Heller’s Decision (13 page)

“
Hey, Penis! Get back to work! I’m not
paying you to stand around and chat.”

Benjy rolled his eyes and donned the head
of his costume again. “See you later, guys,” he said, dancing off
down the aisle.

Mr
Hairpiece stared at us aggressively. “You’re not being paid
to stand around either.” We took the hint and ambled back into the
tent, ready for the next rush of fans.

Chapter 8

Before
the afternoon Q&A session, Roger and Barb took the
opportunity to promote their action group, HUMP. It had been
advertised as an additional session and the pair waited with
patience while extra people trickled in specifically to hear about
their fight against illegal adult material. This was exactly what
Trent would be interested in, so I had my notepad out, ready to
take plenty of notes.

Roger
began with a very heated homily about the awful lives of
those adults and children forced into sex slavery to unwillingly
participate in the production of explicit and frequently violent
pornography.

“
We can’t show you any examples of this
kind of adult material, and you know why? Because it’s illegal.
It’s illegal to make, it’s illegal to distribute, it’s illegal to
download, it’s illegal to watch, and it’s illegal to own. But still
these disreputable companies keep producing it and people keep
buying it. And while there’s a market for it, they will keep making
it, despite the quantifiable human misery it causes. It’s up to all
of you in this room today to stop supporting the companies that
profit from this type of despicable activity.”

“
Name some names!” yelled out someone from
the audience. “What companies?”

“
I don’t want to get sued,” Roger said.
“But there’s a company here at
Seductively Sextravagant
today selling legitimate DVDs, but they are a
subsidiary company of a much bigger multinational organisation
which has been successfully prosecuted in other countries several
times for making illegal adult material. And if you ask nicely at
their booth, they’ll direct you to a website where you can pay to
access any kind of so-called ‘adult entertainment’ you want to,
including that involving children, animals, sexual torture and even
murder. I don’t need to tell you their name because they were
almost prosecuted themselves earlier this year for distributing
some very borderline material, but ended up cutting a deal. I’m
sure you can work it out for yourselves.”

A large man in a suit jumped to his feet
angrily. “That’s fucking bullshit, Harder, and you know it.” It was
one of the suits from PRON Productions. “We didn’t
cut a
deal
, we were
exonerated. Get your fucking facts straight.”

“
Bullshit!” Roger spat back. “You paid a
million dollar fine. I’ve read the sealed court papers. In no way
were you exonerated. That’s just a blatant lie.”

The man stormed out of the session,
pushing a few people out of his way as he went. Bick sprang into
full alert, watching cautiously as the man left. He closed the
door, taking up a post near it in case the man decided to return.
Roger tried to laugh the incident off to lighten the mood. “Didn’t
mean to preach to you all, but some things are too important to be
left unsaid. Now, I hope you have some good questions to throw at
Busty and me about the legitimate adult entertainment
industry?”

“
Is there a minimum length requirement for
men to be stars?” asked one bloke hesitantly, leaving everyone to
wonder if he had a personal interest in the response. The crowd
laughed, Roger included, as he answered the question as best he
could, and the session carried on in a more cheery tone.

After
the Q&A finished and the crowd cleared out, we escorted
Roger and Barb back to their booth for the day’s final autographing
session. A couple of the PRON Production men walked towards us in
what could only be taken as a menacing way, their heads lowered and
eyes fixed on us. Bick and I exchanged worried glances. I looked
around, but there were no alternate routes for us to take. We had
no choice but to cross paths with them.

They openly sneered at us as they
approached. They continued to pass us by, one of them ‘accidently’
knocking into Roger with his shoulder, causing Roger to stagger
sideways. Roger faced up to the man, his teeth bared.

“
You want a piece of me?” he demanded to
know.

I silently groaned to
myself
, not wanting to
be caught in the middle of a public altercation. But Roger and the
PRON man didn’t share my reluctance, and it was soon on between
them. Barb screamed in fear as Roger took a sharp hook to his face.
Bick inserted himself between the two men, pushing the PRON man
backwards, while I grabbed a resistant Roger around his waist with
both arms and yanked him away.

“
Go to Barb, now! She needs you,” I ordered
him.

H
e hesitated for a long minute, clearly wanting another shot
at the thug. But one look at his wife’s frightened face made up his
mind for him and he strode to her, rubbing his jaw with a last
angry look at his assailant. Bick struggled with the man, their
hands clamped around each other’s upper arms.

A couple of the centre’s own security men
ran to his aid, so I abandoned him, sweeping Barb and Roger back to
their booth. We had to walk past the second PRON man to do so, and
my heart hammered the whole time. This man, even larger than the
other, stood with his arms crossed, enjoying the fracas. His eyes
followed us with hostility as we rushed past.

I breathed a sigh of relief when we
arrived back safely, being a
little rusty on my security techniques. I filled in our thick-necks
on what had happened. They straightened up, slightly resentful at
missing the action, bored with their tame crowd-control duty. A few
minutes later, Bick arrived, mussed but unharmed. He smoothed down
his hair in irritation, taking a few minutes to rearrange it to his
liking again.

“
Did the bad man mess up your hair,
princess?” I teased, smiling.

“
Thanks for your help,” he snorted. “You
managed to piss off pretty quickly!”

“
Hey, it’s not my job anymore to become
involved in fights with goons. And besides, you should be grateful
– I
secured your clients
for you. They’re safe and sound now, thanks to me. It’s Security
101, you know,” I said loftily.

“
Well, Wonder Woman, why don’t you do me
another favour and go find an icepack for Roger.”

I wandered off, eventually tracking down
Mr Hairpiece, insisting he produce an icepack. After much grumbling
he handed over a small bag of ice that I hurried back to the
booth.

Ten minutes later, and
although Roger’s jaw would bruise a bit,
Barb and Roger insisted they were okay, just a little shaken by the
events. They wanted to carry on with their autographing, knowing
there would be disappointed fans otherwise.

“
Why do those guys call themselves PRON
Productions? It’s such a strange name,” I asked curiously, as we
walked back to the 4WD when their booth closed for the night. We
had to pass the PRON Productions booth on our way to the parking
lot, but I was relieved to see that it was already closed down for
the night and deserted.

“
Probably to pick up those people who don’t
type properly or those who misspell ‘porn’ in their internet search
engines,” Barb guessed.

“
I suppose that makes a warped kind of
sense.”

We walked them to their hotel door this
evening to be on the safe side. Delivering them to their suite
without any further trouble, we promised to see them again
tomorrow, the second last day of
Seductively Sextravagant
. Bick asked me to drop him off directly
at Dixie’s place, so I went up to her poky little flat with him. I
would have loved an opportunity to talk to her about him, but it
became glaringly obvious that even the ten minutes I spent with
them was ten minutes they would rather spend alone. So feeling a
little unloved, I farewelled them, which neither of them even heard
or responded to, and trudged back to the 4WD alone.

I locked the door of my flat, took a
shower and ate some leftover pasta, accompanied by wine poured into
the biggest glass I could find. In my pyjamas, and doing nothing
more exciting than watching a rerun of
Law & Order:
SVU
, there came a sharp
rapping on my door. I’d been waiting for it.

“Go away!” I yelled out.

More impatient rapping. “Let me in,
Matilda. It’s me.”

I sighed with irritation. “I know it’s
you! That’s why I’m telling you to go away! I’m not letting you in
and I don’t want to talk to you.”

The handle rattled for a moment and he
opened the door, stepping into my flat. “You know I don’t like it
when you barricade yourself in here.”

“
I’m not in the slightest bit interested
in
what you don’t like,”
I snapped. “I don’t like it when all the men are sniggering about
me and my body, but you don’t seem to care about that.”

He seemed
taken aback, at a loss as to what to say to me
that would make things right again. “My sweet, I didn’t realise you
were so angry.”

“
Of
course
I’m angry,” I raised my voice. “And I’m upset how you keep
treating the most private, intimate things that happen between us
as some kind of public entertainment or some kind of warning for
the men.”

“Matilda –”

But I was on a roll and didn’t even let
him start. “The men
know
that I’m
‘your woman’, Heller. You’ve made that perfectly plain on a number
of occasions, even when we weren’t together. You don’t need to keep
jamming the fact down everyone’s throats. As if any of the men
would ever even dare to give me a second glance anyway.”

He sat on
my coffee table, facing me and taking my hands in
his. Childishly, I snatched mine away. We looked at each other, his
beautiful face serious, mine mutinous.

“
I’m not very good at all this, Matilda.
You know that. But I have witnessed the master copy of the footage
being destroyed and the men have been ordered to delete any copies
they may have. If I find out someone hasn’t done that, I’ve made it
very clear I will be harsh in my punishment.” No one did harsh
punishments like he did, so that was probably a sterling incentive
for the men to obey. He leaned over and took my hands again. This
time I let him, slightly mollified by his earnestness. “Is that
enough? Is there anything else you want me to do?”

“
Erase everyone’s memories?” I
half-smiled.

“
There are technologies to do that, but I
don’t have access to them. As you can imagine, the government keeps
those under strict control.”

“I was joking, Heller.” Almost joking,
anyway.

“
I’m sorry, my sweet. I want to promise
I
won’t do anything
again that will upset you, but you are such an enigma to me. I
sometimes feel I have been gifted a precious and mysterious piece
of equipment that came with no user manual.”

That made me laugh. “Gee, you’re such a
natural romantic.”

He smiled. “Am I forgiven?”

I sighed.
“I suppose.”

“Can I stay with you tonight?”

I inclined my head and regarded him. “You
can stay.
But . .
.”

“Hmm, my sweet?”

“I want tonight to be sex-free.”

“
Oh.” That clearly took him by surprise, as
if it was a concept he’d never before contemplated. “Sex-free? Not
even –”

“No.”

“What about a little –”

“No.”

“Surely, just one –”

“No! Sex-free.”

“But why, Matilda? I don’t understand. It’s
almost cruel.”

“
You can’t go just one night without
it?”

“
Why would I want to when I have you in my
life?”

“
Be
cause I want to see if you can. And I just don’t feel like
having sex with you tonight.”

His
histrionic sigh would have embarrassed a drama-queen. “This
is just one of those many things about you I don’t understand. But
if this is what you want.”

“This is what I want,” I insisted firmly.

“
I suppose I can survive one night. But you
better not do anything that will arouse me.”

I laughed. “Like what? A pole dance? I don’t
have any current plans to.”

“
No,” he smiled. “I mean like possessing
breasts.” He thought for a moment. “Or breathing.”

“
Heller,” I laughed again.
“I can’t help those. You’re
just going to have to control yourself.” Somehow he’d managed to
convert my mood from murderous back to affectionate again. I’d
enjoy snuggling up to him tonight.

And I did. He managed to keep his animal
instincts in check. And with my head on his chest, enjoying the
steady beat of his heart, him stroking my hair, I told him a bit
about the day, including the altercation with the PRON
guys.