by Lois Greiman
I was starting to drool in earnest. Note to self: When attending a Hollywood event with starlets the width of my pinky finger, do not wait to eat until you get there. That would be an erro—
Just then, someone approached from behind.
“Hey, Vinny. How’s the knee?”
I glanced up, bug-eyed.
As it turns out, George Clooney is a god. He stood to my right, talking to Angler as if they were bosom buddies. But in a moment it was all over. Or maybe his smile had made me disoriented.
“See anyone you know?” Vincent asked.
Clooney was walking away. I blinked and glanced up at my escort. His expression was as animated as an apricot’s. I tried to match his stoicism, but my tongue felt a little blocky.
“I think I recognize a few faces.” I was going for that admirable apricot attitude, but the saliva dripping from my chin might have given me away. Still, I scanned the crowd in the hopes of remaining upright.
Angler chuckled and slipped his hand a little lower, hovering over the swell of my too large ass as my mind did a little exploration into reality. It’s a state I don’t often visit, but I was beginning to wonder if he had lied to the media about his sexual orientation. Before I could inquire, however, he spoke.
“You okay if I leave you alone for a while?” he asked. “There’s someone here I’ve been meaning to terrorize.”
“Sure,” I said. “I’m a big girl.”
“Noticed that,” he said, and smoothed his palm over my behind.
“Vincent?” I glanced up. It was now or never.
“Yeah?” He was glowering into the crowd.
“You are gay, right?”
“We’ll see,” he said, and almost smirking, glided away.
I pondered that for a while, but the sea of beautiful people was so intimidating I felt the need to eat. In fact, they seemed to be washing me toward the buffet table. I hadn’t had anything but a dry bagel all day, and even though the other women in the room probably hadn’t eaten since their tenth birthdays, I, for one, was hungry. I was also pretty sure I could take the waiter if his task really was to keep the buffet safe from all comers.
I scanned the table, keeping an eye on the hovering waitstaff. The stuffed shrimp looked fantastic. I could do without the escargot, but the bruschetta called to me. My stomach spoke eloquently of missed meals and the coming seven years of drought. I was just about to fulfill my biblical obligations to store up when a woman approached the other side of the table. She looked vaguely familiar and though I couldn’t put a name to her, she had that sleek, starved look so popular in our overfed part of the universe. She took a radish cut like a rose and two pretzels before moving away. I scowled, wondering grouchily if I was expected to do the same. When in Rome and all that crap …
But just then I saw the kabobs. I would have passed them by as too fattening and potentially mermaid-gown messing, but the center of the friendly little skewer held a pineapple chunk and I hadn’t yet had my daily dose of antioxidants. Fetching a plate, I delicately put the skewer in the center, but it looked a little lonely there so I added a little dab of hummus and a splayed stick of celery. My ensemble then seemed to lack color. It was, therefore, my duty to add flare to the palette. A trio of chocolate-dabbed strawberries did that nicely. Their little green caps looked saucy beside the tiny cream puff I added. Then there were small clusters of red grapes. They had been sprinkled with something. Maybe fairy dust. Maybe sugar. Both were good. I popped one directly into my mouth.
“It’s nice to see a woman eat,” my date said, appearing behind me.
Still masticating, I added a triangular sandwich to my plate. “It’s nice …” I began, but in that moment a memory tripped in my mind. I turned slowly, and sure enough, the newcomer wasn’t my date at all. It was someone blond and yummy with a little boy smile and dimples deep enough to drown in. “… to eat,” I finished numbly.
His grin cranked up another notch, then, scanning the buffet, he snagged an unassuming carrot from the assortment, and tossed it into his mouth. “Enjoy,” he said, and ambled away.
I watched, slack-jawed.
“Yeah, it’s the shits,” someone said near my elbow.
“Was that …?” My voice sounded funny, then gave up altogether.
“Brad Pitt?”
I managed a nod.
He chuckled. “Yeah. For the rest of your life you’ll remember that the only words you ever uttered in his presence were ‘It’s nice to eat.’” He chuckled. “Look on the bright side, though. He probably hasn’t heard that line before.”
I turned numbly toward him. He was young and short and as cute as a baby chick.
“I’m Ethan,” he said. “Ethan Engles.”
I blinked, numbly wondering what the hell my alias was supposed to be.
I guess he misunderstood my silence for star shock because he said, “He’s not that good-looking,” in a somewhat insulted tone.
I was going to object, but someone beat me to the punch.
We turned toward the newcomer in unison. He was lean and pale with long-fingered hands and a hooked nose.
“I don’t think we’ve met,” Ethan said to him.
“Kenny Vogue.” They shook hands. “I worked with Pitt on Troy. He spent half the time in nothing but a metal skirt. Trust me—he is that good-looking. And he kept us in stitches half the time.”
“Looks and personality … there ought to be a law,” Ethan said.
“Amen,” I said.
They looked at me.
“Are you in the business?” Kenny asked.
I swallowed, then daintily wiped my mouth with a napkin the size of a plantar wart. “Ummm …”
“Wait. Don’t tell me,” Kenny said. “Didn’t I see you in—”
Ethan snapped his cute little fingers. “You were in Morel’s movie, weren’t you? Taken!”
“The prostitute,” they said in unison.
I choked a little on the first bite of my strawberry. “What?”
“The prostitute that Neeson talks to in Paris.”
“What’s your stage—” Kenny asked, but Ethan interrupted.
“No. Don’t tell me. I never forget …” He paused, then, “Fani,” he said. “Fani Kolarova.”
I gave a laugh and a modest little shrug. I had no idea what they were talking about.
“So you’re French.”
I covered a ladylike cough with my hand. “Oui?” I said.
“Too bad you didn’t get more screen time,” Kenny said.
“You did a nice job with the part,” Ethan added.
I cleared my throat. I meant to deny it all. I really did, but my plate was piled up with enough food to feed Indonesia and I suddenly felt the Hollywood angst like a cancer in my throat. “Just a … petite part,” I said, demure as a kitten.
“You know what they say … there are no small parts,” Ethan said.
“It’s true,” Kenny agreed.
“I disagree,” someone said. We turned. A woman stood beside me. She was dressed in a red, floor-length sheath that skimmed her well-honed body like a crimson wave. Her hair, dark and glossy as a pampered seal, nearly reached her waist. She brushed it behind one shoulder. Slim muscles flexed gracefully in her arms. “I worked on Gigli, remember?”
They laughed. I did, too, even though Ben Affleck was another actor I would be happy to watch gargle. So what if the film had offended half its viewership and put the other half to sleep?
“Nadine, have you met Fani?” Kenny asked.
“No.” She skimmed her gaze up my coppery form and raised her brows when she reached my strawberry blond mane. “I don’t believe I have.”
“Fani Kolarova, this is Nadine Gruber, hairdresser to the stars.”
“And philanthropist,” Ethan added.
She pulled her attention from my lion’s mane. I wondered uncomfortably if she recognized it from Queen’s set. “You’re too kind,” she said.
“Nadine is single-handedly savi
ng the California condor.”
“Any publicity is good publicity,” she said, then grinned wryly at herself. “I’m just kidding. I love those ugly birds. I’m just trying to do my part. Those of us in the entertainment business, with a few exceptions, of course, aren’t nearly as self-centered as people believe. Many of us feel the need to give back.”
I watched her. “You are an actress as well?”
She turned toward me again, smiling prettily. She was not a young woman, but she had been as carefully preserved as Grandma’s sweet pickles. I couldn’t even begin to imagine the kind of exercise regimen it would take to keep every muscle so perfectly toned. She’d probably spent half her life in warrior III pose.
“I was for a time,” she said, and laughed. “Until I was cured.”
The guys laughed with her. I managed to look confused. It wasn’t that hard.
“Cured?”
“Acting is a brutal business,” she said. “The mad rush followed by hours of boredom drains body and mind of its natural vitality. Far better for me to work in the background, where I have time to hone my craft properly.”
“You do a beautiful job at Queen,” Ethan said.
“Well …” She shrugged. “I have excellent people to work with. Patricia, especially, has glorious hair.”
“Only made better by your care.”
“I am developing an excellent earth-based hair care …” she began, but suddenly her words were swept into a soundless abyss, because just then I spotted Adonis. He wasn’t wearing the usual tux. Instead, he had donned an open-necked poet’s shirt. Black jeans hung low on his hips. His skin was dark, his eyes as blue as God’s heaven. He glanced toward me. Our gazes met. His grin was sparkling white and a little wicked.
I believe I said something like, “Ugga,” and then he was sauntering toward me, big shoulders drawn back, all chest and smolder and beard stubble. The rest of the room seemed to fade to gray, evaporating into smoke until he stood before me like a mermaid’s wet dream.
“Hello,” he said, nodding toward my companions. For reasons unknown, their names had scattered like frightened poultry from my mind. It might have been the fact that Adonis had an accent. Or a chest. Or a smile that could light up the Getty Center.
“Sergio,” they said, and then he turned toward me.
“We’ve not met,” he said, and held out his hand. It was in that instant that I recognized him. Give him a loincloth and a hip brand and he was everyone’s favorite slave.
Morab.
20
What can I do to pleasure you, my queen?
—Morab the man-slave, just
before Chrissy awoke
I fumbled with my plate for a moment, wondered wildly who I was, what I was doing there, and if my underwear was on fire. “I’m …” I glanced at Kenny. “Fani.”
Our hands met. A little dab of sugar/fairy dust had somehow been sprinkled on my knuckles and subsequently smeared up against his pinky finger.
“Oh.” The word sounded oddly breathy from my lips.
“I … Sorry.”
“Not to worry,” he said, and sliding his fingers from mine, sucked the offending digit into his mouth. Swear to God, my own went dry. Every ounce of moisture drained from my head like water down a drain.
One of the other guys cleared his throat. “Well,” he said. “I seem to have become invisible.”
“Gay,” said the other, raising his hand.
I think the three of them eventually drifted away together. Or maybe they evaporated.
I knew I should feel badly about ignoring them, but seriously, I didn’t have a choice. It was like contemplating sauerkraut when you have cheesecake on your plate.
“Fani.” Sergio purred the name. “How is it that we’ve not met before?”
“I have been …” Foolish. What had I possibly been wasting my time on that I hadn’t met him? I mean, he was alive, in this universe. “Busy.”
He was staring at me, possibly waiting for me to continue. Possibly just giving me time to stare in return.
“With work,” I added, remembering belatedly that I was an actress … and—dear God in heaven—foreign.
“Ahh, on location?”
My mind was rattling around in my head like a walnut in a hamster ball. “Ahhh … oui.”
“And where is it you’ve been?”
Jesus, oh Jesus, oh Jesus, I thought, and searched wildly for some remote locale we would not have to discuss in a million millennia. “Minsk?”
“Yes?” He looked thrilled. “I, too, have worked in Minsk. Ahh, I lost my heart to the Svisloch. And the Belarusian theaters. Have you yet visited the Bolshoi?”
Jesus God. I’d never been to Minsk. I’d be lucky as hell to find it on a map. “Non. I have been quite busy while in …” Holy crap, what country was Minsk in? Or was it a country? “Minsk. Though I do not have a large part in the film.”
He smiled and skimmed his gentian gaze down my now steaming body. “Well, I am certain with a figure such as yours that will not be true for long. Sim?”
I wondered vaguely if swooning had gone out of style. But maybe it was a moot point. The gown had been pretty tight to begin with—adding the dusted grape may have been more than my lungs could accommodate. “And what of you?” I asked. As if I didn’t know. As if he wasn’t featured in every dream where Rivera didn’t make an appearance.
He shrugged. “I have been on location also.”
“Yes? For a film?”
“A series. It is called Amazon Queen.”
I leaned away and widened my eyes. “You joke!”
“I do not. I am Morab,” he said, and grinned as he hooked a thumb into his jeans. “Would you care to see my brand?”
“Yes.”
His dark brows rose. “Truly?”
I gave myself a mental shake and followed it with a hard slap. What the hell was wrong with me? I was a known actress. Fani. Or something like that. “I mean to say … oui, I recognize you now. You are one of the man-slaves, are you not?”
“I am so flattered that you have seen my work,” he said, and removed his thumb from his jeans.
I didn’t even cry.
He shrugged, still grinning. “The scripts … they are not so wonderful. But there are many fans and I am hoping …” He gave me a lopsided grin. He looked as tasty as a Fudgesicle. “I am hoping what we all hope. Sim?” he said, and laughed at himself.
“To be discovered,” I guessed.
“I know … it is not likely.”
With his looks? Was he kidding? I’d pay full box office price just to watch him blink. Who needs a damned script? Put him in his loincloth … or not. An image of him naked zipped like a naughty Tinkerbell through my mind, but I shook my head and focused on the subject at hand. Opportunity was knocking.
“And what of Ruocco?” I asked, remembering Elaine had said he seemed too accepting of her success. “It is said she is not the easy one to work with.”
“Elaine?” he said.
I nibbled on a celery stick. “That is her true name?”
“Some call her Brainy Laney.”
I scowled. “Brainy?”
“It means … ahh … inteligente. Smart.”
“Ahh, this is American humor, yes? Because she is not smart?”
“I, too, thought there must be something wrong with her when we first met, but …” He shrugged.
“Well,” I said, not giving up, “I have seen her act.”
He eyed me skeptically, reminding me that on more than one occasion men had seemed willing to sacrifice their lives for Laney’s honor. Sacrificing mine would maybe be no sacrifice at all. I waited, breath held, for him to stab me with my own skewer, but he only sighed.
“For a while I, too, was envious. I thought … why not me? You know? But she is a good person. Everyone … they adore her.”
Now we were getting somewhere. “Everyone?”
“Well …” He leaned closer. He smelled like sea foam and orgasms.
Try concentrating with those scents titillating your olfactory system. “There is a rumor.”
“Oh?”
“I do not think anyone is to know this.”
Just tell me, goddamnit, I thought, and made a crossing-my-heart motion.
“Last spring the whole of the cast got a raise in pay. Some say it is because of Elaine. That she asked for less so that each of us could receive the more.”
Oh, Laney, I thought. Have I taught you nothing? “And this you believe?”
“It is something she might do.”
“Where did you hear this rumor?”
He shrugged, snagged a nearby broccoli floret, and popped it into his mouth. “Even Ghazi is wild for her, and he is the Muslim.”
“Ghazi?”
“The master of props. It is said that he is a prince and has two wives already. But perhaps his God does not care if he adds a nice Christian girl to his collection.”
My ears pricked up. “He hopes to marry her?”
He smiled. “He would have to join me and … how do they say … the remainder of the club.”
I felt my heart crack a little but tried to be strong. The show’s viewership was off the charts. The fact that most men watched it with the volume off didn’t make Laney any less appealing.
“Everyone, they adore her,” he repeated.
“That can’t be true,” I argued, and he scowled.
“Why do you say this?” he asked, and suddenly he almost seemed menacing.
I resisted taking a step back. “No reason,” I said.
He stared at me a moment, then shook his head. “I apologize,” he said. “I have been somewhat worried for her of late.”
“For her? Why? She has got what each one of us wants. Oui?”
“That is how it would seem, is it not?”
“I am wrong?”
He shook his head. “You have not seen the man she is to marry?”
As a matter a fact, I had. There was a reason I cried myself to sleep every night. “Non.”
“The man … he looks like …” He shook his head, exasperated. “A chimpanzee with bad hair.”
Thank you! I was beginning to think I was the only one who saw the resemblance. “Perhaps he is very nice,” I said, and almost—almost—felt a niggle of defensiveness.
He took a drink from his flute. “There is none so nice as that,” he said.
