Snowblind

Chapter 12: It’s Only Make Believe

Coos Bay, Oregon

July 20, 1995

It was another beautiful coastal Oregon summer morning. The sky was clear over the beaches, with the marine layer staying several miles offshore. The temperature was in the high fifties and the offshore breeze was light and gentle as the sun was just barely above the eastern horizon and had not yet had time to heat up the land and draw the cooler ocean air ashore. The tide was currently out, leaving the beaches around KVA’s cliffside house open and accessible. As was usually their habit when staying in town to record, Jake and Celia were making their morning run together on the beach route.

After reaching the state park to the south of them, they went up the stairs back to the roadway, the most difficult part of the run. Jake had been exercising regularly of late, having found a few trails near his Oceano home that led down to the sand dunes of Pismo Beach, so he took the stairs easily. Celia, on the other hand, had been a bit deficient in keeping up with her aerobic level exercise until coming to Coos Bay two weeks ago, and she was still sucking wind pretty good on the stair portion. Three quarters of the way up, she had to pause and rest to catch her breath. Jake stopped with her and patted her shoulder companionably.

“You’re getting better,” he told her. “You almost made it all the way up today.”

She nodded, her breath tearing in and out of her lungs, her face red and sweaty, her white t-shirt soaked with exertional sweat both on the back and the front. Even her legs, bare in her black running shorts, were glistening with a sheen of perspiration. She took a drink of water, swallowed it, and then panted for a few more breaths before answering. “I’m going all the way up this thing tomorrow,” she said. “Even if it kills me.”

“Hey,” Jake said lightly. “No dying until we at least get your basic vocal tracks down. That way the rest of us can finish your CD and cash in on you posthumously.”

She barked out a little laugh and shook her head. “Your concern for my welfare is moving,” she told him.

He put his hand between her shoulder blades and rubbed a little. His hand came away wet. “The show must go on,” he said.

“The show must go on,” she agreed. “Come on. Let’s get to the top of this perra.”

“Let’s do it,” he said.

They walked the rest of the way up. Celia was still sucking pretty good wind at the top, so, instead of resuming their jogging pace, they kept up a steady walk back toward the house to let her recover a bit. Gradually, her breathing became normal and she was able to speak a full sentence without gasping.

“Well,” she said, “at least this will get me back into shape for touring. As it stands right now, I don’t think I’d be able to last through a ninety-minute show.”

“What about two and a half hours?” Jake asked.

“Two and a half hours?” she asked. “What the hell?”

“Do you think you could work your way up to that?” he asked. “There would be a twenty-minute intermission about an hour ten in.”

“Jake, what are you talking about?”

“A little idea that Paulie and Obie planted in my head the other night,” he said. “Apparently this is the up-and-coming thing for A-list musical acts. Two to three hour sets and no opening band. Just the headliner. The Eagles are doing it, Rush is doing it, U2, Metallica, the Rolling Stones.”

“Really?” she asked.

“Really,” he confirmed. “Paulie asked me to talk to you about the possibility.”

“That’s a really long set,” she said doubtfully. “And I don’t think I’m quite in the same league with those other acts.”

“You’re not,” Jake said. “You’re in a higher league. You’ve sold more CDs in the past two years than all of them combined. You’re hot commodity. I would say—and Paulie agrees—that you are at the very top of the A-list as far as musical acts go.”

She smiled, pleased with his praise, but she was still doubtful about the idea. “What is the point of the longer set?” she wanted to know.

“You’ll have a chance to perform pretty much all of your material,” Jake explained. “All of the hits from the first two albums, all of the future hits from the new album, and as many La Dif songs as you want. You could perform all the La Difs that you wrote and maybe even throw in I Love to Dance for nostalgia purposes. The fans get to hear it all and we don’t get complaints about how you didn’t perform this song or that song.”

“Then it’s to give the people what they want?” she asked. “That sounds rather selfless of us.”

“Well ... it’s not entirely without a profit-oriented angle,” Jake admitted.

“What do you mean?”

“People are more willing to pay triple digit ticket prices for longer shows with more material being presented. Especially once the word of mouth about the set list starts to spread. That translates into increased tour revenue. And, as you know, we cleaned up pretty nicely on your last tour when we went with the higher prices. We’ll be able to rake in even more with the extended set.”

“How much more?” she wanted to know.

“Pauline and Jill put their heads together on this one,” he said. “They estimate we’ll be able to charge seventy dollars minimum for the worst seats in the house, one-twenty-five for the lower-level bleachers, and up to one-seventy-five for the front floor levels.”

Celia whispered appreciably. “That’s quite a lot,” she said.

“The theory is that people will be willing to pay that for an extended Celia Valdez set. Assuming sold out houses across the board—like you did on the last tour—we’re talking about a quarter million or so in profit from each show. And that’s just ticket revenue. That doesn’t even include the merchandising.”

Celia nodded thoughtfully. “A quarter of a million, huh?”

“That’s just a loose average,” Jake said. “It’ll be a little less at some of the smaller venues, a little more at some of the larger ones.”

“Is that KVA’s share of the profit, or the total of all profit?”

“The total,” Jake said. “Assuming we have our MD&P provider finance the tour like they did before, they will logically want to share in that profit, just like on the last tour.”

“Naturally,” she said. “So ... fifty-fifty split, like before?”

He nodded. “I don’t think either KVA or whatever record company we end up with would accept anything less than that.”

“I suppose that’s fair,” she allowed. “Although you know they’ll want to try to negotiate it anyway.”

“Undoubtedly,” he agreed. “But that’s another discussion for another day.”

“I guess so,” she said. “Well ... sign me up. If people really want to see me step up there and sing and play for two and a half hours, and they’re willing to pay for it, I guess I can do it. I have enough material now.”

“All right then,” Jake said with a smile. “I let Paulie know you’re aboard and we’ll start thinking tour once we get masters in hand.”

“Sounds good,” she said. She looked over at him meaningfully. “Why did she task you with asking me about this? Paulie’s never been squeamish about talking business with me before.”

Jake thought about giving her a bullshit answer for a moment then decided against it. “Well ... it seems that she feels you’ve been ... uh ... a little testy of late.”

“Testy?” she asked, frowning.

He gave a half shrug. “You know? Kind of flying off the handle at times, getting disproportionately upset over little things, being uncommunicative. That sort of thing.”

“She says I’ve been doing that?” she barked, a touch of anger in her voice.

“You kind of have been doing that, C,” he said. “You’ve got everyone walking on eggshells around you since we got here.”

She took a deep breath, as if she were about to start shouting at him, and then let it out slowly, her face softening. “I guess I have been a little bitchy lately, haven’t I?”

Jake held his thumb and index finger about half an inch apart. “Just a bit,” he confirmed. “Anything you want to talk about?”

She shrugged. “It’s just a little marital stress, that’s all. It’ll pass. I’m sorry I’ve been letting it out around people who don’t have anything to do with the problem. I’ll try to watch myself from here on out.”

“We appreciate that in advance,” Jake said. He thought about letting it drop here but decided to push just a bit further. “Is it the Greg and Mindy show that’s bothering you?”

She looked over at him, her eyes daggers for a moment, but then they softened. “Yeah,” she said. “What else?”

“What’s the issue?” he asked. “All that clusterfuck over Mindy’s ex doing his little interview has already come and gone, right? The reporters have stopped calling. You’re no longer the lead story on ER every night.”

“That was just a minor league annoyance,” she said. “They had nothing substantial to report except groundless inuendo.”

“Did something new happen? Greg’s been going on about how professional and straightforward Mindy is, hasn’t he?”

“He has,” she said. “That’s what’s bothering me. He tells me she’s playing no games with him, is nothing but the constant professional actress, dedicated to portraying the role she’s been cast in.”

Jake nodded his head thoughtfully. “I will say that Mindy always did take her profession seriously,” he said. “She is a great actress, and she does dedicate herself fully to her work when it’s in progress, just like Greg does.”

This earned Jake another sharp look. “You’re defending Mindy Snow?” she asked.

“Not at all,” he replied. “I’m just stating a fact. Mindy is a lying, cheating, backbiting snake in the grass who will do anything or hurt anyone to further even a minor cause that she’s involved in. There is nothing short of murder she wouldn’t do to gain an advantage, and I’m not even sure about that. But she is a dedicated and professional actress.”

“I think that’s what is troubling me,” Celia said.

“That she’s a good actress?”

“No. That I know what she is capable of, that she will lie, cheat, steal, and hurt anyone she needs to hurt, but that, so far, she is showing no signs that anything like that is going on. According to Greg, she’s this wonderful, delightful girl he gets to work with every day. He even told me they’ve developed a certain chemistry between them that will enhance the scenes they do.”

Jake raised his eyebrows a bit. “Are you worried that he’s getting a little infatuated with her?

“I’m beyond worrying about that,” Celia said sourly. “It’s quite clear when I talk to him that it has happened. I can almost hear him glowing when we talk on the phone and he tells me about the latest scenes they filmed, about how great the interaction between the two of them was.”

“Wow,” Jake said. “You don’t think that they’re ... you know...”

“Tuning each other’s instruments?” Celia asked, using a Jake-ism. “No. I don’t think he’d be able to talk so casually to me if that were going on. And I like to think he learned his lesson after the little makeup girl incident in Alaska.”

“He bought himself a whole lot of silent treatment after that one,” Jake recalled.

“He did,” she said. “And I’m sure he possesses the understanding that if anything like that happens again, it’s the end. I don’t think he would actually do anything with her if she offered, I’m just uncomfortable with this happy, respectful, relationship he’s formed with her. Everything he talks about is ‘Mindy this’ and ‘Mindy that’ and ‘Did I tell you what Mindy said?’.”

“Does he know that this is bothering you?” Jake asked.

“I don’t think so,” she said. “I keep up my happy voice when I’m talking to him; and Greg is sometimes annoyingly oblivious when he’s being offensive to someone.”

“That is true,” Jake agreed. He had been on the receiving end of that particular Greg Oldfellow personality flaw on multiple occasions. “How much longer will they be filming? They’ve been at it for a few months now.”

“At least another month of principal photography,” she said. “And ... well ... they’re getting ready to start filming the...” She trailed off to an incomprehensible mutter.

“The what?”

“The sex scenes,” she said.

“I see,” Jake said slowly. “And when they do that, they’re going to be like ... naked, right?”

“Well, their genitals will be covered since they’re not doing hardcore, but yeah. Pretty much naked. Bare asses, bare tits. The scenes are going to be a hard R rating. I read the script. They’re going to be putting their mouths together. Her boobs are going to be squished all over his chest. His hands are going to be feeling those tits up and squeezing her ass. At one point, he’s supposed to suck on her nipple while she bounces on top of him.”

“No shit?” Jake said, remembering for a brief moment what it had felt like to have Mindy Snow’s nipple in his mouth while she bounced on top of him. “They actually write out how the scene is going to go?”

“Of course,” she said. “Did you think they just threw them naked into bed and told them to improvise?”

“I guess I never really thought much about how a sex scene is filmed,” he said. “I’m assuming this is kind of bothersome to you?”

She frowned. “I didn’t think it would be at first,” she said. “I mean, I was never thrilled about the thought of my husband getting naked and rubbing against Mindy Snow, but I know it’s just acting and that they’re not really doing what they seem to be doing on the screen. He’s done scenes like that before—in So Others May Live and even The Northern Jungle—although those scenes were not quite as graphic. That never bothered me. Truth be told, it always got me a little hot to watch those scenes and I would always ... you know ... get aggressive with him after we would watch it. I thought I’d feel the same about these scenes with Mindy Snow too. And I did at first, but after all the listening to him talk about how wonderful and professional Mindy is and about this fucking chemistry they share ... it’s nagging at me now. I’m getting stressed out thinking about what they’ll be doing and how much that chemistry is going to come into play.”

“I can see where you’re coming from,” Jake said. “Kind of anyway. This is really a bizarre thing to have to deal with.”

“It is,” she agreed. “Something that normal married couples don’t have to go through.” She shrugged. “The life we choose, right?”

“The life we choose,” he agreed.

“Come on,” she said. “Let’s pick up the pace or we’ll be late for breakfast.”

“All right,” he said. “Let’s do it.”

They started running again, settling in on an eight-minute mile pace. It was easy to do as it was mostly downhill from this point.

In Chicago, it was another hot and muggy summer day. All of the daytime exterior scenes for Us and Them had already been filmed, so the cast and crew were now spending their days on a rented soundstage just east of the Loop filming the inside scenes that did not take place in the police station or Frank Haverty’s home. For the past three days now, the soundstage had been built up into the set of The Star Lounge, which was the fictional cop bar where the fictional Haverty and his fictional fellow patrol officers liked to hang out and drink after work. The production team and the actors methodically worked their way through each scene that took place in the bar, starting with the scene where Haverty gets drunk before going home and having the argument with his wife and culminating with the scene in which Lyndsay joins Haverty there after an emotional shift that involved watching a young pregnant woman die right in front of them after being shot by her psycho boyfriend. A slew of extras and supporting cast members were floated in and out of the set for each particular scene so that the bar always had different people in it.

At four o’clock in the afternoon they were almost done with the last bar scene. It was the one where Haverty and Lyndsay got drunk together after the pregnant woman call. It was this scene that would lead to the first of the sex scenes between the two of them and where the chemistry between the two actors was particularly important.

Greg and Mindy sat at a small cocktail table on the set, the primary camera looking at them in profile with the bar and the extras sitting at it in the background. Secondary cameras pointed at each of their faces. A boom microphone was over their heads, just out of the eye of the primary camera. Greg was dressed in blue jeans and a long t-shirt, green in color, that hung over his belt. He had Sergeant Mackle’s empty pistol holstered to the belt and covered by the shirt. Before him was a glass of ice water with a touch of brown food coloring in it that was supposed to be a scotch on the rocks. Mindy was wearing black slacks and a button-up white blouse. Her hair was now down (an earlier part of the scene involved her unpinning that hair after the emotional day) and she had a glass of plain water in a martini glass with an olive on a stick in it. The script supervisor had already made careful notes on the clothing they wore, their hair styles, and the level of liquid in each of their glasses so there would be no inconsistencies when the various takes of the scene were edited together, and so their clothing would be correct when it was stripped off for the first sex scene later.

“All right, people,” said Georgie Fletcher from the director’s chair just adjacent to the cameras. “Let’s try this last one again. I’d really like to wrap up these bar scenes so we can get a little rest before tonight’s fun, okay?”

Greg and Mindy nodded at him but did not speak. They were on the seventh take of the final three minutes of the last bar scene. It was a section where both Haverty and Lyndsay had to spew out a fairly lengthy bit of dark and meaningful dialogue. Greg had screwed up the first two takes by flubbing his lines. Mindy had screwed up two more. One of the extras over at the bar had screwed up another by tripping and knocking over a stool. Fletch himself had put the kibosh on what everyone else had deemed a good take just because he hadn’t thought it good enough.

“Greg, Mindy, you two dialed in?” Fletch asked.

“Tight as a nun,” Mindy assured him.

Greg simply gave him a thumbs up.

“Okay,” he said. “All you in the back, let’s do it just like before, without any tripping or dropping if you please.”

A chorus of agreement noises and thumbs up came back at him.

“Okay, let’s do it then,” Fletch said.

The camera assistant stepped forward with a digital clapperboard and held it up where all three cameras could read it. The readout denoted the name of the film, the scene number, and the take number. The operator read this information aloud and then clapped the top down so the beginning of the take would be marked for later editing (assuming this take was even used). He then backed quickly away, out of the camera eye.

“Action,” said Fletch.

At the bar, the extras began to sip from their near-beers or their colored water drinks. A female carrying a tray of drinks walked slowly through. A bartender began to mix things up while talking softly with two extras before him. Greg, who was no longer Greg, but Frank Haverty after three stiff drinks, slowly took a sip from his drink and then looked up at Mindy, who was no longer Mindy, but Lyndsay Brown, left-leaning, cop-hating reporter who had just spent a month getting educated in the real world.

“How do I do it?” Haverty asked her with a snort. He was responding to Lyndsay’s question, asked in the last take, about how he could see things like what they had seen today and not go crazy. He hefted up his glass, showing it to her. “This stuff helps a lot, even though it screws up the rest of your life. That’s a start. That’s why so many of us are alcoholics, or pill poppers, or both. It’s a crutch and most of us seem to need a crutch to do what we do every day.”

Lyndsay nodded, taking a drink out of her own glass. “I think I understand that now,” she said quietly.

“But that’s not the real trick to surviving this job,” Haverty said.

“What’s the real trick?” she asked.

“The real trick is to just not give a fuck,” he said. “To realize that nothing matters anyway. None of this shit. The world is a fucked-up place and we’re all just here to do the best we can to keep it from spinning completely out of control.”

Lyndsay was shaking her head. “I can’t accept that,” she said. “That girl today, she mattered, Frank! She was pregnant. Her baby mattered. And that asshole, the man who put that baby in her, shot her in the fucking chest because they were arguing over the TV! And she and her baby died right in front of us! Now he’ll go to prison for the rest of his life and she and the baby are dead. She was only nineteen, Frank! He was only twenty-one! Three lives were destroyed tonight in less than ten seconds. How can you possibly say that doesn’t matter?”

“Because it doesn’t,” he said softly. “Not to me, not to the world. You’re sitting there talking like they were taxpaying citizens and the world is going to be missing out on some fucking future Nobel Laurette or something. They were welfare scum, Lyndsay, three or more generations in and none of them had any hope in life. That girl was a high school dropout working in a mini-mart to pay for her vodka and cigarettes. That baby daddy was on parole for selling meth and was tweaking all over the place when we arrested him. That baby was going to be born into a fucked-up existence and grow up to be just like mommy or just like baby-daddy. Why in the fuck should I give a shit about what happened to them? Why should I let that shitshow get into my head and drive me crazy? Keep me up at night? What good does that do? It doesn’t make any of this shit go away, does it?”

“No,” she said quietly. “I guess it doesn’t.”

“And that’s how you do it,” Frank said. “You tell yourself it doesn’t matter, you learn to believe it, to know it, and you drown any doubts with alcohol if they try to surface. That’s the secret to surviving on the streets. It’s more important than that gun I carry or that vest I wear. It’s more important than all that training they give us, than remembering not to stand in doorways or how to walk up on a car you just pulled over. Three times as many cops have been killed by putting their own guns in their mouths because they couldn’t handle the job than have ever been cut down by some asshole on the streets.” He tapped his temple with his finger. “Survival starts here, Lyndsay, with learning not to give a shit about this fucked-up world and the fucked-up people in it.”

She looked at him across her glass for a moment and then shook her head. “I could never let myself get that cold,” she finally said.

He nodded. “That’s what makes you one of them, hon, and not one of us.”

Another nod. “I guess it is,” she said. She then finished off the rest of her drink and set the glass down.

Frank finished his as well. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s get out of here while we can both still walk.”

“All right,” she said. “That’s probably a good idea.”

They both paused, continuing to look at each other across the table, remaining in character. They’d reached the end of the scene, but the cameras were still rolling. Had they really just gone through it successfully?

“And ... cut!” Fletch called out.

The cameras were turned off. The extras stopped moving about. Greg and Mindy let their faces return to neutral expressions. They looked over at the director.

“That was good, guys,” he told them, giving a thumbs up. “Good expression, good delivery for both of you. We’ll see how it looks when I review the dailies tomorrow, but I think we got a wrap on this scene.”

Mindy smiled and stood up. “Fuckin’ fab,” she declared, holding out her palm to Greg.

He high-fived her enthusiastically. “Nailed it that time,” he said. “I was so into character there that I almost feel drunk and pissed off at the world.”

“Me too,” Mindy said. “I was totally Lyndsay there. Feeling pity for you, sadness for the mother, fear for my own sanity. We really do have some chemistry, Greg!”

“Agree,” he said, nodding. “We were clicking really well.”

“That was a good flow on the take,” Fletch agreed. “Hopefully, that click holds for the parking lot scene tonight.”

“We’re still on for filming that tonight?” asked Greg, part of him nervous about the idea, part of him looking forward to it. The parking lot scene was to be the beginning of the first sex scene. Linearly, it would take place immediately after the scene they had just filmed, out in the parking lot of the Star Lounge (though they would actually be filming it in a closed off parking lot of a strip mall out in Oak Park) after Haverty saw Lyndsay safely to her car. They would stand beside it for a moment, telling each other goodbye for the evening, and then they would share a simple hug. The hug would turn passionate and lead to the two of them kissing and pawing each other before making the decision to return to Lyndsay’s condo on the lake and have sex. It would be the first truly intimate contact that the two actors would share.

“Tonight’s a perfect night for it,” Fletch said. “It’s a weekday, so everything will be closed early at the site. Oak Park PD has agreed to seal off the block for us if we give them three hours of warning time. It’s a clear night without much moonlight to interfere with the lighting.”

“Sounds good, Fletch,” Mindy said. “What time?”

“Sunset is 8:20 tonight,” he said. “We’ll need it to be completely dark for the shoot, so I’m thinking that 9:30 action would be about right. That means you two need to report for makeup and wardrobe at 8:30, here at the soundstage. We’ll have you go through the readings and then drive you out there in the limo. The auxiliary makeup and wardrobe trailer will be at the site for touchups. If it goes well, hopefully we’ll be back at the hotel before midnight.”

“Hopefully,” Greg said, pondering the thought of spending two hours or so hugging, groping, and kissing Mindy Snow under studio lights next to a car in a parking lot. It was not exactly an unpleasant pondering. It’s not like I’ll be cheating on Celia or anything, he thought. It’s my job. And it’s just make believe anyway. We’ll just be moving our mouths together and acting like we’re kissing passionately.

“Be sure to put those wardrobe items on hangers and keep them out,” said Lane Casper, the script supervisor. “It is imperative that you wear the same clothing for the parking lot scene as you did for the bar scene.”

“Understood, Lane,” Mindy told her. She then turned to Greg and smiled at him. “Looks like the fun’s about to really start, huh?”

Greg wasn’t quite sure how to interpret that. But he agreed anyway.

The temperature dropped into the low sixties after sunset, but the humidity held steady in the high eighties. It was muggy, with almost no wind coming off the lake, and there were mosquitos and gnats cruising around, occasionally lighting on skin for a quick bite. The parking lot of the closed down strip mall had been transformed by the crew. Oak Park police cruisers had sealed off the block and were keeping all traffic and all pedestrians out of the area. Special lighting towers had been placed around a thirty-foot square in the center of the lot and were providing an artificial brightness that would be damped down by camera settings, giving the illusion of a poorly lit locale. A leased BMW 5 series sedan—the car Lyndsay Brown drove—was parked in a slot in the middle of the square. Several other vehicles, all belonging to locally hired crew members, none of them as nice as the Beemer, were parked on either side to make the parking lot look occupied. The boom microphone stretched out and hung just over the BMW’s driver’s side, where the scene would take place. Two cameras were set up, one to catch a side angle of Haverty and Lyndsay, the other to catch an oblique angle. Behind the cameras were the director’s chair and the rest of the crew. Greg and Mindy, now dressed back in the same clothes they had worn earlier, their hair styled exactly the way it had been when they had filmed the end of the bar scene, slowly got into position for the first take.

The scripting called for the scene to go as such: Haverty walks Lyndsay to her car and they pause there at the driver’s door to exchange a few last words of farewell. She thanks him for taking her to the bar and talking her through her emotional ordeal as best he could. He tells her to go home and get some sleep and that if she does not show up for any more shifts, he understands. She assures him that she’ll be back for the next scheduled shift in three days. He smiles and nods and then, just before she can open the door, he steps forward and gives her a hug that starts out friendly. She returns the embrace in that vein for a few moments but then, as they hold each other, the sexual tension, which had been building in them for the previous six or seven scenes, comes to a head. They gaze into each other’s eyes for a moment and then suddenly they are kissing.

Fletch wanted to capture this entire first part of the scene in one take. From there, they could cut for later print and then move onto the next take, which would involve the progression of the embrace from just kissing to groping and raw passion. The third take would be their breathless discussion in which they decide that Haverty will follow her back to her condo.

“Okay, is everyone clear on what we’re trying to do here?” Fletch asked Greg, Mindy, and the crew. The crew for this session of filming was as minimal as possible, as this fell under the heading of an adult situation scene, the rules and procedures for which were heavily regulated and aggressively enforced by the Screen Actors Guild.

Everyone was clear. The actors took their positions. Fletch himself acted as the clapperboard operator since camera assistants were considered unnecessary for an adult situation scene. Action was called and they performed their roles.

It took seven takes and more than forty minutes of trying before Greg and Mindy were able to pull off the complete conversation between them without one of them flubbing a line or Fletch being dissatisfied with their projection. Greg, standing eighteen inches away from Mindy in the muggy night, sweat trickling down his back, was fighting down frustration, but, as always, this seemed to help him lock in his character as they tried and tried again. Finally, they reached the end of the dialogue portion without Fletch yelling “cut!”. It was time to start the embrace.

Greg, fully into the Haverty character now, looked into Mindy’s eyes, seeing Lyndsay in them, put a slightly nervous, slightly shy smile on his face, and then held out his arms, stepping forward. Mindy took in a slight intake of breath, let a doubtful look flitter across her own face, and then opened her own arms. The two of them came together in a hug. As soon as their bodies came into contact, Greg lost a little of his focus on this being Lyndsay. He felt the soft press of Mindy’s breasts against his chest, smelled the scent of her sweat, the press of her cheek against his shoulder. It felt pretty damn good.

“Cut!” Fletch barked out.

Greg instantly released her. Mindy did the same. They stepped back away from each other and then looked at their director for his explanation of why he had stopped the scene.

“Too quick,” he said simply. “You both jumped into the hug too eagerly. You got the shyness expressions right, but that was not the beginning of a friendship hug that will soon turn passionate. That was a hug that said you two want to start groping each other immediately.”

They both nodded, digesting the criticism he had offered. Greg did not know what Mindy was thinking, but he himself was forced to agree with the director. He really had been concentrating on generating the right emotional expression and had not really been thinking much about the mechanics of entering the embrace. And had he perhaps been a little overeager to finally get his arms around Mindy? To feel her against him? He was self-honest enough to suspect that that was entirely possible.

“Got it, Fletch,” he said, giving him a respectful nod.

“Understood, Fletch,” Mindy echoed. She then let a sour expression form on her face. “Do we have to go through the entire dialogue again?”

“Well,” Fletch said with a sigh, “it was my intention to capture the entire dialogue, hug, and first kiss connection as a single take, but, realistically, we’ll be here all goddamn night if I go for that. That last dialogue take was damn near perfect. We’ll keep the cut there and pick up just before the hug starts. Fair?”

The entire assembled cast and crew breathed a collective sigh of relief.

“Fair,” Greg said, nodding.

“Fair,” Mindy agreed.

They resumed their positions, receiving guidance from the script supervisor, who told them exactly where they had both been standing and the precise angle they had been facing each other when the cut had been called.

“All right. Picking up from the end of dialogue,” Fletch announced, picking up the clapperboard. He called out the scene and take, clapped it out in front of the cameras, and then called for action.

Greg put the nervous look back on his face. He opened his arms and stepped forward, concentrating on making the hug look innocent at first, the kind of hug two friends would share after a trying day. Mindy opened her arms in return. Once again, their bodies came together, her breasts pushing into his chest, the smell of her in his nose. She really did feel pretty good in his arms.

Fletch kept silent and the cameras kept rolling. Innocence turns to passion, Greg’s mind told him. That’s what this moment is all about. Project it. He didn’t have to dive very deep to embrace this projection. He rubbed his hands up and down Mindy’s back a few times. He could feel her bra strap under his fingers, could feel the firm flesh of her body. He felt her arms around him, her fingernails scratching lightly at him through his shirt. He let his upper body lean back a bit, so he was looking into her eyes.

I want her, he told himself, no longer sure if he was just staying in character and projecting onto Lyndsay or was a real human being expressing his thoughts about Mindy. It didn’t really matter when you came down to it. The goal was to carry off the scene in a believable fashion. It didn’t hurt a bit to tap into one’s true feelings in the name of projection, did it?

They stared into each other’s eyes for a long moment. Greg was able to see wanting in Mindy’s eyes, a reflection of his own. She nibbled her lip nervously. And then, by some unspoken signal that fired between them, they leaned toward each other and brought their lips together.

Jesus Christ, he thought, feeling a surge of passion blast through him as they shared their first kiss. He had kissed dozens of women in the line of acting duty in his career, starting with high school stage productions, moving onto off Broadway theater, and then working his way into television and film projects. It was a part of his job and he rarely, if ever, had felt anything other than mild embarrassment at the act. This was something different, however. Mindy’s lips were soft, sensual, and they moved against his in a way that an actress’s lips usually did not in such a situation. He could feel her hot breath against his, could taste the flavor of her lipstick, could feel the hunger radiating from her essence.

The kiss grew more passionate. They opened their mouths a little more, gripped each other more tightly, let their lips slide a little back and forth. Their tongues stayed firmly in their mouths as this was technically a simulated kiss of passion, not an actual one, and the camera (and therefore the viewer) would be none the wiser.

“Cut!” Fletch called out.

It took them just a little bit longer to break the embrace this time, but they did so, stepping back from each other and then looking over at their director once again.

“That looked pretty good,” Fletch told him. “Good projection of wanting from both of you, good embrace, good coming together of the mouths. But I think you can do it a little better, with a little more ... oh...”

“Appetite?” Mindy asked, her face considerably flushed.

Fletch nodded. “Appetite,” he agreed.

And so, they did it again, and then two more times after that. The hug, the rubbing and scratching of backs, the gaze into each other’s eyes, and then the coming together of the lips for the kiss. Each time they did it, they gave it their all, rubbing their open mouths against each other while their arms held each other tightly. To Greg’s embarrassment, he began to feel himself sprouting a fairly respectable erection from the contact. To his further embarrassment, he knew that Mindy was aware of it because it was pushing into her lower belly.

“Cut!” Fletch yelled after the fourth take.

The actors separated from each other once again.

“All of those were pretty good,” Fletch announced. “We’ll look them over with the rest of the dailies tomorrow and decide which one is the best.”

Greg and Mindy both nodded.

“Good job, you two,” Fletch told them. “Let’s all take fifteen. Greg, Mindy, head over to the makeup trailer and get yourselves touched up a bit for the next scene.”

“Right, Fletch,” Greg said.

“Sounds good, Fletch,” Mindy agreed.

They turned and headed across the parking lot, walking side by side. The unspoken etiquette of the acting profession kept them from discussing what they had just done, even in innuendo or allusion. Instead, they spoke of whether or not they’d be finished up in time for their traditional after shift drink in the lounge back at the hotel.

They entered the makeup trailer and, after spending a few minutes drinking water from bottles to rehydrate themselves, had their facial makeup retouched and their hair teased a bit. They spoke very little during this process, and when they did, their words had nothing to do with the scene they were filming.

When their fifteen minutes were up, they walked together back to the BMW and took their positions once again. Fletch talked them through what they were hoping to accomplish in this take: further passionate kissing, hands going beneath shirts, heavy breathing, and then finally, the breaking of the kiss and the staring into each other’s eyes with suitable and believable expressions of lust and wanting.

“All right,” Fletch said. “Go ahead and get into position.”

At the direction of the script supervisor, Greg and Mindy stepped back into each other’s arms, pressing their bodies together, putting their hands where they’d been at the end of the last take. This was a bit awkward since it took the better part of five minutes for them to assume the exact positioning. And through it all, Greg felt the delicious press of those breasts against his chest, the wonderful softness of Mindy’s body. He felt himself starting to stiffen up again down below. This time, he felt Mindy pushing herself a little more firmly into him, subtly moving her soft belly to encourage the response.

She’s doing that on purpose! he thought, feeling a combination of outrage and excitement at this realization.

“Okay ... mouths together,” Fletch said, holding the clapperboard in front of the cameras again.

They leaned into each other, pressing their lips together once again, but not moving just yet. Mindy giggled a little against his mouth, as if expressing the awkwardness between them. Greg closed his eyes for a moment and tried to maintain professionalism.

“Action!” Fletch called.

They continued their passionate kiss, moving their mouths together. Greg’s hands were stroking all over her back. He ran them down to the bottom of her shirt and then slid them beneath. He was now touching the bare flesh of her lower back. It felt incredible beneath his fingertips.

Focus! his mind screamed at him. Stop enjoying this and do your job! He tried to accomplish this, but after realizing that he could both enjoy this and do his job, he abandoned the effort. So I’m enjoying it? What’s the big deal? She’s a hot woman and I’m getting paid to put my mouth on her and touch her. Why shouldn’t I enjoy it?

Mindy, acting as Lyndsay, reached down and grabbed hold of his ass with both hands. She forcibly pulled his groin tighter against him and moaned into his mouth. This was scripted into the scene and Greg had been expecting it, but it sent another surge of lust through him all the same as his erection was ground more firmly against her body. He had to fight to keep from moaning himself.

“Cut!” Fletch barked.

They broke apart, both of them flushed and a little breathless. Greg hoped that the bulge in his jeans was not noticeable by sight. They looked at the director.

“You started off well,” he told them, “but I wasn’t convinced with the transition to the ass-grab.”

“I didn’t grab his ass right?” Mindy said lightly, a sexy smile on her face.

“It should be more of a slide and grab,” Fletch told her in all seriousness. “You just kind of slapped your hands down on him and pulled. Let’s try it again from the top.”

“Slide and pull,” Mindy said. “Okay. I can do that.”

They did it again, and then again, and then three more times before Fletch was satisfied that among all of the footage there would be at least one acceptable take to splice in. Greg and Mindy kissed and rubbed their mouths together until her lipstick and his lip gloss were completely worn off. They groped and grabbed each other time and time again, fingertips touching, scratching, feeling. Through it all, Mindy continued to subtly tease and encourage the throbbing erection Greg had developed.

Christ, he thought helplessly. What is happening to me? If I react like this just from the kissing scene, what’s going to happen tomorrow when we actually push our bare flesh together, when I have to suck her nipple into my mouth?

He employed some self-honesty and found that he was actually looking forward to the experience instead of dreading it.

Filming the dialogue scene in which they agreed to go back to Lyndsay’s house together only took three takes to complete. As such, Greg and Mindy were back at the hotel well before midnight. Both had showered and changed back into their normal clothes. That was a summer dress for Mindy and a dress shirt with slacks for Greg.

“Just enough time for a drink or two,” Mindy said as they strolled into the lobby and headed for the elevators.

“Uh ... well ... actually,” Greg said, “I think I’m going to take a rain check on that drink for tonight.”

Mindy looked at him, disappointment clearly in her eyes. “No drink?” she asked, pouting a little. “How come? It’s become kind of a tradition for us.”

“Yeah ... I guess it has,” he said, “but tonight I’m a little tired. It’s been a long day out in the humidity and the heat. And we’re expected to be at the studio by nine.” And I desperately need to take myself in hand, he did not say. It was true though. His balls were throbbing like those of a teenager after a makeout session.

“All the more reason to have a drink or two first,” Mindy said lightly. “Come on. It’ll help you sleep.”

“Well...”

“Tradition must be adhered to whenever possible,” she added.

He sighed. “Okay, I guess you’re right.”

She smiled and tussled his hair a little. “I knew I could count on you,” she said.

They made their way to the private lounge. It was moderately busy since a lot of the crew that had been working on the parking lot scene had stopped in for their own blast of the good stuff. They went to the bar and ordered their drinks. Once they had them in hand, they found a secluded table near the back corner.

“I think we did some pretty good work today,” Mindy told him as she sipped from her martini.

“Agreed,” Greg said. “It should look very ... you know ... provocative when they put it all together in post-production.”

“It’s going to be hot as hell,” she said slyly. “That chemistry that you and I have developed for this project was shining through tonight.”

“Yeah,” he said thoughtfully. “I guess it was.”

“Filming scenes like that can be so awkward sometimes. You know what I’m talking about, right? Most of the time it’s with someone you’re not really all that interested in being that close to, but you have to do it anyway. It can be difficult to project the proper passion required to convince the viewer that you really are hot to trot.”

“That is true,” he allowed.

“But it wasn’t like that tonight,” she said. “We really clicked out there in that parking lot. Our chemistry was driving it, making us mesh just like two parts of a machine.” She gave him a sly smile. “It was fun in ... you know ... a naughty sort of way, wasn’t it?”

“Uh ... well...” he stammered, “while I’ll admit that our chemistry did enhance the scene to some degree, we were, after all, just two actors out there playing a roll.”

“Oh, come off it, Greg,” she scoffed playfully. “I was pressed up against you for more than an hour out there. I could feel that you were having fun, if you know what I mean.”

He felt himself flushing at her words. “I ... uh ... know what you mean,” he said. “I did experience an unwarranted biological response to our close proximity, and for that I apologize.”

“An ‘unwarranted biological response?’ Have you been hanging out with Nerdly Archer a little too much?”

“No, of course not,” he said. “I was just trying to explain how I got a ... an...”

“A hard-on,” Mindy said. “You got a hard-on rubbing up against me and feeling my body. And you don’t have to apologize for it. I would have been disappointed in you if you hadn’t gotten one.”

“Uh ... I see,” Greg said slowly, uncharacteristically at a loss for words.

Her smile got a little bigger, a little slyer. “I’m not trying to embarrass you, Greg, I just want things out in the open. And, in that vein, you should know that my panties were absolutely soaked when I took them off back in the wardrobe trailer.”

“Really?” he asked, feeling that flush of excitement overriding his embarrassment.

“Really,” she said sincerely. “I’m surprised you weren’t able to smell me though the door.”

Greg swallowed a large gulp of his scotch, hoping it would steady his nerves a little. She is going to invite me to go back to her room with her, his mind whispered to him. That’s where she is heading with this. He had no intention of taking her up on such an offer, of course, but things were going to get really awkward between them when he turned her down.

But she did not make the offer. She started talking about other things—neutral things like the upcoming SAG elections and their chances for Oscar nominations next year—almost without missing a beat.

They finished their drinks and then had one more apiece after that. And then they rode the elevator up to the top of the hotel.

“Good night, Greg,” Mindy said as she headed for her room. “See you in the morning.”

“Good night, Mindy,” he responded, watching her retreating derriere for a moment before heading to his own room.

He undressed and got into bed. His erection returned almost immediately and he took himself in hand, desperately needing some relief. It did not take him long to come up with a suitable fantasy.

Three nights later, in Coos Bay, it was closing in on eleven o’clock when Celia, dressed in a white robe and carrying a bottle of Napa Valley Merlot and a glass in her hand walked out onto the deck of the house for a little relaxation therapy in the hot tub. She was in a foul mood, worried, anxious, suspicious, and, even though she needed to get up in only seven hours to start getting ready for tomorrow’s session at the recording studio, she intended to drink the entire bottle of wine in her hands.

As she closed the door behind her and turned toward the tub, she noticed that, although the lights were out and it was pleasantly dark outside, the jets of the hot tub were running and the cover was thrown back. A closer look revealed that a shadowy human figure was already present in the water. She smelled the odor of burning marijuana overriding the smell of chlorinated water and sea breeze.

“Who is out here?” she called quietly. She had thought everyone else had gone to bed.

“It’s me,” a familiar voice said, just as quietly.

“Teach?” Celia asked, stepping a little closer.

“Yeah,” Laura said. “Just having a little wine ... and a little herb to go with it.”

She stepped closer still, until she was finally able to make out the redhead in the moonlight. She held a pipe in her hand. On the tray that hung over the tub was a bottle of chardonnay, a glass that was about half full, and a small baggie of marijuana.

“You okay, Teach?” Celia asked her carefully. Something in Laura’s voice sounded off.

“I guess,” she said, shrugging. “Are you coming in?”

“I was ... uh ... planning to,” Celia said, hefting her own bottle of wine. “Is that okay? If you’d rather be alone...”

“No, it’s okay,” Laura said. “Come on in.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m sure,” she said. “The water’s good. The bud is even better.”

Celia set her bottle of wine and her glass down on the other tray and then shrugged off her robe, leaving her in her red bikini. She then climbed up the steps and sat on the edge of the tub, letting her legs dip into the water. She felt the bite of the 101-degree liquid against her calves and then slid in a little further, to the first step, which submerged her hips and lower stomach but kept her chest exposed to the night air. “Ahhh,” she sighed. “That feels good.”

“I see you brought some wine of your own,” Laura said, nodding toward the bottle.

“It seemed a good night for it,” Celia said, unable to keep all of the sourness out of her tone.

Laura noticed this. “Having a bad night?” she asked.

“You could say that,” Celia told her. “How about you?”

“I’ve had better,” the redhead replied with a grunt. She held out the pipe and the lighter to Celia. “Want to try a hit? Sometimes it helps.”

“I’ve told you,” Celia said, “that stuff doesn’t do anything for me.”

“Everything deserves a second chance,” Laura said.

“How about a third one?” she asked bitterly.

Laura looked at her carefully. “Are we still talking about pot?” she asked.

Celia chuckled a little but did not answer the question. “All right,” she said. “Give me some of that shit.”

She took the pipe and the lighter from Laura’s hands and then inexpertly mated the two objects together in the fashion intended. The smoke went into her lungs, tasting strongly of skunk scent, and she coughed all of it back out.

“Hit it a little slower,” Laura advised. “And don’t inhale as much of it at one time. This is pretty potent stuff. You don’t need a whole bunch of it.”

“Okay,” Celia said, and then tried again. She sucked the pipe more slowly, without as much force. This time she was able to fill her lungs with the aromatic smoke and hold it in for the better part of twenty seconds. She then repeated the procedure a second time, taking a little larger of a hit this time. By the time she blew that one out, she was starting to feel a little swimmy in the head. Time seemed to slow down to a crawl. She found she could hear the individual crash of each wave on the beach below and then could hear that echoing off the cliffside.

“Oh ... wow,” she said softly. “I think I’m feeling something here.”

“Yeah?” Laura asked with a grin. “I told you it was the good stuff.”

“Nice,” she said, nodding her head. “I guess the shit I smoked before was the bad stuff?”

“Jake says that South American and Mexican pot can’t hold a candle to the northern Cali stuff,” Laura said seriously.

For some reason, Celia found this extremely funny. She started giggling and then laughing. The humor was contagious because Laura started laughing as well, even though neither of them had any idea what they were actually laughing at.

“Madres de Dios,” Celia said when the two of them finally got themselves under control. “I really needed that. Thanks, Teach.”

“Anytime,” Laura said, putting the pipe down and picking up her wine glass. “To the giggles.”

“Oh ... wait, I haven’t poured any yet,” Celia said. She quickly rectified the situation and then picked up her glass. “The giggles.” They clinked their glasses together and then drank. Celia found the wine to be exceptionally good. She could taste the oak and the hint of chocolate that was reputed to be there but that she had never actually been able to appreciate before. Maybe there was something to be said for the whole marijuana thing after all?

“So,” Laura said as Celia sank further into the water, submerging to her chin, “you want to talk about it?”

“About what?”

“About why you’re out here drinking a bottle of wine in the middle of the night and hitting on my pipe?”

“I guess I just felt like it tonight,” Celia replied noncommittally.

“How about why you’ve been so mopey the last few days?” Laura then asked. “Why you’ve been talking to everyone in that monotone voice. About why you’ve been speaking in words of two syllables or less if you can get away with it? And then tonight, why you seemed like someone had told you your dog had died or something.”

“I don’t have a dog,” Celia said.

“Exactly,” Laura said. “So something else must be bothering you.”

She sighed, trying to hang onto the blissful feeling of THC intoxication that was still rising in her brain. “There is something bothering me, Teach,” she said. “But I don’t want to talk about it just yet. I came out here to try to forget about it. This wonderful pot you just gave me is helping with that quite nicely.”

“Fair enough,” Laura said with a shrug. “Glad I could help.”

“Me too,” Celia said with a nod and a smile. She then turned to Laura. “What about you though?”

“What about me?”

“I can’t help but notice that you’re out here in the middle of the night with a bottle of wine and a bag of really impressive pot as well. I’ve also noticed that there’s been ... well ... kind of a strain between you and Jake of late.”

“You noticed that, huh?” Laura asked, sipping from her glass.

“Yes,” she said. “I’m pretty sure everyone has noticed. You and Jake have always been a very happy couple. Ever since you came back from Gordon’s wedding, however, there’s been something ... oh ... off about the two of you. You don’t seem to smile as much. You’re not quite as affectionate with each other as you used to be.”

Laura frowned a little. “Very observant of you,” she said.

“Did something happen at the wedding?”

Laura sat in silence for a few moments, staring out at the stars and the moon. “Yes and no,” she finally said.

“What does that mean?”

Laura sighed. “It means ... that something did happen, but that what happened is not really the cause of what’s been going on between Jake and me. I mean, I thought it was at first—who wouldn’t think that after what I did?—but tonight, we had a little fight and he told me what was really bothering him about what happened and now I realize that I’ve backed myself into a corner to some degree and I don’t know how to get out of it and that every move I might try to make here is a bad move. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

“No,” Celia said simply. “I don’t have the faintest idea what you’re talking about, Teach.”

Laura looked at her again and then shook her head. “Yeah,” she said. “I suppose you really don’t, do you?”

“I’m willing to listen though,” Celia offered.

“This is a very personal story,” Laura said softly.

“More personal than that story you told me about what happened in South America out on tour?”

The saxophonist nibbled her lips a little—a nervous gesture she had that was adorably cute—and then nodded slowly.

“Wow,” Celia whispered, her imagination going wild at what could be more personal than that.

“I can tell you part of it, I suppose,” Laura said. “The part that Jake knows about.”

“The part he knows about?”

“Right,” she said. “The part that happened at G and Neesh’s wedding.”

“Okay,” she said slowly. “What happened there?”

Laura took another drink of wine, swallowed it down, hesitated for a moment, and then swallowed another drink. She set her glass down and then poured it full again out of her bottle. Only then did she turn to Celia and say: “I let the maid of honor eat my pussy out right before the ceremony.”

Celia was not exactly sure what she’d been expecting Laura to say, but it hadn’t been that. Her eyes widened almost comically. “You ... let the maid of honor ... eat your pussy out?”

Laura nodded. “That’s right,” she said.

“And ... uh ... you’re not talking in the symbolic or philosophical sense here, right?”

“Right,” Laura said. “She quite literally engaged in oral-genital copulation with me. We were in our ceremony dresses when she did it.”

“Madres de Dios,” Celia whispered, feeling a flush of sexual excitement at the thought. “And ... and ... Jake knows about this?”

“Of course,” she said. “He gave me his permission to do it before it happened.”

“He did?”

“That was our agreement,” Laura said.

“Guau,” Celia said, shaking her head in wonder. She quickly took a large drink of her own wine and then looked back at Laura. “You two agreed in advance that if the maid of honor wanted to eat your pussy out, it was okay?”

“Well ... we had a broader agreement at first,” she qualified. “Nothing as specific as that. We agreed that if I wanted to do something with another girl ... you know ... something sexual ... that we would talk about it first.”

“Maybe we should backtrack a bit,” Celia suggested. “Did this agreement come about because of you telling him what happened while you were out on tour? You know ... the bartender, the groupies?”

“Kind of,” she said.

“Kind of?”

“That’s what let him know that I was into girls to some degree,” she said. “But after a few months went by ... well ... he noticed that when I was around certain women ... well ... it would put me in a certain mood and ... and one night he asked me about it.”

“I see,” she said slowly. She had a pretty good idea of what the ‘certain mood’ was, but she couldn’t help wondering what ‘certain women’ she was referring to. Am I one of them?

“We talked about it,” Laura said, “and I admitted to him that I really ... you know ... wanted to do things with women from time to time. I mean, I told him I wouldn’t if he didn’t want me to—and I was sincere about that—but I was just clearing the air with him, letting him know where my mind was.”

“Okay,” she said slowly.

“And, well, we came to an agreement that I could do things with other women if I wanted, as long as I didn’t sneak around and do it behind his back. It was just a theoretical idea at that point. I didn’t have anyone in mind or anything.”

“But then you met the maid of honor at the wedding and something clicked between you?”

Laura nodded. “That’s right,” she said. “Her name is Talia, Tally for short. She’s been Neesh’s best friend ever since they were in grammar school.”

“And Tally is into girls?” Celia asked, just for clarity.

“Not exclusively,” Laura said. “She’s bisexual. And yes, something clicked between us. At the rehearsal dinner, she told me about some of her experiences with other girls throughout her life and ... well ... I told her about mine.”

“Is she cute?” Celia couldn’t help but asking, feeling a little surge of sexual excitement starting to develop.

“Yes,” Laura said. “She’s Israeli, used to be a soldier in the IDF. About the same height as Neesh, smaller boobs, pretty face, really cute accent.”

“Okay,” Celia said, trying to picture it. It was a little bit difficult since she had only met Neesh once before, at Jake and Laura’s wedding.

“Anyway, the next morning, after we were all dressed and ready for the wedding, Tally and I were in Neesh’s hotel room, waiting for it to be time to go to the staging area for the ceremony and ... and she told me that she wanted to ... you know ... do that to me.”

“She offered to eat your pussy out?”

“That’s right,” Laura said quietly.

“Just like that?” Celia asked. “She just blurted it out to you?”

“Well ... more or less,” Laura said. “And I really wanted her to do that to me, but there was the agreement with Jake that we’d talk about it first ... so ... so I called up Jake and told him about it.”

“Right then and right there?”

“Yeah,” she said with a nod. “He was in G’s room and they were getting ready to head down to the groom’s staging area, and I told him that Tally wanted to ... to do that ... and he said that if I really wanted to, I should let her.”

“Just like that?”

“Just like that,” she confirmed.

“And she did it?”

“She did it,” Laura said with a smile. “Right there on the couch while I was wearing my bridesmaid dress.”

“Madres de Dios,” Celia whispered, resisting the urge to touch herself between the legs, or maybe tweak one of her nipples a little. “That’s kind of hot, Teach.”

“It was very hot,” Laura confirmed. “It only took me about a minute or so to ... you know?”

“To come?”

“Yeah,” she said shyly. “To come.”

“Where was Neesh during all of this?”

This question had an immediate effect on Laura. Her little smile of pleasant nostalgia turned almost instantly to one of discomfort and indecision. “That ... well ... that’s a really good question, C.”

“What do you mean?”

“Jake asked me that same question,” she said. “And I told him that Neesh was out of the room during it, that she’d gone to freshen up one last time before the ceremony.”

“Okayyy,” Celia said slowly. “And ... was that not the truth?”

“Not ... not the entire truth,” she said quietly.

Celia’s eyes widened. “You mean ... Neesh walked in and caught you two ... doing that?”

“In ... in a manner of speaking,” Laura said.

“Laura,” Celia said. “What are you trying to tell me here ... or trying not to tell me?”

She sighed. “Yes, Neesh walked back into the room while Tally was down between my legs ... licking me.”

“And ... you kept going?” she asked, surprised.

Laura nodded. “We did, but ... but not because we were so involved in it that we couldn’t stop.”

“What do you mean?”

“Neesh wasn’t surprised by what we were doing when she walked back in the room,” Laura said. “In fact, I’m pretty sure she knew before she even left the room that it was going to happen.”

“Really?”

“Yeah,” she said with a sigh. “You see...” She shook her head. “I can’t believe I’m about to tell you this.”

“Tell me what?”

“Right before Tally did that to me ... she ... uh ... she did it to Neesh.”

Celia thought she’d been about as shocked as she could get by this unfolding story. She was wrong. “You mean ... Tally ... she ... she went down on Neesh first?”

“She did,” Laura said with a nod. “In her wedding dress. She spread her legs, pulled her panties to the side, and ate her out until she came.”

“Madres de Dios,” Celia whispered again, feeling that surge of sexual excitement suddenly ramp up by a factor of ten. “In her wedding dress? That’s so ... so...”

“Hot,” Laura said once again. “It was about the hottest thing I’ve ever witnessed in my life.”

“You were there when she did it?” she asked, just for clarity.

“I was there,” Laura confirmed. “I ... I held Neesh’s hands for her so she couldn’t mess up Tally’s hair.”

“Wow,” Celia whispered. This time she couldn’t help herself. She dropped her hand between her legs and gave herself a quick squeeze just to the side of her clitoris, sending a thrill through her. Only reluctantly did she pull those fingers free after one squeeze.

“So ... when Neesh was going to freshen up ... it was because ... she ... uh...”

Laura nodded. “Because she had just come all over Tally’s face,” she said.

“Then this wasn’t the first time that Tally and Neesh ... that they did this sort of thing?”

A shake of the head this time. “No, they’ve been doing it to each other ever since they were in high school basically. Since even before high school if you want to include when they used to feel each other’s boobs up on sleepovers. All those stories I said that Tally told me about her experiences with other women ... they were all the experiences she had with Neesh. And Neesh told quite a few of the stories as well.”

“I see,” Celia said slowly. “This is ... uh ... quite a tale, Teach.”

“Isn’t it?” Laura said bitterly, slugging down another healthy hit of her wine. She then picked up her pipe and her baggie and began to stuff more bud into it.

“What I don’t understand though,” Celia said, “is why Jake would be upset about this. You said you told him about it first, right?”

“Right,” she said, tamping down the bud in the pipe. “But I didn’t tell him about Neesh’s involvement in this whole thing. I told him that Neesh was out of the room while Tally and I were doing our thing, and ... and that she didn’t come back until it was over. And I didn’t mention anything at all about what happened between Neesh and Tally before she offered to ... you know ... service me.”

“Okay,” Celia said slowly. “Because you were trying to protect Neesh?”

Laura didn’t answer at first. She picked up her lighter, put the pipe to her lips, and took a tremendous hit. She held it in for quite some time and then slowly exhaled the fragrant smoke. Only then did she look back over at Celia. “Not exactly,” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“There’s still a little more to the story,” Laura said.

“Like what?” she asked.

And so, she told the story of the night after the Soul Train awards, when she and Neesh had gone skinny dipping on the beach, and then had ended up making out in the surf, and then how they’d gone over to the log with every intention of consummating the new relationship then and there until they’d been interrupted by the realization that the tide was coming in and their clothes were likely being carried out to sea. And that, of course, had led to the incident with the snoozing sea lion and the sneaking back into G’s house.

“Insane,” Celia whispered when the story was over. “That puts a whole new spin on the sea lion story.”

“Yeah,” Laura said with a nod. “Girl time, Neesh calls it; Tally too. To them it’s nothing. Just a little fun between girls; nothing that the guys need to concern themselves with.”

“An interesting point of view,” Celia said.

“One that I just can’t bring myself to agree with,” Laura said.

“And Jake doesn’t know about this part, right?”

“Right,” Laura said. “Or the next part.”

“The next part?”

Laura nodded. “The next part,” she said. “It happened when Jake and G got together at our house—the one in LA that we don’t live in anymore. They wanted to work on their new song. Neesh came along to visit me. It was the first time we were together since that night on the beach. I told Neesh when we were alone with each other that I didn’t want to have any more ‘girl-time’ with her. That I couldn’t justify it the way that she did.”

“And how did she react?”

“It seemed like she reacted reasonably,” Laura said. “At first anyway.”

“At first?”

Another nod. “At first. And then, later that night, after a few drinks, while G and Jake were really involved in their tune ... well...”

She told the next part of the story, how Neesh had lured her into the spare bedroom and went after her.

“She attacked you?” Celia asked, shocked (and more than a little turned on by the thought).

“No,” Laura said. “She didn’t attack me. She told me that all I had to do to make her stop was to push her away.” She took another sip of her wine. “I didn’t push her away.”

“Wow, Teach,” Celia said, unsure what else to say.

“That was the last time,” Laura said. “At least until the wedding day. I felt guilty as hell about what I’d done; I still do. The next time Neesh and I got together, I told her very firmly that I didn’t want to do things like that with her anymore and that I wouldn’t be able to hang out with her or be her friend if she even tried. She agreed. She promised me that I would have to beg her before she tried to seduce me again. And she kept her promise too. We were able to move on after that, stay friends, and she never tried again, but ... the guilt never went away. Neither did the wanting.”

“And Jake doesn’t know about any of this?” she asked.

“No,” she said, “but he knows that I wasn’t truthful about how things happened on the night of the wedding.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, naturally, after I called him up while he was getting ready to be a groomsman at G’s wedding and asked him if it was okay if I let the maid of honor eat my pussy out, he was a bit curious as to how that particular moment in time came to be. And he was also kind of curious about where Neesh was while this was going on.”

“Yes,” Celia said. “I can see how he would want to hear the details of that one.”

She nodded. “Unfortunately, I’m not a very good liar. I never have been. I’m not good at coming up with stories to cover what really happened or with telling such a story in a believable manner. I gave him some bullshit about how Tally had been flirting with me the night before and then how she had just flat out made the offer to me when Neesh left the room.” She sighed. “My tale was not believable. I could tell even as I was spinning it that Jake knew there was a lot more to the story. He tried to pry some of the details out of me, but I clammed up. That put a wall between us. It’s been getting bigger ever since that night. Things kind of came to a head tonight.”

“What happened?” she asked.

“Well ... I’ve been kind of thinking all this time that it was the fact that I’d let Tally do that to me that was actually upsetting him. He let me know tonight that this was not the case. He’s upset because I’m keeping something from him, he said. The trust that is supposed to be between us is damaged, he said. He tried to get me to tell him the real story.”

“And what did you say?” Celia asked.

Laura shook her head. “I didn’t say anything,” she said. “I just told him that the story I told that night is what happened and I’m sorry that he doesn’t believe it. I wasn’t very convincing, I’m sure.”

“And what did he say to that?”

“Nothing more,” she said. “He just turned off the light and got into bed. He turned his back to me and scooted all the way over to his side. When I tried to cuddle up to him like we always do in bed he ... he ... pushed me away.”

“Harsh,” Celia said sympathetically.

“Yeah,” she said. “And that’s why I came out here with a bottle of wine and a bag of pot.”

“It makes sense now,” Celia said.

Laura sighed deeply and took another drink of her wine. The glass was now almost empty again. “What do I do, Celia?” she asked. “I don’t see any way of making this right.”

“I’m not sure you can make it right, Teach,” she said. “You lied to your husband. You did something behind his back.” Oh, and listen to who is lecturing you on that, a part of her gleefully spoke up. The woman who slept with your husband one snowy night.

“Yes,” Laura said softly. “I did.”

“Now ... I’m not saying that a woman isn’t entitled to a little secret here and there. There are things I’ve done that Greg would be horrified by, but I don’t confess them to him.” And how!

Laura looked up at her. “Like what?” she asked.

“That’s not important to the discussion,” she said dismissively. We’ll just keep that can of worms nicely sealed shut. “My point is that Jake knows that something is not right about the situation. Remember when you told me about you and the trumpet player out on tour? What was his name? Spackle?”

“Squiggle,” she corrected.

“I assume Jake still knows nothing about that, right?”

“God no,” she said. “You advised me he didn’t need to know about that. And you were right.”

“Right,” she said. “That knowledge is of no use to him. It would only hurt, wouldn’t help anything. But you did tell him about the bartender and the female groupies, right?”

“Yes,” she said. “Right after he proposed to me in this very hot tub, as a matter of fact.”

“Well,” Celia said, “maybe the same situation applies here. You need to tell the truth to Jake to make things right with him. But you don’t necessarily need to tell him the entire truth.”

“A lie of omission is still a lie,” Laura said righteously.

“Of course it is,” Celia said. “But we live in the real world here, Teach, not Pollyannaville. Sometimes lies of omission are a necessary part of life.”

Laura thought that over for a moment and then nodded. “Okay,” she said. “I see where you’re coming from. What am I supposed to tell him?”

Celia smiled. “How about we put our heads together a little and come up with something? Something that tells most of the truth but that leaves out a few minor details?”

Laura still looked a little doubtful about this, but she nodded. “All right,” she said. “Heads together.”

They put their heads together. With the two of them working in tandem, and with a few more hits off the pipe for each of them, it didn’t take very long to come up with something simple, yet elegant.