Chapter 4

"Phew. I'm glad that set is over!"

Roy turned off the flood lights and turned to face his nude model Samantha, who was wiping her forehead, beaded with perspiration from the torturously hot lights, and slipping on an embroidered Japanese tea gown.

"Hey, don't put that on yet, honey. The night's not over with yet."

For a second he regretted that inviting statement, knowing he should call home if not make it home before Julie got suspicious enough to come checking up on him. But she wouldn't do that, he reasoned, dismissing the thought as a wave of guilty paranoia. But his job as photographer and director of this bombasting money-maker had a few fringe benefits, despite the backaches, and he intended Samantha to be one of them.

He glanced over the top of the camera at her, relieved that the shooting had gone well and a session such as the one he'd just filmed saved a couple hundred dollars worth of money out of his own pocket. That was truly cause for celebration, wasn't it?

Roy pulled the plug of the extension cord from its complexity of wires and switches and ambled over to his female model who was tying the cord on her robe, as with one deftly practiced motion, born of three years of strip-tease dancing, she flung her buttocks-length wavy hair free of the collar.

"Hope you don't have to be home in bed too early tonight, Samantha," smirked Roy. "We might want to rehearse some scenes for tomorrow's shooting," he whispered hoarsely into her shell-like ear, weighed taut with the burden of her two-inch earring.

Samantha's long red nails teased a claw mark on his five-o'clock shadow. "It could be arranged, honey, and I won't even tell the union about the over-time."

Shelly, the male counterpart in "The Torturous Minutes of Lust" shot a knowing smirk in the direction of the playful photographer and his red- haired model. They caught his cold accusing eye. Shelly shook a warning finger at them and slipped his trench coat on. "Have a good time," he called over his shoulder before laughing his way out the door.

Despite the recent wave of warm spring weather, the night was cold with high westerly winds, the kind of weather that brings in fog from the ocean in billowing blankets. It crawls over coastal cities, disfiguring buildings and landscapes... and the moods of the people who try to see clear through it. Such was the night when Julie crawled behind the wheel of her Volkswagen and headed for downtown San Francisco, toward the Mission District where warehouses and industrial plants leave the streets deserted at night, except for an occasional night guard and his Doberman Pinscher body guard.

She knew it was crazy to drive down there at that awesome hour, yet she was convinced that she was doing the right thing. The only thing to do under the circumstances was to go and see Roy, go out to dinner, and talk to him. She had to see him, otherwise nothing would make sense at all. He was the last stronghold of reality in a world that had suddenly gone crazy.

It was a good twenty minutes drive from Nob Hill to the Mission District, and a glance at her watch told her that she should make it in time before they all left the studio. The last thing in the world she wanted was to be stuck down there in the complex warren of darkly shadowed buildings with no sense of direction.

She could visualize how surprised he would be to see her. The denim jumpsuit she was wearing was one of his favorite outfits and, even though she'd worn it only yesterday, he never tired of it. And, despite her tear-stained face, she'd managed to make herself look pretty good.

As she drove, she pushed the memory of Corby Lewis and of Ertha's lewd suggestion deep into the back of her mind. The fresh air blowing through the window helped her to forget and to think optimistically about the future. It was beginning to look as if her interpretation of everything that had happened was only an exaggeration. Certainly nothing could be as bad as she'd thought. A half an hour later, Julie pulled up to the intersection of Mission and 16th Streets, and she looked around for signs of Roy's VW van. After driving around the block three times, she finally found it parked in a yellow zone. She parked her car behind his van, hoping she wouldn't get a ticket. She was just rolling up the window and locking the doors when a black man dressed in a security guard's uniform, a brace of dogs at his side, called out to her, wanting to know where she was going. As he walked closer, the guard glanced at her and then took a second look. Julie was pleased. She needed a little reassurance and the guard obviously thought she looked good.

"Oh, I'm going to meet my boy friend. He's rented a place down here to do some shooting... pictures, that is," she added with a nervous giggle. "And I've come to meet him."

"What's the address?" he wanted to know.

"Oh, it's Mission--2299 Mission. Can you help me find it?" It was said not out of flirtation, and the man complied out of more than sympathy.

"You're a pretty brave girl running around these streets at night." One of the Doberman's gave a conceding yap. Julie kept a safe three foot distance between her nippable legs and the dogs. As they made the corner, the hopeful blonde walked with her head just a touch higher as she turned away from the man, the building now in sight. She knew his eyes were on her, watching the sway of her hips as she made her way to the side entrance of the warehouse.

"Should be an elevator inside, lady. Want me to wait?"

"Oh, that's okay," assured Julie. "I'm sure that something happens, you'll hear a scream. Besides, Roy is expecting me," she lied.

"Please... this isn't my territory, and somebody'll have my ass if they catch me off the block, but please, I can't let a pretty lady like you go into this building alone... just as far as the elevator." His dark eyes twinkled with fatherly concern.

"Okay, thank you, thank you," Julie was delighted. The guard opened the old-fashioned gate and pressed the button for her. She waved through the webbed-glass window at him, exuberant that in minutes she would be with Roy. There was apprehension, too, for she'd never been involved in his work to the degree of feeling comfortable around his models, especially the nude ones, and for an ominous moment, she felt as if she were prying into his private life.

Julie got off at the third floor and pushed open the creaking iron gate of the elevator and stepped out into a long hallway with several closed doors lining the walls. Tip-toeing down the hallway, she peered at the doors that had no numbers, now totally confused and wishing that she'd let the guard help her find her way. At the L in the hallway, She craned her neck to the side, waiting to hear a whisper or music, anything to tell her people were still in the building: certain she'd detected a faint giggle behind the door directly to her left, she stopped and felt her body collide into something hard and yielding.

"Ohhh," Julie sucked in her breath and looked startle eyed into the face of Shelly. "My God, you scared me."

"To say nothing of what you did to me," answered the suave actor, a salacious smirk on his face. "Can I help you... are you looking for someone?"

Julie let her upheld fingers drop from her mouth and answered, "Yes, I'm looking for Roy. Do you know where I might find him?"

"Roy... sure, I know Roy. He's back there," he returned with a half-laugh that set Julie on edge. "Just go to the door at the end and walk right in. It's not locked. There's a waiting room that doubles as a dressing area. Just have a seat and Roy will be right with you," he sadistically added in retribution for Roy stepping on his territory with Samantha tonight. "It might be a while, but he'll find you."

Julie thanked her benefactor and confidently strolled down the hallway to the door and opening it, slipped in unheard and made herself comfortable in the dressing room where a sofa and easy chair were the only furniture. And those were tattered.

An unexpected chill coursed down her spine as she sat cross-legged on the sofa, her purse at her side; she stared at the sequined bikinis hanging from crude hooks on the walls, the feather headresses and see- through nighties, and tried to imagine herself feeling at case in such a seductive costume. Julie couldn't. A cautious afterthought piqued her confidence; maybe she shouldn't have come here. Maybe this was too private a place to talk to Roy. But she was here now, and no way was she going to walk back to her car unattended.

She picked up a magazine, last week's Time and read an article on how Pornography was sweeping the country from the West coast to the East, and that soothed her abhorrence of Roy's involvement in it. If everybody was doing it for money, she reasoned after scanning the article, then certainly he could, too. Perhaps she had been too clutching with him. A nag?

When the article was read and the magazine thrown carelessly to the floor, Julie glanced at her watch and then at the door that separated the dressing room from the shooting area. At first she thought her eyes were tired from reading without her glasses, but she soon recognized it as fatigue. Yes, it had been a rather grueling day, hadn't it?

Where was Roy anyway? she thought as she stretched out on the sofa and, substituting her marshmallow soft handbag for a pillow, found it welcomingly comfortable. Julie just couldn't stay awake any longer, so she turned over on her side, crossed her arms over her chest for warmth and let her eyes close. She tried to stay awake as long as she could, thinking Roy would be coming through that door any second, but after a few minutes, she was sound asleep, dreaming of a happy reunion with her boy friend.

Behind that door Samantha and Roy were giggling softly, talking over the day's shooting. Man, everything had gone well. Shelly got it up and kept it there, for a change... something that's not easy for any man with a line of lights beating down on his head and people directing him to 'move the right leg left and wrap his arm around her waist... now, lower... lower, so we can get a look at those tits of hers..." God, no, porno films were not so easily done. Now, all the equipment was unplugged and waiting for tomorrow's shoot.

They were lying on the bed now, the scene of today's shooting, still hot and damp with sweat and cum. Roy cupped Samantha's soft undulating buttocks in his hands, pinching the soft flesh between his fingers.

"You are a hell of an actress, you know that?" he asked, getting up from the bed to grab the half-empty wine bottle from the floor near the ladder. She took the chance to make a dash for her cigarettes before they got too involved to want to move.

Bottle of wine in hand, he pulled the giggling Samantha over to the bed, collapsing heavily himself and then bringing the girt down onto his knees. His hand slipped quickly under her robe, rising rapidly to the soft nylon covered mound of pubic hair between her legs.

"Mmmmmmmmm!" he murmured into her ear. "You're gonna get it tonight. Flinging those ass cheeks in front of my face all day," he teased. "Or maybe you would rather I let Shelly have you for the night..."

"Oh, come on! Shelly's not such a hot lay. He's big, but he doesn't know how to use it." She pulled an extra-long cigarette from the pack and let it dangle from her lips, greasy with lipstick, waiting for a light. "Come on, light my cigarette. What do you think I am? Liberated?" She giggled, wiggling her hips so that her bottom came in contact with the hard upstanding head of Roy's cock, barely contained by the stretched cotton of his Levies.