Brand New Cherry Flavor

by Todd Grimson

  Three teenage girls stood there on the sidewalk as Chuck put another mirror in the backseat. The boldest one said, “This is incredible. Chuck Suede and Lisa Nova. Would you guys … um, would you mind signing something for me? This is incredible. You both look great!”

  The first autographs Lisa had ever signed. She paid attention as Chuck made sure he asked each girl’s name and smiled at each one. What would happen if you tried to go to a regular supermarket, buy personal items like tampons and deodorant? You’d be trapped.

  Back in Topanga Canyon, the same woman was waiting for them, camcorder poised. The security guy Larry had insisted on hiring let them in; the guards came from Pinkerton’s and worked eight-hour shifts, so that someone was always hanging around the grounds. The guy last night had, no doubt, through the open window, listened intently as they’d fucked. Listened as they peed and flushed the toilet.

  Lisa went to the bathroom, disturbed by these reflections. When she came out, she found that Chuck had turned on the TV, the Dodgers were on. To him it was a low-key but pleasurable way to spend a Saturday afternoon. Lisa thought sports were mostly boring, with exceptions now and then. He was drinking a cold beer. She smiled at him, and he asked her if she wanted to have dinner with Taft Flowers and Heather Malone. She took a sip of his beer and asked, “Where at?”

  “I don’t know. I was gonna call him. But I know they’d like to meet you. Taft and I have been good friends for a long time.”

  Lisa remembered: The two had been in Ride the Snake when they’d been fourteen. It had made them teenage stars. She said sure, and went to take the mirrors into the studio. Glamorpuss had been shot almost entirely in her bedroom—in her bed, in fact. It was amazing how into the role she’d gotten. Really, it was spooky. Though the real Mona hadn’t died like that, as far as she knew.

  Chuck would get a cowriting credit, since they’d improvised so much, and they were also coproducers. Larry Planet was executive producer, and maybe with his clout she’d get into the DGA. She could hear Chuck laughing, talking on the phone to Taft.

  There had been a lot of trouble on the set of LA. Ripper II. Fox Quigley hadn’t gotten along with Eric Lemongrass either, and there’d been all kinds of shooting problems, accidents and illnesses and so on … but then, when Lemongrass fell—not doing a stunt, no way, just walking down some stairs—and broke his ankle, he’d blamed it on Lisa, probably just to get some attention; anyway, he’d told someone at Behind the Scenes that she’d probably put a curse on the production out of spite. The narrator of this Behind the Scenes segment was one of those British tabloid scumbags with a cut-rate accent … and so of course he had enumerated the different men Lisa had been involved with, saying “the latest to fall under her spell is Chuck Suede.” He’d thrown in Roy Hardway and Miguel Casablanca, and Jules Brandenberg, none of whom she had fucked. With Jules that one time, that was “heavy petting,” she’d told Raelyn, and they’d laughed.

  This film, Glamorpuss … well, it was old-school, but Lisa felt like it was another gift from someplace, she’d had to do it, it had just happened, she was unbelievably lucky to be able to do such a project with an “element” like Chuck, and he was great. It was funny, because she’d never meant to be an actress, she’d never thought she could act. As a matter of fact, she’d never had much interest in actors in general; in film school they’d joked and called them furniture, and now here she was … she wondered what Christine would have thought. She was naked in it, but so was Chuck, it would have been impossible to do it fully clothed. The whole idea of exploitation, of exploiting oneself … she was more comfortable thinking about exhibitionism, the desire to show oneself, to find some truth in that….

  Although this was a performance that might (Larry Planet said it would) generate a lot of offers, she didn’t think she’d appear in anyone else’s film. There were so many other possibilities she wanted to explore. Glamorpuss was an anomaly—as was Manoa, City of Gold— but at least this one was fairly conscious; if people liked it, Lisa could feel good about accepting some praise. She was much more confident about what she might be able to do. It would be interesting to hear (and she probably would, through Larry, eventually) what Selwyn Popcorn thought of this new film.

  It was one-thirty. She made sandwiches, and she and Chuck ate them while they watched the developments in the game. He explained to her some stuff about certain players as they came up to bat that made it more interesting to her.

  When they were getting close to evening, Chuck revealed that it was a bigger dinner party than he’d earlier thought, and she should dress appropriately, to “knock them out.”

  “What if Nehi Laughton’s there?” Lisa asked. “He thinks I had people beat up his wife.”

  “Don’t worry about him. I’ll keep an eye out. He doesn’t want to piss me off.” Chuck sounded sure of this, and Lisa believed he knew what he was talking about.

  “I don’t have anything to wear. I really don’t.”

  “We’ll figure something out. Let me help you find something.”

  They went into the closet, going from one hanger to the next.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Another week passed, more or less peacefully. Nothing happened crimewise, as far as Lisa knew. Nothing connected with her. She did, however, allow Watson Random to file a lawsuit against the police department, related to Lancaster’s slapping her on the ass in her bed. If they didn’t fuck with her anymore, she intended to

  withdraw it, she didn’t want to be bothered, but Watson said doing this would make it less likely that something similar would happen again.

  Her legal fees were really huge by this time, but the money coming in and going out didn’t seem real, so it was hard to care.

  The press seemed to have gotten sick of her, or rather, simply bored because nothing new was happening, and it wasn’t cost-effective to have someone camped out when she so rarely stirred. She’d adjusted to the siege mentality … now it was only a few desperate freelancers who lay in wait.

  Lisa had put a stud through her tongue. It didn’t hurt, but it reminded her of the ritual pain. The metal felt weird, and Chuck, when he saw it, was quietly amazed. She’d bought it in a leather shop, hating to go in but feeling she needed something to put in there to preserve the piercing, keep the hole in her tongue from closing up. Her taste buds had not been affected, or at least it didn’t seem like it. Sweet, salty, bitter, sour. They were all there.

  She and Chuck disposed of Roy Hardway’s shrunken head in a respectful manner one day; somehow Lisa knew instinctively what to do. They simply set it out in the sun.

  As they watched, on their knees, the head seemed to turn into a gold mask, really shining, stitches gone … and then the gold turned into wax, glowing with a bit of red, and they heard a sigh, and it slowly melted away, it kept melting on the grass until there was nothing left.

  Chuck went away to the location of his next movie, to be directed by James Anka, whose first film, Inevitable, had won the Golden Palm at Cannes. Lisa was sorry to see Chuck go, she was almost in love with him. It was hard to tell what he felt about her. Absence, separation would probably make it clear to what extent each might need or want the other around.

  Glamorpuss was pretty much cut; all it needed was some soundtrack work. There was apparently a rumor going around that Lisa and Chuck had fucked on camera; Larry Planet said that this kind of thing would only increase interest and curiosity … The last scene, Richard in jail, had been shot without difficulty. Lisa thought Chuck was awfully good. Great, really.

  When she called Track to see if he would do the music, he said sure. The idea of doing a straight melodramatic soundtrack, like Miklos Rosza, appealed to him as an exercise in style.

  The next day, he called her back and said he’d just got a phone call from someone named Martinho Vidal down in Brazil.

  Track said, “Vidal says that Dad is sick, and that he’s on his way to France for some special treatment, it’s some rare tropical disease.” />
  “Is it life-threatening?” Lisa asked, stunned, scared.

  “No, no, in fact he specifically said his life isn’t in danger, that there’s a treatment, that he should be OK.”

  “Maybe I’ll call Isabel,” Lisa mused, sort of hurt that her father had not let her know. But then, probably he didn’t want to worry her. That was how he would view it.

  “I think she went with him to France. Vidal said they’d be in touch. The worst is over,’ he said. Really.”

  “He didn’t like me.”

  “Who?”

  “Martinho Vidal.”

  “Oh, you can’t be sure of that,” Track said, though he didn’t sound very sure.

  “Are you going to go to France?” she asked, and Track hesitated, she could hear him hesitating; he answered her question with one of his own.

  “Are you?”

  “Yes. I will.”

  In one of the new mirrors, gazing to distract herself, to kill an afternoon, she watched a delicate Japanese child trying on this dress and then that. Unsmiling, staring as if she knew that Lisa was watching, uncanny, coming back in a kimono, slowly, ever so slowly belting it up. She was perhaps twelve. It was hard for Lisa to guess. A pink party dress with a white collar, worn with white tights. A white dress with a lace collar, exquisite against the golden skin. Now, after looking to the side, as though hearing her hated mother, the girl stuck out her tongue. And then she finally, fleetingly smiled, just for herself.

  Lisa was left exhausted, with a strange kind of intoxication; she had to go lie down for a while. Her head swam, she was dizzy. She fell asleep for an hour until she suddenly heard Raelyn open the door of the refrigerator and take something out. Caz padded in from outside, already purring in anticipation of being petted and caressed. Something was slightly funny with Lisa’s vision, but when she opened her eyes again, it had passed.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Saturday night was always busy, although Joey tried to encourage customers to think ahead; if it was possible, she liked to make her rounds during the week. But Saturday night, almost all night, her pager went off again and again and again.

  It was very good money. She and Zed had split up, and Zed had decided to live with his mother in Paso Robles for a while … he had problems, he no longer felt equipped to deal with the world.

  Whereas Joey, since the unveiling, was in her glory, she felt so beautiful, the surgery had been so successful, and these days she stayed high, blissfully, almost all the time. Her life was now so organized that she had a solid baseline of static pleasures, as Epicurean philosophy recommended Qoey’d once attended, briefly, Dartmouth, though she hadn’t learned anything much about pleasure back there), with frequent episodes of kinetic, wild pleasure—that is, of the sexual and hardcore exhibitionistic variety—with any of three devoted male admirers, all of whom treated her like a beautiful princess, they adored her … and one of them, the rock star Dash Pilgrim, Joey sort of loved in return. She didn’t think of him as just a john.

  She had become good friends with another transsexual, Lauren Devoto, who had never quite opted to take the plunge, that is, go under the knife. Lauren advised her to stick with an older man, someone rich, who would take care of her … a connoisseur who could appreciate the “best of both worlds,” the beautiful she-male, the chick with a dick. Lauren, of course, had pulled off the seemingly impossible and been legally married, and very few knew her real story, her triumph … Joey had sold her drugs for two years before Lauren had seen fit to fully confide. Joey had kept her mouth shut and showed proper deference, and eventually Lauren had wanted to share.

  The silicone augmentations to the breasts, ass, and thighs, the hormones, electrolysis to remove unwanted hair, makeup secrets—there was a lot to talk about, so when not together they spent a lot of time on the phone.

  These new chemicals were so wonderful. If you really knew what you were doing, and had quality-control checks and a plan, there was no reason to experience anxiety or dread, and a whole new range of brilliant emotions became available; naturally you had to be careful, but… Joey was a good ambassador, and Lauren was one of her best customers. She liked to try each new flavor the boys in the lab came up with, once it had been given its trial to watch for bugs.

  Joey felt this was the wave of the future, and she hardly even dealt in traditional substances like cocaine. She specialized, and a lot of these new formulas were not even illegal… some had no known bad side effects unless you were an asshole going out of your way to fuck yourself up.

  It was 5:30 A.M. Sunday morning and Joey had been up all night, hitting the clubs, going to private parties, called to the homes of movie stars and studio executives, rock stars, supermodels … then she was betrayed. And it wasn’t exactly a secret who betrayed her: the conceptual artist Mark Ferdinand. He didn’t even say he was sorry! Nothing! He introduced her to this guy outside his home in Silverlake, it looked OK, and then Joey was busted: “You’re under arrest. You have the right to remain silent,” all that.

  On the way to the station, Joey thought of what Zed had taught her, and one thing was for sure: Mark Ferdinand would have to pay, and pay big time. She knew some rough people. Maybe the next time he went to Milan, chasing baby models who didn’t know if they were going to make it or not—he was the kind of jerk who preyed on them, he had money and knew the ropes over there—Joey thought: I’ll have both his elbows broken. Then he won’t be able to feed himself or wipe his own ass.

  Now to the task at hand. She was calm, she hadn’t wept, the problem was going to be convincing these shitheads—narcotics detectives Wheeler and Chung—to make the phone call, they weren’t going to want to give up their bust. They were dumbasses.

  She would never, it was inconceivable, give up any of the chemists. Second, she could never spend any time in the L.A. county jail. Were they kidding? These were real breasts, a real ass, and she did not intend to be auctioned off as a sex slave.

  So she began.

  “I swear to God, they’ll want to talk to me. They will thank you forever for calling them in.”

  “Do you have any idea, sweetcheeks, how many assholes call in every day with so-called critical leads? You don’t know how badly you’re boring us with this shit. Quit fucking around.”

  “Listen, just get this straight: / know who wore the bird suit Tell Bluestone or Brown. I—hypothetically, in another life—might have, you know, sold stuff to Lisa Nova, Boro, Lauren Devoto, Veronica, Steve Zen, and Code”

  “Oh fuck,” Godfrey Chung said, throwing his fresh butterhorn against the wall, bouncing it like a bank shot into the wastepaper basket.

  Tom Wheeler, his partner, took this to mean that Chung believed her, and that even though it was Sunday morning they’d better call in the homicide dicks.

  Joseph Allen O’Brien. Hard to believe that she was a man. Just to punish her a little, make her sweat, they made her wait in the holding pen with all the motherfuckers taken in overnight. Chung told the sergeant to keep an eye out, stay ready with the Mace.

  Profit Brown’s pager went off in church. Then he called Bluestone, who was still apparently lying around with his wife in bed. Interruptus.

  Some formalities had to be gone through. Like Bluestone and Brown could promise Joey the moon, but it meant nothing unless someone from the DA’s office agreed there would be no prosecution—and the assistant DA on call, a young monotone-voiced woman, was not being cooperative at all. Joey’s lawyer, Patrick Seagull, had shown up, and maybe this woman had a hard-on against him, so to speak, whatever … negotiations were not going well. Joey wanted total immunity: “I want out of here today and nothing relating to this can ever be filed. In return I’ll tell you all kinds of things, I’ll answer everything you ask and more.”

  Finally, since they were into the afternoon by now, Profit Brown did something he ordinarily would never do, but this was just too maddening … he called at home a senior assistant DA, another black man, someone he’d worked with before. As
soon as the guy understood the situation, he said, “Put her on the line. Go get her and put the stupid bitch on the line.”

  The assistant DA on call was very angry—Brown knew he’d made an enemy, no question, and her father was a judge, the only reason she’d ever gotten hired—but this was what had to be done. He’d live with it. Her father was an extraordinary idiot, an arbitrary judge, and little Renee here showed every sign of living up to the family tradition.

  Joey was served lunch, they had takeout delivered, and at last she could smile. She freely gave it all up.

  “Veronica located a piece of furniture for Boro, way back, and then she used to go out there to see Wanda and get her fortune told. She hated Lou. I don’t know all the stuff she saw, but I know she used to dress up in a bird suit, nobody could even tell if it was a woman or a man. And Steve Zen got dolled up in Aztec drag, in body paint, because Boro wanted somebody who’d lifted weights, someone with a big chest. Alvin Sender was the connection there.”

  “Who has the videos? Do you know what I’m talking about?” Bluestone asked.

  Joey laughed and accepted a light for her cigarette.

  “Veronica and Steve, most likely. Veronica has called up Lauren a couple times in the past few days and hinted that she’d sell them if the price is right. But Lauren’s been tied up. You should be careful if you visit Veronica—she and Steve have some weapons in that bungalow. Steve worked as a freelance enforcer, hired muscle—Sender used him once to beat up some guy. Veronica … she has all these pictures of Lisa she’s cut out and taped up on the wall. I think she tries to put spells on her, using things Wanda taught her … I think she’s hallucinating quite a bit. At least, that’s one kind of drug she seems to go through pretty fast. She’s tripping out,” Joey said, and snickered, smoked her cigarette, yawned. Little freckles across the bridge of her nose.