by Polly Frost
At that time, I had my name on a few indie films but Tyler hadn’t heard of me. Still, the words producer and movie project worked their magic. She listened intently to my proposals, batted her big eyes. Moments later we were making a visit to her trailer, entangled, wet, and hot.
I’ve had my share of models and actresses, but Tyler was good and she was fast. I offered her a joint and a few lines of coke. But Tyler and I were tonguing each other before I could even take the product out of my purse.
She wasn’t wearing any panties, and she’d groomed her pubic hair into a perfect tiny triangle.
I pushed Tyler onto the sofa in her tiny trailer, throwing aside a pile of ratty stuffed animals as I slid a long finger up her cunt.
She screamed as she came. I wondered what the crew outside must be thinking, and whether our lovemaking would find its way into the tabloids, and as I thought about the press I started moaning and coming myself.
Afterwards, we shared a joint. I told Tyler it wasn’t her glitz that turned me on. I was turned on by the raw talent that I could see she had, and I could tell that she was perfect to do the quality indie film that was my pet project. The one that I’d dreamt of forever. Tough, independent, meaningful.
She curled up happily. Within a month we moved in together and formed our own production company, just her and me for the moment.
Right now, present tense and three years later, Tyler is languorously spread-eagled on our four-poster bed. Her wrists are tied to the posts, and I’ve got my mouth in her exquisitely salty folds. Exquisite—another trite word. It’s not up to me to find a better adjective.
She’s writhing happily. Yet I just can’t get turned on.
This is a problem lately. I’m obsessed with worry, of the career and financial sort.
We’re not where I thought we’d be at this point. I had no idea how impulsive and hard to control Tyler could be. I was helpless to keep her from choosing a string of girlfriend parts in action movies that went nowhere.
I know the movie we need, and I always have. It’s my dream project. Not only will it get the press attention and the industry attention, it’ll express my deepest beliefs. Like I said: tough and meaningful.
As my tongue swirls around Tyler’s clit, her hips begin to wriggle slowly. I envy her ability to set everything aside and get into the moment. It’s what makes her so perfect a heroine for the American public.
I slip a wet finger up her ass to help her along.
“How about more of that,” she says dreamily and greedily, and I slip a second finger up her ass. For someone who claims to have grown up in poverty, Tyler’s become awfully good at ordering up exactly what she wants.
“Can I raise something we need to talk about?” I say.
“Oh, shut up and just let me come on your face,” she gasps. So I oblige with some enthusiastic tongue thrusts.
After she finishes twinging and crying out, I untie her and settle down beside her. A long postcoital kiss lets us share the taste of her happiness.
She runs her hand over my nipples, but I’m not yet into it. I imagine my Yale classmates seeing me in bed with Tyler Beaumont. It almost always gets me hot, but today even that image isn’t turning me on.
I’m blocked, with a dull, insistent fury over what’s become of our careers.
I glance through our window at the pale camellia bushes lining our house. They’re overgrown. We haven’t paid the gardener in so many months that he’s stopped coming. And then there’s our mortgage. Or rather mortgages, plural. Two fat loans on our little Hollywood Hills bungalow that we should have traded in for a spread in Silver Lake long ago.
I pull away from Tyler and turn on my side. “I really do need to talk to you,” I say.
Tyler exhales loudly. “Do you ever get your mind off career, career, career? My career specifically?”
“Our career,” I rebuke her.
She grabs her ratty old bear from the pile of mangled stuffed animals on her side of the bed. She sits up, legs wrapped around a mahogany poster. She’s pouting.
“Sweetie,” I murmur, “you know very well we’re partners in this. And we are so close to getting where we’ve always planned to be.”
“Where you’ve planned for us to be!” Tyler says. She pulls viciously on the ears of her stuffed animal.
We’re headed into one of our arguments.
“I thought you wanted out of Werewolf High,” I say.
“I still get a lot of fan mail for that TV show. Young girls write that I empowered them. Thanks to me, they, too, can kick ass just the way guys can. You’re the one who thought it was garbage.”
“Let’s face it, honey, you have terrible taste.”
She throws the bear across the room and looks away.
“And,” I say insistently, “let’s do some math. You begged for the lead in a low-budget Matrix rip-off. It played in three theaters for two days. Then you did back-to-back slasher pics. Bombs, both of them. And you even let not one, but both directors talk you into a lot of nudity! Christ almighty, Tyler! Couldn’t you have held out? All the shrewd actresses know to save the extended nudity for the prestige art pics. Titties for the trashmeisters, sure. But save the pussy for David Lynch! Jesus!! You’re taking us straight to DVD.”
Tyler thinks about it, if only for a second.
“I know you’re right,” she mutters, then brightens. “But I’ve heard a rumor that Michael Bay is thinking of me for his next movie—how bad is that?”
“Michael Bay is going to have you play another girlfriend part while cars crash and blood splatters around you. You can do better than that. We can do better than that. You could be the next Charlize Theron.”
Tyler bursts into tears.
“Let’s face a few facts here,” I say consolingly. “We’re in debt, baby. And your career has stalled because you’ve gone with your impulses. We need to think.”
She jumps up, glares at me through red eyes. “I am not impulsive!” she blurts.
She storms to the closet and yanks out her suitcase. As she opens the door, I gasp.
The closet’s bursting with leather pants, leather jackets, sheer things, and the gleam of expensive dresses I don’t recognize. Tyler’s been on one of her shopping sprees again.
Stay collected and in control, I tell myself. Focus on what’s important.
So I say in a soft but necessarily cruel voice, “Need I remind you that you’re twenty-five? And that there are armies of seventeen-year-olds eager to push you out of the way? Three more years and you’ll be stuck with mommy roles.”
That does it.
“Not mommy roles,” she wails, and the tears start to flow again. She pulls herself together. “But I don’t care about money or things the way you do, because I never had them in my childhood the way you did. I didn’t get to grow up in Westchester. I didn’t get to go to Yale. And I am not too old!”
“Well, you certainly like the goodies now,” I say.
Tyler starts flinging clothes into the suitcase.
“I don’t know why I stick around for your abuse,” she says.
I’d like to throttle her. Or just let her walk out and see how far she gets without me. But if Tyler and I break up now, I know it’ll be another two days before I’ll be able to win her back. We’ve been through this cycle enough times already. And, frankly, I don’t have time to lose.
I walk over and put my arms around her.
“Sweetie, you stay because we both know we’re a hot team,” I say. “There’s nobody like us.”
I gently take the suitcase from her and set it down.
“I don’t really care about being in debt,” Tyler says.
“I know you don’t,” I say. Time for a strategic lie. “It’s part of what makes you such an exciting person to live with.”
I steer Tyler over to the bed and look her deep in the eyes. “And it’s why I love you. I’m so cautious where money’s concerned.”
“You’re tight in a lot of ways,�
� she says bitterly.
“You’re right, I know that. But where the money’s concerned, baby, you just piss it away. You know you do.”
Tyler narrows her eyes, trying to figure out if I’m ragging on her.
“I’m praising you, sweetie,” I say. “You’re spontaneous and free. You’re what this business loves and needs. And that’s why I’ve gone to all the trouble to line up a project just for you.”
Tyler’s still wary, but she touches my lips with a gentle finger.
“It’s not one of those serioso films of yours, is it?” she says.
Of course it’s serious, you bitch-idiot, I want to say. I’m Stacy Dickerson, quality filmmaker. But I’ve got to package the idea so Tyler will go for it.
“Remember the night Charlize Theron won the Oscar for Monster?” I say. “And how we both said it should be you up there on the stage getting the award?”
“Oh no,” Tyler says. “You’re not going to try to talk me into playing a serial killer again—”
But I don’t allow Tyler to finish.
“Oscar, darling. Focus on Oscar,” I murmur. She relents, and I raise her hands and run my tongue around her nipples. After I hear appreciative moaning, I raise my head and say, “You know how much it means to me to make a plea for women in prison. I’ve even found the perfect murderer to do the movie about. Think of it this way: it’s going to make us both legit. And it’s going to take both of us to the next level.”
She scrunches up her adorable nose and winces in pleasure as I tug at her nipples. “I don’t want to talk about it. You’ve got me all horny. I don’t know why I put up with you. But you can make it up to me if you put on our dildo. And if you fuck me with it while we play that old videotape of mine.”
It isn’t one of her old movies. Tyler’s referring to a tape she made at fourteen back in Alabama with a junior high school boyfriend. On it, she gives one of the most expert blow jobs I’ve ever seen, and I’ve watched a lot of professional porn.
Her old boyfriend blackmails us from time to time, and I pay him off so the footage won’t go on the Internet. When I raise it with Tyler, though, she claims not to be worried.
“Screw him,” she says. “Let him post it. Who cares if it’s out there for everyone to download. I’m hot in it!”
Tyler likes to watch the tape and have a lot of mirrors around the bed. Talk about a narcissist. And yes, the tape does get me off, too. Who wouldn’t want to watch Tyler having sex? Even watch her having sex with one of those damned stuffed animals of hers?
And yes, I do enjoy fucking her with a strap-on and spanking her for having done the video. It’s part of our very positive routine.
I strap on the dildo and waggle it around.
“Tyler, you promised we would do my film,” I say, taunting her with the device. “And that was three years ago. The cause of women in prison hasn’t gotten better in that time. It’s gotten worse. There are more women on death row today than ever before.”
“That’s because women are kickin’ ass!” Tyler says. I frown at her. “Oh, don’t be such a stick-in-the-mud. I don’t know why you’re so fixated on women in prison anyway. Sometimes I think it’s just because you hated your suburb so much,” she says.
But she moves up and fondles the dildo. “I like the way the leather straps cut into your hip,” she whispers to me. “Anyway, I don’t want to play some dumpy chick. And I really don’t want to wear hideous makeup the way Charlize did. What’s wrong with a little glamour? Why can’t I be an old-style femme fatale?”
By this time, the video’s on, Tyler’s mouth on the screen is around her boyfriend’s dick, and I’m pumping my dildo in and out of my in-person starlet’s cunt.
“Glamour doesn’t get you the Oscar,” I say, dropping the “O” word again.
Tyler gives a quiver. I’m getting to her now. Her lips are pursed in a pout, and she’s running her tongue around them.
“I don’t know why they can’t give the Academy Award for fun, glamorous action roles,” she murmurs.
I turn her over so we’re face to face, and lay into her as I make the key point. “Glamour is for when you’re on the red carpet, baby.”
“Do me, sugar,” she says.
It’s time to sew up the deal. “Glamour’s great. But there’s a time and a place for it. The real stars know that. Look at Nicole Kidman. Look at Renée Zellweger. At the premieres and at the awards ceremonies, they’re sparkling and showing cleavage in designer clothes. But how did they get there? They did roles where they looked terrible.”
I sink my tongue intimately into her mouth and whisper to her, “C’mon, you’re always telling me you want the Oscar.”
“Of course I do,” Tyler whispers back, her hips beginning to buck of their own free will. “It’s been the biggest dream of my life. It’s what held me together when my uncles were molesting me back in Alabama. My dream and my stuffed animals were all that kept me going….”
“I know, I know,” I say, trying to keep the impatience out of my voice. “Come now, sweetie. Give me your orgasm.” She starts to quiver, and as she does, I say, “You said you trusted me to guide your career. Don’t you trust me?”
“Yes,” she says. “I love you. I will. I do. Oh fuck.” And she’s thrashing, fulfilled.
Afterwards, I roll a joint.
“I’ve even found us our very own serial killer, and believe me it wasn’t easy. Every person in Hollywood seems to be out in the boonies looking for a female on death row to make a movie about. But I found someone fresh. Her name is Karen Devere. She’s on death row in an Oregon state pen.”
“Karen Devere,” Tyler says, trying out the name. “Karen Devere. I’m not sure. What’s she in for?”
“I didn’t get as much time as I needed for research. But I do know that she murdered twelve men and women. All by the age of twenty-three.”
Tyler turns to me. “Are you sure this will get me the Academy Award?”
“And a Golden Globe,” I tell her. “And everything else you could ever want. Plus it’s going to help the cause of women in prison.”
Exterior. Oregon jail.
I find myself deeply moved as we drive up to the prison where Karen Devere’s incarcerated.
I wonder why. Is it because my project is finally coming together?
Then I realize it’s also because the prison building, a gray old gothicky thing, looks just like the classroom building where I did most of my work in French theory at Yale. It’s where I got my start. Funny, the way life turns around on itself.
Tyler’s sulking behind her dark glasses. She’s dressed inappropriately in a tight, hip-baring pink skirt and a midriff-baring T-shirt. But it was enough of a fight to get her to show up at all.
“You must be the people from Hollywood,” the guard at the gate says. “Who’d a thought Karen Devere would have movie stars interested in her? And you’re not the only ones. We just got a phone call a few minutes ago from somebody else out there. Lansing, did she say her name was. Sherry Lansing, is that right? Well, her assistant anyway.”
My breath leaves me. That means big Paramount commitment. Pull yourself together, I tell myself. So what if your serial killer’s dealing behind your back? You can get through this.
“Tell me more,” I say to the guard, slipping him a twenty.
“Well, this nice young fella calls and tells me he’s from Sherry Lansing’s office, like I was supposed to know who that was, and that they’d heard you were comin’ down here and that now they’re real interested in Karen’s, story, too. That’s all, really. But from the tone of voice, I’d expect them to be here at any time. My hint? You should all hurry up since Karen’s gonna be executed in less than a year anyway.”
I demand that a guard take us to Karen immediately, and in a few moments we’re in a musty waiting room.
Twenty minutes go by. Tyler’s in one of her moods, damn it. She swings her feet, grumbling over and over, “I could go right now.”
S
he plays idly with the tiny stuffed koala that hangs from her purse strap.
A female guard swings open the door and comes through. Behind her, Karen Devere makes her entrance.
Not at all what I expected. Good-looking, for one thing. I mean, really good-looking. The type I used to go for before Tyler.
Karen walks on her toes so that her ample hips swing from side to side. She throws her hair back. No gazing at the ground for her! Even the jail uniform works. It’s stylish, what with the dark hair cascading over her shoulders and her eyeliner expertly applied.
Tyler’s eyes widen.
“All right!” she whispers to me. “The murderer’s a babe. I’m starting to get interested.”
Karen is hot, but I’m suddenly perplexed. How am I going to make Karen sympathetic to an audience? People can’t relate to a self-reliant, sexy murderer.
Karen sits manacled on the opposite side of the long table. I pay the beefy female guard handsomely to stand outside. And now it’s just the three of us, locked into the chilly max-security visting room.
Karen’s lips are large and tauntingly full. She stares directly at Tyler, giving her a wicked smile that I can tell electrifies my partner.
“Tyler Beaumont,” Karen says. “It’s such a pleasure to meet you. I’m a huge fan of yours.”
“Really?” Tyler’s eyes glisten.
“Oh yeah,” Karen says, her voice low and throaty. “But you never should have done Werewolf High. The episode where you decapitated a guy and ran around with his head on a stick? That wasn’t very responsible of you.”
“Oh, come on,” Tyler says flirtatiously. “You did that yourself with a real live man.”
“Exactly,” Karen says. “I never would have thought of it if it weren’t for you.”
“Really?” Tyler throws her hair back and smiles broadly as though she’s just been given a major award. “I’m so honored.”
“Karen,” I sweetly interrupt. “We’re here to make the movie of your life. And what you’re saying is that Tyler’s an inspiration to you. That’s great and I look forward to many interviews in which you say just that. But the inspiration should be towards something that the public will respect, like working to change the way that women in prison are treated.”