Passing Through the Flame (63 page)

Velva picked up the magazine, pretending to read it, and to the right of the set behind the motel-room door, Gentry clutched a bottle of Jack Daniels and two water glasses in one hand behind his back. With the other, he was poised to knock on the door.

“Action!” Paul said.

Gentry knocked on the door.

“Who is it?”

Gentry knocked again.

Velva clambered off the bed, padded barefoot across the rug, her breasts jiggling freely under the thin pink material, and opened the door. She showed the scripted surprise at seeing Gentry standing in the doorway, but the look-what-crawled-out-from-under-that-wet-rock nuance she gave it was all too horribly her own.

“Do you have any aspirins?” Gentry said brightly.

“Do you have a headache?”

“No, but we’ll both have one in the morning,” Gentry said, kicking the door shut behind his back like a bouquet of roses. Paul had to admit that Gentry did that schtick nicely, just as he had envisioned the moment on film.

“Doug, I’ve never had anyone proposition me this way,” Velva said in a little-girl voice.

Gentry looked as if he might choke on his own laughter. “Are you a virgin, Peggy?” he said archly.

“No,” Velva said, arching her body toward Gentry while her eyes looked down in mimicry of bashfulness. “I’ve just never been propositioned
this
way before.” They both laughed together falsely. This is murder, Paul thought.

“Outside, a quarter of a million drug-crazed hippies are openly humping each other on hillsides,” Gentry said superciliously. “Seems to me we should make a last stand for booze and good old dirty motel-room sex.”

“Well, we could have a drink and talk it over, I suppose,” Velva said mechanically. She turned, walked back across the rug, and sat down on the edge of the bed. Gentry sat down beside her, opened the bottle, poured an inch of bourbon into each water glass, and handed one to Velva.

“Here’s to the death of our old worlds and the birth of the new,” he said, clinking glasses and slugging down the cold tea. He placed a hand on Velva’s upper thigh, and Paul could just about see her flesh crawl in a spot where the script called for her to move into his touch, warming to him. “Drink up, Peggy.”

Velva smiled a horrid, sickly smile and took the first sip of her drink.

“Cut!” Paul called. Velva immediately rolled up off the bed away from Gentry, while Gentry moved just as rapidly in the other direction. And this is just the lead-in to the real love scene, Paul thought. What’s it going to be like when they have to kiss, let alone undress each other?

“All right, now both of you are drunk,” Paul said. “Velva, a little to your surprise; Rick, because that’s what you wanted to be.”

Velva and Gentry were lying side by side on the unopened bed, their heads propped up by pillows. Their hair had been carefully mussed by the makeup department. Gentry’s tie and shoes were off, and his shirt was unbuttoned nearly to the navel, revealing his smooth, hairless chest; Velva’s pajama belt was conspicuously untied. The half-empty bottle and the two glasses sat between them on the bedspread like a bundling board.

Paul scooped more almonds and dried apricots into his mouth. He had usable footage covering the first part of this scene; but it sure hadn’t been easy to get, and it sure wasn’t much more than barely usable once he had gotten it. Both Velva’s and Gentry’s facial expressions in reaction to each other’s lines were still godawful in the best take of the master, and the expressions with which they delivered their lines were almost as bad. But at least I’ve got the moving around down. I can fake the scene with a lot of cutaways to close-ups and reaction shots, assuming I can extract at least usable reaction shots and close-ups from them.

But
this
shot, I
can’t
fake with a lot of hokey cutaways. This one, I’ve got to pull out of them for real, somehow.

Well, you wanted to be a director, kid, so
direct!

“Okay, let’s try it from ‘I feel so drunk and sophisticated’ Action!”

“I feel so drunk and sophisticated,” Velva said, curling her fingers around her glass, staring straight ahead, at the camera, at Paul. She shook her head, and her hair dribbled down over her forehead, a nice touch.

“And I feel so drunk and primitive,” Gentry said. “Isn’t it primitive to be lying on a bed in a motel room bombed on booze, while a few miles away the Aquarian Age is going through its puberty rites?”

“Huh?” Velva said, still staring at Paul through her tousled hair, sliding slowly down the bed a little, hiking her loose pajamas up her leg, adjusting to her new position with a sensuous weave of her ass across the bedspread.

Gentry was probably the only man in the room who didn’t have at least the beginnings of a hard-on. He was still doing his jaded drunk act, not showing the only kind of reaction that was believable under the circumstances. My God, does he look like a hopeless faggot the way this is playing! And just when Velva is managing to turn herself on....

“I said the natives are restless tonight, pour me another stinger, wench, and let’s make love before they come for our heads.”

“Doug Winter, you are strange,” Velva said. “Here I am in bed in a motel room with a man I met on an airplane, drunk, drunk, drunk, and about to put out, and I don’t even understand a word of what got me here.”

“We’re orphans of the storm, Peggy, we’re gringos in the Oz Hilton. That’s what we’ve got in common, kid, and that’s why we’re here. Are those your folks out there?”

“No.” Velva giggled, scraping her ass across the bedspread as she rolled toward Gentry, who froze like stone. “Are they yours?”

“Never saw them before in m’life,” Gentry managed to mutter.

“Then let’s make love,” Velva said, completing her roll and bringing her body down on Gentry’s, her mouth on his, with a grind of her lower torso that caused a mass intake of breath from the crew. Gentry froze, then twisted like a snake in agony.

“Cut!” Paul shouted. “Cut, cut, cut!”

“Filthy bitch!” Gentry snarled, throwing Velva off of him and wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

“What did I do?” Velva asked innocently, her wide eyes trained on Paul like a pair of sexual ray guns.

“Nothing, Velva,” Paul said quickly, “you were fine.” At least let’s not screw
that
up, Gentry! he thought. “Rick, I want to talk to you.”

“That suits me fine,” Gentry said, scrambling off the set and charging like a wounded buffalo for his dressing room, scattering grips and makeup people, and slamming the door shut behind him.

“Take a break,” Paul said, walking rapidly but deliberately toward Gentry’s dressing room. “A short one. We’ll be shooting in five minutes.” The silence on the set rang like a slow gong in Paul’s head as he opened the door to Rick Gentry’s dressing room, wondering what in hell he was going to do about a leading man who couldn’t bear the touch of his leading lady.

Gentry was standing right inside the door, his features contorted with rage, his eyes burning with anguish. “That horrible cunt of yours stuck her tongue halfway down my throat,” he said, shuddering. “Lord, it was loathsome! And she did it on purpose.”

“She was just acting her part as best she knew how, Rick,” Paul said softly. “It wasn’t any easier for her than it was for you. I understand your problem, but you’re going to have to deal with it somehow.”

“Oh, you understand my problem, do you?” Gentry said in a quavering voice. “It wasn’t any harder for me than for her? With her playing the whole scene to you and then rubbing it in by crawling all over me as if I were you....”

Gentry trembled. He swayed toward Paul. He swayed back. Paul didn’t know what to make of it; Gentry seemed to be fighting for control of something going on inside him. The only way to get Velva’s footage is to let her play the sex scenes to me, Paul thought. What the hell am I supposed to do about this?

“It wouldn’t be as bad if you didn’t encourage it so,” Gentry said, his voice in tighter control, but his eyes still fluttering with emotion. “If you didn’t make it so obvious.”

“What are you talking about?” Paul said, feeling twinges of guilt at his dumb show, feeling Gentry’s pain as that of a fellow human being for the first time, but knowing that the only thing he could conceivably do with that pain was ignore it. “I’m not doing anything.”

“Of course you’re not,” Gentry said. “You’re not standing there like a Greek statue for her to masturbate over.”

“Rick, I’m not doing anything of the kind,” Paul said. Am I really carrying it that far? Or is that just what she’s been making of me in her head? But whichever it is, it’s
working
, it’s about the only thing that is, and I’d be crazy to stop it.

“Perhaps I’ll show you what you’re doing,” Gentry said, suddenly smiling and looking at Paul with eyes that blazed with a lust that made his stomach quiver around the fruit and nuts in it as if they were rotten and acid. “Perhaps I’ll show you what she’s doing, too,” Gentry said silkily.

“Rick—”

Suddenly Gentry was all business. “I’m sorry to bother you with all this, Paul,” he said. “Let’s just go shoot the ghastly scene and get it over with.”

And he opened the door and preceded Paul out of the dressing room. I wonder if I’ll ever figure this guy out, Paul thought. I wonder if I’ll ever figure out how to work his head well enough to make his footage with Velva play like anything but low fag humor.

I wonder if I want to understand him that well. He had a hollow feeling that told him that if he was to finish this film instead of his own career, sooner or later he was going to have to find the handle to Gentry. Whether he could stand it or not.

“Roll it.”

“Sunset City
, Scene Seventeen, take one.”

“Speed.”

“Action!”

“I feel so drunk and sophisticated,” Velva Leecock said, wishing it were true, wishing she were plastered enough to get through this awful scene without knowing it. Paul stood beside the camera with his pelvis arched forward so that the material of his tan pants was pressed into the V of his crotch. She concentrated on that triangle of cloth, made it the focus of her attention as she tossed her head, fanning her hair across her forehead. She stared into Paul’s eyes, imagining the flesh under the cloth blossoming to her touch. Gentry was reduced to a blur at the edge of her vision.

“And I feel so drunk and primitive,” Gentry said. Velva opened her lips a crack and let her tongue show. “Isn’t it primitive to be lying on a bed in a motel room bombed on booze, while a few miles away the Aquarian Age is going through its puberty rites?”

“Huh?” Velva slowly slid down the bed, hiking her pajamas up her legs, feeling the rough texture of the bedspread against her soft flesh through the thin pajama material, imagining it to be Paul’s touch, and letting that image light up her eyes as she kept them fixed on Paul’s. She saw the material in the V of his pants bulge and tighten. Ah, I’m getting to you, Paul! You want it! You can taste it! You can feel yourself inside me!

“I said the natives are restless tonight,” Gentry said in a drunken voice that suddenly modulated to a sensuous purr. “Pour me another stinger, wench, and let’s make love before they come for our heads.”

Velva turned to half face Gentry, and saw that he too was sliding down the bed, arching his back, and staring straight at Paul, at the hard-on in Paul’s pants, with hot hungry eyes. Paul’s face went pale, but he kept the camera going, looking at the two of them snaking toward each other on the bed. What a faggot toad Gentry is! Velva thought disgustedly. What a cunt!

“Doug Winter, you are strange,” Velva said, huskying up her voice, sliding further down the bed, exposing the flesh of her lower thighs to Paul, weaving her pelvis at him. I’ll show you, you miserable faggot! “Here I am in a motel room with a man I met on an airplane, drunk, drunk, drunk, and about to put out, and I don’t even understand a word of what got me here.”

Paul Conrad tried to freeze his mind, his body, his emotions, and the cock that was throbbing against the inside of his pants and be nothing more than a mechanical object, the camera that was causing this scene to be recorded on film.

“We’re orphans of the storm, Peggy, we’re gringos in the Oz Hilton,” Gentry said, rolling his hips toward Velva with a motion that languidly displayed his ass to Paul, leaving no further doubt as to who that purring voice was for, who Gentry was playing the scene to. My God, what an ego trip this is, Paul thought. It’s disgusting. It’s sickening. It’s perverted. “That’s what we’ve got in common, kid, and that’s why we’re here. Are those your folks out there?”

And yet, Paul thought, it’s working. They’re both playing it to me, they’re both managing to look turned on, and on film it’ll look as if they were turned on to each other. I’ve got to let it go on. It’s the only way I can get this scene.

“No.” Velva giggled, rolling toward Gentry, flashing her thighs at Paul. “Are they yours?” Paul felt as if her body were enveloping him, awash in the ocean of her sexual vibrations. Space seemed to be distorted; Velva and he were touching, even as she rolled across the bed toward Rick Gentry.

“Never saw them before in m’life,” Gentry cooed, and Paul felt the words wash over him like thick syrup, palpating his flesh with thousands of tiny hands. He was a statue in the embrace of a hermaphroditic Medusa, fired with lust by Velva’s sexual assault, frozen to stone by Gentry’s, a powerless prisoner of that strange psychic conflict. Yet he was using his own body to evoke the very forces that held him paralyzed. In the tight crystal pattern that united the three of them, there was no unmoved mover.

“Then let’s make love,” Velva said, rolling her body over onto Gentry’s, turning it in her mind to Paul’s, and bringing her mouth down on his as his arms went around her neck, pulling her down to him.

Gentry’s lips were Paul’s lips—soft and wet and tender—and Velva kissed them with her eyes closed and Paul’s image drifting behind her eyelids. How they had made love together in the dark way back what seemed like a lifetime ago, and how they had gotten there from a fuck-film set, how she had been balling some nameless creep while doing it all for Paul. And how they shared that.