Unicorns II

by Gardner Dozois

  Barbara turned away to hide her laughter. "Oh, well-played, sir!" she said to Harry. "Not what I'd call subtle, but then Dick wouldn't have seen subtle!"

  Then she had a horrified thought that wiped all the amusement from her face. "Oh, lord! What have you done to your reputation?"

  "Not a thing." His sweeping gesture dismissed any possibility of problem. "Anybody who knows Dick also knows that Dick thinks any guy who doesn't grab a girl's tit on first introduction is a flaming faggot." He grinned in Tommy's direction and got a broader grin in return. "You see?" he said. "Tom got the joke."

  "Boy, am I glad I don't live in Dick's fantasy world."

  "That makes two of us."

  But later that morning the shooting schedule forced them to do just that. Barbara stuck it out through two of the scenes, but, when it came to the third, she gave up and settled in the kitchen, with ER and a cup of coffee, to read through her manuscript. That, at least, gave her the feeling she was accomplishing something.

  By the last page, she was no longer sure of that: the story wasn't good enough. It had its moments—the outrageously horny unicorn was not bad—but as a whole it failed to do what she wanted it to do. For the thousandth time, she wished she'd never gotten hooked on writing.

  She was still scrawling changes and scowling at the results when Harry flung open the kitchen door and commanded: "Go watch Glinda and Suzy. They're doing a bang-up job of your 'The hell with men' scene." Glad for the break, she obeyed.

  He was right. Suzy and Glinda played the exchange as broadly as she'd intended it and with just the right touch of acid. It was so well done, in fact, that when Tommy yelled "Cut! Print it!" he followed it by joining the rest of the crew in applause for the two.

  While the gaffer shifted lights, Barbara went over to the actresses where they lay. "Thanks!" she said. "That was great!" She sat down beside them on the floor, offering her cigarette pack and ashtray.

  "The way you wrote it," Glinda said, "I could see it."

  Suzy, to Barbara's surprise, nodded and said, "Yeah, it's not often we get a decent script." She took a cigarette, paused to light it, then added, "Even then, we get Dick. Your weirdo cat would be better in the part."

  She stabbed her cigarette toward the sofa and called out, "Hey, John! If you've still got some film in that camera, shoot him—he gives a better cum shot than Dick—I've seen it."

  John followed her point. ER had propped himself against the arm of the sofa, his hind legs and tail straight out before him, his back bent double in an elegant curve: he was fellating himself. Barbara closed her eyes in exasperation.

  When she opened them again John had raised his camera and was moving slowly in on the cat for a close-up. ER glanced up, briefly annoyed by the light Tommy had turned on him, then adjusted his feline indifference up a notch and went back to the business at tongue.

  Moments later—business finished—ER softened his curve into the more traditional prose of the feline, all the elegance and hauteur of a library lion, to survey his kingdom. Even the snap of Tommy's end-slate could not ruffle such regal equanimity.

  "Thanks, Suzy," John called, "you're absolutely right about his cum shots." He took the lens off his camera and peered through it. "Splattered the damn lens. Shit, I wish I'd had the slo-mo ready!"

  "Barbara, get the hell out of the scene." That was Tommy. "John, get me a master of Suzy and Glinda and the cat watching them from the sofa. If we intercut the girl-on-girl with the tomcat, we'll have 'em in stitches."

  Barbara got the hell out but by the time John had set up the shot ER had remembered an urgent appointment. He hopped off the couch and headed for the door. "Sorry," said Barbara, "I guess he likes to keep his fantasies to himself."

  "Maybe we'll catch him later," Tommy said. "Print the cat cum shot anyway. We'll figure out a way to use it."

  They reset the lights for the graphic close-ups. Glinda winced as Kim peeled the mike off her ass and rubbed the spot to smooth away the marks of the tape. "MOS," said Tommy, then he grinned at Barbara and translated, " 'mitout sound.' " Barbara cast a suspicious eye at him. "All the early directors were German," he said. "Kim'll pick up the wild sound later."

  "Heavy breathing, groans and moans, slapping flesh," Kim said, relishing the words as she catalogued them—Suzy yelped as Kim ripped the mike from her thigh—"shrieks," finished Kim.

  With no need for quiet in the room, there wasn't, except for the silent intensity between Suzy and Glinda. How they could concentrate so lovingly on each other—with Tommy calling out directions and rearranging them every other minute, with John literally crawling between them for close-ups of various orifices—was beyond Barbara. She could only marvel.

  There was a loud disparaging snort from the other side of the room. Barbara, much put out by the tone of it, looked up to see just who could fail to be impressed by Suzy and Glinda. It was the unicorn again.

  And its manners had worsened, however beautiful it might be. Through the window, it fixed a baleful silver eye on Glinda, its expression that of a parent whose only child had just told a dirty joke to company.

  With a second snort of disgust, it pierced the wall with that utterly wrong horn and bounded through—at Glinda. "Cut!" yelled Tommy. The snap of the end-slate coincided with the thump of the unicorn's hooves on the living room floor—and then it was gone. Vanished.

  Tommy switched film packs and resumed shooting. For a long moment Barbara stared into the empty spot where the unicorn had been, then Suzy said sharply, "My face. Now." Barbara refocused her attention just as John turned his camera on Suzy's face.

  Suzy's face contorted, her eyes closed and her mouth opened to loose a deep sob of pleasure. "All right," said Tommy enthusiastically, "go for it!" Suzy did.

  By the time she was done, Barbara was ready to swear that Suzy had actually reached orgasm. Marvels and prodigies, Barbara thought, wrung out with vicarious emotion, that's what I get on three hours' sleep.

  "Cut! Print," said Tommy. "Take a break, kids, you deserve it. Good stuff!"

  Barbara got to wobbly knees and, picking up Suzy's robe, went to offer it. If she had intended to be nonchalant, she failed miserably; the words just tumbled out. "Suzy, that was some acting—I was absolutely convinced you got off!"

  "Still Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, aren't you? I did get off. The acting comes earlier. I have to convince myself I'm the type of person who would get off with Glinda or Harry—or even Dick."

  "But—how?"

  "It's not them I'm fucking, not up here anyway." She tapped a finger to her temple. "I might consider fucking Harry, but I haven't fucked Dick yet, thank god." She directed that shot at Dick, whose mouth dropped open; then, with as much hauteur as ER at his finest, she strutted past him and into the bathroom.

  "I've fucked you in six movies!" Dick called after her. "This is the seventh," he said, turning his glare on Barbara.

  "That's your fantasy," Barbara said. "Obviously you're not hers."

  "What the fuck would a fag-hag know." He turned his back on her and walked away. In less than three steps, his swagger returned. Marveling at his powers of rationalization, Barbara went to the kitchen for her notebook and a much-needed caffeine fix.

  She was so absorbed in trying to capture everything she'd seen in words—Dick, Suzy, the unicorn, all of it—that she didn't realize what Harry was doing until he turned over the final page and tried to restack the sheaf of papers. He had to struggle, given the tooth and claw marks ER had left in her manuscript.

  Her embarrassment must have shown on her face, for he looked instantly contrite. "I'm sorry, Barbara. I hope you don't really mind, but I was curious. Glinda thinks you're one hell of a writer, you know." He held out the sheaf of papers. "She's right."

  Barbara shook her head. "It's a first draft. Stories read better in print. At least, well—better," she finished, meaning, Never right. "I don't usually let anyone read them until—I've given up on them." She took the pages from him and laid her notebook
atop them to serve as a barrier.

  When she was finally able to look up, she found him staring at her curiously. "You're apologizing, aren't you," he said; it was almost an accusation. "Why?"

  "I—" she faltered, tried again—"it's not what I wanted."

  "I'll tell you what I want—I want fifteen million dollars, the world's best special effects department, and this story. Have you any idea what a film this would make?"

  He shook his head suddenly. "No, no. Wouldn't work. Even with the best special effects in the world they'd never get that unicorn right. God, Barbara, now I understand how you could see a unicorn on a porn set!" Then, grin spreading from ear to ear, he added, "ER should be flattered—I am."

  "Uh—" she'd put more than a little of both of them into the unicorn and now her cheeks must be flaming—"People d-don't usually recognize themselves."

  "Actors are more used to seeing themselves than people are. Glinda will love it—you've got her down perfectly."

  Barbara laid her hand on the manuscript and drew it closer.

  "You aren't going to let her read it?" Harry frowned at her, more concerned than disapproving. "That's not fair, Barbara. You're her favorite writer and that's her unicorn . . . at least by right of the story."

  There was a certain logic to that, Barbara had to admit, but the manuscript remained clenched in her hand.

  Without warning, Harry gave her a Groucho Marx leer and said, "Besides, if you don't show it to her, I'll tell my analyst friend you wrote me into a story as a unicorn." His eyebrow waggled at her with a life of its own. "She's a Freudian. Guess what she'll make of that?"

  Barbara smiled at the transparency of his tactics and slid the manuscript back to him. "You show it to Glinda," she said. "I hate being around when somebody's reading my stuff." She had to peel her fingers off it one by one; that gave her an excuse not to meet his eyes. "It makes me feel like I'm naked."

  "Well," said Harry brightly, "that makes two of us."

  By the third and last day of the shoot, there was no escape from Dick. Two of the PAs were in Barbara's bedroom, co-opted into doing wild sound for Kim. Barbara hadn't been able to watch: her laughter would have spoiled the take. Nor could she stay in the kitchen where Glinda, her scenes finished, waited—with Barbara's manuscript for company—for a lift home from Roger.

  Barbara wound up on set, next to Harry. His work too was finished but . . . "You never know what might come up," he told Barbara, waggling an eyebrow.

  "What's the opposite of bowdlerize?" Barbara asked him. "Whatever it is, you do it with that eyebrow."

  He waggled the eyebrow again and went back to the catty commentary that made Dick's performance almost tolerable. "Thank heaven they're shooting MOS! Hearing Dick's voice just sets my toes all a-tingle," Harry's Gay Cavalier was saying. "He gives such meaning to 'Oh, baby, baby, baby!' " His imitation of Dick's delivery was deadly, and Barbara giggled.

  Behind her there was a rich chortle of agreement. She craned around to see which of the PAs had been listening in and found herself face-to-face with a unicorn—not the prissy white unicorn of the days before, with its cold eyes and its lowering horn—but a proper unicorn!

  She stared, drawing in her breath like an extended sigh. The horn . . . ! The horn was translucent like polished stone—onyx, obsidian, smoky quartz—all perfectly melded into one long spiral. It sprang from beneath a tangle of forelock to sweep up and back in the kind of breath-taking care she'd seen only in a cat's leap. Yes, thought Barbara, with immense satisfaction, that's right!

  So was the rest of it. It had ER's tabby coat . . . gray and silver and gloriously shaggy. Matching stripes ran amok in its mane. Instead of a beard (and that was right, too—she'd always thought the beard a bit silly), a flourish of cat-whiskers ornamented its slender Arabian nose . . . and its eye-ridges as well, which added to its air of rakish good humor.

  Its gold eyes sparkled with merriment. Barbara knew that in bright sunlight they'd narrow to slits just as ER's did, but now the pupils were wide, dark with interest in her. It chuckled again, pressed its warm whiskery muzzle to her shoulder and shoved, for all the world like ER's head-bump greeting. More emphatic though, for it pressed her into Harry, who said, "Barbara?"

  "My unicorn's back," she said—not only did it feel as real and warm as Harry but she could even smell it, a happy combination of rain-spangled fur and cinnamon, like the day ER had gotten into the cinnamon doughnuts—"Will you do me a big favor and tell me just how good my imagination is?"

  Before he could embarrass her by turning, the unicorn gave another chortle-snort, crouched, and sprang, landing before them with a soft thump.

  Barbara was surprised to see that it had the feet of a cat as well—and the curiosity. It padded softly forward, exploring. The swagger in its walk was pure tomcat: tail erect and sinuous, hips swinging side-to-side to flaunt a set of balls the size of grapefruits, richly furred charcoal gray for further emphasis—and to match the tuft at the end of its tail.

  "Oh, god," said Harry in a tone of awe. "It's male."

  "No shit," said Barbara, then shot him a side-long glance. He could see it! She looked wildly around the room but it was obvious only Harry shared her delusion.

  The filming went on without so much as a murmur of astonishment, even though the unicorn had stepped closer to investigate the tangle of limbs that was Dick and Suzy and Carol and Roger.

  It sat back on its haunches to thrust its neck out and sniff the tangle from one end to the other. "Cut that out," giggled someone from within the tangle. "Quit tickling! Is that damn cat back?" Affronted, the unicorn drew back, glaring haughtily at the lens of John's camera.

  "No cat," said John. "Keep your mind on business."

  "It's not his mind you want on business," came the reply.

  "Dick," said John, "can you stand Suzy against the wall behind you?" To Tommy, he explained, "It'll liven up the composition."

  As Dick and Suzy rose, so did the unicorn. Warily, it circled the knot of actors and crew. Head low, ears slightly back, it reminded Barbara of ER stalking something unfamiliar . . .

  Stalking Dick! Oh, god, thought Barbara, I overdid the cat part. "No, don't!" She made a half-gesture to wave the unicorn away.

  It turned aggrieved eyes on her. Not fun, its expression said. "Not fun for us, no. It's work for us," Barbara said, knowing only Harry and the unicorn could hear her, "making fun for other people." The pupils narrowed to slits—dubious.

  "I'm doing my best," Barbara said. "Most of us are." Beside her, Harry nodded vigorous agreement.

  The unicorn eyed them both sympathetically, shook his head, and eyed Dick in quite a different manner. Dick had Suzy against the wall. As John knelt beside them for a good close-up of Dick's hard-on, the unicorn stretched delicately toward them and blew a noisy stream of breath directly onto Dick's prick. Dick wilted.

  "Oh, hell," said Tommy.

  "I'm still rolling," said John. "Trust me, it's a good shot and we can use it. Barbara can write it into the script."

  Open-mouthed, Barbara nodded. Could she ever!—that was all she needed to cut all of Dick's speaking scenes! "One extra scene between Harry and Suzy," she called to Tommy. "Four lines—six, tops. You'll love it!" She turned to Harry, pleading, "You'll do another scene, won't you?"

  The unicorn gracefully scratched the base of its horn with its hind leg, then it raised its head to leer at Harry, waggling its whiskery eye ridges in impersonation. Harry laughed. "I'll do it, with bells on."

  "Shut up, Harry," said Dick. "Goddam faggot."

  Tommy rolled his eyes. "Dick, just pay attention and get it up again, will you?" John got several minutes of film of Dick's attempts to rise to the occasion. The unicorn meanwhile padded softly about, investigating the remainder of the cast and crew.

  Having satisfied its curiosity, it padded back to bump Harry hard enough to rock him. Tail twitching, it settled before him, fixing him with a look of anticipation. When Harry did nothing, it made the
same sound ER made when he wanted something, a kind of chuff of impatience, and head-bumped Harry again, this time into Barbara.

  "I was just going to," said Harry, "when I was distracted by this unicorn . . ." He turned to Barbara and said, "Do you like George Bernard Shaw?"

  "What?" Barbara stared at Harry in disbelief. The unicorn nudged her and she blurted out, "Me? Uh, you mean the playwright? Yes, passionately."

  The unicorn waggled an eyebrow at Harry. "Good," he said; he reached into his back pocket, drew out a bit of blue cardboard, and held it out to her. "I'm doing a showcase of Arms and the Man next weekend. I thought maybe you'd like to see me act in clothes. We could have a late dinner afterwards."

  "I'd like that a lot, Harry." She took the ticket and tucked it into her hatband.

  "That's settled, then," said Harry, and he turned to exchange smug looks with the unicorn.

  Then the unicorn got to its feet. Making a noise halfway between a nicker and ER's chirrup of inquiry, it turned an earnest eye on Barbara. "Glinda," said Barbara, suddenly realizing, "he's here for Glinda." The unicorn chuffed at her, mildly annoyed. "Sorry—I mean Janie."

  Not wanting to take her eyes off the creature, she rose—Harry rose with her—and gestured it toward the kitchen. It trotted beside them, half in, half out of walls and bookshelves. Barbara opened the kitchen door.

  Glinda was just laying aside the final page of the manuscript. She looked up as they entered, but it was neither Barbara nor Harry that she saw.

  "My unicorn," she said, as the unicorn swaggered toward her.

  ER rose from his spot on the kitchen table—making as much of a production of it as Harry made of his double-takes—to intercept and greet it. The two touched noses. Whatever they found satisfied them both. With mutual smugness, they rubbed cheeks, then ER stepped back, granting it permission to greet Glinda.