by Kai Lu
You can't help with whom you fall in love; the heart's not that easy.
Beautiful, 22 year old Amelia Fontaine tries to balance college, modeling, work at a dead-end job, and her dreams in Hollywood, but can't seem to meet every demand, especially when the weight of her lovelife is thrown onto the scale. Will a seemingly too-good-to-be-true job advertisement —pinned to a coffee shop bulletin board—help her begin to make demands of her own?
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For Art’s Sake
Copyright © 2013 Kai Lu
ISBN: 978-1-77111-499-8
Cover art by Scott Carpenter
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For Art’s Sake
By
Kai Lu
For the Amelia we all know, and the Daniel we all hope to meet
Amelia pressed urgently on her brake pedal as the clumsy furniture delivery truck swerving in front of her skidded to a grinding, ponderous halt. The truck driver apparently decided halfway through the intersection of La Cienega and Wilshire Boulevard that he couldn’t beat the red light after all, and had stopped with the hulking vehicle awkwardly, uncomfortably blocking half the crosswalk. Pedestrians crossing Wilshire in both directions gave the driver—a sad, not unpleasant looking older man in a blue work hat—disapproving looks as they made their way around him.
“Slow,” sighed Amelia in answer to the How’s My Driving? sticker on the truck’s rear bumper. “Slow, and clumsy.”
She was supposed to be working the breakfast shift at Café Claire, one of the trendier upscale restaurants in Beverly Hills, but she had begged off coming in today from her boss—a pompous, thirty-five-ish little man named Cyril—telling him that she had gotten a big modeling job and would lose it if she couldn’t have the morning off. Cyril had told her she could indeed have the whole day off if she wanted, but she would have to give up her Friday night shift—the best night to get good tips—to Janice, a girl who had worked at the restaurant a few weeks longer than her, and who was one of Cyril’s favorites. Amelia seriously wondered if Janice and Cyril had slept together. Janice certainly flirted with him a lot. Cyril could be such a jerk.
Cyril-the-jerk probably didn’t really believe she had a big modeling job, but Amelia didn’t care. She probably wouldn’t believe it herself if she were in his shoes, though Amelia would never want to be an officious, five-foot tall, balding man from Whittier who tried to fake a French accent and a savoir faire with women.
She had told him she was a student and also a part-time model when she first interviewed for the waitress job seven months ago, and he had feigned credulity then—mostly, Amelia now realized, because he wanted sooner or later to get her into bed. Once it became unmistakably clear that it would happen neither sooner, later, nor ever, Cyril promptly found any and every excuse to nip and tuck at her hours so that she had the least of all nine girls who worked at the restaurant. Cyril was, to his credit, smart enough to do all this in such a way that it appeared perfectly natural and not the least bit punitive. Amelia told herself she would file for harassment or quit, but, like many things she promised herself, she didn’t follow through and she always showed up her next scheduled day.
“I’m a masochist,” she once told herself in the bathroom mirror as she brushed her teeth, bracing herself to endure eight hours of Cyril’s high-pitched, nasal flirtations. “A masochist, or at the very least, a coward.”
At least today, sitting in her car driving straight down Wilshire Boulevard from Korea Town to Beverly Hills, the four-times-a-week self-torture routine was broken, if only for one day. Maybe more, if it all worked out as she hoped and the whole thing wasn’t as crazy as it sounded over the telephone.
Traffic, while interminable, still allowed time for reflection. In the absence of anything on the radio beyond inane commercials for cars she couldn’t afford and songs she couldn’t stand, her thoughts drifted to last night, and how one phone call had set in motion a chain of events that might yet allow her to tell her boss to go fuck himself.
It was just a plain, black and white letter-sized ad tacked onto the coffee shop bulletin board—Amelia stopped there almost every day after work or school to buy a nonfat cafe latte and to engage in a harmless flirtation with the owner—next to a plethora of flyers for concerts, fitness clubs, and missing pets. Sometimes the sugar and creamer table was so crowded with such flyers that one couldn’t find the sugar and creamer anymore, but with her steaming latte in her hand, Amelia was glad this time that she didn’t see the sugar first. The ad wouldn’t have stood out except for the fact that it was tacked to the wall and the word Models was written in bold, black print across the top. Below it, tiny in comparison, were the words wanted for artist, $200 per day. Lower still were little tear-off tabs listing the advertiser’s telephone number. That was all. No name, email address, or specifics. Amelia saw that no one had torn off any tabs yet, and, somewhat shamefacedly, she slyly pulled the ad off the corkboard, folded it in half and slipped it into her purse.
Normally such a cryptic, nondescript ad wouldn’t even capture her notice, but it was so ambiguous—and Amelia was at that moment so unambiguously strapped for funds—that despite all the red flags her years of experience put up, she found herself dialing the number a few minutes after six in the evening, walking the few hundred yards home from the coffee house. In choosing to do so she experienced one of the shorter, more fascinating conversations of her young life.
“Hello?” a mild, male voice answered after four rings.
“Hi, yes, I’m calling about your ad.”
“My ad?”
“Yes, the one from the coffee shop in KoTo—models wanted for artist.”
“Oh yes, I only just put out the one flyer today. I was downtown for business and stopped at The Coffee Cove on my way back.” The voice paused for a moment, as if considering, then added, “Come to my studio at one twenty five Robertson Boulevard, Beverly Hills, between Olympic and Pico. Is nine o’clock tomorrow morning okay for you?”
Amelia was taken aback slightly, and looked at her cell phone as if it had unexpectedly nibbled her earlobe.
“I… um… oh…”
“Too early?” the voice continued without emotion, in a flowing, slightly melodic tone that had a curiously hypnotizing effect on her.
“No—no…” Amelia stammered, a bit flustered. “I mean, nine is good, I just thought…”
“Yes?”
“Don’t you want to know any information about me? I mean, my name, height, weight, hair color, age, and all that?”
“Would you not like more information about me?” the voice countered, the tone unerringly calm and reassuring, almost like audible silk.
“Well… Yes,” Amelia confessed.
“Good. We can talk about it tomorrow morning at
nine, then, face to face. If I can use you, I will. If you can use me, you should. If we can’t use each other, we turn around, and no harm done, correct?”
“I—I guess—I mean, I suppose so. But, the… I was wondering, will there be other models there?”
“I don’t even think you’ll be there, let alone anyone else,” replied the temperate voice in a lighthearted tone, though the speaker didn’t sound as if he was actually smiling.
“Huh? Uh, I mean, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that. To sound so rude, I mean. I just don’t understand.”
“People answer my ads all the time,” the voice explained suavely, polite but not quite familiar, “but when I tell them about my studio and my art over the phone they usually hang up quickly. The two hundred dollars a day—they think it’s a trick, or some kind of bizarre sex thing, or pornography, or some other crazy scam. Their loss. So, I’ve stopped being specific in my ads or over the telephone, and ask people to come to my studio to see for themselves what it’s all about. The few people who have actually worked with me have never complained about their experience. Most of them have come back to work with me again and again.”
What is it all about? Amelia burned to ask aloud.
“Do you prefer male models, or female models?” she asked rather pointlessly instead, nibbling her lip nervously. “Your ad has so little to say.”
“I take both, but that’s irrelevant. Are you a model?” the voice replied, with a precise patience and smoothness that intertwined incongruously with Amelia’s clumsy stammering. “And, are you a professional?”
“I… Yes, I am. Both.”
“And so am I,” the voice rejoindered mildly. “A professional, I mean—who works only with other professionals. You see? I trust your honesty and good faith, so now you must trust me if we are to be successful. I’ll see you tomorrow at nine, if you’ll actually come. One twenty five Robertson.”
“I will,” Amelia began, intrigued and a little scared, but the man on the other end had already hung up. She put her nearly wallet-sized cell phone in her purse, breathed a lungful of cold, night air, and wondered if she was crazy to actually want to go. Her latte had gone cold, she realized.
If you’ll actually go…
She laughed quietly at herself, gave a dollar to a homeless man sitting on the sidewalk, and, after a moment, gave him her latte, too.
“I’ll find a way to make it taste better,” the smiling derelict had reassured her when she informed him it was cold. Taking a glance back a few strides later she saw him removing a small bottle from his grease-stained military parka.
At least you’re honest, she thought, walking into the foyer of her apartment building.
One twenty five Robertson Boulevard, she repeated to herself silently as the 1930s-vintage steel elevator doors closed around her and brought her to her third floor apartment. She decided to study and go to bed early, in order to make her appointment on time.
But she couldn’t study, and she couldn’t sleep, either.
All that night, lying naked on her fold-down bed in the dark, she found thousands of reasons why she shouldn’t go swimming intermittently through her thoughts, even though she had already called Cyril only minutes after speaking with the mysterious stranger to ask for the next morning off. Perhaps this artist was some sort of pervert, or predator… Maybe he was a kidnapper, or psycho, a million times worse than tiny little Cyril and his bad toupees.
Cyril…that pompous little bastard. He claimed to be a native New Yorker—what was with the French accent, then? It wasn’t part of an overall theme for his restaurant, for he even went so far as to use the accent when he wasn’t around customers. Had he worn a beret, grown an eyebrow pencil mustache and carried baguettes, he could have carried the caricature to perfection. How he happened to manage such a popular restaurant in such a nice area was beyond Amelia’s powers of deduction. Amelia sighed, hints of guilty curiosity lacing her next thoughts—maybe he at least fucks like a Frenchman.
It had been a hard day, and tired though she was, she still wished—more guilt—that someone would just come and fuck the living shit out of her.
It certainly couldn’t hurt, and it had been a while. Far too long, in fact.
She had to read Mrs. Dalloway, the shortest of the six novels her class had to read this quarter, by this time next week, along with writing a five-page analysis of Virginia Woolf’s stream-of-consciousness technique, and its influence on modern-day women’s literature.
Just thinking about it made her head hurt, but at least her teacher was easy on her eyes. Her lunch conversations with girlfriends from the same class confirmed that she wasn’t alone in stressing over the assignment, nor in daydreaming about their young, couldn’t-be-more-than-forty professor, who made Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings a bit more bearable.
God, she thought to herself as she lay naked in the darkness of her tiny studio apartment—the walls were so thin she could hear her neighbor’s television—she could only vaguely remember the last time she had been with someone, though she exercised and kept herself waxed in a state of ready smoothness as if someone—not Cyril, of course—were making her cum all her problems away each night. Yeah, Cyril could have her—in his dreams.
Let him have his dowdy, frumpy Janice.
Janice, Amelia scoffed silently to herself. Too tall, too awkward, too skinny. Janice, who probably only faked being nice to Cyril, just like she only faked not remembering the time the both of them had—I am a masochist…She caught herself and stopped, shame washing over her face. In the slight chill of her room her nipples stood erect on her breasts. She closed her eyes and licked her lips, wishing they were still roommates, so she wouldn’t be alone.
“Oh, Janice,” Amelia murmured guiltily, silently to herself in the pitch blackness as she realized she had been hurling the most vile insults against best friend, “I’m such a fucking bitch… you’re not dowdy or frumpy…you got me my job in the first place…I owe you so much, I wish I could…Maybe I’m just bitter because you’re actually prettier than me, or you fuck better than me, or that at least you’re actually getting fucked—probably, anyway—while I…While I…”
But Janice wasn’t in the room to hear Amelia’s silent apology, much less the bitterness that motivated her remorse.
She was a few miles away in a West Hollywood apartment living with a male roommate, a supposedly-gay architect who probably fucked her silly regardless, just for the fun of it, their constant invitations for Amelia to come over and watch TV a tactless though nonetheless tempting invitation to join them.
Next time you ask, Janice, I’ll come…I’ll come…
Amelia gasped a little, as though unprepared to feel her pussy opening, and steaming wetness beginning to flow against her labia. A relaxing though intense heat radiated from between her spreading legs and coursed unerringly up her spine and through her body, making her arms feel helpless and weak, and her thighs melt. The cool air in the room seemed to blow directly against her hardening clitoris, and she felt the back of her head press involuntarily against her pillow, arching her back as fantasies filled her head in the blackness.
As her hand slipped from her breasts and rigid nipples to her slender stomach and finally between her thighs, Amelia felt her petty bitterness melt away as she had her own dreams, which were a surreal, sometimes black and white, sometimes vividly hued blur, taking different shapes and different people, dancing around her, swimming through her in many dimensions, all fucking her…fucking her…
In one instant she saw glimpses of her gorgeous, four-years-younger-than-her photojournalism crush, kneeling between her thighs in his ragged artist’s apartment, throwing her helpless, quivering legs over his broad shoulders and tonguing her steaming wet pussy to orgasm and beyond while she moaned in surrender …Oh God Ian, fuck me fuck me yes…In another instant she saw—felt—Janice expertly fingering her defenseless, vulnerable G-spot—you know you love this, you bitch, come on—while sucking mercilessly on
her rock-hard clitoris… Janice’s huge, white dildo the entire time pressing farther and farther, thicker and thicker, into her ass, impaling her slowly…
Stop…no…oh…ouch…oh…my God…
While she cried out in pain, pleasure, capitulation…her beautiful-but-gay Korean hairdresser kissing her, swirling his sweet tongue against hers, stroking her rock hard nipples and simultaneously finger-fucking her and massaging her anguished clit while Professor Vorhis fucked her savagely in her ass hole, his serious intellectual cock slamming her up and down as she lay on her back on top of him, asking him to punish her, punish her…give me more…
And now—the man behind the mysterious voice that promised her two hundred dollars tomorrow coming into the picture, just for doing something that wasn’t some bizarre sex thing…sucking him, his black silhouette faceless, swallowing him, biting him, his voice smoothly, unobtrusively coming inside her mind and staying there and convincing her, needlessly, that she was to orgasm now, Amelia…Climax now, you beautiful, defenseless obj—
When Amelia came, it was almost as if she was in a trance. She nearly screamed in stupefying, numbing pleasure, gasping as the shards of ecstasy slammed through her arching spine and shot directly into the base of her mind. When she came to, she realized that she had crammed three fingers into her soaking wet pussy, the quivering labia constricting intermittently as the last spasms of the powerful orgasm subsided slowly, her thumb brushing dexterously against her exhausted clit.
The sound of the television next door had stopped. All around her was silence, and she was alone again. A minute passed, then two.
Finally the television turned on again.
Oh God—Amelia! She scolded herself, feeling stupid, but unwilling to give back the climax.
