Chapter 45: Rekindling an Old Friendship. Vacation

CLAIRE

Claire told us that she had retyped the paragraphs over a hundred times in her mind, and sitting at her computer’s keyboard, she’d physically retyped the short letter over two-dozen times in the past hour. Finally, she deemed it acceptable to send. She read it to us.

Beth – I have missed you, and Joe so much my heart has often ached. I have been in a personal transformation, leaving the adult film industry and the escort service, and becoming more “socially acceptable” To complete my metamorphosis, I also changed my name from Cheryl (as you knew me) to Claire and had some plastic surgery so that my past didn’t haunt me.

I live an upscale life now as an aide and companion to Jim Mellon and Crystal Lee – the country music singers. I even have a bit part in a movie they are making that will come out in about nine months (we just started filming); the movie is called ‘Downslope’.

You asked me to keep in touch. I have followed Joe’s business dealings in the news, and not held up my end of your request to communicate since my transition started – shortly after I last saw you. This email is to reestablish contact if you are still interested in what I think became a beautiful friendship between us. I am not trying to impose on you or ask anything of you or Joe. I know a lot changes in two years.

Love

Cheryl Zaret Now Claire Whitman (my new name – please forget Cheryl ever existed)

She hit the send key with an air of finality to the act. She told us that she wasn’t even sure the email address she had for Beth still existed. A knot formed immediately in her stomach, and she obviously ached in longing for her friend from another era in her life, and from a hope either Beth or Joe wouldn’t reject her. “I guess this is what unrequited love feels like,” she said, but then doubled over in psychic pain as tears came to her eyes again.

We’d all urged her to reestablish contact with people she’d fallen in love with in her past. She hadn’t been reluctant except her fear that they would see her as a gold digger.

Claire’s own parents had rejected her once they realized the life she’d adopted – a call girl or escort, and a porn star. The day had been traumatic and not so long ago – six years. They’d been so strict with her growing up, almost forbidding her to date. She’d been screwed down so tightly that the lid blew off when she left home to attend college. After a short time at a university and living on her own as an oversexed party girl, she got into the porn business and through that became a high-end call girl – an escort, a better name, and less offensive than whore.

She never told her parents how she earned her money to help put herself through school. She’d been working as a waitress, and alluded to getting an even better job at a top restaurant where the tips could be extraordinary. In fact, the tips she got as an escort often turned out to be over a thousand dollars. She took little solace knowing that she’d done well in that business.

She never knew how her parents discovered what she was doing. One day they knocked on her door, she opened it, got called names, disowned, warned to never make contact again, and had every remnant of her life with her parents dropped in plastic trash bags on her doorstep. For all intensive purposes, she was dead to her parents and they were dead to her.

The ultimate rejection had been hard to take. She’d cried for a while, but then when she tried to remember the good times with her parents she couldn’t. There were so few she could count them on her fingers; they included a particular birthday, two Christmases, a day trip to Disneyland. The lasting image of them was one of rules and strict discipline.

Had there been more, but she blocked them out? She shook her head. No, her parents were not really parents. Everything had a rule. If you obeyed the rules, you didn’t get a swat or two on your rear end. If you broke a ‘major’ rule, you had the hide on your ass made raw by the beating. Her plastic surgeon told her he could still see the scars from various beatings with a belt.

Her parents should never have had a child.

She met Beth and Joe through the escort work she was doing. Joe Mansard was a multi-billionaire and business tycoon. He headed a worldwide empire and probably had more power than the Federal government. His wealth exceeded the GNP of all but the top two-dozen countries.

Beth was Joe’s daughter – a beautiful blonde near her own age who had an incestuous relationship with her father, and a loving sapphic relationship with Claire. Beth had been a rare exception in Cheryl’s (Claire’s) escort business: ninety-nine percent of her business had been men until Beth showed up to check out Claire’s ‘acceptability’ for her father. Her father relished seeing Beth and Claire together doing sexual acts to each other – and later in the relationship, making love together.

Like Claire, Beth was a nymphomaniac. Claire thought she had few boundaries as far as sex went and never a problem with quantity, but Beth found those boundaries, blew most of them away in torrid sessions that sometimes went on for an entire weekend with endless orgasms given and received – more than Claire had ever dreamed of.

Joe was a middle-aged stallion, and a man who could easily and simultaneously satisfy two women. A hallmark of the man, besides his flamboyant personality, included his ability to recover in record time after having climaxed. Further, and repeatedly, Joe would have pasted the inside of Claire’s vagina with a copious amount of semen, only to extract himself after his orgasm and instantly repeat the process on Beth. Less than an hour later, he could repeat this feat on the two of them again.

The dealings with Claire – or Cheryl as she had been back then – had started on a business basis, with simple payments going to Andre, her ‘associate’ – read ‘pimp’ under synonyms. Almost as soon as they’d started, Claire would find generous bonuses given to her in some manner. These included an endless stream of high-end clothing, shoes, and jewelry that she and Beth would shop for in the nicest stores in the LA area. Later, Beth presented Claire with a Swiss bank account with what she called some ‘starter cash’ in it - $50,000. Over time, as the frequency of their interactions increased, the amount in that bank account rose to over $500,000. Claire had tried to return the money, and avowed over and over to the couple that she didn’t need it. She told Beth and even Joe that the sums were over the top and embarrassed her, but they would have none of her complaining. After many months, she just started to say ‘Thank you for your generosity’.

The business basic changed, too. As an escort, if she were treated all right, Cheryl could enjoy herself and grew to like some of her regulars, but there were few of them. Beth and Joe were an exception; she fell in love with them – an emotion she hadn’t properly labeled until they had disappeared out of her life for an extended stay in Asia as Joe negotiated and managed in a multi-billion-dollar telecommunications deal that instantly made over a billion dollars in profit for his new subsidiary – probably just because he was the chairman of the new company.

Not long after her last weekend with Beth and Joe, Jill Danes, the movie star, had engaged Cheryl to help her get a part in a movie. Jill fucked the brains out of a Hollywood producer who put her on the road to stardom, while Cheryl fucked the daylights out of his brother. Jill liked Cheryl, and after some long talks helped her leave the adult film and escort business, and become Claire. Jill helped with the name change, got her a shrink to undo the damage her parents had perpetrated on her and raised her self-esteem, dyed her hair a gorgeous red, encouraged her to use plastic surgery to leave Cheryl far behind, and hired her as her assistant and aide. Claire lived with Jill for almost two years before getting her own condo. The pair occasionally enjoyed sex together, but mostly, Jill preferred a good fuck from a male acquaintance. As part of her penance, Claire abstained from sex with men during her make over period and then returned to the field as a normal, healthy woman in her mid-twenties.

Not long after her new independence, Jill got a part in a movie with country singer Jim Mellon. Claire got introduced through Jill, and soon found herself in a swoon over the rising country music and movie star. It wasn’t long at all after that when Jill hosted a dinner party during which she orchestrated some group sex games. Claire let herself go, enjoying the small orgy, and savoring the sexual intercourse with Mellon.

Jim made her heart beat fast. The night of the orgy was all it took for her to fall the rest of the way for him. In a weak and risky moment, she’d even hinted at her ‘love at first sight’ feeling for him. She also had warm feelings for Ellen, Crystal Lee’s sister and Jim’s consort at the party. Less than a week later, because the feelings were mutual and with Jill’s blessing, Claire moved in with Jim and Ellen at their LA hotel, and had become part of their loving circle ever since.

The sex was mind blowing. Seldom did Jim sleep with only one woman. Claire felt honored and grateful that she joined Ellen as one of his usual and frequent bedside partners.

Jim had often referred to her as ‘Mysterious Claire.’ He saw the obvious; that she had a dark past she hadn’t shared with him or the others in the circle. One night, while they were on the road at a concert, the need to talk about her past as porn star Breezy Cummins and as high-class whore Cheryl Zaret overcame her, and she blurted out her whole sordid past amid a shower of tears.

Claire expected rejection, but instead got the heaviest dose of love and affection from everyone in the circle: Jim – especially, Ellen – her best friend, Crystal, Billy – the band leader, Dan – Jim and Crystal’s publicist, and Terry – their agent. To her amazement, everyone took her past in stride, made no big deal of it, and everyone loved her just as they had – maybe a little more now that she’d made herself vulnerable to them. The revelations she’d shared had been so unburdening. And, after that night of truth telling, everyone had been careful to never tell anyone else and to only enjoy the sexy stories they often encouraged her to share – even her relationship with Beth and Joe that she told in a disguised way one night.

Crystal and Ellen had been the ones to push her to reestablish contact. Ellen had said, “If you feel love for them, I bet they felt the same way about you. Make contact. Don’t put it off another day.” Claire worried about rejection or being seen as a gold digger, but she had finally suppressed those thoughts enough to try to reestablish contact.

A thousand thoughts about her past flashed through Claire’s head. She stared, glassy eyes, at the blank computer screen.

PING!

The sound of a new email message arriving in her in-box roused Claire from her reverie. She gawked at the sender: Beth Mansard. Claire’s heart started to flutter and a wave of anxiety swept over her.

Claire closed her eyes and prayed as she opened the email.

’Cheryl – or Claire, I should say; we have missed you so much. Your old associate Andre said you just vanished one day. We did a little search to no avail. I can’t wait to see you again, and I know Joe feels the same way. MY GOD, WE MISS YOU. WE LOVE YOU. WE REALLY DO LOVE YOU. Please don’t go away again. We’re in Singapore but will be back next week for a week in LA. More later. Love. Beth.’

Claire stared at the message for a long time, the words eventually blurring as the tears came – the tears of happiness. She started to sob. The tears wouldn’t stop, and the soggy tissues piled up on her desk.

PING!

Claire’s next message came from J. Mansard. She struggled to read through her watery eyes.

’Claire – Beth just shared with me your new life – as much as she knows from your email. I am very happy that you contacted us. Don’t you dare disappear again now that we’ve ‘found’ you. I join her in wanting to see you as soon as we can. Love, Joe.’

Now, the tears really flowed and turned into deep, chest racking sobs. Claire just sat there with her face in her hands, and after a while two masculine arms surrounded her, lifted her up, and carried her small form from her desk to the bed. She felt kisses on her forehead. Two female arms soon started to stroke and smooth her arms to comfort her. Two new arms more brought a warm washcloth and more tissues. The arms and bodies surrounded Claire with love.

Crystal said in a soft, loving voice, “I’m so proud you did it. I know that took a lot of courage to reach back into that period of your life, and see ... they still love you. We all love you.”

Ellen said in a near whisper, “You left the emails open on your computer. We read them. I hope that’s all right; we didn’t mean to pry, but we wanted to see what was there that had set you off.”

Claire just nodded her ascent. She blubbered out, “It’s OK. I don’t have secrets from you any more.”

Jim cradled Claire in his lap, her head and mane of reddish hair lying on his broad chest. Eventually, the tears stopped. Jim just sat and held one of the women he loved so much.

Claire watched the Gulfstream G650LR taxi into the general aviation Landmark Aviation terminal at LAX. The Mansard chauffeur had chatted with her for the past half hour since she arrived. He knew the plane, and regaled her with some of the statistics about it, including the point that it was the fastest corporate jet in operation. It cost about $65 million and was state of the art. The ‘LR’ designation, meant that the plane had been outfitted with extra fuel tanks for Long Range operations.

The long sleek pure white jet taxied into a position indicated by two linemen waving red-lighted batons at the jet. Claire noticed the plane’s tail number, JM1 – Joe Mansard One. She smiled; Joe did have an ego as large as the airport, no doubting that. He demanded perfection, and got it. He helped people achieve a greatness they didn’t think they could.

After the engines shut down, the door just behind the cockpit mechanically opened, and hydraulically lowered a stairway into position.

I hadn’t noticed, but the chauffeur had disappeared, only to reappear driving the white limousine near the jet’s stairway.

Claire walked about a hundred feet closer to the jet from the impressive airside entrance to the GA terminal building. She stopped, feeling the steady wind across the airport billowing her dress out behind her.

Beth appeared in the doorway, preoccupied with one of the crew members. Claire imagined her thanking the crew for a flawless journey across the Pacific Ocean. Beth had emailed her with their arrival time and where they’d be.

As Beth started down the ladder, Claire waved frantically. Across the tarmac, Claire could see Beth’s face break into a huge grin. Beth flung her briefcase at the chauffeur and ran across the concrete with arms outstretched until the two women were together and smothering each other in kisses.

“My God, you look so different. Is this really you, Cheryl? I mean Claire.”

Claire laughed, “Yes, it’s me. Sorry, I have changed ... I hope you’ll like the new me.”

Beth interrupted, “You looked beautiful before, but now you are absolutely stunning. I can see a little of the old you, but I love the new you. Joe will be ecstatic.” Beth looked over her shoulder to see whether her father had appeared from inside the jet. Joe was such an imposing individual that everyone genuflected even their thoughts to him.

Over Beth’s shoulder, Claire saw Joe moving down the stairway of the plane in a commanding stride. He spied the two women, and ignoring the chauffeur started to walk rapidly in their direction. Claire’s immediate thought was, ‘Oh, my, he’s coming to me. I should be going to him.’

Beth read her mind; she said in a low voice, “Just stand still. Joe has missed you more than you’ll ever know.”

Joe stopped about ten feet from Claire. He studied her from head to foot. Claire wore the pale blue summer dress that Joe once told her was his favorite. White spike heel shoes graced her feet, and she wore a strand of real pearls from Japan that Joe had given her on her birthday one year. Her red hair glistened in the light.