Wherein I Go to a Hollywood Party
The party Malcolm had mentioned started at seven in some producer's mansion in the Hills. "This guy loves Flash/Back and he can't wait to show you off," Malcolm told me. I squirmed a bit, remembering Sam's similar "see the caged monkey!" routines, but this was Hollywood -- showing off the new toys was de rigueur.
Crystyl arranged for a car to pick me up and deposit me at a mansion in the Hills no earlier than half past eight. "If you get there on time, no one will respect you," she and Malcolm told me jointly.
I wrote up to the last minute. I had no idea what to wear to the party and realized I couldn't ask. Not now. For one thing, I would look like an idiot, waiting until so late to ask. For another, I wouldn't have time to shop anyway. I settled on jeans, scuffed sneakers, a jacket, and a button-down shirt open at the throat. It would have to do.
"Very sartorially authorial," the devil said, tipping his cap to me as I headed out the lobby door to my waiting car. He leered.
I ignored him and got into the car. The maps on my cellphone told me that the party was only fifteen miles away, but it took us almost two hours to get there. Fucking L.A.
Once there, I loitered outside for a moment, wishing that Malcolm or Crystyl or Sherrie or Sam were here to usher me, tell me who to see, who to talk to...
I wondered if I should have worn better shoes. I wondered if that slightly tender spot next to my nose was actually a massive zit waiting to break out. Had it done so in the car? I went to probe the area, then realized that would only make it worse.
Fuck it. I walked in.
And I soon came to realize that it wasn't just a Hollywood party. It was my Hollywood party.
Malcolm and Crystyl both were waiting inside, as though summoned by my arrival. They acted as though we hadn't seen each other in years, with hugs and manly claps on the back. Then they escorted me through the vestibule and into the party proper and began the introductions.
Everyone...
I mean everyone...
Everyone at the party was there to meet me. Producers, co-producers, executive producers and, of course, executive co-producers. (I had no idea what any of them did.) A phalanx of publicists and agents and managers and representatives and PR "gurus." A director, some assistant directors, a person referred to as "my muse" by the director. Del MacCarter ("I'm dying to dig into the book, brother. Dying.")
And, of course, her.
Kiki Newman.
The standard joke is that actors are all shorter in person. Kiki was not. She was tall for a woman and not afraid of it, wearing heels even though they made her loom over many of the men in attendance. Her face lit up when Malcolm told her who I was, and yes, I knew she was an actress and that it was most likely just feigned, but I couldn't help but to believe that her smile, the gleam in her eyes, that these things were real and true and meant solely for me.
Her hand, when I shook it, was cool, dry, and soft as a breast.
"Your book," she said in a lilting, relaxed tone, "is dead fucking brilliant."
I loved it when someone else broke the cursing barrier first. It gave me permission to be as potty-mouthed as I wanted.
"Thank you very fucking much," I said gravely.
She threw back her head and laughed. "You're very fucking welcome."
I decided that I liked the way she said "fucking."
"The sense of isolation in that book," she gushed. "And the incredible sense of yearning and denial... It's amazing. How on earth did you capture that?"
"Well, I hadn't gotten laid in a while," I said lightly. It was the truth, but I could make a joke of it.
"Yeah, that makes sense," she said, suddenly down. "I don't know how you could handle that. You poor guy. That's... How long was it?"
We'd gotten very serious very quickly. Could I really tell her about my Epic Everlasting (so it had felt) Dry Spell? It was Kiki Fucking Newman! I couldn't tell her about my (lack of) sex life!
And yet, I was powerless not to.
"Eight months, two weeks, and one day," I told her.
"Oh. My. God. How did you survive?"
"It wasn't easy," I said with a tone of manful self-abnegation.
"I think I would lose my mind," said Kiki Newman, "just absolutely lose my mind, if I didn't get laid a couple of times a week."
Wherein I... Oh, Hell -- Take a Wild Guess
For reasons I didn't understand then and still don't understand now, I laughed -- a pure, almost innocent, almost childlike laugh -- as I ejaculated inside Kiki Newman for the first time.
We had spent most of the party together and alone. Not huddled in a corner for privacy or off in an unused room somewhere. No, we were alone together in the middle of it all, right in the thick of it. People milled about us, occasionally bumped into one of us, but no one spoke to us. No one even looked at us. We were invisibly visible, present while absent. Out of synch enough with the universe that we had the party to ourselves, snagging the occasional wine or beer or canapé from a passing server for sustenance.
I wish I could say that at some point during the night she became "Just Kiki," that at some point I became unaware of her superstar status. That her smile became just another smile, her laugh just another laugh. But that would be a lie. I was keenly aware of the essence of her, of her fame, of the sheer size of her the entire time we talked. What did happen, however, was this: I became attuned to it. Accustomed to it. The initial nervousness, the sense of "Who the hell am I to be talking to her?" was buffeted into tatters by the wind of her personality, the shreds then blown away entirely. I relaxed into her, came to terms with her fame almost unconsciously.
It was my party, she'd reminded me, so when the time was right, we left, climbing into her limo together. I wondered -- briefly -- what would happen to the car that had brought me, but decided I didn't really care.
I leaned forward to talk to the driver. "My hotel is--"
"Irrelevant." Kiki pulled me back by the arm and pressed a button, raising a divider between us and the driver.
I'd seen this movie before.
"I know what you're thinking," Kiki said, sitting back. She was gorgeous in the dim light of the limo.
She was gorgeous in the bright light of the party.
She was gorgeous.
This could not be happening to me.
"You're not getting lucky in this limo," she said, confirming my suspicions. "I don't do that. I'm not some fucking desperate little starlet who needs to blow you in a limo to feel validated, do you understand?"
Of course I understood. Until recently, most of my life was lusting after women I couldn't have. Gym Girl was the glorious exception to the depressing rule. Why had I ever even entertained the notion of Kiki and--
"But once we get back to my place, Randall, I plan to make you see the gods." She grinned salaciously and I felt myself harden nearly instantly. "If you're amenable, that is."
"Uh, I am."
She shifted herself closer to me and leaned in, holding my eyes with her own. Hypnotic.
"Kiss me right now."
I did. She tasted of peppermint and wine. She put her hand in my lap. I gasped. I reached for her.
"No," she said, and nibbled my earlobe. "You can't touch me. Not yet. I like to be in control. Until I'm not. OK?"
Being raped by Kiki Newman was possibly the greatest experience of my life.
Hours later, I rolled off of her, still laughing like a child at Seaworld, like a child seeing Bugs Bunny for the first time, like a child, period.
"I'm sorry. I don't mean to laugh."
"Why not?" She turned towards me. "Sex is supposed to be fun."
We lay sloppily against each other for an indeterminate time. Some schoolboy deep inside me wanted to call Tayvon. Dude, you would not believe what I just did! I tamped it down.
"Something to drink?" she asked. "I have a really nice zin in the fridge. Or a beer?"
I was still slightly buzzed from the party, and the idea of e
nhancing the buzz was appealing. "I'll take a beer."
She padded naked to the door and vanished into the cavernous depths of her mansion. I'd caught glimpses of it as we wrestled each other from the front door to the bedroom earlier, shedding clothes as we went. Her wealth was a foregone conclusion -- she was Kiki Fucking Newman -- but her good taste was not. What I'd seen of the house impressed me.
I capitalized on her absence to check my phone. I couldn't remember my schedule for tomorrow and a part of me was suddenly terrified that I would miss something important, that Sherrie had been trying to get ahold of me for hours while I romped in Kiki's house and in Kiki.
My schedule for the next day showed "Production Co. mtg." at noon. Then a flight to Chicago, the next stop on Randall Banner's victory tour. A text waited for me on the homescreen as well. Not from Manda.
From Gym Girl.
My nipples miss you.
That was...unexpected. Forbidden fruit? Wanting what she couldn't have? Second thoughts about staying with James? I didn't know.
Was it time to break up with her, too? Then again, we weren't technically "together," so how could I break up with her? I decided not to respond and had just replaced my phone when Kiki emerged from the darkness beyond the bedroom, bearing a beer and a wineglass.
"Room service," she said.
"I like this hotel." I eyed her with deliberate lechery and took my beer.
She crawled into bed with me and we clinked glass to glass.
"To Flash/Back," she said. "The book and the movie."
Something huge and dark and impenetrable floated between us in that moment and I had to acknowledge it before I became lost in it on my way to Kiki. I didn't want to wander in the fog, not when she waited on the other side.
"I understand you took a big paycut to be in this movie," I said, aware that this could be dangerous territory, but not really caring. I had known Kiki forever, after all. Forever or a few hours. They were the same in Kiki's atmosphere.
She arched an eyebrow and smirked at me. "Is that what you understand? At the end of the day, I'll be out two million up-front plus points plus a continuity bonus."
"That's a lot." Pang of guilt. Ridiculous. It was her decision to scrap the MGM contract.
"You're smiling. Does my losing all that money make you happy?"
Truthfully, I was thinking of the commission Fi would lose and all the extra work she would have to do in pursuit of losing it. "No. Not at all. I feel bad about it, in a way."
"That's adorable."
"Really? I think it's just weird."
"Weird is adorable, Randall. Keep up."
"I'm trying. I still have tour brain. I'm not sure why... I'm not sure why you would give up all that money. I mean, I guess there's a chance Flash/Back will do really well, given how the book's doing, but you'll probably never make back--"
She grabbed my wrist -- her fingers cool and slender and soft -- and raised my beer to my lips. "Drink. You don't know what you're talking about."
I drank. Drank to her ineffability.
She sipped at her wine, then put the glass on the nightstand and settled against me. "Let me explain, OK? There are two kinds of actresses in this business, Randall. There are the ones who show you their tits from the beginning, and there are the ones who wait until later. If you're the second kind, everyone respects you and tells you how brave it was for you to do it. If you're the first kind, no one respects you. Unless you do something huge. Something monumental."
I felt like there was penis joke in there somewhere, but her tone warned me away from it. She didn't have to tell me which kind she was. I'd seen her first movie. And I'd seen her tits years before I bedded her.
"Yeah, I would have made a shit-ton of money from the MGM movie. Special effects extravaganza, CGI out the ass, and the biggest effect of all -- these." She clutched at a breast. "But your movie will get me respect, Randall."
She said it with neither vulnerability nor apology. I pulled her tighter against me.
Wherein I Piss
Some time in the early morning, I stumbled from Kiki's bed and found a bathroom that rivaled my Brooklyn apartment for size. Closing the door to avoid waking Kiki, I eyed the commode. Not trusting my bleary nocturnal aim, I girl-sat to piss.
"Kiki Newman," said the devil. "Slow clap, my friend."
Leaning against the far wall, he brought his hands together over and over in mock slo-mo.
"Can't I even piss in peace?"
"Hey, I left you alone while you did the important business of the evening." He slid one forefinger in and out of the opposing hand's OK sign. "Where's the gratitude?"
"I'm surprised you weren't there coaching."
"You've learned much, young Jedi. Shy bladder?"
My flow was dammed up.
"I don't like an audience."
"This won't take long. I'm just checking in on the status of the new book."
"Don't you just know? Magically?"
The devil howled. "Magically? Randy, dude, how many times do I have to explain this to you? There's nothing magical about this. About me. This is just the natural functioning of the world."
"I must have missed satanic particle motions in physics class back in high school. Or did you invent physics?"
"No one invented physics, asshole. Physics is just a natural by-product of the system the Old Man set up billions and billions of years ago. This is simple, child-level shit, Randy. Pay attention."
"Why do you even care about the new book? It's not like I have a second soul to sell you. The contract's fulfilled. I have Flash/Back. And Down/Town is killing, too."
The devil blew his frustration out past flapping lips. "You're an idiot, Randall. Did you even read the contract?"
"Sure, I--"
"Yeah, Flash/Back is big. It's gonna stay on the bestsellers list for a good, long time. Down/Town debuted at number one and it's gonna stay there for a while. But that's small potatoes. You wanted a world-changing hit. You wanted Rowling and King combined. And that won't happen until the next book, Randall. The new one. Untitled Manuscript is the name on your computer, right?" He leaned in close and I could swear I smelled something hot and dead on his breath and suddenly I had no trouble peeing, my urine gushing out of me in a strong stream that felt unending.
"That is why you sold me your soul. It's the book you're working on now. In the next weeks and months, you're going to think you're on top of the world, at the peak of the mountain. But you're not and you won't be. Not until the next book. That's when my mojo comes into play. That's when you become king of the world. And that, Randall, is when I take your soul."
"Wait, what? You mean I still--"
And then I was alone in the bathroom, cold and shivering and pissing out what felt like everything inside me.
Wherein I Wake
I woke before Kiki, tangled in her infinite-thread-count sheets. California sunlight -- different from any other, if you believe the locals -- poured in through the floor-to-ceiling windows. Kiki had no curtains. Her windows looked out on the wilderness and the mountains.
Next to me, Kiki dozed, and I had a moment of psychic frisson, a dire moment of confusion, where I wondered for an instant why and how a movie was playing in and on the bed. I actually paused, wondering what would happen next.
What would happen next? I had four hours until that production company meeting. I had no idea how long it would take to get there. I should have been up, in a panic, rushing about, dressing, calling Sherrie.
Instead, I lounged.
I still had my soul. Was this beginning or the end of something? How had I ended up here and for the love of God what would happen next?
We're not supposed to compare our lovers, I don't think. No one has written and published rules on this, that I'm aware of, but upon even momentary reflection, it seems unfitting, indelicate, to juxtapose those with whom we've been so intimate. Nonetheless, I couldn't help but to compare Kiki to Fi, to Manda, to Gym Girl.
; Filtered through a man's jaded, jaundiced eye, it would be easy to look at Kiki and say, "Hot, but probably a lousy lay." I'm not sure which would be more of a cliché: that, or her being a sexual decathlete.
In any event, yes -- sex with Kiki was leagues beyond sex with Manda or Fi or even Gym Girl. I can't say for certain if this was due to something intrinsic to her or if it resulted from her fame and her larger-than-life presence. I can't say what it was like or would be like to fuck Kiki Newman the person. I only fucked Kiki Newman the screen goddess.
And Kiki Newman the screen goddess was beyond magnificent.
It couldn't last. It was impossible. I was a guy from a shitty suburb of New Jersey who'd managed to work his way up to a shitty apartment in Brooklyn. She was Kiki Newman.
Tracing invisible lines along her naked form, I imbibed her with my eyes. "Imbibed" it probably too genteel a term. I gulped her down. I guzzled her. She ran down my chin like berry juice. Metaphorically.
Along the smooth and supple hummock of her left hip, barely visible in the bedroom light, was a tattoo. I moved closer for a better view.
"Inspecting the merchandise?" she teased, voice sexy-clogged with sleep.
"When did you get this?" I asked.
"When I was eighteen."
I had seen Kiki naked in her first movie. I didn't remember a tattoo.
Reading my mind, she said, unbidden, "They cover it with makeup most of the time. If it would show up on camera."
Of course. I stroked its outlines gently. It was an adorable cartoon-y devil. A little cherub with a glint in its eye and horns and a pitchfork instead of wings and a harp.
"What's your day like?" she asked.
"I have a meeting at the production company at noon."
She nodded, glancing at the clock. "We have just enough time for a quickie. If you're amenable."
I grinned. "Is that going to become a thing? 'If you're amenable?'"
She grinned back. "Only if you're amenable." And threw a leg over me, neatly straddling and impaling in one motion.
"Oh, God," I said as she began to move.
"Have you ever heard the Hollywood joke about the stupid actress?"