and you'll see something no one has ever seen on television before."
* * *
Ronnie Johnson was wowing them coast to coast that night, and his guests, Jimmy Manners, Ta Ta Boom, and Johnny Priest, were throwing away lines a comedy writer would have given his last giggle for. But when Estelle walked on the show, she was immediately the center of attention. Ronnie rushed out from behind his desk to help her to her seat. Ta Ta flashed cat eyes at her, Jimmy Manners howled, and Johnny Priest even cracked his dead pan to leer at her. She wore a modified nun's outfit, modified so that it wouldn't look exactly like a nun's outfit and thereby run the risk of offending the nation's Catholics, but otherwise it was just as severe. She was covered from head to toe. Ronnie took the bait as she expected him to and immediately began asking to see more of her. After five minutes of double entendres, during which he forgot one commercial and blew his lines on another, he even came around to her and tugged her skirt up to her knees with his own hands.
"Pm sure you'll be more comfortable this way," he said, and winked at the audience. He had expected to have to throw a blanket around her, but her costume threw him off guard and caused him to make the advance. Estelle sat and calmly chatted while the others got laughs just by looking at her and raising their eyebrows. Ta Ta, relieved to see that she had no competition after all, took pity on Estelle and talked down to her. Obviously the poor girl, despite her sudden rise to fame, was ashamed of what she had, if she covered it up in this manner.
As Estelle chatted, her skirt hiked further and further up her legs, but no one seemed to notice. When your eyes have a fixed image in them, they seldom notice subversion of that image. But her skirt rose. At twelve fifty-five, when the bars of the theme music began rippling across TV land, her skirt was almost up to her panties. No one on the show noticed, they were so busy enjoying the jokes they had made at her expense, but millions of late night viewers had their eyes glued on Estelle's bottom half. With two minutes left to go on the show, Ronnie was saying good-night to his guests. He had saved Estelle for last, for a great exit line, a crack he had been saving up since she walked on. With two minutes left, on nationwide live TV, Estelle stood up to go, just as Ronnie was bending to kiss her hand. He opened his mouth to speak, but before he could get the words out, the skirt of her outfit dropped to the floor. Those who were fortunate enough to have color TV thanked the Lord. For a whole minute they were able to feast their tired eyes on the sight of Estelle's vividly red rose-bush between her creamy thighs. Ronnie jerked to attention to cover her, and as the credits came up, seemed to be fucking his guest standing up, his back to the camera.
* * *
The dream center of the country was in an uproar the night of the premiere. Tickets from scalpers were going for two and three hundred dollars and Gass was sure that every star he had invited, every dignitary, would show. Estelle's appearance on the P.M. show had made the front page of every newspaper in the country. Estelle spent the day between the hairdresser's and Gass' office, receiving final instructions. She was to dress very formally and in absolute good taste, he decreed. He and Zack and Estelle would sit in the first two rows of the second section, along with the stars who were in the film. The projection booth was to be locked throughout the showing, guarded by Gass Studio cops.
When everything was as ready as they could make it, they had a quick dinner at Romanoff's, but were so besieged by reporters and columnists that they had to leave before they had finished. A story had appeared the day before in one of the trade papers detailing the first fall of King Gass, the producer who was making a comeback with The Night Life of the Gods. Old acquaintances and former business associates had been calling all day.
"I tell all my 'old friends' to jump in the toilet," Gass said to Estelle and Zack. The old man was savoring the first fruits of his comeback, according to a revenge-fantasy he had had in his mind for years. He described in detail what had happened when he met Hester Millions the week before. She hadn't been able to get a picture since Neptune's Harem, and of course she had heard that he was producing again. She had flung open her arms to him: "Welcome back to the fold, babydoll. I knew you'd come back to us."
"No thanks to you, is it, Hester?"
"Why, what do you mean? You're not still holding a grudge because of what I said at that party, are you?"
"And why not?"
"Because, that's why. I didn't mean anything by it. And I've heard about your new studio...."
"And you thought I might have a part for you?"
"Well, I could make up for the awful way I treated you. My name sells pictures. It'd be good for both of us."
"Your name couldn't sell used bathing suits, Hester. You're all washed up, if you'll pardon the expression."
She had prepared to flounce off, Gass remembered, but it was rather difficult, since they were standing in the middle of the Universal parking lot and she no longer had her entourage to accompany her. She was pathetic, and so Gass had thrown her a line:
"Don't mind me, Hester. As a matter-of-fact, if you come to the premiere of my Night Life movie, we might be able to talk a deal." Estelle and Zack both relished Gass' revenge almost as much as he did; Hester had almost drowned both of them.
* * *
When they finally drove up to the theater in the biggest, most expensive car Gass had been able to rent, even they were amazed by the size of the crowds overflowing the sidewalks. Every major television network was televising the premiere live. Limousines and Cadillacs and Lincolns arrived and left in a steady train, and the gods of Hollywood walked up the long red carpet in a steady procession, come to worship another manifestation of success.
Gass Studio cops checked every invitation, every ticket, to make sure only the select were admitted. Once the doors were closed, they had orders to let no one in or out until Mr. Gass gave the word. The screams of the crowd rose in waves as their favorites walked by in the flesh. When Mr. Gass and Zack and Estelle left their car, the reporters and television cameras rushed to surround them. For ten minutes they parried the onslaught of questions; questions like:
"What is your film about, Mr. Gass?"
"What the title says: The Night Life of the Gods. It's about Hollywood itself."
"Do you think it will be a success, Mr. Gass?"
"Well, it may never be shown again after tonight, but it will be a success, no matter how you look at it." And then Mr. Gass said the interview was over and they entered the theater. Four ushers escorted them to their seats while the nobility of the movie colony craned their necks to see their host. When he judged it was time, Mr. Gass rose from his seat and slowly walked down the thickly carpeted aisle to the stage. He walked like a priest on his way to the altar. A great hush settled over the audience as the lights went down at the same time. Gass stood in the middle of the stage before a microphone, three spotlights on him. He looked very small and insignificant on the immense stage, but when he spoke his voice boomed. He had had the microphone hooked up with the stereophonic sound system in the theater. Everyone leaned forward. Now their curiosity was to be satisfied.
"My name is Gass," the figure on the stage said. "Many of you know me, even though you tried to forget me over the years. You're here tonight because you're curious: about my movie, about Estelle L'Amour, the newest star in Hollywood, and about me. Let's begin with me. Twenty-five years ago I was on top in this business. I made the most films, created the top stars, and enjoyed the biggest successes. And then I disappeared. Why? Because I wasn't a hypocrite, and you out there are. I believed in living the way I pleased, and the hell with what some columnist would write. But you saw a way to get me because of my honesty. You understood better than I did that the public wants its priests to live lives of purity and celibacy. Anyway, I fell. Well, as of tonight, I'm on top again, but this time the tables are reversed-you're going to be as honest as I was. You'll see why in a minute."
Estelle felt like ducking down in her seat. All this was fine for him, but what about her? When they saw her up there, they'd tear her apart. She squeezed Zack's hand, pressing her nails into his flesh.
"As for Miss L'Amour, she was an unknown when I met her. As a matter-of-fact, she had been a prostitute. A dozen of you know her very well, though: Estelle, stand up and let them see you."
Zack pulled her to her feet, and a spotlight was thrown on her. An immediate buzzing began as the various stars recognized their partner in revelry. Ushers walked down the aisle passing out glasses and filling them with the finest champagne. Estelle was trembling with fear, but no one made a move toward her; they hadn't made the necessary connections yet. Gass began again.
"Drink up-you're going to need it. Maybe a few of you have already guessed why. The movie you're going to see is about Hollywood-about all of you. In it, I expose you as the hypocrites you are. In a word, I'm killing the dream."
He walked offstage, but he didn't return to his seat, preferring to remain in the wings. The spots went out, and a flare of trumpets was heard. He had wanted it to be as corny as possible. The curtain slowly rose and the title flashed on the screen. Estelle settled back in her seat, wanting to close her eyes, but unable to. The credits were very severe, opposed to the new style of beginning the film while the credits were being shown. The cast list starred Estelle L'Amour and listed a dozen Hollywood gods as her costars. The opening sequence was familiar to Estelle: there she was, in bed with Hoggart....
For the first few minutes, a shocked silence prevailed, as if the audience couldn't believe its eyes; and then Estelle heard, from all around her, the gasps of astonishment, wives slapping husbands, outraged whispering on every side. By the third scene, it had grown to a dull roar; dozens tried to leave, only to be blocked by Gass Studio cops. As the scenes unreeled, one part of the audience would explode and then die down, only to be replaced by another. Cautiously looking around, holding on to Zack, Estelle noticed that no one could take his eyes away from the screen for long. The images were too huge to be anything less than hypnotizing.
People argued with one another with their eyes glued to the screen. Occasionally someone would stand up as if to leave, only to be pushed down again by the people in back of him. The violence began on a small scale; she saw someone socking Jim Paine in front of her, and while her head was turned a hand grabbed her hair and began to pull. It was Ragland's wife, the girl next door, looking like a bitch in heat. Estelle smacked her, and she fell down, sprawling in the aisle.
The movie was halfway over before the theater became the madhouse that was to occupy national attention for months to come. The erotic images before them, so huge and overwhelming, seemed to cast a primitive spell over everyone in the theater. Estelle looked around and saw the giant figure of Big Jim Paine across the aisle, crouching over a woman in the seat next to him, his monstrous prick jammed down her throat. She was letting out a muffled squeal as her tonsils were invaded. Estelle shuddered at the memory of what she had undergone at Paine's hands. The rest of the audience seemed to be following his lead. In back of her, Ragland was pummeling his wife with all his might, mumbling, "All these years, you frigid bitch!" All over the theater women were fumbling with the zippers of their escorts, or of complete strangers; couples were fucking on each other's laps, over the backs of seats, rolling down the aisles; a frenzy of lust, like slaver around the jaws of a dog, possessed every man and woman in the theater. Up above them on the screen, the hot images flickered, a counterpoint to the actions below.
It wasn't long before Estelle felt herself being grabbed; she looked around for Zack and saw him on the apron of the stage, a big light behind him, filming the orgy. Then the hands had her in position and they were raising her dress as she was bent, face forward, over the back of her seat. She knew it was useless to resist. She jerked as she felt a stiff knob of flesh poking against her buttocks, and then fingers were pulling the soft globes apart, and the prick, moistened with cool saliva at its tip, forced its way in. Other fingers were massaging her vagina at the same time. As she groaned, moving her ass a little, she felt another prick rub across her lips. Without opening her eyes, she stuck out her tongue and began licking the tip. She kept her eyes closed as the first prick left her and another one entered; when the man in front of her discharged in her mouth, she felt hair and flesh rub across her face and stuck out her tongue to taste a familiar clitoris. She glanced up to see Hester Millions doing a back-'bend in the next row so she could present her big quim to Estelle's mouth. Around her, as she passively licked, she heard groans, pants, screams, grunts-a panoply of lust multiplying the images on the screen a hundredfold. Soon her every orifice was flooded; it felt like semen was coming out of her eyes....
Gass watched the exploding scene below him with impassive eyes. His prick was hard, but he was damned if he'd join them. He was lost in the enjoyment of his revenge. It was a Black Mass that he had staged, and he felt like a defrocked priest who has managed to purify himself. When "The End" flashed across the screen, he had the house lights turned up. The theater was a mass of tangled bodies. In some sections, he could hardly see the seats. The smell of semen mixed with perfume clouded the air. The bodies of the most famous stars in the world lay in the aisles, their expensive dresses bunched up around their necks, their stockings ripped, pools of semen running from between their legs. It looked like a battlefield after the guns have stopped. Many were still at it; he saw Van Pire standing in the balcony, his retinue of women around him, their clothing disheveled, trying to get them to fly with him like bats. But most of the people in the audience seemed to come to their senses as the lights went up. Dazed eyes blinked and looked around at the evidences of their folly. People began adjusting their clothing. Their movements were sated and slow. No one spoke. Gass' hard eyes watched as they moved out of the theater, and then he chuckled, shook his head amusedly, and left the stage to look for Estelle.
* * *
Estelle was besieged with offers of starring roles from every major producer in the world the next morning. She woke up famous.
The sun streamed in through the French doors of her bedroom in the Gass mansion. It was a golden sun, the sun of success. Everything seemed new and wonderful. When the maid brought her breakfast, she ate everything on the tray with great relish. Now I'm where I belong, she thought. Hollywood is at my feet. In every crack, too.
She had discovered a curious thing when she saw the movie: everything she had done, every scene she had made, had been transformed into a dream. The magic had happened. It was as if none of it had really happened to her, in reality, once she saw it on the screen. It happened to that woman up there, on the celluloid. It didn't matter that Mr. Gass had ordered the film destroyed after that showing. He was returning to conventional movie-making, and he had already offered her the part of a nun in a movie he was going to make with Chip Ohio. She felt innocent and fresh again, ready to make a thousand films, because she had recovered something she thought she had lost forever.
That afternoon she knew exactly what she wanted to do: she went to a neighborhood theater that was showing Bogart and Bergman in Casablanca, with cartoons. She sat in the dark with the rest of the audience and cried like a baby.
