"It's the first time I ever did it that way," she told him afterwards as he stroked her hair and placed a cigarette between her lips, "and you're the first man I've ever been comfortable enough with to do it." He smiled softly at this and his chest inflated several inches upwards before his mouth sought out their shared cigarette. "It was so beautiful Claude," she said running the back of her hand across the stubble of his early morning beard." I used to fuck myself with all kinds of things before this, up the ass I mean, candles if you can believe it and vibrators, almost anything that would fit up there but I was saving it really, I guess for you." He leaned down and kissed her at a loss for words.
After that weekend in Palm Springs Claude Frescotti had his hands full with Lisa. It was as if that back door exploratory had turned a faucet on inside her that was unquenchable. As they drove towards Los Angeles in her new fire engine red Porsche at 85 M.P.H. she used her left hand to steer with while her right hand moved up and down on his prick until it spilled its load all over his pants and the front seat. She insisted that they stop at a motel before they reached L.A. where she proceeded to suck him off the minute the door closed behind them. As his cock stood at full attention in her mouth she blew it out, turned her ass towards him and
bent over. Before he was half way up inside her, his cock began to spurt helplessly leaving him crumpled at the foot of the bed like an old sheet.
"You mean Claude's going on location and not taking you with him?" Jeanette asked on the telephone. Lisa sat by the pool drinking the last of her breakfast coffee and playing with a half eaten slice of toast.
"That's right. He say's he can work better when I'm not around, that I drain him of all his energy. In a way that's true but I've got the feeling that he "wants to use this as an excuse to break things off."
"Oh Lisa, don't be so paranoid honey. I can see what he means." "I'm not being paranoid. Jeanette and I'm not dumb either."
"I never said you were, or even hinted at it, it's just that I think you're working yourself into a state. Sometimes men just have to get away by themselves when they work and this is the first time in the year that you've been living together that you'll be separated. Of course you feel worried-it's only natural"
"Yeah but he's been acting strange lately. Like it's too much of an effort to talk to me. We haven't been doing anything together like we used to. He just sits in his library and says he has scripts to read and I don't see him for hours."
"That doesn't sound good… "
"That's what I'm trying to tell you! And it wouldn't be so bad if he'd just come out and say it, but he keeps reassuring me that everything is all right, that I have nothing to worry about."
"How are you fixed financially?" Jeanette asked, interjecting a note of common sense into the conversation.
"I've got a couple of thousand in the bank plus a few trinkets."
"Oh well then you're laughing. I mean things aren't all that bad."
"I guess not, but I don't know what to make of any of it. I really have the feeling that's it's over and there's nothing I can do about it. I feel so helpless!"
"Oh baby I'm sorry. I wish there was something I could say or do but there isn't. You're just going to have to weather it out and hang in there."
"You're right."
"Hey want to hear some good news?"
"Tell me."
"I've just sold my first screen play to the studio and I'm now a full fledged working writer!"
"Oh Jeanette that's fucking fantastic!" Lisa shrieked with delight,
instantly forgetting her own set of problems upon hearing of her friend's new found fortune, rising from her deck chair and scattering the breakfast plates into a thousand pieces.
"Yeah isn't that great? I almost died when I got the word this morning. So look even if you and old Claude there do bust up don't worry about a thing. You can come stay with me until you get yourself together and decided what it is you're going to do-but honest honey, I just think it's a temporary thing with him and you and that he'll be calling you in a few days and begging you to fly down to Mexico to be with him. Mark my words."
"I hope you're right Jeanette, but anyway baby, congratulations on your screen play. That's the greatest thing I've heard all month-fuck, all year! Have you called your folks and told them about it?"
"Not yet but I'm going to as soon as I get off the line."
"OK then I'll let you go. Call me tomorrow or if you haven't anything to do tonight, why don't you come up to the house. I'm all alone here with the fucking dogs and the swimming pool and the servants and I could use some company."
"If I can I will Lisa. Take it easy honey."
A week later Lisa received a registered letter from Claude in Mexico. As she opened it with trembling hands a check spilled from the single sheet of notepaper and drifted to the floor. When she picked it up she saw it was for five thousand dollars. The letter was brief. Claude said he was sorry but it was all over between them; he didn't love her anymore but he wanted to reassure her that there was no one else. He asked that she not be there upon his return from Mexico.
She packed the following day and moved into Jeanette's North Hollywood apartment. "Gee that's rotten honey," her friend consoled her. "And I know you really loved the guy too." Lisa nodded her blonde head, her eyes like little red dots in her swollen face. "I know it's not much help but, well, you'll get over it. You'll find someone else."
"I'm not so sure I want to."
"I don't blame you, but there's no use talking about it now. You just need some time to sort things out. I know you think I'm a bit of a mercenary but I must say he did right by you with that five thousand smackers. I mean that took some class."
"Big fucking deal," Lisa said breaking into tears.
Lisa's recuperative powers were stronger than she had imagined. Two weeks after Claude Frescotti's letter of farewell had brought the whole world crashing down about her, Lisa was dating again; moving around Hollywood with a string of suitors. She was enjoying the five thousand dollars she had acquired as a result of their break-up and feeling less and less sorry for herself.
Still there was something too familiar about it all. Los Angeles had become a place she felt like staying away from; if only there was someplace better to go to. Her mind groped for an alternative but found only empty space. One night at the Club Laurent in Beverly Hills, Jay Saxon, her date of the evening and the drummer with a local lounge band asked her if she had ever thought of becoming a dancer. "A dancer?" Lisa echoed back at him, "no Jay to tell you the truth I never have."
"Well you should, because I think you'd be a good one."
"But I haven't ever had any lessons, no experience. Isn't it something you start at young."
"Oh sure ballet baby, but I'm talking about go-go stuff and chorus dancing. You know you put one foot in front of the other and move three steps forward and then cross your legs and move three steps back. It's not that difficult. A lot easier than driving a car. I mean you're not a bad number on the dance floor and I think you'd be a natural."
"You might have something there… "
"What do you mean, I might have something. Baby you're talking to a man who knows! My friend Mario the faggot is getting a show together to take to Palm Springs and he's looking for girls and I told him I had just the blonde for the chorus line and he told me to bring you around. Now all he has to do is see you and hell flip-believe me I know this guy's taste. He may be bent but he's got a great eye for what's right and baby you are it!"
Suddenly Lisa felt all her confidence coming back to her as this new vista opened up inside her head in the smoke filled, packed night club. Maybe this was just the thing she was looking for to get out of Los Angeles, to give her something new to look forward to in life. She knew she had better start doing something because she was pushing twenty-one and that was a dangerous age. She grabbed Jay Saxon's arm excitedly, her long nails biting into his forearm. "Do you really think I could get the job Jay? Do you think I'd be right for it?"