The Martini Shot

by George Pelecanos

  “Hi.”

  I kissed her soft lips, held her and stroked her bare arms. She was warm to the touch. She wore tailored velour sweats and a cutoff tee, and her copper-and-brown hair was up and back in a soft band. She was in her early forties, a large-featured woman with green eyes. She was curvy, big-breasted, thick in the thighs, and generous in back. She was olive-skinned and exotic, a Mediterranean girl built like a black woman. She was exactly what I like.

  “Good day?” she said.

  “Fourteen hours. The director shot too much stuff we’ll never use. Anyway, we got the pages. You?”

  “A little rough.” It was all she needed to say. I knew she was under the gun. “I could use a glass of wine.”

  I opened a bottle of Rodney Strong, a good everyday Merlot that Annette liked, poured it into two short hotel-issue glasses, and took it over to the living room couch, where we had a seat. I lit a couple of candles and programmed my phone to play some tunes through a Bluetooth speaker I took from job to job. The phone and speaker arrangement was my portable stereo. Everything I owned was portable: the push-up stands, my shaving kit, my fold-up Beats, my Swiss Army knife. Everything. I owned a condo in a Mid-Atlantic city, but I lived in hotels.

  Annette and I drank wine and talked about our day. We laughed about the bosses, though she was a department head, and technically, I was management, too. Typically, I was on set call-to-wrap, and she popped in at various locations before rehearsal to check out the work of her crew. Then she’d go off to prep the next episode. Seeing her arrive on set wearing one of her many cool, understated outfits was always the highlight of my day. Hats were her trademark. She walked like a cat. She was smart and talented, a true artist. Annette was our art director and she had style.

  “You mind if I take this off?” she said, her hands going up under her shirt. “It’s too tight.”

  “I like tight things.”

  “Stop.”

  She unfastened her bra, produced it like a magician, and dropped it on the carpet beside the couch.

  “Don’t forget this.” I took liberties and pulled her T-shirt up over her head.

  “You too, Buster.”

  “Don’t call me Buster. That’s a name for a dog.”

  “Come on.”

  I removed my shirt. We embraced and kissed, both of us naked above the waist, skin to skin. I caressed her and squeezed one of her dark nipples, rolled it between my thumb and forefinger until it was a pebble.

  Our tongues mingled. I felt a catch in her breath and heard her moan. She gently pushed me away and chuckled.

  “Who’s this?” she said, nodding at my speaker.

  “The new xx,” I said, and shrugged sheepishly. “Not very original of me, I know.”

  “Wine, candles, and make-out music.”

  “I’m not as creative as you.”

  “It’s perfect.”

  We kissed some more and had a few laughs. While we talked, I slid my hand beneath her sweats, pushed the crotch of her damp lace panties aside, slipped my longest finger inside her, and stroked her clit. It got warm in the room. She lay back on the couch and arched her back, and I peeled off her pants and thong. Now she was nude. I stripped down to my boxer briefs and crouched over her. I let her pull me free because I knew she liked to. She stroked my pole and took off my briefs, and I got between her and spread her muscular thighs with my knees and rubbed myself against her until she was wet as a waterslide, and then I split her. We fucked for a while, slow and deep, with my feet against the scrolled arm of the couch for leverage. Neither of us allowed ourselves to come. It was too good to end.

  “Let’s go to my bed,” I said. We were pretty sweaty by then.

  I brought the candles, the speaker, and my phone. Annette followed with the glasses and the bottle of wine. Entering my bedroom, I switched the music over to an Anthony Hamilton mix and let that ride. Anthony was our favorite, spiritual and secular, authentic and sublime.

  My room was large, with a four-poster bed and floor-to-ceiling windows that gave to a view of the street below and the city skyline. Because it was on the top floor of the hotel, and because there were no nearby buildings as high as mine, it was completely private. Moonlight and candlelight are a heady aphrodisiac, and I kept the curtains open at all times.

  I pulled her to me. I took her band off, and her hair fell free about her shoulders. I cupped my hand around the back of her neck, and we made out standing beside my bed. It felt good to both of us, pressed together, her body lush, soft, and hot against mine. She was a good kisser; our mouths fit.

  She got onto the bed, atop the blankets, and I spread her out. I held her hands and raised them above her, and I kissed her. I kissed her chest and her inner thighs and everywhere. Her pussy was clean, with a five-o’clock shadow and just a hint of smell. I penetrated her with my thumb while I licked and kissed and pressed my tongue into her swollen button. She talked to me and told me what to do. “There,” she said, and “Yeah,” and she said my name, and then her thighs tensed and shuddered. She spasmed and pushed my head away. I lay back and left her alone to enjoy her last rippling throes. But I only left her for a minute. She was ripe, and I pulled her to the edge of the mattress and stood beside the bed and spread her legs. I fucked her like that, me, looking down and watching myself, thick, plunging into her velvet, standing on the carpet with great purchase, her lying there, her knees bent, taking me in. I turned her face to lick inside her ear and kiss her neck, and then her mouth, and she said, “God,” and said it louder, and I controlled it, and she bucked as she came, this time harder than the last.

  When her heart had slowed down, I withdrew from her and handed her a short glass. I took mine off the dresser, and both of us drank some wine.

  “Now you,” she said.

  I lay on my back, and Annette put a pillow under my head. She spread my legs as I had done for her before, and got between me and played with my dick. She knocked the head of it against the nipples of her pendulous breasts and hit it on her tongue like a hammer to a bell.

  “I love your cock,” she said.

  “It loves you.”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “Touch my ass.”

  She tickled my anus as she licked my balls and shaft, and slathered her tongue on my helmet. I laced my fingers through her hair and closed my eyes.

  “Go,” I said.

  I stopped breathing and, like her, invoked a higher power. My orgasm was eye-popping, as I blew a hot load into her mouth. It seemed to last forever, and she took it all.

  “Thank you,” I said, my hand still in her hair. I must have been twisting it. It was a mess.

  “My pleasure.”

  “Sorry. I know that it was a lot. It felt like a lot.”

  “You could help me out and empty that thing once in a while.”

  “I don’t care to spill my seed. I like to save it all for you.”

  She moved up and came beside me, rested her head on my chest. It was quiet now, with just the soul music playing in the room. She blinked slowly and shut her eyes, and I listened and waited for her breathing to slow down. Soon, with each of her inhales, I heard a small click. That was the sound of her in sleep. In the candlelight, I watched her.

  I checked my wristwatch. It was nearly four a.m. We had a short turnaround, a nine-o’clock call, which meant I had to be up at eight. Four hours’ sleep for both of us, but that was workable, and not unusual. It was late in the shoot, and all of us were running on fumes.

  A little while later, I touched her shoulder and said, “Annette.” Her eyes fluttered open. I hated to rouse her, but I knew she liked to wake up in her own bed.

  “Hey,” she said.

  “Hey.”

  She looked up at me without raising her head. The moon had dropped, and its light came full into the room and it was in her eyes.

  “That was nice,” she said.

  “Yes.”

  “I love you, Vic.”

  I made no
comment. I studied her face, a mix of affection and disappointment, and felt a rush of emotion. When production wrapped we’d go our separate ways. “If it happened on location, it didn’t happen.” That’s what was said in our line of work. Maybe it would be like that with me and Annette, too. She’d move on, and so would I. But I knew that she’d always be deep in my head.

  Our driver, a Teamster named Louise, picked us up in a white Ford window van at eight thirty. There were five of us standing on the sidewalk as she pulled to the curb. This episode’s director, Alan Lomax, out of L.A.; our DP, a Danish cinematographer, Eigil, now spelled Eagle for marketing purposes; the camera operator, Van “Go” Cummings, from Venice, California; the gaffer, Skylar Branson, a young Texan who ran the electric crew; and me, Victor Ohanian, writer/producer. We got into the van.

  As was decorum, the director rode in the shotgun bucket beside Louise, a religious woman with kinky blond hair. Van plugged his iPhone into the auxiliary jack of the stereo and programmed some Laurel Canyon singer/songwriter jive into the system. The deal was, Van commandeered the music in the mornings, Skylar (college radio) had the middle of the day, Eagle (jazz) took the post-lunch DJ spot, and I (all over the place) had the ride home. The director listened to whatever we played and was at our mercy.

  Skylar handed me the latest New Yorker. When he was finished with magazines and novels, he passed them on to me. He was wearing a Stihl chainsaw ball cap and a trumpeter’s triangle below his lower lip. He was improbably young for a department head, and very bright. He also sold marijuana to the crew. His girlfriend, Laura, a wardrobe assistant, was in on it, too. It wasn’t as if he needed the money. He was a pothead and felt that he was selling happiness to his friends.

  “Thanks, buddy.” I slid the magazine into my book bag.

  “My pleasure,” he said.

  There was no hint of pleasure on his face. He was troubled about something. I knew him well enough to see it. But it was his business, and I didn’t push it.

  Skylar was a good soul. We’d been friends since the first day of production, though I was practically old enough to be his wayward uncle. I had his back, and he had mine.

  “You all right?”

  “Fine,” he said. “I just need to work.”

  We’d been at it for six months. The shoot was a cop drama for one of the cable networks, based in a southern port city, in a state that offered significant tax credits to film productions. It was a good, long gig. It paid enough to set most of us up for the year. When the money ran out, we’d get on something else. That was what we did.

  Our morning ride to the first location was usually low-key. Some read the USA Today provided by the hotel; others made phone calls to family. Eagle, Van, and Skylar often discussed the first shot and how it would be lit. Or they discussed their golf game. If any of them or the director had a question about the content or tone of the day’s scenes, I tried to answer it. It was business, but not as defined by the straight world. We were playing with many million dollars of studio money, but we dressed as we wanted to, and wore our hair and facial hair as we desired. We thought of ourselves as handsomely compensated rebels. No conventions, no uniforms.

  I studied the landscape as we made our way across town. Often, the crew sees more of a city than the locals do, because we have access and security. The low-end neighborhoods, the seedier bars, the rat-and-needle infested alleys, the Mayor’s office, police stations, prison and jails, the private mansions, back-of-the-house kitchens, and homeless camps under the freeways. I was the curious type, so that aspect of the job suited me well.

  As we neared our destination, we glanced at our call sheets, which detailed our daily shooting schedule. The director was on his cell, talking to his daughter and telling her to have a good day at school. It was early morning in Los Angeles, and she had just woken up.

  “Three moves today,” said Eagle, in his heavy Scandi accent. It sounded like “moofs.” He was tall and lean with long, flowing hair and a beard. He looked like a showered Viking.

  “Four scenes,” said Van, youthful in his fifties, now on his third marriage. Van was a connoisseur of women and a bit of a philosopher. He sometimes entertained us with his ruminations on romance and the fleeting aspect of life.

  “A lot of dialogue in scene thirty-eight,” I said. “Two pages, four people at the table. And then the secretary comes in from the BG and drops the file on the table. She’s got a line, too. We’ll have to cover that.”

  “Why’d you give her a line?” said Van, playfully.

  I’d cast the secretary, a young would-be actress, as a day player after seeing her audition. I was just giving her a break. She’d get an extra eight hundred bucks for that one line, and residuals. Maybe someone would notice her and she’d get more work. Plus, she was hot as balls. Van knew me well.

  “Lots of coverage, is all I’m saying.”

  “It’ll be fine,” said the director, turning his head to us in the back rows of bench seats, interrupting his call to his kid. Lomax was wearing a black Patagonia vest under a black Marmot shell, Merrell shoes. He was overdressed for the weather, a walking billboard for REI. “I storyboarded it and I know what I need. Two hours, tops.”

  He was telling us that he was prepared, that the scene wouldn’t take long, and that he wouldn’t overshoot. But we knew Lomax’s MO. He leaned toward artsy, with shots that made no sense in terms of POV, angles and footage we’d never use when it came time to cut. The secretary’s arrival, easily accomplished by a walk into frame, would be complicated by his insistence on bringing her in with a dolly shot, which meant laying down track and more lighting, which meant time. We’d get behind, and the rest of the day we’d be playing catch-up, and consequently the last scene or two would suffer. We’d worked with Lomax before. He made the days longer than they had to be, but he was all right.

  Louise dropped Eagle off at catering so he could get his usual hearty breakfast, then drove the rest of us to the location. The company trucks were parked on a street in the business district of town, and crew members were milling about, waiting for the AD to call out that we were “in.” First up was a scene in a bank (INT: BANK, DOWNTOWN—DAY), where our protagonist would interview some board members about the death of a teller, whose body had been found in the teaser, a scene we had yet to get in the can. We rarely shot in sequence.

  Louise told us to have a blessed day as we exited the van. The lead set PA, waiting on the sidewalk, handed me my sides, which were the day’s scenes, complete with dialogue, collated into one stapled set of pages. I folded the sides and slipped them into the back pocket of my Levi’s, and asked the PA to order me a breakfast burrito and a coffee from catering.

  “You got it, sir,” he said.

  I thanked him and said good morning to crew as I walked down the street toward the bank.

  This was my favorite time of the day. To step out of the van in the morning and walk onto a set among a hundred other crew members, all of us gathering in one place to build something together, is a feeling of great anticipation and promise. Costumers; hair and makeup people; props; set dressers; scenic, light, and camera crew; sound recordists—all of these people, in their own way, were artists. Unlike a painting, signed by one person, or a book, with one author’s name on its spine, the tail credits on a movie or television show carried hundreds of signatures. I liked that. I had no illusions that what I did as a television writer had weight or permanence. But, because of my comrades, I was proud to have my name on that scroll.

  Inside the bank, the first AD called for a private rehearsal as the actors arrived on set. Eagle had come in with his breakfast and was shoveling it down. The lead actor, supporting actors, day players, and director stood in a circle and read their lines. I stood nearby with Lillie, the script supervisor out of New York, who was wearing New York black. She was by necessity a hyper, detail-oriented person who had one of the most demanding and important jobs in the production. Lillie watched every take in the monitors for cont
inuity and matching issues; she was a pain in the ass, in a good way.

  As the actors rehearsed the lines, I looked for trouble spots. Often the written word seems fine on the page, but when spoken it can lose its luster. Occasionally, what I thought was a great scene didn’t work in practice, and I was there to adjust lines. The actor might not like something I’d written, and I had the authority to change the words if I felt the objection was warranted, or stand my ground if it was not. An actor could misinterpret my writing and not do it justice, and an actor could also elevate what I’d done. Sometimes the words or sentences were just too much of a mouthful, or there was a redundancy I had not seen before, and I’d subtract. All of this came out on set.

  “Scene,” said Lomax, when the actors were done. He then blocked the action, putting the actors through their movements and stops. We were to shoot this one with two cameras, A and B. During the second rehearsal, the B camera assistant laid down the actor’s marks with pieces of colored tape. Lomax discussed the various shots with Eagle and Van, Skylar standing close by. Master, medium shot, then the singles, tighter, tighter, tighter, three sizes. Lomax expressed his desire to bring the secretary in with a dolly shot. Van wiggled his eyebrows at Eagle: I knew it.

  “Crew has the set,” said the first AD.

  The actors went to their trailers as the crew flooded the set and prepped the first shot. Stand-ins took the marks of the actors so that they could be properly lit. It would be about forty-five minutes before the cameras rolled. My breakfast arrived and I ate it while Brandon, the on-set prop master, set up the cast chairs around the monitors, an arrangement called Video Village. I had my own chair with my name printed on the canvas backing, as well as the name of the series: Tanner’s Team.

  The show was a serialized cop drama. It detailed the exploits of an elite Homicide squad headed by a handsome, middle-aged lieutenant named Jeremiah Tanner, a semi-clairvoyant father figure whose detectives, his children in effect (Tanner’s Team), consisted of various attractive youngish men and women, a mix of blacks (but not too many blacks), whites, and Hispanics, cast to hit all the demographic buttons. The lead was Brad Slaughter, a former film actor who had briefly flirted with cinema stardom and was now highly compensated for his work on the small screen. His co-lead was Meaghan O’Toole, an actress who had come from the stage originally and had won an Emmy for her work in an HBO original. She played Mackenzie Hart, the “hard-charging” assistant district attorney who prosecuted the criminals the squad arrested. Mainly, to the actress’s chagrin, she was written as the love interest for the lieutenant.