Slowly, voices began to talk again. Then the music came back on with a burst of noise, as though someone had paused an iPod while the film was on and had simply hit “play” again. Brianna turned to me and smiled. “That was pretty funny. Those old hairdos and clothes.”
I mumbled something and then added, “I guess Tiffany didn’t like it much.” I motioned up at the empty railing. “She left.”
Brianna said, “She’s really emotional lately, for obvious reasons, I suppose. She seems to think everyone’s out to get her. She’s become really secretive.”
“How so?”
“She’s pretty much stopped talking to people. She’s been fighting with Ed constantly for the last couple of days. A lot of it has to do with money and who’s going to run the business. I’ve been trying to stay out of it.” She grinned. “Fly below the radar, you know. But like I said, with Don gone, I gotta get out of here. Tiffany never really liked me anyway.”
I drank another beer. Then got another. Then we went out on the deck overlooking the city lights. My head was starting to float on my shoulders and, as we passed the roaring gas grill near the edge of the pool, I realized I hadn’t eaten anything. I started to think about work and getting up Monday morning, and I began to wonder if the party was ever going to end. Then I took another look around—these people’s whole lives were a party.
Brianna came up beside me as I leaned against the railing, staring out at the lights of downtown, the cluster of skyscrapers that sparkled like jeweled matchboxes in the distance. “Helluva view,” I said.
“It’s better from the upper deck. There’s no bushes around you, it’s like you’re floating in the sky.” I felt her take my hand and lead me back into the house. Her flesh was warm and incredibly soft. We went in through the French doors, into the room with the pink pool table, into the hallway, and then turned up some stairs I hadn’t noticed before.
I stumbled on one of the steps and splashed beer on the carpet. “Oh, shit,” I mumbled.
“Don’t worry about it,” she laughed, “this whole place is covered with one kind of liquid or another.”
I was bent over, leaning on the stair she was standing on, and looked up at her. I reached over for my plastic cup without looking, and accidentally grabbed her bare ankle. The skin of her lower leg was so smooth and firm, my face must have registered shock. I pulled my hand away as if from something hot, and she grinned down at me with a look of surprise and pity, as if she couldn’t quite decide what to do with me.
“Sorry,” I said, as a mixture of desire and fear came over me. She saw it in my eyes and her smile widened.
“For what?” she tilted her head as she spoke, and then leaned over and took my hand. The flash of breasts down the front of her dress as she bent over caused a kind of panic inside me as she led me by the hand up the rest of the stairs and down a long corridor.
As we went down the hallway, she turned to me and put a finger to her lips, urging quiet. We padded over the thick carpet, past several doorways that opened into bedrooms and bathrooms. Turning a corner, I looked into one room and caught a flash of Tiffany Vargas hunched in a chair in the corner of her bedroom holding a small wooden box in her lap. All I could see was that she was crying.
We made it to another corner and turned again, I spoke in a drunken whisper, “Where are we going?”
Brianna turned back toward me, laughing, but keeping quiet. Then she whispered, “The view. Trust me, it’s great up here.”
I wasn’t even sure what side of the house we were on anymore until she ducked through a doorway and into a large bedroom with a sitting area. We were in one of the south corners of the house. At one end of the room was an entryway that led into a dressing area, with another room beyond. At the other end were more French doors, leading out to a veranda with unobstructed views to the south and west.
“Nice room,” I said. “It looks like a suite at a Four Seasons.”
She smiled and said, “This is my room.” Then she turned and crossed to the doors, opened them, and stepped out into the night air.
I finished my beer and set it on a table she had next to a black leather Eames lounge chair. There was a book spread open on the table. I caught the title: The Rise of the Network Society. I figured she either liked to impress people, or she liked to hide from them. I was leaning toward the latter, which only magnified the question: what was I doing there?
I followed her out on the deck. She was right. The view was incredible. The party continued on the deck and around the pool below us, but we were alone and removed from the fray. I stood beside her. She leaned some of her weight against me and crossed her arms in front of her, rubbing her bare triceps.
She said, “It’s getting cold out here.”
I didn’t get it at first. I stood there, my head sagging with the weight of too many drinks, mesmerized by the billions of glittering lights suspended in the darkness. Then she said it again, rubbed her arms some more, and leaned a little more weight against me.
Without thinking about it much, I got behind her and put my arms around her, hands rubbing the goose-bumped bareness of her upper arms. She leaned back against me. The smell of her hair and the solid curves of her back and thighs and ass against me were overwhelming. I put my arms across the front of her, I could feel those breasts, separated from me by only a millimeter of cloth. She squirmed slightly, her entire body a sexual instrument.
I looked down at the people around the pool and wondered what they would think if they looked up and saw us there, leaning against the railing, sinking into our self-absorbed abandonment. And the thought reminded me of the night before, leaning against the wall on the beach, staring up at Ben Cross and that woman, being thankful for the moment that Liz hadn’t been there.
Brianna seemed to sense my sudden burst of rational thought. She turned to face me, her entire body so close, I was nearly lost again. “What is it?” she whispered.
“Nothing.” I shook my head. I wanted her, though I was still unsure if she wanted me, if that was exactly where this was heading. But my brain began to spin, and the lights and the party noise spun right along with it. “I’m not feeling well,” I said. Even in my state, I managed to avoid mentioning Liz. “I would love to stay a little longer, but I’m afraid I won’t be any good to anyone. I might even be sick.”
I let go of her and backed away a couple steps. I rubbed my face and found a hot sweat there. She came toward me with concern on her face. “Maybe you should lie down.”
“No,” I said, and turned to go. Suddenly worried about it being late, and having to get up for work in the morning. My mind racing with a million reasons why it was inconvenient to stay there, why I simply had to leave, immediately.
And I did. I left her there on the deck and made my way out of the house. My entire body was overcome with heat as I crossed the driveway and headed down the edge of Mulholland toward my car. I filled my lungs with the night air, trying to cool myself down, but my vision grew spotty from the heat and movement.
Moments later, I was leaning against my car, trying to put the key in the door. Then I was clinging to it, trying to stay upright, the evening’s consumption gurgling back up my throat and across the black paint of the car door. I heaved over and over, my insides spastic with the need to get the entire night out of me. And when it finally stopped, that swift clarity that follows a violent sickness came over me. I hung loosely against the door, my entire body slack against the car, breathing heavy. Suddenly cool and clammy, but clam.
Then I felt hands on my shoulders and heard a voice. “Whoa there, son. You wanna get yourself killed? Or worse? You in no condition to do any kind of driving.”
I turned to see the black man, the gate keeper, grinning at me and shaking his head. He took the keys from my hand. I didn’t fight him for them. “I got a phone in the office,” he motioned back behind him with his thumb, toward the tiny gatehouse. “I’ll call you a cab. You can thank me for saving your life someday.”
>
IX
I was alone, but not without her. The thought occurred to me in the cab on the way home. By the time I got there, after forty minutes of cold night air blowing in my face, I knew I’d done the right thing. But that didn’t mean I had to miss her completely.
I stumbled around the apartment, my movements slow and exaggerated. I was shocked to discover it wasn’t that late at all, barely eleven at night. I told myself I should go to bed, get the day over with, but I lingered in the kitchen drinking water. My curiosity was unshakable. I was home. I was safe. I was alone. What was the problem, I wondered? What could it hurt?
Two minutes later the laptop was booted up and running. Thirty seconds after that, the high speed Internet connection was running a search for “Brianna Jones.” In those brief moments before the results came back, I pondered my ignorance. Perhaps she wasn’t in the business. Perhaps she was just a pretty girl who happened to live with these people. It was possible. But the computer told me otherwise.
There were thousands of hits. Her name was common enough that I’m sure many of them were irrelevant, but the ones at the top of the Google page were all about her. The very top listing was for a page called “BriannaRamma”—the official website of the world’s hottest new porn star, it told me.
I clicked the link and there she was, taut and tan and topless in a bright red g-string. Had I not seen her an hour ago, I would have sworn the picture was fake. I tried to enter the site, but there was a thirty-dollar monthly fee. I went back and surfed other sites, but most had only clipped or crude images of her clearly pirated from her movies. All in all, it seemed she had managed to keep pretty tight control over her image. I took it as a sign she was doing something right.
I returned to her website, got out a credit card, and signed up. I told myself it was merely curious fascination. I’d just had her leaning against me for crying out loud. Who was she? What did I know about her? Nothing, I told myself. But I was about to learn a few things.
The first thing I learned was that Brianna Jones was big business. The website was huge, well-designed, and structured so that the thirty bucks a month was just the beginning. For that, a customer could look at libraries of pictures and watch streaming clips from her movies, which appeared to number in the dozens. And of course, direct downloads could be purchased from the website “So you can do a download of your own anytime you’re off line”—Brianna assured her customers.
And then there were a variety of toys for sale, each with Brianna’s seal of approval: “This rubber pussy was made from a mold of my own hot, wet cunt. It looks and feels like the real thing. And I should know! Don’t just jerk off to me guys, fuck me!” or “Sometimes a girl just needs a big, thick cock. But most of the time there’s no one around. When that happens, I reach for this ten inch monster. Give your wife or girlfriend what every woman really wants, (Sorry guys! It’s true) she’ll love you even more (and give you the best blowjob you’ve ever had!)”
But the biggest thing of all were the private parties. These were weekly online interactive video chats. Brianna would take requests from the audience, which was limited to twenty-five people, each of whom would pay $200 for the hour. In addition, she would auction off “one-on-one” chat sessions where she would do a private hour, once a week, for the highest bidder. She had two and a half million followers on Twitter and nearly as many on Facebook. Where the hell had I been?
I clicked on a movie. A scene from a gym. A trainer showing her his equipment. I wondered if the man had been at the party. He made a joke and she giggled—naturally, innocently—she could actually act. But it was the way she looked at him. Her eyes naïve, almost doughy. It was totally convincing, like she really was just a girl looking for a new gym and had no idea what was about to happen. Was I fascinated because I knew her? Or was she really that good? On the surface, it was like any other pornography, and yet it was addictive in a way I’d never thought possible. She lay on a weight bench in a gym, clinging to the upright posts for stability, as the man pounded her repeatedly. She looked like she loved every second of it, and with each squeal and gasp, I imagined her beneath me in that bedroom where I’d left her.
We all worked ourselves into a frenzy together. She on a digital file made at some other place and time. Me with my pants around my ankles at our cramped dinette. And when it was over, I went to bed and thought of her, unable to shake the sensation of her weight against me.
Monday
November 4
X
The paper said it all with a single announcement: Officer Cleared in Halloween Shooting. Jendrek slapped his palm down on it and shook his head. “Fuckers do it every time. I knew they would. Didn’t I say it? Friday?” He was looking directly at me. “Jesus Christ, they practically quote me. It’s like they were listening in on our conversation. Christ, they couldn’t even wait a week to make it look good. Cleared the bastard over a weekend.”
He picked up the paper and snapped it stiff in front of him, peering over his reading glasses to read. “‘Officer Davis acted out of fear for his own safety and the safety of others,’ Police Chief Dixon said, in an official statement. ‘It is always tragic when accidents happen, and the entire Los Angeles Police Department grieves with the Vargas family, and we offer our deepest sympathy in this time of tragedy. I only hope that God’s mercy will heal them in this time of grief.’ Give me a fucking break. ‘Police work is difficult and dangerous and requires quick and immediate judgments to be made based on the facts as they are known at the time. Had Officer Davis known the gun was a movie prop, he never would have fired. However, under the facts and circumstances, he was justified in taking the actions he took.’”
Jendrek threw the paper down on Ellen’s desk and put his hands on his hips. “You believe that shit?”
This was the Jendrek I’d been waiting for. This was the man I knew would come out of hiding before long. It was the same every time. He would focus on the bad aspects of a case until he drove himself crazy, convincing himself it was unwinnable, and then outrage would strike. Anything could set it off. And when the outrage arrived, Jendrek could give fire and brimstone stump speeches that would make Clarence Darrow jealous.
“I guess Chief Dixon doesn’t think the Constitution applies in the City of Los Angeles. Perhaps he’s not familiar with a little thing James Madison and I like to call the Fourth Amendment. And we’re not alone. We’re in good company. Seems to me a fellow by the name of Thomas Jefferson, and some wacko named John Adams both thought the Fourth Amendment was a pretty goddamned good idea too.”
When the forefathers came out, it was time to step aside. Jendrek rubbed his forehead. Flushed now. Veins emerging. He ran his fingers through his hair, scratching at the back of his head. Ellen sat behind her desk and smiled at me. She’d done twenty years with Jendrek and she’d seen it all. She sipped her coffee while he fumed. For a minute, I thought it might be over, but then he stuttered for a second, trying to get the words out, and then they came in a torrent.
“I mean, what’s going on around here? Has everyone lost their mind? Is it too much to ask that people do their jobs right? When did the rule become shoot and ask questions later? It’s Halloween for God’s sake. You’re responding to a noise disturbance. It never even occurs to this ignorant fucker—what’s his name?” Jendrek swiped the paper off the desk and focused on it again. “Davis. Officer James Davis. It never occurs to that stupid son of a bitch that it might be a costume? And they do a whitewash over a weekend? Who do they think they’re fooling?”
Jendrek threw the paper down again. He stood with his hands balled in fists, catching his breath and collecting his frazzled thoughts. He seemed to really notice me for the first time that morning. He squinted and said, “What the hell is wrong with you?”
I was so hung over I could barely function. My skin was the color of chalk and my mouth tasted like a cat had shit in it. “Nothing,” I said.
Jendrek guffawed and said, “Catch yourself a l
ittle cocktail virus, did you? You ought to start spending your Sundays in a different church.”
I grunted and turned to go into my office. “I’d burst into flames if I went into a real church,” I said, over my shoulder. I was halfway into my office when I heard the main door open. We all turned to see who it was.
Tiffany Vargas stood in the open doorway, holding the knob in her hand, looking at us like she’d walked in on something private. She wore a dark blue tailored suit with a knee-length skirt and carried a red Louis Vuitton bag I only recognized because Liz had pointed one out to me once. It was oddly conservative, but failed to hide her curvy body.
She flashed me a brief smile of recognition, and I remembered that the last time I saw her she was sitting in her bedroom in tears. “Good morning,” she said, and then noticed the newspaper in a pile on Ellen’s desk. “I see you’ve already seen the paper.”
Jendrek came to life quicker than the rest of us and approached her with a rush. “Ms. Vargas, please, come in.” He took hold of the door and closed it behind her. I watched her eyes do a quick survey of our cramped, tattered space. Jendrek offered her coffee, which she declined, and then the three of us went into Jendrek’s office and closed the door.
She remained standing after Jendrek and I sat. Her urged her to sit, but she refused, saying, “There’s no need to prolong this. I was on my way downtown to meet with my lawyer, Mr. Stanton, and I figured I should come by and see you in person.”
The way she referred to Stanton as “her lawyer” struck me funny, and I caught Jendrek giving me a glance as she said it. His eyes seemed to recognize what was coming. He interrupted and said, “Ms. Vargas, I’m sure the newspaper upset you this morning. We anticipated that would happen. We discussed it with Ed on Friday.”
The Flaming Motel Page 9
