She did and as soon as she could catch her breath she told him so.
True to his promise, Harry did his very best for her, even to strengthening one of her weaker scenes with a case of nervous hiccups that made the crew—once Tommy had called, "Cut! Print!"—laugh and applaud the take. Both of his scenes with Glinda went perfectly.
Then came the next of the scenes with Dick. Barbara, disappointed all over again, pulled down the brim of her hat and narrowed her field of vision to exclude Dick. She lounged back on the floor, pretending that only John and his camera existed, as they circled the couple on the couch with the grace of a pair of ballroom dancers. John was trying to compensate for Dick in his own way, by distracting the audience with an unusual shot.
There was a flicker of movement at the window behind him and Barbara lifted a hand, ready to warn John there'd be clutter in his shot when he completed his circle. The warning caught in her throat.
She was imagining all this, the naked couple on her couch, Tommy raising the boom mike like a drawbridge to let the dancers slide under it . . . Most certainly she was imagining the unicorn that fixed a cold silver eye at them all through the window, but she popped up the brim of her hat to get a better look.
It was the same unicorn whose rear-view she'd so vividly imagined earlier in the day. If anything, this end of it was even more spectacular, all white and wild. Though something about the horn struck her wrong . . . Trying to figure out what, Barbara sat up, pushing her hat completely back as she did.
The unicorn was still there.
Looking for Glinda, Barbara thought and involuntarily raised her hand and pointed—not at the unicorn—but to the kitchen, where Glinda no doubt had gone back to her book.
The unicorn gave a disdainful snort, shockingly loud. It cut through Dick's dialogue like a Bronx cheer.
"Cut!" said a female voice beside Barbara. Kim took off her earphones and said, "Tom, I've got extraneous noise on that take."
"Hell," said Tommy, "I don't hear anything."
Kim held out the earphones: "Come listen."
Horn-first, like a thumb-tack through the sole of a shoe, the unicorn holed its way into the living room. The wall, Barbara was relieved to note, seemed no worse for the wear.
The unicorn made its way, now passing around or over obstacles as fastidiously as ER would, across the room. It paused beside the couch to lower its head and snicker in a very horse-like fashion at Dick. Then it trotted on past, aiming for the wall between the living room and the kitchen.
Half-vanished, it lashed out with its sinuous tail, catching Dick on the butt with a slap of thunder-clap proportion.
"Ow!" Dick jumped up, rubbing his ass and glaring about for the source of the swat.
Vivid but prissy unicorn, Barbara thought. Not Glinda's type at all.
"All right, who did that?" Dick demanded.
Simultaneously, his ear to the earphone, Tommy said to Kim, "What is that?"
"Unicorn," said Barbara, answering both.
Dick glared harder, this time at Barbara. Tommy said, "Yeah, right Barbara. Well, we'll have to reshoot."
From across the room, Harry grinned at her. "Day-dreaming unicorns on a porn shoot," he said. "Barbara, I know an analyst who'd love to meet you! "
Barbara clapped a hand to her mouth, trying to force the word back and unsaid. They hadn't seen it!
"Somebody farted," said Tommy, glaring at Dick. "That's what the mike picked up."
Dick ignored his accusation, stalking Barbara with a different gleam in his eye. "Hey baby . . . Spend ten minutes with me and that'll be the end of unicorns for you!"
At that Barbara uncovered her mouth and rose to her feet to meet him prepared. "I'm not a virgin, Dick—I'm just choosy." At the door, she paused on the threshold and added, over her shoulder, "and anybody who does it in ten minutes ain't worth doin' it with." With that, she closed the door firmly behind her.
"Good exit!" she heard Harry call after her, and she walked the length of the hall in heady triumph.
But her pleasure vanished the moment her hand touched the kitchen door. The unicorn had come this way. She'd seen it, even if no one else had. She didn't know which would be worse, not finding it or finding it.
Cautiously, she pushed the door ajar and peered in, just in time to see Glinda lay aside her book—finished—and reach for a tissue.
No unicorn. Just ER on tiptoe, rubbing his cheek against Glinda's. That was nothing out of the ordinary: ER couldn't bear to see anyone cry, especially over a book.
Reassured or disappointed, she wasn't sure which, Barbara waited until ER had successfully concluded his jollying before she entered. No, no unicorn—and she was disappointed.
ER chirred her a greeting and swaggered across the table to push his head into her outstretched hand as she sat. Glinda said, "He's got a better swagger than Dick, too."
ER, who knew a compliment when he heard one, swaggered back to Glinda, hips rolling in the tomcat walk that displayed his balls for Barbara. "He has more to swagger about," she said. "Of course, any tomcat does."
Barbara hesitated, opened her mouth to speak, then closed it again. What could she say? . . . Glinda, did you by any chance see a unicorn come in here? "Uh, how was the book?"
"It's a good book. I liked it a lot—" she hesitated, her disappointment clear in the set of her mouth—"but it's not my kind of unicorn. I liked yours better."
Not mine, thought Barbara and, reminded, she said shyly, "Glinda, would it be okay if I used you as a character sometime? I wouldn't name her Glinda; that's been done, after all."
Glinda took a deep breath, as if gathering courage, then she said, "You wrote Sloppy Possum Potions, didn't you? I've read it five times—it's wonderful!"
"Yes," said Barbara with a guilty start—Possum was anything but "wonderful," as far as she was concerned.
Glinda, misunderstanding Barbara's reaction, said quickly, "I'm sorry I didn't recognize your name. It's not that I didn't remember it—it's that I never expected to meet you!" She leaned closer, giving ER the perfect opportunity to head-bump her chin.
"My name's Janie. You can use that—any time you like." She paused a moment to rub ER's ears, then added, 'Though I'd really rather not be the stupid virgin who traps the unicorn."
"No chance of that," said Barbara. "That we already decided."
When the shoot had wrapped for the evening, two images remained bright in Barbara's mind, the first being all three couples humping away—at John's suggestion—in unison (it even now made her giggle), the second being the unicorn. So while Tommy set the PAs (who were little more than glorified gofers) to cleaning her apartment, Barbara pulled the brim of her hat down low enough to silence the hubbub around her and focused only on the sheaf of paper before her.
She didn't emerge until some kind person set a cup of hot coffee beside her. Popping the brim of her hat with one finger, she looked out to give grateful thanks. The kind person turned out to be Harry. "I thought you were a star," she said. "Since when are you on gofer duty?"
"Since everybody else has gone home for the evening."
Barbara glanced about her. It was true. She looked again at Harry. "And you're dressed, too."
"Once you wrap for the evening, you wrap for the evening. It wouldn't do for me to be found lurking about your apartment in nothing at all, now would it?"
"What are you doing lurking about my apartment in blue jeans and a T-shirt then?"
Wrapping for the evening hadn't changed his proclivity for comedic over-reaction . . . He raised his hands high: Caught! Red-handed! "Don't shoot!" he said, "I'll go quietly." Then, lowering them to frame her face, he added, "I was watching A Writer at Work."
Barbara grinned. "Well, I suppose turnabout's fair play, isn't it?" She slid the sheaf of papers to one side and gulped coffee with relief. "It's a good thing you didn't tell me that earlier. I'm not sure I could have kept going with somebody watching over my shoulder." She eased off her chair, learning to h
er own surprise how stiff her muscles were. Stretching out the kinks, she brought her wristwatch to eye level. "Good god! It's eight o'clock! No wonder I'm famished!" She cocked an eye at him. "Want to come watch a writer eat Chinese food?"
"I thought you'd never ask . . ."
Barbara couldn't help it; she guffawed. "You could have."
He itemized on the tips of long fingers. "One: I didn't want to disturb your work. Two: I wasn't sure how you'd take an invitation to dinner when you've seen me at work all day."
She tapped each fingertip in answer. "One: I'm glad you didn't disturb my work. Two: I wouldn't take an invitation to dinner with Dick."
"Poor Dick! He's madly in love with you, you know."
Barbara snorted. "Madly in lust, maybe. And only because I won't play. If I did, I wouldn't be fantasy anymore." She was pleased to find Dick's bungling no longer annoyed her. How could she take him seriously when she'd seen a unicorn slap his butt? "Damned if I know whose fantasy he is, Harry—certainly not mine." Then, shooing him toward the door, she said, "Food!"
It wasn't until she had finished her second helping of steamed bass that Barbara revived sufficiently to gather her nerve and ask Harry about the unicorn. Even then she couldn't bring herself to ask straight out. "Harry, remember when Dick acted like somebody swatted his ass? Did you—you didn't see anything, well, out of the ordinary?"
"Ordinarily Dick would have been overjoyed to have his ass slapped . . . that was peculiar, now that you mention it. After all, he enjoyed ER's claws."
"What if I told you the unicorn slapped his ass with its tail?" She made a swatting motion with her free hand, both to demonstrate and to keep her tone light.
He gave this thoughtful consideration, then shook his head. "I don't believe it. I've been flicked by a horse tail and it didn't make me jump—not the way Dick did."
He hadn't seen it. Barbara said, "Unicorns don't have horse tails. They have lion tails."
"If you say so." He raised his wine glass. "I like it, the unicorn slapping the porn actor with its tail. But it's not easy to picture a unicorn on a porn set."
"Harry, I assure you the unicorn was as believable as anything else that went on in my living room this afternoon," she said, grinning again as she recalled the synchronized humping, "but a bit prissier."
"Then keep it away from Dick—he'd try to fuck it. He does bestiality."
"Why am I not surprised to hear that?"
"Hey, you're the one who saw a unicorn on a porn shoot. I don't find Dick half as surprising as I find you."
Barbara eyed him wearily. He smiled and said, "I'd give anything to know what was going on under that hat of yours when you gave me and Dick each that long up-and-down this afternoon. If we'd been dressed, I'd have taken it for ogling—
Dick assumed you were comparing our equipment—but it wasn't that at all. It was delighted discovery." He demonstrated, face full of innocent wonder.
"Oh," said Barbara, "fur patterns! The hair around your navel goes clockwise. Around Dick's, it goes counterclockwise. I'd just never noticed that people have patterns to their body hair before—like cats."
Harry considered the hair on his forearm. "I rest my case," he said. "Dick's not half as surprising as you are."
"Thanks, I think."
He laughed. "Barbara, most people bring such expectations to a porn shoot that they never see past them. You don't. You see what's actually happening—" he glanced again at his forearm—"better than I do." Then he grinned again. "Now I'm wondering about that unicorn."
"I never get what I expect, not even when I write. I'd miss all the interesting stuff if I only looked at what I expect. Maybe that's why I saw the unicorn and you didn't, Glinda saw it too, I think, but it wasn't her unicorn. Something about the classic unicorn that . . ."
Suddenly she had it. "Of course! That's what's wrong with its horn! Nothing's got a horn like that! Look, Harry, males—male gazelles, male moose, male you-name-its—just want to bluff. At most they want to give each other a crashing headache. They don't want to skewer each other! Even those little bitty things on the noses of rhinos—!" She curled her index finger to demonstrate and finished triumphantly, "even they curve back toward the rhino's head!"
"Damned if I know what you're talking about."
"Writer at work," she said, waving to a waiter for the check. "I'm sorry, Harry, but I gotta go—I have to get home to my typewriter."
It wasn't until she reached the door to her apartment that she remembered his presence and that only when he said in shocked tones, "Mercy me, Miss Barbara! What kind of a boy do you take me for?"
"Oh," she said, realizing with a start that she had absently invited him in. "Oh, sorry! Offer withdrawn. I really do have to work tonight."
"Shall I pick you up in the morning to see the rushes?"
"Oh, yes!" She'd never seen rushes. "Uh, you may have to roust me. I don't know how late I'll be up. Phone before you come—" she scribbled the number on a page of her notebook and handed it to him—"and I'll be ready by the time you get here."
He folded the paper and tucked it into the watch pocket of his jeans, then he bent and kissed her on the forehead and was off down the stairs before his gentleness had even registered. She called after him the first thing that came to mind: "I want you to see my unicorn, Harry!"
She finished the draft of the story at three in the morning. Some of it wasn't bad—much of it was, of course—that was the frustration of it all. She scrolled the final page out of the typewriter and reached for the rest, intending to read the story through.
ER beat her to the stack, with a dive and burrow that scattered fifty-eight pages across the desk and onto the floor. In the midst of this disaster, he rolled ecstatically, enticing her to join him. "Aw, cat," she said. He eyed her coyly from beneath page fifteen as he chewed page twenty-one.
"You're right," she said. "I'm too damn tired to read it tonight. I'll hate it." She bent to gather up the pages.
Having enticed her into his game, ER turned his purr up full and attempted to put his mark, tooth or claw, on each page as she retrieved it. She fought the last few pages from his clutches and thrust them, still disordered, into a drawer. "Bed," she told him.
Once when she dreamed of the unicorn, she woke to find ER humping her elbow with all the eagerness of Harry's Earnest Young Actor. "Your fantasy, not mine," she grumbled at him and went back to sleep.
It wasn't until she was sitting in the tiny darkened theater that Barbara wondered why Harry had come to see the rushes—surely he'd seen rushes before? Ah, she thought, he's probably here to see how his work stands up on film. Then she groaned mentally at her own choice of expression; during a porno shoot, everything became double entendre. That reading (as Harry would have called it) probably did explain why Dick had come. Barbara groaned a second time and told her subconscious firmly to cut the bad jokes and concentrate on the screen.
Somebody, probably John, had slated the unison humping as "The Anvil Chorus/take 2." Barbara laughed. Even though there was no sound with the footage, she could almost hear the music as she watched.
Like the writing itself, only parts of the film worked that well. Odd to see the scenes jumbled out of order, and each replayed from two or three separate camera angles. Piecing them together in her head like a jigsaw puzzle, Barbara almost saw a way to do without Dick's footage altogether. No, not quite. Damn him, anyhow—he'd ruined two of her best-written scenes; she didn't need sound to tell her that.
On the other hand . . . She watched the last of the footage between Harry and Suzy with widening eyes and growing wonder. Mentally she patched it together in proper sequence; heat rose to her cheeks. When the lights came on, she turned to Harry in open-mouthed astonishment.
Her pleasure vanished before his scowl. "Harry . . . ?"
"I'm sorry, Barbara. Damn! Just that much off the timing"—he held up thumb and forefinger, fractionally apart—"and I blew it. I knew we should have done another take."
"That scene between me and Suzy—"
His distress was genuine, but, to Barbara, inexplicable. He thought he'd ruined the one scene she found most remarkable! On impulse, she caught his hand and squeezed it. "Do shut up, Harry. You do better than you know. That was lovely, that scene. It didn't work in the writing, but you and Suzy made it work on screen beautifully."
He eyed her unconvinced. "Stubborn man," she told him. "That's the only scene in the film that's genuinely erotic. Not only does Suzy actually look like she gets off but—" Barbara felt her face heat all over again—"then you kissed her, so gently, so tenderly, that— Oh, hell." She looked down at the floor. "I felt like a voyeur, but I couldn't look away because it was so pretty."
"Pretty!" His laughter came so suddenly as to startle her, but it was genuine pleasure. "Damned if I've ever heard a hard-core sex scene described as pretty before!" He raised her hand to his lips and kissed her knuckle in the fashion prescribed for gentlemen of the Old School. "I'm still sorry I didn't give you better, Barbara, but I'm glad what I did was good enough to please you."
"Oh, yes—"
"'Well," said Dick, "will you look at these two? What's going, Harry? A bit of non-union union?"
Still smiling at Harry, Barbara said, "Dick, this is between an author and her character. Go fuck yourself, preferably where no one has to watch."
"So give up the dope, Harry—how's she compare to Suzy and Glinda?" He elbowed Barbara. "Bet you never had it so hot, girl. Let me know when you're ready for the Major League."
He meant himself, of course. Barbara couldn't help but sigh. In her hand, Harry's tensed with anger. Afraid to look up at his face, she did anyhow—and saw none of the anger there.
But as she watched he shifted his stance, thrusting out a hip. His wrists went limp. "Oh, Dick," he said, his voice pitched just a trifle higher than normal. "You're such a delight! So . . . so masculine! Do call me soon, won't you? Barbara won't mind, will you, dear? We are, perforce, just good friends . . ."
His free hand brushed Dick's chest, barely touching, and Dick took a startled step backwards, staring at him in horror. Then, without another word, Dick turned and strode across the room. Reaching Suzy, he threw his arm about her—at the perfect height to clasp her right boob in his hand—and glared at Harry from behind the ramparts. Suzy ignored him.
Unicorns II Page 23