Chapter 8B: Imagery

The movie premier that Jake and Matt had been pretty much ordered to attend (their contract stated they were required to make themselves available for public appearances as arranged by the record company — this was without compensation, of course, with only travel being paid for) was for a film called Thinner Than Water. Neither Jake nor Matt knew anything about it other than it starred Mindy Snow and Veronica Julius, two of the hottest young female actors on the movie scene today, though two polar opposites as far as public image went.

Mindy Snow was the epitome of the innocent girl next door. She was beautiful, of course, but in a wholesome, family values sort of way. She had been one of the stars of a popular prime time series called The Slow Lane, which was about life in a small midwestern town in the fifties. She had played the churchgoing, overly religious younger sister of the family. America had watched her grow from a sweet and innocent twelve year old to a sweet and innocent sixteen year old during the four years the series had been on the air. She was now twenty years old and had been in two movies since then, her character always a copy of the sweet and innocent role she'd portrayed in the series.

Veronica Julius was also beautiful, but in a way that was not so innocent. She too had been in a popular prime-time series but she had played a troubled, street-wise teenager in a dysfunctional family. Her movie roles had become ever more risqué since then, with her playing a young drug addict, a young AIDS victim, and the villainous vamp in a horror flick.

"Tell me again why we have to go to this thing?" Jake asked Janice — who, naturally, had been sent to accompany them and act as their babysitter — as they rode in the limousine towards the Bentley Brooks Theater in Hollywood.

"Yeah," Matt agreed, tugging at the bowtie on his neck. "And why do we have to wear these fucking tuxedos? I think I'm breaking out in a rash from this thing."

Janice sighed, her patented why do I have to put up with such uncouth barbarians sigh. "You have to go because it will get your faces in the entertainment magazines and therefore give you publicity," she explained. "And you have to wear a tuxedo because that is simply how it is done in Hollywood. It's a black tie affair."

"Well who invited us?" Jake asked. "Why do the people throwing this gig want us there?"

"This is a film aimed at the fifteen to eighteen and the eighteen to twenty-five female demographic," Janice replied.

"So it's a teenybopper chick flick," Matt said.

Janice actually winced at that description, but nodded. "Yes," she said. "And that particular demographic also happens to be a big part of the Intemperance fan base. Therefore, the girls who will be interested in this film are the same ones who buy your records. Your presence at this affair is helpful to National Records and to Galaxy Studios."

"I see," Matt said, nodding wisely. "So what's this flick about, anyway?"

"It's about two sisters," Janice said. "One is wholesome and innocent, the other is somewhat of a... well, a girl without morals."

"A goody two shoes bitch and a slut?" Matt asked.

Janice winced again. "I suppose," she said. "Anyway, the story apparently centers around their uneasy relationship with each other, particularly when they both become attracted to the same guy. The guy is played by Mark Dennison."

"The guy who used to play the quarterback on that stupid-ass TV show about high school football?" Jake asked.

"That's him," Janice confirmed. "He's quite popular among that particular demographic as well."

"I heard he's a dick smoker," Matt said. "Is that true?"

"Well... yes, he is a homosexual, but that's a Hollywood secret. Don't go saying anything about that to any reporters you encounter."

"It ain't a very well-kept secret if Matt knows about it," Jake said.

Janice was starting to get flustered. "Look, you guys," she said. "This is a high society event you're attending here. Some of the elite of Hollywood will be there. Now just watch the movie and then we'll go into the lobby where a cocktail party has been set up. Try to mind your P's and Q's as much as possible, okay?"

"They gonna have any good blow at this party?" Matt asked.

"How about the bar?" Jake asked. "Are the drinks free, or do we have to pay for them?"

Janice sighed, already trying to figure out how big of a disaster this was going to be.

The limousine pulled up in front of the theater and the three of them emerged into a sea of onlookers. There were dozens of photographers and videographers stationed just on the other side of a purple velvet rope that separated the walkway into the theater from the sidewalk. Flashbulbs began to explode all around them, effectively blinding them as they made they way to the doors. Jake could hear astonished whispers as the crowd asked themselves if that was really Jake Kingsley and Matt Tisdale. A few of the reporters shouted questions at them but they overlapped each other to the point where they could understand nothing being said.

Two doormen were guarding the entrance. They asked for no passes or tickets from any of them. They simply greeted them all by name, including Janice, and stepped aside, allowing entry. Jake was so flash-blinded that it took a few moments for his vision to clear enough for him to make out the details of the room. When it did, he whistled in appreciation.

"Holy shit," Matt said. "Look at this fucking place."

"No shit," Jake agreed.

The entire lobby was covered in plush red carpet. Hors d'oeuvre tables covered in silk tablecloths were located in several strategic locations and featured a large variety of appetizers, everything from escargot to expensive salami and cheese to stuffed mushrooms. The smell alone was intoxicating. On the far side of the room a large bar had been set up (the drinks were indeed free, according to Janice, but they had been instructed to "please go easy"). Circulating through the crowd were two lovely young women in cocktail dresses. They carried trays upon which glasses of champagne were sitting. And everywhere were men in tuxedos and elegantly dressed and made-up women, most of them beautiful. Nor was that even the most amazing thing. A sizeable portion of the people were celebrities. Jake saw a multitude of actors and actresses he had seen in television shows and on movies. They were circulating around, sipping from champagne or mixed drinks, talking and hugging and giving fake little cheek kisses to each other. He stared from place to place in wonder, marveling over the fact that many of the actors looked much smaller than they did on screen.

"Oh man," Matt said, his eyes flitting from place to place. "We have got to score ourselves some pussy at this place, Jake. I need to tap me an actress. Talk about the fuckfest coup of the century."

"Matt," Janice warned, "you are not here for cheap fornication. This is a very public event."

"Oh don't worry, Janice," he said. "We'll be sure to fuck privately."

"Oh sweet Lord," Janice muttered, and then closed her mouth as a middle-aged woman in a hideous-looking strapless dress approached them.

"Janice," she said, holding out her hands for a hug. "How are you doing, darling? Thank you so much for coming."

As Janice and the woman hugged and exchanged one of the fake cheek kisses, Matt turned to Jake and asked, "Who the fuck is that?"

Jake shrugged.

"This, is Georgette Minden," Janice said, shooting them a look. "She is Mindy Snow's agent and one of the hosts of this premier."

"Ahhh," Matt said. "I see. How you doing? Nice shindig you got going here."

"You would have to be Matt Tisdale," Georgette said, stepping forward and giving him a hug and a fake kiss. "I'm very glad you could show up tonight, Mr. Tisdale."

"Like I had a choice," Matt muttered.

"Matt," Janice hissed.

Georgette ignored this exchange. Instead, she turned to Jake. "And you, of course, are the somewhat infamous Jake Kingsley."

"That's me," Jake agreed, submitting to her as she pushed her ample bosom into his chest and made a smacking noise near his left ear.

"You know, Mindy is a big fan of your music," Georgette told them. "She absolutely adores you."

"Oh yeah?" Matt asked, a twinkle starting in his eye.

"Of course, we don't announce that to the public," Georgette said. "It would be bad for her image."

"Of course," Jake said.

"Anyway, why don't you all follow me and meet the stars of the show?"

"Why the fuck not?" Matt said.

The three stars in question were standing near the back of the room, just adjacent to the entrance of the actual theater. Mark Dennison was a handsome, exquisitely fit young man with capped teeth and a prize-winning smile. He was decked out in a custom fit tuxedo and wore a Rolex watch on his wrist. Mindy Snow and Veronica Julius, both of whom were wearing expensive and elaborate formal dresses, flanked him. Mindy's dress was very conservative, almost borderline prudish. It was light blue and completely covered her shoulders. Only the smallest amount of her ample bosom was showing. Veronica, on the other hand, was wearing a skimpy red dress that left very little to the imagination. Her back was bare, her breasts were nearly falling out of it, and her legs — clad in black nylon — were exposed well past the knees.

"They're certainly keeping up with their images, aren't they?" Jake whispered as they approached.

"Well, naturally," Georgette said. "Image is everything in Hollywood."

The introductions were made and handshakes were exchanged all around.

"I'm really glad you guys could come," Mindy told them. "I just love your music." She blushed a little. "Especially your voice, Jake."

"Uh... thanks," Jake said. "I'm glad I could entertain you."

"I think you guys are fabulous too," Dennison told them. "I own all of your albums."

"We only have one album, dude," Matt said sourly.

Dennison actually giggled. "Of course you do," he said. "And a great one it is."

Matt took a step away from him, and a step closer to Veronica, who he had been eyeing ever since she came into view. "How about you, Ronnie?" he asked. "Can I call you Ronnie?"

"No, you may not," she said, glaring at him.

"Forgive me," Matt said. "But do you listen to our music too?"

"I don't listen to music," she said. She turned to a woman who was hovering nearby. "Callie, get me a drink, will you? Scotch on the rocks."

"Of course, Ms. Julius," the woman said. "Coming right up."

"Six ice cubes," she called after her. "No more, no less."

"Yes, Ms. Julius. Six ice cubes."

Janice spoke up at that point and thanked them for the invite. She then led the two musicians away.

"Bye, guys," Mindy called after him as he went. "It was nice meeting you."

Jake looked over his shoulder and gave her a smile.

"What a fuckin' cunt that Veronica bitch is," Matt said when they were out of earshot.

"Matt, please keep your voice down," Janice hissed. "This place is crawling with print reporters. If they overhear you saying something like that it will be all over the tabloids tomorrow morning."

"Right," Matt returned, sounding anything but sincere.

One of the champagne girls came by and offered them all a glass. Janice and Jake declined but Matt took one.

"Is this the good shit?" Matt asked her.

She looked a little taken aback but answered politely. "It's Dom Perignon," she said. "Chilled to precisely forty-six degrees."

"Yeah?" Matt asked. With that, he swallowed the entire glass at a gulp. His eyes watered and he released a wet burp that resonated throughout the immediate vicinity. He pounded his chest a few times. "Not bad," he said. "That is some pretty good hooch." He set the glass back on her tray and walked off towards the bar while Jake smirked in amusement and Janice suppressed an expression of horror.

"Hey, Jeeves," Matt said to the tuxedoed bartender. "Set me up with a Jack and Coke, and don't be chintzy on me with the Jack."

"Right away, sir," he replied. He then looked at Jake. "And you, sir?"

"Rum and Coke," Jake said.

"What kind of rum would you prefer?"

"The most expensive you got," Jake said.

"Of course," the bartender said. He reached down below the bar and produced two glasses.

"No fuckin' way," Matt told him. "That simply will not do."

"Excuse me?" the bartender asked.

"Those glasses ain't big enough. I'll drink something that size in about fifteen seconds. Bust out the water glasses, homey. I want a fuckin' drink, not a shooter."

"Oh my God," Janice moaned. "Matt, this is not the local watering hole. This is a high society party."

"Then these pricks don't know how to drink," Matt said. "Fire me up, Jeeves. Just the way I asked."

He fired them up, taking down two water glasses, filling them with ice, and then concocting an alcohol to coke mixture with a ratio of about fifty-fifty. "Will these meet your requirements, sir?" he asked Matt when he was done.

"Bet your ass," Matt replied. He turned to Janice, who was still flushing in embarrassment. "Don't just stand there, Janice. Give the man a tip. A big one."

Janice kept her lips tightly pursed but did as she was told. She dug a five-dollar bill out of her purse and dropped it in the bartender's tip jar.

"Thank you, sirs," he said, assuming, as Matt had already figured out, that Janice was their servant.

"Matt," Janice chastised once they were away from the bar, "you simply must maintain some composure here."

"What the fuck for?" he asked. "Aren't we supposed to be a bunch of boozing, drug addict, Satanist badasses? I'm only acting the part."

"You're overacting," she said. "This is not the place for such shenanigans."

"Okay," he said. "Sorry. I'll try to maintain."

"Thank you," she said.

He looked around, as if scoping out the crowd. "So," he asked. "Where can we burn?"

"Burn?" Janice asked.

"Yeah," Matt said. "Me and Jake need to toke up one of these joints I brought."

Janice paled. "You brought marijuana here?"

"Of course," he said. "We're gonna watch a movie, ain't we? I don't ever watch movies without being stoned."

"You can't smoke marijuana here," Janet told him. "Go in the bathroom right now and flush it down the toilet!"

"The bathroom," Matt said. "What a brilliant idea. Thanks, Janice."

"What?" Janice said.

The other one of the champagne girls was passing by. Matt grabbed her arm. "Hey, beautiful," he said.

"Would you care for some champagne, sir?" she asked.

"Uh... sure," Matt said. He took a glass from her tray, quickly downed it, belched again, and then set it back down. "Thanks. But I what I really wanted is for you to tell me where the shitter is."

The champagne girl pursed her lips for the briefest of seconds before answering. "The... uh... men's facilities are located over there." She pointed. "Just down that hallway."

"Thanks, sweetie," Matt said, giving her a little pat on the butt. "Come on, Jake. Let's go burn one."

Jake was suppressing his laughter by now. "You bet," he said. "Let's do it."

"Jake, Matt," Janice hissed. "You can't... I mean... come back here!"

"We'll be back," Jake told her. "Have yourself a drink while we're gone."

The men's restroom was sparkling clean and smelled of lemons. Three tuxedoed men were standing around the sink as they entered, taking turns snorting cocaine from a small mirror. Jake recognized two of them: Michael Quinn, a teen heartthrob who had starred in numerous tough guy flicks, and Anthony Rentworst, a renowned director of such teen heartthrob movies. None of the three even looked up when the two musicians entered the room.

"Wassup, homies?" Matt asked them. "Got any spare blow for me and Jake here?"

Three identical looks of contemptuous disgust met this question. "No," said Quinn. "I think not."

Matt nodded. "I know how it is," he said. "The shit's expensive. You can't be sharing it with just anybody."

"Right," Quinn said. He turned back to the mirror and snorted his fill.

"Pricks," Matt muttered under his breath. With that, he reached into the jacket pocket of his suit and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. He opened the box and removed a tightly rolled joint — a fat one. He put it in his mouth, put the cigarettes back in his pocket, and then pulled out a lighter that he used to spark up the joint. He took a tremendous and quite noisy hit.

The actor, the director, and the unknown person with them (we was Conner Bergman, another famous actor that neither Jake nor Matt recognized) all turned towards them as they heard the inhalation and smelled the pungent odor of the Humboldt Skunk Bud being burned. Their mouths dropped open in shock.

"You guys want a hit?" Matt squeaked, still holding the smoke in his lungs. "I'm not a Bogart."

They didn't answer. Keeping the look of shock and revulsion on their faces, they quickly gathered up their mirror, their straw, and their little silver box and made a beeline for the bathroom door. They didn't let it hit them in the ass on the way out.

"Fuckin' squares," Matt said as he passed the joint to Jake.

Jake took it but was laughing too hard to take a hit just yet. "You're fuckin' killing me, Matt," he said. "Oh shit. This is the most fun I've had since we went to that truck stop and you kicked Hathaway's ass."

They emerged from the restroom five minutes later, both of them reeking of skunk bud and red in the eyes, but in the proper mood for viewing a movie.

Even stoned, the movie wasn't very good. It was as predictable as the sunrise, full of lame clichés, and suffered from a myriad of plot holes and suspension of disbelief problems. About the only redeeming quality it featured was the two actresses who starred in it. They really were talented at their trade and the strained and sometimes violent interaction between them came across as the most genuine aspect of the entire production. And they were both quite alluring in starkly contrasting ways. Mindy's character was cute and cuddly, syrupy sweet. The kind of girl who would like puppies and holding hands at sunset, who would wear a promise ring and actually keep the promise. Veronica's character was sultry and tempting, foul-mouthed, a risqué dresser, a girl who thought nothing of giving it up on a first date, or even before a first date. Of course, the predictable aspect of the movie guaranteed that Mindy's character was the one who ultimately ended up with Mark Dennison's character. And, of course, the Veronica character was shown the consequences of the lifestyle she was leading (in the form of an AIDS scare she got when a former lover told her he had tested positive) and vowed to become more like the Mindy character. And of course all three of them became the best of friends and shared a group hug in the end, this despite the fact that the Veronica character had slept with the Mark Dennison character while he was the Mindy character's boyfriend and the Mark character had thought, for a short time, that he might have AIDS because of this.

The audience either didn't notice the film's shortcomings or pretended not to. Everyone applauded wildly when the closing credits began to roll. They even gave a standing ovation. And afterward, when they filtered back out into the lobby and began to sip from their drinks and munch on the appetizers, nobody had anything but praise for the film, especially when in earshot of one of the stars.

Once most of the party-goers had filtered through and congratulated all the cast members who were present, Mindy drifted across the room until she was standing next to Jake and Matt, who were in the process of sipping from their fourth drinks and annihilating the salami and cheese table.

"Hi, guys," she said brightly, her chocolate brown eyes shining in that innocent and endearing way. "What did you think of the film? Did you like it?"

"It was uh... not bad, overall," Jake said. "Your acting was superb."

"Thank you," she said, blushing a little. "And what about the storyline? Just 'not bad'?"

"Well, I'm sure the writers worked very hard on it," Jake said.

"I was disappointed," Matt said from around a mouthful of food.

"Oh?" Mindy asked. "Why is that?"

"There wasn't a single bare titty in the whole flick," he said. "There wasn't even an ass shot."

Mindy giggled. "Is that how you rate your movies, Matt?" she asked. "By how many nudity scenes are in them?"

"Fuckin' aye," he said. "I can't give a flick a thumbs-up unless they show some ass, tits, or gash."

"I'll keep that in mind for my next film," she said, smiling.

"You do that," Matt told her. "In fact, you and Veronica should think about doing a dyke-out scene. I bet that would get you a sold-out opening weekend."

"I'm sure you're right," she said. "But that wouldn't maintain my sweet innocent image very well, would it?"