“I know,” I said. “And what are we gonna do about paying everyone?”
“That’s exactly what I was wondering.” He looked at me. “Why don’t you go upstairs and see what Pitts has to say about it.”
I frowned. “Why don’t you go upstairs?”
“Hell, Гm just second unit on this! You’re the director. Don’t you think you oughta step up?”
“I guess so,” I admitted. “Keep an eye on that one, okay? Make sure she doesn’t bleed all over the rug.”
“Aye, aye,” Rag Man said.
I toted my camera into the kitchen, where it was quiet and cool. A large wooden ceiling fan revolved slowly, at its lowest setting, from the ceiling. I poured myself a mineral water, then took a deep breath and ascended the white staircase up to Pitts’s humble abode.
“Yes?”
“Pitts? Sam. Sorry to disturb you, man .. .”
“Not at all. Come in.”
He was pecking away at his computer, wearing a pair of reading glasses. He peered at me over the top of the frames. “Hey. God, it’s incredible how much time I spend in front of this thing. You’d think running a porn company would be all shits and giggles, but mostly I spend my days dealing with angry subscribers and buying banner ads. Not very glamorous, huh?”
“No, I guess not,” I said. “But, hey, can I talk to you about something?”
“Yes?”
“We got a woman down. My girl’s having, uh . . . some body issues.”
“She shitting on you?” Pitts grinned. “Do you need a raincoat?”
“No, that I’d know how to handle. She’s . . . kind of in pain. I think she got wacked too hard.”
Pitts frowned. “What do you mean?”
“Sledge.” I fucked her too hard. Huh huh. “They got overzealous, I guess. And I must have fallen asleep at the wheel.”
“Oh,” said Pitts. “Well, that’s not good. Does it look serious?”
I frowned. “I can’t really tell.”
“Is she bleeding?” asked Pitts.
“No,” I said. “Not yet. I asked her if she wanted to go to a hospital, but she said no.”
“Probably doesn’t have health insurance,” Pitts explained. “Most of the foreign girls are here illegally.”
We both sat there for a minute, watching each other.
“Well,” I said, hopefully, “if she’s not bleeding, then it’s probably nothing too major.”
“Right,” Pitts said. “I mean, if she was bleeding, then we’d definitely have to take her to the hospital. I couldn’t see any way around it.”
“Definitely,” I agreed. We both sat there nodding, for a long moment. In the Malibu distance, a coyote howled, low and mournful.
“So,” I said slowly, “you want me to kill the scene?”
“Nah,” said Pitts.
“I don’t think she can have sex anymore today,” I explained.
“Sure,” Pitts said. “That’s what I assumed.” He turned back to his desk, slipping his reading glasses back onto his face.
“But.. . you still want me to pay her?” I asked, confused.
“Certainly,” Pitts said, briskly. “Pay everybody, as usual. Do you need anything else, Sam? I should probably get back to this.”
“No,” I said, pursing my lips, “only—what do you want me to do about the end of the scene?”
“Just have the guys jerk off on her face,” Pitts said impatiently, turning back to his computer and beginning to type. “That way, we can still use it on the site.”
Evening came, and the house was quiet. All shoots were over for the day. Pitts, Timberlake, and Ashley had headed to the Malibu Inn for dinner, drinks, and song. Rag Man was locked safely inside his room, hunched over his PC, assiduously segmenting long-form pornography into this generation’s newest easily downloadable jizz-friendly Web clips. And I was lying on my bed, looking up at the ceiling.
But what if she’s really hurt? I wondered. What if something terrible happened to her insides?
The guilt had set in a few hours after I’d sent everybody home. Now it was eating away at me. I pictured myself swooping the Volvo down in front of Spiegler’s house, demanding in an outraged tone of voice to see “Alice.” Show me where she is, you bastards. Then finding her in anguished, cold-sweat pain, like Penny in Dirty Dancing, and I would whisk her away to Cedars-Sinai, where a team of dedicated nurses would swab her forehead with cool rags.
Then they would turn to me. What have you done to this poor woman?
N-no ... I would say, trembling with fear. It wasn’t me! It was Sledge!
She will never be able to have children, the nurse would spit. How could you let this happen?
But. . . it’s not my fault! It was Pitts! The gapes . . . I’m just the cameraman...
I sighed sadly. I would be swooping down on no one. Why should I take this Czech woman to Cedars-Sinai, anyway? She had Spiegler to take care of her. And anyway, didn’t she know what she was getting into when she flew here in the first place?
A wave of peevish swill rose in my stomach, and suddenly, I was infuriated. After all, this was a nasty challenge that we’d signed up for here, and anybody too weak to stick with it was allowed to leave. As members of the club, we were paid a premium wage for our achievements, not because our work was important, but because it was onerous. Porn was exacting, disgusting work, but at least we could all take solace in the fact that we were living on the edge and for the moment.
Foul acts against humanity were videotaped carefully, then sold on street corners and in back rooms. We were the sexual garbagemen of the United Gapes of America, supplying delicious plugs of spunk to a citizenry too frightened to pursue the fantasy themselves. Every damn day I donned my thick-jellied yellow rubber astronaut suit to dive in and pull out another nugget of creeping doom, but was I complaining? No. Was I quitting? No! My girlfriend kicked me out of her house, and that was nothing! My own father couldn’t bear to have a conversation with, me without cutting it short—but that was nothing! Look at me—was I quitting?
I wasn’t going to fucking quit!
I tried my hand at some occupational therapy, as it was said to ease anxiety and raise levels of self-esteem in crazy people. Cadging a bunch of neglected tools that I found in the garage, I sawed and hacked away at leftover pieces of scrap lumber, attempting to build a birdhouse. After all, fall was coming. Our feathered friends would need a place to roost. I gloved my hands, donned protective goggles. Luiz raised his weed whacker in a cautious salute. My birdhouse emerged rather irregularly, sloping forward, as if a four-year-old had made it, but nonetheless, I felt kind of elated. Within the glorious confines of my tender wooden craft box, a proper little robin baby boy might be raised.
Proudly, I looked about for a pine tree onto which I might nail my creation, when out of nowhere, a woman who looked like Tommy Lasorda with sloppy tits appeared, panting wetly.
“Sambo, I wantcha to meet my wife!” Rag Man said proudly, one beefy arm around his prize. “She just flew in today.”
“And boy am I tired,” Lady Rag Man added, dead-eyed.
I laughed politely. “I didn’t know your wife was so funny.”
She stared at me distrustfully. “I ain’t.”
Like many married couples who had grown to resemble one another m both appearance and mood, the Rags waltzed through the mansion with identical out-turned loping gaits, entering rooms and letting fly farts without ever realizing which of them had done the deed. They held hands like lovers, as Lady Rag Man wrinkled her brow suspiciously at the majestic castle. Her charisma, Frankenstein-ian. Luiz’s dog sniffed at her ankles, then leapt away, yelping.
“She freakin’ you out?” Timberlake whispered.
I nodded, too scared to speak aloud.
Bit by bit, we were force-fed the story of their romance. They had grown up in the same cornhusker town, and upon graduating from college, had gotten hitched immediately. “When you find someone who’s right for ya, you go for her!” Rag Man crowed.