What Movies Made Me Do

by Susan Braudy

  “Let’s really kiss,” he urged me in a shaking voice.

  “Say it again.” I laughed.

  When he didn’t, I lifted my head over his, and pulled his soft lips to mine. He licked along the inside of my bottom lip. His tongue went wide and around and around mine. When I groaned, he said something into my mouth. I pulled away. “What?”

  “It’s going to be right this time.”

  I closed my eyes to feel his mouth on mine. My heart was hammering all over me. He pushed the sheet off of us, and I heard drumming. Rain blew in through an open window. I struggled to get up, but he smoothed his fingertips on my forehead. “Leave it open, it’s special.”

  “I’ll remember this for a long time,” I whispered.

  The wind changed direction while we sniffed cool breezes. It reminded me of winter nights in Philadelphia, necking in an open jeep with my teenage boyfriend, under my parents’ sycamore tree. Jack ran a possessive hand along the soles of my feet, squeezing my bare toes, clasping my ankles, my calves, and pushing up my pants cuffs to rub my knee. “Feel good?” he teased.

  “Mmm.”

  He brushed his fingertips over my trousers along the inside of my thighs. Pleasure suffused me. I remembered his hands on my face. I thought of the smile on his face when he pledged friendship. “I always forget,” I said.

  “Forget what?”

  “What this feels like. Otherwise I’d never get dressed up and go to the office again.”

  “You work too damn hard.” Neither of us moved. He was better than the best vacation.

  I sat up and undraped his bathrobe. He opened his arms. “Take me,” he said, “I surrender.” Looking at his narrow muscled chest made my legs contract. He lifted his knees and I pulled the bathrobe off. Rocky leapt up and padded out.

  “Too steamy for your pooch,” Jack whispered. He looked skinnier than ever. I was crouching by his ankles, and when I saw his erection I felt my own viscera contract.

  “Don’t take advantage of me,” he said, hiding his head under a pillow.

  “How would I do a thing like that?”

  He grinned and pulled my blouse over my head. Then he took off my trousers and underpants with big gestures as if he was unfurling a flag. “You been hiding lovely curves.”

  We looked at each other’s bodies a long minute, my arm curled around his neck. I was embarrassed to be naked with him. He rolled onto his side and squeezed my thighs with both hands. A warm tickle fluttered down to the soles of my feet. Sleepy pictures of him under the Israeli coats on the boat flickered through my brain.

  I yawned, stretching every muscle. “You awake?” he asked, crouched over me.

  “Totally.”

  He disappeared licking down my belly and between my legs. Spasms shook me and I held my breath. He inched his head back close to mine on the pillow, his chin glistening wet. “How’s it going?” he whispered.

  I traced his spine down to his buttocks and rubbed soothing circles there. “I like the way you touch me,” he said. I felt surrounded by him. He lurched down and pressed himself against the opening of my contracting sex. I opened my legs wide. He gasped and we paused, savoring smooth wet flesh alive with nerve ends. I felt him filling me smoothly with a friction that was pure music.

  “We fit,” he whispered in a little shriek. But a second later he pulled himself away, sitting back high on his heels, his sex organ shining.

  I crushed my thighs together. “Come back, please,” I whispered.

  Then he was over me, and all the way inside me, deep to where small muscles were contracting and tensing, waiting for him. I wrapped my arms and legs around him, the orgasm convulsing my body.

  Suddenly, like a needle jerking away from a phonograph record, the silence came loud and from nowhere. He pulled away from me, depleted and scared. I clasped my thighs, fighting the chill of wet loosened flesh exposed suddenly to air, no more friction and heat.

  He flopped over on his back and turned his head away, whistling. “First time for me, not working so well.” He cupped a hand over his sex organ lying loose in damp curling hair. “It’s us,” he said. “It’s not easy.”

  I was scared, I wanted to do anything to help him.

  He licked a circle around my breast. “I feel like a skinned grape. I’m not lying to you and saying the same old things and trying to stay cool.” He trailed his tongue up my arm and into my armpit, where it made warm shivers down to my thighs again.

  “I want this to be real.” I began crying.

  He brushed tears off my cheeks with his thumb. “It’s very, very real,” he said. “We’re two human beings in the middle of our lives, and we care for each other a whole lot.”

  “That’s right,” I said, and laid my cheek for a moment on his stomach and kissed the line of hair. “Can you hear my nerves going crazy?”

  “Almost.”

  I flicked my tongue down the soft underside of his penis and felt it stiffen. His salty flesh felt like the inside of my own mouth. I stiffened my lips and sucked between my cheeks, letting him slip out. I clasped him with my hand, the flesh strong and hard now, hearing him moan. I flicked my tongue round and round, sucking him. He moved his hips from side to side, sliding around inside my mouth. He cried out and grabbed my head.

  I got up on my elbows and knees and up over the bobbing round tip of his sex. He cupped my buttocks and began pitching me forward in a new languorous rhythm. My stomach was wet against his as we moved together over and over.

  I smoothed his hair off his sweating forehead, first with one hand, then the other. I felt tender. I felt newborn. Then he started to tremble all over. His fingers went everywhere, across my face, inside my mouth, my ears, in tickling circles around my nipples, pinching at my inner thighs, into me, his tongue poking inside my mouth. I thought about a flame that heated and didn’t burn up into ashes. A flush started on my skin that went into a deep part of me, pulling tight, until I felt the sexual core was my whole body, connected to him by fire. I licked at his thrusting tongue.

  He pulled away from me, and buried his head between my legs and I felt the whole room dilate, our breathing swelling out the walls like the sides of a balloon.

  He lifted his head from between my legs. “I got a great idea.” He rolled off the bed and I saw his narrow form against the open doorway before he disappeared. Deserted, I hugged my breasts. Don’t miss him too much, I told myself, tossing my head on the pillow.

  Then he leapt back on the bed, holding a round gold-framed mirror, standing over me.

  I threw my arms over my head, looking up his long legs, one more muscled than the other, to where his penis bobbed straight again, the skin stretched taut over delicate pink sacs like the eggs of an exotic bird. He balanced the bottom edge of the mirror across my knees.

  “What’s wrong with normal sex?” I teased lamely.

  “Look, you’re beautiful,” he said.

  I looked at one full breast, my rib cage, the shaking muscles of my bare thighs, the small dark triangle, rounded belly, a smear of drying fluids, my face, framed by a wild tangle of hair against the white pillow, lips opened like a thirsty child. My eyes were lidded, in a druggy daze, like a kid in the midst of a wonderful tantrum. “I’ve never seen myself like this.”

  He stacked pillows at my side, and propped the mirror against them. Then he straddled me again, his knees gripping, and he was inside me fast, sending shock waves over my belly.

  “Aren’t you beautiful?” he repeated.

  I stared at our limbs moving and pulsing together. Just when I believed there was nothing stronger left to feel, something shook inside me, and new flushes of feeling came like rising notes of a scale.

  “Keep looking,” he whispered. He slipped off his elbows, and I held him tight, watching his buttocks contract in the mirror. He came slower this time, and he felt so warm, sprawled all over me.

  He yawned like a cat. “What else do you want to do?”

  “Sleep like this,” I said, huggin
g him harder.

  He was kissing my neck with little kisses. Then he relaxed on top of me, his breathing changed and became deep and strong, hypnotizing me into a deep secure sleep.

  When the phone woke me, I saw the sun had come up. I felt his arm flung across my chest. I inched away and swatted at the phone.

  It was Vicky. Calling me at this hour on Saturday. If only I’d unplugged the phone. “What’s wrong?”

  “You lied to me.” She sounded triumphant.

  “Never.”

  Jack opened one eye, closed it, and shifted his arm away.

  “Have you read the Times? Try page one. The story about a police report saying Jack Hanscomb drowned. His sister won’t comment and his passport washed up on some jetty. He was last seen in a sports car in some port town with a European woman.”

  “No, Anita’s got him. She’s coaching him in Hebrew,” I gulped, pressing the phone to my ear.

  She coughed. “Tell that one to Michael.”

  “You have a cold? What’s wrong with you?” I asked rudely.

  Jack rustled the sheets and whispered, “What the hell time is it?”

  I patted his bare shoulder. “Don’t call me so late,” I said to Vicky.

  “It’s eleven a.m. your time,” she said.

  “Don’t call me so early.”

  I heard Rocky pad over to the bed. I closed my eyes.

  “Don’t worry,” Vicky chortled. “I’m calling for your own good. Michael knows all about the Times story, and he’s got the studio to halt payments noon today on your production. He’s suing Jack Hanscomb for breach of contract, and the lawyers and the insurance boys are flying over with Sam Falco tomorrow to see if they want to finance the rest of the shoot and sell your sets to some Israeli outfit.”

  “Michael moves too fast. It gets him in trouble,” I said haughtily. “Sam won’t go along with him.”

  “Bullshit. I’m your friend—”

  I slammed the phone down, good and pissed. It sure sounded as if I was about to be axed. I flung off the top sheet, rolled off the bed, and walked out, shutting the door behind me. The living room was bright with morning sun. In my bathroom I picked up a hairbrush and threw it. It cracked against the wall, and I watched the pieces fall. Dammit, dammit. I stepped into my dungarees, pulled on a shirt and headed for the front door. I’d survive; I’d lay low for a couple months dreaming up projects. I’d produce a movie independently. No more studio politics for me. I’d get a low-budget development deal for a movie on somebody like Margaret Mead. It wouldn’t be easy after this mess, but she looked more like my type of hero than Jesus anyway. I fished a quarter and a nickel out of my change purse for a newspaper, sniffling.

  Jack padded out, tying his bathrobe sash. “Bad news?” He flung his arms open. “Be nice, now,” he coaxed. I lost a wonderful minute leaning into his arms.

  “I’m going out for a newspaper,” I said finally. “I hear you’re on the front page, officially drowned, and about to be sued for millions of dollars.”

  He sat down hard on my favorite rocking chair. “No shit, they must’ve found that passport I threw off the hydrofoil to impress you.”

  I twisted the doorknob. “Now the whole world’s impressed.”

  He was speechless. I let the door go and kissed the top of his head. “I’ll be back.” He rocked the chair forward and hugged me.

  I felt high. Maybe I was just giddy from sex. On the elevator my mind whirled. Could Michael have wrong information? He was moving too fast. Jack wasn’t in breach of contract for another four days.

  Out in the street I breathed cold fresh air. It had snowed several inches during the night. They were shoveling a path in Central Park. Saturdays, midtown was peaceful. I tramped through several snowbanks to the newsstand. Michael was trying to make good on that half million he’d promised Sam, pay or play. That money had to work for him or else he was finished. I rounded a slushy corner looking at my favorite local bookstore. One frosted window was crammed with a woman’s novel whose movie rights I’d just recommended we buy. I wondered how much money Michael would pay for Jack Hanscomb’s official corpse. He was probably praying round the clock for the body to wash ashore.

  I stood scanning the newspaper with surprising calm. The story cited Jack’s recovered passport, his mysterious departure, and quoted his ex-girlfriend, who cried and said her Jack had nine lives. Blind sources were used to describe uneasy working conditions on our set and Jack’s apparent depression. His sister and mother refused comment. Another friend dismissed it as rumor. One of our studio lawyers reached by telephone stated that Mr. Hanscomb had four more days before he was officially fired off the picture. “We assume an explanation for the circumstances of Mr. Hanscomb’s absence is forthcoming.”

  I stuck the paper under my arm, and watched pigeons scatter across the icy sidewalk ahead of me and a small boy wearing floppy yellow boots. Jack Hanscomb was still rocking in my chair when I threw the newspaper into his lap. Without reading it, he folded it several times. “I been thinking.” He stared anxiously into my eyes.

  “Great, great, gives those cells some exercise now and then.” I blew my nose, pacing a small circle in the foyer, keeping my distance from him.

  “I can get better,” he said tentatively.

  “I’m sure your fans will appreciate that ringing testimony.”

  “Take it easy and listen. I’m flying back after breakfast.”

  I stopped short, and stared at him. Amazing. He wasn’t kidding me.

  “Thank you,” I said in a shaking voice, walking over to the rocking chair.

  He opened the newspaper and began scanning the story. “At least they’re still calling me an international sex symbol. Boy, I sound like a flake.”

  I laid my cheek on top of his head. He pulled me down onto his lap on top of the newspaper. I am too big to sit on laps. The chair creaked. “I want to get back to work,” he said, hugging me. “I hate your lady friend, and I hate the movie. But one more week won’t kill me. Of course, you’ll always believe I went back because of your sexual powers.”

  I smacked at the newspaper. “Better not change your mind in an hour,” I said breathlessly.

  “Don’t worry, I’ll be on an airplane.”

  I had a pang. I wasn’t lonely yet. It was hard to believe he was leaving my apartment. I didn’t want to let him go. Why couldn’t we get back in my bed for a couple of days, lock the door.

  I tried smiling. He was watching my face. “Look, I’m a professional movie actor, right? I can’t afford headlines like this unless it looks like a shameless publicity stunt. My price’ll start slipping. I’ll miss out on good scripts.”

  I looked at him directly. “What made you change your mind?”

  He hesitated. “From the moment I arrive and start from scratch, I always picture walking off the set. I want to hide. I don’t like to risk failing. The more successful I get, the more I stand to lose each time. Usually it clears up, and I lose myself in the work.”

  “And this time?” I asked.

  He looked sheepish. “This time I acted out my fantasy. But I guess it’s time to face reality again.”

  I squeezed him, and he held me. I had won. My head threatened to burst.

  Eleven

  Camera follows tall woman in dungarees and sweatshirt around a sleek office as she begins to water rubber tree plants. On sound track muted trumpets swell while she lies down on a couch, lifting a wire basket of memos.

  I dialed Israel, blowing my nose.

  Anita sounded petrified. “I’ve been calling you for hours. I got a stop-everything telegram from Michael Finley, and my mom phoned to read me the Times story.”

  “I’ve been walking the streets,” I said, my voice hollow.

  “That bad, huh?”

  “Listen, Jack’s getting on a plane. He arrives midnight tonight. I told him you’d send a car.” Shivering, I reached to turn up the thermostat. I better not catch a cold.

  “Flying back alone?
That prima donna?” Anita whistled her piercing whistle. “Way to go, all right.” She put her hand over the phone. Then she bounced back on. “Do me a favor and tell Paul yourself. He doesn’t believe me.”

  I told Paul. He was succinct. “Outafuckingsight.”

  I tried to sound casual. “Keep me posted, Paul. We’re not out of the woods yet.”

  Then Anita got back on the phone, laughing. “Do you think you ran off with him for a fling or for the movie?”

  “Look, it was his decision to go back. I was getting used to him hanging around.” My throat tightened.

  “You got exactly what you wanted, as usual. We’ll do endless setups when he arrives, we’ll just shoot and shoot.” She sounded very happy.

  The film was back on the track. It was hard to believe. “Send me your revised shooting schedule.”

  “After I consult Jack. God, Michael Finley’s rattling his sword but good. Paul already made him and his lawyers hotel reservations.”

  I laughed. “Jack will be on hand to greet them.”

  “Things have a way of shaking themselves down.” Anita sighed. “By Monday I bet Michael resigns to take a plush independent deal at another studio. I hear he set it up just in case.”

  I wondered who’d replace him. In a way it didn’t matter. I’d still have to fight tooth and nail to get the rest of this movie made right. I’d miss Michael Finley in a way. I suppressed a pang. I’d grown accustomed to his tactics. “God Anita, we won again.” I raised my voice. I threw a pillow across the rug. “What a team.”

  When she hung up I retrieved the pillow and paused, staring at the huge empty skyscrapers around me. I felt cozy in the midst of them. It was damn reassuring to be up here again in my office. I automatically initialed a memo about a women-in-film luncheon. Buy us a table, and make a $100 donation, I wrote. I walked slowly back to my couch remembering waking up with his arm across my chest.

  Breakfast felt like hours ago. I’d cut him a grapefruit and some good French cheese while he packed his tee shirts in one of my old suitcases. I bought two first-class tickets to Israel by phone—two seats would give him plenty of room to sleep. I told him to drink fluids on the plane. Out in front of my building, it was as though we had already separated. Sam’s treatment stuck out of the side pocket of his suitcase. I avoided his intense blue eyes before he bent to step into his cab. It wasn’t until he was gone that it hit me. I stood there waving under my orange canopy while a pretty white dog sniffed my boots. Then the cab stopped with a jerk, backed up to me, and he got out, his eyes all hurt like movie close-ups. He grabbed my elbow, pinning me against him, and kissed me hard on the mouth. “I miss you already,” he said, and we looked each other in the eye. “I’ll call you when I get there, okay?”