Chapter 136

The three women were chatting amiably and smiling widely when Adam exited the shower. Ekaterina had almost asked him to join her while she cleaned up – and he might have – but she decided the scene had ended and it was time to go back to being friends.

The smiles continued until Mira Nagy arrived in a van to pick up Anya for the drive to Las Vegas. Anya gave Katya a warm hug and spoke some sisterly advice into her ear. Then she pulled Adam down for a long embrace and a kiss on the cheek.

"I will return soon," she promised firmly.

"I hope you do," Adam told her.

Anya watched two of her friends waving from the sidewalk as the van pulled away. When she could no longer see Adam and Katya, she turned back to face the front windshield and sighed.

"You wish to stay, too?" Mira asked.

"Yes," Anya said simply.

Mira nodded sadly but Anya expounded.

"It is more than just who I've met," she continued. "I like how they do things here."

"I fear you have misunderstood how things are in America," Mira cautioned. She thought Anya was speaking about how well her two scenes had gone.

"Not with the business," Anya corrected. "I know it is no different here than at home. I like how their company does things. They are truly friends."

She glanced around at the other occupants of the van – Irena and her aunt from Lithuania, Svetlana from Belorussia, Alana and Sasha from Hungary, Tatyana from Romania and Karina from Estonia.

"I have only met these girls this week," Anya said. "We have worked for the same place for several months and we never spoke. When we go back, it will be the same. We will not have dinner together. We will not go places together. We will return to work and wave to each other on the street. My whole life has been that way. In gymnastics, you do not have friends. You have rivals, people who hope you fail so they can succeed. In porn, we have acquaintances, people who seek the same job or a better contract. You cannot have friends in either place."

"But they fight that idea here. Yesterday, I spent the afternoon with a dozen porn stars. We did not talk about work very much. We spoke of very little that was serious. We just had fun being around each other. I have fun being around this group. I am not suggesting I do not like the others here. But we are all very different and we do not look for our similarities. We focus on the one thing we know we have in common – fucking for money."

"That is true," Alana said. "We could try when we go back."

Svetlana scoffed at the notion.

"We live differently," she said. "I am in Budapest only a month or two per year. Irena does not speak a language we understand. Tatyana and Karina work from Prague and Bucharest more than Budapest. When we return, it will return to how it was."

She was polite enough to omit the fact that the other performers in the van were insanely jealous of Anya. Before the trip, none of them knew her personally. She was simply a face to them – a face that didn't have to put up with anything she found distasteful. The few girls who knew each other before the trip would spend hours at a time sniping about Anya's contract and the deference paid to her by the Nagys.

"I fear she is right," Karina said.

"It has always been that way," Irena's aunt said from the driver's seat. She had been doing her best to keep her niece involved in the conversation. As with most of their discussions, it was conducted in English because it was the one language that most of the women shared.

"But it doesn't have to be that way!" Anya insisted. "I wish you would have accepted their invitation to come visit yesterday. You would have witnessed for yourself what I am saying. They do not compete for jobs. They do not say mean things when they think a person cannot hear them. They ... they care for the others. They did not treat me as a princess or as a pariah. They did not look at what I used to do with a sense of awe or at what I do now with a sense of disgust. They just looked at me as Anya – a person no different from them. They treated me no better and no worse than they did Katya."

The women in the van pondered Anya's pronouncement. None of them knew many people who viewed them as anything more than a sex worker, little more than a prostitute.

"What will you do?" Mira asked.

"I will come back," Anya said simply. "I wish to stay with BCC but I wish to work from here. Adam has an idea. His company does much with other businesses here. It is how they came to work with us. He wants to develop the same relationship with BCC."

"He wants to develop the same relationship with you," Karina snorted.

"No," Anya said. "How can you say that after how well this week went? The men we worked with were all trained by Adam. He and his group find men and women who behave as he does. Today he was amazing with Ekaterina. He has seen what she had done before. He knows she did rough things – just like all of you have. But he will find her jobs here that do not require it. If he cannot, he will find her a job outside this business doing what she wishes to do. He will do the same for all of you. Irena, what do you think?"

The aunt explained the conversation and asked the question before relaying Irena's answer, given with a slight shrug.

"She said he seemed very nice," the aunt offered. "He did not make her feel as though she was missing something by only doing a handjob. From my perspective, I think Anya is correct. I spoke to the young woman who accompanied him to the shoot. She was very friendly but she did not make me, uh, uncomfortable. She is a performer, I think. I believe if Vaclav develops a business arrangement with this group, they would do their best for us."

"But their best is still small web sites," Mira pointed out.

"Today," Anya admitted. "But tomorrow, I do not think that will be the case. I know they have much money and many plans. They will start their own production company next month and produce the features they wish to star in. There is a web site devoted to the American porn industry. You should see what is next for them."

"I will," Mira promised. "But what will you do here if you stay?"

"I will not stay," Anya said sadly. "I have commitments to BCC and I will fulfill them. But when I return, I will do here what I do there. I will work the jobs I wish to work. I will allow BCC to use me as a bargaining tool for others."

She noticed the look on Mira's face.

"Yes, Mira," Anya said, "I know that you use the lure of casting me to get jobs for others. I am fine with that. For some, it is the only good jobs they get. I believe we can do better in Los Angeles than we do in Europe. I believe – and Adam and his friends believe – we can bring performers over almost constantly if I am here to help find jobs for them. We could still do the major tours, like now. But we can do so much more with Katya and me here."

"I get jobs because Anya is willing to work for the same company?" Tatyana asked.

Mira sighed.

"At times," she admitted. "We can make arrangements for others by promising a scene with Anya later. It is not always that way but it happens."

The young woman turned to the seat where Anya sat.

"You would do that in L.A.?" she asked.

"I do not think I would need to do that in L.A.," Anya replied. "Five Friends got a job for Ekaterina when they found she had only one scheduled. They made a call and she was working. They did the same for me. The second scene I did was not because they wanted to work with me. It was because they wanted to work with Ashley Malibu and Cassie Charms. If Mira were to call them and suggest that you might like to shoot somewhere, they would do it if they could. Right now, they might not be able to do it. But there are many places who wish to work with the group."

Tatyana turned to Mira. Tatyana was probably the second most popular star on the tour – a designation that would be fought over by Svetlana and Karina, who both believe themselves to be more popular.

"I would like to work in Los Angeles more," she said. "I believe we all would like the chance to work here more than once a year."

"I will run it past my father," Mira said with resignation. She wasn't opposed to the idea. She was worried that Five Friends Casting was not big enough to handle what Anya hoped they could. She also didn't want to be the one to tell her father that their biggest draw would be leaving for America in a few months whether he liked it or not.

It was a relatively quiet Sunday afternoon when Adam and Ekaterina returned. Only the permanent and semi-permanent residents of the houses were there. The routine visitors were all elsewhere.

As he expected, the women swooped down on Ekaterina to help her unpack her meager belongings – and to make arrangements to ensure she had more things than she probably had need for. Adam smiled as the horde descended and was happy because it gave him a moment to pigeonhole Sean and Walt, who he found playing a video game in the living room at the main house.

They gave him a brief nod when he entered and he waited for Walt to kill Sean – again. Sean was perhaps the worst gamer on the planet.

"You know, there is a way for you to be on the same side," Adam pointed out.

"What is the fun in that?" Sean asked after retrieving the controller from where he had flung it in frustration. Adam quelled the urge to point out the irony in the statement.

"How did things go today?" Walt wondered.

Adam gave a half-shrug.

"OK, I think," he said. "Everyone seemed happy."

"You sound awfully blasé for a guy who just got a blowjob from a smoking hot Russian chick," Sean said with a laugh.

"It sort of feels blasé after a while," Adam admitted. "That's another reason why I wanted to work less. It becomes routine after a while and I worry I'm going to give a really shitty performance soon because I simply don't care. It's sort of sad, huh?"

"Yeah, I'm crying a river," Walt rejoined.

Adam took a deep breath.

"This job isn't for everyone," he said. He wanted a diplomatic way to approach the subject he felt the need to broach. "In fact, a lot of what I do isn't for everyone."

Walt and Sean exchanged glances and then smiles.

"I told you," Walt said. "Before the week was over, he would be here to discuss the pitfalls. That's five bucks you owe me, Sucker."

"Yeah, well, I figured he'd be too busy to really think about it," Sean said, pulling out his wallet. "If yesterday hadn't been canceled, I would have won. In all fairness, he was still supposed to do Anya yesterday when I made this bet."

"Yeah, too fucking bad," Walt said, pocketing the fiver. "So, Adam, which part of your life isn't for everyone?"

"A lot of it," Adam answered. "You know, I gave this a lot of thought before I got into the business. I probably should have given my personal situation more thought than I did."

"Are you unhappy?" Sean asked with genuine concern.

"No," Adam said. "But ask me again in a week or a month or year when Karlie or Erin or Trinity meets someone else and moves out."

"Won't happen," Walt said with certainty.

"How do you know?" Adam asked. "It could happen."

"If it were just you, maybe," Sean pointed out. "I mean, if everyone wasn't as close to each other as they are to you. But they are. In fact, most of the girls are closer to each other than they are to you. Adam, I think it's obvious what you want to discuss. So just say what you want to say."

"Think about what appears to be happening," Adam advised. "Look, let's face it, I had nothing to lose. You both do. If this doesn't work out – for whatever reason – you stand the chance of losing Rachelle or Mary. Is it worth it?"

"Was the risk of losing Shelly – or Allie or Sarah – worth it?" Walt wondered. "I mean, why do you think it won't work?"

"Why in God's name do you think it will?" Adam retorted. "I have no idea why things work so well down there. I really don't. But I am smart enough to know it probably shouldn't."

"We return to my previous statement," Sean said. "If it was about just you – or any single person – it probably would fail. But it is bigger than that. Look, Adam, I think you already know this but I'll say it anyway. Shelly loves Trinity as much as she loves you. Erin loves Rebecca as much as she loves Allie. That's why it works."