The camera came in closer, framing Anna being penetrated from both ends, her eyes shut in a straining ecstasy. The two cocks fell into a rhythm, and her slender body tensed to the beat of the men fucking her mouth and cunt. David was saying, “That’s it, baby. That’s it. Suck me.” Then the coworker broke step, fucking her faster and faster, his hips working intently, gaining a frenzied impetus. She moaned, her mouth twisting on her husband’s cock.
Watching, Emily began to feel a nagging sadness. It was partly the idea of having a husband—someone who would be working with her to make a happy life. Although she immediately felt it was silly, she imagined Anna and David going through life together, developing their own ways of solving problems like the problem of desiring other people. They were committed to each other (meanwhile, David had moved around behind his wife, taking the coworker’s place, and was applying oil to his dick, preparing to penetrate her anally; she looked over her shoulder, half-dazed, half-coy); they were committed to accepting each other for what they were.
As she thought this, in the corner of her eye, she saw the redheaded girl in the corner get up suddenly and head for the door. At that moment, something twinged in her memory, and she said to herself,
That’s Zaza.
Jared looked back, his face anxious. He met Emily’s eye and mouthed something at her, nodding at the departing girl. Emily couldn’t see what he was saying, but it was obvious he wanted her to follow Zaza, catch her. . . .
She got to her feet, glad to be able to do something, anything, for someone else. Her shame eased ever so slightly as she followed Zaza out the door. After the darkened studio, the corridor’s light was almost painful. It took her a second to adjust. By then the girl was turning a corner, and she found herself running in pursuit. As she rounded the corner, Zaza was opening the door to the stairwell. Emily called out, “Hey! Wait for me!”
Zaza froze and looked back frowning at her, bewildered. Then her face softened into a faintly starstruck expression. “Oh, is it . . . Emily Lister? Hi. I mean . . . hi.”
“I’m a friend of Jared’s,” Emily said, as if that would explain everything. But the bewildered expression returned to the girl’s face, accompanied by a shadow of guilt.
She said, “I wasn’t . . . I just wanted to thank him. And he was busy, so I guess I chickened out. I don’t know what I was doing.”
Emily laughed. “You mean you snuck in there?”
Zaza shrugged. “I’m great at sneaking in places I’m not supposed to be.”
Emily walked up to join her. As she did, she admired the other girl. She had a coltish vulnerability about her that made her pale, angular face extraordinarily appealing. Her slenderness was quintessentially youthful, and the addition of that silky, blazing hair was enough to make the sensitivity of her face wonderfully sensual. She was a girl “made to be kissed,” as they used to say. She could understand why Jared thought about her all the time, even when he was watching more conventionally pretty girls having sex.
“Would you come and talk to me?” Emily asked. “We can go to Jared’s dressing room and wait for him.”
“Oh!” Zaza blushed, looking helplessly thrilled. “But does he want to see me . . . I mean, I could write him a note. I just . . .”
“Don’t worry,” Emily said, smiling. “I think he wants to see you.”
Emily had had the key to Jared’s dressing room for a year, and he had the key to hers. Each of them used the other’s dressing room as a place to hide out sometimes, or just as a place of comfort. Surrounded by Jared’s clothes and books, listening to his CDs, Emily felt as if she was in a safe zone outside of her own life. Entering there now, she felt such a wave of relaxation that she was surprised to notice Zaza creeping in anxiously, obviously overawed.
There wasn’t much to be awed by. Jared’s taste ran to floppy old furniture and Rolling Stones posters—unframed, attached to the wall with tacks. He was surprisingly neat, but that meant extremely tidy rows of thriller novels on the floor against one wall, and a little arrangement of carefully dusted figurines that included a Gumby and Pokey and a warrior brandishing a sword. The latter was Tenedor, Jared’s half-elf Dungeons & Dragons character, from when he was an awkward thirteen-year-old. Sometimes Emily still called him by that name.
“God,” Zaza sighed. “This is so incredibly cool. It’s like, you know it’s full of molecules from his body.”
Emily laughed. “You mean, dead skin?”
Zaza walked over to a worn old armchair nervously. “Is it okay if I sit down?”
“Of course.”
Zaza sat carefully in the chair, stroking its arms with a wondering tenderness.
“You know, that’s the chair Jared met Babylona in. I mean, when he met her, that was where . . .” Emily briefly told the story of Jared’s first meeting with Babylona, feeling a little self-conscious; it probably wasn’t the best story to tell a young girl with a crush on one of the characters.
But Zaza followed it with rapt attention, and then said, “Babylona is amazing. I haven’t met her yet. Is she still like that?”
“
Exactly
like that,” Emily said darkly.
“You say that like it’s a bad thing. Is it bad? I mean, how is it bad?”
Emily considered. While she still had a lot of affection, and even grudging admiration, for her boss, there was also a certain imperviousness about her. Babylona didn’t fully accept that other people could be different from her and have different needs. As far as Babylona was concerned, everyone was just pretending that they didn’t want to have sex all the time with any good-looking stranger. Once she reassured them that it was okay, they should give up pretending and have sex all the time—especially with her.
“Well,” said Emily, sitting down on the sofa, “you know when you go to a restaurant, and at the end of the meal, you’re too full for dessert, but the person you’re with keeps insisting you have dessert, and saying that they’ll pay for it, and that they know you want dessert, and that you don’t have to lose weight, and all the time you
actually don’t want dessert,
but eventually you give in and get dessert? And then you feel really sick?”
“Oh, no, I always want dessert.”
Emily laughed again. “Well, you two should get along great.”
Zaza leaned forward, frowning intently. “Listen, do you ever have crushes on people you hardly know? Like, serious crushes?”
It was on the tip of Emily’s tongue to say no. But then she thought of Ralph and blushed. “Sure . . . once or twice.”
“Because I was just on this show,
Home of X,
I guess you probably know it, and I was doing okay. I mean, I got through the first vote and everybody seemed to like me. But then I began to just think about this guy all the time. I mean, a guy who wasn’t in the
Home of X
house. And then, even though I was still having a good time, I just kept thinking about how long I’d be away from him. I mean, everything was perfect, but it was ruined just because he wasn’t there. . . .”
“Then?”
“Oh, then Janice—this other girl in
Home of X—
set the place on fire trying to make vegetable curry. I mean, it actually burned to the ground, which looked fishy. But it really wasn’t me—I’m not the kind of person who would, like, commit arson just to see some guy I had a crush on. I mean, I am that kind of person, but I didn’t have to, ’cause Janice really burned the house down. Last night. I’m really tired, actually. Maybe that’s why I’m not making much sense.”
Emily made a mental note to watch
Home of X
when she got home. “Well, would it make you less tired if I told you that Jared has a crush on you?”
In a flash, Zaza was on her feet, staring at Emily dumbstruck. She swallowed and nodded slowly.
Emily said, “ ’ Cause Jared has a crush on you. One of those crushes you get on people you don’t really know.”
“Oh, of course!” Zaza blurted. “Because if he knew me, he wouldn’t . . . oh, God. And he’s coming here?”
With a pang, Emily realized that she wasn’t going to get to see Jared that night. No ice cream, no lazy confidences, no thirtieth viewing of
The Godfather: Part II.
Perhaps it was just as well. It was time she faced whatever was troubling her and decided what to do about it. If anything could still be done. She said, “Yes, he’s coming here. Or he will be once I text him and tell him you’re waiting.”
Zaza stared as Emily pulled out her cell phone. She said, “Um, but what if he doesn’t, and then I know he didn’t on purpose? If he
doesn’t
want to see me, I mean.”
Emily was punching in the message.
“ ’ Cause,” Zaza babbled, “then I’d know. And sometimes when you have a crush, it’s better not to know, so you can keep hoping and having a dream that . . .”
“That’s not going to happen,” said Emily, frowning over her phone. She held it up to show Zaza the screen:
zaza in d. room xxx e.
“Oh,” said Zaza. “Yes, I guess you’d better. I mean, if he comes . . .”
Emily hit SEND. Then she was smiling up at Zaza, who had already started staring at the door, waiting for Jared to appear.
“Okay,” said Emily. “I think I’d better go before I magically turn into a third wheel.”
Zaza nodded dumbly. Her girlishness had become so intense that Emily could barely restrain herself from hugging Zaza, patting her on the head. . . . She confi ned herself to saying, “You know, it was really great meeting you.”
At this, Zaza turned to her with immediate, touching gratitude. “You mean it? I’m not hopelessly . . . stupid?”
“Not at all hopelessly stupid,” Emily said, getting up and moving to the door. “And you’ll see. He’s going to have
more
of a crush on you as he gets to know you.”
Zaza smiled, dazed. “You’re so wonderful. God, I hope you’re as happy as you deserve to be. I mean, I always used to hope that when I watched your show. I always knew you’d be so wonderful in person.”
“Thanks,” Emily said awkwardly. Then she was slipping out, feeling an odd lump in her throat. She didn’t know exactly why this girl’s opinion of her should matter so much, but it did. She could imagine her own TV persona through Zaza’s eyes—a sensitive but poised woman, always affectionate toward her guests . . . a woman who deserved to be happy. She was feeling a resurgence of her self-confidence as she made her way down the corridor toward her own dressing room—and ran smack into Ralph Anderman.
ELEVEN
N
either of them said a word. She had run up against him and then stepped back, with her hand on his shoulder to steady herself. He looked down at her but she couldn’t read his expression; she was too lost in the shock of seeing him. It made her realize that she’d been picturing him almost nonstop for days.
He was taller than she remembered, or perhaps it was that she was barefoot and he was wearing shoes. He should have been just another handsome man, like all the handsome men she worked with every day. But there was something else, a brooding energy she always felt just beneath his calm manner. It was a definitive masculinity in his presence that made her feel that his experience must be subtly different from hers. His emotions were male emotions; his thoughts were male thoughts. She could never quite believe he was real, as if a real man was a mythical beast she had never expected to encounter in real life.
Still, without speaking, they walked to her door and she let him in. As soon as the door was shut behind them, he took her in his arms. Her body molded itself gratefully to his strong frame, and he was kissing her, kissing her, the strange fire of his presence filling her body and making her weak and glad. He stroked her hair as his lips moved to her throat. His firm muscles against her chest made her conscious of her softness; she would feel small and delicate to him. All the sadness and shame of the day had vanished. Everything she wanted was here, was being given to her now.
He pulled her robe down over her shoulders, and she let it fall to the floor. Then he stood back from her for a second, looking down at her naked body. She let her hands fall from his chest and stood there allowing herself to be seen, her nipples tightening under his gaze. His face was almost fierce with his desire for her, and she made herself stand still, letting her own longing mount in her. A bright stab of heat went through her loins and dissipated in a tingling down her thighs. Her skin was alive with anticipation of his touch; it felt almost transparent.
He put his hand to one of her breasts, weighing it, and she gasped at the shiver of response between her legs. Again he bent to kiss her, while his hand played with her breast, the thumb flicking lightly over her hard nipple again and again while he squeezed the tender flesh. She let her tongue slip into his mouth and he sucked it, the motion awakening a deeper, aching throb in her. She could feel that she was already wet, and when his free hand passed down to cup her ass and pull her toward him, a delicious chill passed over that wetness as her pussy was ever so slightly parted.
Then he was guiding her over to the sofa. He sat, drawing her down with him, pulling her so that she was sitting on his lap with her legs on either side of him, her groin pressed against the swelling of the hard-on in his pants. With her sitting on his thighs, he began to kiss her breasts, sucking one nipple and then the other, his tongue playing over the sensitive tips, his teeth joining gently over them and teasing spasms of pleasure out of them. At the same time, he was pulling his belt open, and a minute later his naked cock was pressed at the dripping lips of her pussy, the hardness of it as thrilling as the keenness of a razor. His hands passed down her sides and over the silky skin of her buttocks. Then he was gently raising her, repositioning her on top of his cock.
For a moment she was poised there, a faint cry escaping her lips as she felt the tip of his dick opening her. Her own wetness was exciting her, the softness of her cunt so ready for him. Then he lowered her onto him, and his dick slid deep inside her, cutting a wound of pleasure into her that made her gasp. She let her weight sink fully onto him, the feeling of being fucked deeply making her faint with delight. He arched his hips to press even farther into her, and then he was lifting her again, his dick slipping out, out. He held her poised at the tip of his dick again, his eyes locked onto hers