— Barbara Hambly
Slow, Slow Burn
ALL RIGHT, THIS IS THE WAY I PICTURE IT: WE’RE IN a busy midtown brass and fern bar, okay? Maybe at a table on the sidewalk, under an umbrella says Cinzano on it, we’ll see. Two women poking at salads, glasses of white wine. They’re dressed very nice, expensive but not flashy, they pay attention to details, they accessorize, you know what I mean? Maybe a bag or something in the shot with a very exclusive name on it, sets these women up as fashion-conscious, upscale, the best taste in everything. One’s older, see, she’s the younger woman’s mother, though there’s no real noticeable age difference. They could be sisters. Make ‘em both blondes. The older one’s got kind of a suit on, she’s the dynamic woman-on-the-go. The daughter sort of mirrors that, a subtle thing, she’s got a nice blouse or shirt on with a jacket that says she’s shopping the right stores and she’s never more than fifteen minutes out of style. Whatever these women talk about, the people at home are gonna know they could make their own croissants from scratch if they felt like it, and they don’t live in no trailer park, either. This is like ‘Beauty Hints of the Idle Rich’ or something. The older woman smiles and says something like, ‘I’m glad you enjoyed the villa. I knew you and Ramon would find it pleasant.’
“So the girl is toying with her radicchio, see, and she puts her fork down and goes, ‘Mother, may I ask you a personal question?’
“Mom says, ‘Of course, darling.’
“Daughter looks down at her plate, she’s just a little bit embarrassed. That’s good, that makes her human. Audience will relate to that. She looks back up and goes, ‘Mother, have you ever used — ‘pause for effect’ — modular marital aids?’
“Big smile from the understanding old bitch. Maybe she, you know, reaches out and pats the kid’s hand. Like: There, there. She says, ‘Let me tell you a secret, dear. Your father and I have the biggest collection of sex moddies in the diocese.’ She laughs. The daughter laughs. Then Mom reaches into her bag, see, and what do you think she takes out? Take a guess.”
Two account executives have flown all the way from America to talk with Honey Pilar, who everyone agrees is the most desirable woman in the world. Even account executives want her, though their motives are mixed, and that’s why these two anxious men have come from New York to Honey’s walled estate in the south of France. She is sitting at a long table made of polished limba, an exotic hardwood from the Congo Basin that not even the architectural magazines know about yet. Beside her is her husband, Kit, who likes to think of himself as her manager. One of the admen is speaking; his throat is very dry because he is desperate that Honey Pilar likes his proposal, yet he is too self-conscious to sip from the fluted glass of Perrier-Jouet in front of him. He glances quickly at his associate, but it is easy to see that he can expect no help from that quarter.
Kit stares at the account executive, but he’s not going to say anything. The silence goes on and on. The hopeful smile the adman is wearing begins to vanish. He looks at his associate, who is still no help whatsoever.
“On the phone, I think we discussed the kids’ market,” says Kit wearily. He purses his lips and turns to Honey, who is sipping Campari and soda through a straw. “She doesn’t like it. I don’t like it. Come back with something else.”
The adman lays his sweating hands on the beautiful, glossy tabletop. “Miss Pilar?” he says hopelessly.
“Kit like doing business,” she says, and shrugs. When she smiles, both account executives are inspired with possible new approaches. The sound of her voice, they tell themselves, is enough reward for their failed labor. The opportunity to meet with her again will motivate them to find just the pitch she and Kit are looking for. “You have nice flight,” she says.
Kit is in the control room watching his wife on the bed with a seventeen-year-old Italian boy. Kit watches them through the grimy glass, wishing he’d worn a shirt because he is sweating heavily in the hot, stale air of the studio, and his naked back is sticking to the black vinyl padding of the chair. He peels himself away and leans forward, checking meters and digital readouts that don’t really need checking. Honey is a consummate performer. It’s as if she has an accurate internal clock ticking behind her forehead, cuing her: 00:00 initiate encounter, 00:30 initiate foreplay with passionate kiss, 00:45 experience preliminary arousal…. They are seven minutes, ten seconds into the thirty-minute recording. By the outline on Kit’s clipboard, Honey is supposed to begin oral stimulation at 07:15, and goddamn if she isn’t already sliding down the boy’s tanned body. No cue cards, she doesn’t even need hand signals. Kit pretends to check the levels again, then turns away from the big glass window.
Kit had his own brain wired long before he met Honey Pilar. If he wanted, he could jack into a socket on the board and feel just what the Italian boy is feeling, or he could jack into another socket and eavesdrop on Honey. Kit doesn’t need to peek on the boy’s responses because he’s been married to Honey for five years, and she’s every bit as good live-in-person as she is on a module. Honey Pilar is still, at the age of forty-five, the most desired woman in the world. One out of every eight moddies — of all kinds — sold through the big modshop chains is a Honey Pilar sex moddy. Kit has never been her partner on any of them.
At 14:20, Honey and the boy curl together on their sides. Honey’s eyes are closed, her face flushed. She is only wearing some kind of white cotton peasant-looking blouse and rope sandals. The boy is naked except for a pair of black matte-finish sunglasses. Drops of sweat glisten on his hairless chest. Kit stands up and turns away again. He leaves the control room, sure that nothing out of the ordinary will happen. He wanders down the long hall. He kicks off his deck shoes and feels the pile carpet warm on the soles of his feet. There is the strong odor of stale beer in the hall, as if several cans had soaked the floor recently and no one had cared to do anything about it. None of the windows are open, and it is even hotter in the hall than in the control room. Kit pushes open the scarred blond wood door at the end of the hall. He is in another control room. He chases a green lizard the size of his hand from the padded chair and sits behind the board. He stares at meters and digital readouts. They are all flickering at safe levels.
Beyond the glass, a young woman in a torn T-shirt and a bikini bottom sits at a microphone, clutching a sheaf of printed pages. Kit knows that she works for some revolutionary organization, but there are too many even to begin to guess which one. She reads the pages in a slow, husky voice. Kit thinks her voice is pretty damn sexy. He likes everything about this girl, what little he knows. He likes her bikini bottom, her torn shirt, her rumpled black hair, and the way she talks. After a moment, Kit hears what she is reading. “Achtung, Achtung,” she says. Her voice has no accent, neither German nor otherwise. She herself has brown skin, pale full lips, and Oriental eyes. “Achtung, drei hundert neun-und-siebzig. Fiinf-und-zwanzig.” Then she begins reading a list of five-digit numbers. “39502, 95372, 01814, 66589.” She reads twenty-five groups of digits, meaningful only to the certain audience listening to her frequency, reading the key to her code. “Ende,” she says. A moment later, after shifting to another frequency, she begins again in Spanish. “Atencion, atencion.” More numbers, more signals. Kit would like to buy the brown-skinned girl a drink, look into her black eyes, ask her if she herself knows who might be listening to her broadcast.
Kit leaves her control room. She has never looked up, never known for an instant that he was there. Kit walks back down the stifling hallway. As he enters the small room, he sees Honey Pilar astride the Italian boy. Kit checks the clock on the board, checks the script. The recording is still precisely on schedule. He hasn’t been missed. Just as the girl at the microphone did not know he was there, Honey does not know he has been gone.