Sex and Violence in Hollywood (5 page)

Adam realized he had not replied to her greeting, just stared at her. He cleared his throat and said, “Um...hi.” Instantly, he realized how stupid that sounded because she had already said something else, moved forward in the exchange. He felt like an idiot.

“Do I need to talk slower?” she said.

“Oh, no. Um...I just...I was startled, I guess.”

“Okay Hi.”

“Hi.”

“I bet you’re looking for something interesting.”

“Always.” He finally smiled.

“Let me guess.” She looked into his eyes, squinted a little more, ran a fingertip along her lower lip. Turning, she walked deeper into the store, slowly, and Adam followed. “Elmore Leonard. Or...no! Something gritty but darker. Ummm...David Martin? Thomas Harris?”

“Adam Julian.”

“Oh. Who’s he?”

“That would be, um...me.”

“Oh!” She turned to him with wide eyes. “What do you write?”

“The songs. You know...the ones that make the whole world sing.” Embarrassment burned in Adam’s neck and cheeks. He did not know why he had said it or where it had come from, but it had slipped by the censors and was on the air.

His palms were wet, but there were no tremors in his legs yet. When he was overly nervous or stressed, his legs became possessed by the shivers. Carter said it made him look like Don Knotts in Alien, but there was nothing Adam could do about it.

Then she laughed! The sound so surprised Adam, he took an abrupt step backward. It was such a bright sound, so embracing. And it was not quiet.

“My mom listens to his music sometimes,” she said. “Course, she also listens to the Grateful Dead.”

They came to a wall of shelves at the end of the aisle. Adam recognized it as the horror section because it held the works of only two authors: Stephen King and Dean Koontz. The girl looked around at the books, spread her arms, and said, “Ah, the giants.” Then she giggled. “I bet you don’t know what that line’s from.”

“Star Trek IV: The Journey Home,” Adam said. “That was Spock responding to Kirk’s explanation of profanity. Kirk identified its source as the popular writers of the time, the collected works of Jacqueline Suzanne and Harold Robbins. And Spock said, ‘Ah. The giants.’”

Her smile stalled, mouth dropped open. “That’s good. That’s very good. Alyssa Huffman.”

“Never heard of her.”

“She would be me.” She grinned.

“Oh! And what do you write?”

Her grin tilted slightly and for a brief moment, became deeply naughty. “Things that would give both my parents strokes if they ever read my diary. Maybe I’ll let you read it sometime.” She looked around. “Horror? Is this where you were going?”

“I don’t know where I was going. My friend and I just came in to look around, see what kind of store you had.”

“The guy at the magazines?”

“Yeah. Carter.”

“Well, it’s a...booky kind of store. Unless you just ran out of strawberries-and-honey incense.”

“In which case it would be an incensey kind of store.”

She nodded. “Pretty much.” She turned and headed back toward the front.

Alyssa was dressed in black. Black tank top, skirt with a slit up the side to reveal black net stockings and pseudo-Victorian-style pointy-toed boots. Against all the black, her skin was like milk. She had beautiful lips. Full, lush, Janeane Garofalo lips. They were painted a deep red, but Adam thought they would look much better without it.

They passed through the romance section. As a boy, Adam had been struck by the number of romance novels in bookstores. They almost seemed to reproduce on the shelves before his eyes. He’d decided to search for the secret to their popularity and had bought a few at random. One of the novels was called Passion’s Stormy Sea, by Teresa Laree Montgomery. He could remember nothing about the novel except for a single phrase, which had haunted him ever since. “A mouth like a ripened fruit.” It had made no sense to him. Ripened fruit? What kind of fruit? A banana? Depending on how ripened, that could be disgusting. An orange? An apple?

Alyssa’s lips reminded him of that phrase. The words suddenly sprang to life. His immediate response to seeing her lips had been a desire to put his mouth over them and suck, as he would suck on a ripe fruit. A peach, a pear, any fruit. He suddenly realized the fruit itself, which had thrown him for so long, was not the point.

Her bracelets and necklaces of black and silver chittered together as she walked. A step behind her, Adam let his eyes move over her body. Tall and shapely. Loose in her movements, comfortable in her body. Dressed as if she had just returned from a black mass, ritual sacrifice, and book signing at Anne Rice’s place.

“You work here, right?” Adam asked.

“Yep. I know this store inside and out. I grew up here.”

“In the store?”

“Practically. My parents own it.”

“You must read a lot.”

“Almost always.”

“Who do you like?”

She stopped walking and thought a moment.

“Wait,” Adam said. “Please promise me you won’t say Anne Rice.”

“What’s wrong with Anne Rice?” she asked, turning to him.

“Well, I guess it’s a matter of taste. Like anything else. But I think people who like her work as well as people who don’t can agree that it’s better read than worn.”

She pressed her lips together and there was a quick flash of fire in her eyes. For a moment, Adam thought he had said the wrong thing, that she was angry.

“Are you making some kind of judgment of me based on my clothes?” she asked.

He responded quickly. “Oh, no, no, not a judgment. Just an educated guess.”

“Yeah, sure.” The flames in her eyes crackled again as she cocked a hand on her hip. “You think because I’m wearing all black, I read Anne Rice and listen to Bauhaus and obsess over role playing games and hang out in basements with other losers and assorted children of the night. Right?”

Adam thought, Must...get...foot...from mouth! “Well, I didn’t say that,” he said.

“You were thinking it. Weren’t you?”

He decided not to bother arguing. “Yes. I was. The black clothes, black nail polish...I don’t know what got into me.”

“How do you know I’m not, like, in mourning? How do you know my boyfriend wasn’t just killed in a drive-by shooting and I’m wearing black to mourn my loss? Or maybe black reflects how I feel inside after years of sexual abuse from my father, for which my mother blames me. Maybe that’s why I wear black.”

Adam tensed, prepared himself for the worst. “Is...is any of that true?”

“Nah. It’s the goth thing, like you thought. But my heart’s not in it.” She shrugged her shoulders and her breasts moved freely beneath the black tank top. “My friends kinda got into it and I didn’t have anything better to do, so I went along with it. I’m not too crazy about the subculture, myself. There’s way too much piercing going on, for one thing. Come to think of it, I’m not too crazy about the friends I got into it with.”

The door rang open and three chatty women came into the store. Alyssa went behind the counter, found a notepad and wrote something. Ripped the page out and handed it to Adam, smiling.

“The address is where to be tonight at ten,” she said. “The phone number is where to call if you can’t find where to be.”

“Where is this?”

“My house. Come pick me up.”

Adam smiled. “To go where?”

“Anywhere. Wherever.”

“No, uh...no walking through graveyards, or anything, right?”

She laughed softly and leaned over the counter, their faces close. Her breath smelled of cinnamon. “Don’t worry, I’ve got a whole closet full of very non-Rice clothing. I’ll wear some for you.”

“I’m kidding. You can wear anything you want.”

“Okay. And I won’t make you walk through any cemeteries.”

“We can walk by,” Adam said. “I’m just not comfortable with actually walking on the dead.”

* * *

In the car on the way home, Adam talked of nothing but Alyssa.

“Are you outta your mind?” Carter barked. “You don’t wanna mess with those goth chicks, man, they’re trouble with a capital N, for ‘neurosis’. They don’t live in the real world. They latch on and never let go. They want your blood, man. Literally!”

Adam laughed. “They’re harmless. They just want to belong somewhere, like all of us.”

“Hey. Dr. Drew. I’m gonna start puking all over the upholstery, here. Turn on CNN if you don’t believe me. They’re in the news all the time. Killing their parents, shooting up their schools. Hell, without those freaks, Anne Rice would probably be writing greeting cards for Hallmark!”

“There’s nothing wrong with this girl, Carter. She’s not like those people. She just wears the clothes because her friends do.”

“Yeah, sure, that’s how it starts. That’s how she’ll do it to you, a little at a time. Pretty soon, she’ll have you wearing black suits from the Salvation Army store. Then a shirt with ruffles and puffy sleeves. Next thing you know, you’re lurking down Melrose looking like Andy Warhol’s mortician.”

“Nobody’s gonna make me wear anything, jeez.”

“They drink blood, you gym teacher, don’t you watch Dateline? 20/20? The Learning Channel? I mean, they’re not, like, real vampires, or anything, but they drink each other’s blood, I’m not shitting you! You’re gonna start showing up with Band-Aids all over, it’ll happen.”

“Are you through?”

“Yeah. All I’m sayin’ is...be careful out there, okay?”

“There’s nothing to be careful about. This girl’s different.” Adam’s voice lowered when he added, “She’s special.”

Although Carter tried to change the subject, Alyssa was all Adam could think about the rest of the way home, and for the rest of the day.

FIVE

The sun mockingly slowed its pace
as it made its way across the sky. Adam kept himself busy as time stretched. He worked on a short story, did some reading, watched a little television. He consulted the map of the Los Angeles area tacked to the inside of his closet door and found the shortest route to Alyssa’s house. Above all, he lay low, avoiding his dad and Gwen.

Time still did not pass fast enough. Adam stripped, went into his bathroom and turned on the shower. As the water hissed, he put a CD into the boom box on a windowsill just outside the shower. Dave Brubeck’s Time Out.

Ever since he was a little kid, Adam had thought “Take Five” was the coolest piece of music in the universe. It had been his mother’s favorite, too. She had been a jazz lover, and it had been the soundtrack of their long days together before he started school. He had loved it because she had loved it. She used to laugh so hard when he danced to “Blue Rondo a la Turk,” spinning around and around. Adam kept her collection of CDs, tapes, and records in his room. The music soothed him, made him feel safe. He turned it up and got into the shower.

Piano, sax, bass, and drums cut clearly through the shower’s hiss. Eyes closed, Adam scrubbed shampoo into his hair.

A hollow clack sounded in the steam. The latch on the shower door.

He turned around and opened his eyes, which were stung by shampoo suds. But someone was there. The shower door closed again. He spun around and put his face under the stream, scrubbed at his eyes.

Soft hands slid over his back. Around to his chest.

Gwen. Adam smiled as he rinsed his hair.

She stepped close, so her breasts pressed against him.

It was not Gwen. The breasts were too small, body too short.

Gooseflesh crawled over Adam’s arms and shoulders in spite of the hot steam. He turned around and stepped back, away from the hands. He meant to say something, but could think of nothing appropriate to say to a total stranger in his shower.

She smiled as he stared at her. Tanned and curved, she stood in a careful pose that suggested she knew it, and knew how best to show it off.

When the girl started to move toward him, Adam held up both hands and said, “Uh, look, y’know...not that I really mind, or anything, but...who are you and what are you doing in my shower?”

She moved forward again, and when Adam put up his hands, she pressed hers to them, slid her fingers between his. Locked them together. She smiled. It was an amused smile.

“I’m Rain,” she said. When Adam looked confused, she continued: “I thought we oughtta get to know each other. We’re gonna be spending a lotta time together.”

“We are?”

“Yep. For as long as I can take it, anyway. Long as I’m here, I want to make sure there’s somebody to fuck.” She had a generous mouth, and it spread into a large smile now, revealing small, impeccably white teeth. “Got a problem with that?”

Cold water splashed in Adam’s stomach when he realized who she was.

Gwen named her daughter Rain? he thought.

Her eyes darted over his face before she dropped suddenly, disappeared from Adam’s field of vision. He felt her breath on his penis, which was already hard.