Body Parts (Rye & Claire 1) (3 page)

She spun out of his intended
embrace re-crossing her arms over her chest. “That asshole!” She could
feel hot tears running down her cheeks. “Goddamn it, what was I supposed
to do? What do we do now?”

Chapter Four

Erin von seagram looked down
at the storyboard for the tenth time, then up at the couple on the lawn
by the pool. The positions were right: man astride woman who was on all
fours. But the couple seemed cardboard and moving in slow motion.

Camera one had the long shot,
which was too long, making the couple appear too small, their activity
indefinable. Camera two was the front shot, but was too tight, cutting
off the woman’s breasts so you could hardly see that she had any. The
forward thrusting motion and the head-and-shoulder shot of the man
looked more like a college wrestler trying for a take down than two
people having sex.

Von Seagram shook his head.
This was supposed to be pornography, damn it. “This, this is a joke,” he
said, slamming down the storyboard. Picking up the loud hailer, he
yelled, “Cut. Everyone back on the set in one hour.”

Billy Spanning extracted
himself and walked over to admire the pool. As if in shock, his co-star
lay still for a full minute then slowly climbed to her feet, head down,
shoulders slumped, not even trying to cover herself.

The production assistant
strode across the lawn carrying two towels and two terrycloth robes.
Billy snatched the towel and robe. “Thanks, Jerry.”

Jerry approached the woman, leering at her breasts. When she grabbed for the towel he pulled it just out of reach.

Von Seagram was watching. “Goddamn it Jerry, give her the towel.”

The woman grabbed the towel and robe. “Fuck you, Jerry.”

Crystal Cassidy was incensed
and embarrassed. Putting on the robe, she pulled it tight, and stormed
across the set to her tiny trailer, slamming the door behind her as she
entered.

How had she come to this? Jan had never mentioned how debasing it was, all she had to do was stand nude in a swimming pool.

Crystal raged, clenching and
unclenching her jaw. Her stomach churned as she let the terrycloth robe
puddle around her ankles. Tears streamed down her face as she walked
into the bathroom, adjusted the shower temperature, and stepped in. The
steaming water pounded against the fiberglass walls of the tiny stall as
she scrubbed with the harsh loofa brush. When she had scraped her skin
pink, Crystal squatted down in the bottom of the tub, letting the shower
envelope her. She pulled her knees tight against her chest, and
remembered.

It had all started out so
innocently, moving to Hollywood to escape her tiny hometown of Garland,
Iowa. She’d teamed up with a friend, Jan Eckert. An acquaintance really,
she met in her senior year. They shared the same ideas. The two of them
thought they were so tough, so worldly. They’d combined cars and cash,
united in the goal of fleeing their hometown as soon as they graduated.
They were going to move to Los Angeles and break into show business.

The turning point came when
Jan returned to their seedy L.A. apartment with the news that she’d been
fired. She turned, shut and locked the door, dropped her purse on the
floor, oblivious to the sounds of the pinball machines coming up through
the floor from the Pizza Haven restaurant located directly below.

She walked to her friend’s side, nervously chewing her gum. “Jan, what’s wrong?”

Crystal had seen her friend
in many moods but dejection was not among them. Throughout their
adventure Jan had always been the optimistic one.

They’d been answering cattle
calls for everything from commercials to sitcoms, even getting to appear
in a few crowd scenes. But the money just wasn’t coming in fast enough.

“I got fired,” Jan said, tears running down her face. “The manager wanted me to sleep with him.”

“Hey, good riddance, I say. Come on, Starbucks isn’t a job worth crying over.”

“It’s not the job or even
getting hit on, our money’s running out. This is the beginning of the
end. I’m taking a bath,” Jan sobbed, stripping as she walked to the
bathroom.

Crystal shouted over her
shoulder as she opened the refrigerator door. “You get settled in the
tub, I’ll bring a beer. I’ve got something to read to you.”

She took two Rainmakers from
the fridge and set them on the counter, then began rummaging through a
drawer, looking for a bottle opener. She parked her gum on the edge of
the kitchen sink and grabbed the want ads section of the newspaper.

When she got to the bathroom,
Jan was just stepping into the tub. Crystal waited for her to settle in
and for the water to stop sloshing, then handed her a beer.

She eagerly took it, taking a
first drink as though she’d just crossed the desert. “I hope you
brought the comics, cause I could use a laugh.”

“Better than that,” Crystal
said, taking a swig of her beer, then setting the bottle between her
feet as she sat on the toilet seat. “You ready for some good news?”

“Read on,” Jan said, taking another long drink.

Crystal took a deep breath.
“‘Wanted: Aspiring actresses. Must have beauty to match talent and not
be afraid of their bodies. High paying with many perks for the right
women.’”

“And get this,” Crystal said,
pausing to retrieve her beer for a quick drink, “‘Call to qualify for
an interview.’ Sounds like a cattle call to me, whattaya think?”

“That’s a cattle call alright, but not the kind you think.”

“How many kinds of cattle calls are there?”

“Crystal,” Jan said drawing out her friend’s name, “that’s a cattle call for a porn movie.”

“Is not, and how would you know?”

“In all the ads we’ve
answered for commercials, and all the real cattle calls, how many have
cared about our personal regard for our bodies? None!”

“Well if you’re right, and I
don’t think you are, and this is the beginning of the end, and I don’t
think it is, shouldn’t we be considering every angle?”

“C’mon, how are you going to
feel lying naked in front of technicians and cameramen, not to mention
some total stranger probing your every orifice?”

“I’m not as naïve as you think, I’ve had a lot of lovers,” she said.

Jan turned her head and looked directly at Crystal. “For crying out loud, these won’t be lovers.”

“I guess you’d be an expert on those things,” Crystal said, sticking out her lower lip.

“I did my share of experimenting in school just like you,” Jan said, crossing her arms across her chest.

Crystal was looking directly
at her friend, surprise mixed with shock. “I knew it, I was right. I
figured you for the school slut.”

“You what?”

“Sorry, no offense.” “It’s
just that the whole school had you pegged as a math nerd, so I figured
sure you were using that image as a cover.” Crystal put down her empty
beer bottle and nervously thrust two folded sticks of black jack
licorice gum into her mouth, chewing vigorously before speaking again.
“We haven’t exactly shared secrets, never double dated, you know.” A
mischievous smile crossed her face. “Tell me about the first time.”

“I was never the school
slut,” Jan said reaching over the edge of the tub to set her empty beer
bottle on the floor. “I always figured it was either you or Linda
Neville, rumor was she kept a rubber tucked in her boot. But you had the
biggest tits hands down, always showing cleavage and chewing that damn
gum.”

Crystal stuck out her lower lip again. “OK, I deserve that, but now I want to hear about your first time even more.”

“Jesus, don’t you ever quit?” Jan said.

“I’ll tell you my first time
if you tell me yours,” Crystal said, handing Jan a robe and falling in
behind her, ignoring the empty beer bottles.

The two walked into the
living room, Crystal making a detour into the kitchen while Jan sat on
the futon. She came out with a pack of gum in hand and walked over to
the giant beanbag chair in the center of the living room. “You go first,
and I want all the details,” Crystal said, chewing the new gum
vigorously.

“Alright then. It started
when my parents decided I was old enough to be left alone. My father was
going on a business trip to Hawaii and decided to take my mother. I
guess he didn’t want some teenager tagging along.”

“I remember that you were really pissed about something, coach couldn’t figure you out, and asked me if I knew anything.”

Jan ran her fingers through
her hair. “Damn right I was pissed. I just wanted to get even with my
parents for not taking me to Hawaii. Their worst fear was of me having
sex, or getting pregnant. So, that was it. I wasn’t going to get
pregnant but I sure as hell was going to have sex.

Chapter Five

It was 6:00 am
; Rye was on the multi-station weight machine doing incline presses with 150 pounds while Claire began her core workout.

The building that housed Mad
Dash Ambulance was an old Victorian house. The bottom floor consisted of
the two-car garage that housed the ambulance; the kitchen and workout
area were where the living room had once been. Claire had converted the
two downstairs bedrooms, the smaller one into a dispatch room, the other
into a supply room. One of the upstairs bedrooms was used as a library
and the other left as a bedroom.

They worked three days on,
four days off. On workdays they were on-call twenty-four hours. They
worked out every morning, no exceptions, though often their workouts
were interrupted.

They were on their third day of work.

When he finished his last
set, Rye stepped away from the weight machine and turned to watch Claire
work through her crunches. The sight of her working so hard reminded
him of how hard it had been to get the business going—ten years just to
get it started. They had been married five years when they jointly
decided that they were tired of working for someone else. At age
forty-nine, Claire had already worked her way up from emergency medical
technician to trauma nurse in the emergency room of Medford General
Hospital; Rye was a supervisor at Medford Ambulance Service. He gave an
audible sigh at the thought of getting knocked down to the bottom rung,
right back where they started.

“What’s wrong, is my butt too high?” Claire said, executing another pushup.

“Nah, your butt’s fine, I was
just thinking. Olden can’t really afford to pull our license, that’s
why he just reduced our status”

She finished her forty-ninth
pushup, one for every birthday, and rolled onto her back. “Great, when
they finally do find Rusty we’ll get to work our way back to the top,
what, another ten years. Shit, you’ll be sixty-three.”

Rye just shook his head and
started his core exercises. Claire began her kicks. She always brought
up their age when she was upset. “At least it will pay the bills,” he
said.

A crackling sound interrupted
their bantering. Both stopped what they were doing and looked
expectantly at a speaker up in one corner of the room.

Mad Dash Ambulance held
jurisdiction over Jessel County; Medford Ambulance covered all of
Jackson County. Mad Dash also represented search and rescue for both
counties. Emergency calls were received by the 911 emergency center and
dispatched to the appropriate ambulance service.

Rye walked over and pushed
the remote button on the wall that rolled back the huge double garage
door and started the traffic signal flashing amber, slowing the traffic
on Snoop Drive.

“Unit 88, Code 3.” The voice
paused and static continued to crackle from the speakers. They looked at
each other knowingly. A Code 3 meant lights and sirens, 88 was Mad
Dash.

“Heart attack, 238 Wilshire Way, Cascade Circle Estates.”

“Shit, I knew it,” Claire said, grabbing her towel and streaking across the room.

“At least we’re still getting calls,” Rye said.

Claire stopped, spinning to
face him. “Right, back to the bottom of the barrel. You know how many
false alarms have come out of that retirement community?”

Mad Dash had visited Cascade
Circle Estates dozens of times before acquiring Jessel County. Residents
were prone to panic with every new ache or pain.

They drove the five miles in
silence, entering the circular driveway that passed in front of the
retirement home where the manager, Jim Webb, met them. He always looked a
little chagrined whenever they drove up. The facility had been the site
of so many false alarms over the years that he felt embarrassed every
time an ambulance pulled into the drive.

Claire went around to the
rear of the Beast, putting on the backpack that contained the oxygen and
the AED defibrillator. Rye walked over to greet Webb.

“Helen pulled her emergency
cord. When I went up to her apartment she said she thought she was
having a heart attack, She’s in room 208. I hope this isn’t another
false alarm.” He looked at his feet and ran a hand through his hair.
“God, what am I saying?”

“Better safe than sorry.” Rye smiled at the agitated manager. “Never hesitate to call, really.”

Claire was half way to the front double door when Rye caught up with her.

“Helen Horwitz, Room 208.”

When they exited the elevator
on to the second floor Helen was standing, with the help of her cane,
just outside her apartment door. Rye jogged up to her.

“How’s the heart?”

“Oh I’m so embarrassed. I took a Tums and my symptoms simply disappeared. It must have been the sausage.”

“I’m glad to hear that, but as long as we’re here we could hook you up and look at the numbers. No cost, no problem.”

Helen reached out and gave his arm a squeeze. “No thank you, dearie, I’m fine.”

He smiled down at the tiny
woman. “I’m glad it was a false alarm.” He gave his watch a quick
glance. “Better find my partner, see if we can grab a quick brunch.”