Passing Through the Flame (7 page)

Paul turned right onto Laurel Canyon Boulevard, and they began to climb into the hills along a road that followed the old watercourse, a big gully that ran down from the Mulholland Drive Crestline to the feet of the little mountains, just off the Sunset Strip. Dry hills rose up around them, covered with tangled scrub growth—the fire-prone chaparral—and tall waving eucalyptus trees. Houses clung everywhere to the slopes, set into little shelves bulldozed into the hillsides, or supported over thin air by fragile-looking wooden wooden stilts. No two of them were alike, and each house was engulfed and shaded by its own shrubbery: bougainvillaea vines fragrant with purple-red flowers, ivy, pine trees, cacti, ice plant, anything you could name transplanted from everywhere on earth.

Hundreds of little lights peeped down at her from the overgrown hillsides, reminding her of a long-ago Christmas in Nebraska. Her father had set up a huge electric train layout around the Christmas tree, a whole papier-mache mountain village done up like a picture book of the Swiss Alps: chalets and little peasant huts nestled among the tiny plastic trees. When the room lights were off, the little mountain became the foothills of the great Christmas tree, and the houselights of the train layout a little village on the outskirts of the great city of Christmas tree lights that towered above it.

The Santa Ana roared through the canyon, perfumed with the heady aroma of the growing things that filled the hills. The canyon was nothing like the rest of Los Angeles, with its endless flat grid of streets, plastic, neon, and shiny metal. To Velva, the hot sweet Santa Ana carried the smell of all the good things in the world wafting down from the feast that awaited her atop the hill at Jango Beck’s party. Fame, money, her name in lights, her pick of men. Stardom. Christmastime. Velva almost laughed aloud with joy.

Up the canyon they drove, winding higher and higher, past the darkened little country store to Lookout Mountain Drive, flanked on the right by the strange crumbling ruins of Harry Houdini’s mansion, and on the left by the old Tom Mix house, a huge mock-rustic log cabin now broken up into rooms for musicians and hippies. The Hollywood that was, and the Hollywood that is, Velva thought with massive sadness.

Lookout Mountain Drive was a smaller road all overhung by trees. Higher and higher they climbed as the steepness of the slope increased. The trees thrashed and whistled overhead as the Santa Ana tossed their heavy crowns. Somewhere in the distance, a pack of coyotes began to yip, and from every direction the lone howls and barks of isolated dogs took up the challenge. Velva could hear the shrieks and growls of sports cars and motorcycles echoing from all directions. Sounds carried strangely up here, adding to the general weirdness. Dope dealers, astrologers, hippies, Hollywood witches, and nobody knew who else hid themselves in the wooded nooks and crannies of Laurel Canyon. There were posh mansions almost side by side with crumbling huts, and with everything so wooded and overgrown, you could hardly tell which was which from a distance.

Paul made a right onto a narrow road marked “Private Drive.” Immediately the road began to wind upward through inky blackness. Here no houses or lights could be seen, only the yellow beams of the headlights lighting up the road and throwing deep and ever-changing shadows into a tangled wilderness of trees, sumac bushes, sharply pointed succulent leaves, and amorphous, almost corallike scrub growth.

Velva shivered despite the Santa Ana heat. There was something... ominous about this drive, about Jango Beck being surrounded by this spooky landscape, putting his house in the middle of an exterior for some AIP horror movie. It looked as if the Wolf man might pop out of the woods around the next bend. Beck must have tons of money, she thought. Why hasn’t he landscaped all this mess, put in a nice lawn, some cedars, or at least lights?

Winding up through the darkness, the satin of her dress caressing her body, the spooky wooded landscape, the ominous feeling crawling along her flesh.... It all began to seem like the night she had met Jango Beck. The same sort of winding dark road had taken her and that awful creep Bert Romer up through the same sort of hills in Topanga Canyon to Valhalla, an honest-to-God
orgy ranch
.

Romer had at least been honest about it. At his peak he had directed a few TV episodes, now he was happy to get work in the porn industry, and smart enough to know that there was no way he could get inside her pants by himself. “Lots of important people show up at Valhalla,” he had said. “TV producers and directors, writers, film people. You’ll end up making it with some people who can do both of us a lot of good. I think we understand each other, Velva.”

They did, and so Saturday night found them driving up to a low rambling ranch house and then walking down a long dark hall with many closed doors toward a big noisy room, with Velva wondering just what a Hollywood orgy would look like.

The reality itself was disappointing. A big square room with a large fireplace at one end, the “Bolero” playing on the elaborate Early American stereo console at the other, just too corny for words. There was a bar with a black bartender in a red dinner jacket, and paintings of people screwing and going down on each other on the walls. There were a few couches and little tables with fruit, nuts, potato chips, and dips, but almost everyone who wasn’t standing at the bar was on the piles of huge pillows that almost entirely covered the black carpeting.

People were balling—couples, some threesomes, even a foursome—or doing things too complicated for Velva to follow. Other people with their clothes still on, were sitting around talking, drinking, and feeling each other up. Except for the naked people balling in the middle of everything, it reminded Velva of every dull Hollywood party she had ever seen, which somehow made her feel weirder than she would have at a Roman orgy complete with kinky costumes.

As Romer led her into the thick of things, Velva tried to size up the crowd. The women were all good-looking, but none of them had what you’d call star quality. The naked men were mostly middle-aged, and very few of them had the bodies or techniques to do what they were doing on camera. The men who were still wearing clothes looked like TV producers, directors, and writers in their Hollywood-hip sports clothes. They would probably look like the naked men with their clothes off, which meant that the naked men would probably look like
them
with their clothes on. Which meant that this thing might not be entirely a waste of time.

“Hey—Bert!” A thin man with graying hair—fiftyish in a fawn-colored jacket, yellow shirt, and brown pants was snapping his fingers silently as if at a waiter. Sitting next to him were a slightly younger, fatter man in different shades of blue and a good-looking but sort of dykey redhead in a tight black vinyl dress.

Romer put on a big grin and led her over to this group. “Haven’t seen you around, Bert,” the thin man said, running his eyes over Velva’s body as they sat down on cushions across from him.

“I haven’t been doing any TV lately,” Romer said. “I’m... ah, into some film projects.”

“We’d all like to do features, wouldn’t we?” the chubby, fortyish man said. There was something nasty in his smile, as if he knew damn well that Romer was doing porn.

“Velva, this is Ted Yancy [the thin man], and Albert Flood [chubby],” Romer said. “Ted’s a producer, he’s had three successful series. Al’s a TV director. And this is Velva Leecock, she’s—”

“Don’t tell me, an actress!” Yancy said, giving her a kind of George Sanders smile.

“How did you know?” Velva asked.

“I’m a producer, I should know an actress when I see one.”

“Charlene here is an actress too,” Flood said.

“Yeah,” said the redhead, with a horrible Brooklyn accent. “Hey, do you dig making it with chicks?”

“I hope not,” Yancy said. “At least not exclusively.”

“Would I bring a dyke here, Ted?” Romer whined. “I know the rules.”

“Rules?
You didn’t tell me about any rules.” What kind of rules could you have for an
orgy
? The whole scene was beginning to turn Velva off.

“Why don’t you go get yourself a drink, Bert, and I’ll explain the rules to Velva?” Yancy said.

“Yeah, why don’t you?” Flood said. “Why don’t you have a couple of drinks and relax? Later on, we can talk about this slot I hear is opening up at Universal, but you don’t want to talk business until we’re all good and relaxed, right?”

Romer’s unhappy face suddenly broke into a smile. “Sure, Al,” he said. “See ya later.” And he left, leaving Velva alone with a TV producer, a director, and the Brooklyn redhead, who wasn’t really serious competition.

Yancy and Flood exchanged wise little looks. “Poor old Bert,” Flood muttered, and the way he said it turned Velva on. He sounded so casually superior, so on top of things.

“The rules are very simple, Velva,” Yancy said. “We’re all here to have a good time and meet interesting people, right? So it’s considered inhospitable to refuse to make it with a guy here. You understand?”

Velva nodded, having already anticipated the inevitable. “Good,” Yancy said. “Because Al and I would like to have a little scene with you now.”

“And Charlene.”

“And Charlene.”

Well, this is what I came here to do, Velva thought, make it with directors and producers. And this Yancy has had three successful series. I just wish these guys turned me on a little more. “What did you have in mind?” she said, pulling her dress up over her head. In a minute or two, they all had their clothes off. Charlene had a good body, though her breasts were a little saggy. Yancy was skinny, but not really too bad. Flood was fat and sloppy but at least pretty well hung. Nobody in the room seemed to notice what they were doing, not even Romer, who was having an excited conversation with some guy at the bar.

After a certain amount of fiddling around, they finally got their parts figured out. Velva knelt, with Charlene on her back, her face between Velva’s spread legs. Flood mounted Charlene in the conventional position, and Yancy stood in front of Velva to receive head. It was just like making a pornie. Yancy was producing it, and Flood was directing. The only thing missing was the camera. She didn’t feel anything at all as the scene began, but she was determined to give a good performance. This could be a big break. Being a TV star was certainly not the same thing as being a movie star, but it could be an important step up.

It went on for an interminable time, flesh in flesh, moving and pumping, sighs and groans, becoming very abstract, as if she were experiencing the whole thing as one of those group close-ups they do in R movies—parts of bodies moving together but such a tight shot that nobody can really tell who is doing which to who with what.

Suddenly she felt a searing sharp pain in her anus! Some son of a bitch was trying to bugger her!

She spat Yancy out, turned her head to peer over her shoulder, saw a disgusting fat old man bent over her behind. She screamed in pain as he thrust himself farther into her.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing, you fat creep!”

“What do you think I’m doing, kiddo?” the fat man said. “You better watch your mouth.”

“Remember the rules,” Yancy said, scowling. He grabbed her head, turned it around savagely, and pushed himself into her mouth again. The pain in her rectum increased.

Then from somewhere behind her, she heard a smooth, almost hissing voice say, “I don’t think you should be doing that. You’re offending my sensibilities.” There was a choking gasp, then blessed relief as Velva felt the fat man slide out of her.

Again, Velva spat Yancy out and turned her head around. A tall man was standing over the fat man, holding him lightly by the throat. The tall man wore black boots, a skintight black leather suit with lines of brass studs up the legs and down the arms, a wide red velvet sash secured by a heavy, jeweled brass buckle, and a pale-yellow ruffled shirt. He had an enormous woolly head of black hair neatly trimmed like a formal hedge, a white man’s afro, and deep penetrating brown eyes that seemed almost black. And, oh, did he have star quality! Velva had never experienced star quality as overwhelming as this before.

The fat man was livid with rage. “Do you know who I am, you faggot biker creep?” he screamed.

“I know who you are,” the tall man said in that same quiet voice. “You’re Roger Adrian. You fancy yourself a high-rolling network executive.” He laughed. “And I know the crud you churn out. You surely don’t imagine that your
credits
score points with me?”

The fat man rolled his eyes and seemed about to let out a string of truck driver curses, but Yancy spoke hurriedly. “What are you doing here, Jango?”

“Slumming.”

“You’re Jango Beck?” the fat man said, in an entirely different voice, soft, and more than a little frightened.

“You thought I was Lash LaRue?” said Jango Beck, letting go of Adrian’s throat.

“You know the rules here, Beck,” Adrian said in a really respectful tone.

“Know them? I make them. And you’ve just violated my prime directive. You are in bad taste,” said Jango Beck. “You’d better leave for tonight. You can come back when you figure out what good orgy manners are. Interesting little problem, don’t you think?”

To Velva’s amazement, Roger Adrian seemed to shrivel like a punctured balloon. “Maybe I’ve had a little too much to drink...”he said lamely.

“Then apologize to the lady and have a very quick cup of coffee on your way out.”

“I’m sorry, miss,” Adrian mumbled, and then the big network executive slunk off like any other sad, lumpy fat man. Star quality! This Jango Beck
really
had it. Who was he? What—

Yancy took her head in his hands and thrust his cock back into her mouth. Velva choked and spluttered and pulled herself away.

“I think I’ve seen enough crude shit for one night,” Beck said. “And I think the lady has had enough of the pleasure of your company. Isn’t that right, miss...?”

“Velva. Velva Leecock.”

Jango Beck took her hand, pulled her lightly to her feet, while at the same time giving her a strange, hooded Laurence Harvey smile. “Come have a drink with me and wash some of this bad taste out of your mouth,” he said.