Chapter 1

It started quite innocently, really. He was a relatively conventional 57 year old man who had knocked around over quite a lot of the world, and she was a 23 year old part time rebel with a mohawk, tattoos and a child she hadn't planned on having.

What brought them together was complicated, but at the same time, quite simple.

That sounds like a strange sentence, but the key word is "together," which has many levels of meaning. We can start with the simple side of things.

Their first "togetherness" was based on both of them applying for jobs reading books onto tape. It was just that simple. They both needed some extra income and applied for jobs at the same place, which offered both full and part time employment. He had a background in theater and a deep voice, which qualified him. She had the perfect voice for portraying innocence and youth that belied her chronological age.

Their initial meeting was simple too, and happened just like thousands of people meet other people every day.

"Hi. My name is Bob," he said, holding out his hand to shake. "Well sometimes. People call me lots of other things too."

He was like that. His thought processes ebbed and flowed constantly. He had a philosophical bent and enjoyed examining everything from just about every angle, even when it was as simple as, say, a pencil. If he'd been born a lion, he would have been sitting on the savannah, his eyes flickering from potential prey to potential prey, thinking "Am I hungry enough to go for that ibis over there? Do I need to scratch that itch, or will it go away? I could use a drink of water right now. Where's that lioness I've been watching? I wonder if she's gone into heat yet. What just moved over there?"

It wasn't that he was scatter brained. It was just that he wanted to see and do and experience and be part of everything possible, all at the same time. It was a quality that had allowed him to submerge himself into a dozen foreign cultures and fit right in while he watched and learned.

She was as simple as he was complicated. She'd been through the school of hard knocks and was much more pragmatic about things.

"Layla," she said.

His eyes lit up. "What a beautiful name. It motivates me to wax poetic. I'm sure that's what they'll want when we read."

She examined him. He was muscular, but carried a bit of extra weight too. His eyes had that funny quality of looking blue one minute and green the next. He wasn't balding. In fact, the bushy beard thrusting from his chin made her think of a loufa, for some reason. He was looking at her, which she was used to. Most men looked at her. Most people looked at her, for that matter. Her hair was a vermillion shade this week and the long mohawk flopped to one side, drooping down to tickle her right eyebrow. Sometimes the area below the mohawk had a quarter inch of hair on it, but she'd shaved the sides of her head before coming in for the interview.

She had expected the interviewer to take one look at her and tell her, "Thanks, but no thanks." He hadn't. He'd simply said, "Your voice is perfect for what we have in mind. You're hired. Be here on Tuesday at eight."

Now this man was looking at her too, but again, his reaction wasn't what she was used to. This man ... this old guy ... this guy old enough to be her father, if not her grandfather, was looking at her like a man looks at a woman. He didn't seem to be at all ashamed to let his eyes flicker up and down her body. Yet, somehow, he didn't ogle her. He looked at her all over, but it was ... all over — not just at her girly parts. On impulse, she looked him all over too, staring at the front of his pants, where there was the inevitable bulge. It looked about like most other bulges she'd seen.

He looked about like most other men she'd seen.

"I guess we're reading together," he said.

"Great," she thought to herself. "I'm saddled with one of those masters of pointing out the blindingly obvious."

That attitude only lasted an hour. But much happened in that hour, before it changed.

They were standing in a small room. The walls were covered with what looked like foam egg carton type material and the ceiling had those tiles with all the little holes in them. There were microphones hanging from the ceiling on moveable booms and stools to sit on. Layla and Bob were the only people in the room, but there was equipment for four or five. It was both bare and small. The door opened and a man walked in with a sheaf of papers in his hand.

"Here's the story we're starting with for you two," he said. "This will just be a run through, to work out any kinks. When we get an actual take, we'll overlay the narrator's part and any sound effects during later production runs. Right now we just want you two to try to get the feel for things and see how it goes. Some people can do this and others can't. You never know until you try."

He smiled, but it was only with his mouth. He went to one of the hanging microphones and pointed to a switch on the side. "Slide this up when you're ready. If you have to cough or anything like that, please turn the mike off before you do that. OK?" He didn't wait for anyone to say anything was OK. "Either one of you can read the narrator's part today," he said. "It will be overlaid later, so the only parts that matter are your characters' spoken lines."

Layla took a stack of papers. The man handed Bob a similar stack and then left.

Layla glanced at the heading on her stack: Adventures in Babysitting. The author's name was "Lubrican." She had to look at it for a while to make sure it didn't say "Lubricant." It didn't matter. Below that was a list of characters. Her character - she assumed she was the babysitter - was named Megan. Below that was a description that said:

Megan is a sixteen year old virgin, raised by a single mother. She is Rod Wilson's neighbor and has known him for many years. He fixed her bicycle when she was younger, and has done other neighborly things for her and her mother over the years. She likes him a lot. She has dated, but not any one boy seriously. She has been kissed a few times, but is otherwise innocent of things sexual.

Layla blinked. That sounded like a setup for something pornographic! She looked further down to see a bold line that read: Mister Wilson/Rod.

The description of him was: 35 year old man who is suddenly raising a three year old boy alone. His wife had a gambling problem and shoplifted to get money for the casinos. She was arrested recently and given three years in jail. He has watched Megan mature, both physically and emotionally, and has a finely tuned appreciation of her body. He is already sexually frustrated by the forced separation from his wife, who also confessed to having an affair with one of the men she owed money to. She blamed everything on Rod, and has said she intends to get a divorce while she's in jail.

She looked deeper into the pile. Words jumped up off the pages ... words like "nipples," "prick," and "pussy."

"This is PORN!" she yelped.

Bob was doing the same thing with his script.

"It appears it is," he agreed. His voice was calm.

Layla looked around. She went over to a microphone and leaned her mouth up close to it.

"HEY!" she yelled.

Bob stepped over and slid the switch on the microphone to the "ON" position. Layla leaned even closer.

"HEY!"

They heard a muffled curse through the door, very faintly.

"THIS IS PORNOGRAPHY!" she yelled.

The door opened and the nameless man came in.

"Please don't yell into the mike," he said. "We have a script outside in the sound booth, and can make adjustments when we know a loud voice is coming up. You don't have to yell. We can compensate for your normal voice."

"This is a dirty story!" said Layla, her voice level. She sounded dangerous somehow.

"Yes," admitted the man. "This is for our adult series."

"If I'd wanted to do phone sex, I would have applied for that kind of job!" she said, obviously upset.

Bob held up a hand. He faced the man.

"Why don't you give us a few minutes," he said. "We weren't expecting this. We need to talk about it."

The man was only too happy to leave. Bob turned back to Layla.

"There is nothing to talk about!" she snorted. "I'm not reading this crap!"

"Why not?" asked Bob. "It's just words ... lines. You read them and then you're done and you get paid. Isn't that what you're here for?"

"I have a four year old little boy!" she moaned. "When I told him I was going to read books onto tape, the first thing he asked for was one of the tapes!"

Bob smiled. "Well, obviously you won't give him THIS story to listen to. We can make a different tape for him."

"I can't do this," she moaned. "I don't have any experience with this kind of thing. This is ... smut!"

"Oh," said Bob. "I didn't know you'd adopted your little boy."

"Huh?" She looked confused. "Aidan isn't adopted."

"Then you DO have some experience at ... this sort of thing," said Bob. "I mean you had to have sex to have a baby."

She blinked, and frowned.

"Well, OK, but this isn't like that. This is perverted!"

"What's perverted about a man wanting to have sex with a woman?" he asked.

"She's only sixteen!" Layla's voice was strident.

"Your voice sounds a lot like a girl that age," said Bob.

"I'm twenty-three," she pointed out, as if that was a rational response to his comment.

"So you got pregnant when you were nineteen?" he asked.

"Eighteen," she corrected him. "Wait! What does that have to do with anything?"

"I was just trying to get a handle on how much experience you had," said Bob. "So you had sex once, when you were eighteen, and Aidan was the result."

She glared at him.

"Of course not!" she almost snarled. "I've had sex more than once, not that it's any of your business."

"Naturally," he said, bowing to her in an almost formal manner. "But you never had sex when you were sixteen ... right?"

She opened her mouth, then closed it. She'd been having sex since she was fourteen. But that was none of his business and it didn't have anything to do with this.

"Well, since you never had sex when you were sixteen, I have to agree that there is no way in the world you could be realistic in your portrayal of a girl that age, who is attracted to an older man, who is also attracted to her. Yes ... I'm afraid this won't work. I'll have to tell them to get me another partner."

"You're going to DO this?" she asked, unbelieving. He had to be in his forties. Men that age were conservative. She was sure he'd be just as outraged as she was.

"I've got a house payment to make," he said, shrugging his shoulders. "But I understand that a woman of your high moral standards couldn't do this, to say nothing of the fact that you have no sexual experience to draw on for the role."

He was dismissing her! She felt her blood begin to boil. Adults had been dismissing her for years. Even now, after she'd voted in two national elections, people dismissed her. Usually it was because of her appearance, which was none of their business. But this man ... this OLD man ... was dismissing her because she wasn't a slut!

"I'll have you know I have PLENTY of experience!" she blurted.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I didn't mean to make you feel bad. It's just that you're obviously uncomfortable with this. I was just trying to make it easier for you to withdraw gracefully."

"Oh yeah?" she said, unhappy with her last blurted comment. "Then why did you keep me here to talk about it?"

"I like you," he said.

"You don't even know me!" she objected.

"I have to know you to like you?" He smiled. "Why can't I start out liking you, and then change my mind if you turn out to be somebody I can't get along with? Why should I make you prove something to me before I like you?"

There was a knock on the door. The man stuck his head inside.

"Look, I don't really care if you do this or not, personally, but we're burning daylight here. I need to get something on tape today. If you two aren't going to do it, fine, but don't do it somewhere else, OK?"

"SHUT THE DOOR!" yelled Layla. "WE'RE GOING TO DO IT! WE'RE JUST NOT READY YET!"

The door closed with a thump as the man hastily withdrew.

Bob stood there silently, waiting for a few seconds, and then spoke.

"I'll start as the narrator," he said, stepping up to a microphone. "Are you ready?"

He'd taken her at her word, shouted though it was. Layla wasn't at all sure she'd actually meant it. She thought about her own rent. She needed this money. She'd look for another job later, but this outfit paid by the day, and she needed to leave with some cash in her pocket.

"OK," she said, somewhat sullenly.

Bob flipped the microphone on and started reading.

Outside, in the sound booth, Charles gave a sigh. It was almost impossible to get anyone stable to do this kind of work. Perverts loved it, but they were impossible to deal with. They always wanted to adlib or change the lines to match their own sometimes twisted fantasies. Of the non-perverts who would actually take on a job like this, most just didn't have the voice for it. The average reader was in his or her fifties or sixties, and was usually supplementing a retirement with some added income. The adult books on tape promised to be very lucrative, but only if they could get some decent readers to do them.

As he heard Bob finally start reading, he smiled. This one was a narrator, at least. When the girl chimed in with her part, Charles gave another sigh. She was perfect! Her first line, "Hi Mr. Wilson, isn't it a great day?" made him close his eyes and imagine the girl that lived two doors down from him. She was a cutie, one of the reasons he'd accepted taking on this particular book to produce. It happened to fit his own fantasy.

When they took a break for lunch, they'd only gotten through twenty pages. Layla's attitude had softened a bit. Whoever this Lubrican person was, he wasn't what she'd expected. Well, the text she was reading wasn't what she'd expected, based on those few words that had jumped off the pages when she'd first looked through the script.

He had made her character into a sweet young girl, happy, but curious, and in a way that didn't make her seem to be the least bit slutty. And Bob's part wasn't the slavering dirty old man she had expected either. His feelings for Megan were complicated, like hers were for him. It was very flirty, thus far. She liked the flirty feel of it. You didn't get a chance to be flirty very often, without upsetting somebody.

They hadn't actually gotten to anything patently sexual. There was a lot of teasing by both of them, and innuendo. There was a yearning kind of quality to the story, so far. Both of them were tempted to be naughty, but both of them resisted that temptation, at least to some degree.

The nameless man had opened the door at a chapter break. He was smiling now.

"Go get some lunch," he said. "You're doing fabulously. Take the scripts with you, if you want, so you can look them over before this afternoon. I've already got a lot of stuff down that's perfectly fine for the final production. You two are making amazing progress."

It's pretty hard to be surly when someone compliments you like that, and Layla was no exception.

"You want to split up or go together?" asked Bob, breaking her train of thought.

"You don't want to eat with me?" she asked. Somehow, she'd almost believed the lines he had spoken to her ... that he found her interesting, and fascinating, even though he was older and shouldn't do that. There was a funny kind of blurring of the lines between reality and the story they were reading, because he really was older and he had really sounded like he found her fascinating.

"Of course I want to eat with you," he said. "I'm just giving you options, that's all."

"Well, I choose the option where we eat together," she said firmly.

"Great," he said. "Burgers?"

"Ewwww," she said, making a face. "And put all that grease and blood in this body?"

She almost jerked as his eyes raked over her T shirt and jeans. He was looking at her like a man looks at a woman again.

"Obviously not," he said, appreciation in his voice.

"Are you flirting with me?" she asked, unbelieving.

"Is that a bad thing?" He smiled.

"It's totally inappropriate," she said, almost pouting. "You're old enough to be my gramps."

His hands went to his chest and he made his face twist into an agonized mask of pain.

"Ouch!" he said, staggering backwards. "For such a slip of a girl, you sure pack a punch."

"I'm NOT a slip of a girl," she said, trying to stand taller. "I'm five feet eight inches tall!"

"And I'm NOT old enough to be your gramps," he came back, looking like he was trying to stand taller too. She saw his stomach suck in a couple of inches and almost giggled as he tried to look manly.

"I'm a vegetarian," she said, getting them back on the subject of food.

"I should have known," he sighed.

"What's wrong with vegetarians?" she pouted.

"Nothing, if you're not interested in taste," he said.

She knew, somehow, that he was teasing her. She wondered why she found it so much fun to be teased by him, but was distracted by her stomach growling. He laughed and she knew he'd heard that growl.

"We'd better get something in your stomach to feed that thing, before it eats its way out and attacks me."

He took her hand and pulled her, to make her walk beside him, as she tried to think of a comeback. He didn't give her time.

"There's a place up the street that should be able to cater to both our tastes," he said.

Lunch continued to enable her to change her attitude towards Bob. Without being pushy or nosy, he asked her all kinds of questions about her, both her past and present. Somehow she found herself telling him things she had never thought to mention to an almost complete stranger. Like the fact that her love life was unhappily flat, at the present, almost dismal in some ways. Not that she was a raging slut or anything. She just liked sex and always had. She thought about sex as being in roughly three categories. There was "good sex," which she remembered having fondly. Then there was "just sex," which was OK if that was all you could get. Then there was "that was a miserable excuse for sex," which was all she'd been getting lately.