Show Me (5 page)

Before she could stop herself, she had kissed his fi nger. That deliciously fatal smile spread over his face again. “Thanks,” he said. He put the finger to his lips and kissed it—kissed her kiss. Then he was turning and heading off down the corridor again, leaving Zaza slumped against the wall in a half faint of wondering joy.

 

 

 

 

W
hen Emily had first met Ralph Anderman, it was in his office in Lower Manhattan. The building was a beautiful prewar edifice with a mosaic in the lobby of nymphs in a stream. The elevators still had cages, and his office itself was a modest-sized room that looked like a Victorian gentleman’s study. She spent five minutes gushing about how much she loved the place before he cut her off with:

“I’m sorry, but I have to break in. You should know that I’m not going to be on the show.”

A month’s work on the part of her researchers and producers evaporated. It was the first time it had gone so far before a refusal was issued, and Emily was surprised at how hurt she felt. When she got the news thirdhand, she sometimes felt a little twinge of embarrassment, imagining that the celebrity involved might have specifically not wanted to sleep with
her.
But having someone say it to her face was ten times worse.

Unfortunately, the embarrassment came out as irritation. “So,” she said, “let me guess. You wanted to meet me from curiosity?”

“Not exactly.” He looked uncomfortable. “At least, that’s not how I would put it.”

“You thought you might get a free sample? Because—”

“Not at all.”

“
Don’t
tell me you’re a fan.”

“I’ve never seen the show.”

She was about to say
Oh, you’re too good for my show?
but she caught herself in time. Then she was blushing. Why should he watch her show? If Emily hadn’t been the star, she probably never would have seen it, either.

He was looking at her with a contained amusement, and for the first time she was struck by his looks. He was blond, with a face that might have been too pretty if it weren’t for his brawny physique. Blond with deep brown eyes—it was a striking combination that somehow emphasized the cool intelligence in his face. But perhaps he just looked better to her because she
wasn’t
going to sleep with him. Meeting gorgeous men she was guaranteed to sleep with had become old hat.

He said, “Let’s just say that you’re here because I wanted to apologize. Turning down beautiful women is new to me.”

“This is business,” she said, but her voice was weak. “You can apologize to my producers.”

“I know I could,” he said, with an irritation that echoed hers.

“So?”

“I don’t know. Is it necessary for me to explain my least motivations?” He was glaring at her now, and she remembered his reputation for being merciless with fools and incompetents. But she wasn’t a fool, and she hadn’t done anything incompetent. She hadn’t done anything at all!

“You did waste my afternoon,” she pointed out. “There’s necessary and there’s simple courtesy. It’s also not that flattering to be described as someone’s
least motivation.
”

They glared at each other for a moment. But as she watched, his eyes softened into an expression she couldn’t read. Maybe it was only confusion; after a minute, he shook his head.

Then, to her astonishment, he said, “Busted.”

“Busted? What do you mean?”

“I am a fan, and I did invite you here from curiosity—if just wanting to meet you counts as curiosity. I wouldn’t have used that word, but it’s close enough. The shoe fi ts, even if it pinches a little.” He was smiling ruefully.

She found herself smiling back, with a sudden lightheartedness that made her realize that both of them were being fools. And, seen from the point of view of a business meeting, definitely incompetent. “So you have watched the show?”

“No, that was really true,” he said. “I don’t even have cable.”

She was surprised to find that she filled with relief. But why would she be relieved? In fact, why would she care one way or the other? Just to say something, she said, “Wow, you really don’t have cable?”

“No,” he said. “I have to save every penny toward a hostile takeover of Microsoft.”

She laughed. “I don’t think it’s going to work.”

“You underestimate me.”

“Granted.” Smiling at him, she fell into the habit of imagining where she would touch him first, what kind of approach would inflame him most. Then she caught herself and said, with a somewhat forced lightness, “I didn’t know it was so easy to be a business visionary.”

“Don’t interview me,” he said softly.

She blushed again. Then she was foolishly thinking about how she had always blushed easily, and how people had mentioned it on blogs, and how it was one of the things that set her apart from other porn stars; it made her reactions seem so real, because they were. And all that time, they were staring into each other’s eyes. It had been at least a minute.

She said, “I wasn’t interviewing you. I guess I sound like I am sometimes. Bad habit.”

“You’re right,” he said. “I’m being terrible. I ought to send you flowers to apologize. That’s what a gentleman would do.”

She imagined receiving the flowers in her dressing room and was hit by an inexplicable wave of loneliness. “Well, don’t.”

Again, she was confronted by the enigmatic dark eyes, the somber expression she could not fathom. Then he was standing and saying, “I’ll see you out.”

In the corridor, he told her, seemingly calm again, that he kept a private elevator in the building; even though he deliberately used a small office and disliked superficial signs of hierarchy, it just wasn’t practical for him to appear randomly in public places. “There’s always a person who’s here to replace ceiling tiles, but who has a million-dollar business idea. It’s not so much that I can’t spare the time; I just can’t stand to hear the business ideas.”

Emily, meanwhile, was strangely affected by the idea of being in the private elevator with him. Her mind was sketching a scenario in which the elevator got stuck and . . . but she made herself match his calmness. “Are they all really terrible?”

“It’s not that the people are always stupid,” he said. “It’s just that business ideas are usually only worthwhile in the context of doing business. You know, when you have a problem to solve, the solution to the problem could be a great business idea. But I guess you’re not interested in business.”

They had arrived at the elevator; he pulled a little key out of his pocket and put it into the wall.

She said, “Oh, it’s interesting. Though I don’t know much about any business except . . .”

“Yes, actually, a lot of the elevator-ride business ideas turn out to be porn.”

She laughed. “Oh, well, you know I never wanted to be in porn.”

“You wanted to be a veterinarian.”

She frowned at him.

“I’ve read your interviews,” he said. “I was wondering why you hadn’t asked how I could be a fan without having seen the show.”

Then the elevator had arrived, and he was drawing back the gates; the thundering sound it made relieved her from the necessity of answering. He stepped back to let her get into the elevator first. He entered after, and the thundering sound came again as he closed the cage.

Then they were standing together in the enclosed space, shoulder to shoulder. Emily was keenly aware of every detail: the elevator’s hum, the cool air, his shoulder inches away from her. The moment that he turned toward her, she was keenly aware of turning toward him, her heart pounding as if everything she cared about was hanging in the balance.

He said, “Hold still.”

Then he put his hand on her cheek and bent down and kissed her on the forehead. It was a gentle kiss that contained the same enigmatic freight of tenderness—it had been tenderness—she’d seen in his eyes earlier. It made her feel weak and desperate. When he let her go and stood back, she felt as lonely as she’d ever felt in her life.

Then the elevator doors opened. He pulled back the gate and she stepped out, propelled by the necessity of acting normal. People had to behave as if they were sane, even if they weren’t sane at all. Even if they had just felt the craziest thing they’d ever felt in their lives.

But when she heard the gate begin to thunder closed behind her, she whirled in a panic. He put his hand to the cage and said, “So long.”

Then the elevator doors closed again and she was walking, stumbling, through the lobby.

She took a cab home—she couldn’t face going back to the studio. In the cab, she sat with her eyes closed, trying to find a way back to her daily life. She knew if she let herself think about Ralph, she would only be miserable. Still, she thought about Ralph. “You wanted to be a veterinarian,” he’d said, and even though it was something he’d read in a magazine, it still made her feel impossibly warm and known.

When she wasn’t avoiding thinking about Ralph, she was avoiding thinking of
In Depth,
which meant, of course, that she thought about it. Not for the first time, she longed to put it all behind her, to go back to being an everyday person who could walk down the street without having people stare and nudge their friends. A person who could meet a man without obsessively wondering whether he judged her, whether he liked her for herself or for the idea of dating a porn star—whether he was The One but was dismissing her because he didn’t want to deal with competition from a hundred hours of X-rated film.

When
In Depth
had started, the interviewees were still ordinary members of the public. It was nearly impossible to get celebrities to have public sex even now, and Emily’s ability to do so was one of the things that made her XTV’s greatest asset. With an unknown hostess on a brand-new network, it had been completely impossible. So the focus was on men with interesting stories (“I survived a plane crash in the Himalayas,” “I’m a real-life cowboy,” etc.) who were both extraordinarily good-looking and willing to have sex on air.

At first, Emily was painfully shy about the whole endeavor. Her researchers had had to do most of the talking when vetting interviewees. Her participation had been confined to saying diffidently afterward, “Um, I don’t think I want to . . . with that guy. If that’s okay?” Or else, “Yes, he seems—I mean, don’t you think? I’d like to, if it’s okay.” The charm of that first season (released as a set, it was now selling like hotcakes) was partly her shyness. It made every moment of film feel compellingly real.

The format of the show took shape around the drama of two attractive strangers meeting, getting to know each other, and then having sex in front of the cameras. Every week there was a restaurant date (in a restaurant where the other diners were all paid extras), then a “cute” date based on the gentleman’s real-life job (Emily perched in the cockpit of a plane; Emily getting a riding lesson from the real-life cowboy), and finally a long, leisurely, wine-soaked chat in bed, followed by . . .

Well, the first few times, what followed was difficult. The difficulty sometimes turned into multiple takes and humiliating long afternoons. Emily’s “magic touch” had completely failed her. It was impossible for her to concentrate on someone else’s body with a forest of microphones and camera lenses staring her down. The cowboy had taken two hours to get an erection, and then had threatened to beat up one of the cameramen who laughed at the wrong moment. Another man, an oceanographer who had a fascinating story to tell but a childish sense of humor, had been incapable of stopping himself from saying the wrong thing while they were fucking. In the middle of the sex scene, he would say something like “Wait. What’s that birthmark? Why—you’re my sister!” He’d apologized later, confessing, “Well, it felt so good when you laughed.”

By the second season, she’d begun to relax more. The magic touch returned, and she began to enjoy the way men reacted to her. Making them shift from self-conscious posing to uncontrolled sexuality gave her a feeling of power, not to mention the actual fucking, which was often a fantasy come true. At the same time, she became comfortable being sexual in front of an audience; she could either blank out the cameras or perversely enjoy the illicit thrill of being watched.

But of course, by the second season, she hadn’t had sex off camera for a year. She’d been too preoccupied and too busy getting used to her new life to think about dating. So it became perfectly natural to fall into a sex trance in a TV studio, knowing that any minute the director could interrupt with a request. “Turn a little toward camera one.” “Can we have more vocalizing?” All of this became part of sex, until when she was attracted to a man off camera, she immediately imagined him in that double-king-sized bed, surrounded by film equipment.

“I’m worried that I’m becoming strange,” she told Babylona. “What if I can never have a normal relationship after this?”