Bernadette took off her trench, draped it over her arm, and went up to the counter with a smile stretched across her face. Garcia stayed back, taking in the mountainous scenery. “Hello. We’re with Capital City Venture Group.”
“Oh, yes. They’re expecting you.” The woman jiggled out from behind the desk, displaying long legs barely contained by a short black spandex skirt and fuchsia stilettos. “Follow me to the set.”
Bernadette felt like a midget librarian in her green suit as she jogged to keep pace with the twenty-something woman. Garcia continued to bring up the rear, and Bernadette knew why.
The trio went down a long hall lined with framed poster-size photos of young women posing like vintage pinups. Busty blonde on ice skates, falling on her butt. Busty blonde hanging upside down on a trapeze, her short skirt flying. Two busty blondes having a pillow fight. Busty blonde cowgirl wielding a six-shooter. Busty blonde Mrs. Santa in furry red boots. Busty blonde in a stars-and-stripes bikini bottom, tossing a sailor’s cap in the air. Bernadette bet that in the original posters, however, the girls weren’t wearing nipple rings.
“Uh … no brunettes,” noted Garcia, struggling to come up with a neutral comment about the artwork.
“I never noticed,” said the busty blonde in the tight sweater.
“Actually, they all look like you. Is that you?” Bernadette asked.
The young woman giggled. “I wish. Someday maybe. I’ve got to work on my look.”
“You’re gorgeous,” said Bernadette, and she meant it.
“I need a nose job, and I’ve got to drop ten,” she said. “My ass is as wide as the back of a school bus.”
“That sounds like a jerk boyfriend talking,” said Garcia as they walked.
“Yeah … well … it is.” She pushed open one side of a metal double door and held it for the two visitors. “My boyfriend is the director.”
“Which one is he?” asked Bernadette, looking toward a brightly illuminated cluster of people and equipment moving around in back of the warehouselike space.
“I don’t see him right now,” said the woman. “Ask anyone and they can point him out. Skip Masterman. He looks like that model on the cover of all the romance books. Muscles and long hair. Big nose. What’s that hunk’s name?”
“Fabio,” Garcia volunteered.
She nodded. “That guy. Skip looks like that guy.”
While they talked, Bernadette kept her eyes on the commotion across the cavernous space. She saw men and women in jeans clambering around cameras, lights, and other equipment. They were all facing a pool of light. That was where the action was taking place. “If he’s that hunky, what’s your boyfriend doing behind the camera?” Bernadette asked distractedly.
“He’s been in adult films,” she said. “But the real money is in the directing and producing. He came home to do that.”
“He’s from Minnesota?” asked Garcia.
“Straight off the soybean field.” She paused. “But don’t get me wrong. Skip isn’t a Jethro. He’s smart. He has a degree in philosophy.”
So that’s what philosophy majors did after college: direct porn. “How is the money?” asked Bernadette.
“It’s coming,” said the young woman. “Some of his old high school buds are backing him on these fetish films.”
Bernadette was intrigued. A clique of country boys was interested enough in water porn to pour money into it. She turned to the fuchsia sweater. “We’re good if you need to get back to the desk.”
“You sure? I can take you over there,” she said, casting an interested glance at Garcia.
“We’re not shy.” Bernadette looked across the room. “We’ll find Skip and introduce ourselves.”
“Okay.” She jiggled out of the room, closing the door behind her.
“How do you know who Fabio is?” Bernadette whispered to Garcia.
He grinned. “Just shut up about it.”
“Let’s go into the light,” Bernadette said, and they made a straight line for the knot of activity.
Chapter 19
THE JERK’S GIRLFRIEND wasn’t exaggerating. Skip masterman could pass for Fabio—until he opened his mouth. He had long yellow teeth with a gap between the top set, scary choppers that gave him a wolflike appearance. Like everyone else, he was dressed in jeans and a T. The front of his shirt had a movie camera on it, and the words “I’m Famous in Europe.” A diamond studded his left lobe; the rock was the size of a thumbtack.
Standing at the elbow of a stocky woman armed with a tiara and a hand mirror, Masterman directed the positioning of a huge water tank that was being wheeled in front of the cameras and lights. Unlike the tanks Bernadette had viewed over the Internet, this one was horizontal. It resembled a giant aquarium.
“Right here,” he said, pointing with a pencil to an X chalked on the concrete floor. “Center it right here.”
The three men wheeling the tank missed the mark, positioning the tank to the right of the X.
Masterman marched over to the X and repeatedly stomped his foot on top of it. “Here! Here! Here!”
“This thing keeps … getting away from us,” said one of the crewmen, panting as he pushed the tank left toward the mark. The front of his jeans was wet from water splashing over the sides.
“The floor is sloped or something,” panted another of the trio.
Where was the diving diva? Scanning the crowd, Bernadette’s eyes landed on a large-breasted blonde wrapped in a bathrobe. The young woman didn’t seem the least bit nervous about the prospect of getting dunked naked into a tank of water. She was busy puffing on a cigarette, flicking the ash onto the floor as she watched the three struggling crewmen. “That must be the star,” Bernadette whispered to Garcia.
“Must be,” he said, his eyes locked and loaded.
“So you recognize her?”
“Yeah. No. I mean—” He saw her smirking. “Funny.”
Masterman stepped off the X and watched the trio again miss the mark, this time wheeling the tank too far to the left. “Jesus H. Christmas,” he spat. “Why is this so difficult?”
“Is the water still warm?” the robed woman asked no one in particular.
“It’s perfect, Tiff,” Masterman answered without tearing his eyes off the X.
“It was cold yesterday,” she said, and flicked another ash onto the floor. “I froze my ass off.”
“You’ll feel like you’re back in the womb,” said a guy with a clipboard.
Masterman looked over at the clipboard guy with a grin. That’s when the director spotted Bernadette and Garcia. He tucked the pencil behind his ear and walked over with an outstretched hand. “Hello.”
“Nice to meet you, Mr. Masterman.” Bernadette accepted his big mitt while trying to imagine all the places it had been during the course of his career. She was glad she’d kept her leather gloves on her hands. “My partners e-mailed you earlier today.”
“Capital City Venture,” he said, shaking Garcia’s hand vigorously. “I’ve heard of your group. Impressive projects.”
Garcia fired back with a similar line of bullshit. “Your films are what’s impressive.”
Masterman turned around and addressed his crew. “Take ten, kids.”
The trio struggling with the tank started to walk away, digging their smokes out of their pockets.
“Not you, bozos,” Masterman yelled. “Keep working on positioning that water. X marks the spot.”
“I hate that X,” one of them groused, and the three of them returned to muscling the tank into place.
Masterman turned back to his visitors. “Which one is your favorite?”
Bernadette frowned. “What?”
“Which of my films is your favorite?”
Recognizing a lose-lose situation, Garcia kept his mouth shut. Bernadette thought back to the clip Creed had shown her. “The one with the fire hoses. The critics gave it four out of five, right?”