And there were other delights in the vicinity.
Butterbugs relished these lyrical afternoons, when LA could pass for something really great. Poetic, even. He caught sight of Cody’s great ass over in the parker-lot. Was this the time to ask her out for a plate of cream or a malted, or something? No Goth-y caramel stuff, though.
Old Atrocity would certainly approve.
30.
The Codification Of The House
Of course he was nervous.
Even with a thundering ‘key’ role, how does one approach this top-of-the-line, brilliant, super-sexy pony girl? There she was, fishing for her beep-key in her bag, and everything was undeniably foxy about her. And, flooding the cinematic potential of the scene was rich percussive sunset music by Fikret Amirov, seeping generously from the recording stage, hard by.
Butterbugs could not help but stare. Her taut physique, leonine hair (leonine, not big; like a shaggy lioness cub) super-sophisticated shades, and veiny hands made his slobber reflexes public, just a bit. He thought he should warn her.
‘I approach you, Cody.’
She looked up benignly. Long day, long week. What about something new?
‘Butterbugs. You do indeed. Did you have a question?’
By God, this woman was efficient. She was probably ready to return to Hyman’s office and pour him another beverage, if that was what was required.
‘You are retiring for the day…’
‘I am.’
Sweet, sweet look.
If only she were standing there with just a lingering bra on, legs apart, like an A-frame, so that he could feel her smooth thighs…
‘Would you care to come for a Friday drink. At the Bubble Room?’
Rat-a-tat-tat. There. He got it out.
How far it was to Sullivan Canyon, and home, she thought.
‘It’s just yonder.’
Indeed the east Santa Monica-Culver City amenities were all before them. Butterbugs was feeling his way, albeit mindlessly. How else could he appeal to this impossibly turbo power-chick?
She thought: an important property. And a hunky dude. All right. I can dig him.
‘We may proceed.’
He figured that his unicycle (the Hudson was getting new muffler bearings) was safely chained up behind the pipes, so he readily boarded her Boxster (911s were gauche for admin types – too much a director’s car) and made himself joyously subservient. Mentally, he was reduced to the Shawna Lee days, when everything rotated around wondering about a chick and dreaming impossible fantasies, and drawing an odd sort of contentment from being thunderstruck at a brilliantly-produced woman, whose talents could never be captured on film, but perhaps intimated through music. Or interpretation might entail even color, used in abstract but potent blocks. He gazed at the instrument panel now, in order not to stare at the moves she made, which he knew were utterly competent, confident, and strong. Her piloting the Boxster to the Bubble Room – just across the street – was as a monumental movement of an obelisk by a glorious goddess. And when they got out (and she did not even put up the convertible top), he could do nothing but stand in goo-goo-gaa-gaa mode as her butt muscles moved her trim-trim-trim form into the dim bibendum light of the Bubble Room. He didn’t even get the door for her, and she knew by his puddle-like behavior that she had him by the balls. (If, indeed, that’s where she wanted him…)
Punk actor, she mused. Another one! But hot damn, he’s cute. Not as dumb as he acts, though. She knew it was her charms that had him on the slab of goofishness. Test: as they were walking down the tawdry Naugahyde-lined corridor towards the destiny of the actual Bubbly Room, she made to reach into her stretch elastic panties, for to adjust her back passage, or some such, and, catching a quick glance at her victim, realized that yes, she had him firmly in tow by her cub’s tail, so to speak. That being the case, it was time to check him out as a person, and not merely as one of Hyman’s exhibition puppets.
They assembled in a leatherette cavity under a dreary brass umbrella chandelier, with parasol drinks.
‘Here. Here you are,’
Butterbugs carefully guided her tumbler onto a used paper doily.
‘Why, thank you.’
‘You served me once, now I serve you.’ Then, much quieter, ‘Only you…’
‘A tepid caramel beverage! I had no opportunity to properly prepare it…’
‘Oh, but it meant a lot to me!’
‘It did?’
‘Oh, oh, it did!’
She detected big ardor on his part.
‘Yeah, well, Hyman Goth is quite an intimidator sometimes. Are you satisfied with the deal he made?’
‘Deal?’
‘You’re into ‘Seacom! Centcom! Ecomcon!’ aren’t you?’
‘Why yes, I guess I am…’
‘Butterbugs, have you eaten anything?’
‘Only that which you lavished upon me!’
‘A single (and tepid!) caramel beverage?’
‘It has sustained me, thus far.’
‘Well, anyway, I hope you can get Sonny to confer with Hy as to the details of your signing. I always want newcomers to do well by Goth Pictures.’
‘Oh, thank you, Cody!’
‘Not at all. I keep Hy in line. He’s lucky he has me.’
‘And I’m lucky to have you! Erp – That just escaped; I meant, uh –’
‘Butterbugs! I do think you’re swell, you know!’
She got the mutual admiration requisites out of the way. Her patient smile couldn’t help but set the seal on the fact that she found him endearing.
‘You do?’
‘Of course! Now listen. You’re a hot guy. I’m only telling you that for your own good.’
‘But –’
‘What does that mean?’
‘I –’
‘Well, I heard that you tamed Old Atrocity. If you can handle him, what can’t you handle?’
‘Ohhh… h… Uhrr…’
‘Me?’
‘Bwuhh… Dxt…’
‘What, do you want me to – strip right here and now, or something?’
Butterbugs was just, just incapable of anything resembling a reply. He wasn’t exactly making cartoon noises in response, but whatever they were, they weren’t alienating Cody. If anything, they helped her consider just whom she was talking to.
She reached out and touched his hand.
‘Hey, easy. I was just kidding.’
‘I am in awe,’ he was able to get out.
‘I know. The picture business is mind-blowing.’
He was flummoxed. Damn, but was she right! Not only was he in awe of her, but in awe of the picture business. He was grateful for the reminder. And come to think of it, they were perhaps one and the same. Cody and the picture biz, that is.
‘It’s so – exalted,’ he offered, somewhat tenuously.
Cody pursed her experienced lips.
‘Oh, man, that’s a cool way to say it. I never thought of it like that before.’
Her underarm hairs began to tingle. That happened only when she was significantly excited.
‘I never thought that the nobility of it all would show so clearly,’ he said.
‘Butterbugs, tell me more!’
He kept her fine hand on his. Her aureolæ flushed behind the scenes – another sign of arousal!
‘It was something that had magnetic power. And I, helpless in its pull!’
‘Butterbugs!’
She was breathy now, helpless herself.
‘The strangeness of it – doing these things, at such a time!’
‘You have understood.’
‘I can feel. I can only feel.’
‘The power? The mind-blowing power?’
‘I think that must be it.’
‘It’s there, all the time!’
‘And I never knew it Cody. Until you showed me!’
‘Butterbugs! You are legend!’
‘And so I came to Hollywood town. And to pictures.’
<
br /> She stroked his hand, then routed it around the table and placed it midway on her thigh, almost as he had imagined earlier. She must have known.
‘And you?’ he whispered, readily feeling the taut flank, interpreted by smooth, stonewashed denim.
‘Oh, Butterbugs! Kiss me now!’
If lips could lunge, hers aimed for his. And a mutual passion nakedly developed.
In the jungle darkness they kissed and petted. Wordlessly they wandered, without cunning, with orgiastic intent, yet without portfolio, as their sensual simplicity was enacted with elegance and intrigue.
‘Oh, Cody,’ Butterbugs said at length. ‘You are so cool. And I am nothing.’
‘I! I! I am as nothing. There is only you. You!’
Barber Butcher, the half-ton sweep-up boy, approached their booth.
‘Well, we’re closing,’ he muttered unprofessionally.
It became a transfigured night. Not in the Schönberg context, but rather, Enescu’s ‘Symphony #3’, lento.
They took to the sidewalks. The back streets, where things suddenly become residential in a small town way, with twirling dusk sprinklers and friendly folks wielding spray bottles of NoMoreGrowth. Yet, the two walkers gazed upwards a lot, mainly because the darkling sky, that irresistible big screen over the familiar, circumscribed, and prosaic LA infrastructure, genial though it was, was where their potential lay.
‘Butterbugs! Look at our evening above! More clear than usual. I present it to you!’
She gestured, in a fulsome sweep, where the entire Milky Way was, or should be, behind the subtle pall of protective Southland atmosphere. Yet, its brightest jewels did stoutly stand out, like weak xenon bulbs remaining on a redundant thiertre’s ‘closed’ marquee. Still, with a woman like this under a canopy like that, there was definitely get-it-on energy flourishing and glowing, and all but inviting an entering and enveloping.
Cody was a commander.
In the Industry now, he thought that maybe he should be seasoned enough to conceptualize the whole scene hereabouts in terms of the Universal Pictures trademark, or, further out, the old Orion logo, but instead, what he saw was pure reality, chaperoned by this worshipful Cody girl, who was plainly deep, and plainly romantic, despite her security-clearance standing at one of Hollywood’s highest studios.
‘Hey Cody,’ Butterbugs whispered, as the sky became brighter in its free casting over the megalopolis, and the stucco surrounding them retreated into the half-light. ‘Cody! I could put you in my pocket!’
‘You could?’
Her hands, sexily-veiny-tanned instruments of power, playfully grabbed him by the shoulders and in seconds they were rolling on one of those senior-manicured lawns, giggling.
After a gentle tussle, ending up on a flowery bank, Butterbugs rested on his side, observing this awesome jeans ’n’ tank-topped woman of consequence (egads, those were her working clothes!) as she stood up and got her kit together.
‘Butterbugs,’ she said cheerfully, running a finger stylishly round her oval belly button to get the grass bits out, then patting her firm tummy, ‘I have a feeling that you fancy me.’
He could not utter anything but a Don Knotts croak, ‘Yeah…’
‘Well look, I’ve had a wonderful time, but I’ve got to get back to Urie and Elven.’
‘Whuh? Who are… they?’
‘They’re my kids! Urie’s dad is Bob Evans, and Elven’s is Sir Obadiah Grut. I’m a mom, Butterbugs. Their mom. And I don’t want them to be latchkey operators.’
‘But… I think I love you, beautiful girl!’
‘Oh, Butterbugs – doughboy – you are so sweet. I… loved you… in that picture!’
‘But…’
She grew solemn, standing with stateliness over him, under her sky.
‘I think you’re going to become a very great star.’
‘I don’t care about that. I just want us to steal away home…’
‘I know. I do know. I tell you, you turn me on. There’s something – I don’t know – cosmic, about you. I think we’re both pretty quick studies, aren’t we? I have to admit… But listen, you nice guy… Yeah, very nice… For you to understand… I think that… Well… In another life, I would flee everything just to sleep near you. I’m not talking idly when I say, I would leave everything and devote myself to you, utterly and without question. That is the bond I feel with you. It has happened quickly, but there’s no need to question it. It’s just a fact, and I know myself very well. You might say that confidence… isn’t one of my weak points.’
‘Urie and Elven! Are there… Is there… others, or, I mean, another?’
‘No! No, there’s not. I know, you may not expect such, but I sleep alone! Sometimes, I daresay, out under these very stars, on top of… In my own… Oh, it nearly makes me weep. Because, I want to, I want to show you, where I do it. I mean, where I sleep – out. It’s… It’s on top of the old porte-cochère, where there’s just enough clear view of the night sky. And I disrobe, and lie back on the divan, and there’s nothing against my skin, and the next stop above is in a constellation. I lie there, half in dreams, yet knowing my fortune, to be in such a place – It’s a rhapsody – a true destiny, fulfilled. Well… almost.’
Butterbugs could imagine the scene: an elevated plane, on the verge of being a launching pad to the empyrean, holding hands with his one and only, leading the way to the reclining, cushioned surface, from which they could lie back and study their future together, before them, and way above. A pas de deux, in a nocturnal upper layer, next the stars, where no one else could know the truth, the sweetness, the pathos. Safely skewered with the arrows of Eros, stitching them together with elements of longing, lust and love. An idyll achieved.
It was certainly possible.
He was listening, and in the midst of this gift of reverie, from one whom it was blissful to receive such from, he nevertheless noted a tone change. Not that it really mattered. He was simply enthralled at the new, deliriously sexy way she talked about herself. Her capabilities, her looks, her promise. And managing two kids! All the more reason to savor her loftiness. What couldn’t she do? Surely it was within her capability to… love him.
‘Oh, Butterbugs! Where I sleep! Away from the arms of some… one!’
She looked down at the green, mundane ground.
‘I’m – I’m afraid I have to remain loyal to my own kind. Yes… So I have to tell you. I would steal away. We could run away. Over the ridge. Far away. And we would live by our wits, always heading towards the edge of human life, for that is where the real essence of existence is, Butterbugs. The triumph, and its higher ascension.’
Butterbugs was afraid of this: that his quick, super-focused love was correct in every way. He was completely exhilarated. Almost euphoric.
‘And we would be happy, whatever may transpire. We would serve each other in the non-defined æther of existence. What could be more exciting?’
Butterbugs was able to rasp, in honest awe:
‘Oh Cody, I don’t know. I just don’t know…’
It wasn’t uncertainty; he was genuinely unknowing of anything more exciting in this universe right now.
‘You see, I have thought about this,’ she said. ‘In this world, with time sped up to the fevered pitch of today, a person like me, whom people think as having ‘made it’, well, I have to think about what I want and how to do it. It’s as if time is short.’
‘Oh, but wait! The time of love is long indeed!’
‘Is it?’
‘I could gaze at you forever!’
‘Sweet boy –’
‘And love you forever!’
She looked away in modesty. Her profile, with newly serious expression, opened new horizons of ecstasy.
‘I can’t imagine…’
‘But you are perfect, Cody!’
‘I can say this: yes, I am something special. My body has not let me down. I am a phenomenon. Yes I am. On a goddess level! Oh God, I’ve never told anyone tha
t! Even myself! Why do you make me?’
Butterbugs became only more enchanted, more thrilled.
She continued:
‘But, why not? I am proud. I am confident. I know I have a lot to offer. So why not be confident? I know I am sexy, too. Is that so terrible? Is that… all-important? Oh, yes, if it leads to fulfillment, to joy! I have not suppressed it! Hey, why should I abandon anything that feels good? I know that guys ogle my body. But you know what? I know how to handle them. I’ve got them under control. But you know what? You’re the first person – well, since Marlon Brando – that I have to regard in this elevated way. And maybe you’re something more. My Parsifal. My Holy Fool!’
‘Please, my wonder, don’t label me.’
‘You’re right, New Boy in Town. Ohh, man, I did it again!’
‘Well, I guess it’s true. I am new…’
‘Never again will I use my background as a cynical (and tough!) professional, to judge the likes of you!’
She looked downward, as if to consider what she was getting into, by revealing such thoughts.
Butterbugs, despite his fervor, was actually canny enough to touch on Earth for a moment.
‘So… So… what you’re saying is… that, because you’ve got kids…’
‘I can’t say that… If I were one increment weaker – Or – that’s the wrong word. If I were… different, I would run away with you – right now! Towards that star!’
It might have been Venus, or it might have been a hovering drug-in-the-box ’copter.
‘I see!’ He was almost panting. ‘Cody! Cody. I even love your name!’
She suppressed a slight laugh. ‘It’s a ‘corruption’ really. Of Candahara…!’
‘Even better!’ he enthused.
‘Nahh… No, no, too much like ‘candelabra’, don’t you think?’
‘Exotic – like you!’
‘But ‘Cody’ is just fine.’
‘Your wish is… You know the rest!’
‘You make me think about so many things, all at once, new boy.’
Forward to Glory Page 34