NORTH NORTH HOLLYWOOD - Chapter 32 -by Peter Nolan Smith

THIRTY-TWO

The dawn came cold and wet with gray tendrils of rain dripping from the fast-moving clouds. The TV weatherman smiled at his audience throughout the Southlands, but Sherri couldn't hear a single word of his bright banter, since she had muted the volume, hoping to hear any sign of movement from behind the locked bedroom door, though the sleepless hours had passed without a sound other than the rain against the windows.
Throughout the night she had gone over the events in the cabin and the night that followed, telling herself that she had no other choice to prevent Lena from being with a man, but had always had to face the truth of having many other options to exercise. Pounding the sofa Sherri wished she could rewind the past, for she had betrayed her trust and gone with a man, thereby destroying her dream of a life with Lena and the tears fell from her bleary eyes, as Sherri was confronted by the future of having no one to love. She clenched her fists and muttered, "Nothing, nothing, nothing. I always end up with nothing."
Over twenty years in the porno industry had earned her millions of dollars, but she had never owned a new car, bought a house, or even gone on a vacation that wasn't tied into a sex scene on film. She had fucked thousands of men and women without ever holding onto one or letting one come to close. Her life was meaningless and only her movie made it worthwhile, except she had run out of money. Processing the forty odd reels, edit the film, and blow the 16mm rough cut up to 35MM would cost another $30,000. She couldn't even pay off her male lead, who would be wanting his money once he returned. Everything just kept getting worse and worse.
Stifling a sniffle, Sherri picked up the phone and hit REDIAL. After the second ring her uncle's recorded voice answered on the other end, but Isaac always got up early and answered the phone. "Where could he be?"
She didn't have time to ponder the question any further, for the bedroom door opened and Lena crossed the hallway to shut the bathroom door without a word or a glance in Sherri's direction.
Hearing the shower being run, Sherri wished she was soaping the younger girl's back, but she wiped away tears instead and pressed REDIAL. Her uncle still didn't answer, which was just as good, since she was too choked up to speak. Hanging up, Sherri lay pinned to the sofa for the ten count by a near-broken heart
Several minutes later Lena sauntered from the steamy bathroom, cruelly flaunting her lithe body, to sit at the far end of the couch. The fragrant femininity of her body crept across the distance to stitch an aching want in Sherri's heart. The words, sentences, explanations, and pleas of love so well rehearsed throughout the long night, froze on Sherri's tongue, as Lena phoned her voice mail. She wrote down a number, which she dialed, and after a few seconds said, "I want to speak with Carl James. Tell him Lena de Gama is calling."
"What's she calling him for?” Sherri asked silently, for Carl James had been pestering her with offers of three times the going rate for M/F scenes from various producers wishing to cash in on Lena's popularity, but Lena had always turned down every proposals, though not today.
As she agreed to a meeting with Louie Sinreich, the muscles of Sherri's throat strangled her breathing, for while the man from nowhere had been bad, Louie Sinreich was the lowest of the low, which she had discovered this first hand, when Che Chasta and she had filmed the ALL CUMMERS series for him at the end of her downward spiral.
Those films with her ex-lover and herself at the center of a male orgy were another reason she avoided men at all costs. Not for the perversions to which they had submitted her in that drugged state, but for how this abject debasement had somehow satisfied her need for self-destruction. She couldn't blame Louie Sinreich for this fall, however he had been ruthless enough to take advantage of her long embrace of self-destruction and would do the same to anyone any chance he got, including someone as strong as Lena, but the young actress seemed oblivious to this threat, as Lena put on an Anni deFranco CD on the stereo and rummaged through the closet, as if she were looking for a special outfit.
"Aren't you going to say anything?” Sherri asked.
"What is there to say?” Lena said around without turning around.
Sherri thought about slapping the young girl, but force never had worked on her, so she fought to get out the words, "I want to explain."
"Explain what?” Lena picked out a see-through shirt and held it up to her chest.
"About the other day." Sherri lifted her head, her eyes glistening with dewy tears.
"What about it?” The young girl discarded the shirt and continued her search.
"Why I slept with him.” Sherri gulped hard.
"You mean, when you ‘fucked' him. Isn't that how you put it to me?” Lena faced Sherri, her unclothed stance that of a naked ballerina after blowing an audition.
"It was only to keep him from you.” Sherri didn't say that it had been bad enough to watch Lena with other women, for at the same age she would have been regarded by any lover's jealousy as the first chain on her freedom.
"I am not a virgin. Not with men. Not with women. Many times I had no choice, it was only for the money, but this one I wanted for myself. The reasons why are my own. I wanted him and you spoiled it.” The young girl pulled out a skimpy black tee-shirt and miniskirt. "From the beginning in San Francisco, you and I agreed we were to be free."
"I thought that only meant women.” Sherri was drowning in a sea of sorrow and each word Lena said was a wave over the breakwater.
"No one. Not you. Not anyone tells me what to do.” The incarnate anger in Lena's eyes took away Sherri's breath.
"I'm sorry.” Sherri slumped against the door and would have fallen, except Lena caught her. The younger woman had never intended to hurt Sherri this badly and the glacier in her heart melted to water. "Sherri, you of all people should have understood why I wanted."
"I did and that was what scared me. That you would be me."
"I never will be as long as we are together." There were so many things they could say, but instead both women chose to slide closer into an embrace, so their naked thighs met and formed a shadowed line between their flesh. Nuzzling Sherri's neck, Lena tasted how the smoothness of the older woman's skin, which, despite the oils and creams, was giving way to age, yet Lena found Sherri's sun-weary skin comforting. Her fingers drew tight circles on Sherri's lower belly and succeeded in eliciting a strangled cry from the older woman's throat, as she teased her nipples with a purling tongue.
Sherri spread her legs wider, for Lena slipped in one finger, then another, until she tucked her thumb into her palm and popped her hand inside the older woman's womb to become a fist. Sherri groaned with the pain, but welcomed the discomfort with a plaint of pleasure and her clitoris fluttered with flashes of electricity, as she pleaded, "Suck me, please. Suck me."
Lena's mouth released the rigid nipple and she kneeled down to flick a catlike tongue across Sherri's clit before burying her arm up to the wrist inside the older woman's warm wetness. Her lover's body shuddered intensely with each fierce wave of a shattering orgasm, till she thought her flesh was falling from her bones. Nothing could feel so good and last forever, so she begged, "No more, Lena, no more."
"Whatever you want, Cara." Lena withdrew her slick hand and stood up, kissing Sherri on the lips before laying on the bed, her skin an olive white against the rumpled pink sheet in the dim bedroom. Sherri fell between Lena's legs and listened to her lungs filling with air, hoping they could lie there forever, however after only a few minutes Lena slipped out of bed.
"Where are you going?" Sherri asked quietly, though she already knew the answer.
"I'm going to see Louie Sinreich."
"Why?"
"Because he is offering $20,000 for my participation in a Virtual Sex Reality project.”
"That isn't necessary, Lena."
"We need money to finish the post-production, no?” Lena pulled on her clothing.
"I can get it from my uncle."
"You have been calling him all week, but he is not home."
"We can make some more films." Sherri wiped her eyes dry with the corner of a sheet.
"Then this one will die. You have to finish now. I will ask for $30,000. That should be enough, right?" Lena's fingers combed through Sherri's short hair.
"Yes." Lena was right about the money to get the movie into a viewable state for a Springtime festival in Europe, which would show anything a woman presented, but that didn't make dealing with Louie Sinreich any less dangerous. "This man___"
Lena read her mind and said, "I do not trust this man. Can I have your gun? It will make me feel safer."
Sherri was relieved that Lena understood the inherent dangers and handed her revolver to Lena. "Do you know how to use it?"
"Like a pro." Lena clicked open the cylinder and checked to see if it was loaded, then snapped the weapon shut before slipping the five-shot .38 into her pocketbook and handing Sherri a piece of paper with a telephone number written on it.
"Give this to him, when he comes here."
"Sean?” If Sherri thought it was over between them, she had been mistaken, for her sacrificial acts had only gained a delay of the inevitable.
"Yes, I can have my choice of men and he is the one I want. He's non-HIV, but there are other reasons."
Before the syllable 'why' stumbled from Sherri's mouth, Lena said, "This man. Do I want him more than I want you? No, so do not be jealous. You have been with hundreds of men and women. So have I, but I only want him, because he's not as bad as either of us think. Maybe for the last time I want to see what a man is like."
"One last time."
"Yes, one last time and then with no one, but you."
The words made Sherri's heart fly and she would no longer stand in the way. Resting her head against Lena's wool-covered thigh, Sherri said, "If you have to go, then go."
"Thank you.” Lena bent over and kissed Sherri's lips, her tongue slithering into her lover's mouth. Lena broke away and said, "I will be all yours tonight."
"I'll be here.” Sherri breathed easier for the first time in weeks.
Her mind swung from the affairs of her private world to the work and money necessary to finish ADAM AND TWO EVE's post-production work. The processing plant would front the rough footage and the editing room would do the same for the cutting room time. "Give me a couple of minutes and you can drive me over to the editing studio. I can take a taxi back."
For a morning that had begun so badly, things had turned out better than imagined, however that condition only existed inside their four walls.
Outside it was raining harder. The freeways were clogged. The LA River basin was saturated to the maximum, and the slopes of the hills above the steep canyons were giving way. The meteorologists were predicting it was going to get worse before it got better, and for once they were going to be right.