Nefarious Muse

On the doorstep, a weary smile conspired below purple shades that swallowed the rest of her face. “Are you Vince?” She offered her wrist at full extension.

The audio meters danced in sync with her voice as the record light persisted and timecode streamed in the viewfinder. His hand reached into frame to take hers. The smack of lips on flesh peaked the left channel as his lens wandered to her overexposed white pants and glittered toes in lucite heels.

“Guys, this is Faith,” he said to no one. “We’re gonna put her through the paces today.”

Faith nodded until no response came, then air-slit her throat with a finger. Once off the record, she turned away and raised a cell phone to her ear.

“Sorry ’bout that. Yep, got it with me. Three-thirty, then.” She snapped the clamshell shut and shifted the weight of her shouldered gym bag as she wedged past Vince through the doorway.

Wind chimes mingled with coconut oil and gasoline, and the gray bristles of his Yosemite Sam twitched.

“I know I know, I’m early,” she said. “You guys just do what you gotta, and I’ll be at the craft table or in makeup.”

“The um, accommodations are pretty modest around here.”

“Pretty?” She nosed toward the featureless living room and vacant kitchen.

“There’s some bananas there in the hammock if you want,” he said. “But on the phone I did say to show up camera-ready.”

“I’d have remembered that.”

“Well, if you want, Chandra keeps some stuff in the master bath–”

She stepped out from behind her glasses and clipped them to the cleavage-strained neck of her tank top. She sighed, poking her tongue into her cheek. Hawaiian, possibly Thai, but a couple of American generations had blended ethnicity enough to conquer any Pacific Rim market.

“–room.” He gulped air.

“Doubt she has my colors.” She patted her gym bag. “You’re lucky I brought my kit. We up there?” She pointed her phone to the second-floor railing and mounted the stairs before Vince could do anything but bring up the rear. Her white seat wiper-bladed in his LCD on the ascent, inked butterfly wings peeking out the top.

“Straight down to the end.”

“You sure?”

A gallery of family portraits, none Vince, glared track-lit along the corridor as his motorcycle boots stalked her towards the darkness ahead. They passed a bedroom furnished with everything but price tags, followed by a smaller one in immaculate pink.

“Grab the switch there, on your right.”

The room flooded with white, and the camera squinted and hunted for focus. Four walls, a bed, and a television. Dust scorched on the bulb of a lone redheaded movie lamp in the corner that bounced off the ceiling and flattered no one. A dismounted tripod telescoped five feet above the floor.

Faith beelined for the bathroom and its door rocked the frame in her wake. Just as Vince turned the knob, it locked. A faucet hissed.

Vince shook his head and laughed, taking off his ball cap. “Fuckin’ Orange County.” He turned the camera on himself and flipped its viewfinder forward, raking his free hand through the wisps that clung to the rim of his smooth dome. Strays eluded his grasp on the wrong side until he realized it was the opposite of a mirror.

He knuckled the door. “Let’s have a look.”

The faucet ran.

“S’okay, take your time.” Air blew hot from his nose as he retreated to the corner of the bed. “The devil ain’t comin’ for me today.”

Three minutes later, the latch clicked and she emerged the same unmade person as before. That funeral smile and calculated swagger. But her eyes glassy and sniffling.

“Hey now, I woulda shared with you.” He held his arms wide like an uncle expecting a hug.

“Right.”

“Whatever sets the mood. You wanna ride the rails, fine by me.”

Hand on hip, she leaned on one leg. “Can we just do this?”

“Absolutely. Need to slate it again, though. Right against that wall there, please.”

“You mean the white one?” She gestured to each identical wall in sarcasm, then set her gym bag on the nightstand and checked its balance.

Vince held up his index finger, the tape reels whirred, and he cued her with a point.

She rocked heel-toe, hands in pockets. “Hi, my name is Faith Love, and I’m nineteen years old.” The smile faded too fast for an edit, question marks in her eyebrows.

“All right, good, good. And now say … ‘Wanna see something?’”

“Huh?”

“Doesn’t matter. Could be something like, ‘Guys, check this out.’”

“Ooh-kay … guys check this out.” A frigid echo of his direction. “Wait, check what out?”

“Your intro.”

“To what?”

“To this whole Faith experience.” He circled a hand between the two of them.

“You lost me, Vince.”

“What don’t you get?”

“It’s just, I mean–”

“You can ask me whatever. Just spit it out. I want you to be comfortable.”

“Well … like, okay, why are you camcording this? And where are all the umbrellas and strobes and backdrop thingies and all that?”

Three quick orange pulses, and a flash froze her scowl on another small LCD. A point-and-shoot dropped from Vince’s left palm, tethered to his wrist. “Don’t worry. Everyone gets taped. Standard procedure, just to have on file for other jobs, quality control and whatnot. You wanna get more work, don’t you?”

“Yyyeah. But I already got a portfo–”

“Producers wanna know what you’re like on set.”

“This is a set?”

“Half this floor is a business write-off.”

She dug her toe and eyes into the carpet. “Must be nice to be able to itemize your bedroom.”

A sheep-shit-eating grin crept over his face. “Lotta overtime.”

Flash.

“So … where are all these calendars you guys shoot?”

“Ah, the inevitable calendar model question. It’s just an understood thing in the industry. Look, those pics you e-mailed; you’ve done what, some lingerie? Bikini?”

She nodded. “And a little bit of other.”

“Right, well, we like our girls with personality. Just some sexy poses, see what you got. You can do that, right?”

The dangling jewel in her navel trembled as she twisted the bottom of her tank in her fists. “And who are these producers?”

“I work for one who could open some doors for you. If he likes what he sees.” He wrested her hand away and steadied it in his. “Everything’s cool, Faith. You’re in good hands.”

“I just … the acting thing’s a ways off for me right now. I’m in a class, though, playing to camera and stuff.” She bit her lip.

Flash.

Vince checked the still image in his left hand, lowered the camcorder in his right, and turned off his narrator voice. “Hey, great stuff so far. Very natural. Guys love that shit. I think we’re ready to take this up a notch. You bring your IDs?”

“In the bag.”

“Okay, so we’ll just be fading back in from that same spot.”

“Wait. Would you mind if I just grabbed a little sip–”

“Some water? Yeah, sure.”

“No no. I’m sorry, it’s just, my heart’s still all …” She fluttered her hand against her chest.

“Ah,” he said. “No problemo.” He rolled across the bed and the nightstand drawer clattered as he fished out two airline bottles of José Cuervo. She smiled, toasted him, and contorted her face as the dosage demanded. The second shot was but a chaser.

Faith smacked her hands together. “And action!” She jumped back into place in front of the wall.

“All right.” The tape rolled as Vince sat at bed’s edge. “So Faith, why don’t you show us what’s under there.”

Her purple bra barely caught the light before she flung it at the lens and her breasts hung pendulous in closeup. She pressed them together and leaned into potential viewers’ computer monitors until the screen eclipsed. Vince reached for a handful, but she bounced back into a full-body pose and the autofocus lagged. She shimmied her pants down over her hips, then the first leg snagged her heel and she had to spin to palm the back wall for balance.

“Gracefully,” he said.

And there she was, naked but for purple boy-shorts.

“So … does Faith have any special skills she’d like to share with us?”

She eased to her knees, then glanced below frame into his lap and chewed on her fingertip. He placed her hand on his thigh and she obliged with the other, rubbing against his jeans.

“Look at that face, guys.” His hand reached into the shot and stroked her cheek. Then he tugged her hair down behind her back, hinging her jaw open like an adult Pez dispenser. A practiced moan escaped her throat. “Let’s see what you can do with that, shall we?” he said, and adjusted his viewfinder for an aerial view.

Faith remained fixed upon what had grown under his denim. Her fingers struggled with his Confederate buckle and unzipped him. She leaned out of frame and out of character to ask if he had this month’s HIV test to trade as she began to stroke his battle-scarred erection already glistening.

Vince cropped her out of the shot and zoomed in on Vince, Jr. “You don’t have to worry about that with us.”

Faith took him in both hands like a golf club and gripped for tee off.

“Jesus Christ, let go, bitch!” The veins in his neck gorged like those below.

“You want a release? I’ll sign yours if you sign mine.”

“The fuck you talkin’ about?” His voice, constipated.

“Student documentary on the gonzo sex biz. I was gonna call it One-Man Band, but now I’m thinking Vince Bohn and the Unidentified Lesions of Drunken Coercion. I was planning on blurring all the dudes’ faces, but I’m sure there’d be a market for the director’s cut. Maybe in law enforcement.”

“You think the boss is gonna let you have this tape?” He cackled between gasps. “No footage, no film.”

She winked at the nightstand and the voyeuristic, unzipped gap in the nylon above it. “It’s in the bag.”

Gordon Highland is a video director/producer, and author of the unpublished novel Major Inversions. Visit him at http://gdotcom.com