“You’re not going with her?” I asked as we waved farewell to my exquisite wife.
“It’s a closed set,” said the sharp blonde in reply. “Authorized cast and crew only. And only a few of the crew at that.”
“Because of the sex scenes?”
She nodded, and smiled. “But I’m not here for her,” she said, surprising me. “Come on—I have a table booked at La Provençale.”
I wrinkled my brow. “For you and me?”
She grinned. “Would that be all right? Hayley asked me to keep you company a little this evening.”
“Uh…okay, I suppose that would be fine.”
She drove so I could drink, and I guess I did need a strong glass or two. It was a nice discreet restaurant with low-lighting and the kind of booths that could keep everyone but the waiting staff from intruding on a private conversation.
“So, how are you feeling?”
“Good. I think.”
Liona was sympathetic to my plight. It felt nice to have a reassuring person to talk to. “You know it’s just a movie, right?”
“Of course.”
“So I don’t have to tell you they won’t be…you know…fucking…for real?”
“I know.”
She nodded. “And most of the time they’re shooting, they’ll be wearing underwear anyway….”
“Most of the time?” I attempted a wry grin.
She broke out into another broad smile. She was one of those blondes who made you feel like you’d achieved something impressive just to make her smile like that. It warmed me a little inside, at least, where my nest of vipers was currently squirming.
We ordered our food—salad for Liona, who didn’t appear to be eating properly, merely for show—and a fish dish for myself—with the waiter providing some exceedingly speedy service.
“It’s really very awkward,” she said. “Shooting sex scenes. Not sexy at all.”
“You seen many?” I chomped on breadsticks while she didn’t even seem to want to consume water while we waited for our meals, and I suspected she was on some kind of special diet—one of those Hollywood women, paranoid about their weight.
“A few,” she said. “And I hear about them from my clients, of course. You’ve got dozens of people standing around tending to this or that, repositioning you, lighting you, the director yelling instructions, guys running in to blast you with fake sweat between takes. You’re trying not to stumble over your lines and not to get in the way of the other actor’s light…all while trying to seem like you’re so passionate about him, so completely into the sex…it’s really not an enjoyable experience for the actors.”
“I suppose not.”
“Everyone’s kind of embarrassed about it, and the things the director’s shouting seem kind of dumb all the time, and the actors are both wishing they were somewhere else—anywhere else, and they’re imagining that everyone around them is judging them—and they’re not, but you can’t get away from feeling that. It’s nothing like you’d imagine seeing the footage at the end.”
“I guess it takes great acting, huh?” I smiled.
“But they have incentive to get it over with as fast as possible.”
“A week, though,” I laughed. “And they’re only mostly wearing underwear while they’re doing it.”
She laughed. “He’ll probably be wearing a little flesh-colored thong when they’re doing the actual fucking parts,” she said.
“Dry humping all week with Aaron Simpson,” I chuckled. “Some girls would kill for that.”
“You’re a good guy, David, supporting her in all this. You guys should get well rewarded, too. I think Hayley will really make it with this movie.”
“I hope so. She deserves to.”
“She has the talent, she has the looks.”
*
I took it as a good sign that Hayley came back from her week shooting sex scenes, and she wasn’t in the mood for real sex for a while.
“God, I never want to do that again,” she said, as she slumped down with me in front of the TV wearing baggy sweatpants and a hooded top. “It was, like, the most awkward thing I’ve ever done.”
“You got to spend all week in bed with Aaron Simpson!” I chuckled. “Your teenage self would have killed for that.”
“My teenage self wouldn’t have imagined doing it with 50 other people in the room, stopping and starting all the time for days straight, someone yelling at you all the time to put your hand here or there, move your shoulder this way, put your knee over there and bend your head some impossible way….”
“Sounds pretty horrible.”
“It was. I mean, you get through it. You kind of get used to it after a day or so—but you don’t really see it as sex, somehow. It’s not romantic, it’s…I don’t know…very scripted, very planned, and you’re just following every instruction and then waiting for the next one.”
I guess it was something of an anticlimax for someone like me, increasingly obsessed with the idea of my wife enjoying a little liberated sexual fun outside our marriage.
The next time we were actually in the mood for a little physicality with each other, I raised one of the key questions whirling around my head ever since that dinner with Liona when Hayley had gone off to shoot her sex scenes.
“Was he hard while you were doing those scenes together?”
Straddling me, she sat pressing down on my hardness, though I wasn’t yet inside her. Her pause suggested that she needed to figure out how to tell me, there was no way it was something she’d struggle to remember.
“Some of the time,” she said. “But you know…we were both wearing these flesh-colored thongs, and I had a kind of pad thing on my…you know….”
“A pad?” I smiled. “Now that sounds sexy.”
She shrugged. “But you know, he’s a guy, and I was almost naked…you have to expect there’ll be some…stiffness….”
“Was he big?” I asked
She rolled her eyes, but now started grinding against me. “You’re probably happy he was pressing that thing against me, huh?” she joked, though it wasn’t entirely a joke.
“You have a problem with that?”
She smiled and shook her head. “I guess it could be worse, I could have a husband who denounced me as Satan every time I did a mild love scene with another actor.”
“I don’t think I really believe in Satan.”
“But you know,” she said, taking my swollen, throbbing cock inside her tight little pussy now, “I’m only yours, David. I’ll only ever be yours.”
“I know.”
“Even if you have some weird fantasy about me cheating on you.”
“How many times do I have to say it?” I grinned. “It’s not cheating if I know about it.”
Chapter Seven
On the way to Hollywood wearing my best suit, I sat there being warned yet again it was only a movie, that I had to remember at all times while watching it, that it wasn’t real. It was a shock, nevertheless, when it came to my first moments seeing her up there on the big screen making love to another man.
None of it seemed real, from the very beginning. Turning up at a theatre on Hollywood Boulevard for the Premiere, the stretched limo pulling up in front of a crowd of baying fans, flashing cameras and the red carpet. Hovering awkwardly behind my gorgeous, glamorous wife, far enough away from her to give her room for the photographers, the lights were dazzling, the noise stupefying, the stage fright intimidating.
It was a relief to step inside the lobby of the Indian Theater. Even if it was already crowded with people from the movie, publicity hounds for the studio and various invited guests in assorted evening wear, it was more civilized than the chaos outside.
“Hey, how’s it going?”
“Great to see you!”
“This is hubby? Oh. Hayley!”
God. Every glance included some bewilderingly famous person within it—I felt a fraud to be here, I was put in the shade by so many bright stars around us.
&nb
sp; “There you are! Fabulous to see you, sweetie!”
“How are you?”
“Oh, you know. Bannerman’s was closed this afternoon for some God-unknown reason, so my nails are simply frightful!”
There were lots of air kisses as we circled the crowd, clutching Champagne flutes and fancy canapés, uttering brief nothings in greeting and admiration to people Hayley might have known, but I suspect she didn’t.
I felt like the invisible man: eyes flicked onto my face for mere fractions of seconds before deciding I was nobody, and then it was as though I wasn’t even there. I didn’t mind too much—it wasn’t my world.
Hayley, on the other hand, was like some bright gravitational force, drawing all energy toward her, with even the brightest of stars obliged to take her in, and attempt to meet her. She drew plenty of complements on her dress, of course, since she did look pretty incredible in the tiny little crimson sequined thing. I still found it more than a little shocking how much skin it showed off.
I couldn’t blame the men in there. The sweet girl-next-door, as I usually saw her, had been temporarily replaced by a devilish seductress in a tiny dress and nylons. Her red hair was highlighted with strands of honey and gold, almost strawberry blonde. And she hadn’t gone for the usual understated make-up strategy, playing up her wholesome friendly charm—her elfin face was accented by mascara and heavy eyeliner, her lips splashed with sinful scarlet.
When we’d been just about to leave home, it had left me stunned to see her walk out of the bathroom looking like this, like some life-long sexual fantasy.
“My agent said I need to flaunt it,” she’d said.
“Wow,” was all I could really say by way of judgment.
“You do know it’s an Aaron Simpson movie?”
“How could I not?”
“So then,” she’d shrugged, and I had had to concede that this new look of hers did fit with the kind of brazen pin-up dream-girl chic that Aaron Simpson’s leading ladies usually displayed.
Confusing seeing her that way, though. She’d never dressed up for me like that. But then, she’d become a different woman through the process of her film shoot. She’d started out a polite, mousey girl who probably wouldn’t have said ‘boo’ to a goose, and she’d come out the other end a divine Hollywood starlet, a goddess in human form—with all the supreme confidence that came with it. She had come out of her shell, and her body was almost public property now. And she had to respond to the expectations that were laid on her, at least the ones laid on by her agent, her new publicist, her new manager, her new personal trainer, her fans.
Seeing her like that, as we left our little house on Redondo Beach, it made me wonder how she looked in the movie itself. The audience was going to see her in full Technicolor—and without any clothes. There was something exciting in that, though I still couldn’t quite comprehend why I felt that way. The six-figure check—and her agent’s promises of future seven-figure checks—probably helped.
But there was something flattering in knowing I’d made the right choice in my wife, that she was so gorgeous—as I’d seen while she’d been still waiting tables—and she was mine, but the world would now recognize it, too, while she adorned their posters and screens.
“Hayley, my how spectacular you look tonight!”
“Thanks Reggie!”
“Give my love to Aaron. He’s been looking for you.”
I felt like telling all these guys at the party who kept slipping surreptitious glances Hayley’s way: I got her first. I noticed her when the world didn’t.
There weren’t just surreptitious glances, there were outright stares, and there were smiles. I saw Hayley returning some of those smiles, and my stomach lurched. Hayley flashing expressions I had never seen before—suggestive, naughty, dangerous. Oh, I knew it was Hollywood, it was all make-believe, she was an actress. But the looks she was giving men all around the room hinted that she might be available later if they had a few minutes and a darkened room.
I caught myself, recognizing how ridiculous I was, hoping for and fearing the possibility that all this would tempt my beautiful wife into some naughty indiscretion. This was just business. It wasn’t what you knew, it was who you knew, and like any actress plucked from nowhere to star in a major motion picture, Hayley had to make connections fast, else she’d quickly slip off the fast-track career ladder.
“Haaay-leeee!”
And there was Aaron Simpson, Jesus. A man I had been watching in darkened movie theaters since I was a boy.
“Oh my God!” He was making a beeline for us. Jesus.
“Hey, Aaron,” Hayley was all smiles, of course. The perfect networker.
“My God, you look good enough to eat,” the Hollywood megastar said, unconcerned that she might have a date on her arm.
“This is…uh…my husband.”
Aaron Simpson turned his hundred million dollar smile toward me. He did a good job faking friendliness, but his practiced smile didn’t quite touch his eyes.
“Nice to meet you, sir,” he said, full of false enthusiasm.
“Uh… hi. Great to meet you—I’ve seen all your movies,” I said, feeling small, pathetic, that last comment slipping through my lips without thinking, embarrassing me as it turned out.
“Good to know,” Aaron nodded, making me feel he’d heard such platitudes so many times before, it wasn’t worth commenting on these days. He turned back to Hayley, undressing her with his eyes.
“Listen, sweetie, I wanted to talk to you about another project we might do together,” he said.
Hayley’s eyes lit up, a faint flush appearing in her pale face. Jesus, she looked like a schoolgirl with a crush who had just noticed her and suggested they go out for coffee some time.
“I’d…I’d love to,” she said, slightly out of breath, dazzled by this most famous of men despite having worked with him so closely for so many weeks. A moment passed, and she realized her utterance wasn’t quite fully professional. She clarified herself: “I mean, of course. We’ll have to set up a meeting.”
Aaron nodded, smiling warmly this time, genuine when it was directed at Hayley.
For a beat, they just stared at each other, as though flirting telepathically.
“Enjoy the movie,” Aaron said to me as he turned on his heels and sauntered away. I couldn’t fault the guy, he was charming.
*
I watched my stunning wife silently observing the superstar floating off into the crowd, feeling faintly nauseated and yet elated by just how bewitched she seemed to be by him. As I excused myself for a moment to visit the restroom before the movie began, I also found to my surprise that I was quite unbelievably erect in response to the way this other man so thrilled Hayley.
Even after a while of experiencing this fantasy, I couldn’t really tell whether I’d actually be able to cope with it happening right before my eyes. It was complicated.
“See you in there?” her voice now broke me from my thoughts.
“Uh…sure,” I said, concealing the confusion circulating inside me.
“Don’t take too long—it’s supposed to start in five minutes.”
“Sure, honey. Won’t be a minute.”
I didn’t really need the restroom. I just needed a breather. I wandered upstairs, and found another bar catering to a similarly stellar crowd, though without Hayley on my arm I could slip in undetected. People stared through me—I was the invisible man. It was fine: I headed to the quietest corner of the bar and ordered an iced water, and at least there I felt I could just pause and think for a moment or two.
Hayley was a professional actress now, and by the signs of it, her career was really starting to take off. The sense I got from the people surrounding her in this party was that she had a future. There were so many people trying to butter her up, get on her good side. Of course she was going to come up against some of the most attractive men around. I’d always known I’d have to deal with it at some stage—I’d always had confidence she’d mak
e it someday, even while she’d been merely waiting tables at a coffee shop in the East Village.
She deserved recognition for her hard work, her considerable acting talent—and, yes, for her beauty too.
I took a few deep breaths, calming myself, though strangely happy about the prospect of other people recognizing what a beauty my wife was—how that might build her confidence, add to that sexy little glint in her eye. Oh, I felt the jealousy, like acid in my stomach. I felt the cold fear that any moment, Hayley might become a bona fide celebrity, and therefore subject to the rules of celebrity, namely that marriages involving famous people always failed.
Yet the thought that someone as high and mighty as Aaron Simpson might envy me my wife made me feel curiously satisfied. The idea that Hayley could drive a man like that wild on set, and then come home to me, made me feel immense pleasure.
A couple of guys I didn’t recognize filled the space at the bar next to me, and I hardly gave them a second look. I couldn’t fail to hear their conversation, though.
“The critics won’t like it, but when has Aaron Simpson ever bothered with pleasing the critics?”
“He gets the box office, that’s the important thing.”
The tuxedo-clad guys seemed oblivious to who might be able to overhear their conversation just then. I just sipped my iced water and pretended I was off in my own world.
“It’s a happy coincidence that when he chooses a movie just so he gets the chance to bang another hot little starlet in front of the cameras, the audiences like it, too.”
I caught my breath, my heart rate suddenly picking up.
“Happy coincidence indeed. Well, apparently he’s stretched the boundaries to the full this time. It’ll be interesting to see how the audiences react.”
Sitting there listening to the conversation, I found myself recalling Hayley’s continued mantra: It’s only a movie. She’d said it so many times before they’d finally come out for this screening. But I was anxious about what the movie would finally be like—and how people would treat Hayley after seeing it.
She's a Star (a Hollywood Hotwife story) Page 6
