He gave me the kind of look that says, friend, that’s the story, and I shrugged at him and left him to go investigate the kitchen. It was endowed with a rich person’s Sub-Zero refrigerator and a range-top gas stove with six burners and a honey dripper of balsamic vinegar and a green-tiled island plopped right in the middle of the floor for chopping up yellow peppers and making pots of delicious Chinese tea. There were plenty of cut-glass vases for placing flowers and stainless steel cutlery and mirrors and tea whistles and full-frontal air-conditioning. In the next room was a Samsonite washer and Sony dryer with all the Clorox bleach a man could want and a broom closet filled with mops with heavy-duty handgrips and a small transistor radio and buckets of detergent and brooms with black bristles and stipple-fingered yellow gloves and a bucket and a family-sized box of Whipple fabric softener with a picture of a cuddly teddy bear on it.
The living room contained sectional couches and an expensive green throw rug and digital cable television with hot exterior speakers and a remote control that glistened blackly. A chandelier of outstanding golden ugliness tinkled down from the rooftop and a magical staircase rose up from the middle of the room to the top floor, where Pitts would live and hold court. The Classy Bathroom was up there, too, where starlets would snap on their fishnets and apply their own makeup to their cheekbones, clogging their meth pores, creating the smoothest surface known to man: peachy, punc-hired by maroon lips, peachy, punctured by ey^s blue, peachy, punctured by whorish jet-black lash-clogged mascara and clean hair until you got to the skull, where a filmy layer of dandruff and shame coated their heads and the rake of a fingernail would yield a quarter inch of greasy white flake. A stall shower loomed behind you, flanked by a tower of baby wipes and theater lights with exposed yellow bulbs encircling mirrors that were never streaked. A hair dryer fit directly into the wall.
Next to the bathroom was a guest bedroom whose walls, empat-terned by circular brushstrokes, offered an attempt at faux-finishing. This same room boasted a thick, verdant shag rug that hungrily swallowed earrings and lipsticks and hastily gnawed candy bar crumbs. There were rumors about this house: notably, that a famous hardcore band had lived here a few months before us and recorded an album within its walls. I pictured them out on the lawn, weirdly unhappy, gazing into the turquoise pool, writing their grungy lyrics. This house was richly fuck-ugly, it rented for ten grand a month, its net worth was $10 million, and yet it was putrid, just obscenely sick, with strolling lawns and crunchy chemical-grass and birds overhead pooping into your hot tub. I breathed in the essence of the house and its walls and its monstrous oaken furnishings, and knew what I would do here.
Like those who had lived here before me: I smelled the money.
It was evening, and the chlorinated pool water was warm. It felt incredible on my face and my hair. Incandescent 250-watt underwater halogens illuminated my legs and chest, making them glow ghostly and white.
“I’m having an anxiety attack,” Timberlake mumbled.
“What are you talking about, man? Were on easy street here.”
“Pitts is going to fire me,” he whispered.
“Pitts is not firing anyone,” I said. “He’s up in his room, tending to business, happy as a clam. What in hell is wrong with you?”
“I’ve had four jobs this year already,” confessed Timberlake, treading water with a mildly agonized expression on his face. “And I was fired from every one.”
“Four jobs?”
“Yeah. At first I was blaming the places where I worked—shitty pay, stupid hours, lack of perks, and horrendous bosses. But now, after job number four, I’ve got to lick the balls of reality. It’s me.”
I frowned. “You can do this, man. It’s super easy.”
“Anxiety attacks are strange,” Timberlake continued, as if I’d said nothing. “I basically just watch myself having them. Part of me thinks it’s funny, almost cute and endearing. Meanwhile, the other part of me is wigging out.”
I floated on my back, weightless, regarding the spray of stars clustered overhead. You could live in Los Angeles for years without ever really seeing stars with any clarity. Streetlights always dimmed them out. But these Malibu stars were coming through with pristine clarity.
“Look,” I said, coming out of my float. “You-will-do-fine. Okay? I’ll make sure of it. I’ll help you.”
“I don’t need help,” Timberlake spat back. “I understand porn, okay?”
“Well, bro, you were just saying ...”
“Sam,” Timberlake said, “can I ask you something strange? Have you ever jacked off at work? I have. It was one of the most incredible rushes of my entire life”
“I don’t want to hear about—”
“I could hear the woman in the office next to me moaning about how delicious her lunch was. Meanwhile, on the computer, I’m watching this fine Latina with the biggest bubble bqtt I’ve ever seen. Even through crappy digitization, I could still see ripples of pleasure coming up in waves off of her fat ass. My whole groin was hot. It rocked.”
I shook my head, confused. “What does that have to do with your anxiety attack, dude?”
Timberlake stared back at me, laughing abruptly, as if I’d farted in the pool. “Nothing. Why?”
“You said you were ...”
“The attacks always pass, given enough time. Employment, what a silly fucking debacle. I have three pairs of slacks suitable for work. Only one of them has cum stains on them.”
I gazed at him, momentarily stunned. Timberlake peered back at me, curious. -
“We still headed to see that black agent tomorrow?” he asked.
“Sure,” I said, mildly confused. “But just a second ago, you were . . .”
“Just let me ramble, dude!” Timberlake exploded, radiating a gigantic smile, splashing in the water. “This is how I roll! Free association! I rented two Euro-porns last weekend. Ter-ri-ble! The women were unbelievable, but man, the French can turn the most beautifully naturally fitted, fat-assed gaping anus fuck scene into depressing tedium.”
Sighing, I climbed out of the pool. “I’m going to sleep, buddy.”
“Hop to it,” Timberlake said. “I’ll swim here for a while longer. Beautiful in here.”
That night, I traipsed around our enormous house quietly, deliberating where to shoot my very first scene. Each and every room seemed a superlative backdrop for whatever sleazy scenario I might dream up, from the immense, high-ceilinged den to the drafty, impersonal salon, to the elegant and stuffy dining room. Hell, even the garage looked good enough to fuck in, with Pitts’s immaculate Mercedes-Benz holding court in there.
Observing the riches around me, I had to wonder, what in hell was I doing here? How was it possible that in such a short period of time, I’d come from filming a piss video in Periwinkle’s low-rent living room in Santa Cruz to this Malibu villa-on-a-hill? It boggled the mind. But after some minutes, I concluded that I deserved everything I’d been granted. It is truly the privilege of youth to believe that worldly advantages have been bestowed upon you for a reason. Yes, I concluded, this was my destiny: to know porn in all its varied forms. To discern, in the most intimate terms, the opulence contained therein.
Even so, the house was a bit much. As a nod to humbler origins, I’d decided to take up residence in the pool house, a tiny but adorable carpeted luxury cabana, fifteen by fifteen feet in size. It had been designed to serve as a discreet, freestanding changing room for guests headed to the large, exposed-brick outdoor Jacuzzi tub positioned a scant twenty feet from my French front doors. Shyly, I hung my few clothes in its closet, vowing to buy more flamboyant and expensive gear as soon as my first paycheck came in. I placed my toothbrush on the edge of the sink; it looked shabby there, amid the polished shine of the basin.