15

On Sunday evening Gina George insisted – saying, “It’ll give me a chance for some American girl talk” – on going to the airport alone to pick up Carla Ortiz.

There was no mistaking Carla as she stepped out, pulling a large rolling suitcase, from behind the international arrival gate. Her very youthful mestizo features, with slightly plump high cheekbones and long, straight black hair, did not in the least resemble Sofia’s ripe, chiseled Moorish look framed by brown curls, and her boobs were considerably larger (though the work was not, in Gina’s opinion, of Doc Kruger caliber), but from the waist down their builds were a close match, and Carla’s skin tone could easily be made to match Sofia’s with the right filter. Bill knew his business all right, Gina thought.

“Gina George,” Carla gushed in her purest Valley Girl tone as she gave Gina a tight hug, “it’s so super-fantastic to meet you! You’re my hero! I’ve, like, seen all of your movies!”

“It’s great that you could come and help us out on such short notice,” said Gina, hugging Carla in return. Carla’s perfume was strong and quite distinctive, one that Gina had never smelled before.

“It’s nothing! I’m, like, between projects, and I needed a vacation anyway, but on my own I, like, wouldn’t’ve went to Europe for just a few days. And I’m like getting paid for this one! And I got to fly first class, and I get to stay at the Ritz! Thank you! Thank you!” And she kissed Gina hard on the mouth.

Obviously, thought Gina, Bill Martinez doesn’t treat his actresses like Barry Bergman does.

“Did you have a nice Thanksgiving?” she asked as she pulled away so that they could begin their walk toward the taxi stand.

“Oh, for sure. Did you? But I’m so dumb! Duh! They don’t, like, have Thanksgiving here, do they?”

“No, but an American business group had a dinner at our hotel, and they invited me. The turkey, though, was done the way they do it here, with prunes and nuts and stuff. It was different, but delicious!”

“But that’s just the way my abuelita makes it for Christmas, like, Mexican style!”

“Then you should like the food here,” said Gina as they entered the taxi and she gave the driver the name of the hotel. “But first,” she went on, “you’ll have a day’s work. You should enjoy it, though.”

“So he’s, like, a real hunk, this guy Mario?”

“He sure is.”

“Ooh,” Carla giggled, “I can’t wait. Too bad I don’t speak Spanish that good.”

“You don’t?” Gina said, astonished.

“Not too good. I mean, my accent’s good, but it’s like Spanglish. My parents, like, never talked to us in Spanish after we moved to the Valley, and we lived in a neighborhood that was, like, mixed. I had more friends that were Jewish than Mexican.”

During the cab ride Gina tried to give Carla an idea of the film, but Carla was either too tired to pay attention or not really interested. By the time they got to the hotel, ostensibly to have drinks and snacks in the bar with Albert, Mario and Sofia, she said that she’d had plenty to eat and drink on the plane and what she really needed was some sleep. After being introduced to Mario, however, her preferences seemed to change drastically. She let her bag be taken to her room and suddenly got thirsty for a beer, becoming quite animated and regaling her tablemates with stories about previous body-double work she had done, though without naming the films or actresses involved. “It’s confidential,” she explained.

“In this film we have no secrets,” Albert said. “Would you like to have body-double credit?” Gina could read on Sofia’s face that she was hoping for a positive answer.

“I don’t know,” Carla answered, “I never got it before, but sure, why not? Like, every little bit of credit counts.”

“You definitely should have it,” Sofia confirmed. She looked at her watch. “I must go now,” she said, “Victor is waiting for me. Tomorrow I start rehearsals for a new play, so this is our last chance to have dinner together.” She kissed all present on both cheeks, including Carla who had prepared for a kiss on the mouth, and left.

She had been seated between Carla and Mario, but now that she was gone Mario moved his chair next to Carla’s. Their bodies were almost touching.

“She’s really gorgeous,” Carla said, looking at the disappearing Sofia.

“So are you,” said Mario. Carla’s complexion was too dark to register a blush, but Gina knew that it was there.

“Let me explain to you a little what needs to be done,” Albert said to Carla. “Tomorrow morning, when you are rested, we will go to the studio and look at the footage of the original scene. In the finished film the scene is broken up into twelve segments, about a minute each, that are spliced in as flashbacks, and we will show you that part of the film, unless you want to see the whole thing.”

“Why not?” said Carla. “I’ll watch a free movie anytime.” And she laughed. “Like, I saw two of ‘em on the flight coming over,” she added.

“I don’t think they show my movies on airplanes,” Albert said, and laughed too. “Anyway, in this film I plan to replace five of those segments with what we get from tomorrow afternoon’s shooting. I think it will be obvious which ones, don’t you think so, Mario?”

“Yes, I think so,” Mario said.

“Sounds super,” said Carla. “Now, they told me that in Spain you guys eat dinner real late? So maybe I’ll go up to my room to freshen up and, like, rest up a little, and then we can eat dinner?”

“You know,” said Gina, addressing Carla and Mario together, “you two will be working together real soon, rather intimately to say the least, so maybe you ought to have dinner by yourselves, so you can get acquainted.”

Carla looked at Mario. “Sounds good to me,” she said.

“Yes, it’s fine,” Mario seconded. “I will take you to a special restaurant that you will like,” he said to Carla and looked at his watch. “At nine o’clock? Is one hour and a half enough?”

“Sure,” said Carla, and, turning to Albert and Gina, added, “Bye, you guys. It’s been wonderful meeting you guys, and I guess I’ll see you guys tomorrow!” With a giggle she got up and then, as though she had forgotten something, said “Oh!” and bent down to give Gina the two-cheek kiss she had just learned. She did the same to Albert and Mario, who had stood up, and quickly walked out of the bar toward the desk in order to get her key.

“She is wonderful!” said Mario.

“I’m glad you think so,” said Gina. “That’s what counts.”

If there was a tinge of tartness in her voice, Mario did not seem to notice. “I need to go home and change for going out,” he said as he stood up, shook Albert’s hand and kissed Gina’s cheeks, with a little touch of tongue thrown in. “Good bye!”

After an extended Sunday brunch at the International House of Pancakes – an old family tradition – with assorted Garabedians, Hagopians, Kevorkians and Lewises, Jennifer hugged them all, climbed into her car and drove off, heading for Los Angeles.

She had done her best over the holiday to keep up a cheerful appearance, covering up as best she could her sadness over Leslie. Of course she could not tell them about her. She had never told them about having a roommate in the first place, letting them believe that she was living alone in a studio; this had been true during her first year in LA and was now, at least technically, true again.

She wondered why the only comments she had received over the three days about her bright red Spider were “Nice car!” or, in her brother Ken’s words, “Nice wheels!” Were they all really unaware that this was not the kind of vehicle that would be within the monetary reach of a girl working in an office to save up for graduate school? There was no reason for them to see a red flag in the fact that the supposed office work had, since June, been at the nondescript-sounding BB Productions, a fact that she had communicated to them only because she had kept her parents’ home as her legal residence and she had them forward any official mail – from the DMV, the IRS and the like – to her workplace. Or did they suspect something and not want to let on, such as that she might have a rich lover? That was factually true: Barry Bergman was her lover, and he was rich, but he was not a sugar daddy: what she got from him was not gifts but well-earned, if generous, pay for her work.

With some time to herself on Saturday, she had driven into the seedy section of town, and saw that the marquee of the theater that had been her epiphany of X-rated cinema read XXX TRIPLE BILL, and that one of the items on the bill was FRANK BOND IN CAMPUS CAPERS. But the picture of her on the poster was scarcely recognizable, and someone would have had to see the movie to know who Jenni Jarman was.

She would have liked to tell someone about her life, perhaps the one who for years had been her confidante: her slightly older cousin Rachel, who like her had been sexually precocious – she had preceded her by six months in the gymnastics coach’s bed, and had encouraged her to follow in her footsteps – but was now conventionally married, with a second baby on the way. Jennifer had been a bridesmaid at the wedding.

She realized as she was nearing Bakersfield, with the Valley fog growing thicker, that even if she had found some time alone with Rachel – their typical time for exchanging confidences was while jogging together, something that Rachel’s pregnancy now didn’t allow – she would not have told her anything, after all. Here, in the San Joaquin Valley, she was Jennifer Garabedian, and Jenni Jarman was another person, over the mountains in LA.

The most common subject of confidential talk between Jennifer and Rachel had always been the coach (they had never called him anything but “coach,” even in bed). Rachel had for years worried that one of the many girls who had shared their experience with him might at some point bring belated charges of sexual molestation or even rape against him. But this had not happened – he was still at the school – and Jennifer firmly believed that he knew better than to make advances to girls who might ever come to feel abused. He knew how to spot those who, like them, would feel lucky to have been initiated by someone with his expert knowledge of the adolescent female body and psyche.

There was one thing for which she felt thankful on that Thanksgiving: for the first time as far as she could remember, no one had made a wordplay connection between the turkey they had been eating and Turkey, the land where their people had been persecuted. Even as a child, she had never flinched on hearing her paternal grandfather’s tales of suffering on the deadly forced march through Eastern Anatolia, which he had survived as an orphaned child. But the pun had always made her queasy, and when she was six it actually made her throw up.

As she started the climb up the Grapevine – those Italians sure knew how to make cars for mountain driving! – the fog gradually turned into a drizzle. As she crossed the Los Angeles County line, the Hispanic radio station to which she had been listening began to fade, giving way to a classical-music station from Los Angeles. She did not touch the tuning knob. She enjoyed the mingling of bolero and Bach in the course of the transition. It corresponded to what she was feeling: her identity as Jennifer Garabedian was gradually fading and being replaced by Jenni Jarman. The feeling was intensified when, some forty-five minutes later, she was in the San Fernando Valley, turning off onto the Hollywood Freeway (“the one-seventy,” as LA people called it). By this time there was only one thing that she needed as an affirmation of being Jenni Jarman: to make love with Barry Bergman.

When she turned into Barry’s carport, passing an unfamiliar-looking dark-green Volvo sedan that was parked across the street, she saw that Barry’s car was there.

She carried her duffel bag through the drizzle into the cottage, dumped it on her bed, and then let herself into the house. Barry was not in his study, the living room or the kitchen. His bedroom door was shut. From behind it she could hear the sounds of Barry doing it, probably with the Volvo driver.

Fuck it! she said to herself as she walked into the kitchen to pour herself a drink.

Around midnight, with Albert sound asleep, Gina put on a dress and slippers and sneaked out of their room into the hallway. She walked its length, from one end to the other, several times, each time of course passing Carla’s room. Since she was alone, she saw no reason not to slow down, or even stop, as she passed it.

On the first pass there was no discernible sound coming through the door, but the second time she could hear some soft female moaning, gradually increasing in volume. She forced herself to continue her walk, and on the third pass the moaning was quite loud. She must be masturbating, Gina said to herself, probably fantasizing about Mario.

But just as she began to walk back to her room she heard a stifled, unmistakably male groan, one that she by now was quite familiar with.

Mario doesn’t waste time, she thought. But as she walked down the pleasantly heated hallway, she looked forward to getting back into the bed that, she hoped, was still warmed by Albert’s body.

Jenni was lying on her bed, leafing through assorted sections of the Sunday Times that she had brought in from the living room, trying to find news items that she had not read in the Fresno Bee. She heard the sound of a car – probably the Volvo – driving away, and about ten minutes later Barry knocked on the cottage door. “Yes!” she said. Barry entered, dressed and, it seemed, freshly showered.

“I didn’t know you’d be back so early in the day,” he said.

“That’s okay, I didn’t either,” she answered as she sat up and took off her glasses, placing them on the nightstand. “After brunch I just felt like I’d had enough of Fresno.”

“I mean,” he added, “I wouldn’t have had company if I’d known. It’s an old friend, Doc Kruger’s wife Nancy...”

“The psychologist?”

“Yes.”

“I read her book for a class in college! Anyway, come sit down!” she said as she patted the space beside her on the bed.

“You see,” he said as he sat down with an uncomfortable-looking smile on his face, “I felt that I needed to talk to someone about the Leslie business, and she volunteered. She was supposed to come over yesterday but couldn’t make it – there was some sort of crisis with a client of hers.”

“I see,” Jenni said.

Barry took a deep breath. “But it turned out,” he went on, “that she was also going through some sort of crisis of her own, one that, for now, I’ll spare you the details of. At one point she asked me, ‘Am I getting old, Barry?’ And I said, ‘If you mean am I adding years then yes, we’re all getting old, but if you mean am I getting less attractive then the answer is no.’”

Jenni looked at Barry. His tan had faded, and his facial skin looked puffy. He probably hadn’t slept well, poor guy, and it showed.

And then it struck her. He was in his forties! Like Nancy Kruger, probably. She, Jenni, hadn’t slept well either since Leslie’s death, but on her it didn’t show.

She had always liked older men, since the coach, her first, who was almost thirty to her almost sixteen. And her present lover was twenty years her senior – big deal!

But, no doubt about it, he was getting old. Older, anyway.

“And then?” she asked him.

“She said, ‘Prove it to me, Barry!’”

“And you did,” said Jenni with a smile as she took his hand.

Barry smiled back. “Did I have a choice? We had been lovers once, you know.”

“I figured,” she said and kissed him on the cheek. “You’re sweet, Barry.”

She knew that if she were to lie back on the bed and unzip her jeans, as she had so many times, Barry would join her; he was certainly virile enough to be up for a union with her in that situation. But she no longer felt like it, and the fact that he made no moves made it easier. What she now needed was to be alone.

Since Barry’s response was only a sheepish smile, she decided to go on. “You know,” she said, “I’d like to read the rest of the paper. If the weather were nice I’d do it outside, but as it is...”

“Sure,” he said, seeming relieved, “I’ve got things to do too. By the way,” he added as he stood up, “I’m reopening the studio on Tuesday, and we’ll probably get back to shooting on Thursday.”

“Uh-oh,” she said, “I’m expecting my period.”

“Then we’ll just do the blowjobs until it’s over,” he said matter-of-factly. “And there’s non-sex stuff too, you know. See you later!” And he closed the cottage door behind him.

She was left feeling disconcerted. He was, to be sure, both her boss and her (non-exclusive) lover, but she had no trouble keeping the two aspects of him separate in her mind. Of him, on the other hand, she was not always sure whether he was treating her as employee or as girlfriend. She wondered if Gina George had had a similar identity problem with Barry Bergman.

Yes, the bed was still warm. Gina lay on her side, naked and fully stretched, facing the gently breathing Albert’s back. She moved her torso closer to him until a nipple barely touched his skin. Albert Bosch was not a man easily aroused. He always stayed cool while shooting the sexiest scenes, and he was known as having never been involved with any of his actresses. But she was different. For one thing, their relationship had been one of lovers before becoming one of actress and director. And she, Gina George, could arouse him any time she wanted.

But she might as well wait till morning, she decided as she yawned. “Good night, Albert,” she whispered soundlessly as she turned away.

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