Max Collins - Quarry's cut

She stood near the couch, leaning against it, fiddling with one of the arcs of brown hair that framed her pretty face.

“How will this do?” she said, ambiguously.

“Fine.”

“My room’s next door.”

“That’s fine, too.”

“Do you really have to…” And she gestured toward the john.

“Not any more. Seeing you turn up scared it out of me.”

She smiled a little. First real smile I’d seen from her today. “I’ll show you my room.”

She did. It was the same as mine, except the couch had already been converted to a bed. A sloppy, unmade bed, at the moment.

“I’m always something of a slob,” she said, “when I don’t have a roommate.”

She sat on the bed. So did I.

“Maybe I can do something about that,” I said.

She touched my face. Kissed me. Put her tongue in my mouth.

“You could sleep in here,” she said, after coming up for air, “if you’d like.”

“I’d like.”

“We’ve got some catching up to do. How long has it been? Two years?”

“About.”

“You know, I’ve thought about you, Jack. Often.”

Jack really was the first name she knew me by: it was the Murphy part of the name I was using here that made it phony to her.

“I think about you, too,” I said.

And I had, every time I played poker with her father, who had entrusted his daughter to me one evening, figuring I was a safe bet. I was, but he was betting the wrong way.

“I probably shouldn’t believe you,” she said, stroking my face, “but I think I will.”

“Well, why not? We did spend a… memorable evening together, after all.”

“Yes. Memorable. Yes. Mmmm.”

I’d just slid a hand under her sweater, touching a breast tentatively, its tip poking back at me, but I decided not to take the credit for that: the room was pretty cold.

But I was warming up, so I played with her breasts for a while and she talked.

“Are you really a writer, now? Is ‘Murphy’ a pseudonym? You can guess why I’m not using my real name. The experience is what I’m after, here, the chance to work with a director like Jerry Castile. He’s very good, you know, and getting well known, despite the subject matter of his work. Do that some more. Please. Anyway, this opportunity was just too good to pass up. Look. Let me take my glasses off. Yeah. There. Just put ’em over there, would you? Yeah. Thanks. Mmmm. Listen… my father didn’t find out about this, did he? He didn’t send you…”

I cupped her chin in one hand. “That’s not nice.”

“… what?”

“It’s not nice to put your tongue in my mouth and tell me how you think about me and let me play with you while you ask if your father sent me to spy on you.”

“I just thought…”

“Don’t think. Don’t bother. I wasn’t sent by your father to spy on you. I’m not about to tell him or anybody I saw you here.”

“Jack, I didn’t mean…”

“Sure you did. But never mind. You owe me nothing, except the courtesy of keeping my real name to yourself. I have my reasons for not wanting it spread around.”

“I understand,” she said.

“Good,” I said.

Of course she didn’t understand at all, but that probably hadn’t really occurred to her: she was just saying something to say something. And I hadn’t had time to make up an effective lie to cover my presence here, so I let it pass.

“Now,” I said. “You want your glasses back?”

“Not particularly.”

“Fine,” I said, and put my tongue in her mouth.

“Sorry I took so long,” I said, returning to my place across from Castile in the booth in the bar.

“I got talking to Janet. Interesting girl.”

“Well,” Castile said, with his practiced smile, “you must have the journalist’s knack for getting people to talk.”

“Oh?”

“Janet’s been very quiet, on and off the set. Also very efficient, very intelligent… but despite her efforts to seem unimpressed by all the naked flesh and sex-on-camera, I don’t believe she’s ever worked on anything like this before.”

“She admitted as much, when we talked,” I said.

“She certainly opened up to you in a way she hasn’t for any of us,” he said, and that was probably true. “Ah. Here she is now.”

Janet came over; looking cool and pretty, and stood with her hands clasped in front of her, fig-leaf style, and gave her report on the food situation.

“There are still plenty of cold cuts left,” she said. “And bread. And beer. But that’s it. There’s a pantry but it’s bare.”

“We’ve been having our lunches here,” Castile explained to me, “and then having a late supper at a place up the road a ways. Great food. Wilma’s Welcome Inn, it’s called. That chili there is something else.”

“Well,” the girl said, “it’ll be cold cuts tonight. And beer.”

“And bread,” Castile said, good-humoredly.

“Mind if I join you?”

The voice came from behind me, but I soon saw who it belonged to: Castile’s sex-star wife, who was wearing a green terry-cloth full-length robe, belted at the waist, with a white towel turbaned around her head. She wore no make-up at all, now, and the effect was startling: she was pretty, with a fresh quality, almost an innocence, that seemed incongruous with the image of her I had in mind, which was of her being humped from behind while cameras dispassionately rolled on.

“Sit down, baby,” Castile said.

Janet stood aside, so Castile’s wife could push through and sit next to him in the booth. Then Janet said she’d go off to the kitchen and make a platter of sandwiches for everybody, if Castile wanted her to, and he did, and she went.

“Doesn’t she mind playing cook?” I asked.

“When you’re shooting a picture with a crew this small,” he said, “everybody has to be ready to do just about anything. Fixing lunch is just one of the jobs that’s fallen to Janet. She’s been making the sandwiches every day we’ve been here and hasn’t complained yet. And that’s three days now.”

“Brownie points,” his wife said.

“Pardon me?” I asked.

“She’s just trying to rack up some brownie points with Jerry. She’s as bad as that little nerd over there, what’s-his-name, that Richie. Both of ’em got visions of Hollywood in their empty little heads.”

“Baby, you’re being a little harsh…”

“Not at all. Realistic is all. I bet the little bitch’d take her clothes off in front of the camera if you asked her to.” She caught a glint of skepticism in my eye, and said, “You don’t think so, mister, uh, what was it?”

“Murphy. And not mister… Jack. And no, I don’t think she’d take her clothes off on camera. Not and do the kind of things that’d be expected of her, anyway.”

“And why not?”

“She doesn’t seem the type.”

“Who is? I’d still be running a beauty shop if I hadn’t done it.”

“Why did you? Money?”

“No, not money. The beauty shop was making money. I guess I got a little exhibitionist in me. I’m no whore, I’ll tell you that. I’m an actress. And there is a difference. Sure, I know what you’re thinking. I was screwing that guy, and was getting paid to do it. Now a whore will sometimes be something of an actress, I’ll admit, and can fool a guy into thinking he’s brought her off, that she’s really digging what he’s doing to her, what she’s doing to him. But how many of ’em could hump a turkey like that Frankie Waddsworthless on camera, on cue, on screen, and make it look like she’s enjoying it? Having the greatest goddamn climax since the Virgin Mary had the big wet dream?”

Castile seemed a little uncomfortable during this speech. Apparently he didn’t want Oui magazine to know his wife/star considered the star of the picture a turkey.