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“It’s not so much to ask,” she said. Her voice dipped to a husky, regretful note. “I’m having trouble getting to her. I think she was upset by what I said about you. Of course, if she thinks you’ve forgiven me, it will make a difference. And I have something very important to tell her.”

“Oh, what’s that?”

“Just tell her that you think it’s important. Trust me. she’ll think it’s important.”

At this point, his hard-on was only an embarrassing memory. He turned to her and said, “What if I don’t?”

She smiled at him, her perfect white teeth gleaming. For a long time, she said nothing, and he was aware of the soft breeze chilling the sweat on the back of his neck. His hands formed into fists as he looked into her untroubled blue eyes.

She said, “It hurt my feelings that you didn’t want to fuck me.”

She sounded so serious that he was taken aback. “I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings,” he said. “You know it wasn’t personal.”

“You’re not sorry,” she said coolly, as she turned her back on him to return down the beach. “But you will be.”

 

 

 

 

“
W
ait. I thought that
was
her husband?” Zaza said, squinting Wat the wide-screen TV on which a devastatingly handsome Latino man was wrestling with a struggling (and devastatingly gorgeous) blonde.

Her roommate, Booley, shook her head in exasperation. “No! The husband is his identical twin, Lorenzo! This is Lothario, the evil twin everyone thought was lost on an oil rig during Katrina when the noble oilman caught him trying to rape a girl reporter and clubbed him and threw him into the sea, but he came back from the dead and raped Toro’s bride on the day of the wedding!”

“Oh. Well, I still don’t know which twin I’m going to fuck.”

“I’m
sure
it’s the evil twin,” Booley said. “Lorenzo is
totally
faithful to Annabella.”

“And you’re sure they aren’t the same man?”

“No! Honey, everybody knows they’re real-life identical twins! Where have you
been
?” Booley looked at her with mock consternation. “You’re lucky you can come to the source here. I could talk about
Midnight’s Secrets
all day.”

“Everyone’s so good-looking.” Zaza sighed as she watched the man tearing open the blond girl’s blouse to expose her braless and heart-breakingly perfect breasts. The actress screamed as he fondled them with an expression of vulpine pleasure in his eyes.

“At last we meet,” the man said.

Zaza and Booley both laughed. Zaza said, “It’s pretty cheesy.”

“Well, that’s the whole point. You have to
love
the cheese. It’s good cheese. It’s like extra cheese on a pizza. On a four-cheese pizza.” Booley crossed her arms defensively.

“Well, that’s going to be me,” said Zaza, pointing at the girl, who was now looking up imploringly as Lothario slipped his hand into her panties, smirking sadistically. “Oh! Here comes Lorenzo!”

The two identical men began to fight, throwing punches and hurling each other over the furniture as the buxom blonde ran to a corner of the room and shrieked again.

“Yes, you’re going to be a porn star,” said Booley. “I guess it’s a good thing now that you don’t have parents. My dad would
freak
if . . .” Then she saw Zaza’s face and said, “Oh, sorry. That was tactless, wasn’t it?”

“Why? Oh—I don’t care about the parents thing. I had an aunt; that was plenty, believe me. I was just thinking about . . . Jared Vairy.”

“I cannot believe he hugged you.”

They both went into a reverie while staring at the TV screen, on which the evil Lothario had fled, leaving Lorenzo and Annabella to embrace each other . . . then caress each other . . . then renew their bond with slow, tender, devastatingly-gorgeous-person sex. Booley pointed at the screen and said, in a dreamy tone, “See? No money shots, no close-ups of genitals. Tasteful.”

“Tasteful cheese.”

“Mozzarella.”

Zaza sighed. “Well, thank you, Jared Vairy. But I am
so
not beautiful enough for this show!”

 

 

 

Zaza had learned about her new job from Jared himself. She had been out drinking with Booley and a couple of Booley’s college friends, trying not to think about Valerie or whether she’d lost her job or—especially—Jared Vairy, who had probably forgotten all about her the instant he turned the corner. She hadn’t even told him her name! What an idiot. Of course, he knew she was Valerie’s new assistant. But would he really remember to put in a good word for her? And if he didn’t even know her name, why would Babylona listen to him? And . . . but . . . and . . . but . . . until Booley waved her hand in front of Zaza’s eyes and said, “Hello? Hello? Are you having a seizure?”

But just as they got home, Zaza’s cell phone rang. It was Jared Vairy, calling her at midnight from (this was the part Booley couldn’t get over) Babylona’s private jet, Air Force X.

“I’m sorry to call so late,” he said. “I was thinking it was Bermuda time. Though I think that’s even later. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

All she could say was, “You’re going to Bermuda?” Then she wanted to kick herself. Her voice sounded so disappointed—as if he was her boyfriend and he was going away for a week without her.

“Oh, I’m back Wednesday,” he said. “I’ve been commuting all season. It’s murder.”

“It doesn’t sound like murder,” Zaza said. “I mean, Air Force X. Is there really a water bed on board?”

There was a brief silence, and she wondered if she had said something wrong. Then she heard him saying to someone else, “Yeah, I’ll be there in a second. Chardonnay.” He came back saying, “Sorry. They’re about to serve dinner.”

“Sounds like
murder
,” Zaza said, laughing.

“Oh, I lead a dog’s life. And there is a water bed on board. It’s wonderful during turbulence, though I don’t usually like them.”

“Oh, me, neither,” Zaza said, though she’d never been on a water bed.

“But before I forget, I talked to Babylona and I did get you another job, though I don’t know if you’ll want it. I mean, I told her I’d have to check with you, so it’s no problem if you don’t. It’s . . . well, acting.”

“Acting?” The world went black for a moment, and when it was restored, Zaza found herself sitting on the carpet staring at the phone in her hand.

“Hello?” the phone said. “I’m sorry. Are you angry? I know you might not be—it’s not that I think—”

She put the phone back to her ear hastily and said, “Acting in what? Of course I’ll do it. Acting in what?”

And somehow she finished the conversation and hung up the phone without asking the question that was burning in her mind. Did he really think she was pretty enough to be in an erotic soap opera?

 

 

 

For the three days between that conversation and her appearance on
Midnight’s Secrets,
Zaza was a wreck. A script was FedExed to her with her lines highlighted in yellow—by an assistant like she’d been, Zaza realized with a slightly guilty thrill. She was playing Lara, sister of the blond knockout Annabella, who unluckily arrived for a visit at the moment that the evil Lothario was rifling through Lorenzo’s belongings, having broken into the house to . . . (Here the plot was too tangled for Zaza to follow, though Booley assured her it was brilliantly stupid.) Lara was obviously immediately kidnapped by the evil twin, and seduced against her better judgment in his evil penthouse. All the while, she imagined she was being seduced by the perfidious husband of her own sister . . .
et cetera, et cetera,
circles within circles, cheese within cheese.

The details of the sex were rendered in initials: O (M on F), V.

Booley immediately translated this. “Oral, male on female, vaginal. Oh, my God, you’re so cool! Are you really going to do this?”

Zaza answered immediately, “Of course,” although she found it impossible to picture.

It somehow didn’t help that Booley was a fan of the show. Watching the show with her was the worst thing—there wasn’t a single ordinary-looking person in sight. Booley kept saying, “Oh, you’re beautiful. Anyway, obviously they’ll give you special makeup.”

Finally, the morning of shooting came. Zaza spent an embarrassed hour having makeup slathered over her entire body. Somehow no one gave any sign that she was too homely, although they did get impatient with her for wearing jeans and an underwire bra to the studio. “God knows if those marks in your skin will come out in time for the shooting. Didn’t they tell you?”

For the same reason, she learned, the sex scene would be shot first. She was given a black satin robe, like the ones boxers wore before fights, and plush slippers from a laundry bag full of similar slippers. A harried-looking young man led her down to the studio where the scene would be shot.

The penthouse set was there—one half of a luxurious room with a white carpet, a huge leather armchair, and a bed whose sheets were prerumpled. On the side without walls, there was a chaos of film equipment and cables. It gave her a strange feeling, because she remembered the penthouse from the TV show, but in her memory it was a real room with four walls. On the carpet by the bed a bottle of Jack Daniel’s stood open beside two tumblers.

“And is that actually iced tea?” Zaza pointed at the bottle, feeling knowing.

“Oh, that?” the man said. “No, it’s whiskey. Your leading man can’t last ten minutes without a drink.”

She frowned at him and the man shrugged, saying, “He
is
the evil twin.”

Then it struck her: She was going to have sex with a total stranger. She was going to have sex with a stranger
on television
. At that point, everything began to be a blur. She sleepwalked through the introductions to the crew and the director, Charity Cave, an aging seventies porn actress who kissed Zaza on the cheek and told her—surely out of politeness—that she was “ravishing.” People were smiling at her; someone put a glass of wine in her hand. She had drunk it down in an instant, and immediately began to think about the whiskey bottle. Drinking was clearly the answer. Then she was standing with an empty wineglass in her hand, grinning meaninglessly at a swarm of bustling people, all arguing good-naturedly with one another and waving scripts.

The thing that woke her up at last was her introduction to Javier, the twin who played Lothario. He took the wineglass from her hand and handed it, without missing a beat, to a passing cameraman, who took it with a frown of irritation and handed it on to an assistant. Then Javier took Zaza’s hand with a melting gentleness and said, “I’m sorry we couldn’t have a drink last night. I would have really loved to get to know you first. Doing it like this seems so . . . corporate.”

“Oh, do you usually . . .” Zaza found herself blushing.

“Yes, I was going to e-mail you. But I had to go meet my brother’s fiancée.”

He was still holding her hand, and the warm pressure of his palm made her tremble inside. A faint pang of anticipation sounded in her belly, and she found herself licking her lips. This man was actually going to kiss her, touch her breasts, fuck her. It was about to happen—nothing could stop it. Meanwhile, he was just as devastatingly handsome—a man with pitch-black eyes and thickly muscled arms whose deep brown skin was striking in the half-unbuttoned white shirt he wore. She couldn’t help glancing at the smooth strip of his chest that showed and imagining how it would feel. Even now, she couldn’t believe it was really going to happen.

She forced herself to make a show of attention. “His fiancée? Oh, he’s getting married?” For a moment Zaza imagined he must be marrying the blond actress from the show. She remembered Booley’s ex clamation:
Lorenzo is
totally
faithful to Annabella!
But of course Javier would already know that girl—he wouldn’t be meeting her for the first time.

Javier was looking sorrowful, his thick black eyelashes lowered poetically. He said, “It’s his third marriage in four years. Every wife meaner than the last! This one threw her salad at his head in the restaurant right in front of me.”

Zaza said timidly, “Was she jealous or something?”

Javier looked at her darkly. “No, she wanted some of his french fries. He didn’t want to give her his french fries because he had asked her before if she wanted french fries and she’d said . . . Oh, it’s all too depressing to tell.”

“Oh, well, at least
you
don’t have to marry her.”

“We live in the same house.” He smiled tragically and let go of her hand. As she watched, he moved with a catlike grace to sweep the bottle of Jack Daniel’s from the floor. She was still expecting him to bend and get a glass when he raised it and swigged from the bottle itself. Then she was left with an afterimage of his movements, his body’s strength and beauty in the simple motions of stooping and raising the bottle in the air. He lowered it to his hip and caught her eye, smiling with a quiet, carnal satisfaction. Then he pointed to the bottle inquiringly. She nodded, and as she moved to join him, the director called out, “Would everyone get ready, please? It’s the bedroom scene. Take it from ‘There’s no need to be frightened.’ ”

A thrill of fear ran through Zaza and she took the bottle from Javier hurriedly, taking a swift, burning gulp. Now she had to take off her robe. Of course, she could crawl in under the sheets and then take it off in privacy. But that seemed ridiculous; in another second everyone would see her, anyway. So she took a deep breath, handed the bottle back to Javier, and untied the robe’s belt. As it slipped from her shoulders, she felt a strange invigoration pass through her. Every inch of her skin was hypersensitive with the consciousness of exposure. Javier was watching her with an enigmatic expression as she let the robe fall to the floor.

“You’re lovely,” he said in a comradely undertone. “Lovely. Break a leg.”