Chapter 2

Rachel and Don Carpenter were one of the few actress-actor marriages in Hollywood that had actually managed to last. They realized early on in their marriage, that they were almost emotionally identical and a perfect match. Yet they both also had more than averagely active libidos, and knew that for each of them to have a free sex life was no threat at all to their marriage.

Now they sat alongside their pool, sharing a small pitcher of martinis. Rachel sat on a deck chair, a white bikini setting off her deeply tanned body. At thirty-eight, she looked every bit as good as the younger Lisa, but her own self-criticism and fear of growing older sometimes blinded her to the fact. Her thick black wavy hair set off her strikingly beautiful face--a face that had graced the covers of movie magazines for almost two decades, and her body was voluptuous as the day she had won a beauty contest in Corpus Christi and was sent, as first prize, for a Hollywood screen-test. Millions of men in this country and all around the world would have left their jobs and their wives for a chance to get Rachel Carpenter in the sack for just one night.

"She's juicier than these orange trees," the famous beauty said. "Do you think she's ripe for plucking?"

Don Carpenter, whose once classically handsome face had now settled into the deeper crags and furrows of middle age, was still an attractive man. He had aged, but aged well, aged into a look of distinction. He laughed now. "Have I ever been wrong about a woman before?" he asked. "I tell you, she's been so neglected by her ambitious young husband that there won't be any trouble at all. And even if there is. I can change her mind. After all... Farley Greendawn owes me a favor... a bigger one than just keeping Charles Radwin detained for an evening. Shit--he'd still be sitting in a Mexican jail for murder if I hadn't fixed it with that senorita's family... What a butcher that abortionist was! And Greendawn holds all the cards for young Charles Radwin... Yes, sweetheart--one way or another, we'll be getting her hot little body between the sheets."

"I suppose, darling, we can count on that fatal charm of yours," his beautiful wife answered with a slight tone of sarcasm.

"With the right treatment, she'll probably be as easy as you were," he said with a smile.

"That was twenty years ago, my dear."

"You bitch!" he cried... and laughed at the same time. "You know I've improved with age like good wine... Shit... I can show her one hell of a lot more than that ambitious prick she's married to."

"Well darling... personally I look forward to that ambitious prick pulsing right up in my pussy... You saw him that time they came over for drinks... He couldn't take his eyes off me... and was doing everything he could to keep from breathing hard... Christ, we could've made it right then."

"My, you are eager, aren't you?"

"Jealous?"

"A little, perhaps, but I always am--for a moment at least. But that doesn't last longer than it takes me to get into the sack with your lovers' wives."

Don took another sip of his martini. "I wonder how she's going to react when I tell her you have to study for a part and that I'll take her out to dinner alone."

"Good luck, love... I'm going to take a nice long bath and get ready for the evening. There's a lovely little orgy out in Topanga to keep me from getting bored."

Rachel stood up and Don eyed his wife's tanned voluptuousness as she walked back into the house. God! It was a natural wonder, like the redwood trees, how that woman's body stayed so beautiful through the years.

Lisa had been upset at the news that Charles would be working late and she had been indulging in Bloody Mary's since the phone call. When Don Carpenter knocked at the door she was already more than a little tipsy.

"Hi, darling," Don smiled as the front door opened. "Your leading man has just arrived."

"Wonderful," Lisa said. She hadn't been in Hollywood long enough yet for the magic of famous faces to have worn off. And every time she saw Don Carpenter, whose face, cut from fan magazines graced the walls of her teenage bedroom, she couldn't help but feel a wonderful thrill run through her body. "Would you like a bloody Mary?" she asked.

"Sounds great..."

"Say... where's Rachel?"

Don sank down in a chair..." Well, she has a script she has to learn for tomorrow--and they want her at the studio at 6am for makeup--so she couldn't make dinner tonight. But I didn't want to have our evening ruined, so I'll take you and Charles out to diner..."

Lisa laughed as she poured Don Carpenter his drink. "Well, Charles is working late tonight too, I'm afraid... maybe we should just do this another night."

"Nonsense... I have no desire to sit home tonight and watch Rachel read a script. I'd much rather watch you enjoying a good dinner."

He helped her on with the lynx coat Charles had bought her for her birthday, and together they walked to Don's Mercedes sedan. And as they drove down Sunset Boulevard to the strip, Lisa's thoughts were centered not upon the aging movie star who sat beside her, but upon her husband Charles and her marriage. Confused and hurt by the call from his secretary this afternoon, she had no idea how to recapture her husband from his work. She decided that she didn't care about the money, about this so-called "glamorous" life, about anything. As a teenager, she would have given anything to be seated beside Don Carpenter driving down Sunset Strip in Hollywood, but the reality of it now showed those dreams to be the dreams of childhood, not the powerful emotional reality of adult life. All she wanted was her husband back. He had been a stranger for too long, she thought almost desperately.

Was it possible that in the months since their marriage she was losing, or perhaps had already lost her sex appeal? Her mind searched every avenue trying to discover the real cause for her husband's neglect. Of course, Charters career was very important to him--but still, that didn't seem to be reason enough for his neglect of her. Her ears wore deaf to Don Carpenter's continuous flow of words as they drove along the Strip. Laura was oblivious to the bright lights and the traffic, and her mind was already fogged by too many bloody Mary's.

Perhaps, she thought, Charles took her for granted. Perhaps she could make him jealous, and then he would have to pay attention to her. It certainly wouldn't be hard. She wouldn't have to do anything. She could be secretive about her night out with Don when Charles asked her how dinner went. There could be no harm in that.

She smiled and sat a little straighter, adjusting an imaginary out- of-place hair on her head. After all, Don wouldn't mind being used... especially if he didn't know about it.

Lisa had never even flirted with the idea of being unfaithful to Charles. She was more in love with her husband than any man she had ever known. But now, to her liquor-fogged brain, the idea of making Charles jealous seemed like a good one. She turned her attention to the famous man behind the steering wheel. I wonder, she thought, how he is to Rachel in bed. It was a question the entire movie-going population of the United States had asked themselves at one time or another.

"Oh," she said out loud, amazed that she could have had such a lewd thought. Never in her life had she any ideas relating to other people's sex life. It had always been a private thing, not to be discussed or even thought of.

"What was that for?" Don asked her.

"Oh, nothing," Lisa stammered. "I-I forgot to turn the living room light out." She was embarrassed to talk with him after picturing him in bed with Rachel, but somehow she couldn't get the thought out of her head. She even wondered how he might be with her, how he might please her. She fought to purge the images from the back of her head, but they persisted, until suddenly, she hiccuped from the embarrassment.

Don laughed. "How many of those bloody Mary's did you drink before before we left?" he asked. "More than your share I'll bet. Do you feel like continuing?"

"Of course, I want to." Lisa took a deep breath to calm herself, raising her full, firmly set breasts higher, straining against her dress, unconscious of Don's fixed stare at her upthrust breasts. For nearly a minute she imprisoned the air in her lungs, while her face reddened under her light makeup.