by Thomas Perry
She had graduated from high school in Van Nuys and gotten a job as a receptionist at a company that sold ceramic tiles for bathrooms and kitchens. She still went out with her high-school boyfriend, Mark Karsh. She had been in love with Mark Karsh from the age of sixteen. Mark Karsh had curly black hair and brown eyes that promised intelligence. Mark had decided not to go to college because he had an uncle who was a film editor. After graduation, the uncle drew heavily upon old friendships and got Mark a job at a company that used computers to make special effects for television shows. After a few days at work, Mark was shocked: He was expected to start at the very bottom of a strict hierarchy. All he had been given was a chance to learn difficult technical skills, and to prove himself by working harder and longer than he was paid to.
Sylvie accepted his complaint that his employers were exploiting him. If they had appreciated his true worth, then he would already have been promoted, and his real movie career would have begun. But after a few months, he still had not learned to operate the machines with any skill, and he had grown sullen and lazy, so he was fired. Sylvie paid for their dates while he searched unsuccessfully for a new position. Finally he accepted the job Sylvie had gotten him in the tile factory.
One night after about a year at the tile factory, Mark asked Sylvie out to an early dinner at Il Calamari. He said he was celebrating something that he wanted to be a surprise. She had always wanted to go there, and she had waited a long time for Mark to take her on a real date, where he invited her somewhere and drove her there and paid. All through dinner he teased her, refusing to tell her what the surprise was. After dinner he drove her to her apartment. She had thoughts of special new careers for Mark, and in unguarded moments, a vision of a ring for her.
Once inside, he told her the news. “You’re not going to believe this. When I was working at the digital-imaging studio, I met a few industry people. One of them was a guy named Al Molineri. He’s known in the business.” Mark was artful in the way he underplayed it. “He’s not a major player or something. He’s just a guy who has connections. He’s written a few scripts, done some editing, video and sound, produced a movie or two. He knew my uncle’s name and he introduced me to some other guys who can get a movie made. They liked me. While I was at it, I showed them your picture, too.”
She began to feel a difficulty in her breathing. He was keeping something back—no, keeping a lot back—and she was afraid she knew what some of it was. “What picture?”
“Well, just the one I carry in my wallet at first, but then a few other things.” He hurried past that topic and into his news. “They were really interested. They want to meet with us and put us in a movie.”
“What did you show them?”
He shrugged. “I don’t remember everything. What difference does it make? Didn’t you hear what I said? We’re going to be in a movie.”
“You showed them the pictures you took of me that time. The ones you said you would never let anyone see.” She began to cry.
He rolled his eyes. “We’ll both be stuck working all day every day in the fucking tile company for the rest of our lives unless we do something. I’m trying to give us a future.”
“It’s a porn movie!”
“There’s a love scene. There’s one in just about every movie. It’s nothing we haven’t done a million times, and nothing I’d be ashamed to have anyone see.”
“Then do it yourself with somebody else.”
“They want us both, not one of us. Both. Look, just come with me. We go to a restaurant tomorrow night, have dinner with them, and hear what they have to say. That’s all. If you think it’s a bad idea, we’ll say, ‘No, thanks.’”
They met the two producers at a coffee shop in Reseda that wasn’t too far from the part of Van Nuys where Sylvie had grown up. The producers were a man in his forties named Eddie Durant with a beard so short it just looked as though he had forgotten to shave, and a woman named Cherie Will. They were sitting together in a booth near the back drinking coffee and looking over a stack of papers from an open briefcase.
When Sylvie and Mark approached their booth, Eddie Durant didn’t stand up or shake hands, but Cherie Will smiled and reached across the table to each of them. She didn’t seem exactly attractive to Sylvie, because she was twice Sylvie’s age, and there were some wrinkles on her forehead and, oddly, her upper lip. Instead, she seemed athletic, with tight bulbous young breasts that were too high on her chest. She said, “Hi, sweetie” to Sylvie and called Mark “dude.”
Sylvie was fascinated by Cherie Will. Cherie looked into Sylvie’s eyes when she spoke. “Why don’t you two order something to eat?”
Sylvie and Mark ordered and ate, but all the waitress seemed to bring Eddie and Cherie was more coffee. Eddie said, “The story is that you’re a young housewife who has an argument with her husband before work in the morning.”
“Is that Mark?” Sylvie asked.
“No. Not sure who it is yet. But it’s another guy about your age. You get mad. You both go to work. You work in an office, as a receptionist.”
“I do. I really do.”
“Then it’s not a big stretch. This delivery boy, played by Mark, comes in. He’s delivering a box of paper or something. You like the look of him, so you offer to show him where the storeroom is. You take him in there, close the door, and have sex. Then you’ve gotten back at your husband, and you’re not mad anymore.”
Cherie smiled. “It’s an old, simple story, but it always works. Men have fantasies that the pretty receptionist will fuck them in the storeroom, and women have fantasies of getting even with their husbands by fucking the pretty delivery boy, who will appreciate them. I’ve been in that story about forty times myself, in some variation or other.”
Mark Karsh said, “How much would the gig pay?”
Eddie Durant said, “A thousand dollars each for one day’s shooting.” He smiled. “If you find you like the work and you’re good at it, the pay goes up. There’s a lot of work for people who can do it. The Valley is the adult-cinema capital of the world. About eighty percent of the adult features shown anywhere are shot within four miles of here.”
Mark looked at Sylvie, tried to fathom what she was thinking, but failed. “I think we have to talk about it first.”
“Okay. We shoot day after tomorrow at eight A.M. sharp. Call me by noon tomorrow.” He held out his hand and Mark shook it. As he and Sylvie walked up the aisle toward the front entrance, two women in their early twenties came in and stood in the entry, blocking their way out while they craned their necks looking for someone. Sylvie couldn’t help feeling jealous for a second. She instinctively moved closer to Mark and put her hand on his, even though she was furious at him.
When she and Mark were outside, she turned back and looked in through the glass. She saw that the two girls had made their way back to the booth where Cherie Will and Eddie Durant sat. She could read Cherie Will’s lips as she said, “Hi, sweetie,” to both of them, and this time Eddie Durant half-rose to shake their hands.
Later on, Sylvie looked back through the years and realized that what had really caused her to make the decision she had was not anything that Mark had said to persuade her. She had been angry with him, and not inclined to do anything drastic to make him happy. It had not been what Eddie Durant or Cherie Will had said. It had been the two girls.
One of them had been short and blond, with blue eyes and a size-two figure with good breasts, a tiny waist, and a perfectly rounded bottom. Girls like that had always been cruel to Sylvie because she wasn’t like them. The other was tall and willowy like Sylvie, and that infuriated her, because that girl seemed to be competing for the same spot in the universe as Sylvie was. As Sylvie stared in the window of the diner, she realized that she had to have the job, simply because those two wanted it.
She tortured Mark for a couple of hours before she announced to him that she would do it. She could still see him, all these years later, looking as though he had struck it rich.
He was sure that doing this one dirty movie would get him discovered. All he had to do was grit his teeth and smile through one day as a porn star, and then he would be a real star.
The next day, Sylvie and Mark arrived for work at seven-thirty. The studio was a small warehouse that Cherie and Eddie had insulated to cut the echoes and lit with floodlights. Cherie was already waiting “We’ve got to go get you tested.”
Sylvie thought Cherie meant a screen test. They got into Cherie’s car, a black Mercedes with dirty leather upholstery and signs of wear. Mark sat in the front beside Cherie, and Sylvie was in the back by herself. When Cherie stopped the car and they got out, Sylvie followed her into a small office that looked like a clinic. She asked, “What’s the test?”
“Blood test,” said Cherie. “You have to be checked for STDs every thirty days if you want to work in the industry.”
Sylvie dutifully sat in the chair while a nurse punctured a vein at the inside of her elbow, took several small vials of blood, then said enigmatically, “We’ll let you know.” When Mark had done the same, Cherie drove them back to the warehouse.
Sylvie entered as Eddie Durant finished shooting a scene for another movie. Somehow she had assumed there would be a couple of people in a closed room and maybe a cameraman. But there was no room, just a couch with a pair of fake walls held up by wooden struts. Men adjusted lights and camera angles, while others stood in small groups drinking coffee and talking, or making notes on scripts and schedules. Eddie Durant saw Cherie bring Mark and Sylvie in, and he took them off the set to see a man in his mid-thirties with hair so black that Sylvie thought it must be dyed. This was Bill. He wore a pair of jeans, T-shirt, and sandals. “Megan?” he called, and a woman in her early twenties wearing jeans and a huge Winnie the Pooh sweatshirt ambled over, smoking a cigarette.
Cherie said, “Now we have all the principals. Bill is Sylvie’s husband, and Megan is the husband’s girlfriend. We’re on a tight schedule, so we’ve got to move quickly. Eddie is going to shoot Bill and Megan’s scenes in here this morning. Rather than striking the set with the couch, we’ll re-dress it as Megan’s living room. I’ll shoot Sylvie and Mark’s scenes in the company office. When we’re done, we’ll come back in here and do the rest with the set for Bill and Sylvie’s house. Everybody got it?”
Cherie took Sylvie and Mark to a corner of the soundstage, where a harried woman with big hair put makeup on their faces, asked them what sizes they wore, and handed them two hangers with clothes on them. They followed Cherie to the company’s office, where a tall, thin man named Daryl had set up a big video camera on a tripod in the reception area, and had a big reflective hoop of white cloth just above frame height to diffuse the bright lamplight. Sylvie put on the receptionist outfit, a skirt that was made for a shorter woman and a blouse that was made for a bigger one. Sylvie managed to learn and repeat her lines while seated at the reception desk, even though the telephone rang twice and she had to answer it and hand the phone to Cherie. Her line was “Package? Come into the storeroom and I’ll show you where to put it.” Then Cherie unplugged the telephone and the camera rolled. There were three takes, one close-up on Sylvie, one on Mark, and one that showed both of them at once.
The next shots were in the storeroom. Cherie explained the scene: “All right, Sylvie. You’re the one who drives this scene. You’re pissed off at your husband, and you lured this handsome guy in here. Now you’ve got to make him glad he came in.”
“How do you want me to do it?”
“I want this to look natural. Real. You come in, you lock the door, and then you do what you would do. If I want something changed, I’ll say, ‘Cut,’ and have you do it differently.”
Sylvie had spent twelve years as a ballet dancer. She was accustomed to having people look at her closely and impersonally, as a body assuming poses, so she didn’t feel as though stripping off her clothes was a big step. She had spent all of those years learning to move and to place her body in positions that were graceful and beautiful, and to set her face in expressions to convey feelings and attitudes she didn’t necessarily feel. That was about all the acting that was required.
Mark was her boyfriend and they were used to each other. The only part that was disconcerting to her was when Cherie stopped them and told them to change positions, or Daryl the cameraman moved into her field of vision to remind her that they were not alone. When Cherie decided that they had exposed enough tape, she said, “Cut.” Then she took Sylvie into her own office and let her use it as a dressing room. She said, “You’ve got a gift, honey. This is going to be a good movie—as these things go—and you’ll get all the work you can do from now on.”
“Thank you.” Sylvie was still feeling breathless and a bit addled, trying to concentrate on what had happened and what was happening.
“It’s not a compliment,” Cherie said. “I’m telling you that you’re going to get rich.” As they walked back to the soundstage, Sylvie said, “Aren’t we going to wait for Mark?”
“No. He’s not in the next couple of scenes, and we’ve got a tight schedule.” When Sylvie got to the soundstage, she saw the re-dressed house set and the nightgown that the costume and makeup girl had on a hanger, and understood. The scene with her husband Bill wasn’t going to be just an argument at the breakfast table before they both left for work. She was supposed to have sex with him, too.
Sylvie thought about everything as she sat down and let the makeup girl work on her. She stared at herself in the mirror. She stole a few curious glances at Bill as he stood talking to Eddie Durant on the set. She could get up and walk out the door. Nobody would stop her, and probably nobody would even blame her. She was a twenty-year-old girl who had been talked into something. There was no reason for her to go on. This was all about Mark’s ambitions, not hers. There were hundreds of other girls just like her, waiting for this chance.
“Sylvie?” Cherie called.
She stared at herself in the mirror. Her face was beautiful in this light. She could never have made her skin look so radiant, her eyes so big. Her hair was shining. She was amazing.
“Sylvie!”
“Coming.” She stood up, took a few hurried steps to join the group, and said to Cherie, “Where do we start?”
That night the production wrapped at nine, and Sylvie went outside to find Mark. His car wasn’t where she remembered it. She went to the office and found Lily, the receptionist. She was just returning from the inner offices, where Eddie Durant had been signing the day’s payroll checks. Lily leafed through them quickly and handed one to Sylvie. She said, “Uh, Mark? He’s been gone for hours. Where do you live? I can give you a ride.”
When Sylvie got home, she waited for Mark’s call, but it didn’t come. At ten-thirty, she tried calling him. He answered after a few rings. She said, “Where were you?”
“Where were you? I waited for a couple of hours after I was done.”
“I had some more scenes to shoot.”
“I heard.”
Those words had the end in them. The day’s experiences had changed his plans. He was not going to be a star. He was not happy that he had been at the studio or that he had brought her there. He was not going to see her again.
Call-waiting signaled a few times that she had another caller. She said to Mark, “I’m tired. I’ll talk to you another time,” knowing that she wouldn’t. She clicked the flash button to get the other call. “Hello?”
“Sylvie, it’s Eddie Durant. Cherie and I just went through today’s tapes to do a director’s cut, and I’ve got to tell you, we couldn’t keep our eyes off you. We’re writing you into a movie we’re starting day after tomorrow.”
“Gee, I hadn’t really thought about that. I just got home a while ago.”
“We’ll pay you two thousand—double the last time—for a day’s work.”
“Can I have time to think about it?”
“Sure. Call me later tonight. We’ll be here editing until at least one or two.”
&n
bsp; That was the beginning. On Thursday she drove to the studio and listened while Cherie Will explained the script to her in the five minutes it took to have her hair and makeup done. Then she spent the day having sex with three different men she had never seen before.
Eddie and Cherie had her working three days a week for the next month. Sylvie kept telling herself that she ought to call the tile company to tell them she had found another job, but she didn’t. She didn’t want to tell Martha, the middle-aged office manager, that she was acting. Martha would instantly sense what sort of movies they were, and she would talk. Sylvie didn’t want the men in the company hurrying into video stores to find a tape with a picture of her on the box. The tile company still owed her about three hundred dollars, but going in to pick up the check didn’t seem worth it.
Now nearly twenty years had passed, and Sylvie felt so different that she could only reconstruct some of the young girl’s feelings. Many of the faces had faded in her memory and lost their clarity. As Sylvie stared ahead through the windshield, thinking about the distant past, something startled her. The display on the laptop computer’s screen had changed. “Paul! The car is right up ahead. It’s not moving.”
The idea of tracing Jack Till’s car this way had been a revelation to Sylvie. She knew that the car-rental companies had been using the global-positioning units installed in rental cars to catch customers violating their contracts by speeding or taking their cars out of state. Paul had gone to the rental company where Till had rented his car, and given a thousand dollars in cash to a mechanic in exchange for teaching him how the company found a lost car. They simply went online to the service that monitored the global-positioning system, typed a code, and watched the display on their own computer. The code for Till’s car had cost another thousand.
Till appeared to have parked in the lot at the end of Castillo Street, at the Santa Barbara Harbor. Paul pulled into the lot and searched for the blue sedan, driving up and down each aisle as though what he was looking for was an empty space. Sylvie was the one who spotted Till’s car. “There. Right near the entrance.”