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I was ready to snap something smart back, but Pitts came back and sat down at the table calmly, so I shut up. And as we waited for the food to arrive, I looked across the room and recognized a girl from Brown whom I had once kissed. For a moment, I thought about going up to her—we hadn’t seen each other since graduation—but then realized she wouldn’t want to see me. Even more, I wouldn’t want to explain what I was doing with my life now, anyway.

But I couldn’t help but look at her. Her name was Sandra, and she had been kind of compelling. She was one of those students who would make these long, rambling, tortured, yet somehow incisive comments in classes, which graduate students would fumble to answer in their excitement. But on a date, that kind of neurotic emotional rigor was poisonous. Sandra had been very pretty at school, and I saw that she still was. Her nose was hawkish and powerfully nostriled. From across the room, I watched and remembered her.

“Back to the plan,” Pitts said. “We need better girls. You know what I mean? Younger. Cleaner. More innocent-looking. I want this stuff looking like a father’s worst nightmare.”

“Can do!” Timberlake exploded, laughing, before I could stop him. “So I’m watching this scene, the other night? Tiny blond girl, bobbed hair, braces, ’bout nineteen years old. And she’s just beggin for it! Beautiful! But the best part? Right at the end, she’s all, Cum on my braces!”

“Keep your voice down,” I begged him.

“Cum on my braces,” he repeated, sniggering like a madman, fingering wormholes into a couple of pieces of bread in the basket, ruining them. “Can you believe it?”

“That’s the kind of stuff I’m talking about,” Pitts said, nodding his head. “We’re renting a really great house here. Wait till you guys see it. It’s very refined. I need us producing scenes that demonstrate a kind of contrast. See what I’m saying?”

“Luxurious surroundings,” I said, “dotted with stark degradation.”

“Filthy,” said Pitts. “Kinda, well... evil.”

“To chicks with braces!” Timberlake proposed, raising his glass. “And black dick!” A passing waitress glanced over at our table, frowning, unsure if she’d heard correctly.

We all raised our glasses and sipped from them happily.

“We should talk about money,” I volunteered.

“All right,” Pitts agreed.

“You mentioned a raise.”

“I did,” he said.

“Do you want to hear what I was thinking?”

“Yes, please,” Pitts said, looking cautious for the first time that night.

“Well,” I said, “I was getting around four hundred dollars for Bert and Darth. But since the stakes are higher now, I figure me and Will should get paid around five hundred for a regular shoot.”

“I can live with that,” Pitts said, smiling.

“Great,” I said. “But there’s more. If you want another guy in the scene, I think we should receive a small bonus. Say, six hundred for a three-on-one?”

“What’s the rationale?”

“An extra guy is more work for us,” I explained. “We have to book and organize each guy, take care of ’em, shoot ’em, and then get rid of ’em. I readily admit the job’s not rocket science, but the truth is, it’s no cakewalk, either.”

“Well, okay,” Pitts said cautiously. “Are you done?”

“Not quite,” I grinned. “Same policy as we go up the ladder: four guys is seven hundred dollars, five guys is eight hundred."

‘You want me to pay you guys eight hundred dollars a shoot?” Pitts said, incredulously.

“Only if there’s five guys,” I said simply. ‘You know, five guys represents an honest-to-God gangbang. That’s what the big boys are doing, and it takes a hell of a lot of organizational prowess, not to mention top-notch camera skills. Which, luckily, we’ve got in spades.”

Pitts was quiet for a moment. “So you guys want to get rich, huh?”

I shrugged, then I stared him solidly in the face. ‘Yeah,” I said. “We want to make money.”

There was a moment of awkwardness. Fleetingly, I wondered if I had gone too far. But then Pitts nodded. That’s all he did: nod once. I couldn’t decode from his expression how much anger versus respect was in there, but either way, it didn’t matter. I was going to get what I’d asked for.

I bit down on my smile. Underneath the table, Timberlake kicked me in congratulation. From across the room, I watched Sandra wave her supple, thin little wrist, explaining something to her friends. I watched her, but not longingly. We didn’t belong in the same world any longer. I was glowing, cold and excited.

Dusk the next evening, Timberlake and I arrived at the mansion for the first time—though the word mansion, as it turned out, was an overstatement, actually, and not quite right. In fact, the place was more of a Spanish-style villa, with a red roof constructed of thick Santa Barbara-style stone shingles that rested atop velvety white exterior walls that reflected Malibu Barbie sun all over the place, which was punctuated by a host of bizarre lanterns that led down to a rolling green, which led down to an Olympic-sized swimming pool, which was bounded on all sides by a brick patio, atop which sat a faction of inordinately ugly, stiff, white wooden deck chairs that waited there for you to perch upon them, gazing restlessly out at the world beyond you, high above the LA smog, insulated from its poorperson traffic.

Malibu is marketed as a place to escape, and many people receive it that way. But it is deathly lonely as well, and no one ever speaks of that part. Neighbors exist only behind the tint of their black BMWs. When they come knocking at your door, it is not to welcome you to the neighborhood.

A security gate closed us off from the world, anyway. In Pitts’s master bedroom, a high-powered telescope had been installed; aside from that, we were isolated. It was an ideal place to make degenerate pornography—to videotape long, exquisite white Iqgs being parted by black dick.

Timberlake and I took a hushed, barefoot tour of the grounds, shivering with enormous delight at the colossal lawn, the shrubs and the slips and the sprouts and the almost obscenely lush greenery. Manicured softwoods brushed against the fine hairs of our cheeks like a mother whispering good night, sweet dreams.

“There’s got to be a fuckin’ gardener living on the property here, man,” said Timberlake.

He was right. Luiz was our caretaker’s name. He was a sweet man with a poor command of the English language and a semiretarded black Labrador that followed him around with a devotion bordering on beauty. There was a wife in the picture, too; Luiz let us know that if we saw fit, she’d be available to clean the place every week.

“No,” I said, imagining the tableau. Your average conservative middle-aged Mexican woman would likely faint dead at the sight of three panting black giants towering over a little half-dead white girl. Even the after-trash, the grab-bag pile of crumpled panty hose, bloodied tampons, turkey neckbones, wrapped-up toilet paper, browning apple cores, and spent douches could easily send her into apoplexy. “We’ll probably take care of it.”

Timberlake and I parted a sliding-glass door and went inside the fifteen-room villa. The smell of furniture polish wafted up our nostrils and into our brains. A brand-new Canon XL-1 video camera lay quietly atop the glass living room table.

“Nice!” Timberlake exclaimed. “Opening day present?”

“It well may be,” I said, staring at the huge camera. “Quite a thoughtful gesture.”

“I guess I’ll be shooting with this bad boy,” Timberlake said.

“Suit yourself. But it’s your funeral.”.

“How’s that?”

“Too heavy,” I said. “The XL’s not a porn camera. It’s got great picture quality, but you’ll have to support it on your shoulder. It’ll wobble when you try to get in close. It’s gotta weigh ten pounds, easy. You should shoot with the smaller GLrl, like I do.”

“Like I said,” Timberlake repeated, defiantly, “I guess ГП be shooting with this bad boy.”