High Life

by Matthew Stokoe

  In the months I’d been hanging there I’d come to know things about a few of the girls—maybe you chat with them over a drink while they’re between tricks, maybe you overhear gossip, some info you pick up just by watching what goes down on the street. It isn’t anything self-improving but it helps pass a slow night.

  And that was how I’d heard about Rosie. She was a brunette in her forties who worked more for pleasure than for business—she got off having guys shit in her mouth. Rumor was she had a husband and a couple of kids somewhere, but she spent so much time on the drag, day and night, I didn’t think it was true.

  I found her in her usual spot, standing in the doorway of an abandoned corsetry store in a cross-street twenty yards back from the drag, like her noneconomic motivation segregated her from the rest of the whores. She wore a black latex minidress and her body looked soft and a little overweight. I’d pawned the suit Bella had paid for, and with the rest of my money I had about three hundred bucks. I knew it was going to take most of it to get her to trek over to Santa Monica with me, but that was the way it had to be. Her mouth had some sort of nervous tic that made her lips pull back from her teeth when she spoke.

  “So who’s the john?”

  “A guy.”

  “Yeah, but he does what?”

  “Does it matter? I’m paying.”

  “Sure it matters. I’ll do it whatever, but it can make a difference. For instance, lifestyle is very important. A man who spends all day sitting on his behind eating refined foods, chances are his output will be less than spectacular. Believe me, I’ve learned the importance of fiber. Doughnuts for breakfast, burrito for lunch, fried chicken for dinner, you’re going to get a six-inch turd if you’re lucky. Skinny, too. Someone who eats muesli and exercises, well, that’s a different story. They’re going to lay eighteen inches of healthy shit, minimum.”

  “Size is important?”

  “It feels heavier. But it’s a trade-off too, because shit from an out-of-condition colon smells more powerfully. Given the choice, though, nine times out of ten I’ll go for size. Maybe seven times out of ten.”

  “Don’t worry, this guy’s full of shit.”

  “That’s a joke, right?”

  We purred down Santa Monica Boulevard in the Prelude.

  Ryan had parked in front of the Senior Citizens Center and was sitting on a bench under a palm. There wasn’t a homeless person within thirty yards. I guess one of them must have fucked with him and got burned. I left Rosie in the car and went and sat next to him.

  “Jackie, how nice to see you. Tell me about the limo outside the Bradbury Building.”

  “The Bradbury Building?”

  “From where I was it looked like the same bim you had over at your place.”

  I remembered the gray sedan that had blocked my view after Bella pulled away.

  “I’ll trade you the limo story for an address.”

  “Jackie, I don’t know if our relationship has reached the trading stage. What address?”

  “The woman at my place, the woman at the Bradbury Building. She forgot to pay me.”

  Ryan laughed.

  “I saw she left you on the sidewalk. What happened? Couldn’t perform?”

  “The address? You got it through DMV, remember?”

  “Oh, I got it through more than that. Give with the story first.”

  I didn’t want to give him anything without a guaranteed return, but Ryan had the upper hand and there wasn’t much else I could do.

  “She called me up and invited me to a party.”

  “Sounds like she’s getting serious.”

  “She needed an escort, that’s all.”

  “What about those fifteen minutes in the back of the limo?”

  “You were counting?”

  “I was imagining what kind of technique she was using on your meat.”

  “Jesus …”

  “For her address I want details, like it was one of those phone sex things.”

  “You know what I was doing, you know I didn’t go home with her. That’s enough. See that woman in my car? She’s paid for, and she isn’t your usual hooker.”

  “I can see that. How old is she?”

  “She comes when you shit in her mouth.”

  Ryan reached a heart pill out of his pocket.

  “You’re quick, Jackie, but then I never figured you for dumb. Where are we supposed to do it?”

  “I’ll spring for a room.”

  “Get me in the mood. Tell me how it happened in the back of the limo.”

  “Shit, Ryan, she’ll tell me where she lives pretty soon anyway.”

  “But you can’t wait.”

  “You’ll give me the address if I do?”

  “Word of honor.”

  So I told it like it was something out of a porn rag. Details like the trace of shit I noticed when Bella pulled her finger out of her ass, like the gulping sound she made when I came in her mouth. When I finished, Ryan stood up abruptly and started for his car.

  “Let’s go. Don’t bother getting her out, just follow me. You know the Starway on Wilshire?”

  “Give me Bella’s address and take her with you. I’ll give you the money for the room.”

  “Oh, no, Jackie, you have to come too.”

  The Starway Motel was a dump that stood across from a shoe retailer on the eastern boarder of Santa Monica. It was the kind of place where ten-year-old Trans Ams and Camaros pulled up late at night then disappeared before dawn without the owners ever being seen. The rooms invited invasion—the windows didn’t shut properly, the doors didn’t latch. Inside, the carpet was greasy and the sheets were stained. But it was cheap, and if the other guests weren’t actively trying to rip you off they pretty much minded their own business.

  Rosie took an eight-foot square of plastic sheeting from her bag and spread it out in the middle of the room. I climbed onto the bed and sat with my back in a corner. I was pissed off. I wanted Bella’s address safe in my hand, I wanted to be out, heading toward it. Instead I was stuck here, hanging on Ryan’s string, not knowing if he intended to make good on his promise or not.

  “This’ll be an experience for both of us, Jackie.” Ryan glanced at Rosie and shook his head. “Jesus … What happens to some people?”

  “You’re the one who’s going to give it to her.”

  “It’s an opportunity. Who wouldn’t?”

  “Most people.”

  He sat on the edge of the bed and took off his shoes. He had small feet. He laughed.

  “You wouldn’t take it if it was offered?”

  “Doesn’t do it for me.”

  “Probably ain’t extreme enough.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  Ryan was down to his shorts. He picked up his jacket, took an envelope from it, and spun it into my lap.

  “Brought you another present.”

  I looked inside—several glossies.

  “Have a look. I won’t think any the worse of you.”

  I dropped the envelope on the bed. Ryan made a disappointed face. Over on the floor a naked Rosie was flat on her back, legs spread, talking to herself. The plastic crinkled beneath her. Ryan winked at me and moved toward her.

  “Time to get on.”

  From behind he looked like some huge slug heading for food. He didn’t have a waist, the fat on his guts filled up what hollows there should have been, and the cheeks of his ass were so full his crack was just a tight vertical line running between his legs to the small of his back.

  He stood in front of Rosie for a while and stuck his toe into her cunt. She ground herself against it. Then he got down on hands and knees and crawled up her until his hard-on was in her mouth. He pushed it in as far as he could. She took it until she was about to heave, then told him to turn around. The cheeks of his ass stayed together even in this position and she had to use her hands to pull them apart. When she saw his hole she groaned and put her nose against it. Her tits rose and her eyelids fluttered like she was get
ting a rush.

  “Squat over me, baby.”

  Rosie’s bent legs trembled. Ryan looked like a small Sumo wrestler, hunkered down over her head, arms braced against his knees. His dick looked ugly and dark against the white skin of his belly. Rosie pressed her mouth home. I watched the sides of her mouth roll as she worked her tongue, but it went on too long to hold my attention so I took the photos out of the envelope and looked through them.

  Five shots of two bodies, different angles. A guy on his back, a woman slumped on top, his bone curving into her cunt. Both of them locked together in rigor. Some hotel room, cheap prints on the walls, pieces of plaster missing. Their heads were covered with plastic convenience-store bags, cinched tight with silver duct tape at the neck. I could see the logo for a liquor company on the one the woman was wearing.

  Wild. Real dead people having sex. An image so shocking that for a moment I couldn’t make sense of the pictures, couldn’t arrange the collection of limbs and asses into two joined people. When I did I got hard, so I put them away for later.

  Rosie was murmuring up at Ryan.

  “Are you ready, baby? Can you do it now? Squeeze it out of that big ass of yours. C’mon, baby, c’mon.”

  Ryan concentrated and there was a moment of complete stillness, his face turned red, Rosie lay motionless with her mouth open. Then he grunted and a flood of liquid shit slopped out of his ass, filling her mouth and covering her face in a lumpy brown sheet, like it had been tipped out of a bucket.

  She coughed and swallowed and coughed again, blowing shit out of her nose, wiping it from her eyes. Her tongue circled her mouth once, trying to lick more of the stuff in. Then she twisted her head away and puked. But Ryan wasn’t finished yet. After a couple of stuttering farts something more solid emerged, a short thin turd that dropped out of him and lay across her ear and the side of her throat like a dead snake. She took hold of it and pressed it into the space between her breasts. Ryan smirked at me, then rolled her over and butt-fucked her. He could have done anything he wanted, Rosie was off in some shit-heaven dreamland.

  Ryan took a shower and dressed. I opened a window and sat counting the minutes until I could get away. The smell in the room was appalling. Rosie lay on her plastic, her head in a pool of shit. She had her eyes closed and she made noises like a baby sleeping.

  “Looks like she enjoyed it.” Ryan tightened his tie. “Fucking nitro, haven’t had a solid shit for five years. You think Miss Vernier is into this kind of thing?”

  “Who?”

  “Your piece with the limo.”

  Ryan took out a small notebook, tore off a page, and handed it to me.

  “The address DMV gave me, same as where the limo went.”

  “You followed her home?”

  “I’m interested in the company you keep. Dress smart, she’s big money.”

  Ryan and I left Rosie fugued out on the floor and headed back into the world. Late afternoon, the sky was clear and there was a nice breeze coming up from the ocean. Traffic was starting to pick up along the boulevard.

  “You want to grab a coffee, Jack?”

  “No.”

  “She forgot to pay you, huh?”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “Sure.”

  “Maybe I just like her.”

  Ryan laughed.

  “Don’t get those photos too sticky.”

  Then he got in his car and drove away.

  Chapter Nineteen

  On the flats of Beverly Hills they go out of their way to flaunt their wealth. In Malibu they do their best to hide it. Up in the hills, anyway, where the really big money settles itself. More space, better views, enforceable seclusion. The roads are narrow and winding and they don’t have sidewalks. The only things that show people live there at all are the occasional driveways disappearing between screens of vegetation.

  Access to the address Ryan had given me was blocked by a pair of black iron gates ten feet high, set into a solid stone wall. Through them I could see redwoods and pines and a lot of other European-looking trees. I parked on a grass verge and thought. How to explain knowing her address? I couldn’t tell her I got it from a cop. So I generated some bullshit about knowing a guy in the DMV, which was kind of related to the truth, and when I had it straight in my head I got out of the car and pressed the intercom by the gate. No one answered, but there must have been a camera somewhere because after a while the gates swung open. I drove through and along an avenue of trees that opened out, about a quarter of a mile later, into an area of gently rising wild grass surrounded by woodland. I’d expected something more formal, more landscaped and designed, but it looked like Bella’s ideas on gardening were strictly low-maintenance.

  The house, at the top of the rise, was large, but not obscene. Old stone, slate roof, leaded windows—more New England than Malibu. I rang the house bell and looked back the way I’d come. I could see a slice of ocean above the trees.

  Bella answered the door herself and she didn’t seem pissed off to see me—the opposite, in fact. I got ready with my story, but I didn’t need it.

  “I thought that must have been you last night. The driver noticed your headlights.”

  For a moment I was thrown. Then it clicked, she’d mistaken Ryan’s tail for me.

  “I don’t like sleeping by myself.”

  She reached out and ran her fingers through my hair.

  “Come inside.”

  The interior of the house wasn’t anywhere near as gothic as the outside. Instead of antiques and shadows, the decor was contemporary and there was a feeling of light and space that could only have come from an extensive remodeling of the original layout.

  Bella led me up a flight of stairs and along a corridor to a suite of rooms—bedroom, bathroom, a dressing room, and another room with the door closed. The windows of the bedroom were on a corner of the building and overlooked a large rectangular pool on one side and an area of grass and forest on the other.

  “Nice house.”

  “I like the seclusion. One of the advantages of wealth is the distance it can buy you from other people.”

  “One among many.”

  She undid my fly. I came out hard in her hand and we fucked a solid hour. By the end of it I was sore and she was smeared with come and glit.

  While she took a shower I wandered through the suite. The style of the rooms was deco minimalist—smooth unornamented surfaces, furniture with clean lines, nothing unnecessary. In a wardrobe that formed one wall of her dressing room I found her clothes. They hung with department-store precision—a lot of short-skirted suits, dark colors, no patterns, cut from the best fabrics in the world. On the rack they looked almost conservative, but I knew how Bella’s body transformed them. The recessed dressing table in the opposite wall was bare of cosmetics or jewelry except for a platinum compact and an eye pencil.

  I ran my hands over things, over polished hardwood and flawless joinery, over materials and furnishings the rest of the planet could never dream of owning. I breathed in the smell of money.

  The closed door off the bedroom opened onto a small room without windows that held video equipment—a couple of semi-professional cameras on tripods, a two-tape VHS editing desk, three monitors in a row above it.

  I was looking at the controls of the editing machine when Bella walked up behind me and touched my shoulder.

  “Do you know anything about them? Or are you only interested in the end product? What you see on the screen?”

  She was wrapped in a towel and there was still moisture in the hollow of her neck.

  “I’m interested in the life around it.”

  “I spoke to Welks this morning. You should call him, he’s warming to the idea of another presenter.”

  “You pressured him.”

  “I’m a stockholder, I’m entitled to make suggestions. Did you enjoy mixing with those pigs last night? Is that really the life you want?”

  “It’d be better than the one I’ve got now.”
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br />   She kissed me and smiled, and it was a smile that unnerved me. Not passion or compassion or pity or love … but satisfaction.

  “Go and clean up, Jack, we’re having dinner soon. There’s someone I think you’ll find it interesting to meet.”

  The dining room was on the ground floor. Bella held my arm as we went down the stairs. I expected to hear the bustle of cooks and maids, but the house was quiet.

  “Are you good at surprises?”

  “Sure.”

  “I hope so.”

  She pushed a door open and we walked into some sort of predining area, a room with couches and a bar—a place for cocktails. A man stood at a window, looking out at the grounds. His back was toward us but he turned as we entered. And in that two-second movement I understood what Bella meant about surprises.

  “Jack, I’d like you to meet my father, Powell Vernier.”

  There was laughter in her voice, like she was enjoying a joke. But it was lost on me. I was too busy trying to deal with the implications of what I was seeing. The man in front of me had silver hair. He’d picked me up in a Jaguar on the drag, and later he’d dumped me in an alley. And his presence here moved the thoughts I’d had the night before, about Bella’s blow job and tattoo, from bleary late-night brainshit to something with a much more definite connection to reality.

  Powell ignored me and looked hard at Bella.

  “Is this wise?”

  “Whether it is or not, he’s here.”

  “You invited him?”

  “Shall we go through?”

  Powell snorted and turned away from her abruptly. He stalked through a pair of open sliding doors that connected with the dining room proper. Bella and I followed.

  The table was laid with crystal and silver, pale roses were arranged in the center. On a counter under a row of windows, covered metal dishes rested on warming plates. I thought someone might appear to serve us, but Bella and Powell moved to the food and helped themselves. Bella caught my look.

  “I don’t like other people in the house.”

  “I didn’t say anything.”