She’s taken off the cap and glasses and is murmuring to Frank and Rudy as she seeks after Kitty from floor to floor, bobbing her head rhythmically as though singing along softly to some tune issuing from the earbuds. The search is slow going. She consults the directory stand at each escalator landing, then makes a circuit of the floor to check out every jewelry shop, shoe store, and boutique on it, scanning the crowd closely as she moves through it. Given their loveliness and self-possession, most of the party girls are easy enough to spot as she makes her way up the floors.
“The flock has scattered all over the place,” she says. “Mostly in twos and threes.”
When she’d studied Kitty through the binoculars, she had also focused on the girls nearest to her, the ones she’d seemed most vivacious with. If those were Kitty’s close friends, then wherever in the mall she sees any of them, there’s a chance Kitty will be nearby. By the time she arrives on the thirteenth floor—whispering, “No fear of unlucky thirteen in this place”—it’s after eleven and she’s begun to fret that she’s missed her, has simply failed to spot her on a lower level.
She checks a shoe store and two jewelry shops, then enters a dress boutique that’s not very crowded and immediately spies a couple of girls she’d made special note of through the binoculars. They’d been babbling with Kitty in the animated way of good pals as they went up the front steps, and they’re unmistakable, one with a black buzz cut and wearing a flower-print sundress, the other with a short brown ponytail and in jeans and an LA Dodgers T-shirt. Taking a casual look around, Rayo doesn’t see Kitty.
The two girls are browsing the cocktail dresses on revolving racks near the center of the store, the buzz-cut one with a tote bag on each shoulder, the other girl with only one bag. Ambling up to a neighboring blouse rack, Rayo whispers the situation to Frank and Rudy and tells them she’s removing the earbuds to try to eavesdrop on the girls. She’s affecting to look through the blouses when the buzz-cut girl holds a short yellow dress against her body and, addressing the other one as Rosa, asks her how it looks.
Ay, Lupita, that’s so perfect, Rosa says. You have to try that on!
Lupita grins and hands the two totes to Rosa and heads off toward the left side of the row of dressing rooms against the far wall, apparently headed for the next-to-last room in the row, the only one whose door is open. Then the door of the last room opens and Kitty Belle comes out holding a black cocktail dress on a hanger, and Lupita stops to admire it.
“Whoa! She’s here!” Rayo hisses into the phone. “She was trying on a dress!”
Lupita holds up the yellow dress, and Kitty smiles and nods and says something, and Lupita grins and goes into the room and shuts the door. Now Rosa has seen Kitty and goes to join her at the register, where a clerk enters the sale and Rosa hands Kitty a tote to put the dress in. Kitty checks her watch and says something, and Rosa nods and they both give a little wave and Kitty departs. Rayo exits behind her, the buds in her ears again as she tells Frank and Rudy she’s on Kitty’s heels.
“I know, man, I’ve got a watch,” she says in response to Frank’s reminder that the girls are due back at the vehicles in less than forty minutes.
She follows her down to a food court on the ground floor and stops to observe from a short distance as Kitty goes to the serving window of a concession. Her order—a clear-wrapped sandwich and a can of soda pop—is served on a small plastic tray, and she pays for it out of a wallet she takes from the tote, then carries the tray to an unoccupied table near the far end of the court.
Rayo tells Frank and Rudy she’s removing the buds again so she can talk to the girl. She puts them into her phone pocket, then buys a cup of strawberry yogurt from the nearest stand and begins eating it with a plastic spoon as she casually ambles in Kitty’s direction. She’s almost abreast of her table when she stops and stares at her with feigned surprised. My God, she says. It’s you!
Kitty looks up from her sandwich and says in her distinctive rasp, What’s your problem?
Oh, God . . . I’m sorry, Rayo says. She casts a quick look around as if making sure there’s no one near enough to overhear them, then steps closer to the table and says softly in English, “You’re Kitty, right? . . . Kitty Quick? Or Kitty Belle, last we heard.”
Kitty’s expression becomes quizzical. “You in the business? We ever work together or what? I think I’d remember.”
“No, no, we haven’t. Jeez, I can’t believe this. We got here yesterday and been looking all over town for you—theatrical agencies, photo studios, TV and radio stations. We’ve tried everywhere in town we could think of where you might’ve had some professional dealings, but we came up with nothing. We finally gave up this morning and were just about to leave, but my partners had to convert some money at a bank down the street and I came in here to get a snack and . . . damn, here you are! It’s mind-blowing!”
“Who the fuck’s we? And what do you want?”
Rayo takes another look around and says, “May I sit, Miss Belle? I think you might be interested in what I have to tell you.”
“Oh, yeah? Like what?”
“Like a movie offer. One that will pay you very well.”
Kitty stares at her for a moment, then nods at a chair. Rayo pitches the rest of the yogurt into a trash can and moves the chair to within low-voice range of the girl.
She tells her that we is herself, Rayo San Luna, and her two partners, and that the three of them work as talent agents for an adult entertainment company in Texas. They’re always on the lookout for new actors, and it so happened that just as the company was working out a deal to produce a sex-sword-and-sorcery flick called Throne of Eros for a satellite TV group, she and her partners saw The Love Tutors and were totally convinced that Kitty would be ideal for the lead part in the throne flick. They showed the producer the Love Tutors DVD and got a quick okay to look her up and see if she’s interested.
“The producer said he wants me?”
“She wants you. Stella Lupino. Not many women honchos in this business, but she’s better than most men. Great eye for casting. We knew she’d jump at you. And here’s the best part . . . the job pays twenty thousand.”
“Twenty thousand? For a little skin flick? They make most of them in about a week.”
“This movie’s several levels above most, and the company doesn’t pinch pennies when it comes to getting what it wants. And Miss Lupino wants you. As it stands, the shooting schedule’s around three weeks, maybe four. The thing is, shooting starts next Friday and the cast has to be in Dallas no later than Tuesday, just three days from now. Naturally all the contracts have to be signed and verified no later than Monday. Miss Lupino’s already optioned a backup actress to play the lead if we couldn’t find you, or, if we did, you weren’t interested. But if you want the job it’s yours, as long as we get you to the company office in Dallas by day after tomorrow, and we can do that.”
“How’d you know I was in Ensenada?”
“We didn’t know, but it was the only lead we had. We went to Tucson to see if you were still with Mount of Venus, but Lance Furman said you’d gone to LA.”
“Lance,” Kitty says with a chuckle, and shakes her head.
“I know.” Rayo grins. “You believe he wanted to put me in a movie?”
“Oh, God, yeah, I believe it!” Kitty says, and they burst out laughing. “He’s always on the watch for sexy girls. His eyes musta got this big when he saw you! He say he could make you a star?”
“He did, yes!”
They laugh all the more.
Rayo tells her that Lance put them in touch with Ben Steiner, who sent them to Nolan Dolan, who said he’d heard she’d gone to Ensenada with some Mexican big shot a few weeks ago. But that was all he knew. “All that matters now is, do you want the job?”
“Yeah, I want it,” Kitty says. “But I have to tell you, that one movie’s all I’ll do. Sometimes they want you to sign a contract, says you’re gonna do two or three or however many, but I’m only gonna do this one and that’s that. That’s all I’ll agree to.”
“Okay. If that’s what you want, no problem.”
“Hey, look, I won’t bullshit you. I always liked sex, right from my very first time when I was fifteen. And when I did my first sex movie, the one with Lance, I really loved it. To get paid so good for doing it in a movie with nice, good-looking guys seemed like the best job in the world. I mean, yeah, Lance can make you roll your eyes with some of the stuff he says—you know that—but he always made the job fun. And most of the other actors were new to the business, too, and were great to work with. We joked around and laughed a lot between takes and felt sorta close in a way that’s hard to describe, but still it’s true. One of the girls even admitted she’d once had to do a little hooking for a while and said making sex movies was a thousand times safer and could never ever be as lonely as hooking. Anyhow, right after that movie for Lance, I went to LA where I knew the pay was better, and I made a couple of movies for Nolan Dolan. But it wasn’t the same. The pay was better, yeah, but nobody joked much and everything was all the time strictly business. I still liked it in some ways, but in some ways it pretty soon started feeling different even though I couldn’t say why. Then one day when I was making the second movie for Dolan, I was watching them film a scene where this girl was doing three guys at once. I’d done two at a time but never three, and I’m watching her real close and she suddenly gets this look on her face that . . . ah, man, it made me feel awful bad for her. Like I was seeing something about her that was way more, I don’t know, personal, more . . . private than even her pussy could ever be. I knew the final cut of the movie wasn’t gonna include that look, and I couldn’t help wondering if I was gonna get it, too, or maybe sometimes already did and didn’t even know. All I knew was that whatever she was feeling just then was something I didn’t ever want to feel. She wasn’t but a coupla years older than me. Ah hell, I wish I could explain it better.”
“I think I understand,” Rayo says.
“Anyway, that’s when I started to hate sex movies. But see, as much as I hate them, I’ll damn sure make one for twenty thousand dollars, because with that much money I can take care of myself awhile and maybe even—”
She suddenly focuses her attention on something behind Rayo and flaps her hand at it in shoo-away fashion. Rayo turns and sees Lupita and Rosa staring at them from the entrance to the food court, Rosa scowling at Kitty and tapping a finger on her wristwatch. When Kitty gives them a more vigorous hand flap of dismissal, Rosa responds with a hand sign of “Up yours,” then tugs Lupita away by the arm, and they stalk off into the crowd.
“Sorry about that,” Kitty says. “Friends of mine, but they can be a real pain in the ass.”
“I totally understand, Miss Belle. I have a pair of friends exactly like that. Anyhow, you set to go?”
“You can call me Kitty. Down here they call me Gatita. And yeah, I’m set to go but, ah, did Dolan tell you the name of the fella I came down here with?”
“Yeah, honey, he did. I didn’t want to bring it up if you didn’t.”
“Chuy was awful sweet when we met. He asked me to come stay with him as his guest for as long as I cared to and said he’d pay for everything and I’d have nothing to worry about. I knew it meant having sex with him whenever he wanted, but I figured that was better than staying in sex movies, so I said okay. It didn’t really surprise me when I saw he had a lot of other girls living with him, too. To tell you the absolute truth, I was glad I wasn’t the only one. And I gotta admit he’s real generous. Lets us buy clothes at some real nice stores in Culiacán and like today at this place. What I’m saying is, it was all pretty okay for a while. Then one night we got in an argument about something, and in the middle of it he told me to suck his dick and I told him to suck it himself, and he grabbed me by the neck and said if I ever talked to him like that again he’d let every one of his men fuck me and then, if I made him mad enough, he’d give me to a guy he knows who makes snuff films. You know what that is, a snuff film?”
“Yes.”
“The awfullest thing, see, is that once you been so scared that way by somebody, you can’t really feel about him no other way after that, not even when he’s being nice. Ever since that night, I’m all the time scared of him. About the only time I have fun and don’t feel really nervous is when I go shopping with the other girls or there’s a party and I can dance. I love to dance. The bad part about a party, though, is I gotta have sex with any guy who wants it. I guess that’s a funny thing to complain about, huh? Seeing as I’ve been in those sex movies.”
“That’s all done. You’re coming with us.”
“Well, hey, I really want to but there’s a problem. Some of Chuy’s fellas are waiting out in front for me and the other girls, and they’re not about to let me go off with somebody else, especially not some strangers.”
“Don’t worry, sweetie,” Rayo says, and pats her hand. “I’ve gotten to know this place. We’ll leave by a side exit and give them the slip.”
“Think we can? Oh, man, if they catch me trying to—”
“They won’t. I’ll give my guys a call and we’re on our way.”
She glances at her watch and takes out her phone and is irritated by the screen warning that the battery power is now nearly drained. She puts in the earbuds, telling Kitty it’s so she can hear better in all the food court noise, then pretends to tap a few numbers and says, “Come on, man, answer.” Rudy’s voice says, “Well done,” and she tells him to pick them up at the building’s north door, which is nearest to the food court.
“All right, amiga,” Rayo says, putting the phone and buds back in the tunic pocket, “let’s hit the trail.”
As they head for the food court exit Rayo asks her how old she is.
“Seventeen as of two months ago. How about you?”
“Twenty-seven.”
“Really? I never woulda guessed you’re that old. You sure don’t look it,”
“Thank you so very much.”
“And hey? I been wanting to tell you. I like your haircut.”
Rayo laughs. “Yeah? That’s cool, kid, because I like yours, too.”