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Enjoy this snippet from The Pleasure Dial, An Erotocomedic Novel of Old-Time Radio by Jeremy Edwards
Prologue
Artie was looking up the skirt of his favorite Macy’s mannequin when he decided to head for the West Coast.
Her name was Trixie (Artie had decided), and he could always count on her to listen patiently while he tried out new material. It certainly beat telling jokes to thin air. Moreover, he’d found that gazing at the sleek, impressionistic bareness beneath her skirt of the week—Trixie never wore lingerie—gave him the serenity he needed to make important decisions.
Yes, he determined in that moment—crouching on the sidewalk, the strain on his muscles a small price to pay for the view—that he would take the job writing for Sid Heffy. Trixie’s mannequin heinie seemed to smile approval.
After wandering around New York for a couple of years with his talent tied to his finger like a balloon, Artie Plask had hit that first lucky break on which he’d built a career. Now, in his late twenties, he was so busy writing bits for burlesque comics and gossip columnists and advertising men that he had the luxury of sending the spillover work to worthy friends who were still establishing themselves.
He’d been thinking of moving into radio full-time for a while—he’d had a parade of offers, and the fill-in spots he’d consented to had been some of the most stimulating work he’d ever done. Radio kept you on your toes, forced you to be as brilliant as you could be. The business was expanding, despite the Depression, and the requirements of creating so many fresh shows every week for a coast-to-coast audience meant that a joke writer with a good reputation could have his pick of jobs.
But Heffy was the first radio star who had tried to lure Artie to California. That made the prospect of radio seem not merely like a new gig, but like a new life.
Looking at Trixie—at her unblinking yet sympathetic blue eyes, now that he’d risen from his voyeuristic crouch—Artie admitted that he liked the idea of a new life, content as he was here in New York.
He blew the skirted statue a kiss before walking off toward Western Union to answer the wire from the Heffy people.
Chapter 1
“You mean I’m supposed to report to Mr. Heffy’s house?”
“Welcome to Hollywood, kid,” answered Sid’s head writer, and the telephone earpiece seemed to bristle in Artie’s hand with the force of Mickey’s nasal vibrato. “Oh, and stop by the five-and-dime and get yourself some swim trunks. Sometimes we work by the pool.”
“Sid likes that, huh?”
“His daughter does.”
Artie knew he could work anywhere, having written gags on streetcars, at the Y, even during slow-moving portions of his cousins’ bar mitzvahs. Still, he’d assumed that the writing team of Dressinger Clothing Presents the Sid Heffy Show would be working in an office somewhere downtown, like the radio writers did back in New York.
He liked children, but he hoped Heffy’s daughter wouldn’t be too disruptive. He didn’t relish the prospect of getting splashed by some eight-year-old’s aquatic gymnastics just when the next punch line was firing through his brain.
Showing up for his first day on the job with a notebook and a pair of trunks made Artie feel like the taxi ride had landed him back in summer camp—and the summery spring weather of Los Angeles added to the illusion. Coming from a world where one went into an office, rain, sleet, or shine, and worked, he told himself he’d have to adjust to this world where you showed up in the sunshine at your boss’s mansion, as if for a lawn party . . . and worked.
“Whaddya want?”
“How do you do, Mr. Heffy. I’m Artie Plask, your new writer.”
The man opened the front door wide enough to let Artie through, all the while rolling his eyes for the benefit of an imaginary audience. “So this schmuck from back east thinks I’m Sid Heffy.”
Nobody had warned Artie that the star employed a majordomo who looked—and acted—very much like the star himself, whom Artie had seen many a time in the movies. He reflected that the hiring choice showed a peculiar flavor of vanity on Heffy’s part.
“I beg your pardon, Mr.—”
“Lubb.” He sighed it out, as though the syllable itself ought to convey every detail of the crap he had to put up with in this job—such as opening the door to schmucks from back east.
Sid Heffy (like his double, Lubb) was a slightly rotund gentleman whose egg-shaped head and downy blond hair could not help but suggest, in one way or another, something newly hatched. Large, gaping eyes and a small, tight mouth conspired to evoke suspicious befuddlement—the basis of Heffy’s act, even in the invisible medium of radio, and, from the comedy writer’s point of view, the foundation for every line handed to him. And though no one was writing for Lubb, Artie had already noted that the man’s mimicry of his boss extended beyond what Nature had arranged, into the realm of demeanor. Having met this mimeograph first, he couldn’t help feeling that his first-day introduction to Sid himself would be anticlimactic.
This concern proved moot, however, as Sid Heffy was not in.
“But go on through,” instructed Lubb, in a tone implying he would have preferred to tell Artie to get lost. “The other writers are back there on the patio, and Elyse is keeping the jerks company.”
“Elyse?”
“Elyse. Elyse Heffernan.” Again the butler rolled his eyes. “Sid’s daughter.”
Artie, who hadn’t even remembered that “Heffy” was a stage name, and who also hadn’t spent his train journey boning up on the dramatis personae of his new employer’s family, felt as stupid as Lubb intended him to feel, and this was quickly putting him into a funk. Maybe the presence of an eight-year-old would be welcome, after all, to brighten the mood.
But there was no eight-year-old on the patio.
Instead, there was a breathtakingly picturesque woman of perhaps twenty-two or twenty-three. She was seated at the edge of the pool, completely naked. The downy blond hair that ran in her family was visible in two locations, and tickled Artie’s eyeballs from both of them.
He observed that the skinny young men who dotted the poolside landscape in their patio chairs were giving the beauty only fragments of their attention. Clearly acclimated to these working conditions, the fellows seemed fairly absorbed in their notepads and the rapidly expanding volume of material emanating from the typewriter.
Mickey, who was at the Olivetti helm, was on a roll, and Artie knew that you didn’t interrupt a writer in flow. So he stood at the edge of the patio smiling at Miss Heffernan, waiting patiently for Mickey to take a breath and discover his arrival. It was scarcely a hardship.
Elyse had evidently been in the water some time earlier, and her nipples still glistened in the morning light. She held Artie’s gaze, looking friendly, clever, and a tad hungry for attention. After thirty seconds of this paradisial stalemate she beckoned him poolward; he was about to accept the unspoken invitation when Mickey’s nasal tone broke in on the idyll.
“Oh good, Plask is here. Pull up a chair, Artie.”
Elyse shrugged and stood up, and he watched the arced lines of her bottom as she plunged headfirst into the water.
Mickey introduced him to the other seven “boys.” Artie shook hands, memorized names, then looked around.
“You said I was being added as a tenth writer, didn’t you? So if I’m the tenth man, where’s the ninth man?”
“Right here at home plate.”
The voice, though only moderately high in pitch, was unmistakably female—and it had not come from the direction of the pool, where Elyse was busy doing laps. No, this voice came from the doorway back into the house, a doorway that Artie was certain had been empty a moment earlier.
She was a compactly built woman about his age, svelte and lively looking, who was dressed in subdued tones that emphasized the acuity in her face. She immediately reminded Artie of every witty woman he’d known in New York, with all the ones he’d never encountered piled in for good measure.
For some reason, she was carrying an enormous quill pen.
“You don’t write radio scripts with that thing, do you?” Artie blurted. Writers did have eccentric habits—though not by comparison with the on-air personalities.
She strode toward him jauntily, like the more elegant type of European stage clown, and Artie admired the way her theatricality electrified every inch of her petite frame.
“Don’t you think we should be properly introduced before I tell you what I do or don’t do with my feather? Mariel Fenton.” She extended her hand amiably.
Her black-coffee eyes were birdlike in their attentiveness, only warmer, and Artie had the feeling that anything he said to Mariel, or even near Mariel, would be processed with intelligence and compassion—and never taken more seriously than was warranted.
“I’m Artie Plask.”
“I know,” she confessed. “I just wanted to hear you say it.”
He laughed. “I’m glad you’re so easy to accommodate.”
“I’m easy to lotsofthings.” Having tossed off the line, she efficiently deposited her quill in the band of her gray cloche hat, clapped her hands together, and addressed the group: “So, boys, what’s the story?”
Mickey grabbed three typewritten pages and handed them to her. Mariel quickly scanned them.
“No offense, boys, but this . . .”
“Stinks?” a writer named Gabe offered helpfully.
Mariel turned to Artie. “It is to be noted that I never actually employ that word here.” She addressed the group again. “Oh, well, let’s see what we can salvage.” She found her way to a vacant chair.
“Is she your most senior writer?” Artie whispered to Mickey.
“Nah—she’s just the smartest.”
“Look at this: first page,” said Mariel. “Heffy says he’s brewing some tea. There is absolutely nothing funny about brewing tea, Mickey.”
“It’s only an incidental line,” said a writer named Howard.
“Nothing is incidental in good comedy,” Mariel retorted. “Heffy should say he’s boiling an egg. Now that’s amusing—though offhand I couldn’t say why.”
“I think it’s partly because Heffy looks like an egg,” said Artie. Mariel’s approach to scriptwriting was very much in line with his own philosophy, and he hoped she’d approve of his insight.
She did. “Yes,” she said, with a decisive nod.
The work was intense and productive over the hours that followed. At lunchtime, he saw Elyse wrap her glittering form in a towel and glide into the house. She returned an hour later, clothed this time, clutching a monograph on modern art. Every now and then her laughter redounded musically across the tiles, obviously not provoked by Miró and Kandinsky, but by a stray joke that fell sweetly on her ears as the writers tossed ideas around the patio.
“Good work, Artie,” said Mickey, when it was time to quit. Three of Artie’s jokes had actually made it into the working script, which meant he stood a good chance of seeing one line make it onto the air Saturday night. For his first session, he knew this was good work.
Mariel had written about half the show, including most of the best lines. She stalked the patio when brainstorming, waving her feather like a zany orchestra conductor while Mickey scrambled to keep pace with her on the typewriter. Her buttock muscles flexed beautifully beneath her dark skirt as she strode to and fro, and her bosom bounced with sober confidence.
When the session broke up, Mariel stretched like a cat, and she smiled at Artie. He rose from his chair so that she could get by him on her way out. But instead of leaving, she walked toward the pool, where Elyse was lounging in a deck chair.
“How are you today, Elyse?”
“Wonderful, thanks,” she answered breathily yet melodically, rising from the lounger. “You?”
“I’m swell. We showed that script a thing or two, and your old man’s funniness will thus remain intact.”
Heffy’s daughter grinned broadly. “Thank you for keeping Daddy funny.” Her tone dropped to a conspiratorial hush. “He thinks he’s really a great actor, doesn’t he?”
“Indeed he does—and that’s part of what’s so funny about him. Say, have you met Artie, the new kid?”
Artie stepped forward. “I saw a lot of Elyse earlier,” he explained to Mariel. “But I guess I didn’t get a chance to introduce myself,” he said to Elyse apologetically.
“I knew you’d want to meet him,” said Mariel cryptically.
“Yes,” said Elyse, looking at him with sparkling green eyes. “I adore Daddy’s writers.” She surprised Artie by touching his chest. “Well, I’m off to my boudoir.” She laughed colorfully, as if treasuring a magical secret, then walked gracefully into the house. Even dressed, Elyse somehow looked nude to Artie.
The other writers had long departed, and Elyse’s exit left Mariel and Artie in a poolside tête-à-tête.
“You do understand she’s expecting you to join her there, yes?” Mariel asked.
“What?”
“Elyse likes to try out all the writers, at least once apiece.”
He felt his right eyebrow clicking itself upward. “I see. Well, I’ve certainly heard of less agreeable conditions of employment.”
“Oh, goodness, it’s nothing like a ‘condition of employment.’ Elyse is merely a pansexual sensualist looking for some innocent kicks. We all think of her as a sort of freelance sex goddess. But it sure results in a lot of loyalty among Heffy’s staff. Don’t forget, you’re an addition, not a replacement. Of course, Sid no doubt attributes the low turnover to his own charisma.”
“Yes, I imagine he would.” Though Artie had yet to meet Heffy, the star’s reputation for self-infatuation preceded him. Nor had it been diminished by the presence of the “made in his own image” butler.
“No, participation in Elyse’s little program is not compulsory. Benny declined,” Mariel noted, pointing to the chair that writer had occupied during the script session. “He’s known to prefer the company of men.”
“But she’s taken all the rest of them to bed?”
“Most of them. A couple of the boys are working from monogamous scripts. I’m afraid that Hollywood isn’t entirely what you fantasize it is—you know, one big orgy.”
“Hey,” Artie protested, “you’ve got the wrong guy. Or at least the wrong fantasy.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“I didn’t come here looking for one big orgy. I’ll be perfectly content with a series of smaller orgies.”
She laughed appreciatively. “I apologize for misreading you.”
He bowed his head graciously.
“You said our local goddess was ‘pansexual.’ I’ve never heard that word before, but I know my Latin prefixes.”
“It’s Greek. The prefix, I mean.”
“Oh. Right. So tell me: did you decline to participate in the Elyse program as well?”
Mariel half winked, half shrugged. “Me? You know me . . .”
“No, I really don’t know you,” he grinned. “But I have a feeling this is something I ought to redress.”
“Exactly—and as soon as you’re redressed, we’ll take steps in that direction. But first things first.” She prodded him between the ribs. “Elyse’s boudoir is on the second floor, opposite the stairs. Unless you’re going to disappoint the poor girl.”
“Me? You know me . . .”
Chapter 2
A few minutes later, Artie crept into Elyse’s boudoir.
He thought the room might be better termed a den. His eyes roamed from beaded curtain to extravagant ottoman, from incense candles to luxurious bedclothes, and then to the sprawling, half-naked woman positioned upon them, gyrating with lust and caressing her own flesh with a corner of silk sheet.
“Funny—I thought Mariel said you were a sensualist.” It was Artie’s nature, not to mention his job, to open with a joke.
“Come here, sweet Artie Plask.”
He closed the door behind him but then hesitated, humbled by her apparent proficiency. “Are you sure you need me? You seem to be doing all right by yourself.”
“I may not need you, strictly speaking . . . but I want you.”
“Fair enough.”
“Yes, you look like you’d be able to please a woman. This woman, at any rate.”
Artie was grateful for whatever it was about him—his sympathetic eyes? his playful mouth?—that evidently advertised his devotion to female pleasure to those looking to obtain some. He approached the bedside, trying to absorb the testosterone-thrilling reality that the divine Elyse was going to crack her fruit for him, to show him her juice.
“Mariel’s right. You are a goddess, and I can’t imagine a lovelier one.”
“Thank you,” she purred. “Daddy thinks I could be a movie star.”
“But that would mean getting dressed.”
“Exactly.”
“You’re pretty happy hanging around here, aren’t you?”
“Yes. I love witty men,” she confessed in a drawn-out moan. “And women. And I’m the luckiest girl in the world, because the wittiest people in Hollywood come to my house every day and make me wet from morning to night.”
“On Tuesday and Thursday nights, you mean.” According to Mickey, those were the only evenings the team worked late.
“I bet the entire swimming pool smells like my horny pussy,” Elyse declared proudly, looking Artie in the eye.
He lowered his ass to the edge of the bed, his hard-on wrestling his thigh for top billing.
“Your jokes made me laugh today,” she continued.
This was his kind of foreplay. “Which one did you like best?”
“The one about ignoring.” She tittered at the memory.
There’s a customer waiting, and I don’t want to ignore him. I don’t want to . . . but I’d like to. Yes, that would work well in Heffy’s voice. “Thank you. That’s a subtle one.”
“I love that word, don’t you? Subtle. It sounds like a softly licking tongue.”
Artie knew a song cue when he heard one. He pulled the sheet away from her body, and focused his attention on the sex-damp blond fur he’d thereby revealed.
The ohhhh-oh she voiced when he ran a finger along the seam of her lips made her sound pleasantly surprised by his touch—though the “surprise” component was clearly an illusion. She shifted her hips to welcome him, and he kissed the sticky sweetness of her moist curls to continue the corporeal dialogue.
When he took hold of her bottom cheeks, their softness was a surprise; where they’d appeared shapely but firm while in action at the pool, in the bedroom they seemed to have undergone a metamorphosis from shapely muscles into equally shapely pillows.
He licked the length of her opening, and Elyse ohhhhh’d again. She gaped for him, and her clit sparkled like a swollen jewel in some undersea treasure chest. He continued licking.
Her buttocks slapped themselves against his palms, anticipating his caresses. “Keep licking. Ohhhhh . . . Lick my pussy all night.” She squeezed his frame between her knees, and the fragrance of her arousal cloaked him as he dined on her.
“You tickle so nicely,” she moaned, churning her sex in his face. “My mind, my pussy . . . you funny men tickle me everywhere.”
In that spirit, Artie slipped a finger up the crack of her ass.
“Oh, god, yes, tickle me there, too. Everywhere, every—” She broke off into sensualistic giggles.
He deepened the trajectory of his tongue, making sure to lavish sensation on every bit of pleasure-loving cunt flesh he could reach. Elyse writhed in slow motion, giggling and whimpering yeses and oh gods, and sponging Artie’s muzzle with her juices.
“Oh, go-o-o-o-oddddddd!” She laughed it; cried it; even kicked it, tangling the sheets.
Her clit hovered in his mouth like a gumdrop until, unable to come any more, she lifted him by the shoulders and kissed the top of his head. He turned his face upward, and she devoured his mouth with the abandoned kisses of a woman wallowing in satisfaction.
So this was life on The Sid Heffy Show.
Though his erection was raging, Artie felt strangely satisfied too. He’d licked the pussy of a sex goddess until she cried with ecstasy—what more did he want from day one on the job?
But Elyse was not only a goddess, she was a giver; and soon Artie’s cock was throbbing excitedly in her fist, his trousers and shorts clutched in her other hand. Her delicious touch was almost so light as to not be there: it felt as if the air itself were giving him the seamless hand job, teasing him quickly and exquisitely to the point of no return. Right before he shot, Elyse kissed his tip, and when he spurted she laughed with delight.
She offered him a nipple to kiss before leaving him to recuperate in her bed. “I’m going for a swim,” she said.
Her ass-cheeks, receding through the boudoir door, were still flushed with pleasure.
Artie luxuriated in Elyse’s erotic nest for only a moment before the door opened again. He lifted his head to see, not a nude Elyse returning for a towel, but a fully clothed Mariel.
“Hello, Artie.” She gave a perfunctory glance at his flaccid cock, as if feeling that this was the polite thing to do. “I thought I should tell you that we’ve all been fired.”
“What?”
“I know—isn’t it fun?”
Chapter 3
It was, perhaps, simply out of shock that Artie neglected to pull his trousers up as Mariel came to sit on the edge of the bed. Whatever the reason, the result was that his cock nestled unobtrusively but quite visibly in his groin while he listened to her reassuring words.
“Now, don’t worry, this sort of thing happens all the time around here.”
“Mariel Fenton barging into boudoirs?”
“Sid Heffy firing his writers.”
“But you said there was low turnover!”
“Precisely—and that’s why you shouldn’t worry. We’re always getting fired, but no one ever actually has to leave. It’s only a gesture on Sid’s part.”
“A gesture,” Artie snorted. “How thoughtful of him.”
“Well, be reasonable. He has to do something once in a while to feel important.”
“I didn’t even think he was here today.”
“Oh, he’s here, all right—pretty as a picture, and twice as ugly. He returned ten minutes ago and fired us five minutes ago. Sid is very efficient when he wants to be.”
“The guy sounds like a one-man bureaucracy. Say, why were you still on the premises?”
She looked away, toward an art nouveau tapestry heavy with libertines—the first trace of self-consciousness he’d seen in her. “I was kind of sticking around to see how everything . . . played out.” Her confident manner—and her direct gaze—immediately returned; she settled the latter on Artie’s sated dick.
“I can’t believe I’ve been fired. I haven’t even met the boss.”
“We’ve been fired,” she said evenly, still studying his anatomy. “Don’t be a hot dog. Oh! Sorry, that was an indelicate choice of words under the circumstances. I didn’t . . .”
But they were both laughing too hard for her to finish disclaiming the remark. Something very comfortable seemed to fill the room—something that was also intoxicating, as if the laughter were laughing gas—and it felt perfectly natural when Mariel collapsed on his convulsing shoulders and stifled her warm guffaws in the hollow of his throat.
Where Elyse’s laughter had a celestial magic—even when carnally provoked—Mariel’s had a solid presence. It seemed to resonate in Artie’s bones.
“Fine,” she said at last. “Go ahead and be a hot dog. It suits you.”
They let the laughter linger between them for a minute.
“Now, then. Pull your pants up.” Swift as lightning, she yanked the oversized feather from her cloche and gave his scrotum a quick brush.
He squealed gleefully. Then he glanced at the untelescoping sausage in his lap, drawing her line of sight back to it with his own.
“I can’t help noticing, Miss Fenton, that your words and your actions appear to be at cross purposes.”
“Sorry—I couldn’t resist. I’ve wanted to tickle your balls ever since I first barged into the room. As you are no doubt aware, women of my intelligence are subject to a large array of sensible impulses, such as tickling a friend’s balls with a feather. Bearing this in mind, I hope you appreciate my vast reserves of self-control.”
“At the moment, I think I’d appreciate them more in absentia.”
She hesitated an instant before giving him a kiss on the cheek.
“Now, come on, pants up. Heffy wants us out of here, for the time being. We must humor the old golf ball, until he changes his mind.”
They shared a cab back to central Hollywood, arriving at the courtyard of Artie’s apartment first.
“So, what do I do in the morning?”
“I don’t know. What do you usually do in the morning?”
“I only got here two days ago. I don’t ‘usually’ do anything yet.”
“Ah, a tabula rasa—a clean slate.”
“I know what a tabula rasa is. I think I’ll even be correct this time when I identify it as Latin.”
“Just think: we can mold you, shape you, turn you into the ideal man.”
“You’re implying that I’m not already the ideal man? I’m terribly hurt, Dr. Frankenstein. But getting back to tomorrow morning . . . what I was trying to get at is the question of what I do regarding my status with the Sid Heffy organization.”
“Oh, that. Personally, I’m planning to phone Mickey first thing.”
“All right. I’ll do the same. In fact, I think until I get my bearings I’ll just do whatever you do.”
“Okay, but that will involve sitting down when you pee.”
“You may need to demonstrate that one for me.”
“I shall look forward to it. See you tomorrow, Artie.”
“Yes—if Heffy . . .”
“Nonsense. I told you not to worry.”
***
“G’morning, Mickey. Plask here. I heard a little rumor that we’ve been fired.”
“What the hell are you chuckling about?”
“Sorry. I was advised not to take it too seriously.”
“I’m afraid this time is different, kid.”
“Uh-oh. Sid is that annoyed with us, huh?”
“No, it’s worse than that. He’s not annoyed with us at all,” said Mickey.
“I don’t understand.”
“It’s nothing to do with us. It’s just that Sid Heffy has decided to turn his show into a goddamn radio drama. Effective immediately.”
“What?”
“I was at the house at seven o’clock this morning, and Sid was on the phone with some hound-faced playhouse type. I gather the bastard is all set to remake him as radio’s answer to Hedda Gabbler.”
Artie wondered if Mickey could really be sure the playhouse type was hound-faced just from hearing Sid talk to him on the phone. For that matter, it puzzled him that any self-respecting playwright—hound-faced or otherwise—would be awake at 7 a.m.
“I tell you, Artie, I always thought Sid’s dramatic delusions were a harmless trademark that added something to his persona. If I’d known the jerk was going to act on them, then . . .”
“Then what?”
He could virtually hear Mickey’s shrug over the phone. “Then I would have known, I guess.”
“Well, maybe it won’t pan out, eh?”
“Yeah, maybe. That’s what Mariel said.”
It made Artie absurdly proud to learn that he’d reacted the same way she had. “That reminds me—how do I get in touch with Mariel?”
“You turn around.” The voice came from the apartment doorway.
“Never mind, Mickey.” Artie hung up the phone.
“This is a regular part of your routine, isn’t it?” he said to his visitor.
“Everyone has their shtick. And you can’t deny it’s convenient to have me materialize whenever you need me.”
“True. It’s undeniably convenient . . . if a bit disorienting.”
“You’ll get used to it.”
“I look forward to that.”
He rose from his seat, and Mariel automatically took his place at the tiny desk, spinning the chair around to face the room. “I just thought that while we were out of work I’d drop in on you, to break up the monotony around here with my own brand of monotony.”
“Your company certainly isn’t monotonous yet,” he said gallantly—and truthfully.
He began to pace. “Look, this isn’t so bad, right? We can all get jobs on other shows in a trice.” He snapped his fingers.
“That was a snap, not a trice. But it’s true—none of us will be jobless for long.”
“Still, it would be a shame to see the old gang break up.”
Mariel laughed. “The ‘old gang’? You’ve only been with us for one day.”
“It was a very productive day. And a very enjoyable one.”
“Speaking of Elyse, I have her private motor car outside.”
“Complete with chauffeur?”
“No chauffeur. Elyse drives.”
“When does she find the time?”
“Well, that’s why she lets me borrow it whenever I want. It’s just a two-seater, though really you can fit three if you squeeze.” She made a slightly lewd gesture to illustrate the concept of squeezing, which Artie found unnecessary but pleasant.
“Open car or closed?” he asked.
“Closed. Why?”
“I was just wondering if it smells like . . . the swimming pool.”
“Say, I hope you don’t have some silly idea that you’re going to settle down with Elyse in a bungalow.”
“Pfft. Trick a girl like that into giving up a life like this? Even if I could—which I sincerely doubt—I wouldn’t.”
Mariel smiled warmly. “I like the way you think, Plask.”
“So . . . am I the only one who wasn’t at the Heffernan mansion at seven o’clock this morning?”
“No, the rest of the boys are presumably still in their footsie pajamas. Mickey was the only one welcome, and very temporarily at that. I had to pretend I was there to borrow Elyse’s car—she wasn’t awake yet, but Lubb gave me the keys. It will come in handy, though.”
“For what?”
“I haven’t decided yet.”
“You have a delightful way of putting the horseless carriage before the horse.”
“Glad to oblige. Oh, I know!” She bounced out of the chair. “Let’s drive over to Culver City.”
“Okay. But what’s in Culver City?”
“Lila and Henry.”
Chapter 4
Mariel waved at the studio security guard as she steered the little auto into the gargantuan lot.
“Good morning, Charles. Lila Lowell is expecting me.”
“Lila Lowell?” goggled Artie, as the gatekeeper cheerfully waved them through. Lila was one of the biggest stars, a household name even among those who hadn’t actually seen any of her steamy movies.
“Naturally, Lila Lowell. How many people named Lila do you imagine we have in this town?”
“And she’s expecting you.”
“Yes, in a blanket kind of way: she knows I could drop by the soundstage at any time. I used to write her publicity, and she’s never managed to fully extricate herself from my society.”
“I see. And what manner of household name, then, is this Henry?”
“Henry is Lila’s personal costume and makeup specialist. A real artist. So if Lila’s playing a vamp, for instance, she turns to Henry every time her makeup fades and she needs to be revamped. Lila won’t do so much as throw a brassiere over her tits without consulting him.”
The car went quiet while an image of the sultry screen idol parading topless in a dressing room, waiting for her Henry, hovered in Artie’s mind—and his crotch.
“What are you thinking about, Artie?”
“I believe you know damn well what I’m thinking about.”
Mariel chuckled as she pulled into a parking space.
“Well, here we are. But speaking of makeup, let me just fix mine before we go in. This will also give the gentleman a moment to adjust his penis before he has to stand up and exit the car.”
“You think of everything.”
“Almost everything. I should have brought a change of panties, since apparently you’re going to be entertaining me with hard-ons all over the place.”
“As a matter of fact, they’re always in the same place.”
“Oh, I bet we can find somewhere new to put them.”
No sooner had they been admitted to the set than the director began a take.
The Lila Lowell scene being staged was instantly reminiscent of every Lila Lowell scene Artie had viewed through a haze of popcorn in midtown Manhattan. Lila, dressed in a black “negligee” that most women would be proud to wear in the ballroom, reclined on a day bed, looking simultaneously fascinated and bored by the tuxedo-clad lover who sat beside her—a dual impression that few thespians could convey.
Though the man was ostensibly wooing her, most of the dialogue was Lila’s. Her lips, moodily sensuous in black lipstick, uttered line after line of existentially erotic observations in a voice that resonated with charisma and even “heart,” despite its languidness. Finally, having worked herself into a blasé sort of passion, Lila seized her co-star and kissed him fervently until the director cut.
As the crew scurried around preparing for the next scene, Mariel waved to her friend. Lila smiled in recognition and began making her way toward them.
“Hello, dear,” the star said almost inaudibly when she arrived at Mariel’s side. Her bearing was surprisingly timid, her speech and movements small and inhibited—a dramatic contrast with her self-possessed, magnetic screen persona.
“Lila, this is Artie.”
Lila smiled faintly. Her eyes wouldn’t meet his.
“I’m sure you’ll warm up to him right away,” Mariel added. “He’s a good egg, not to mention a top-notch gag writer and a rather yummy male individual—for those of us with a taste for male individuals.”
“Take your picture?” Lila whispered to Artie.
“Huh? Sure, okay.” He turned a puzzled face to Mariel, while Miss Lowell retrieved a Brownie from a nearby table.
“She takes everyone,” Mariel explained in a discreet undertone. “It helps her break the ice.”
When Lila returned with the camera, Artie gave her his biggest ice-breaking grin.
“Hey, you haven’t smiled that big for me,” said Mariel.
“You didn’t take my picture,” he shrugged.
“Don’t have a camera,” said Mariel. “Surely, that’s not the only way?”
He was just reaching into his heart for the next serving of innuendo when the director called, “Places!”
Mariel grabbed the star by her shoulder. “Lila, before you leave: How would you go about convincing Sid Heffy that he isn’t cut out for serious drama?”
Artie noticed the delicately arched eyebrow that accompanied Lila’s reply. “Direct him to a mirror?” she whispered.
“No, he already spends most of his time in front of one.” Mariel turned to Artie. “I bet that’s why he wasn’t at the house yesterday—he probably found a hotel lobby with an even larger mirror than the one in his bedroom.”
Lila laughed silently, then waved her fingers in a goodbye and headed back to the set.
After the experience of conversing with Lila, Artie was startled by the loud, confident clarity of her voice when she once again went before the cameras. He saw that she was now playing to a different beau—though apart from mustache style, the two gentlemen seemed fairly interchangeable.
“There’s a void in my soul, Hubert,” she intoned, gesturing toward the very bottom of her abdomen on the word soul. “A void as empty as your head. Come, why don’t you marry me? It’ll be the grandest month you ever had, and we’ll be through in time for the season at Monte Carlo.”
“Ready?” Mariel whispered.
“No. I haven’t seen this picture before.”
“We should find Henry while Lila isn’t using him.”
Mariel led him to the exit, and, as soon as the shot was completed, they creeeeeak-ed open the door and stepped into the major-motion-picture-studio sunlight.
“Stick close to me,” she said. “Otherwise you’ll be lost in this high-rent rabbit warren before you know it, and we’ll all wonder what ever became of you—until you unwittingly show up in the chorus of some B movie we’re about to walk out on.”
Though his legs were considerably longer than hers, he was surprised to find how difficult it was to keep pace with Mariel when she was going full steam. “For future reference, it does not require a lengthy sermon to persuade me to ‘stick close’ to a silver-tongued, generally appealing genius of a woman. Especially one who keeps ogling me.”
“Thank you. I don’t think I’ve ever been called ‘generally appealing’ before.”
Even the most dedicated of rabbits would have thrown up its ears in defeat trying to navigate the array of offices, soundstages, trailers, and pre- and postproduction facilities that Mariel was able to guide them through without a false step. Nestled somewhere in this maze was a sort of auxiliary costume and makeup wing, attached in theory to two larger buildings, but accessible from neither. Mariel, naturally, knew where the actual entrance was.
She led Artie, in turn, through the interior maze of the building itself, bringing him at last into Henry’s work area.
There sat Henry. And straddling Henry’s lap was a redheaded woman who was very busy kissing Henry like hell.
“I thought you said he was a makeup specialist. This looks more like a makeout specialist.”
“Perhaps they had a spat. In that case, we could say they were making up, right?”
Mariel’s voice, which had carried farther than Artie’s, attracted Henry’s attention. “Ah! Come in, come in.” His companion halted her meal and winked at them.
“We don’t want to interrupt you,” said Mariel graciously.
“Midge has to get back to the front office anyway,” said Henry. He squeezed Midge’s chest as she leaned in for a goodbye kiss. “And what a nice front office it is,” he said to her dotingly.
She hopped off of Henry and hurried past them, brushing them with perfume and enthusiasm. ...
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Copyright November 2011, Jeremy Edwards.
Published with permission from author on OystersandChocolate.com. Copying or reprinting this work in part or in whole without permission is illegal.