by JA Huss
Those make me wet. No. Those make me throb.
I wonder how far Ark wants to take this threesome stuff. He doesn’t act bisexual at all. JD I can see. He seems more open.
Maybe because he’s a porn star, stupid.
Right.
I close all the windows and open up the other folder called In progress. This one has two movies with last Sunday’s date. The day JD brought me home. The day he made these movies with us in the tub.
My jealousy kicks in because these movies are of a girl sucking off Ark, not JD.
Asshole.
Why this ticks me off, I’m not sure. But it does. I open the attached documents to see if I can find out who she is, and there is one contract and the sum she was paid. Ten thousand dollars.
Jesus Christ. If I had an ID I could make one movie and go home.
No, my mind interrupts. I can’t go home until I find Janine and write this story.
The girl’s name is Lanie Porter. She’s thirty-two, redhead, blue eyes, and she looks like a hooker. Gross.
OK, I’m done with the desktop folders. It’s all on the up and up. He’s got contracts, STD tests, and photocopies of their driver’s licenses. It’s obvious to me that Ark’s real business is not this public fuck porn. Because that’s all legitimate and I just know that deep down, he’s as illegitimate as they come.
I check the hard drive for more folders, but there are none. Which means he uses this computer for personal stuff and maybe the initial steps in the digital record chain, and then all the files get transferred somewhere else.
I look over at the three tall filing cabinets that look like expensive pieces of modern art made of steel, wire, and glass.
No. That’s too easy. He wouldn’t keep paper records. Would he?
Obviously if one has filing cabinets—custom-made filing cabinets, no less—one keeps files in them. I pull on the latch on the stainless steel box but it’s locked.
I try each one, but nope. They are all locked.
If this was a nineteen-twenties gumshoe movie where the reporter was the heroine, I’d find the key in the oversized desk drawer. But the desk has no drawer and even if it did, I’d never find the key in there. Because the lock on those filing cabinets requires a fingerprint and a code.
“OK, then,” I say to myself as I walk out of his office and slide the doors closed behind me. “Operation Ambush Ark is over.” I’ve got nothing but an unsettled feeling about those pictures of us. It was like… it was like… he was creating something from it. But I’m not sure what.
I shake it off. Because that stuff was personal and if I want to know personal stuff, I’ll have to ask him myself. So I walk down the hallway to JD’s bedroom and then flick the lights on before entering.
JD’s room has the same custom furniture as Ark’s office, and the rest of the house, for that matter. Steel boxes instead of cabinets. Cables and wires to add to the industrial effect. And glass. But there are some subtle differences between the two rooms.
One, JD is not neat like Ark. His shit is all over the place. And two, he’s not nearly as worried about security. Because he’s got porn everywhere. Most of it is him getting his dick sucked by these random girls. Girls who look a lot more enthusiastic than that one blowing Ark, that’s for sure. And JD is animated and talkative in his starring roles. He pulls their hair and slaps their faces. He always makes them come, too. It’s just fingering, but hey, it counts.
Ark never acted like that with the woman in his movies. And that makes me feel better for some reason.
JD, for being the guy who does all the acting, has plenty of cameras in his possession. Big expensive ones with zoom lenses. Small pocket-sized ones. Video cameras, everything from a professional one that goes on your shoulder, to a little hand-held hiding in the back of a knocked-over stack of video games.
The cameras all have photos of him and girls on them. Some sexual, some not. Just random conversations with people.
But this little hand-held video camera has more than forty hours of video on it. All of it is of JD, and none of it has girls. Because it’s a video diary. The last entry was five days ago. The day he met me.
I press the button that will take me to the beginning and then press play.
The first was four years ago.
I look around, suddenly ashamed of my snooping. Do I watch it? It’s wrong. I know it’s wrong. But then the little screen in front of me comes to life and there’s a face.
I almost don’t recognize him, that’s how different he looks. He’s skinny, for one. Gaunt. And his face is black and blue. The kind of black and blue you see in police photos after a mugging.
Someone beat the ever-living fuck out of him. And that seals the deal.
I need to know how he got so broken and all I have to do is not turn it off.
“Hey,” JD says from the camera. He stops. Just one word is enough to shut him down. His eyes begin to water and for a moment I think it’s because it’s painful to talk. From the beating.
But then he swallows hard and wipes his eyes. He clears his throat. “Hey,” he repeats. “I just want you to know, I miss you.” Another pause. Tears well up in his eyes. “I got this camera from a guy I met today, baby. And he said I could use it. I know what you’re thinking. Don’t trust anyone bearing gifts. I know. I shouldn’t trust him. But I got no one, Marie. I’ve got no one else.”
JD lies down on something, and from this close-up angle I can’t tell if it’s a bed or the floor. But I suspect it’s the floor because he looks homeless. He looks nothing like the healthy, charming JD I know.
“So I’m gonna take a chance and help him out. He’ll help me if I help him. That’s what he said. He’ll help me look for you. And when I find you, I want you to know that I never gave up. I never stopped looking. So I’m gonna record it all on this camera.” JD stops and his eyes dart back and forth. Like the lens is a pair of eyes. “I love you. I love you, and I love our baby. I’m so sorry and I will never stop looking.”
There’s silence after that. Well, not quite. There’s no more talking, but the film goes on for three more minutes of sadness. Of JD looking into the camera, desperate for his Marie to see him. To see his grief. To believe that he’s gonna save her.
I stop the recording because an overwhelming despair washes over me. He didn’t save her. He lost her. She was killed, or died on her own, or whatever. Ark said so the other day. And there’s no baby here, so obviously there was no happy ending with that either.
I watch the next entry. He’s still a mess. And the next and the next and the next. All of him a mess. There’s plenty of mentions of Ark, but no one else ever appears in the videos. Just JD and his depression. JD and his sadness. JD and his overwhelming problems.
He talks about killing himself at least once a week. Sometimes every entry has a mention. And month by month, he appears to be getting worse instead of better.
But then he explains the business they’re starting and something changes inside him. It’s small on the first day. A pause. It’s a short pause, only a few moments. But in every other video, the pause is so he can cry.
After this pause, he does something different.
He smiles.
All because of Public Fuck America. Ark’s brainchild to a life of luxury.
JD buys into it. Every bit of it. Because after that one smile, there are more smiles. Not every day, but every week. I find myself fast-forwarding the recording until I see the smile before stopping to hear what he has to say. And then… he laughs. Exactly four months after meeting Ark, when he was at his lowest point in life, JD laughs.
From there, his diary is all about business. His acting. The girls. The money. The loft. That Ray guy. Holidays are happy and the entries become less and less frequent. Once a day turns into once a week turns into once every two weeks and on and on. Until there’s a six-month gap in the dates.
And that movie isn’t of JD lying down, like all the others are. A bedtime ritual that cle
ared his head and set him up for the next good day.
No, the next one is outside and JD never even makes an appearance. Because it’s nothing but one long shot of a headstone. Not the nice kind that stand up, but the flat ones. A marker, really. Just a marker of a girl he used to love. Marie Lagucci. Dead at age twenty-two.
He never talks, but the crying is audible, even over the roar of traffic.
This is the first time Ark ever appears in the diary. He picks JD up and takes him to a waiting car. The whole time the camera is recording. Ark is patient and sympathetic.
JD is a mess.
Ark must figure out the camera in JD’s hand is still recording in the car, because that’s when the footage ends.
There are no other entries for a year.
My mind fills in those dark days after her grave was found. JD is a guy who feels. Not like Ark, who seems to be a guy who watches. JD is a guy who is invested. When he’s in, he’s all in. Heart, soul, mind.
I don’t bother watching the rest of the video. Instead, I fast-forward to the end. And even though it’s more of a breach of privacy to listen to him talk about me, I do anyway.
And I feel like total shit once I’m done. Because he tells Marie I’m good. And pretty. And deserving of a nice life. Like the one Ark gave him. He tells Marie they can save me from whoever—whatever—the problem is.
But the problem is me.
So can he really save me from myself?
JD pays the girl in the alley afterward, while I pack up my lenses and put them in my bag. There’s a small crowd gathered, and since this is not how her contract was written, I’m gonna take the girl home in a cab before heading over to Ray’s.
“You ready?” I ask, nodding at the waiting cab.
The girl won’t meet my eyes, but she nods back.
“See you tomorrow, JD.”
“OK,” he says, walking off and lighting up a cigarette at the same time.
The girl is already climbing into the cab, so fuck it. He doesn’t know about that asshole Gabriel tonight, and I’m not about to tell him until I have a chat with Ray about it. So I let him walk off while I join the girl.
“Where do you live, darling?” I ask her, the cabbie looking over his shoulder at us.
“My boyfriend is waiting over at Skates Pub.”
“Your boyfriend?” Do boyfriends let their girls do this shit? I swipe my credit card and key in the address so we can get going. I have a lot of editing to do.
“Yeah,” she says, looking out the window so she doesn’t have to meet my eyes. “We’re having some trouble paying the bills.” And then she does look at me. “He lost his job a few months ago. I have to feed my kids.”
I nod at her, shoot a smile to let her know I don’t judge. But internally I judge. Not her. Him. What kind of asshole lets his girl do porn to feed their kids?
“My girlfriend worked for you guys a while back. Four or five times. She does real movies now.”
“Oh.” Real movies my ass.
“Her husband told my boyfriend about it. So we went looking for you guys. And that’s how I met JD. He’s real nice.”
I guess. I ignore her for the rest of the ride because honestly, I can’t understand how a man could let his girlfriend suck another man’s cock for food money.
“This is good,” the girl says, knocking on the glass that separates us from the driver. “That’s my boyfriend.”
The cabbie pulls over and I smile at the girl when she says thank you. Her boyfriend waits a ways off, letting her come to him.
“Where you going, mister?” the cabbie asks me, jolting my attention away from the scene playing out in front of me.
“Back to 16th and California,” I say, swiping my card again.
I think about Gabriel the whole five minutes it takes me to get back home, and then I go down to our parking garage and grab my Jeep. I wonder if JD is upstairs with Blue yet? I’m tempted to go check, but I can’t see him alone yet. Not until I talk to Ray. Because all that bullshit will come pouring out, and I’m not sure that’s good for anybody.
Not because I’m selfish. Not because I want JD to forget the past and concentrate on the future. I do, but that’s not why I don’t go up there and tell him his kid might be alive.
I don’t tell him because the last time he got wind of this, he was obsessed for months and it ended with a trip to the emergency room to pump his stomach from an intentional overdose.
This is a no-win right here. Don’t tell him shit and lose our friendship if he ever finds out. Tell him, and he gets obsessed, never gets any closer—because I’m not fucking a pack of sister-wives to get that info—and he tries to kill himself again.
I need advice. I need Ray’s advice. JD and I don’t see him together that often. Holidays mostly. But I know Ray takes care of JD like I do. He watches out for JD as best he can. And he lets me know when I need to step in. Ray will know what to do.
I get in the Jeep, start her up and then pull out of the garage and head north.
A few minutes later I pull into the garage and park on the top level. Cut the engine… and sit. I have no clue what I’m doing. Why the fuck did I let this shit get so far along without having an exit strategy? What if Gabriel is lying?
And then a thought pops into my head.
A traitorous thought that derails my whole night.
What if Ray is somehow involved?
I’m waiting on the couch, wide awake, when JD comes through the door at ten minutes to two. He immediately smiles at me.
“Whatcha doing?” he asks, plopping down next to me. His smile is contagious, but in my head, all I see is the destroyed man in the first entry of the video diary.
I manage to give him a weak smile back. “Waiting up for you. I didn’t want to miss you. And I didn’t know where you wanted me to sleep.”
JD shrugs. “We can sleep in my room. But Ark won’t come in and join us. So we might as well hit the sack in his room. That way he can’t avoid us.”
“Why would he want to?” I’m genuinely interested. Plus, this is a whole lot better than talking about JD’s dead girlfriend.
“Ark’s not into this shit, ya know?”
“What shit? Sharing?”
“No,” JD laughs. “He’s down with sharing, obviously. But sharing isn’t a real relationship. If we want him to be in a real relationship, we gotta talk him into it.”
He’s serious.
I lean in and hug him, but he pushes me back. “I need to shower first. Get the smell of that whore off me.”
“Oh,” I snort. “Mood-killer.”
“Yeah, well, three more nights and we are done. I’m retiring from acting and going strictly into acquisitions.” And then he pats my leg and gets up. “I’ll meet you in there in ten minutes. Go get naked.”
I watch his sexy ass as he walks off to his side of the loft. My heart has this little ache in it. Not for myself—for once—and not for the best friend I probably lost. Or the sadness that comes when I think of my parents and what they must be going through.
But for him.
And for us.
Because I want more than anything for this to be real. And it can’t be real. How can it be real when all three of us are lying? I don’t know what Ark’s lie is yet, but clearly JD is not over what happened to his girlfriend and baby. He never mentions the baby in the video diary other than that one promise to find out what happened. And the only conclusion I can draw from that is it hurts too much. It just hurts too damn much to speak the words.
How can I fix this? How can I make these men mine when they have this shared sad past?
Find me, the voice in my head says. Find me and you’ll find out what really happened to Marie.
I want to believe her. That girl in my head who sounds an awful lot like Janine. I really do. But I’m not sure JD can handle the truth.
My fingertips go to the raised scar on the back of my neck. If Marie had this brand, I know what happened to her. I know what
happened to her baby, too. The same thing that would have happened to mine.
Of course, mine would’ve been folded into the flock because I was one of Gabriel’s wives. But Janine… her baby didn’t have the pedigree to be kept. I was only granted this privilege after they found out who I was and Gabriel claimed me as his. For every one of us on the inside, there were dozens of girls on the outside, who just ended up dead and their babies sold to a long list of couples eager to buy, regardless of how the child came on the market.
That word in my mind makes me gag.
You were part of a baby-selling ring, Blue.
No. I shake the thought out of my head. I was a prisoner, like Ark said. They locked me in a cage for four months when they first found out. That’s how they kept me in the months after it was determined I couldn’t conceive. Every night they came and took me to the lounge. And every night I had a flock member to please in any way they wanted.
I was not one of them.
But I’d be lying if I said I believed that. Just like JD is lying if he thinks he wants to put this behind him. Because when Gabriel came to me and offered me a deal, I took it. I made that YouTube video and lied to the world. I signed the contract. I let them brand me.
“Blue?”
JD’s voice startles me so bad, I let out a whimper.
“Blue?” He comes over to me, still sitting on the couch, in the exact same position as when he left. “What’s wrong?”
I can’t lie to him. I can’t. Not after all those hours I spent watching him bare his soul to a camera called Marie. But I can’t tell him the truth either. At least not that truth. “I miss my parents,” I say instead. “I miss them so bad.”
“Where are they?” he asks, sitting down. He’s naked, just a wet towel wrapped around his waist.
He smells like soap and shaving cream. He smells like a fresh start.
And then I realize he doesn’t even know who I am. Ark never told him. I figured they’d be talking about me all night, but clearly not. “Canada,” I say, unable to tell that story again.
He just leans over and puts his arm protectively around me. And that small gesture is what seals the deal. I hug him hard because it feels so good to have something in common. I’m running from my past. He’s running from his. And the two of us are clinging to each other. Sharing our regrets and shame.