by Lee Goldberg
“You’re welcome to stay here,” Ian said. “You don’t have to do this.”
She ignored his comment and began pulling down his sweatpants. He didn’t resist.
The dentist answered Gene’s question. “Bosom!”
The crowd shrieked and laughed at the naughty answer.
Mei reached between his legs and he almost climaxed at her touch. The only reason he didn’t was because Bert Convy was watching him.
“Is she correct?” Mei asked.
Ian stared at her breasts. “No microphone there. So I guess you really aren’t a spy.”
“Keep checking.”
Mei slipped him inside her, and again he nearly came but a quick glance at Charles Nelson Reilly kept him from letting go. She pulled his head to her breasts and moved rhythmically against him. He felt himself losing control and peeked under her armpit at the TV again. One look at Gene Rayburn was enough to kill his desire for a few more seconds. He nearly made it to the Super Match, but he came before the show’s climax and her own, which didn’t arrive.
“I’m sorry,” Ian said, breathing hard. “It’s been a long time.”
“It’s okay,” she said. “It felt good.”
“Why did you do this?”
“Wang Mei had sex with Ian because she felt blank.”
Ian leaned back and studied her face. “Obligated? Lonely? Bored? Afraid?”
“There is no correct answer. Isn’t that what you told me?” She climbed off him, stood up, and held out her hand. “Take me to bed and you can try again to fill in the blank.”
He did as he was told.
They made love twice more that night. She faked an orgasm the first time, for his sake, but she wasn’t that good an actress. It also reminded him that he wasn’t much of a lover. He wasn’t lousy in bed, but he wasn’t Clint Straker, either. Perhaps nobody was, though there was certainly room for improvement. Ian always felt like he was blindfolded the first time he went to bed with a new lover. He fumbled around in the dark, hoping not to stub a toe or fall down a flight of stairs, rather than relying on instinct, his senses, and his expertise to find his way. Part of the problem, he knew, was his own eagerness and lust. Once past that, he could approach a woman like a story, finding the plot points that will inevitably lead to a strong, emotionally earned climax that was true to her character.
So the third time he made love with Mei, Ian relaxed and focused his attention on her, gently caressing and exploring her body. He worked his way down to the scar on her thigh where she’d hidden the microSD card. He licked the scar, eliciting an encouraging moan from her, and let his tongue trace a trail up between her legs, where he continued his explorations, slowly and tenderly, until she arched her back and her body quivered for a long, sweet moment. She barely made a sound, unlike the theatrical writhing and moans of her fake climax. And when it was over, Mei almost immediately drifted off to sleep.
And that worried Ian, who was relieved that he’d finally satisfied her but was concerned that she might only remember his two failed attempts. What if she woke up in the morning and thought her orgasm was a dream, the wishful thinking of a dissatisfied lover?
He fell asleep trying to think of a way he could tell her that it really happened without appearing woefully insecure.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Eli Tanner’s Ranch. Dunn, Texas. November 5. 7:15 a.m. Central Standard Time.
Beth Wheeler, the woman who abducted Gustavo Reynoso and dumped him on a street in San Diego, didn’t have any problems talking her way past the ranch hands, driving up to the main house in a dented GMC ten-foot box truck, and getting a face-to-face with Eli Tanner on his front step. That was because she came across as one of them, a local girl. She had the walk, the Texas twang in her voice, and she dressed the part, from her Stetson down to her authentic snakeskin boots. She pulled it off effortlessly because she wasn’t acting. This was who she was, except for the red hair, brown eyes, and freckles that she’d expertly applied to change her appearance.
Her parents had been Russian spies who had come to Texas to work as wildcatters and infiltrate the oil industry, which they did. Their final mission had been the sabotage of an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico a decade ago. The rig exploded and sank, creating an environmental disaster that coated the Gulf states in 130 million gallons of raw crude oil and crippled a UK-based petroleum company that had been an obstacle to Russian energy interests worldwide. Beth’s parents were killed in the blast but she was their legacy, a roving disaster agent, going anywhere the GRU felt her talent for death and destruction was needed. Today, that place was Dunn, Texas, and Eli Tanner’s ranch.
Tanner stepped off his front porch and regarded her. It was different from the leering looks she got from the ranch hands when she came in. There was nothing sexual about his appraisal. He was judging her musculature, her endurance, and strength, as if she were a horse that he was thinking of buying. Finally, he said: “You told my boys that you had urgent business with me.”
She got right to the point, knowing that men like him hated small talk and distrusted people who indulged in it. “I saw you on Dwight Edney’s show. You’re putting up a good fight against the illegals swarming over the border. But let’s be honest, you’re losing. Most of ’em are getting past you and laughing all the way to Houston.”
“That isn’t my problem,” Tanner said. “I’m only interested in protecting my ranch.”
“But that’s exactly what you’re losing. This hopeless fight is eating up your days and nights, time you aren’t spending on your business. Keep this up much longer, and you won’t have a ranch to protect.”
“So you’re some liberal do-gooder who came here to tell me to let ’em trample my land, vandalize my home, and kill my cattle?”
“C’mon, is that what I look like to you?” She stood up straight and took a step toward him. “I came here to help you fight.”
He smiled and acknowledged her offer with a nod. “You look like a woman who can handle a horse, and probably a gun, too, but having you here isn’t going to change anything, no offense intended.”
“None taken. But what if you could get your hands on enough weapons, ammunition, thermal-imaging scopes, night-vision goggles, and other gear to equip, say, a hundred men? Could you put together a citizen militia to protect your piece of the border?”
“Sure I could, but those resources will never come.”
“Why not?”
“Because Dunn, Texas, is a pimple on the state’s scrawny ass. Most of the people here live hand to mouth. There isn’t enough votes or money here to get any politician to do anything for us.”
“Who needs politicians?”
Beth walked to the rear of her truck, unlatched the roll-up rear door, and lifted it to expose the contents of the cargo area. The interior was filled with wooden crates and cardboard boxes. “This is all yours, free and clear.”
“What is it?”
“Everything I just talked about. All you have to do now is find some good men.”
Tanner raised a bushy gray eyebrow and lifted the top off one of the crates to reveal it was full of AK-47s that were carefully packed in straw. “Why are you doing this?”
“Because you’re a patriot and I’ve got child-bearing hips.”
“That’s mighty kind of you, but I’m a happily married man with more kids than I can feed.”
Beth laughed, her amusement genuine. “I didn’t bring you the guns so you’d fuck me.”
“Well, that’s a relief.” Tanner scratched one of his leathery, stubbled cheeks. “But I don’t understand what you’re trying to say.”
“What I’m saying is that I respect you, your wife, and your kids. I don’t want you to sacrifice your ranch fighting a losing battle to protect the children I’m going to have someday from being raped by Mexican drug pushers or growing up poor because there won’t be any jobs. A lot of God-fearing Texans feel the same way that I do.”
“So why aren’t they here to j
oin the fight?”
“Because they’re better at writing checks than shooting guns.”
“What about you?” Tanner asked.
“I’m just a driver making a delivery.”
“You look like a lot more than that.”
“It’s your imagination,” she said. “In fact, I was never here.”
It wasn’t until after the truck was unloaded, and she was driving off, that Tanner realized she didn’t tell him her name.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Ian Ludlow’s House. Malibu, California. November 5. 8:26 a.m. Pacific Standard Time.
Since the night Mei seduced Ian, the two of them had only left his bed to eat, shower, and watch Match Game, though they’d never finished an episode without having sex again. He was terrified the show was now an erotic trigger for him, and that for the rest of his life he’d get an erection every time he heard the theme or saw Gene Rayburn.
Ian had no illusions about the meaning of all the sex they were having together. It wasn’t love. It wasn’t really lust, either, though there was a lot of that.
It was avoidance. For both of them. Sex kept him from writing and kept her from thinking about the future.
The sexcapades couldn’t go on. That was what he’d decided in his postcoital stupor that morning, her naked body curled up against him, his head turned away from her so she wouldn’t have to smell his bad breath when he spoke.
“We can’t just stay in the house having sex all the time,” he said. That was definitely something he never thought he’d hear himself say.
“Why not?” Mei said.
“Because we both need to work. I need to write and you need to act.”
“I don’t need to,” she said. “I have enough money to do nothing but this for the rest of my life.”
“You don’t act for the money,” Ian said, turning his head to face her. He wasn’t feeling so bad about his breath now that he’d caught a whiff of hers. “You act for the same reason I write, because it’s who you are, though I also need to do it to pay my bills. I have a book due in three months that I haven’t started yet.”
“At least you know that somebody wants your work,” she said. “Nobody is going to cast me in anything until they see how Straker turns out.”
Ian considered that fact for a moment. “How would you feel about doing a guest part on a television series?”
“It depends on the show,” she said.
He hesitated, afraid he was about to unintentionally insult her. “How about Hollywood & the Vine?”
She sat up and began enthusiastically singing the theme song, which had a catchy tune that some years back a jury had determined, in a landmark, multimillion-dollar copyright infringement suit, was lifted from Marvin Gaye’s “I Heard It Through the Grapevine.”
“Oooh you heard about that cop Vine / a plant who can’t stand crime / you get caught you’re gonna do time / honey honey yeah.”
Mei bursting into song wasn’t the reaction Ian had expected. He’d also never imagined he’d have a naked woman in his bed singing the Hollywood & the Vine theme to him. So many things were happening in his life lately that were beyond belief that the unbelievable was becoming his new normal. That, too, was another reason he was having trouble writing. Nothing he put on the page seemed wilder than what he was experiencing.
“You know the show?” he asked.
“Are you kidding me?” She shifted to a deep announcer’s voice. “Half-man, half-plant, all-cop.” She laughed at her impersonation, then said: “It was the best thing on TV since the cop with the talking car. It was a big hit in China.”
“And you liked it?”
“I loved it,” she said. “It was brilliantly subversive.”
“It was?”
“The subtext about the relationship between man and nature, with nature being an allegory for freedom, and how it transcends race, religion, or government, was explosive stuff that slipped right past the censors in China,” she said. “Ronnie Mancuso’s performance was incredibly nuanced.”
Ronnie’s hair and skin were dyed green, he wore green clothes, he drove a green car, and his character’s name was Charlie Vine. There was nothing remotely nuanced about that. But that was not what Ian said.
“I never thought of the show that way.” And that was true.
“His performance was one of the reasons I became an actress,” Mei said. “Being on the show would be a dream come true, but it’s been off the air for years.”
“It’s back again.”
She broke into a big smile. “It is? And you can get me on it?”
“No problem,” he said. “I was a writer-producer on the show the first time around and I’m good friends with Ronnie, who is the executive producer now.”
After the end of the original series, Ronnie had retired from acting to live off the grid in an underground bunker in the Nevada desert to escape the government, which he fervently believed was listening to his thoughts and planning a global pandemic to usher in a new world order.
Ronnie would have still been in his bunker today, waiting for the apocalypse to arrive, if Ian and Margo hadn’t come to him for help when they were on the run from assassins. The three of them ended up thwarting the kind of government conspiracy that everybody told Ronnie he was crazy to believe was real.
Ian hadn’t spoken to Ronnie much since their adventure, or Ronnie’s subsequent six-month commitment to the Corcoran mental hospital, or Ronnie’s renewed stardom upon his release, but he wasn’t worried about that. They’d both been busy, that was all.
“I’m sorry, Ian. I never paid any attention to the credits,” Mei said. “I had no idea you worked on the show. Why didn’t you ever tell me?”
“It’s not something that I publicize.”
“Why not?”
Because he was deeply ashamed of it, but since she liked the show so much, he said: “I don’t like to brag.”
She gave him a kiss with a lot of tongue action. If this went on, they’d never get out of bed.
“I should get up and give him a call,” Ian said.
“You’re already up,” she said, reaching between his legs to emphasize her point. “Call him later.”
He decided that was a good idea.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
An excerpt from the script for the Hollywood & the Vine episode “The Bad Apple,” written by Jackson Burley.
INT. BARN — DAY
Hollywood and Vine are sitting in the hayloft, watching a house.
HOLLYWOOD
I hate stakeouts.
VINE
I don’t mind them. It’s a chance to photosynthesize.
He’s using a shiny piece of cardboard to shine sun on his face.
HOLLYWOOD
I have to sit for hours, eating lousy food, drinking lousy coffee, and willing myself not to pee.
As he’s talking, Vine sets down the board, takes out a bottle of water, and pours it on his green-haired head.
HOLLYWOOD
And I’ve got to watch you water yourself.
VINE
I’m just trying to stay hydrated. It’s no different than you drinking coffee.
HOLLYWOOD
I don’t pour it on my head.
VINE
Maybe you should. It might improve your disposition.
Vine notices something.
VINE
Here they are.
A car rolls up. Two men get out and go to the WELL. They pull up a package.
HOLLYWOOD
They’ve got the ransom.
VINE
Let’s go!
The two cops burst out of the barn.
HOLLYWOOD
LAPD. Freeze. You’re under arrest.
A third man, hidden in the back seat of the car, pops up and opens fire with an automatic weapon. Hollywood and Vine take cover, returning fire. The other two men take out their guns. Hollywood shoots one man, who falls into the well. The other man RUNS out into the ORANGE GRO
VE. Hollywood fires at the gas tank of the car . . . and it BLOWS UP, sending the remaining man spiraling through the air. Vine darts into the orange grove.
EXT. ORANGE GROVE — DAY
Vine takes cover behind a JEEP. Hollywood joins him.
HOLLYWOOD
The shooter could be hiding behind any one of those trees.
VINE
We start a gunfight here and a lot of innocent trees will get hurt.
HOLLYWOOD
A bullet isn’t going to hurt a tree.
VINE
Tell that to the tree. Actually, that’s a great idea.
Vine goes to the base of the tree, puts his hand on the trunk, and closes his eyes.
HOLLYWOOD
What are you doing?
VINE
Asking my cousins a question. There is a vast root system under this field that’s like a chat room.
HOLLYWOOD
What’s the question?
VINE
Where’s the shooter?
A moment later, a nearby tree shakes loose all of its ORANGES, the fruit RAINING DOWN hard on the shooter, who squeals and, the instant he breaks cover, Hollywood shoots him in the leg, taking him down, before the bad guy can get off a shot. Hollywood nods with approval.
HOLLYWOOD
Sweet.
Fillmore, California. November 5. 3:45 p.m. Pacific Standard Time.
The director yelled, “Cut!”
Ian and Mei stood behind the director, a shaggy-haired young man in an Aloha shirt and board shorts, who sat in a chair facing a bank of four camera monitors. The bad guy got up off the ground, his leg soaked in red corn syrup from the exploding “blood bag” that was under his pant leg. A group of special effects men ran out to the burning car and used fire extinguishers to put down the flames.
“I don’t think you can blow up a car by shooting it,” Mei whispered to Ian so the director wouldn’t hear her.
“You can in a world where a cop can be half-man and half-plant,” Ian said, not caring if he was heard or not. “A TV show creates its own reality.”
They were in an orange grove in Fillmore, California, one of the last authentic small towns that still remained “in the zone,” an area within a thirty-mile radius of the intersection of West Beverly Boulevard and North La Cienega Boulevard in Los Angeles, where shows could be shot without having to pay actors and crews a special fee for going out on location. But as authentic as Fillmore was, it was never itself on film. It doubled for countless fake towns across the country, and across time, its storefronts constantly being re-dressed to be someplace else, sometime else. Fillmore was real but it was also fictional. People who’d never been there before passed through the town with a disturbing sense of déjà vu.
