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Without bothering to slow down, she said, “I got to go off alone. I mean, my mom will freak out if she sees you. She really will.”

“Your mom? Oh, you didn’t drive here.”

“No,” she said, annoyed. “I don’t have my license. I got to go home with my mom.” Suddenly, the idea of her mother was intensely comforting. Her mother would cry and threaten to kill the no-good motherfucker who hurt her. Her mother would pour her a glass of whiskey (she often tried to comfort Valerie with whiskey—well, this once it would work). Valerie would insist that it wasn’t Ralph’s fault; she would be generous. At last her mother would say, “Oh, never mind, sweetie, you’ll feel better in the morning.” They would watch a movie together. For once, Valerie would be the center of attention.

Ralph had moved closer to her, scowling and trying to catch her eye. “You don’t have your license? Really?”

She stopped to glare at him. The glare of the amusement park lights, his face was a mask of shadows and white, sweat-glistened planes. She wanted to turn and run away from him as fast as she could.

“Wait,” he said. “How old are you?”

She answered honestly without thinking. “I just turned fifteen.”

 

 

 

 

A
s his cock softened inside her, Emily couldn’t help heaving a mental sigh of relief. It was over for another week. Never mind if she still had five minutes of air time to fill; it wasn’t ideal, but at least it was Cal B., who could hardly be boring. He was a former model and the author of several scurrilous and hilarious novels about the world of fashion. At first she’d balked at having him on the show, because he was a little too frank about his reasons for doing it: “Publicity, publicity, publicity, and PR,” he’d said on the phone. “The way the book business is nowadays, I would fuck a cat in the middle of Times Square if it sold books.”

It made her feel defensive when her show (and, implicitly, her body) was seen in such cynical terms. But Cal turned out to be charming company, much friendlier and less caustic in person than he was in his writing. Since
In Depth
progressed through three stages—the dinner date, the “fun” date, and the sex itself, she spent much of each week with that week’s guest. In the course of that week, she often heard the guest’s whole life story. Cal’s life story seemed to consist of a series of amazing anecdotes, often about celebrities who could not be named but whose identities could be easily guessed. There were tales of models being smuggled onto nuclear submarines; of a fashion designer who would only have sex with people—male or female—wearing a bodysuit stitched all over with feathers, and a cardboard beak; of his own parents, who were both performance artists and had spent a year communicating solely through drawings. He had also had more than his share of lovers, each of whom apparently mistreated him in absurd ways—but who were all, according to Cal, “now good friends.”

Eight years after his retirement from the fashion world, he still looked like a stereotypical male model, with chiseled features, blazing blue eyes, and thick jet-black hair. He was gorgeous, he was sexy, he was funny, he was smart. Emily should have wanted to fuck him. Anyone would want to fuck him. On their “fun” date, they went behind the scenes at a fashion show, and Cal was besieged by frail, exquisite girls. They made big eyes at him and referred to dates with him in terms that made it plain he had slept with them all.

Only, she didn’t want to fuck him. She didn’t want to sleep with anyone but Ralph Anderman. The idea of sleeping with Cal filled her with ennui.

When the time had come, she had distracted herself by trying to give him the sexual experience of a lifetime. By treating it as an exercise of skill, she managed to enjoy herself without triggering her own guilt. It was gratifying to see his reaction to her electric touch and to the carefully planned blow job she gave him, with violent peaks and long, lazy spells of teasing. When they fucked, she was barely conscious of the physical pleasure it gave her. She didn’t want to think about physical pleasure. She almost resented her own body for responding to him.

Now they lay in a careless tangle, Cal smiling blissfully at the experience, Emily smiling blissfully at the fact that it was over. And he said, in the drowsy, deep tones of thorough gratification, “I should tell you . . . I had a secret purpose in coming on the show today.”

This wasn’t in the plans. Emily’s heart sank. If he did anything really outrageous, they might have to run the sex scene again. She said, with some trepidation, “And I guess you’re going to tell us that secret now?”

With an enigmatic smile, he reached for his jeans on the floor. Reaching into the pocket, he pulled out a small velvet box and opened it to reveal a chunky diamond solitaire. He slipped off the bed and got down on one knee, striking a dramatic pose that was made faintly sculptural by his nudity. “Emily . . .”

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“Will you be my wife?”

Emily actually looked directly at the camera, as if she could see through it to all the people who would eventually watch this at home, catch their eye, and receive some confirmation that she shouldn’t be expected to deal with this.

Cal was saying, “You understand, I’m not a love person. I don’t do love.”

Emily looked back at him, frowning. “So you want me to marry you why? Or is there going to be a punch line?”

“We’ll be the first couple to
openly
marry purely for the publicity. It should put Hollywood to shame, with its seventy-year history of marrying for the publicity but pretending it’s for love. Everyone will
act
shocked, of course.”

“You can’t do that, Cal.”

“Any justice of the peace will marry us. It’s not against the law to marry without being in love, you know. I can marry anyone I like, as long as it’s a woman. I don’t have to love her or think she’s swell or believe in fairies or anything.”

She smiled dazzlingly at camera one, trying to quell the shiver she felt going through her. “Well, we’re just about out of time on
In Depth
for this week. And from me, your hostess, Emily Lister, I’d like to say”—she turned to Cal—“
no
, I will not marry you—”

“Damn!” he said. “Break my heart, why don’t you?”

“—and good night.” Emily batted her eyelashes at the camera and waited for the call of “Cut!” Then she turned back to Cal and said quietly, “Why did you do that to me? Do you have any idea how unfair that was?”

He cocked his head at her. “You’re acting as if I wasn’t serious.”

“You were really hoping I’d do that? For publicity?”

“Well, what’s wrong with it?”

The cameramen were discreetly slipping away, pretending not to hear. Emily made a face at Cal, wondering if he was sincere. “Look, Cal, are you actually as cold-hearted as you pretend to be?”

“It wasn’t meant to be cold-hearted. Seriously, I’m kind of unconventional, but not—”

“I’m sorry. Forget it.” She reached for her robe, the familiar sight of which gave her a chill of depression. Of course she was the kind of person who attracted this sort of offer. This sort of proposal. Who would expect a porn star to be sentimental about marriage?

“Honestly, Emily, it was meant as a compliment. If you think I would marry just anyone for the publicity, you’re wrong.”

He was watching her with a friendly concern that was so out of synch with her feelings that she stopped to frown at him, the robe held up over her still-naked breasts. Of course, her reaction was more about Ralph than about Cal.

“Now I’m feeling bad about this,” he said. “Note that I wouldn’t bother to feel bad about just anyone.” He smiled at her.

“Oh . . . I think I’m just having a bad week with men, in general.”

“Oh, so you’re saying you’re upset about some other guy?”

She smiled weakly. “Well . . .”

He shrugged. “That hurts. Well, in my own way, I am terribly disappointed that you’re not going to marry me. And it’s not just the publicity.”

“But I’m a love person. I do love.”

“Well, good luck with your love,” he said, and reached for his complimentary
In Depth
robe. “But if it doesn’t work out . . . I’ll be single for at least another month.”

 

 

 

Emily tried to go back to her dressing room, but the hallway leading up to it was haunted by the ghost of Ralph Anderman.
Before you go, could I invite you to lunch?
he had said.
I can wait exactly ten minutes.
If she went into that hallway, it would be only to check whether he was there. He wasn’t there; she knew he wasn’t there. Still, going to her dressing room after he wasn’t there would be so depressing that the thought of it frightened her.

Instead, she decided to go see Jared, who was doing voice-overs for an episode of
Meet the Wife
on the tenth floor. He would be finished in an hour. Maybe he could take her to lunch, or take her home to his place to sit around eating ice cream all night. The thought of fucking him passed through her mind and made her frown. No, not this time. Jared wouldn’t mind.

She took the stairs. The elevator was used by staff from the insurance offices on the top floor; ordinary office workers in suits, carrying briefcases and laptops. Some days she didn’t care; she would even sign autographs and answer predictable questions about the most recent star she’d fucked. On a good day, it wouldn’t have mattered that she was barefoot, in a flimsy silk robe. Today she not only didn’t want to appear in public in her debauched, tousled, half-exposed work guise; she didn’t want to appear in public with Emily Lister’s face.

When she arrived at the studio, Jared was sitting at a microphone, watching the footage of
Meet the Wife
on a big monitor while following along on a paper script. A bored technician and producer sat to one side, yawning at readouts on consoles. The lights were dimmed, and at first Emily didn’t see the fourth person in the room—a lanky redheaded girl sitting cross-legged on the floor in one corner. The girl was staring not at the monitor but at Jared himself, as if her life depended on the words coming out of his mouth.

Jared said, “Anna has been married for ten years. She loves her husband, David, very deeply, but sometimes she wants more.”

On the monitor, Anna, a slim blonde in her early thirties, was shown unpacking groceries from the trunk of her car, then exercising on an elliptical machine in front of the TV, then throwing a stick for a Boston terrier in her backyard. Her voice was now heard on the voice-over: “I really want to have a child with David and settle into being middle-aged and, you know, boring. But before I do that, I want to have some experiences—things I missed out on because I found the right guy a little early.”

Jared read, “Anna and David met when they were twenty-two.” (The monitor now showed David, a good-looking, thickset man with impressively developed forearms, coming home from work and hugging his wife.) “They both knew immediately that they’d found the one.”

Now David’s voice was heard on the voice-over. “Anna and I are very alike. Very alike. We like all the same movies, the same bands. We have no friction. But part of that is that we both feel a little . . . like we missed out on some of the wilder parts of being young. Some of the more freewheeling sex that our friends had.”

Jared read, “David and Anna didn’t want to have an open marriage. They were afraid the jealousy would destroy their relationship. So they decided to try an even more unconventional arrangement.”

Anna was now shown in an office, talking to a young man at his desk. Her voice could be heard saying, “So, I’ve always been attracted to you. I mean, the day you were hired and you came into the office . . .” The volume of her voice faded, and Jared began to read again.

“Every three months, Anna and David invite two very special guests to their Montclair, New Jersey, home. Anna invites a man; David invites a woman. All the visits have one thing in common.”

Now David was shown talking to Jared himself, in the same living room that was shown before, the elliptical machine in the background. David said, “So we decided that if we were always in the same room, that would make the situation feel more controllable. Because Anna knows that if she doesn’t feel comfortable, if she is getting really jealous watching me with another girl, she can call it off. That’s our agreement.”

“And has that ever happened?” Jared asked.

“Not so far.” David smiled a little bashfully.

“But from the look on your face, it’s been close?”

“I had a bad night once. But the amazing thing was, the jealousy was really hot. It was one of the peak sexual experiences of my life.”

Jared began to read again, as the film went to Anna slowly stripping in front of a mirror. The camera zoomed out to show that both David and her young coworker were watching her from the bed.

“Every six months, David and Anna have a threesome. In the summertime, they sleep with a woman; in the winter, with a man.”

On the monitor, Anna was standing in bra and panties. She raised her long slim arms above her head and did a pirouette. David leapt up from the bed and lifted her into his arms, carrying her over to the bed. He and the coworker stripped off her underwear while she laughed and pretended to struggle.

Anna’s voice was heard in voice-over: “The feeling of being with another man is really . . . incredible. But it’s more incredible having David there to share it with me. Having him watch me is honestly the most erotic thing. And of course he can’t help joining in. . . .”

The camera cut to a scene from later in the same session, the coworker fucking Anna from behind as she braced herself on all fours on the bed. His eyes were closed and he intermittently bent forward to fondle her breasts, his hips curving forward still, keeping up a steady beat into her. Then David appeared on the other side of the bed, naked, his strong ursine frame emphasized by the savage look on his face. His cock was fully erect, fat and darkly red. With one movement, he had poised himself with the tip of his cock hovering at her lips. She licked her lips and then he was pressing his dick against them, making her take him in her mouth.