“I’m overwhelmed,” he said.
“Well, I’m being a little premature,” Ned admitted. “We ought to keep our minds on ‘The First Year,’ but just between us, I think I’m finally going to get Spoons out of the starting block this year. It’s over at Hamlin Productions now, and they’re hot about it. If it goes, I’ll be able to seriously start thinking features.”
Kim put her hand on his shoulder, giving it a loving squeeze.
“This civilized guy has had some rough sledding in this town, but believe me, he’s going to own it before he’s through.”
“Hey, this is all a bit premature,” Ned cautioned, “including Kim’s predictions of my rise to power in this town—but as soon as we see where we are with our TV project, I’d like to have my lawyer draw up an option for ‘Springtime Women.’”
“It’s a deal!” said Perry.
“Hey, hold on. I’m not in a position to lay out big bucks—this would just be a minimal thing, but if it went, you’d end up doing all right, I’m sure.”
“Listen, the important thing here is your confidence in me. And the chance to work with you again.”
Perry extended his hand, and Ned shook it warmly.
“All right, it’s a deal then,” Ned said.
Waitresses dressed as harem girls were bowing before them with steaming platters of lamb kebab. Perry picked up the bottle of wine, now empty, and waved it toward a sommelier wearing a red fez.
“More!” he said.
“More?” she asked.
Her face hovered over his cock. It was still only partially erect. A “semi” they used to call the condition back in high school.
Ha. If they could see him now. The old gang would never believe it. Perry Moss, the shy type, getting sucked off by his lovely, talented photographer wife in a hip hotel suite high above Sunset Boulevard, while he waited for a phone call from the other coast that might make him even more rich and successful. Not rich by Hollywood standards, of course, but certainly by Haviland standards. The Haviland College crowd would probably be surprised, too, seeing their tweedy literary man in his present condition—holding a glass of chilled Chardonnay in one hand, fondling the nipple of his wife’s ample breast with the other.
“Perry?”
“Yes?”
“Does that mean yes, you want more, or yes, you remember I’m still down here?”
“Yes. I mean more. Please.”
Jane sighed, then returned to her labors.
Perry took his idle hand, the one that wasn’t fiddling with the nipple, and ran it through Jane’s hair, wanting to show he was with her in this enterprise, was appreciating her efforts. They were, as always, artistic, the quick little butterfly kisses of the cock, interspersed with light, quick licks that lovingly lolled and lengthened into a lush, wet suck. Yet now he could not keep his mind on it, could simply not focus full attention on what was happening between his own legs while he wondered when the phone call would come and what news it would bring.
Even now, at this moment, while his wife’s thumb and forefinger made little nips at his partially swollen stalk and the tip of her tongue tickled its tendermost top, the network brass in New York might be making the final—fatal?—decision about his show. Was it to be or not to be a series? How many episodes would they go for? Twenty hours constituted a whole season in these perilous, do-or-die times. Would they get, as Archer hoped, an order for thirteen hours with a chance for a pickup of seven? Or eleven and nine? Or none? He felt little nibblings around the root, and tried to concentrate on rising fully to the occasion here and now, instead of some smoky hotel room in New York. It was said that Max Bloorman, who was rumored to be the real power at the network even though he wasn’t the president, smoked big black cigars; even in this day and age of health and pure air, he held fast to his habit, blowing smoke right at anyone who got in his way. So, the crucial meeting was no doubt muggy with the ash and fume of his fulminations.
Jane was tickling his testicles now. Nice, but still no cigar. Sometimes when it was fully erect his cock reminded him of that. A sort of cigar. He wondered what kind Bloorman smoked. Smuggled-in expensive Havanas no doubt. Damn! He had to get his mind off the show, on to the sex. That was one of the whole points of starting this up in the first place, to try to get his mind off worrying over what he had no way to control. Hell, he couldn’t even control his own cock.
Perry suddenly switched tactics and positions, pulling Jane up beside him, kissing her wet on the mouth, with thanks, like saying hello, then sliding down, making stops at the breasts to deliver a few quick licks so as not to let them feel neglect, then continuing on below to his true target, burrowing in between her legs to pay back respects for her own arduous efforts and also to lose himself in this dark and lovely lair, forget his fears about the fate of the show, which now he saw as his own fate too, flee from those worries, and in so doing, not only give his wife pleasure but raise his own sex to the occasion of coupling, that occasion that recently was all too rare.
Kissing these other lips as affectionately as the ones above, he tried to forget about his business in New York. This really turned him on, kissing her down here. He had never kissed any woman like this before. He had licked his share, yes, sloppily slurped away as he thought was his duty, neither hating it nor enjoying it, just carrying on like a trouper in hopes of being good in bed, of getting a good rating.
Were there sexual Nielsens?
Perry lifted his head slightly and drew his hand to gently part her legs a bit more, then gently bent down and sought the exact spot with his tongue, the little protuberance in the hot center, touching and, tasting it at the same time, sweetly giving moisture back from his own mouth. He had never taken this care before with a woman, never loved this dark, luscious place between the loins, and it was all tied up with loving her , Jane, wanting to make love here because it was her, hers, and so it was special, sacred almost, and that was how he approached it, treated it, felt it within his own experience.
The trouble with rating something, whether it was lovemaking or television, was that you couldn’t measure quality. The fact that Perry had given head to other women before he met Jane could no doubt be charted in the numbers of women and amount of time spent in the exercise, but there was no way to compare that with the feeling of intensity and arousal and near reverence for life itself that came from his doing it with Jane. In terms of television, though of course it was possible to measure, for instance, the share of the audience and the numbers of people watching “Brideshead Revisited,” it was certainly not possible to measure the depth or quality of the experience of those watching it from, say, their viewing of “Dynasty” or “Good Morning, America” or the local six o’clock news. There was no way Max Bloorman and the network honchos could measure the quality of experience, then, of something unique and special like “The First Year’s the Hardest” as they judged its potential against all the ordinary, run-of-the-mill contenders it was no doubt competing against.
“Ooooooooh—aaaaaaaaahhhhh”
Jane’s gentle moan brought him back again to where he was trying to be. He raised his head, placed his fingertips on the protuberance, and ducked down to move his tongue in deep below it, searching and sucking, feeling at the same time his own sex stiffen beneath as it hadn’t yet in this whole session, thinking maybe now he was getting it, forgetting what was going on in New York. He wished now he’d have gone, though nobody asked him; he’d have loved to just hang around the hotel lobbies during the crucial week that all the networks declared as the “selling season,” when all the studios and production companies brought their pilot films before the councils of judgment, like medieval peddlers bringing their wares to the market, to see what would be purchased—in this case not by the multitudes but for them.
Читать дальше