Chapter 132

Rebecca, Trinity and Erin headed off to Las Vegas just after noon. But with them, they carried two additional passengers – Anya and Ekaterina. Anya would see Las Vegas again in a few days, she knew, but Ekaterina would be making the only visit she would make for awhile. She had determined after only a few minutes of talking to the group from Five Friends Casting that she would stay in the United States and work toward a resident visa.

Ekaterina and Shelly had quickly become friends, partly because of Shelly's early actions and partly because Shelly was extremely likeable. Anya had flitted around, emulating Tyanna by talking and making friends with everyone. She, too, had developed a fleeting image of staying in the U.S. She would have no trouble getting a visa. She knew her Olympic fame would allow her almost immediate admittance regardless of what she planned to do in America.

But she also knew that Budapest Central Casting would balk at letting her go. She had only a few months on her contract and it was a foregone conclusion that she would re-sign with them. BCC was the best company for her. They had enough connections that her contract wasn't usually an issue. When it became an issue, BCC backed her decision to pass on a project.

She would have to go back to Prague and fulfill the remaining two months of her contract. Perhaps she could return to America when it was over. Like the others at the gathering on Thursday night, Anya felt she was accepted for who she was and what she wanted to do. No one viewed her as a porn starlet. No one looked at her as an Olympic gymnast. They simply viewed her as Anya Kovec, person.

Oh, certainly there had been discussions about what she did now and what she used to do. Those were inevitable. But they were asked in curiosity about what made Anya who she was. They weren't meddlesome. They were simply asking about her.

Coming back to the United States would be good for her career – if she chose to continue in the adult industry. The shock to her parents and former coaches had been accomplished. All had disavowed her. No one was going to come to her to help train the next group of elite gymnasts (or worse, to try to get her to return to defend her silver medal at age 20.) Her life was finally her own – except for the fact that it wasn't. She was beholden to Budapest Central Casting. She was beholden to the fan base she had developed. And she had no other way of supporting herself.

The stipend she received as an Olympian was long gone. What she hadn't spent herself was spent by her parents. She had saved some money but she had few skills. Even the prospect of joining a touring exhibition – like so many of her peers did when their Olympic careers ended – had been killed. She saw to that herself. So she would do what she needed to do – even if it meant doing things she didn't necessarily enjoy doing.

"Have you thought about trying to work out of L.A.?" Trinity asked, echoing the thoughts in Anya's head.

"I have thought about it," Anya said with a smile. "But I do not think it will work that way for me."

"Why not?" Erin wondered.

"I do not think I can get out of my contract with BCC," Anya admitted. "I am, well, I am their biggest name. I suspect that I will have to finish it out. Then I'm not sure that I can do as well in America as I can do in Europe."

"I think you could," Rebecca said from the driver's seat. "Plus, you will have a lot more opportunities here. You can do movies but we could also help you get you set up with a nice web site. I mean, we could do that even if you went back. But here you have other things you could do. Subarctic has a lot of irons in the fire. We do our own features. We do web hosting. We do casting. We're developing an office complex. Look at what we did for Veronica. She is a former actress. Now she has a career and we hope she's going to start taking classes in the fall. That's the thing you can't overlook. In a few years, maybe even in two years, your fame is going to dwindle and so is your career. What do you plan to do after that?"

"I do not know," Anya admitted. "I'll probably go to work for BCC in another capacity."

"Or you work for Five Friends," Ekaterina said. "Help people like me. That is what I hope to do. Maybe we partner with BCC and help everyone. You should call to see."

Anya nodded unconsciously. She decided it couldn't hurt anything to make a call to Vaclav Nagy. All he could do is say "no."

Shelly's meeting with Ben and Tate Benedict and Jerry Goldsmith went off like clockwork. Jerry and his investors had come to a quick decision once Ellen was out of the equation. This project was a moneymaker. There was no way around it. It was going to be shot for half of a normal feature's costs. It was going to have a viable plot and good actors. It would feature some of the fastest-rising starlets in the business. There was no dissent from any of the owners. It would make money.

"Walt says he will have the stuff ready by tonight," Shelly announced with a smile.

"Tonight?" Tate asked. "I figured we would be six or eight weeks away. This is great. How soon are we going to shoot this?"

"The problem is scheduling," Shelly said. "Thanks to the strike, the guys are booked to the hilt. That tosses this weekend out the window. Then we're all booked on 'Cotton Panty Chronicles' the next weekend. We have some womanly issues the weekend after that. So it looks like the first week of July. But that is right before the Fourth of July. We can do it then or the following weekend. We will need the time to learn our lines and to make sure we can handle the dialogue."

"I think we shoot as soon as we can," Ben said. "The cast is still firm?"

"Locked in," Shelly assured him. "If we find the acting substandard, we'll replace him or her. We're going to use Parker and Kenzie as the sorcerer and the princess."

"Good choices," Tate said. Shelly was relieved. She'd worried that Tate would think using two black actors would be a bad call. "So we're still shooting in Vegas?"

"That's the plan," Shelly said. "We're thinking about trucking everything up on Friday and then shooting Saturday and Sunday. Most of us have Monday free because our second term classes are canceled on Monday and Tuesday. That should open us up in case we're cutting things too close. That means we can stay in Vegas for the Fourth. That would be cool."

"We should be OK," Ben said. "We're only talking five scenes. You know, I was thinking, we might keep the actual sex to a minimum. Otherwise, the movie will run three hours or more. It could be a problem if we allocate 10 or 12 minutes per scene for sex. I think we want to really play up the dialogue and try to make the sex seem as natural as possible."

"We agree," Shelly said. "We figure on 30 or 40 minutes of total sex and the rest of the time spent with dialogue and action. We're working on choreographing the fight scene. Walt has crafted us some really lightweight but realistic-looking swords to use. Allie, Sarah and I are taking martial arts classes and the instructor is really helping us to work out some pretty good sequences."

"So you're figuring on editing the sex down to fit to about 8 minutes each," Ben said. "I can see that."

"I'm not sure how much editing we'll have to do," Shelly said. "Allie, Sarah and Adam all think they can keep it pretty close. Plus, we can cut all the repetitive parts. I'm not talking about softcore or anything. We're just talking about keeping it clear and concise, you know, eliminating all the acrobatics and stuff. We're thinking about mainstream sex scenes but one that shows everything, not just the actress' boobs."

"I think that could work," Jerry said, closing his eyes to picture the concept and speaking for the first time. "How many cameras are we planning to use?"

"We're thinking panorama," Shelly answered. "Dazzle has what, four available?"

"With this much leeway, I think we can offer six," Jerry said. "I'll make sure you can have at least five."

"So that is five from you, three from Daystar and three from Subarctic," Shelly said.

"You guys bought three cameras?" Tate asked incredulously. High-end cameras were not cheap.

"They will come to us in a business deal," Shelly said. "We are buying out a small company, Looker Lass."

"Rita Looker's site is going to belong to you?" Ben's voice was almost a half-octave higher than usual.

"Well, not really," Shelly said. "The individual sites are still the intellectual property of the site holder. We are in the process of bringing in the remainder of Looker Lass' assets – including the property we'll be using in Las Vegas and her equipment."

"Man," Ben said, shaking his head, "you guys are really moving."

"That was more about bringing Rebecca to L.A.," Shelly confessed. "She is heading up there right now to pack up most of her things."

"That's good," Ben said. "The few times I spoke to her in Las Vegas she was different. Now she is always smiling. I'm glad she is coming down."

"We are, too," Shelly said. "But we're also glad to see her bring her assets to Subarctic. We're not sure if we're going to keep the house up there or sell it. We are keeping the cameras and her sound equipment or we'll offer it to you guys. It's a little better than what you're using at Daystar."

Tate pursed his lips but Shelly continued before he could reply.

"You do your shoots entirely inside where you can control the lighting," she said. "For inside shoots, what you use is fine. But for outside shoots, you'll have problems because the lighting isn't consistent. She has filters and a more versatile camera setup for those shoots. If you plan to branch out to feature shoots, you'll find your cameras are not up to standard."

"She's right," Ben said. "But we knew that. It's one of the things we discussed and one of the reason we've put it off until now. We'll see how this one sells before we make a decision on going further."

"This one will sell," Tate said. Jerry nodded his agreement. "But this will be the biggest seller, I suspect. We're going to have to watch about saturating the market."

"We want to make every feature an event," Shelly put in. "We're thinking of three but no more than four each year. We want the rest of the industry to sit back and wonder what our little triangle will come up with next."

"I guess we're well on the way to that," Jerry said. "I get calls almost every day asking our schedule and our cast and our budget and almost everything else they can think of. I just laugh and tell them I'm just a silent partner for now. Then I give the number to Daystar and Five Friends."

"Yeah, thanks for that," Shelly laughed. "It's been a real treat. Thankfully we have Veronica there. She handles it like a pro. It helps that she knows a lot of the people who call and she can play them off. So, are we set for the first?"

"I think we should go for it," Ben answered. "I'm excited. I think this is going to be a really good thing, not just for our groups but for the industry as a whole."

Derrick made it a priority to point out to Nancy Drewery the four porn stars in the line. There was no reason for them to stand in a line to visit with Ashley and Sahara. They were there either to make trouble or to say something incendiary.

"Nancy, I will stomp a mud hole in their asses if they so much as smirk and Shelly isn't here this time to save their sorry asses," Derrick promised. "You might want to have your guards give them a heads up."

"I'll speak to them personally," Nancy said. "Maybe we'll get lucky and they'll still be outside when this ends."

The last group was a mixture of the first two. The buyers had already been inside and purchased what they wanted to have signed. Nancy decided to stave off any problems by announcing beforehand that the young women would sign only things purchased from the store during that day. There would be no headshots signed – or napkins or receipts or boobs or butts.

It started a fresh run on merchandise at the store but only a few left to head home.

"We'll take a 10 minute break at the end of each hour," Derrick declared. "It will give the ladies a chance to use the restroom and get a soda or something. If it looks like it will create a stampede, we can alternate. But they can't sit here for 3 hours without getting up. We learned that this morning."

"Good plan," Nancy said. She knew Peaches was getting a plethora of free advertising. Sahara and Ashley had not asked for payment, stating that they considered this a part of promoting the magazine and they'd already been paid to do that. It was a startling idea to Nancy's bosses, who were used to being held hostage for promotional fees and any number of perks to show up to sign magazines for a 50-minute hour. Then they would act like they were doing the magazine a huge favor.

She couldn't wait to get to the office on Monday. She was certain her boss would want chapter and verse about how things went. This would be a story the guy hadn't heard before. Most of the time, the conversation revolved around how drunk or how much of a bitch the girl was.

Sahara and Ashley had done yeoman's duty, in Nancy's opinion. They had made pleasant conversation with even those who were assholes to them. They had smiled and joked to each other and with those in line. During the first two stops, they had signed anything set in front of them. If no one had anything, they gave him or her an autographed photo.

She truly hoped the four people that worried Derrick weren't here to cause problems – but she realized they probably were.

"If you pull a stunt, you'll be arrested and prosecuted for disturbing the peace," Nancy said bluntly – and in a voice that could be overheard by those behind them in line. "And it will conclude the signing. I've already spoken to the manager, so don't think I'm bluffing."