Chapter 25

The next day during the shoot, Joe finally asked Johanna about Tom’s reaction to Piracy.

“He’s totally cool with it, even relieved.”

“Relieved?”

“Like he was with me when he finally let me do my thing. He knew he frustrated Kate not letting her do her songs, but they never really fit.”

“Not because she fucked with him?”

“Possibly, but I don’t think so. I think a couple of her songs are really good, but they really wouldn’t work with our sound.”

“The meetings?”

“I forwarded your texts. Everyone’s cool with it.”

“Even Gary?”

Johanna laughed. “He griped of course, but Tom will take care of it.”

“And Brit?”

“What about her? I think things are thawing between you and her but right now she’s glaring at us.”

Joe looked up at Brit about to become Ariel in a scene and had to agree. “I guess I didn’t mention it, but I thought these meetings, especially the ones with the major label should just be the band and not their biggest fan, more professional that way.”

“Hmm. That might be a problem but I think you’re right.”

“Really?”

“I love her, but sometimes she can’t keep that cute trap shut.”

“I talked to Lindy about it...”

“When did you talk to her?”

“She called me last night.”

“Good.”

“Yeah, so she thought maybe we could sway her staying out of the big meeting by having her listen in on your phone.”

“And I can see her bursting in yelling at the executives. No, she’s going to have to sit on her hands and wait for me to tell her about it.”

“How will you convince her?”

“Like you said, it has to be just be the band for this with you as our manager and Grace as our lawyer protecting our interests.”

“Sounds good.”

“So Joe, you saw what happened with Lindy and the limo and us yesterday.”

“Yeah.”

“I think Brit really loves you in her way, and I think she’s overreacting, and I think she’s seeing Eddie there as your replacement.”

“She’s not the only one.”

“Fuck. I’m sorry.”

“No, Lindy really needs this, and I’m happy she likes Eduardo.”

“Happy?”

“For her?” Joe shrugged. “I mean I’m with Connie and Freja and Connie and I are getting married on Friday.”

“Really?”

“She’s pregnant and that was the deal, not that I’m complaining.”

“Wow. So Friday. Isn’t that animation day?”

“I thought we could take a break. It won’t take long, just getting the judge to marry us and signing things. I thought I’d bring my partners as witnesses.”

“Isn’t Lindy a partner?”

“Shit,” Joe muttered and pulled out his laptop finding the call schedule. He sighed seeing one of the few days Lindy was free since it would be all about the villains. “I’ll talk to her this evening at the loft.”

“Were you going to keep it from her?”

“I should have told her last night.”

“You should have.”

“Just with her freaking out even before I told her about Kate and Joyce...”

“I get it. Still not a good idea.”

“No.”

“Anyway, about Brit and me and Lindy and Eddie.”

“A repeat of yesterday?”

“Yeah. Tomorrow I’ll be splitting for the meetings early and that will be the last shoot with Ariel for a while, so...”

“I get it. You want to be with Lindy.”

“Goes both ways big guy.”

“I know. And Brit gets to fuck Eduardo.”

“You don’t get it.”

“Silence on the set,” Joyce announced.

“Let’s go outside,” said Johanna. “I could use a smoke anyway.”

They slipped out as quietly as possible, probably still annoying Henry.

“The thing is,” Johanna continued, pausing to light her cigarette, “Brit doesn’t fuck guys.”

“Uhm...”

“You are the only one, or were, once we became an item. Brit has the fetish for spurting cocks as you know, and sucking them gets them there, but it’s also a power over men. The guy she chose to take her cherry just hurt her and came, in other words a typical testosterone addled boy, and the next guy nearly raped her until a knee to the groin and an elbow to the face got her out of it. Being with me she can be loved and feel safe and appreciated and can be assured she will be pleasured as much as she pleasures me. We formulated a bond, a pact, early on, to only just be with each other, because face it, she’s eminently fuckable—what straight guy wouldn’t want some of that bouncy bunny—and I’m like a dyke target...”

“Not just dykes,” Joe smiled fondly.

Johanna laughed. “You remember that posing bit in the bathtub.”

“Pretty unforgettable.”

“Yeah, me too, probably the sexiest I’ve been in front of a man, which kind of proves my point. I trust you, Joe and I trust you with Brit. I know she’s loved those times with you, and I don’t know if that will happen again with your thing with Kate and then Lindy, for better or worse, being stuck with Eddie. At least he didn’t steamroll Brit, a big guy like that, just fucking and getting off. He seemed like you, making sure she enjoyed it as much as him. I know it makes sense if I’m with Lindy Brit will be with your substitute, and its fair too, but it doesn’t feel the same, and maybe it had to do with that first time being the first time Lindy saw Eddie’s big dick and got distracted, and maybe Brit enjoyed his as much as yours, although I have a feeling she didn’t,”

“You didn’t talk about it?”

“We don’t really except maybe in a general way, like did you have fun, me too sort of thing. And we didn’t even talk about that generally, in fact not at all, which makes me think she isn’t any more comfortable than I am with Eddie or it was just a nice fuck or something. It’s weird that I wouldn’t be happier with Eddie because of this lack of feeling on Brit’s part compared to her fondness for you, but maybe I want her to have the same closeness, the loving intimacy, as I do with Lindy, like it’s not just two couples making out but some sort of weird foursome despite me keeping separate from you.”

“Sounds like you don’t think it will be just this evening and that’s it.”

“Yeah, I get this vibe that she wants more of this, and I’m definitely not against it, but at the same time if it isn’t about us, if it’s about some voyeur thing, watching Eddie fuck Brit, I don’t know. I think I’d end it no matter how delicious her body is.”

“You guys should talk.”

“Who?”

“You and Brit and Lindy.”

“Without Eddie there?”

“Oh yeah,” Joe sighed.

The red light turned off meaning the shot had been finished.

“I guess we should go back in,” Johanna suggested.

“I need to talk to Joyce.”

“You mean that hot lesbian? Going to try to get her to switch sides? Haven’t you learned anything from me?” Johanna smirked.

“Uhm, I’ve already been with her,” Joe confessed as he opened the door for her.

“You slut,” Johanna laughed.

“It was Connie’s idea,” Joe said quietly.

Johanna nodded, understanding. “We’ll talk about it later.”

Brit bounced up to her. “What were you and slimeball talking about?”

“About you, how much he misses you and how jealous he is. Your ears burn?”

“You deserve it Joe,” Brit frowned cutely, Joe catching a touch of sadness in her eyes, or maybe he was projecting. But the two held their gaze into each other’s eyes longer than would be usual if she just dismissed him. The moment broke and she walked away with Johanna.

Joe brought a folding “director’s chair,” setting it beside Joyce busy making notes. “Can I talk to you about something?”

“Uhm, hey Joe, what about?” she asked, hiding her startling.

“You know about that band I’m managing?”

“Busy boy. Aren’t you working on animation nights while acting here?”

“You don’t know the half of it,” Joe chuckled. “But speaking of animation, maybe you could come by tonight?”

Joyce looked at him as if to say, “Aren’t we trying to be discrete?”

Joe cut through that misunderstanding, explaining, “It’s part of what I want to talk to you about. I know you were on the film director track in school, and I thought you could look at some of the work we’re doing on the animation film and maybe give me advice since this is my first time. That’s if you want to work with animation.”

“I hadn’t really thought about it, but sure, I can see if it works for me.”

“Cool. The other thing is about the band.”

“What you were doing in my club.”

“And feeling extremely unwelcomed,” Joe chuckled. “You know Johnny’s in the band. She’s the bassist, sings and writes some amazing songs.”

“Okay.”

“We’re ... They’re trying to get this going, you know, gigging of course but also getting their music out there, finding a label and so forth. Anyway Johnny’s got some pretty unconventional ideas about how she wants that done, and I’d say we’re pretty copacetic about that. They just did this awesome concert video that Henry directed and we’re trying to get that out there as the first big thing for them, along with a single taken from the soundtrack of the video. Johnny’s got this thing about putting out albums only on vinyl or available as full files, like CD sized files, for download, but no CDs. Anyway it made me think of making DVDs instead of CDs, with the music on vinyl and downloading and so forth, and she was into it. So I thought maybe you might be interesting in directing music videos.”

“Like Thriller or something.”

“Maybe not that ambitious, but why not,” Joe smiled. “And if you take to animation, we’d probably do something like that.”

“Like the Gorillaz.”

“Exactly, although I think we’ll mix in live action for some of the tracks, maybe something inspired by the song, not necessarily just a bunch of lip synching.”

“That actually sounds kind of interesting.”

“You write as well as direct?”

“I used to, but at USC they tended to promote more collaboration, like interpreting a script someone else wrote, though most were written from my ideas. The truth is, my work was better when someone else wrote the dialog,” she admitted with amusement.

“We can definitely collaborate on that because as a director I’m a pretty good writer,” he chuckled. “As far as animating the band, let me show you something I did for Henry but am using on my film as well.” He pulled out a cardboard tube and extracted the original club scene he’d drawn.

“That’s really cool Joe.”

“Thanks. The band’s actually more defined, I worked off of the video to make them look a little more like themselves, although there will always be some caricature to them.”

“You made the storyboards for Henry,” Joyce realized.

“Henry’s more stick figures, but I think it helped him get a better vision of what he wanted.”

“A lot of work.”

“I tend to draw really fast.”

“Maybe you can draw me,” she practically whispered.

“I’d love that,” he whispered back.

“Uhm, hey Joe,” Lindy approached him. He noticed the big, intimidating guy Eduardo shadowing her as usual when she wasn’t on set, and the smirk on the guy’s face. “Can I talk to you for a minute?”

“Of course. See you later, Joyce.”

“I’ll be there.”

He stood in front of Lindy. “What do you need?”

“Maybe somewhere else?”

“Outside or...”

“The make-up area?”

“Sure.”

As they walked to the other side of the studio building, they flirted with holding hands to the point of pinky fingers sliding against each other, a quietly electric moment, but Lindy’s hand immediately retreated, and Joe tried telling himself it was for the best.

When they sat beside each other on the make-up chairs, she told Eduardo, “Could you watch me from a little farther away? I’m really not going to run off, okay?”

Eduardo nodded placidly and ended up leaning on the corner of the changing room maybe three yards away.

“What’s wrong?” Joe asked, seeing her unease.

“Henry thinks I should be working on my fight training more.”

“I was wondering about that.”

“Starting tonight.”

“I thought we were working on voice acting tonight.”

“I know, and I thought the training was starting on Thursday and Friday when I’m not on the call sheet. I’d be working alone and then with the villains.”

“And that’s changed.”

“It was suggested I needed to be proficient, as if it was second nature.”

Joe glanced at Eduardo and saw the smirk again.

“Who suggested it?”

“Turns out Eduardo knows the guy Connie hired and he’s going to help as well. Henry had him call him. I knew nothing about it.”

“So Friday’s out too?”

“It’s strenuous work supposedly, so I’d be done in the afternoon.”

Joe took a breath. “I have plans Friday afternoon.”

“Oh.”

“Connie and I are getting married.”

“When were you going to tell me Joe?”

“I should have last night and I’m sorry. I planned to tell you today, and I guess I just did.”

“She pregnant?”

“Yes.”

“Congratulations.”

“Thanks.”

“Stud,” and she laughed on the edge of hysterics.

“Lindy?”

She surprised him by getting up and sitting in his lap, her head on his shoulder. “Hold me Joe.”

“Of course,” he said and embraced her, kissing her forehead, tasting make-up but he didn’t mind.

“It’s what she wanted,” she murmured quietly.

“It is.”

“And it makes sense in a way.”

“How so?”

“The situation right now is why it’s not me. Anything can set it off. Me thinking I’m not good enough for you when you’re sleeping with other girls or maybe when you’re just you. And it comes down to me freaking out about becoming a fucking star!” she giggled.

“The problem with that kind of thinking is that you’re amazing,” Joe told her, “even if you don’t believe me. And not just as an actress, a star, whatever, but as a person. And you’re an amazing friend, Lindy, probably the most amazing I ever met, and I don’t think it’s just me. Take Stuart for instance, not the easiest person to get to know. He practically wanted a tear a new hole in me thinking LA would be taking away his favorite partner, and it definitely wasn’t me. And Eduardo, he’s already madly in love with you and wants to kill me having you sit on my lap, and seems to be making sure it doesn’t happen often.”

“I know. I know why he set up these extra sessions and believe me it doesn’t make me happy with him. At the same time he’s actually right. I need to be completely confident with my warrior bitch persona.”

“Yeah. Even if he’s smirking like a fucking Cheshire cat over there.”

“I love you Joe, you know that.”

“I love you too.”

“Invite me to the wedding even though you’re marrying the wrong girl?”

“You’re invited, and I guess Eduardo too. Dress casual if you want.”

“Maybe I’ll dress slutty so you realize your mistake,” she giggled. “When?”

“We’re meeting at 1 o’clock at Beverly Hills City Hall. The wedding’s at 1:30. When it’s done we’re heading back to the loft to work.”

“If you say so,” she laughed.

“That’s the plan. Speaking of which...”

“I’m free Thursday evening and Friday however long unless Connie has other plans. How about all day Saturday and maybe even Sunday if you need me?”

“That should help. We’ll see how it goes.”

“Okay. And Joe?”

“Hmm?”

She pulled his lips to hers for a lingering kiss, no tongues, it was about contact and intimacy.

“I believe Eduardo is steaming,” Joe whispered after the kiss.

“He’s not a cartoon, Joe,” she giggled. “I want this. I want to fuck you or at least feel you against me, we don’t even have to kiss, but I need this contact. I don’t care about what Eduardo thinks about you, or me for that matter. To me this is essential to my wellbeing, to be close to you, to be comfortable like this, just us together.”

“Simpatico.”

“Simpatico,” Lindy giggled.

“There you are,” said Joyce, rushing up to them and halting. “Henry needs you on set.”

“Perfect timing,” Lindy grinned, standing up and leaning down to kiss Joe’s forehead.

“Make-up!” Joyce yelled.

Both Joe and Lindy laughed.

Joe got up, somewhat of a bulge at his crotch but he didn’t care, and went to Eduardo. “All yours, tough guy,” Joe said, patting the thick tattooed arm.

Later, four entered the limo and sat where they’d been the evening before, or actually knelt in the case of Brit, already working on undoing Eduardo’s black jeans to get to the thick shaft of meat beneath as if it was automatic. Lindy and Johanna kissed.

“We should go somewhere comfortable,” Johanna insisted.

“The loft?” Lindy offered, her own automatic moment.

Johanna glanced at Eduardo. “Wouldn’t Joe be there?”

“So? I can suck him while Eduardo fucks me with his big cock, treat him like all the other dicks,” said Brit, already pulling out Eduardo’s half hard cock as if illustrating.

“Stop it!” Johanna yelled.

“What?” Brit asked almost as loudly and yet reacting as if Johanna’s vehemence had struck her physically.

“There’s only one person here that actually thinks Joe is a dickhead, who actually hates him and it’s not you! Joe did something stupid, or more he acted like a fucking man being set on by a succubus as defenseless as any other man with a cock and balls and a fondness for female flesh. But its Joe we’re talking about, presented with a frustrated woman trying to rub one out and not succeeding, a pussy in desperate need of attention. That’s catnip for a kitty and Joe being Joe does what Joe does, tongue enters pussy and pussy explodes! And then the pussy pounces on the naked, no covered cock of Joe’s, used to be your favorite, remember? And the temptress, the demoness, the succubus with the gifted pussy that lures men to their doom like the sirens lured ships to jagged rocks, but this is no vagina dentata, this is tender flesh, slippery, smooth yet clutching firmly, letting the man know, despite the rubber, that he has entered a place of wondrous friction, a place which he never wishes to leave and thus she captures his soul. Kate wanted Joe, she laid her trap and captured him. And what does Joe do? He gets to know the bitch, not just the cunt, but the entire bitch. He hears her confession, her evil revealed, and believe me I know Kate loves every transgression she’s ever performed. She loves being the succubus, turning men to her every whim, but then gets bored of their silly worship and kicks them to the curb, but with a last bit of fun of getting an angry fuck, which is her favorite thing. And Joe gives her that right off the bat, angry because of his friend Dave and all the guys in the band and finally this A and R guy where she doesn’t just suck him like you but throws her whole body into it.”

“How do you know all this?”

“You saw me talk to Joe, but I got it directly from the bitch’s mouth as well, lover.”

“You talk to her? When?”

“When you’re not around, obviously.”

“But I thought...”

“That I felt like you do about her? You know we were best friends since before I can remember, and even if our paths diverged when we both hit adolescence, she still makes me laugh like no one else and I do the same for her. She’s still the troublemaker she’s always been and you can’t really say I’m not. We’re weaved from the same cloth really.

“But why do you hate her? You know she doesn’t feel the same about you. Her thing with your brother? Tom got over that ages ago, after Gary it was that lame ass drummer who Tom ousted, and it kind of made it obvious she was just being a cunt fucking with them, literally. And if you think about it, they get to watch that ass of hers and remember tapping it,” Johanna laughed.

“Did you... ?”

“Yeah, when sex just started becoming a thing, becoming the thing I guess, we kind of checked ourselves out, how we felt about each other that way. We’d seen each other naked of course before, and even did the kid thing of looking at what a penis looks like in comparison, but that was really the turning point, watching each other masturbate and then experimenting touching each other, she even knew I was more interested in that than her, and just wanted to find out if she might be interested herself and wasn’t.

“It wasn’t like we were going to be sex partners or anything, we knew each other too well before it became the thing to really want that, especially me since it would have me wanting her of course. It was about experimenting since we trusted each other more than anyone else, but it really was the point of divergence. In a way her life became about penises and mine about vaginas after that, just really who we ended up wanting to hang out with. But we still would get together and laugh about the world and the stupidity of people and shit like that, and that’s pretty much how it’s been.

“It’s the only thing I haven’t been completely honest about with you, Brit, but really, I really wish you’d get over it. Yeah she’s a walking cunt, a conniving and destructive bitch, but enough is enough. It’s not just her thing with Tom is it though? You’re worried we’d reignite our friendship and that would take away from our time together.”

“It’s not like that.”

“Isn’t it with as close as we are? I think it’s natural to be envious or jealous of someone who might supplant your place with me. Don’t you think so Lindy?”

“I don’t know,” Lindy thought. “With Joe and me, we really were our best friends without competition.”

“What about the partners?”

“That really was what it was with Joe, a partnership. He’s not really close to them except for working together. It was different with me with Beth and Mary, but Joe kind of took over, and Beth and Mary ended up with Joe’s partners,” Lindy chuckled. Continuing more seriously, she said, “LA changed all that with my binge drinking messing things up. I picked the exact worse time to let my drunk slut out, not to mention who I ended up with, and Connie happened, no misguided jealousy there,” she chuckled. “And of course she ended up perfect for Joe, and at Joe’s insistence, though more mine I think, after a major hurdle, we ended up sharing Joe and each other. But the bottom line, and Joe’s in complete agreement, it was me that let all that happen. I think I’ve always struggled with a low opinion of myself, depression I guess, and tend to find solace in a bottle. Not all the time mind you. I’ve never been physically addicted to alcohol, but when I’m drinking I keep drinking until I’m lost in it, and my opinion of myself no longer matters. Of course the next day happens and things end up worse.

“I don’t know if you know all this shit. I’m sure Eduardo knows. But it’s just a round way of explaining my relationship with Joe, why he’s getting married Friday and not to me.”

“Holy shit,” said Brit.

“Yeah so I know you think Joe’s a trigger, Eduardo, and in a way he is even if I was a lot more messed up, a lot more depressed before I met him. What makes him a trigger isn’t because of the other women he’s been sleeping with, including Kate,” she said to Brit. “In a way the point is I feel like he deserves these other women, because he’s like this really great guy, right Brit?”

Brit tilted her head down silently in response, so Johanna answered for her, “Of course she agrees and so do I.”

“Joe told me he ended up turning a lesbian,” Lindy tittered.

“I heard and I told him it ain’t working on me,” Johanna smirked.

“I know, Jo,” Lindy grinned and kissed her. “So yeah, he deserves Connie. He deserves Freja. He deserves Kate.”

“He definitely deserves you,” Johanna insisted.

“Thanks. But the problem is I keep feeling like I don’t deserve him.”

“Bullshit,” said Eduardo.

“We know what you think of Joe, Eddie,” Johanna growled.

“Believe it or not,” Lindy told Eduardo, “Joe’s okay with you being with me, not the part about you fucking with my schedule like I told you not to do so I wouldn’t be seeing him, but we both decided to be okay with that because I really do need as much fight training as possible to do justice to my role. And that clever smirk you showed him when you fucked with him didn’t make it easier accepting you as my lover.”

“Fuck him,” Eduardo muttered.

“No, fuck you Eddie,” Johanna growled. “You want Lindy to at least like you and not just use that fat cock of yours as a fucking dildo, you better start listening to that lady you’ve become so enamored of.”

“She’s right, Eduardo. You do no favors to yourself or to me hating the man I love, the only man I’ve ever loved.”

“I don’t know what to say.”

“Fine. Hate him. But let me make it clear, and in fact I’ll repeat myself. Joe is the man I love, the only man I’ve ever loved. You fuck with him, you’re fucking with me. Understand?”

Eduardo nodded.

“My lack of fondness for myself, the symptomatic binge drinking and the slutty drunk and the whole mess makes it hard for Joe to trust me. Partly maybe if I can’t love myself how can I love Joe, except I do love him? There’s two things that make that obvious to me, the first being making love to him which, especially when I’m sober, is intensely intimate along with being wonderfully orgasmic. Even when I’m sharing him, that’s still there, like it’s just us. And second, and more important, especially now since it appears the first is on pause for some time, there’s this peace and contentment just being with him which we’ve had since the beginning. We can just be together, saying nothing to each other, no need to fill in the silence, and it just feels perfect, like nothing except us being together matters. Simpatico Connie calls it.

“But then the self-doubt crops up and makes me want to binge and when I do, who knows who I’ll end up with in my drunken lust. And that’s where the trust breaks down. Not because of monogamy, because right from the start of our relationship Joe told me if I decided to be with some other guy he’d be fine with it, and it seemed fair to give him the same permission although Joe doesn’t tend to stray, or he didn’t until we came to LA and I fucked up. The point was that we should be honest with each other, so cheating wouldn’t be cheating and if we decided to end up moving onto someone else, not to string the relationship along in dishonesty. Being a wasted slut though puts me in a dangerous situation where I’d fuck anybody and not care, including complete sleazebags, or, what happened, Joe’s nemesis. Because of this, because he couldn’t trust me in that state, Joe told me he couldn’t commit to marriage with me.

“And yes Joe’s a trigger because like I said I feel like I’m not good enough for him, like I felt I wasn’t deserving of this role I’m doing and really went into the deep end. Is it curable like a bad cold or a virus that just takes time to leave? Or is it chronic the way a lot of mental diseases are, in fact most all of them seem to be, and the cure is a take one day at a time thing, a month medallion, a year medallion, the rest of my life medallion? Can I feel good about myself, that I’m good enough all the time? Does anybody? Or should I take something that adjusts my brain chemistry every day for the rest of my life, and will evening out my emotions be me or someone else I’m not sure I would want to be?

“Joe suggested a sort of cure for me that actually lets me be me, writing down those emotions that promote my binge drinking and making them visible. And some of the stuff I’ve written have been pretty cool, like these poems or prose poems, though I don’t know how publishable they’d be, that anyone else would want to read them. It does seem to work as a release valve, and looking at them, at these dark, angry words, sometimes in response to their darkness there’s like a weird affirmation, like no this isn’t me or isn’t me all of the time or even most of the time, and I can have these thoughts but they don’t have to have me, like pulling out these words from my psyche and putting them down on paper, there’s a way to distance myself, to move past this shit, like I’m vomiting the poison out of my system. But then I ended up falling off the wagon in a big way and ended up at this weird, hidden rehab place and you Eduardo as my minder.”

Silence as if the others were absorbing the dam break of words Lindy released.

Finally Johanna asked, “Could I see those writings?”

“They’re really dark.”

“I like dark.”

“The notebook I was using is at the loft. I actually started a new one in a notebook I found where I’m staying maybe for stuff like that, for like therapeutic mind exercises or something.”

Eduardo nodded.

“Why don’t we go there and pick it up?” Johanna suggested. “It doesn’t look like our plan for sex is panning out.”

In fact Brit had long moved from kneeling and sat beside Eduardo at some distance and Eduardo had zipped up.

“Sure. I’d like to get a hug from Joe and make my apologies directly to my partners.”

“Let’s get some take-out for everyone!” Brit suggested.

“I’ll call Joe and see what he wants,” said Johanna, pulling out her smart phone.

“I was going to call you,” Joe told Johanna, “but I thought I’d give you some time.”

“Understandable. It didn’t turn out like we planned. We thought we’d pick up some food for everyone. Any suggestions?”