Chapter 2: Dirty Little Secrets

Thursday May 19

Cassidy must have friends in high places because she contrived to be my security today. When I got to the set, Kitty and Anita met me and informed me that we were shooting scenes on an old yacht today. Laurent planned to do other scenes, so I didn’t have to deal with him.

It was an absolutely perfect day to be out on the water. There was a light breeze, which made the heat and humidity bearable. Cassidy looked like she planned to get some sun while I worked. She had on white shorts, a sleeveless blouse, sunglasses and a straw hat with a scarf to keep it on her head.

The hotel had suggested that we not use their grounds for our workouts, so I’d asked Paul and Fritz to find us a dojo we could work out in. I personally thought they planned to play tourist, which was fine with me. Caryn begged off because she needed to follow up on arrangements for the restaurant grand opening. Megan was a big help, but Caryn was the one that knew the whole plan.

When we arrived at the marina, I was amazed at the effort they’d gone to. All the boats that might be observed in a shot were from the correct period. Floating out in the bay was a big yacht where most of the scenes would be filmed today.

Kitty set up a series of scenes where I walked down the dock and boarded a classic wooden Chris-Craft boat to take me to the yacht. I fell in love with the boat. It had an inboard motor that made a deep throaty sound as it gained speed. The artisanship and care for this boat were obvious. It simply glistened in the morning sun. It just had so much more style than today’s fiberglass boats had.

The storyline for today was that I would meet with Stewart’s character, Callum Ascot. His job was to recruit my character to help MI6. Ceci was the daughter of a key Cuban official. Callum wanted Rick to use his budding relationship with her to gain access to her father’s home office.

We filmed on the sheltered exterior aft deck. By noon, I was ready to die from the heat, as were several of the film crew. Kitty took pity on us after I sweat through my third shirt. I started to wonder about Jim’s sanity for going to school in Alabama. I’d been there in the summer and it was every bit as hot and humid as it was in Cuba in mid-May. I didn’t necessarily mind the heat; it was the humidity that was the killer.

Kitty let us all take a break to get drinks and cool off. I found Cassidy sitting on a deck chair near the bow. Getting out of the sheltered aft deck let me get some breeze, which made all the difference. I flopped down in the chair next to her.

“You stink,” was her helpful critique.

“You’re a brat.”

I snatched her hat off her head.

“Give it back,” she complained.

“Or what?”

“Do you really need me to spell it out for you?” she asked.

I tossed her hat high in the air, and the wind caught it. The next I knew it had gotten stuck twenty feet up the aft mast. It had tangled itself in a rope.

“Get it for me,” she said, as she shaded her eyes to see where it was stuck.

I practiced my one-eyebrow look and wondered why she would ask me to climb the mast to retrieve her five-dollar hat. This had all the earmarks of something my mom would yell at me for doing.

“I’ll buy you another one,” I offered reasonably.

“I like that one,” she said, with a little more heat in her voice.

She walked me over to the mast and jabbed me in the ribs when she thought I was delaying retrieving her hat. I tried to climb up, but my shoes were too slick. I took them off and was about to go up.

“Stop!” Kitty yelled.

Crud! She was probably worried about insurance or some other stupid thing they usually annoyed me with when I wanted to do something fun.

“Are you going to climb up to get her hat?” Kitty asked.

“Uhm ... sure.”

“Let me get a camera,” she said, and then hurried off.

I kept hoping the stupid hat would work its way free and fly off into the Gulf of Mexico, but no such luck. Kitty came back with a camera operator, sound technician and my makeup guy. They made me put on a dry shirt and fixed my nearly nonexistent hair.

Going up the mast, I didn’t even think about what I was doing. I just went up like a monkey. I grabbed the hat and showed it to everyone like a trophy. Cassidy looked happy, so I threw it to her like a Frisbee, which she caught. That was when I looked down at the water. I was twenty feet up the mast, but the distance to the water was another fifteen or more feet. I suddenly remembered that I had a fear of heights and clutched the mast for safety.

I think Cassidy was first to figure out I might be in trouble.

“Just climb down,” was her helpful suggestion.

The girl was on a roll today. First, I stunk, and now all I had to do was climb down. That was easier said than done.

Then inspiration hit. Without thinking, I kicked off the mast and went flying. I windmilled my arms to keep myself from doing a back flop. Cassidy said I screamed like a little girl. I got myself somewhat vertical right before hitting the water. Dropping that far was like jumping off the roof of our three-story house. I swear it took several minutes to plummet into the water from that height. Time seemed to slow down as I leaped to my death.

I plunged into the water and didn’t seem to slow down. When I finally stopped sinking, I became worried, because like most people ... I needed to breathe! I felt myself begin to rise and could just make out the bottom of the boat. As I rose, my ascent became more rapid.

When I finally surfaced, I heard, “There he is!” Cassidy received a credit for a speaking role in the film when it came out. I looked up and the film crew had captured everything. I swam to the back of the yacht and pulled myself out of the water.

“Cut!” Kitty yelled. “Get him dried off and we can set up to get it from another angle.”

I said some bad words, to the amusement of the crew. Kitty rethought her request and left me alone. I couldn’t believe it. I was actually thinking I’d rather have Laurent verbally abuse me than let Kitty make me jump off the mast again.

Kitty wrote a quick scenario to tie in the hat scene and we shot it. When I looked at where the hat got tangled on the mast, it was a miracle toss. I couldn’t duplicate it, so they just shot me tossing the hat. Cassidy wasn’t pleased when it ended up in the drink. She made sure I really would buy her a new one before she allowed us to use it. She cracked me up sometimes because I discovered that she’d only paid a dollar for it. She said it was the principle of the thing.

By the end of our day, I felt good about what I’d done. It was much nicer working with Kitty, but I was starting to realize that Laurent was the better director, technically. He had a knack for getting the right visual for a scene. Kitty’s strength lay in that she got a better performance out of us. It was too bad that they couldn’t work together, but Laurent had too much ego to allow Kitty to help him. I think we were all surprised that he allowed her to shoot these scenes today on her own, but he’d gotten behind with the shoot, so the studio guy had insisted they split up.

I tried to stay out of the film’s politics. I would leave that to Laurent, Kitty and Roger to work out. The rumor was that Gabe Francis, the studio head, had had an unpleasant discussion with Laurent after he’d walked off the set. He now had a babysitter and had to play nice. I didn’t feel sorry for him, but I kept my opinions to myself.

The Cuban baseball team had practice today. Cassidy was given the afternoon off and Fritz went with me.

Practice with the Cuban team was a lot of fun because they took it so seriously; it kept me on my toes the whole time. I found that Coach Conde knew what he was doing: it turns out that he’d played on the local Havana professional team, Industriales. He’d also played on Equipo Cuba, the Cuban National Team, and had appeared in the Pan Am Games.

Coach Conde was still associated with Industriales, working as a scout. They sponsored the team I was practicing with today. Coach Conde eventually wanted to manage the parent club. The other professional team close to Havana was Mayabeque, and his team played their youth team this weekend. It was a big deal because the two professional teams were rivals.

Two players on the team, Luis Tiana and Tony Perez, spoke good English. Somehow the discussion turned to girls.

“Is that girl who was catching you the other day your girlfriend?” Tony asked.

“Cassidy?” I asked, and they both nodded. “No. She actually works for me as security, like Fritz.”

I nodded to where he was sitting in the stands, catching some rays. I felt safe with him half asleep, relaxing. Of course, I jest. Fritz was ever the professional, and if there was even a hint of trouble I would have known about it.

“Coach said you were here working. What do you do?” Luis asked.

“I’m in a movie being shot at the Hotel Nacional de Cuba, but I’m trying out to be on the US Under-18 National team. That was why Cassidy was catching me the other day.”

“Is she single?” Luis asked.

“Yes, she’s single, but are you sure you’re ready for an American girl?” I asked.

“We enjoy tourist,” Luis stated.

I felt the hair go up on my neck. The way he said it made me think that he wasn’t the type of boy Cassidy would like. I was wondering if I liked him, beyond some baseball practices.

“So where would I meet a girl? Are there clubs or other places I could go?” I asked, to change the subject.

“I like you, David, so let me give you some advice,” Tony said. “Jineteras are everywhere and you choose what you want. Normal girls can’t afford to go out to clubs.”

“What’s a jineteras?” I asked.

“Whores,” Luis supplied.

I wrinkled my nose because I wasn’t really looking, and if I were, I didn’t want to spend time with a prostitute.

“When we go out to a bar to dance, almost all the girls are jineteras. You have to realize that going out isn’t cheap. The girls call themselves ‘Cuban girlfriends’ for foreigners, and they accompany lonely businessmen on tours of Cuba, escort them to dinner and then often back to their hotels. You need to watch these girls because they will either steal from you or bleed you dry.

“What these women have in common is that their choice of prostitution as a profession is out of necessity. Most of them work to survive and ensure their family’s survival. Jineterismo as a profession has arisen largely because it takes approximately $100 a month to live comfortably in Havana today, but government salaries in pesos are worth, at most, a fifth of that.

“In Cuba, a prostitute can earn in a week the equivalent of a doctor’s annual salary paid by the state in pesos. Outside of the tourism industry, where workers make tips in dollars, all our jobs are paid in pesos and salaries come from the Cuban government, since the government runs all industries. Government salaries for professionals, such as professors and engineers, paid in pesos, total close to $20 a month.

“Many establishments won’t even accept our own national currency because of its minimal value. They only accept US dollars, which makes it impossible for those who don’t work in the tourism industry to buy goods, because they don’t have any way to obtain dollars,” Tony explained.

“Basic necessities are rationed and available at affordable prices; however, the ration amounts generally last just two weeks. Most people either go without or are forced to pay outrageous prices to survive the rest of the month. Food rations have become the norm since Cuba does not produce enough food to feed the nation, and importing food is complex due to costs and the embargo,” Luis said.

“The average family can live only if it somehow obtains dollars. You can understand why girls turn to prostitution. Even men choose to work in the tourism industry. My cousin quit being a doctor and now works as a bartender at a hotel so he can get dollars as tips,” Tony said.

“So, I need to avoid jineteras. Where would I meet a nice local girl?” I asked, now curious.

“Why would you want one?” Luis asked with a smirk.

“I haven’t had the best luck with prostitutes. I just want to hang out and experience what your country has to offer. I’d prefer to do it with someone that wanted to hang out and not someone trying to figure out how to get money out of me,” I said.

“I’d recommend you meet a Cuban girl during the day, and then take her out at night for dancing. I go to Malecón (the sea wall) or Vedado (the central business district), which are both good places to start,” Tony suggested.

“Normal girls in Cuba don’t speak English, and if she speaks English, then she’s likely to be running a scam on you or is a prostitute,” Luis advised.

“What else should I look for to be safe?” I asked.

“Avoid the ‘Havana Honeymoon Surprise.’ That’s where you wake up and all your belongings are gone! This happens with a sleepover,” Tony said.

“You guys make it sound like I’m either going to find a prostitute or get robbed.”

They both shrugged as if to say it was what it was.

“You need to worry about family members if you meet them. One of my friends got into a lot of trouble. The girl’s mother lied about her age. She turned out to be only fourteen and used her twenty-two-year-old sister’s ID,” Luis said.

“How did he not figure that out?” I asked.

“In Cuba, fourteen-year-old girls can have more piercings and tattoos than a veteran sailor. They can fool you, believe me,” Tony said.

“You need to be careful with the police. Cuba’s not like the US. If a girl is caught in the company of a tourist, even a regular girl, they may arrest her. One of my neighbors was arrested when she was caught just walking down the street with a tourist. The police also regularly raid clubs with undercover operatives to watch who girls are talking to, and to question couples. When a girl visits a hotel, she is forced to register by law. That information is then sent to the police,” Luis explained.

On the way back to the hotel, I asked Fritz about it. I told him about the underage problem.

“Take a picture of her and the ID on your phone. That way you have proof she lied to you,” Fritz suggested.

I should have thought of that. That was what I’d done when I dealt with the madam in Georgia who wanted to talk to me. Even if they stole my phone, the pictures would still be in the cloud when they were backed up.

“This isn’t the States,” Fritz continued. “These people are struggling. Today when Paul and I were out looking for a dojo, I bet we were approached by thirty women.”

“You have got to be kidding me.”

“Nope. Several were very graphic in their approach, but a few didn’t give off a professional vibe.”

“I was hoping to just meet some nice girl and goof off,” I said.

It seems my definition of ‘nice girl’ and ‘goof off’ made Fritz laugh.

“Think of it as supporting the local economy. Plus, you’re only going to be here for a month,” Fritz said.

I liked my new one-eyebrow-raised look. That made Fritz laugh even harder.

“Okay, for you I’m sure it wouldn’t take a month. Paul and I decided to just pay for it,” Fritz said, and then blushed.

“How much did that cost you?” I asked, not letting him off the hook.

“Twenty bucks for the both of us.”

Ten bucks to get laid? Hell, I’d spent more on Cassidy buying her stuff. She never seemed to have the money her dad gave her handy, so I just paid for it. I might have to explain how she could work it out in trade. Then again, she could make me cry if she wanted to. Tami was right; my first instinct was never correct. Plus, Cassidy never really took advantage of me. I could afford a bottle of water or a dollar hat. If she had Brook’s or Halle’s tastes, I might have pushed back. Those girls knew how to spend money.

After dinner, I was relaxing in my room when there was a knock at the door. I opened it to find Kimberly Fillmore, my love interest in the film, standing there. She had on her costume from today: a gray wool pencil skirt that went past her knees, old-style high heels, and a white turtleneck sweater that clung to her in the best possible way. Kimberly had been over a couple of times to watch movies, but she’d never come alone.

“Can I come in?” she asked.

I stepped back to give her space to enter the room. She seemed nervous, which confused me. I’d never hit on her or said anything that would make her feel unwelcome.

When I first met her, I assumed that she was older, like most actors or actresses. I’d guessed she was twenty-two. Seeing her now, I thought she might be my age.

She took a deep breath and then turned and smiled at me. I smiled back, not knowing what else to do. My smile seemed to calm her because her smile seemed to touch her eyes now. The original one had appeared to be forced.

Kimberly’s eyes locked on mine and she closed the gap between us. This had the feel of her seducing me. All rational thought went out of my mind when she kneeled in front of me and began to undo my pants. My first thought was to stop her and talk about this, but I remembered what Tami always said. My first thoughts were always wrong, so I went with my second thought, which was just to keep my mouth shut.

Kimberly’s eyes never left mine as she almost dared me to stop her. I raised my eyebrows, which made her smile again. She fished out Mr. Happy and bathed him with her tongue to get him wet. I closed my eyes and enjoyed what she did from there. Kimberly had perfected her craft and did wonderful things to my cock. When I got close to cumming, I stopped her.

“Bedroom,” was the first word I said.

Kimberly led the way as we both lost our clothes en route. I found a condom and put it on. When I explored her sex, she was ready; so without preliminaries, I slotted the head of my cock in her entrance and pushed forward. Damn, she felt good.

Friday May 20

Cassidy smacked my bare bottom to wake me up.

“You are going to Hell, Mister!” she announced.

I just rolled over to give her a show. She grabbed my pillow and tried to smother me with it. I slithered out of bed and ran for the shower. Cassidy waited for me in the living room. She patted the couch to indicate I needed to sit next to her.

“What’s got you up in arms today?” I asked.

“Two things. Did you know that Kimberly’s only fifteen?”

That couldn’t be right.

“Before you doubt me, she and I have become friends. She really is that young.”

“That’s not good,” I admitted.

“You also need to know that she came to you on orders from Laurent.”

WTF did that mean? Cassidy saw the look on my face and grabbed my head so I was looking at her. When she was sure she had my full attention, she began talking.

“Kimberly told me she’s doing what she has to if she wants to keep her role in the movie. The dirty little secret of Hollywood is sex is a commodity. The men with power expect it, and the girls trying to break in are expected to give it out to those who can help them,” Cassidy said.

I felt a white-hot flame of hate begin to burn in my chest. I would kill Laurent. He had to be fifty, and he’d made a fifteen-year-old have sex with not only him, but with me. I wondered who else she’d had to have sex with at his orders.

I’d heard rumors about this practice, of course. It gave rise to the phrase, ‘casting couch.’ What sickened me was Kimberly was so young. If she’d been older, then it would’ve been her decision. It also made me wonder if her mother knew what was going on. I had a bad feeling she did.

Cassidy touched my arm.

“I want you to think before you act. I warned Kimberly that you wouldn’t take this well. She begged me not to tell you, but I explained that you were both my employer and more importantly my best friend.

“I also talked to Caryn last night when Kimberly told me what she’d done. She also advised you take measured steps instead of resorting to violence,” Cassidy said.

I knew Cassidy hadn’t come up with the phrasing ‘measured steps,’ which told me she had in fact talked to Caryn.

There was a knock at the door and then it opened. Caryn, Paul and Fritz all walked in.

“You told him?” Caryn asked.

“Yes,” Cassidy said.

It was obvious that everyone in the room knew about Kimberly.

“I hope this isn’t an intervention,” I said, to try to lighten the mood.

I was not expecting Fritz to take the lead.

“I’ve been in Hollywood for a number of years working for Rita. There have been rumors about things like this, of course, and it’s terrible. I’m not saying nothing should be done, because there absolutely should be something done. What I want you to stop and think about is if you push this, what it will mean to the movie. It will hurt many people if word of this should leak out. And I’m not just talking about the people here.

“There have been literally millions of dollars spent to this point. One man’s actions have endangered this whole production. Before you go nuclear, I would suggest that you speak to people you trust to help you with this. The worst-case scenario is you get sued for a lot of money if this is handled wrong,” Fritz said.

“Right now, we just have what Kimberly told Cassidy. Let us see if we can gather the proof needed before you do something,” Caryn said.

“You’re all saying that I shouldn’t just kill him. I want to be clear on this. Cassidy has told me that Kimberly told her that Laurent made her have sex with him to get the role. He then had her have sex with me. You all see that I can’t just let this go, right?” I asked.

“We’re not asking you to. Just like you did with Brandon, get the evidence you need and then take him down. If you want to kick his ass then, I’ll make sure no one stops you,” Fritz said.

“I’m not willing to allow him to continue to abuse her,” I said.

“Agreed,” Caryn said.

“What are we going to do about it?” I asked.

“First, Cassidy’s going to have a talk with Kimberly and will be with her 24/7 to make sure nothing happens to her,” Caryn said.

I looked at Cassidy and she just nodded to tell me she was willing to take that on. I knew if she was around, Laurent would never touch Kimberly again.

“Cassidy,” I said seriously, “you’re allowed to hurt him if he tries anything.”

“I understand,” she said formally.

“Why does that sound like you just put a hit on someone?” Paul asked.

None of us bothered to answer him. In a way, I had. Cassidy knew that I had her back if she hurt him. I would do whatever it took to protect her. I did hope that she wouldn’t hurt him too badly because I wanted a piece of him when this was done. Men like him made my skin crawl.