Passing Through the Flame (81 page)

Gentry threw a sidelong glance at Velva that was pure poison, then looked at Paul with phony sincerity, and finally with a gross lipsmacking expression. “I know exactly what you mean, Paul,” he oozed. Blech!

“Velva, you understand the game he’s playing, but you’re not sure what you’re going to do about it, got it?”

“I understand,” she said. Better than you do, poor baby.

Paul stepped back behind the camera, looking about a million miles distant from what was really going on. “Okay... lights....”

The bright shooting lights came on, making it even hotter. Behind her, Velva could hear the extras groan.

“Come on now, folks, remember you’re having a good time listening to the music,” Paul said. “Let’s try to get into the spirit of things, okay? Just think of those twenty record albums you’re all gonna get, and let’s see some mellow vibes... there... that’s better.... Okay, roll ‘em.”

“Sunset City
, Scene Forty-nine-B, take one.”

“Speed.”

“And...
action!
”

Gentry propped himself up on one elbow, and stared up at her with disgusting cow eyes, tapping the fingers of his right hand in time to the faint beat of the music in the background. “You know,” he said in an oily voice, “we’ll probably never see each other again. You’ll go back to Kansas, and I’ll go back to New York, and our paths will never cross again.”

“What are you trying to say, Doug?”

“That I like you. That I can still like you knowing I won’t see you after this thing is over. Could you feel that way about me?”
Could I?
Christ, I’d give anything not to see your faggot face again. I’d even go down on your disgusting cock. “I don’t know, Doug....” I’d bite it off at the root! Velva thought, snapping her teeth together.

“Cut!” Paul shouted. “What the hell was that supposed to be, Velva?”

“I’m sorry, I guess my mind was wandering.” She turned and smiled at the kids behind her, rolling her eyes. She was rewarded by stoned titters and giggles.

“Cut that shit out!” Paul snapped. “Let’s do it again.... Roll it...”

“Sunset City
, Scene Forty-nine-B, take two.”

“Speed.”

“Action.”

“You know, we’ll probably never see each other again. You’ll go back to Kansas, and I’ll go back to New York, and our paths will never cross again.”

“What are you trying to say, Doug?”

“That I like you. That I can still like you knowing I won’t see you after this thing is over. Could you fee! that way about me?”

“I don’t know, Doug,” Velva said, fighting back her disgust. “I like you, but I’m not sure what you really mean....”

Gentry put his hand not on her knee as the script called for, but on the soft flesh of her inner thigh. Velva shuddered, her body locked in stasis. “I think you know what I mean,” Gentry said. His mouth puckered into the ghost of an O, and Velva’s mind supplied the unbidden image of those slimy lips closing on Paul’s cock, sucking him in, draining his substance like a vampire.

From some inner reservoir of strength that she hadn’t even known she possessed, Velva managed to call up a fey innocent smile and throw it in Gentry’s face. “Maybe I don’t
want to
know what you mean,” she said coyly.

Gentry’s eyes pretended to scan the crowd, but actually he was focusing them on Paul, delivering his lines for Paul’s benefit twisting them hideously. “Look at all these people from all over the country. They’ve never seen each other before, and they’ll never see each other again when these four days are over. Just like us. That doesn’t stop them from getting close to each other, from doing what they want to do. In fact, it gives them freedom; it could give us freedom. What happens here is like what happens in a dream—we can do whatever we want and nobody will ever know. We can satisfy our secret desires, and no one we know will ever find out. When we wake up in three days, it will all have been a dream.” Velva could all but see the disgusting images in Gentry’s mind, and it seemed to her that Paul understood what was going on, too. His body was tense and frozen, and his eyes were expressionless gray disks locked on Gentry’s, as if hypnotized by them.

“That’s... that’s... quite a line,” she stammered. “Better than anything I’ve ever heard back home.” Gentry’s horrid fingers palpated her thigh, and the image of what she had seen in the Ecoenvironment Dome flashed through her mind, those same fingers clamped like a monster crab around Paul’s cock. She trembled. She felt sweat running down her back.
I’m not going to blow this take!
I’m going to do it for Paul.

Gentry smiled his loathsome false smile. “Who knows?” he said. “I might be able to back it up.”

“Are you trying to tempt me?”

“Do you find me tempting, Peggy?”

Again, it seemed to Velva that he was directing the line straight at Paul. Her head filled with a bubble of nausea. Oh, Paul, how can you let this happen?

She forced herself to look down at Gentry, to paint a coy coquettishness across her face. “Let’s just listen to the music,” she said, throwing her head back, closing her eyes and staring up blindly into the brilliance of the noonday sun.

“Cut!” Paul shouted. “I think maybe we can use that. But we’ll do another take after lunch just to make sure. We’ll all take a half hour break now. Everybody back here at twelve fifteen sharp.”

Velva opened her eyes and let out a long, ragged breath. Gentry was already on his feet, making for one of the portable toilets. Probably going to jerk himself off over Paul. The extras were stretching themselves, wandering off into the crowd in search of dope, and the crew was busy shutting down equipment.

Paul stood alone, wrapped in his own thoughts, absently stuffing something into his mouth from a plastic bag. Velva walked across the grass to him.

“Could we have lunch together?” she asked. “I really have to talk to you.”

Paul looked at her narrowly, his eyes sunken and red-rimmed, his pupils dilated, probably from speed. He’s driving himself into exhaustion. “I’m not eating lunch, Velva,” he said. “But maybe we should have a talk. The footage we’re getting today is barely usable, and it’s mostly your fault. Your mind seems somewhere else.”

“Maybe it is,” she said. “That’s what I want to talk to you about. Let’s find someplace we can be alone.”

“Okay,” Paul said. “There’s not many people on the other side of the ridge near the fence.” He looked around at the crew, the endless sea of humanity beyond the cordon of guards, seeming for a moment like an animal at bay. “Might not hurt to get away from all this for a few minutes.”

He began taking long strides up the slope of the hill, not looking back to see if she was following. As she puffed up the hill behind him, Velva glanced over her shoulder and saw Rick Gentry emerge from the toilet, scanning the area, no doubt for Paul. She could see his face fall as he saw them disappearing together, and it made her tingle inside. Think the worst thing you can about what we’re going to be doing, you shit, she thought, and you won’t be wrong. Because I’m going to make it happen.

“This will do,” Paul Conrad said, leaning against the gnarled bole of a live-oak tree, feeling the sudden temperature drop of the shade like a cool breeze on his skin. Velva spread her arms out along the twisting length of a horizontal branch, lifting her breasts up and out toward him. A calculated gesture, or just Velva being Velva?

The tree was roughly in the center of a small grove of four. The hill rose behind Paul in a gentle slope covered with dry grass and low scrub growth to form the northwest lip of the natural amphitheater. He could hear the faint sounds of music and human voices from beyond the ridgeline. About fifty yards away was the old rusting wire fence that was the northern boundary of the Sunset Ridge Ranch and Sunset City. To the west, the blue domes of the performers’ compound glittered like giant insect eyes in the high sun. This little corner was about as close to seclusion as you could get here, though a couple of hundred thousand people were only a few minutes’ walk away.

“You’ve got to do better than you’ve been doing this morning,” Paul said. “It’s pretty damn obvious that you can’t stand having Rick touch you. I can save what we’ve shot so far with cutaways and reaction shots, but I can’t keep doing that.”

“You know how I feel about that faggot. I should get an Oscar just for
letting
him touch me.”

Paul sighed. “I know you’re trying, Velva,” he said. In fact, she was doing much better than he had originally thought possible. She was actually acting, and doing a reasonably professional job of it under admittedly trying circumstances. The fact that I’m trying to squeeze more out of her now means I really think she has more to give, he realized. She’s grown. Which means maybe I can make her grow some more. And I’ve got to use whatever means I have to get it out of her.

“But you’ve got to try harder,” he said. “The way Rick is, it’s no easier for him than it is for you.”

“
Rick!
You think I don’t know what’s going on between you and Rick?” She arched her back, thrusting her breasts at him, definitely deliberate this time. Her mouth was hard, and there were anger lines on her face, but her eyes were soft and gentle, almost loving. Paul’s stomach did a flip-flop. He felt a phantom claw at his loins.

“What are you talking about?” he stammered, hearing the tremor in his own voice and hating himself for it.

Velva leaned toward him till her breasts were only an inch or two from his chest. Her hands reached out to touch him, but held back, hovering around his hips. “I saw,” she said softly. “I see. I’ve got eyes.”

“Saw... saw what?”

She shook her head sadly. “Saw
this,”
she said, and suddenly grabbed his crotch in a hard, clawlike grip. Blood rushed to his loins and pounded in his temples. He felt his erection growing under Gentry’s fingers Sandy’s fingers Velva’s fingers. Velva took her hand away. Paul blinked away an aura of lightheaded vertigo, suddenly aware of the massive fatigue held back by the artificial stimulation of the Dexamyl, waiting to devour him. Waiting to take him away....

Gently, Velva took his hand. “Sit down,” she said, folding her legs under her, drawing him down with her. Paul let his back slide down the bole of the live oak, feeling the rough bark on his back through the fabric of his shirt. His consciousness focused on its texture, on the softness of Velva’s hand in his, on the sunlight dappling through the leaves of the trees, on the hardness of the ground beneath his buttocks—fleeing from the horrors of memory into the immediate textures of the now.

“Rick Gentry wants your body,” Velva said. “Gee, I’ve been in enough pornies to be able to pick up all the sex vibes on a set.”

“You think I don’t know that?” he said. “You think it isn’t driving me nuts? Christ, last night with Sandy I....” He cut himself off but felt grateful for the closeness of Velva’s body, in the cool shade under the tree.

“If you know it, why don’t you stop it? All you have to do is let him know how you feel.”

“I can’t do that,” Paul said.

Velva put her free hand on his shoulder, leaning over him till their faces were almost touching. “Oh, Paul, you’re not
enjoying
it? He’s not giving you...
feelings?”

“Of course not!” Paul snapped angrily. Then he burned with shame at his overreaction, at what it might say about what was churning in the oily depths.

“You’re sure?” she said earnestly, with genuine warmth. “I mean, there’s nothing wrong with being bi. A lot of men have these feelings; sometimes they don’t even know it themselves until someone like Gentry deliberately cockteases them into—”

“Are you calling me a latent fag?”

“Oh, Paul, no, no,” she cooed, and she threw her arms around his neck, and kissed him openmouthed. Grateful in this moment for the taste of a woman’s mouth on his own, for the sweet ache she stirred in his loins, he kissed her back, long and wetly, and when they parted, he let her nestle down in the crook of his arm.

“Who should know better than me that you’re no fag?” she said. “But... I mean... every man has these buried feelings, you know, and Gentry is doing his best to bring them out. He’s practically beating off over you in every scene. Why do you let it go on? Why do you encourage it?”

“For the film,” Paul blurted. “To get the footage. If I’ve got to be his wet dream so he can play love scenes with some conviction, well... well....”

“Oh, Paul, don’t you see what you’re doing? You’re cockteasing him; you’re letting him cocktease himself over you.”

“Yeah, I guess that’s just what I’m doing.”

Velva put her hand on his inner thigh, looked at him with sweet concern. “Take it from an expert,” she said. “Don’t play that game unless you’re prepared to deliver.”

“You don’t seriously think—”

“I’ve been there. Man, I’ve played that game with guys I wouldn’t have dreamed of balling, and sooner or later a situation comes up where you’re gonna lose all you’ve been cockteasing the guy for unless you come across....”

“You don’t think I’d—”

“Yeah, I think you just might,” she said. “If you had to to save the film. We both know what this film means to us; we both know where we came from, where we could go back to if this movie bombs. And I’ll tell you something, I wouldn’t think any the less of you. I’ve sucked plenty of cocks for less than this....”

“Oh, Velva....” Something made him hug her to him. She was looking into the midnight of his soul, she was showing him the worst thing that could happen, and how it could happen, and she was telling him it would be all right in her eyes. Could I talk like this with Sandy? Would she understand?

“Let me show you something,” Velva said against his ear. “Let me show you something your Sandy never could.” She pulled away from him, stood up, and with a deliberately dramatic motion, flipped her dress up over her head, tossing it aside to reveal her full naked body, nipples red and erect, pubic hair shining golden in a spotlight shaft of sunlight pouring down through a break in the leaves.

Startled, amazed, grossed out, Paul leaped to his feet, glancing around nervously at the empty hillside behind him. But despite himself, his loins were throbbing, and something inside him was singing.