“He’d like to spend more time with you,” I observed.
“He brought me flowers the other day,” Liz said, seriously. “Lilies.”
“You represent an older sister figure to him.”
“Bullshit. He wants me. He told me as much. And if he romanticizes me, it’s because I don’t perform. In his mind, I’m, like, cleaner”
Timberlake folded his arms. “Perhaps you are cleaner,” he pointed out.
“Perhaps,” Liz said, a bit grimly. “And on that note,” she said to me, her eyes narrowing, “did you have fun with that slut?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“The midget.”
“Tasia?”
“Is that what her name is?” White Liz said, sipping her beer.
“Whatsamatter?” I grinned. “Jealous?”
“Just interested.”
“She never called me,” I admitted.
“Sam waits for girls to call him,” Timberlake said, laughing. “The ego on this kid!” He rapped me on the arm playfully. “You don’t mind that I said you have a big ego, right? I mean, it’s kinda true. Eh, Liz? No?”
“He’s okay,” Liz said, grinning at me.
She held my gaze in her serious Liz way, but then she smiled, and so did I. From across the table, she grabbed my arm and pulled on it. “Let’s try out that Jacuzzi.”
“Hot,” Timberlake reminded us. “I need that water hot.”
The three of us donned swimsuits and charged yelping into churning, burbling wonderful waters. White Liz had switched to rum and Coke and we laughed, and I sipped from her tumbler, my face flushed from the heat and sweet drink, the water jets humming. Timberlake, awash with the pleasure of the night, glided tirelessly from one side of the large brick hot tub to the other, back and forth, his arms swanlike, enveloped in his own narrative. Meanwhile, Liz and I inched toward each other in the tub. The crickets were out, and the summer lawn was freshly cut, and we in the warm waters were surrounded on all sides by nasturtiums and vines you could reach up and touch. Above us in the summer night sky: a sprinkling of stars. The house was dark and thickly windowed, a rock star’s mansion we’d stumbled into, with gates that closed noiselessly behind us. I inched closer to the beautiful red-haired twenty-two-year-old who was looking into my eyes more and more fetchingly, and thought, Dear God, please will you bless Pornography, for her endless bounty? Amen and pass the bread.
Timber slowed, catching his breath, and examined us, who were by now touching. He grinned. “Am I mistaken, or is there a certain chemistry developing here between the two of you?”
“Right,” I said sternly. “Good night.”
“Good night, sweet prince,” Timberlake said. ‘ Liz, I’ll call you.” Cloddishly, he launched himself from the tub, rivulets of chlorinated foam coursing into his eyes. Yelping, he sprinted toward the house, toward the stack of thick white towels, which he would use and then toss on the floor for someone else to pick up.
“How did you meet him, again?” White Liz asked.
“He came with the place. We’re in discussions to slit his throat and feed him to the coyotes.”
“Can I help?” Liz whispered, floating in the water toward me. My pulse quickened as she placed her face about an inch and a half away from my lips. Liz laid her hands on my face, her palms fragrant and wrinkled. In her gaze, I felt weightless in the water, and she wrapped her tiny perfect legs around me and rubbed up against me with her swimsuited cunt, her tongue on my neck. She was radiating confidence and lust. No hurt, no helplessness; no self-hatred or sickness.
“Let’s go inside,” she suggested, smiling, and we stood up in the water. Wet and dripping, holding hands, we walked into my pool house bedroom, which still lacked any sort of bed. I rummaged up a towel, and she stood and dried her body in front of me as I watched, admiring her: beautiful and breathless, her rib cage, her eye makeup running. She threw me the towel, and I tousled the fabric across my body, across my head.
She came to me then: one full head shorter, three years younger, a secretary of the porn industry, a child of the dance clubs, just wondering at me, sizing me up, smiling, taunting, being cute, maybe a little drunk, so what, she was skinny and tiny and we dropped down to the floor where I kissed her perfectly shaved and unscented pussy. I licked at her, the scratchy carpet playing against my knees, forgetting who I was, my ass sticking in the air, my fingers straying to her neckbone and shoulder, and I didn’t want to crush her on the carpet and burn her back, so I grabbed her to me and her buttocks sat on my thighs and her back arching, her body arching, and White Liz nipped at my neck like a perfect little baby spider with strong thighs gripped around my waist and my cock grew and bulged and I put my hand on her porcelain throat, and I gripped the roots of her hair, and shook her head gently. I pushed down on her head, until her body fell and her back pressed the floor and I licked at her mouth. My fingers explored her lips and then her white teeth and then I was pushing my fingers into her mouth, gentle, and her nails raked into my back, scratching grooves, I rasped Liz, but it was way too late, because then we really were fucking, the way you do it the first time, when you are anonymous, don’t know who you are, don’t much care, and I crushed her body into the carpet, her hips and ass so tiny, her tailbone absorbing the brunt of the blow, her hugging me and moving under me and she looked at me so intensely, her freckles glowing, peering into my eyes with so much focus, such a sharpened spotlight, that I felt huge yet somehow vulnerable, and she said fuck me with a voice so urgent that I had to swallow twice.
That night, we slept on the floor together, huddled under a big orange comforter, our bodies forming one simple tangle.
It didn’t take long before Liz and I were operating as girlfriend and boyfriend. We occupied a similar sort of space, living on the fringes of the industry—she as a fully clothed secretary, I as a director who didn’t fuck. Both of us made our living amid the smut pile, but felt more comfortable pretending that we weren’t exactly a part of the dirty excess, that we were somewhat removed from it. And to some extent, it was true: to real porn players, we weren’t really part of the game; yet among our normal friends, we had secrets to hide. It left both of us feeling kind of alone. So it was hard to fight the feeling that our union, if not predestined, was at the very least something that should be explored.
“My resume is pretty bad,” I explained.
“I don’t care.”
“I have several black marks against me. I have committed sins on videotape and sold them on the Internet.”
“I said, I don’t care,” repeated Liz. “What I want to know is, are you done? Are you over porn girls?”
“Sure,” I said automatically. I paused. “What do you mean?”
“Can you be faithful,” Liz said.
“Wow. Of course I can. Wow. How can you even ask that?”
“Sam. Come on. There’s a new girl over at your house every day of the week.”
“I know, Liz. You send most of them to me.”
She smiled. “Oh, yeah. I’m like your supplier.”
“You’re my pimp.”
“Whatever,” Liz said, smiling. “Look. I like you. I just don’t want to be worrying all the time that you’re trying to get blown by some crazy whore.”
“Liz,” I said, giving her my best sincere look. “I’m tired of these girls. I really am. I used to be fascinated, I admit, but it was a phase. I’m looking for someone real.”
“I don’t know,” White Liz said. She shook her head sadly, as if lamenting what she was getting herself into. But then she kissed me. She rolled on top of me and put her tiny muskrat body on mine and we laughed and pressed our faces together and kissed.