Unsoul'd (23 page)

"That's adorable."

"Really? I think it's just weird."

"Weird is adorable, Randall. Keep up."

"I'm trying. I still have tour brain. I'm not sure why... I'm not sure why you would give up all that money. I mean, I guess there's a chance
Flash/Back
will do really well, given how the book's doing, but you'll probably never make back--"

She grabbed my wrist -- her fingers cool and slender and soft -- and raised my beer to my lips. "Drink. You don't know what you're talking about."

I drank. Drank to her ineffability.

She sipped at her wine, then put the glass on the nightstand and settled against me. "Let me explain, OK? There are two kinds of actresses in this business, Randall. There are the ones who show you their tits from the beginning, and there are the ones who wait until later. If you're the second kind, everyone respects you and tells you how brave it was for you to do it. If you're the first kind, no one respects you. Unless you do something huge. Something monumental."

I felt like there was penis joke in there somewhere, but her tone warned me away from it. She didn't have to tell me which kind she was. I'd seen her first movie. And I'd seen her tits years before I bedded her.

"Yeah, I would have made a shit-ton of money from the MGM movie. Special effects extravaganza, CGI out the ass, and the biggest effect of all -- these." She clutched at a breast. "But your movie will get me respect, Randall."

She said it with neither vulnerability nor apology. I pulled her tighter against me.

Wherein I Piss

Some time in the early morning, I stumbled from Kiki's bed and found a bathroom that rivaled my Brooklyn apartment for size. Closing the door to avoid waking Kiki, I eyed the commode. Not trusting my bleary nocturnal aim, I girl-sat to piss.

"Kiki Newman," said the devil. "Slow clap, my friend."

Leaning against the far wall, he brought his hands together over and over in mock slo-mo.

"Can't I even piss in peace?"

"Hey, I left you alone while you did the important business of the evening." He slid one forefinger in and out of the opposing hand's OK sign. "Where's the gratitude?"

"I'm surprised you weren't there coaching."

"You've learned much, young Jedi. Shy bladder?"

My flow was dammed up.

"I don't like an audience."

"This won't take long. I'm just checking in on the status of the new book."

"Don't you just know? Magically?"

The devil howled. "Magically? Randy, dude, how many times do I have to explain this to you? There's nothing magical about this. About me. This is just the natural functioning of the world."

"I must have missed satanic particle motions in physics class back in high school. Or did you invent physics?"

"No one invented physics, asshole. Physics is just a natural by-product of the system the Old Man set up billions and billions of years ago. This is simple, child-level shit, Randy. Pay attention."

"Why do you even care about the new book? It's not like I have a second soul to sell you. The contract's fulfilled. I have
Flash/Back
. And
Down/Town
is killing, too."

The devil blew his frustration out past flapping lips. "You're an idiot, Randall. Did you even
read
the contract?"

"Sure, I--"

"Yeah,
Flash/Back
is big. It's gonna stay on the bestsellers list for a good, long time.
Down/Town
debuted at number one and it's gonna stay there for a while. But that's small potatoes. You wanted a world-changing hit. You wanted Rowling and King combined. And that won't happen until the
next
book, Randall. The new one.
Untitled Manuscript
is the name on your computer, right?" He leaned in close and I could swear I smelled something hot and dead on his breath and suddenly I had no trouble peeing, my urine gushing out of me in a strong stream that felt unending.

"
That
is why you sold me your soul. It's the book you're working on
now
. In the next weeks and months, you're going to think you're on top of the world, at the peak of the mountain. But you're not and you won't be. Not until the
next
book. That's when my mojo comes into play.
That's
when you become king of the world. And that, Randall, is when I take your soul."

"Wait, what? You mean I still--"

And then I was alone in the bathroom, cold and shivering and pissing out what felt like everything inside me.

Wherein I Wake

I woke before Kiki, tangled in her infinite-thread-count sheets. California sunlight -- different from any other, if you believe the locals -- poured in through the floor-to-ceiling windows. Kiki had no curtains. Her windows looked out on the wilderness and the mountains.

Next to me, Kiki dozed, and I had a moment of psychic frisson, a dire moment of confusion, where I wondered for an instant why and how a movie was playing in and on the bed. I actually paused, wondering what would happen next.

What
would
happen next? I had four hours until that production company meeting. I had no idea how long it would take to get there. I should have been up, in a panic, rushing about, dressing, calling Sherrie.

Instead, I lounged.

I still had my soul. Was this beginning or the end of something? How had I ended up here and for the love of God
what would happen next?

We're not supposed to compare our lovers, I don't think. No one has written and published rules on this, that I'm aware of, but upon even momentary reflection, it seems unfitting, indelicate, to juxtapose those with whom we've been so intimate. Nonetheless, I couldn't help but to compare Kiki to Fi, to Manda, to Gym Girl.

Filtered through a man's jaded, jaundiced eye, it would be easy to look at Kiki and say, "Hot, but probably a lousy lay." I'm not sure which would be more of a cliché: that, or her being a sexual decathlete.

In any event, yes -- sex with Kiki was leagues beyond sex with Manda or Fi or even Gym Girl. I can't say for certain if this was due to something intrinsic to her or if it resulted from her fame and her larger-than-life presence. I can't say what it was like or would be like to fuck Kiki Newman the person. I only fucked Kiki Newman the screen goddess.

And Kiki Newman the screen goddess was beyond magnificent.

It couldn't last. It was impossible. I was a guy from a shitty suburb of New Jersey who'd managed to work his way up to a shitty apartment in Brooklyn. She was Kiki Newman.

Tracing invisible lines along her naked form, I imbibed her with my eyes. "Imbibed" it probably too genteel a term. I gulped her down. I guzzled her. She ran down my chin like berry juice. Metaphorically.

Along the smooth and supple hummock of her left hip, barely visible in the bedroom light, was a tattoo. I moved closer for a better view.

"Inspecting the merchandise?" she teased, voice sexy-clogged with sleep.

"When did you get this?" I asked.

"When I was eighteen."

I had seen Kiki naked in her first movie. I didn't remember a tattoo.

Reading my mind, she said, unbidden, "They cover it with makeup most of the time. If it would show up on camera."

Of course. I stroked its outlines gently. It was an adorable cartoon-y devil. A little cherub with a glint in its eye and horns and a pitchfork instead of wings and a harp.

"What's your day like?" she asked.

"I have a meeting at the production company at noon."

She nodded, glancing at the clock. "We have just enough time for a quickie. If you're amenable."

I grinned. "Is that going to become a thing? 'If you're amenable?'"

She grinned back. "Only if you're amenable." And threw a leg over me, neatly straddling and impaling in one motion.

"Oh, God," I said as she began to move.

"Have you ever heard the Hollywood joke about the stupid actress?"

"Now? Really?"

"Have you?"

"No."

"She fucked the writer to get ahead."

It took me a moment, but I got it. What I didn't get was why she told me that joke while astride me.

Confusion must have overridden lust in my eyes because she tittered and stroked my jawline comfortingly. "Oh, poor Randall. Don't you get it? Don't you get what I'm saying?"

"I guess not."

"I'm not a stupid actress. I'm not fucking you to get ahead. I'm already bigger than you are." She leaned in close, pressing herself to me, never letting my cock slip from her. "Well, in some ways. I'm fucking you," she whispered, "because I want you to come harder than you've ever come before in your life."

I never kept track of such things, but I'm reasonably certain she succeeded.

Wherein I Invite

The production meeting consisted of me, Malcolm, Crystyl, the duo producing the movie (including the legendary Ira Gold), a studio rep, and a truly bewildering array of assistants, secretarys, and gophers, none of whom sat at the main table, but rather encircled the room's perimeter, lurking, ready to pounce the moment they were needed. I felt naked without my own legion of assistants.

I barely heard anything throughout the meeting. I was replaying the morning and the previous night, as if it had been a movie I'd seen. I could scarcely believe it had happened to me.

I also couldn't believe that when I got out of the meeting and into the car, I had a text from Kiki:
What are you up to tonight?

I checked my schedule. I was due to leave for Chicago in the morning and I had a signing at Vroman's that night.

Signing. Then nothing until the morning.

Can I come to the signing?

I paused for a moment. It was a free country; of
course
she could come. She wasn't really asking about the signing. Even I knew that.

If you're amenable.

LOL

Still in possession of my soul. Still famous and soon-to-be rich.

Kiki Newman's boy toy.

Sherrie glanced over at me as traffic slowed in that special L.A. way. "What are you smiling at?"

"Nothing."

Wherein I Confess

Kiki, I learned, was the kind of person who became enormously turned on by seeing someone do something they're good at. And I was the kind of person who was very good at chatting up a crowd, especially a crowd containing Kiki Newman.

We slipped out a back exit and into her limo before the paparazzi could get to us or confirm my presence with her. In the limo, she threw her day-old rule about backseat sex out the figurative window. Before we hit the first traffic jam, she'd already worked off my pants, hoisted her dress and pushed aside her panties, then sank down on me, swallowing me into her slick depths.

I briefly imagined the bemused drivers around us, stuck in the same traffic, watching the limo rock to and fro. Then I imagined nothing.

Back at her house, we made it as far as the living room sofa before Round Two, then lay in exhausted, entangled repose on the plush carpet, a thin, decorative blanket draped over us.

"You should move to L.A.," she said. "It makes sense."

"Why?" I regretted it the instant I said it. Clearly, she was building something on the time we'd spent together so far.
She
was the reason.

"You're gonna write the screenplay, right?" Oh. "So you should be here to work on it."

"Del MacCarter's writing the screenplay. He has two Golden Globes and four Oscar nominations."

"Jesus, you already sound like you've been here too long." She waved the air as if it stank. "Who cares about Del MacCarter? You should take a crack at it. Sex it up a little bit. Your way." She wrapped her fingers around my cock to drive home the point.

"Careful with that thing. It's in a fragile state."

"Was I too rough on it?"

"I'm not sure that's possible."

"Let me kiss it and make it better."

"Oh, Jesus."

She planted a soft, sensuous kiss on the head of my cock. I felt a bit of a lurch deep in my pelvis, but after the limo and the sofa, it would take a bit more for me to rise to the occasion.

"Better?"

"Infinitely."

"Even if you don't write the screenplay," she said, "you should stay in L.A. For a little while at least. They'll fuck up the movie if you're not around, Randall. I've seen it happen before. The writer comes to town, everyone falls all over themselves trying to get their tongues as far up his ass as possible. And then when he leaves, they go off in some bullshit direction."

"I don't want to be in the way. Sometimes you
have
to make changes to the book for the movie."

"Don't let them do it. Your book is perfect the way it is. There's no reason it can't be turned into a movie without major changes. If you just let Del MacCarter do it his way, it'll be unrecognizable on the screen. It might be a good movie, but it won't be
your
movie."

I thought of brunch, of Malcolm telling me about MacCarter's "metafictional" Lacey Simonson concept.