NORTH NORTH HOLLYWOOD - Chapter 2 - A novel by Peter Nolan Smith

A baby's plaintive cry bounced down the air shaft into the pitch-black bedroom. The middle-aged man on the mattress opened his eyes. The upstairs neighbors had brought their infant home from the hospital. Sean Collan swung out of bed. The bawling ceased as soon as his feet touched the bare wooden floor. Sleep belonged to another day.

"Damn." Sean stumbled from his tomb into the sunlight flooding the living room.

>The blinding brightness indicated another beautiful spring day for January, although Sean wished the city had been buried by a blizzard. At least then he would have an excuse for staying in his apartment since New Year's Day.

Celebrating the First Night at his best friends' loft had been a time-honored tradition. Soul-kissing their angelic daughter at the stroke of twelve was a drastic detour from previous parties. While he had zero reservations about sleeping with someone less than half his age, Sean had known Allee, since she was three, and he fled without wishing "Happy New Year.” to either parent.

Union Square had glowed with thousands of revelers’ high expectations for the infant millennium. Everyone was with someone. None noticed the tuxedoed man walking into the East Village and Sean arrived home with a resolution to not die an old person in New York.

A fast accompanied by a vow of silence should have birthed revelations, except the days of starvation unearthed visions of pork satay, French toast, bacon and fried eggs in bacon grease, chicken pots pies, fried clams and finally this morning corn flakes with bananas drowning in cold milk.

Hunger had him in the submission hold, yet six days in a New York apartment were no forty days in the desert.

Stretching his stocky body, he surveyed the damage. His left knee popped from thirty-five years of basketball, his right torn shoulder was torn after pitching relief in a fastball game at age 40, and his crackling knuckles had busted too many heads.

Thankfully his face had lost its beer bloat and Sean fit into 34 Levis, although not today and he dressed in khaki trousers, Irish sweater, and black leather coat.

On the stairs he passed two neighbors without saying a word.

As safe as New York had become under the law-and-order mayor, the city was packed with people firmly intent on remaining strangers.

Outside on the sidewalk he weaved through the discarded Christmas trees to his motorcycle. A handful of parking tickets fluttered from the 1970 Yamaha 650cc XS. No parts had been stolen and he continued to the corner, which was under siege by a dozen RVs and scores of burly film technicians. Their walkie-talkies squawked out orders from the director and the cameraman across the street was focusing a camera on two diminutive actors.

The stars' names escaped Sean, for his love of the movies had been ruined by over-bloated budgets, gun ballets, parking lot car chases, and Barbie Doll love scenes. Even sitting in a theater had become a chore.

A PA tried to bar him from crossing the street.

"We're filming."

"Great." Sean stepped back onto the pavement rather than start an altercation.

Two policemen eyed him as if he might be trouble, then went back to drinking their coffees.

Upon reaching Veselka's Diner, Sean sat at his usual corner stool. A discarded NY Times lay on the counter and he scanned the front pages without registering the headlines. Nothing had happened during his absence from reality.

A short Ukrainian counterman came over with a glass of water.

"Happy New Year, where you been?"

>Sean shrugged to indicate nowhere.

"The usual?" Anton was accustomed to his long-time customer's vow of silence.

Sean nodded and Anton stuck his order above the grill.

Across the counter three French tourists studied the diner, as if they were on an anthropological expedition.

Back in the late-70s these foreign gawkers would have been plundered for their last franc by junkies. That era’s thieves were dead, imprisoned or burnt out. Junior execs paid good money to live on the Lower East Side. Sean was an anachronism and a quick read of the Help Wanted Ads reinforced his stranglehold on true meaninglessness. No one would hire him for a sales person, cook, or tugboat captain and a rescue from ruin appeared uncertain at best.

>Anton delivered his coffee and buttered bagel.

Sean wrapped his hands around the ceramic mug and thanked the stars for having left him that one last move to save his soul.

"That's not much of a breakfast for a grown man."

Sean turned his head.

Frank deRocco was five years younger than Sean. He looked older by ten. Drinking had spread a lace of red veins across the Ninth Precinct detective's face, tobacco had yellowed his stumpy teeth, and his scalp gleamed under his thin white hair. "Been callin' you the last couple of days, but you ain't been answerin' the phone. You sick?"

Sean shook his head glumly, for the two men weren't friends.

"What's the matter, Seano? You lose your voice?" deRocco spoke out of the side of his mouth, so no one else could hear them. "No matter, you only gotta listen. You know, it's funny, but the other day I'm up in Midtown South, readin' some bulletins to kill time, when I find this Identikit picture of that skinny French bitch you were runnin' with last year. A blonde, no tits, no ass. Just like a boy."

deRocco opened the complimentary notebook from an off-shore Cayman Island bank, then paused, as if he had forgotten how to speak. The stalling ploy played as badly in real life as it did on TV.

"Seems a year ago there was a series of robberies in Midtown and East Side hotels. I'm from the Ninth Precinct and normally don't give a shit for what goes on outside my territory, but this set-up was cute. A skinny French broad shows up at a hotel bar and she's a piece of ass. Now your typical out-of-town businessman hits on her, though he's not typical, since he's wearin' a gold Rolex or Cartier or somethin' foreign. They talk, have a few drinks, get touchy-feeley. He invites her upstairs. She agrees, and, like friggin' magic, once in the room she gets naked and the guy's lickin' her breasts like ice cream, because she says drives her nuts. Then the lights go out for the guy. Wakes up eight hours later with a killer headache and no gold watch, cause here comes the cute part. The French broad coated her nipples and tits with a very strong knockout drug. I can't remember what. Anyway she works this scam fifteen times we hear about, probably another ten where the suckers are too embarrassed to tell the police. The watches run for ten to twenty thou each. Definitely Grand Larceny. Midtown stakes out the hotels, only gettin' a nibble from some whores workin' the hotels, but no blonde French broad. She made her nut and bolted."

Mira Lachelle had been a fashion model before a heroin habit banished her from the runways. The Frenchwoman said that she was here on holiday. Sean gave her a place to stay. Resistance to the wasted princess’ advances was impossible. Mira said the watches were presents. Sean didn’t ask from whom and for the six months after she had left New York, he had come to view Mira as a failed morality test.

He reached into his pocket to pay the bill.

"I ain't got to the story's happy ending yet.” The cop gripped his forearm. “Anyway I put one and one together with her being the 'perp' and you fencin' the 'swag' through your Jew friends in the Diamond District."

he chances of Mira ratting him out were nil. She barely spoke English.

"The way I figure it, those out-of-town suckers got what they deserved.” The cops can claim how much DNA, fingerprints, and evidence help their investigations, however 95% of the crimes are solved by informers and the other 5% from dumb luck. “I mean, New York's not New York without a few hicks gettin' ripped off. That's how you rationalized it, right? Rob from the rich and give to the poor. Anyway I reckon you and the broad grabbed maybe like a hundred thou and out of that you owe us ten grand."

>deRocco was rousting him on a long shot uncomfortably close to the truth and Sean speechlessly moved his head from left to right. The only real score had been a platinum Audermars-Picat Royal Oak, otherwise the bands, cases, and movements of limited edition watches were etched with corresponding numbers and no fence on 47th Street would give more than ten cents on the dollar.

"Stop shakin' your head like a dog that's gonna get beat.” deRocco's bloodshot eyes regarded Sean, as if he was a pet turtle on his back. “I know you're busted, but you still owe me and my ex-partner. You remember Kev, right?"

Kevin Driscoll had been invalided off NYPD after a Dominican dealer holding out on their cut had popped off a lucky shot into his knee. Driscoll had succeeded with an even luckier shot and the perp had arrived DOA at Bellevue, forestalling any departmental investigation into the bagman's errant ways.

"You should thank your stars, that you're talkin' to me and not him, because Kev's real pissed, but me I like you. I mean we go back to when? 1980. The National Club. You never spoke to Internal Affairs and I respect you for keeping your mouth shut."

Due to a juvenile belief in the criminal code of honor, Sean had not informed Internal Affairs about the precinct cops accepting bribes for turning a blind eye to an after-hours nightclub, thereby adding one more chip to his leaning tower of wrong turns.

"A long time ago, but it has to count for something, which I'm giving you an out to get straight with us. You're goin' to whack a stranger." Frank deRocco's lips barely moved, as the words crackled like old leaves off his nicotine-stained tongue. "Do it and we're quits."

>Sean blinked in disbelief.

"What are you lookin' at, you fuckin' frogs.” DeRocco sneered at the French tourists across the counter. “This ain't no Martin Scorcese film. You want a free show. Go to friggin' Mickey Mouse Times Square, you Frog bastards."

The tourists retreated into the restaurant's dining area and Frank deRocco demanded, "So what do you say?"

>If Sean refused the cop's offer, Frank deRocco would drag him out to 2nd Avenue and shoot him dead. One by one the jumbled syllables crawled onto his atrophied tongue. "First, that I owe you 10K is bullshit. Second, you want someone to killed for free, then go up to St. Patrick's Cathedral and pray for God to strike him dead with lightning. Otherwise it's ten thousand."

"Balls, lotsa balls. I thought it'd come to this, but ten thou's a lot, considering we weren't gonna to pay you squat."

"That's the deal," Sean took a bite from the bagel. His demand for money would buy time, which is always a valuable commodity, when your moves are down to none.

"Okay, you get the five up front." The burly detective had counted on Sean's being greedy. "And you get the other five, when the 'vic's' history."

"I do?" Sean didn't have any time to ponder why the cop had accepted his counter-offer. deRocco yanked Sean off the stool. "C'mon, we're out of here."

The early morning passers-by on the sidewalk thanked their stars that they weren't being stuffed into an unmarked Chevy Caprice. "Relax, Seano, you're going to Las Vegas, not the Meadowlands. America West out of JFK at 9:30."

"That's an hour from now."

"Plenty of time."

The cop stepped on the gas and the Chevy lurched into the Second Avenue traffic. "I got your getaway bag from the apartment. Always ready to go, right?"

"I try." Sean breathed a little easier spotting the old leather bag inside which everything he needed to affect a getaway. Everything other than money and deRocco seemed willing to take care of that problem. Five thou was good for a half-year in Asia.

"You always talked about writing a big story." The cop lit a cigarette. "This is as big as it gets as only as you change the names to protect the guilty."

"Thanks for the inspiration." Sean had given up on writing years ago. There were already too many words being scribbled for television, movies, books, greeting cards, and ads without another writer adding the tower of babble about events better left secret.

"I mean you got Vegas, a murder, two dirty cops, a loser, maybe a hooker and an Elvis imitator thrown in for a little color."

"This isn't going a kamikaze job?" You had to ask, whether or not you intended to commit the murder.

"Hey, you get to ride into the sunset. Up ten thou. Can't do better than that." Frank deRocco knew his passenger’s fate.

"No, I guess I can't," Sean replied with the reggae chorus 'Murder, she wrote." repeating in his head.

Over the years he had broken more than a few laws starting with joy-riding in the 1960s, pot-dealing in the 70s, and illegal after-hour clubs and money laundering in the 80s, yet he had never killed anyone and he had no intention of breaking that streak.

Somewhere between New York and Las Vegas he would find the chance to vanish into the crowd and avoid being the executioner of a faceless stranger. Sean would have take advantage of that moment, but thankfully Las Vegas was all about luck, unfortunately sometimes more bad than good. Sean could only bet on the latter, because he didn’t need to crap out again in this lifetime or the next.

NORTH NORTH HOLLYWOOD - Chapter 3 - A novel by Peter Nolan Smith

THREE

The twentieth-floor suite's view of the Las Vegas Strip framed the expansive desert horizon. Most tourists considered this vista spectacular, however its occupant was transfixed by his reflection in the floor-to-ceiling mirror. Louie Sinreich looked good for 35. His sandy hair was a tribute to the technological advanced in salon coloring and his smile gleamed like the keys of a new Steinway piano thanks to monthly visits to a Hollywood dentist.

Five hours a week at a Hollywood gym maintained his body's Adonis musculature. The effect was all natural, which was more than he could say for his overnight guest, a surgically-altered blonde sprawled atop the king-sized bed’s satin sheets.

Her name drew a blank, but she couldn't have been born with which she had introduced herself at the casino bar last night. Two drinks into her come-on she had commented on his resemblance to James Wood. Louie had heard the line before.

"He's my 3rd cousin."

It was a lie used so many times he almost believed it himself.

"What's a 3rd cousin?"

"The son of my uncle's nephew."

"That's funny." $1500 had persuaded the blonde bombshell to join him for a nightcap. He had dropped a Blue Boy on the elevator and inhaled a rail of meth inside the suite. Erect and awake he exacted his money's worth from his guest; five happy endings in 8 hours. She negotiated another $500 during this marathon. Louie had gladly paid it, but now was time for her to go and he slapped the showgirl hard on the ass.

The blonde whelped awake and raked back her Malibu-blonde hair with lacquered fingernails.

"I hate Viagra."

"Don't worry, honey, party time’s over." Louie waved for her to get out of the giant bed. "I have guests in five minutes, so you gotta go."

"I understand business before pleasure." The curvy showgirl jumped to her feet and into her form-fitting leather sheath in less than ten seconds, then strapped on her high heels, as if they had materialized from thin air.

"You need a date for later?"

"I know where to find you, if I do." Louie hid his erection, since he disliked any woman, especially a hooker, thinking she had any power over him.

"Then I'll be seeing you around." The blonde blew him a kiss.

"I'll be around too."

The door shut without a noise and Louie ventured over to the double-paned window overlooking the canyon of casinos. Across the street a fake volcano's fiery eruption magnetically drew hick tourists into the gambling hall like the ants to a picnic and Louie's mind crunched the numbers.

"$600,000,000 makes someone a player in this town. When I build my casino, it'll cost a billion, maybe even more. The biggest and the best. A regular Tenth Wonder of the World."

Louie Sinreich's grandest scheme was to construct a casino catering to the wicked of this world far from family-oriented Vegas. Deep in the desert BABYLON would crown his five-year plan to dominate the adult-film industry and the buzz at the hotel room's door was a small step in the right direction.

"One second." Louie slipped into a silk robe and opened the door to a middle-aged couple in matching purple jogging suits. The redheaded woman's massacred eyes grazed down his torso and her slightly overweight husband grasped Louie's hand.

"Sorry, if we're a little early."

"Nothing to be sorry about." Louie released the handshake and led the woman inside the room. "Please sit down. Can I get you a drink? Some coffee maybe?"

"Just some water.” The older man settled onto the sofa next to his wife and patted her thigh. "Dorrine and I have given up caffeine."

"Nothing like living healthy."

>"We agree, Mr. Sinreich." Dorrine unzipped her warm-up jacket.

She wasn't wearing a bra and her breasts sagged onto her ribcage.

>"On the West Coast we go on a first name basis.” Louie handed them two glasses of water. "Call me Louie, please."

"Sure, Louie, I want to thank you for flying us out here, but I don't really see how you can help us."

"Henry, why are you always so negative?" Dorrine planted herself on her husband's lap.

In Rockford, Illinois Dorrine Johns stopped cars.

In Vegas she was an over-sexed woman vainly struggling to fight off the overflow of years.

"Kids, it's love not war." Louie signaled a time-out with his hands. "Henry's right to wonder why I flew you two out here. Sure, there's the computer convention, the awards ceremony, gambling, and shows, but when I said, "Business." I meant business."

"What kind of business?” Henry put down his water.

"Ten years ago if anyone had told me amateur videos would grab 15% percent of the market, I would have told them that they were nuts. That’s how big the home videos are now and whether you like it or not you are on the cutting edge of the porno industry."

"Dorrine and I never intended to sell videos. They were just a way for people like us to get in touch with each other. With themselves."

"Henry thinks of 'Swinging' as a religion to free both body and soul." Dorrine tapped her husband's face.

"However it started, now you find yourselves the head of America's biggest swinging network. 150,000 couples coast to coast happy to pay you $150 per year to join a swinging network. Pretty good money any way you cut it, but I can increase your earnings."

"I'm quite happy where I am," Henry fidgeted under his wife.

"I know you are, but you have obligations to the public now. The viewers were tired of Barbie Doll starlets faking orgasms. They started buying your videos. When you have a 'product' people want, money comes to you. No one's asking you to betray your members or beliefs and I respect protecting your members by HIV tests. I do the same for my actors and actresses. Every twenty-one days they’re tested for diseases. You and I may have different goals, but when it comes time to defending our freedom, you, me, and Dorrine all get naked on the same side of the bed."

"I guess so." The years of harassment by the various anti-porno prosecutors had proven allies in the battle for a free libido were few and far between.

"Henry has trouble accepting being 'King of the Swingers' makes him a millionaire, right, Henry?"

"Swinging isn't about the money. You may see hundreds of starlets a week, but I see Dorrine with another man, I see her alive with his desire. Almost like the first time I saw her."

"I was 19. You were married, but this isn't about us, honey, listen to what the man says."

"Thanks you, Dorrine."

Louie sat on the sofa and stared into Henry's eyes.

"I understand your feeling for Dorrine. I felt the same way the first time I saw her in that badly cut video. And I saw that she wanted more excitement than any small town can give her," Louie Sinreich seamlessly explained how the Johns could expand their access to swingers by having his production company professionally edit and license their catalogue of amateur videos for online access. "Not only will you make millions, you'll be stars of the internet."

"Just say yes, darling, just say the word." The redhead bounced on her husband’s lap.

"When have I ever been able to tell you no?" Henry smiled like a little dog and his wife and she kissed her husband with a conspiratorial wink at Louie.

"You won't regret this, Henry. Not one bit." Louie derived zero thrills from watching regular John and Jane Does mimicking porno films.

Still snaring a major share of a multi-billion dollar industry was good morning's work for a man just out of bed and he reached over to free Dorrine's breasts from her track suit. The 42 longs were not a pretty sight either, but this part of the game never was until you signed a contract.

Then it was all happy faces to the bank.

NORTH NORTH HOLLYWOOD - Chapter 5 - by Peter Nolan Smith

FIVE

The warm California sun flayed the storm clouds into fleecy shreds and soon the morning reminded every non-native why they had moved to Los Angeles in the first place. Two days of rain had painted the hillside scrubs a verdant green and the palm trees wavered with the waning wind. By mid-morning the temperature in the Valley rose into the mid-seventies and a superbly conditioned brunette touched up her tan on the back balcony of the unoccupied apartment complex near Sherman Way.

Any voyeur would have mistaken the naked woman to be a mindless sun worshipper, but Sherri Conti was thinking very hard about how to get money to finish her first non-pornographic project ADAM AND TWO EVES.

She had the crew, the equipment, and the two actresses, Lena and herself for this low-budget feature about the last man on earth. They had shot 70% of the film throughout December. Neither woman had exchanged Christmas gifts, since they had financed the film through their credit cards. All their plastic was maxxed out to the limit. Another $20,000 would finish the film, however money wasn't the biggest problem for this project. Sherri could get the money with a single phone call.

They didn't have a male lead.

Hollywood actors’ fees were out of her league and most weren't risking their careers on working with an unknown director connected to the porno industry. Sherri had scavenged every casting book in the business. She had auditioned almost a hundred unknowns. None had fit her vision for 'ADAM AND TWO EVES' lead, a man like the saint from Bunuel's SIMON OF THE DESERT.

Beaten by weather and cursed by God.

40 and still handsome.

He had to be out there somewhere.

Sherri turned her head to the bedroom.

Lena was packing an overnight bag for her trip to Las Vegas.

After forty-one films together their relationship had become more than simply sex for the older woman. Lena was unlike any other of her previous lovers and Sherri wasn't the only one who felt that way.

Men and women at gas stations, supermarkets, and coffee stores demanded autographs, as if Lena was a budding Hollywood star. Most of them had seen the young actress in Sherri's XXX videos online, which portrayed women as instruments of their own desire rather than receptacles for men's lust and Lena's uncanny metamorphosis into the films’ characters had helped these films realize a massive cross-over demand from the mainstream audience. In recognition of these phenomena, Lena would be honored with the 'Best New-Comer' title at the XXX-RATED Awards ceremony tonight in Las Vegas.

She deserved much more.

Several minutes later Lena came out on the terrace.

"You all ready to go?" Sherri shielded her eyes from the sun.

"After a kiss, yes." The young actress wore a matching combo of gold silk hot pants and a tube top. A white leather jacket dangled from her fingertips.

"Aren't you going to be cold?"

>"That's why I have the leather." Lena didn't like clothes. "I wish you were coming with me."

"I have some editing on the film, besides this is your big night.”

Twenty years ago Sherri had been a young girl straight out of the Jersey Pine Barrens on the way to the top, completely blind, deaf, and dumb to how much the lifestyle of a porno actress would demand from her body and soul.

"I'll go to the gym later."

"To exorcise the demons." Lena was too young to be haunted by an adult past.

"It's the only way." A strict diet and daily exercises fought off the tidal tug of her old life. She was in good shape for a woman her age or ten years younger, but her heart was a wasteland from too much sex and too many drugs.

"There are other ways besides gym and hard work." Lena rubbed the back of her heel. The straps of her high heels were biting into the flesh. They were new and she liked the sound of them clicking on tile.

"Like you."

A psychiatrist had diagnosed her condition as 'adonia mixed with apathy'.

This inability to feel pleasure stole any chance to fall in love and Sherri prayed that Lena was the cure, but as long as they were involved in porno, nothing would fill the emptiness of her soul.

"Yes, me." Lena knelt between Sherri's bare thighs. "You know I want you with me."

"I know, maybe next year.” Lena was young and the only thing Hollywood worshipped more than beauty was youth, which was the one commodity that money could not buy in this town.

"I know the real reason you can't come.” Lena inhaled the fragrance of burnt peaches off Sherri's skin and her finger skated along the raised tracks of scar tissue inside her lover's arm. “You can't see any of those people. Those people from your past. You think it would kill you, if you did, but I wouldn't let that happen to you."

"I know, but I'm still not strong enough.” Sherri stroked Lena's head, so the long black tresses tumbled onto her belly. "Sorry."

"Nothing to be sorry for, Sherri, but if you don't mind, I want to wait a few more minutes before I go.” Lena shucked off her clothes and the morning sun melted their nakedness together, until Sherri tapped her shoulder. "If you don't go now, you won't make it there."

"Only if you insist." Lena picked up her clothing from the tiled floor. It took her less than ten seconds to get them on.

"Go have a good time.” She had lived through her own wild period without listening to anyone and understood Lena was too young for domestication. The two women kissed without parting lips. How long Sherri could hold Lena was a question she would never ask the girl.

"If you see anyone suitable to play the male lead for ADAM AND TWO EVES, get their number."

"Anyone?" Lena had met tens of men who could have performed the role and Sherri had turned them all down.

"You know what I'm after.”

"Yes, a man in his forties. Blonde hair. Slightly beat-up. Not too thin, not too fat. A rough voice and a not just another pretty face." Lena wouldn't have been so strict as Sherri. After all it was just a movie.

"And he has to look like he has lived on the road."

"Slightly brutish. Like Robert Mitchum with a heart of gold,” Lena joked, but Sherri remembered the actor’s darker roles. "Not from NIGHT OF THE HUNTER."

"Or CAPE FEAR."

"And he's too nice in HEAVEN KNOWS."

>"And too young in THUNDER ROAD.” They would never find a man at this rate. "I have to get going."

Sherri handed over the keys to the Skylark parked downstairs. "Drive carefully."

"I'll come back in one piece." Lena could not bring herself to tell Sherri she loved her for letting her run free. She had heard the word 'love' from too many men and women in a multitude of languages, when they meant something else, instead she stepped into the hallway from where she would have blown Sherri a kiss, except the apartment door shut.

Accustomed to no good-byes, Lena pressed the elevator button for the garage.

>The Buick's V-8 powered the Skylark onto the Ventura Freeway. Lena's finger hit the stereo's PLAY button and Madonna's MUSIC blasted from the speakers. Her body wriggled to the beat under the fastened seat belt.

A warm wind blew through the driver's window.

Once she was out of the city, she'd put down the top.

She was happy to be on the road, for like a river overflowing its bank, there was no controlling youth once she were free.

NORTH NORTH HOLLYWOOD - Chapter 9 - by Peter Nolan Smith

Not one of 273 Louie Sinreich's video productions had been recognized by his peers at AVFA awards and none of his video were in the final selection of the evening, Best New Starlet.

"Fuck it." He shrugged off the rejection, satisfied that Steven Spielberg must have felt the same at the Oscars.

"Excuse me." Bob Olsen's droned from his left.

"Nothing. What were you saying?" Louie had been humoring the hippie blob by nodding his head, as if he really was listening.

"Now most of the people working on Virtual Reality are interested in the visual stimulation. Just like we were nothing, but eyes. They think that VR will be a movie we can only watch, instead of feel. You know the first VR we programmed at Livermore labs was an interactive sex dream and we used hypnotic brain wave patterns and the proper hertz levels to lower the senses' defenses. Once the Pentagon figured out I was trying to make love, not war, they pulled me off the project. For about one day, because____"

'B-b-bob." Ur Bell admonished his partner with a withering glance. "You're talking t-t-too much."

"About what?" Bob had a beer in his hand. Half the bottle was gone. He talked too much to drink too fast.

"Ur’s right." Louie was good at keeping his mouth shut. "The only good secret is the one you never tell."

Before he could continue, the emcee announced Lena de Gama as the winner for the Best New Starlet award. Everyone in the auditorium rose to their feet to applaud the young actress, as she stepped up to the podium.

"I want to thank you all for this honor. I don't know whether I deserve it, but I sure earned it and I couldn't have done it without help. I'll make it short."

Bob Olsen and Ur Bell were spellbound, while Che Chasta gazed on the young vixen, as if her heart was melting. The Johns stood with their mouths open and the rest of the audience wore expressions of desire, longing, and hope.

Louie had underestimated her sexual allure, for even he was drawn into this gathering's cult of worship and telling himself she was just another woman couldn't break her hold.

Luckily his cell phone silently vibrated against his ribs and Louie lifted it from his jacket. "So?"

"Your itch has been scratched," the ex-cop from New York informed him.

"Great." Louie had eliminated another barrier to his future and he leaned over to Che. "I want you to get her coming off the stage, so no one else can grab her."

Lena finished her speech and the crowd cheered, as if she had discovered a cure for AIDS.

The young actress curtsied with a ballerina's grace and descended from the stage to a mob of admirers.

Hands groped at her breasts, pinched her ass, and tore at her clothes. Bodies pressed closer and held off her feet. As a child she had gone swimming in a crowded pool. The lifeguard had whistled for everyone to leave the pool. She had been knocked under water by the rush. She couldn’t breathe then and was out of breath trouble now.

A hand snatched her away from the maelstrom. It was Che Chasta.

The surging throng stepped back in anticipation of the two putting on a show. They groaned with disappointment, as Che led Lena from the hall. It was time to call it a night.

Louie Sinreich was more pleased with the evening's events. All charges had been dropped against Che, the Johns were ecstatic to meet these stars, Che had Lena, and once the geeks learned that old man had been whacked, they would have to work with him.

All in all today had been as good as it gets and Louie smiled, "How sweet it is."

The truth was that it was very sweet and promised to only get sweeter.

NORTH NORTH HOLLYWOOD - Chapter 10 - by Peter Nolan Smith

The fastest way to LA from Las Vegas was the Interstate. The Mustang had a full tank of gas, but Driscoll exited into the desert. Route 160 was no short-cut and Sean asked, "Where are you going?"

"There's a place up ahead I wanna stop at." Driscoll's eyes concentrated on headlight’s funnel boring through the night.

"Stop where? There's nothing out here."

Off the unlit two-laner not a single dot of electricity challenged the star-lit desert and Sean grasped the door handle, ready to bail out at 80mph. The car locks popped down and Driscoll turned on the radio.

"Sure, there's nothin', but nothin' out here, except Pawrump."

"What's Pawrump?" The name sounded like a bodily function.

"Two roads crisscrossin' in the middle of nowhere between a coupla golf-courses, though they're closed now."

"So why we going, if everything is shut?" Sean hated surprises.

"Because they have a couple of whore houses that never close and nothin' makes me hornier than murder." Elvis was a welcome change from the boy band drivel on the other stations.

"I like the idea of driving straight to LA better."

"And I like the idea of killin' a couple of hours with some trailer park whores. I'll get you LA tomorrow morning. How's that sound?"

"Like it's my only choice."

“Free will doesn’t exist in this life.”

”Only things you had to do.”

"No one ever said anythin' about this bein' a democracy," Driscoll interrupted the discussion by turning up the music and hummed NOW OR NEVER out of tune. The Mustang accelerated to 90mph. "Seano, I know how you feel."

"I don't think so.” Their only common link was New York.

"Hell, I felt the same as you after my first time. Me, I popped my cherry back in 1980. I go into an Avenue C apartment on a 1054 call, expectin' to clonk some PR for beatin' up on his wife, only I walk in the wrong apartment and stumbled on a heroin deal. One of the spics whips out a piece and pulls the trigger. I almost shit in my pants. I mean I thought I was dead, 'cept the greaser's gun jams. You shoulda seen his face, when I popped 'im. Boom. One shot to the head." The ex-cop laughed with the recollected comfort of having dodged fate, though it came out more like a drum roll of coughs.

"This old guy was scared.” Sean looked at the desert. It was empty.

"You’d think after living that long he’d be happy someone put him out of his misery."

The car raced toward Mountain Summit Springs.

"No, he wanted to live." And Sean had spared him.

"What he wanted was unimportant, Seano. I'm proud of you for pulling this off like a man."

"Thanks.”

Driscoll might have bought the faked murder, but this detour was wrong.

The DJ announced the rest of his shift was dedicated to Elvis and Driscoll tapped on the steering wheel to the beat of DON'T BE CRUEL. At the top of the pass, he pointed to a ball of light shimmering on the dark horizon like a star fallen to earth.

"That's Pawrump up ahead. Maybe another thirty miles. You're gonna love it there."

"Yeah, I can hardly wait." It sounded like the perfect place to disappear off the face of the Earth.

"Once we get to the whorehouse, I'll give you the other five thousand, but you be careful, cause the 'girls' out here are kinda fast with their hands, if you get my drift."

Driscoll stepped on the accelerator and the car sped up to 110 mph. After several minutes the car slowed to less than seventy.

“Damn, I gotta take a pee. I'll stop at the next road."

"What road?" The desert was untouched by man.

Sean never saw the punch riveting four knuckles into his temple. His mouth tasted metal, as if all the fillings in his teeth had come loose before he tumbled down a narrowing black hole to hover above a pool of unconsciousness. Something had gone horribly wrong and he didn't need any fingers to add up what, because sum came up snake eyes.

The Mustang rocked onto a rutted dirt road for a quarter mile. Driscoll's right foot stomped the brakes and the car skittered to a stop. He opened the passenger door and Sean Tempo slumped from the car like a bag of potatoes. The ex-cop squinted back to Route 160.

No headlights lit either direction.

Driscoll might have lost his taste for killing strangers, but wasting an old acquaintance would be a treat and he kicked Sean Collan several times, until burying his toe in the fallen man's ribs knocked his left knee out of alignment.

”Goddammit.”

The big man turned Sean face down in the sand and slipped the five wallets his partner had Fed-Exed him into Sean's jacket, then dropped the empty .357 revolver on the sand.

"Frank, you're a genius."

Tomorrow the local cop would investigate the buzzards circling in the air.

The police chief would wire the NYPD about the wallets and revolver on the corpse.

If the NYPD were on the ball, they would link the revolver's forensics to five unsolved New York murders and tonight's killing in Vegas, clearing any suspicion on his partner and him.

A car was coming from Las Vegas on Route 160.

Probably two miles away. Driscoll lowered to the 9mm’s muzzle to his victim.

"Seano, you won't feel a thing."

The ex-cop's words broke through the rushing in Sean's ears. Black shoes bracketed his head. Why sand was in his mouth and what the cold metal stuck into the base of his skull came to Sean. Driscoll was ignoring his own instructions about placing the muzzle to the back of his victim's neck.

Sean twisted his head to the side.

An explosive crack broke the sound barrier next to his ear and a sword seared across his neck without decapitating him. He rolled over and wildly swung his fist. The punch connected with the ex-cop's knee and threw Driscoll off-balance into the Mustang.

Sean scrambled to his feet and juked from side to side.

Shots rang out and bullets hissed through the air. Sand squished beneath his feet. Cactus tore at this clothing. Jesus had lived up his end and now it was up to Sean to fulfill his part of the bargain by running for his life.

Driscoll emptied the 9mm at the disappearing target. He jammed another clip into his automatic and popped off every round without hearing a shriek of pain.

"Godfuckingdammit, I hit nothin', but the motherfuckin'' wind."

He jumped in the Mustang and shoved the shift into DRIVE. The spinning rubber excavated a hole in the loose sand and buried the rear tires up to the hubcaps. Driscoll beat the steering wheel and screamed, until a chunk of phlegm popped out of his lungs.

Looking into the black desert, the ex-cop rubbed his aching knee and said aloud, "Frank's not gonna like this."

And that was the god-awful truth.

NORTH NORTH HOLLYWOOD - Chapter 11 - by Peter Nolan Smith

The winter wind whistled over the Skylark’s ragtop. The heat was on full and Che Chasta slid across the seat to caress Lena's thigh. Neither of them could wait till Death Valley.

"Is there a town close?" Stopping in the middle of nowhere might look good in a movie, yet there was no telling what kind of homicidal maniac was lurking in the dark and Lena stepped on the gas.

"I see a light up ahead." Che hadn't never been on this road. "Might be a town."

Good." Lena spread her thighs and the blonde’s hand slipped inside her panties. "You know I've dreamed about meeting you for a long time.”

"Not a gang-bang film." Che groaned, for while she could handle more than a hundred men at a row by imagining her body belonging to someone else, the recovery time from the all-out assault took weeks.

"No, it was a old film with Sherri.” Lena clenched the blonde’s hair tight like Sherri had in one scene. “Just the two of you.”

"GIRLS LIKE US was our only solo film.” Che didn't see any reason to tell Lena that they had done the film to pay off a drug debt. "You really like it?"

"No, but it was like your bodies were unattached from your souls."

"Yeah, we were damned."

"Drugs?"

"Crazy too."

"What was Sherri like back then?” Lena wished she could have been them with them for a night or two, only no time machine could resurrect that Sherri without killing her.

"Sherri didn't care about anything. She would fuck anyone for a fix and rob them. A lot of people were after her and not to wish her good luck, but she was so wild, no one would touch her, since it was real apparent that she was going to kill herself sooner or later. Why? She never told me why. Maybe because she fucked too many men for no good reason or maybe she realized she could never go back to whoever she was before she started in the business. I don't know, but she was crazy and even worse once her brother died. She never tell you about this?"

Before Lena could say, "No.", a blonde man in the black suit materialized on the road.

She stamped on the brake.

The sudden deceleration threw her passenger onto the floor. Lena braced for the expected impact, except the car swerved to a stop without her hearing the sickening thud of metal hitting a human body. The overpowering stench of burning rubber filled the interior and the Skylark's V-8 purred at low revs, its headlights pointing into the shadowy undergrowth.

Che climbed onto the seat. "What happened?"

"I might have hit something." Lena also might have killed a human being.

"What?" The blonde's eyes darted upward, as if a UFO might be fleeing into the heavens.

"A man.” Lena looked behind them.

A prone form lay on the road’s shoulder lit by the red glow of the brake lights.

"Men always show up, when you need them least." Che quickly pulled on her dress.

Lena put the car in neutral and opened her door.

"Where are you going?" Che clutched the younger girl’s arm.

"I am going to see, if he is dead or alive." Lena picked up the heavy Maglite under the front seat.

"Who gives a shit? Let's get out of here. No one saw nothing out here."

"Except us." Lena got out of the car and focused the tight beam on the horizontal man.

"Is he dead?"

"I don't think so, but sit behind the wheel. If I shout, be ready to get out of here." Lena cautiously approached the man on the highway.

He was in no shape to hurt anyone. His blonde hair was splotched with blood seeping from a cut over his left eye. Blood from a furrow on his neck was splattered on his white shirt. Neither wound could have come from her sideswiping him. When the flashlight's beam touched the man's face, he flinched and covered his eyes.

"Are you okay, Mister?" Lena was relieved he was alive.

"I'm just a little banged up, that's all," His left shoe was gone and he gasped for breath like he had been running a mile. "I got into a car crash back off the road."

"Anyone with you?" The headlights of a car blinked in the desert. She had no curiosity to find out whether or not the man was telling the truth.

"No, I was alone." The blonde man in the black suit blindly outstretched his hand.

"I'm not going to hurt you, I promise."

"How can you be sure?"

"Cause I'm in no shape to hurt anyone." The man shivered with an icy wind ripping across the road. "Help me."

She played the light on him. There was something familiar about his face. Not from a photo, but Sherri’s description of the man they needed to cast in her film. Her grasping voice was in character, his beaten face was forgettable and the dusty suit completed the image of the last man on Earth. Like the saint from Bunuel's SIMONE OF THE DESERT.

There was no guarantee that he could act or would do the film or that he wasn't dangerous other than her having a feeling that he had been put here to star in that role. She just had a feeling and helped him to his feet.

"You better not be any trouble.”

"Just get me out of here and I'll love you forever."

"That won't be necessary.” Lena was scared, but only for an instant, for the man sighed, "Good, because forever seems like it's coming real quick."

When he flopped onto the trunk of the car, Che poked her head out the window. "Girl, are you out of your mind? Drop him and let's go."

"Open the back door," Lena ordered the blonde. "I'm not leaving him out here."

"Great, just what the world needs. A good Samaritan for drifters." Che cleared their bags off the backseat and Lena released the man, who keeled through the car's open rear door.

Lena sat behind the wheel and both women regarded the man sprawled across the backseat.

"What do you think?" Lena asked Che, as if she might be a better judge of men.

"He looks no different than the hundreds of fuck-ups I've fucked for the camera or for the fuck of it. Just another man screwing up my night. We should dump him at the next town."

"No hospitals. No cops," the man muttered from the backseat. "All I want is a ride to LA."

"What if we're not going to LA, big boy?" Che rubbed her chilled skin.

"Then you're out $500." The blonde man produced five crisp hundred-dollar bills. "Once we hit LA, you can throw me out of the car."

"Deal." Che snatched the money out of his hand.

The blonde man crumbled into the seat, sapped by whatever had happened to him.

"I hope he doesn't snore." Che checked the bills. They looked good.

"Men like him talk in their sleep." Lena stepped on the gas and the Skylark raced along the forlorn two-laner. Che gave Lena $200. "So I guess our ride to Death Valley is shot."

"The faster I get him to LA the better.” Even at 80mph it would take three or four hours, but she could tell by the way the blonde man lay that he would be out for even longer. "I guess I'll have to give you a rain check."

"I was afraid you would say that, because it never rains there."

"You like his type?" Lena peeked in the rearview mirror.

"You're asking the wrong girl. Remember I'm the gang-bang queen. I'll do anyone," Che boasted, though it was all an act.

"I'm not asking about anyone.” Lena was having doubts about this man, whose face she couldn't see in the dark. "I'm talking about this one."

Che studied the man for several seconds. "He's a little older than I like them, but I'd do him, if they was no one else around. What about you?"

"I haven't been with a man in six months.” She couldn't say she missed it either.

"Hey, I told the truth. Now it's your turn."

"If he was the last man of Earth, maybe."

"Out here he's the only man on Earth." Che laid her head on Lena's lap. "Just remember that."

The Skylark picked up more speed and left only the tang of a V-8's exhaust on the passing wind, which was better for everyone, except for the man they had left behind in the rain.

NORTH NORTH HOLLYWOOD - Chapter 12 - by Peter Nolan Smith

A pale streak of dawn slithered below the charcoal black storm clouds impaled on the city's tallest buildings, as the streetlights dimmed one by one up Fifth Avenue. Traffic on the icy avenue was sparse and only a few dog-walkers braved the snow-clogged sidewalks in front of the Plaza Hotel. This morning most of New York would stay in bed except for those who had yet to go to sleep.

"C'mon, ring, you bastard." Frank deRocco glared at the telephone for the hundredth time since 3am.

Something was fucked up and the detective poured himself another glass of whiskey, which he downed it in one go. When the empty glass fell from his hand, he realized he was in no condition to show up for his precinct 8AM roster.

Derocco dialed the station house and told the desk sergeant he was sick.

With only seven months to go until his 'twenty and out', none of the white shirts at the 9th Precinct was going to bust his hump for taking and the detective flopped onto the mattress, his head drowning in a sea of swirls.

A half-hour later the telephone rang and his hand groped for the handset on the night table. The plastic was cold on his ear.

"It's me." His partner sounded high on cocaine.

"Of course it's you. Who else is gonna call me here. My ex-wives?" deRocco slurred with the wind shuddering against the windows.

"I been waitin' all night for you to call. What's wrong?"

"Nothin' really, but...."

"I hate hearin' the word 'but.'" deRocco sat up too fast and keeled over onto the pillow. "Get it over with. But what?"

"He did it. I saw it with my own eyes."

"And?"

"I took him out to the desert like planned."

"And?"

Static interference answered deRocco.

"You still there?"

"Yeah, I'm calling you from a payphone."

"I don't want to know where. I'm gonna ask you one question, and I'm not wantin' to hear you say, "No." Ready?” deRocco was sobering up fast. “Did you take him out?"

"Yes and no."

"Whatcha mean, yes and no?"

His partner explained about the shooting and Sean escaping into the desert with the wallets along with the car stuck in sand and his bad knee.

"Shit."

"So what do I do now?"

"You mean, "Now you fucked up." This news had ruined his day and it was only seven hours old.

"Sorry." Kev’s voice was as contrite as that of an altar boy caught drinking the sacramental wine.

"Save your 'Sorrys' for Judgment Day." deRocco rubbed his unshaven face and spoke deliberately, "This is what I want you to do.”

”What?”

”Nothing.”

”Yeah,. do nothing till dawn. When it's light, go back to where you were and follow his tracks like you were an Indian. Maybe there's a God and you did hit 'im. If so, look for the vultures overhead. Got it?"

"I think so. Anything else?"

"Yeah, you better spend some quality time on your knees prayin' you did kill 'im."

"I already been doin' that."

"Well don't stop, cuz his those wallets are a death warrant." deRocco stopped his harangue, for Kev needed reassurance everything between them was as before. "Everythin' gonna work out."

"What if I can't find him? I mean I might have hit him, but it's a big desert out here."

"Forget about it."

"What about them wallets?"

"Screw them too. We go to plan B. You head to LA and pick up the money for the hit." They had stashed around $400,000 in a Cayman account. That cache plus their pensions should keep them going for years, if not till death parted one of them from the other.

"I'll meet you and we'll head anywhere in the world we want."

"You comin' out?" Kev sounded like he had won Lotto.

"Yeah, I have some vacation time I gotta take or lose." DeRocco was already visualizing his trip cross-country. "Not for nothin', but everythin' is gonna will be fine. Trust me."

"Who else can I trust?"

"Me and no one else, partner. If you find the body, call me. The last thing I want is go out to L friggin' A."

"I know, I know. Maybe I'll be lucky like you said."

"Yeah, right, it's always darkest before the dawn" What worried deRocco most was that bad things usually came in threes.

Even worst somehow that stupid song CALIFORNIA, HERE I COME popped into his head. Not getting rid of it had to be number two. He only prayed number three wouldn't be as bad as the first two, but the way his luck was breaking he couldn’t count on anything other than the worst and thankfully he always knew how to handle that end of the business.

NORTH NORTH HOLLYWOOD - Chapter 13 - by Peter Nolan Smith

Lena’s passenger remained unconscious the entire ride to Hollywood. An hour before dawn no one was on the streets and Che suggested dumping the stranger on the Church of Scientology lawn.

"They know how to take care of people like him."

"I'll take care of him." Lena had plans for 'the man from nowhere'.

"Suit yourself, just drop me at my house." Che didn't say another word

Upon arriving at her bungalow she got out of the car and slammed the door, as if to wake the man in the back seat.

His breathing was the only sign of his not being dead.

Che cleared the blonde mane from her face and asked Lena, "When will I see you again?"

"Here's my number." Lena scrawled the info on a fast food wrapper.

"Sherri won't mind me calling?"

"You and me. We're just friends?"

"So far." Che kissed the young actress through the window of the LeMans. Their lips melted whatever faults they possessed between them. "You be careful of that man."

"I can handle men." Lena looked over her shoulder. The man was dead to the world and almost dead men weren't trouble. "Call me."

Lena drove over to the freeway. Traffic was light, but a heavy rain lengthened the drive over the Hollywood Hills.

Lena shut her eyes. It had been a long drive from Las Vegas.

Car horns woke her and she opened the window. The cold wet air revived her long enough to get home, where she parked the LeMans in the sheltered garage and got out of the car.

"Mister?"

The man was out cold.

"Mister, I can't carry you." She shook his arm for several seconds, then slapped him in the face.

"Where are we?" His hands covered his face.

"LA." To Lena he seemed a million years old. She figured his age for 40. "Can you walk a little?"

"Maybe." The man pulled himself off the seat and Lean helped him out of the car.

He smelled of dust and old clothes. His blonde hair rubbed stiff against her skin and felt, as if it had been stolen from a brush. She picked up her bag and led him to the elevator. without locking the car. It was safe. No one else lived in the condo building which had been condemned after an earthquake.

"Don't fall down," Lena told the man.

"Where we going?" His words stuck like mush in his mouth..

"Someplace safe." The elevator stopped on the 4th floor and the man in the black suit sagged against the wall.

He wasn't drunk.

He wasn't on drugs.

Someone had beat him into this state.

Lena knocked on the door to her apartment.

"Sherri, open up. It's me."

"Did you forget your keys?" Sherri asked opening the door.

"No."

"Who is he?"

I'll tell you later. Help me carry him into the guest bedroom?"

"Are you crazy?"

No, just do it."

The two women dragged the man to the back bedroom and dumped him on the single mattress. For all intent purposes he was dead to the world.

Lena stripped off his bloodstained clothes and bundled them in a ball. The swelling bruises to his head suggested that he might be suffering from a concussion and Sherri checked the unconscious man's pulse. It was strong and steady. Lena went out into the bathroom and returned with their medicine kit.

"He's going to live."

"Good." Lena tended to the naked man's cuts. "Because I have plans for him."

"What kind of plans?" Sherri surveyed the pale stranger's body and pointed to the ancient tracks from a needle. The older woman wore the same tattoo. "You don't get these for graduating from a seminary."

"I know, I know.” Lena threw the covers over him and explained about finding the blonde man on the highway without mentioning Che Chasta. "I wanted you to see him."

"Why?” This stranger didn’t belong inside their home. No man did.

"You don’t see what I see.”

"No, I don’t.” Sherri could only see a man. “Plus this wasn’t the deal.”

”What deal?”


”What you and me? I said ‘no men’.”

"I didn't sleep with him and I have no intentions to sleep with him." Lena cleansed the wound on the man's neck. He was too far gone to feel the sting of alcohol. "But you said I could bring home strays."

"I meant a cat not men?"

"I couldn’t leave him to die in the desert?"

"A dead man in the desert sounds better than a dead man in my house."

"He asked for my help." Lena reached up to stroke her lover's hair.

Sherri pushed away the gesture.

"I can understand that, but why didn't you dump him on the sidewalk like he asked? Plenty of people get their start out here like that. I want the truth."

"I told you I had plans for him."

"Like what?"

"I see this man in the desert and I think SIMON OF THE DESERT.”

”He looks nothing like the saint.”

”Shave the saint." Lena pointed to the man. "Now you see what I see?"

"You’re kidding." Sherri had to admit the man on the bed met the physical requirements for her road film’s lead.

"Not at all. This is the Man from Nowhere. Look at him. He has been screen-tested by the road. When I saw him, I saw the last man on Earth."

"He's a complete stranger." At this point in Sherri’s life most men were little else.

"ADAM AND TWO EVES will never be completed, unless we find a man for this role and who better to play a man from nowhere than a man from nowhere.”

”They are actors.”

“And you’ve rejected them all.”

"I hate men."

"I know you do. I've heard you and your friends talk about a world without men. -50% one of them called machocide. I respect your beliefs, but we'll never finish ADAM AND TWO EVES without a man. This is our 'Adam'." Lena could sense Sherri’s wilting to her suggestion. The final push had to come with cautious reason. "We do not have to love him or even like him. All we have to do is act in a few scenes with him. Maybe you are a little jealous of this man?"

Not jealous, but he could be a rapist or a murderer."

"He does not look the type." Lena stood over him with a bemused smile.

”What’s so funny?”

”If I drove past that spot in the desert two seconds earlier and I wouldn’t have seen him.”

”And a second later you would have killed him.”

”Life’s a question of timing.”

”He still could be a killer.

”Not him.”

"And how can you tell?"

I have been with enough men in my life to know the difference between the good and the bad." She searched his pockets, uncovering a stack of hundred-dollar bills, five wallets, cold French fries, and an Irish passport..

"What are you doing?" Sherri half-expected the man to wake during this frisking.

"You want to know who he is." Lena opened the wallets and examined their IDs. Only the passport matched the man’s face. She handed it to Sherri.

"Sean Collan of New York."

"At least now he has a name."

"That doesn't prove whether or not he's dangerous." Sherri flipped the passport onto the suit in the corner.

"Maybe to himself, but not us," Lena stated defiantly, yet she had to demonstrate that she wasn't buying this 100% and examined the wallets. "He might not be a killer. A pickpocket. A thief. But that doesn't change his looks?"

"Are you sure you want to use this man?" Sherri dropped the wallets on the floor.

"Yes, he is better than some stupid actor pretending to be the real thing."

"Everything in my body says get rid of him.”

”And everything in mine says he’s perfect.”

”This is crazy, we don't even have any money to shoot the film."

"Yes, we do."

Reaching into her backpack, Lena poured Isaac Conti's money from an envelope.

Seeing the banded stacks of $100 bills, Sherri asked, "And where'd this come from?"

"Your uncle gave it to me last night at the award ceremony. He wanted you to use it to finish ADAM AND TWO EVES."

"My uncle."

"Another man."

"I can't keep them out of my life." Sherri started to cry, until Lena caressed her cheek.

"Don't be scared, baby. You’re the one always saying we have to do this film. How ADAM AND TWO EVES can save me from whatever happened to you. It would be easy for me to keep thinking it was a dream and nothing else. I have had a lot of those in my life, but I believe in you and believe in this film. I think ADAM AND TWO EVES can be something great, but we need a man to finish it. If not him, then nobody.’ Lena stared at the still form on the bed. No man was harmless other than in this condition and even unconsciousness was no guarantee of safety. “You got me, remember that and nothing else."

"How can I forget? Without you I'd be like everyone else in LA. Wake up, drive my car to work, come back home, watch TV, sleep alone."

"You might have a lover sometimes."

"Strictly for sex."

"And what's wrong with that?"

"Nothing."

"So let's finish the film.” Lena pulled Sherri out of the back bedroom into the living room, where they lay on the sofa. The young girl's jade eyes gazed up at her lover, as she arched her back to get closer.

“You have the money. You have the actor. You have me. What else do you need?"

"Nothing."

ADAM AND TWO EVES could bring Lena and her to another world away from having sex on film. She could visualize them film on-screen with the man in the distant background. Sherri wrapped her arms around Lena, as if to protect the young actress from all the harm she had ever experienced as a woman. A last fear arose and she asked, "What if he refuses?"

Lena trembled with anticipation of her lover's caressing her secret places.

"Everyone wants to be in the movies."

And that was no lie.

NORTH NORTH HOLLYWOOD - Chapter 15 - by Peter Nolan Smith

Slashing sheets of rain spattered against the window. The temperature in the room was cool, but Sean wished it was colder, for snow was quieter than rain.

Taking a deep breath he coughed with pain. Driscoll must have booted him across the desert, while he was unconscious. A quick examination by his fingers confirmed that none of his ribs was broken. Sean was a lot tougher than he looked, although the raw burn on his neck convinced him that he was also luckier than he deserved. Turning his head an inch the wrong way or a second later and he wouldn't be feeling anything right now.

Someone had applied an oily antiseptic salve to the wound. The lack of medicinal odors excluded that he was in a hospital and the absence of shouting men ruled out jail.

His left eye was swollen shut and Sean opened his right. He was lying naked under a crisp sheet and duvet on a bed in a small white room. He rose stiffly from the mattress and looked for his clothing. They were gone.

A new pair of black jeans, a white tee-shirt, and black Levi jacket hung over a chair. A pair of work shoes lay on the floor. He flashed on this bare room being the After-Life, except this world felt too much like the last one to be the next.

He stood and went to the window.

The steady downpour washed over the flat suburban plain of tract housing. A few palm trees competed with the electrical power lines under a leaden sky obscuring the horizon. Even without any discernible landmarks Sean was certain that he was in Los Angeles, although not the LA of TV, but it didn't matter if this wasn't Hollywood. He had been given another chance for life,

Hobbling over to the chair, he tongued his teeth. Several were loose. Whoever had picked out the clothing had misjudged his size. Bigger was better than smaller, but best was that his Irish passport and the wad from deRocco were inside the jeans jacket.

Some of the money was missing, however he was puzzled by the five additional wallets. None of them held money and the IDs in each belonged to different men. The names on the credit cards were unknown to him. Knowing deRocco and Driscoll he figured the owners were dead.

Sean put on the clothes. At least the shoes fit.

Opening the bedroom door he stepped into a hallway. The photos on the wall were of a young woman. Some were nude. It was evident from the look in her eyes that she was no angel.

Sean crept across the entrance alcove, hoping to leave without any good-byes or thank-yous, except as his hand reached for the knob on the front door, a female voice said, "Welcome to back to the land of the living."

Two dark-haired women in terry-cloth robes sat on the sofa in the living room. A tartan blanket lay across their laps. Twenty years separated their ages. The younger one was the girl from the photos. The older woman’s hand was under the blanket. It could only be holding one thing.

"How long was I out?" Sean let go the knob and adopted a non-aggressive stance with his arms out from his side.

"It’s been almost twelve hours since I picked you up." The younger female tilted her head to rest on the other woman's shoulder.

“And I slept all of it?”

“More like a coma.” The older woman circled her left arm around the smaller woman.

"So you drove me here?" Sean vaguely recollected a woman on the highway, but little else. "From the desert."

"We got here this morning." The young woman answered, though any additional information was cut short by the overhead rumble of a plane.

"When the weather gets bad, the air controllers at Burbank swing the over-flight pattern this way,” explained the older woman, as the jet’s fading reverberation was replaced by unsynchopated raindrops.

"Where am I anyway?" Sean eye’s were drawn to the black-haired girl.

Youthful smooth skin covered a sympathetic face balanced by full lips full and gem green eyes. He could have spent the rest of the day or time staring at her, but everything about her companion said lesbian. Even more so that she hated men.

"Sepulveda." The older woman saw the word meant nothing to him and said, "It's north over the hills from Hollywood in the Valley."

"Yes, we live in North North Hollywood," the young girl stated, as if it were a popular joke.

"So I made it to LA?" He had seen the older woman before.

"Mostly in one piece." The younger brunette looked at him as if she knew him.

"Thanks for the doctoring."

"More like nursing." The young one's breezy manner demonstrated a youthful lack of fear. "My name is Lena and this is Sherri."

“My name is___” Sean was in a position to bury his life-long persona under any alias.

"Sean Coll." The older woman short-circuited Sean's attempt to re-IDed himself. "We checked your passport, when we took off your clothes. We were a little curious, you understand?"

"I would have done the same thing." Sean buttoned the jacket to leave. "Thanks for the ride and the place to stay. How much do I owe you for the clothes?"

"Nada." Lena's robe slipped open to reveal a vee of olive skin and she smiled at him. "You gave me $500 for a ride to LA."

"Oh, yeah." The unremembered trip had been worth every penny, since he had almost $5000 in my pocket. "Thanks again, I guess I'll be moving along."

As Sean reached the front door, the older woman curtly advised, "I'd be real careful about spending that money in your pocket."

"Why?" Sean braced for the bad news.

"Cause most of it is fake." She clearly enjoyed telling him this. "They're good fakes, but fakes no less."

"Shit." Sean reached into his pocket for the stack of hundreds. The first four were good. The rest were queer and his body sagged under the weight of this new misfortune.

"I discovered that at the mall this morning, when I buy you the new clothes," Lena said with a sultry voice contradicting the virginal vision in the white nightgown. "I used one bill. It is bad. The next one is 'good'. I told the store manager a story with tears in my eyes and he does not call the police."

"My little actress." The older woman pulled Lena closer to her. "What you have in your hand is commonly called a______"

"A Minnesota Roll." Sean had fallen for the oldest trick in the book, where a conman salted a roll of cash with good money to hide the 'bad' from the mark.

"Sorry, you got burnt, but better you hear it from us than the police."

"Always is." Sean's dream of Indian Ocean sunsets evaporated into a rainy afternoon, for passing bad paper an unknown town was always a bad idea regardless of his desperation.

"Are you okay?" Sherri asked without any real concern.

"Great." Sean shrugged with indifference and put his hand on the doorknob. “I’ve been broke before.”

"Ask him," Lena told her companion.

"Ask me what?"

Sherri regarded the younger girl and shook her head.

"He has places to go. Let him go."

"He has nowhere to go." Lena turned to Sean. "Where you came from, we don't care. What you did before, we don't want to know. How you got that money is none of our business. We don't ask questions and we don't answer them either."

"I hear a 'but' coming."

"No 'buts'.” Sherri sighed and motioned for Sean to sit on the only chair in the living room.

"But you don’t want me to go." Sean crossed the wooden floor to sit on a chair opposite the two women.

"No, we don’t."

“So are you going to tell me why?” He hoped it wasn’t another proposition like the last from deRocco.

"It's like this. We want you to be in a movie. While your role is small, it's pivotal to the plot. The bulk of the film has already been shot. We need you for two weeks at the most. It'll be long and hard work, but you'll get a place to stay, food, a per diem, and $3000 upon completion. Of course it depends on a few things."

Sean rubbed his left eye and pried open the lids. He wasn’t blind.

"Such as what?"

"First of all this." Sherri's right hand came out from under the blanket.

Sean flinched, except instead of the expected gun she pointed a Polaroid camera, whose flash momentarily blinded him. It spit a photo onto Sherri's lap and Lena picked up the developing picture.

"Consider this a screen test. If the Polaroid hates you, so will a movie camera."

“And if it likes you, the movie camera will do the same.” Che waved the photo in the air.

Sean's vision returned with spots floating across the room. "So what's next?"

"Read this line." Lena handed him a typed page, pushing a raven-black tress from her face.

Sean scratched his head. Grains of desert sand trapped in his hair dropped on the paper. He assembled the letters into words and the words into a sentence.

"So tonight doesn’t involved love?"

"Wooden, but not too bad," Lena held the photo up to the light and showed it to Sherri. "He looks like he fell off a truck."

"You're right, he is the Man From Nowhere, though he could do with a few less pounds. You have any problem with a diet, nothing too radical?”

“Such as.”

“No drinking and only one meal a day?" Sherri asked with a harshness expecting only one answer.

"I've stopped drinking recently, so that'll be no problem."

"I've heard too many people tell me their drinking was no problem only to discover later on how big a problem no problem was." She was giving him one chance and one chance only. "If it does become problem, you're out."

"Fair enough." This was too good to be true, yet Sean had to be honest. "I'm no actor."

"We don't need an actor. We need the Man from Nowhere and no actor in LA has a face like yours." Lena assured him.

"Man from Nowhere?" His left hand reached up to cover his puffy left eye.

The older woman leaned forward and handed him a neatly bound screenplay titled ADAM AND TWO EVES.

"Read the script and you'll see why you have the part. Any questions?"

"Who are the two 'Eves'?"

Sherri's glare betrayed her deep-rooted machothropism, but he would not break from her stare. He had grown up with two sisters.

"I'm one.”

Sitting on the couch, Lena shape-shifted from a woman to a girl and back to a woman in a matter of seconds.

"And I'm the other." Sherri put the Polaroid camera on the coffee table.

"The two Eves." Sean was thoroughly bewildered by the illusion.

"That's us, so will you do the film?"

Every post-high school waiter and waitress in New York and LA would have instantly thrown in the towel of their wage-slave existence and responded with a 'yes', but they didn't have two madmen on their tail.

"This isn't a 'adult' or a 'snuff' film?"

Sherri shook her head.

"When we are finished, you'll be proud to have been in this film."

"Oscar time?" Sean saw himself on the red carpet.

"You have big dreams for a nobody."

"Is that a sin?" Sean was inside from the rain. Starring in a film was the best deal he had been offered since a kiss from his friend's daughter.

"We don't believe in sin."

"Where we shooting?" LA was too small for him.

"Death Valley."

"I'll do your film." No way deRocco would find him there.

Lena gleefully clapped her hands together and kissed Sherri. The older woman was visibly displeased about his acceptance of her offer.

"I'll go read the script." The room’s equation was for two not three.

"You do that." The words were more a command.

"Okay." He returned to the back bedroom like a child sent away from the dinner table and shut the door behind him.

Giggles snickered through the thin sheet-rocked walls.

If he were uninvited to be a voyeur, then he would block out being an erotic eavesdropper.

Sean chewed two pieces of tissue paper, till they were soggy wads, then stuck them in his ears and opened the screenplay to page one, then lay on the bed.

Within five minutes the script fell off his chest and nothing in the world could have raised him from this sleep.

He was dead once more.

NORTH NORTH HOLLYWOOD - Chapter 20 -by Peter Nolan Smith

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