John Irving - Until I Find You

“Small schlongs need not apply,” she said. Her name was Milly. She was wearing a slate-gray pin-striped pantsuit, very businesswoman-banker chic, which stood in seeming contradiction to her old-fashioned pearl necklace—of a kind worn by ladies who belong to bridge clubs. Her hair was huge—a silver-blond bubble, like a motorcycle helmet sans insignia.

Jack said there’d been a misunderstanding and started to leave. “You might as well show me your schlong,” Milly said. “It’s a free opportunity to find out if you measure up.” That got the attention of a bodybuilder-type with a ponytail and a busty young woman who looked like a vampire. They were sitting on a couch, watching a movie on a VCR. It was footage of themselves, probably from Muffy the Vampire Hooker 2— a long, unvarying blow job, in the throes of which the eponymous Muffy occasionally bared her vampiric canines. One would hope that when she was moved to bite the bodybuilder and suck his blood, she would do so in his throat. Jack saw that Muffy did not have the bloodsucking canines inserted while she watched the movie on the couch; she was innocently chewing gum.

The guy with the ponytail paused the blow job on the VCR, and the three of them had a look at Jack’s penis. While this was not specifically the film career Jack sought, most men are curious to know how their penises compare; after all, here was a panel of experts.

“It’s okay, buddy,” the bodybuilder told Jack.

“Cut the crap, Hank,” Milly said.

“Yeah, Hank,” Muffy the vampire hooker said.

Hank went back to the couch and started up the blow job on the VCR again. “His dick looks fine to me,” Hank said.

“It’s cute,” Muffy told Jack, “but in this business, cute doesn’t quite cut it.”

“Forget quite, ” Milly said. She was in her fifties, maybe sixty—a former porn star, one of the cameramen had told Jack, but the cameraman must have been kidding. Except for the big hair, Milly reminded Jack of Noah Rosen’s mother.

“It’s cute, and it doesn’t matta how big it is,” Muffy whispered in Jack’s ear. She went back to the couch and plopped down next to Hank.

“It doesn’t cut it, period. And it does matter how big it is,” Milly said. “It doesn’t matter if it’s cute. ”

“Thank you,” Jack told them, zipping up.

Hank, the big guy getting the endless blow job from Muffy on the VCR, followed Jack to the car; there was nothing cute about Hank’s schlong, which Jack had noticed was enormous. “Don’t be discouraged,” Hank said. “Just eat healthy. I’d stick to low-fat, low-sodium, low-carb stuff, if I were you.”

“Hank, are you ready ?” Milly was screaming from inside the house.

“This job isn’t for everyone,” Hank admitted to Jack. “There’s a lotta pressure.” He had a high, nasal voice—a mismatch with his hulking presence.

“Hank!” Muffy called. She was standing in the open doorway of the house, baring her teeth in a broad-mouthed grin. She had inserted the bloodsucking canines; Muffy was ready for the next shot, whatever it was.

“Coming!” Hank called back to her. “It might have worked out differently if I’d met Mildred’s sister,” he said, “but I met Milly first.”

“She has a sister?” Jack asked.

“Myra Ascheim is legit,” Hank said. “Mildred is the porn-producer side of the Ascheim family.”

Jack saw that Mildred Ascheim had joined Muffy the vampire hooker in the doorway. “Stop stalling, Hank!” Milly yelled.

“What is Myra Ascheim legit at?” Jack asked.

“She’s some kind of agent,” Hank told him. “She used to represent Val Kilmer, or maybe it was Michael J. Fox—lots of people like that, anyway. It’s all about who you meet out here,” he added. Hank was walking back to the house like a man about to have nonstop sex with a vampire hooker. He looked less than thrilled.

“Good luck!” Jack called to him.

“I’ll look for you on the big screen,” Hank said, pointing skyward—as if the big screen, in both their minds, lay in a heavenly direction.

“Good luck, little schlong!” Milly called to Jack.

Hank stopped and walked back to Jack for a minute. “If you ever meet Myra, don’t tell her you’ve met Mildred,” he warned Jack. “That would be the kiss of death.”

“It’s not as if I actually auditioned, ” Jack said.

“This was an audition, kid. I’ll look for you,” Hank said again.

Jack would look for him, too, although he didn’t tell Hank that at the time. His porn name was Hank Long—a big, handsome guy, no stranger to a weight room, always with minimal dialogue, no doubt because of his high, nasal voice. Jack would see him in fifteen or twenty “adult” movies after their first meeting—for the most part, nothing memorable by title or plot.

Jack could have recognized Hank’s penis all by itself—Emma could have, too. They watched Hank Long movies together, after Jack’s not-exactly-an-audition in Van Nuys.

“Never go to Van Nuys,” he told Emma, when he got home. “There are a lot of guys with huge schlongs out there.”

“Like that would really keep me away,” Emma said somewhat ambiguously.

Jack told her the whole story—how his penis, in Mildred Ascheim’s estimation, didn’t cut it; how he was “cute,” according to Muffy the vampire hooker, but not in a league with Hank Long.

“I wouldn’t say you were tiny, baby cakes, but I’ve seen bigger.” More than Milly’s small-schlong assessment, Emma’s bluntness left Jack a little crestfallen. “For Christ’s sake, you’re not trying to be a porn star!” Emma said, trying to cheer him up.

She called Lawrence at C.A.A. immediately, beginning the conversation by telling him she would never fuck him. “Let’s get that out of the way,” was how Emma put it. “Do you have any other brilliant ideas about which agents Jack should see?” Emma covered the mouthpiece of the telephone and turned to Jack. “He says no,” she reported.

“Ask him if he knows Myra Ascheim,” Jack said.

Emma got a quick answer to her question over the phone. “Lawrence says she’s a has-been, honey pie. She’s been let go by everyone. She doesn’t even have an assistant anymore.”

“She sounds like a good place to start,” Jack said. “Ask Lawrence if he’ll make a call—just one call.”

Emma asked the bastard. “Lawrence says Myra doesn’t even have an office. ”

“She sounds perfect for me,” Jack said.

Emma conveyed Jack’s feelings to Lawrence over the phone. “He says not to mention Myra’s sister, ” Emma told Jack.

“I know,” Jack said. “It’s Myra, not Mildred. I know, I know.”

That night there were three messages on the answering machine when Jack got back from American Pacific. He was anxious that one of the messages might have been from a housewife he’d been banging in Benedict Canyon. The woman was insane; she claimed that from her bedroom she could see part of the estate on Cielo Drive where Sharon Tate had been murdered, but Jack couldn’t see it. When the Santa Anas were blowing, she said she could hear the screams and moans of Ms. Tate and the other victims—as if the murders were ongoing.

She called Jack frequently, often to reschedule their rendezvous. Usually the postponement had something to do with her husband or one of her children, but the last time the family dog had been to blame. The unfortunate animal had eaten something it shouldn’t have; the complications were so severe that the vet had promised to make a house call.

Emma said that Jack should learn to read between the lines—clearly the housewife was also sleeping with the vet. Emma loved listening to all the reasons the Benedict Canyon woman found not to sleep with Jack, or at least to postpone the illicit act. But Emma had been writing; she’d not answered the phone that night. She and Jack listened to the answering machine together after Jack came home.