Timberlake felt his freedom particularly- infringed. “That guy’s killing my concentration,” Timber said to me, as we jetted out from the compound at night. “Murdering it.”
“You had no concentration in the first place," I said. “Did vou?" ‘You’re wrong about that, you’re wrong. I'm coming along.
Aren’t I? I can shoot a good scene.”
“No, you never could,” I said, as honestlv as I knew how. “Look, why worry? What’s the worst Pitts can do? Fire vou?”
“I can’t lose my job, Sam. I want . . .” He gazed into mv face, wondering whether to trust me. “I want a new car."
And there it was. Timberlake’s dream. The fucking moron couldn’t live with his Subaru, and the wav it wheezed when it went up a hill. He was slipping down to the Beverlv Hills Acura dealership three days a week to wank off on the aluminum showroom floor. Wasting long afternoons there, conducting an extended flirtation with the lowly salespersons, talking cars, the way the rest of us talked about a woman’s legs, thighs, and silky maroon lips. And one dav, he threw down all the money he’d earned thus far—$4,750.60—and signed up for an indentured servitude that would cost him eighteen grand more. Timber’s nearly new Acura was fast and gold and smelled like the absence of responsibility. It had a moonroof and perforated leather seats and triple-tread tires and reverse steering ignition with a five-disc CD changer and a digital odometer, plus a thrown-in radar detector that suction-cupped to the inside of the windshield or to your anus, as preferred.
“Why, man, why?’ I groaned.
“You scared to see me looking good?” Timber crowed. He wore sunglasses. (Why was it that when a guy went out and got a new car, he immediately had to spring for $80 sunglasses?)
“You will never look good, not even if you lopped off Celine Maxima’s head and glued it to your neck,” I explained. “I’m upset because I’m worried about you. You’re in debt, man!”
“This job’s...”
“This job’s supposed to get us out of debt, fuckwad!! Not the other way around!”
“It’s just eighteen thou,” Timberlake said grandly. “I’ll pull that down in a couple of months. And meanwhile, I got the car of my dreams. Truly, I don’t know what you’re whimpering about.”
Yes, it was true, I didn’t understand cars much. A diesel Volvo older than most of our female talent was just fine for me. Rag Man must have felt similarly, rolling around town as he was in his rented Kia. “I ain’t gotta impress no one up here,” he told me. “It’s not like my lady is up here, keepin’ tabs on me ’
“Oh yeah, we heard you were married,” I said.
“Fucking-A-rzght!” he bellowed. “I love her, a lot.”
“Wonderful sentiment,” I said. “Beautifully expressed.”
Rag Man nodded. “Fact is, we haven’t been separated since we were married, thirty freakin’ years ago, so this is a little weird for both of us.”
“Does she mind you being around porn?” I said.
“What’s to mind? She loves it! She’s freaky, Sam,1” Rag Man confessed.
“Oh, I bet she is,” I said hurriedly. “So, hey, about that Larry David? Let’s see what’s on—”
“I ain’t come in her pussy in twenty years,” said Rag Man, his tone hushed.
I didn’t ask. But he would tell me anyway.
“In her mouth.” He grinned, triumphant. “Every damn time.”
“Kudos,” I said, weakly.
“Nasty,” Rag Man corrected, smacking his lips.
Meanwhile, Pitts had started banging about one porn chick per week as the rest of us stared on, envious. Autumn Haze was one of his “dates.” God, she had a pretty face. It was the face of a bubblebath operator. Autumn stayed with us for an entire week, moving her suitcase, her thousand-toothed hairbrush, her spongy shoes and silky breasts into the master bedroom, constituting an odd sort of common-law wife/sex slave for Pitts. Despite the frequency with which he exchanged women, Pitts was not what you’d call a pig. Pitts honestly got into his ladies; he got into Autumn, found her fascinating. As did I. Autumn was a Northern California woman with a hazy far-off look in her eyes that spoke of stories she wouldn’t mind telling but was honestly a wee, wee bit too drunk to remember. She could have been twenty-two years old or, equally plausibly, twenty-nine. Her body had felt the effects of gravity, but that face? Preserved in honeydew. She was as pretty as Jenna Jameson, maybe prettier; an A-lister who’d lost her way and had to hang out with us. But if Autumn knew she was slumming, she didn’t give much of a damn. A borderline personality’s spotlight of fame followed her around every corner, tracked her to the bathroom, and watched her write in her journal. She was voraciously sexuaclass="underline" when I shot her, she demanded not only that I get four fellows for her, but that she’d be able to select the guys in her scene. I was impressed. No other girl had wanted to pick before. Maybe no one had felt empowered to. Perhaps no one cared.
'Autumn’s gonna rock this one out,” Rag Man murmured to me. “Ain’t she?”
“Yep,” I responded shortly.
Little scoutin’ report for you. She does best in positions where her legs can extend to their full height,” Rag Man recommended. “She looks tall and elegant. Dudes like that refined shit. Especially when it’s combined with her slobberin’ and whatnot.”
“Thank you for the advice.”
“No problem,” Rag Man said. “She’s a total whore, so this is gonna be easy. Oh! You’re gonna notice that her left boob hangs a little bit. She might have a little one at home, is my guess. So if you can delay her takin’ off her bra until about midway through the scene, it might make the scene a little hotter.” He watched my face. “ ’Course, I don’t want to tell you what to do.”
I shook my head, impressed in spite of myself. “You know a hell of a lot about porn, don’t you?”
He grinned happily. “You don’t miss a trick, do ya, boy? We elders do have wisdom to impart, even beery fuckers like me.”
‘You love this crap,” I accused him, smiling. We began to get the living room ready for the scene. I moved our green sectional sofa closer to the wall, and Rag Man strode forward to lend a hand.
“Hell yes, I do,” said Rag Man. He grunted, nudging the sofa until it was perfectly aligned with the wall. “I was going to movie theaters way back when, man. Whackin’ off next to other dudes, or just not whackin’ off at all.” He shuddered, remembering. “It was brutal.”
“Then VCRs came out?” I said, hiding a box of baby wipes behind the couch, within easy reach for the talent.
“Yup. I got one of the first models, an ’81 JVC top-loader. Cost me damn near five hundred dollars, but it was worth it. VCRs were way better. I saw a lot. I learned a lot.” Rag Man nodded. But when PCs came, I mean, the whole thing changed. Think about the way we’re showing our movies, man—we haven’t mastered a tape yet. It’s all on the friggin’ Internet'. Just a few years ago, nobody was doin’ this.”
“Nobody was watching porno on the Internet?” I said. “Not even the geeks?”
“No bandwidth to do it on,” Rag Man said. “Until the mid-nineties, the best you were gonna do was get some pictures off a bulletin board system. And that’d take you about half an hour per pic.”