Spirit (39 page)

Laura smiled and nodded and felt as if she were floating away on some gently-rising balloon. The sitting-room was a
balloon, soft and rounded and warm and comfortable. Raymond's face was a balloon, too, bobbing up and down in front of her. She thought he was so ugly that he was handsome. She wondered how that could be. How could a man have such a sloping-back forehead and all those craters in his cheeks and still be so sexy?

She sat up and kissed him. He tasted all right. A bit chickeny, but otherwise all right. ‘You know what you are?' she said, nuzzling in close to his shoulder. ‘You think you're a Latin lover.'

‘You think that's what I think I am?'

She nodded her head up and down, up and down. ‘You sure do.'

‘You want me to prove it to you?' he asked.

She snorted and giggled and flung her arms around his shoulders and kissed him on the nose. ‘Latin lovers are always like that, aren't they? Always having to prove themselves!'

Raymond made a
moue
. ‘Isn't that the only way that you can find out if your guess is correct?'

Laura nodded giggling again. She couldn't help it, everything seemed so delicious. Raymond kissed her cheeks and her ears and her eyelashes, and then he kissed her on the mouth, deep on the mouth, and his tongue slid in between her teeth, and started exploring her gums, like a walrus exploring a rocky shoreline.

Something happened to Laura then. She never remembered how, or why. But it seemed at that moment as if Raymond were the most desirable man she had ever met, that he was the key to everything exciting and successful. He was rich, and he could make her famous, and that gave him a magnetism that she found totally irresistible. The gramophone was playing ‘Downright Dirty Blues', with a slow, strutting rhythm and a trumpet that sounded as if it were physically in pain. Laura nuzzled and kissed Raymond's lips, and then she lifted herself
up, lifted her dress high on her thighs, and climbed astride him, reverently holding his pockmarked cheeks in both hands. ‘You,
senor
, are the answer to a maiden's prayer,' she whispered, and kissed him, and kissed him again.

His right hand slithered down the back of her white satin dress and cupped her bottom. He allowed himself a small smile, because he could confirm now what he had already suspected earlier – that, in a close-fitting satin dress like this, she wasn't wearing any undergarments. His left hand cupped her breast. He looked over Laura's shoulder at Chester, and Chester nodded his understanding, and walked out onto the balcony, behind the net curtains, and smoked his cigar, and admired the lights of Los Angeles.

Laura felt Raymond's hands sliding her dress higher and higher. It felt so silky and sensual, and he was such a Latin Lover, wasn't he? His hands caressed her bare bottom, his fingertips ran soft as spiders in between the cheeks. She kissed him again, a wet, passionate, all-over kiss. ‘Do you know what you are, Raymond? You're . . . god, that's what you are. Not
the
God. But
a
god. The god of Hollywood. The keeper of the keys.'

‘You are a very exciting little girl,' breathed Raymond, and his fingers ran around her thighs and found the soft damp fur of her pubic hair.

She felt him struggling for a moment underneath her, but she was floating and floating away, and she didn't realize that he was twisting his fly-buttons open. It was only when his fingers opened the lips of her vulva, and a hot bludgeoning presence made itself felt between her legs that she realized what he was doing. Even then, it didn't seem really real. It was more like one of those dreams she had, when she thought that a boy was on top of her, thrusting and thrusting, and then suddenly he melted into nothing, and it was morning, and the birds were singing, and Aunt Beverley was bringing her a glass of orange juice.

Raymond grunted, and pushed himself up into her, only halfway, then grunted again, and buried himself deep inside her, right up to the balls. She was sitting on top of him, but he was far stronger than she was, and it was he who set the pace. He gripped her bottom in both hands and rammed up into her, again and again and again, until she was jiggling around on his lap like a marionette.

She loved it, she hated it, it made her feel sick. It was fantastic. His huge cock ramming into her over and over again, his tongue wriggling deep inside her mouth.

‘You're a floppy little fuck, aren't you?' Raymond sweated. He kept on thrusting himself into her, and her vagina was making a monotonous, systematic squelching noise. ‘Come on, Laura, I thought you were sexy! I thought you were the screen queen!l I thought you were a star!'

‘Star,' Laura mumbled, her arms flapping loosely by her sides.

Raymond rammed her and rammed her again and then he lost his patience. He tipped her off his lap, so that she sprawled onto the sofa. Then he furiously unbuttoned his shirt, although he didn't take it off, unbuckled his belt, and took off his black evening pants and his shorts. Hairy-chested and hairy-legged, still wearing his shirt and his black evening socks, he lifted Laura off the sofa and carried her over to the marble-topped breakfast table. He laid her flat on her stomach, her dress lifted up to her waist, her legs wide apart.

‘This is cold,' Laura murmured, to her own reflection in the polished top. Her eyes closed, then opened again. ‘What am I doing here? Chester? Is that you, Chester?'

From the balcony outside, there came a suppressed smoker's cough. Chester was watching through the net curtains. He saw Raymond take the tear-shaped olive-oil bottle from the supper-tray, and approach Laura where she lay spreadeagled on the table. He heard her call his name, but he stayed where
he was, and continued to watch, and to cough. Raymond stood between Laura's outspread legs. His cock was darkly-pigmented, very hairy, and huge. He took the stopper out of the bottle of oil, and carefully poured a thin stream of it all the way down the shaft. Then he put down the bottle, and massaged the oil into his cock and balls until they shone, and his black pubic hair looked like Frank Sinatra's quiff.

His hands still smothered in oil, he parted the cheeks of Laura's bottom and smeared them around and around. Laura opened her eyes and tried to lift herself up off the table, but Raymond pushed her back down again, and said, ‘You want to be a star? Then shut up, and stay where you are.'

Chester smoked and watched through the breeze-blown curtains as Raymond positioned the plum-coloured head of his cock against Laura's bottom. Somewhere not too far away he heard a police siren but he didn't turn around to see where it was. He didn't once take his eyes away from the tense, still scene in the living-room. He coughed, though, when Raymond forced himself forward, once, twice, and then again; and Laura cried out and tried to get up again, but Raymond punched her with his clenched fist in the small of her back to make her stay where she was.

She stayed where she was. Her face was turned towards Chester as though she were watching him accusingly, but he knew that she almost certainly couldn't see him, out in the dark. He smoked and wished that it were all over, but he knew that Raymond wanted him to watch. Raymond was even standing slightly to one side, his right hand on his hip, his shirt drawn back, so that Chester could get a clearer view.

Chester closed his eyes, but he could still see dark, greasy veins, sliding in and out, and stretched reddened flesh. All the same, he still had his eyes closed when Raymond let out a thick, coarse shout of triumph, and shouted. ‘You're a star after all, Laura! You're a star!'

After a while he opened his eyes to see Raymond on the sofa with a full glass of champagne, and Laura still lying on the table, her dress raised, the cheeks of her bottom decorated with sperm. He opened the sliding door and stepped back into the room. Laura's eyes followed him but she didn't attempt to move. Chester walked across to the bathroom and came back with a thick turquoise towel. He looked down at Raymond but he couldn't find the words to describe his loathing, not only for Raymond, but for himself, so he said nothing at all. He wiped Laura and then he helped her off the table. She clung on to him and kept swallowing as if she wanted to be sick.

‘You want the bathroom, sweetheart? I'll take you to the bathroom.'

When he came back he stood looking at Raymond and he still couldn't think what to say.

‘Do you have a problem?' Raymond asked him, at last.

Chester shook his head. ‘No, no problem.'

Raymond swallowed more champagne, and sniffed. ‘You want to talk some finance now? How much do you need?'

‘Whyn't you put your pants on first?' Chester suggested. Raymond's penis was lying shiny and curled-up on his sofa like a slug.

Raymond sniffed his underarms. ‘I have a better idea. Let's go for a swim. We can talk about finance in the pool.'

 

 

Hernandez drove Laura home in Chester's Cadillac. She had to ask him to stop twice so that she could be sick by the side of the road. Apart from that, she said nothing, but stared out of the window and watched the lights of Hollywood dancing a nauseating rhumba.

‘I know what you're thinking,' said Hernandez, as he turned into Franklin Avenue. ‘You're thinking, “Those bastards, I'll get even one day.” '

He drew into the kerb and shut off the engine. ‘Let me tell you something, Miss Laura. If you ever get those bastards, I want to be there when you do. I want a front-row seat, and popcorn.'

She turned her head and stared at him. Her throat and her sinuses were raw from vomiting. She felt as if she had been beaten all over with a billy-club. Hernandez climbed out of the car and opened the door for her. He held out his hand to help her out but she wouldn't take it. He stood and watched her climb unsteadily up the steps to Aunt Beverley's front door. There was a bloody stain on the back of her white satin dress.

Hernandez waited until the front door opened and Laura went inside. Then he returned to the car. ‘You get those bastards,' he repeated to himself, as he started the engine. ‘You get those bastards good.'

The bastards themselves were paddling around in Chester's bean-shaped pool under a starry sky. The air was cool now, but the water was well over 70 degrees. Chester had brought out another bottle of champagne and cigars for each of them.

‘You know, sometimes I think about girls, and I think, “fuck 'em,” ' said Raymond.

‘What do you mean?' Chester wanted to know. ‘You not only think it, you do it.'

‘No, you're missing my point. Sometimes I wish they'd help themselves, do you know what I'm saying? They're so goddamned helpless. They're so goddamned eager-to-please.'

‘Laura didn't look very eager-to-please.'

‘Ah, forget it. Laura drank too much champagne. She would have loved it, else. She would have been begging on her hands and knees for more. There's nothing girls like better than a reaming.'

Chester didn't trust himself to reply to that. He leaned his head back against the side of the pool and puffed cigar smoke into the night. ‘We're looking at a shortfall of one-hundred-fifty thousand dollars,' he said. ‘You think your pals can come up with that?'

‘They'd want to see some projected figures. The trouble is, things aren't as easy as they used to be. Time was, you could move your money from state to state in your back pocket, and nobody would stick their nose into it. These days, every Treasury agent seems to have got religion or something. They don't seem to understand that it's greasing and lubricating that made America what it is today.'

‘You should know,' said Chester, although he probably didn't say it loud enough for Raymond to hear.

‘I'll tell you what,' said Raymond. ‘I'll go talk to some of my people in Reno. There's somebody in particular I have in mind. Somebody who's very interested in movies.'

‘Not Bernie Katz. Jesus, that toad.'

‘Why not Bernie Katz? Bernie would really go for Laura.'

‘I don't know, Raymond,' said Chester, pensively. He had done similar favours for Raymond so many times before, and yet this time he felt deeply guilty. Most of the girls had done
plenty of favours before, and didn't mind what Raymond did to them. They just smiled falsely and laughed falsely and looked into the middle-distance while he grunted and humped. But Laura was different. Laura was sweet and bright and if she didn't get mixed up with too many people like Raymond, she might even get to keep her sweetness and brightness, and make something of herself. Not in
Devil's Elbow
, of course. All of the casting had been completed over five months ago, although there was probably still some room for a 356th moll on the left.

They floated around for a while, and Chester began to sense that Raymond wasn't particularly interested in coming up with an offer. He didn't want to beg, but he had most of his own money tied up in
Devil's Elbow
, plus the money of a lot of people who wouldn't exactly be delighted if the picture never got finished and released.

‘Listen,' he said. ‘Why don't you
talk
to Bernie Katz, at the very least?'

‘What can I tell him?' asked Raymond. His voice was very flat.

‘Tell him he can play it any way he wants to. If he wants the picture to lose money, it'll lose money. If he wants it to make money, it'll make money.'

‘All right. I'll call him, then I'll go see him. I presume I can take Laura along.'

Again, Chester didn't trust himself to answer.

Raymond took a leisurely and absurdly over-stylish swim across the pool, naked and hairy, his body illuminated by the lights beneath the surface. Chester didn't care for people swimming naked in his pool, and he looked the other way, especially when Raymond trod water in the deep end, his short refracted legs paddling like a frog's.

After a while, however, Raymond called out, ‘Do you think this water's getting cold?'