Amber: “Meat”

Deliriously, vibrant red hair flailing like a whip, Amber Haze rode the man's cock. Her hand held one breast like an offering, a firm, round, pink offering, nipple hard as the tip of a finger. Spreading her perfect legs, she lowered her torso, raised it, lowered it, her red-furred cunt clinging to the full round cock inside her. Lying on the lavender sheets, the man shoved his hips up, farther up, pushing harder, his long legs propped in order to penetrate her more deeply, into the farthest depth. Amber opened her eyes widely—gold-flecked eyes, heavily lashed, darkly outlined—and looked up in an expression of delirium. She moaned, groaned, sighed, moaned. The hand not stroking the proffered breast reached back, behind her arched buttocks, as if to double the sensation of the lunging cock—in her, and sliding on her eager finger tips. Now the man tumbled over her roughly and mounted her thrusting body.

He was a slender man in his thirties, tall, just slightly better-looking than plain—hair brown, features as regular as those of anyone walking any street. Still, he was extraordinary. He was Jimmy Steed, the man reputed to have the largest cock in the country, perhaps the world. Again he manipulated Amber's body over, his large hands pulling her up from the stomach, so that her buttocks were toward his waiting cock. She was on all fours, kneeling. One of his hands still grasped her flat stomach and slid toward the pink breasts, his other hand clutched his inflated organ, and he shoved it into her cunt.

She groaned, red hair glorious, luxuriant over her face. She pushed the cascading hair away. Her head turned from side to side. Her gorgeous face, tongue licking her scarlet lips hungrily, seemed to be about to accept the ultimate in sexual grace as Jimmy Steed fucked her. Even in that position, her breasts, large and sculpted, retained their firm hardness, although he pushed forcefully against her in hard, jerking shoves.

Again in one tough motion, Jimmy Steed turned Amber over, face-up on the pillow. Her lips parted, moistened wine red, and her tilted nose flared as if to allow for the increased quickening of her ecstatic gasps. He fucked her from the front now, separating her legs with his hands, allowing his penis to display its full, round length before entering her again. Proudly, Jimmy Steed looked down at his organ, not at Amber. As if in a state of pained bliss, her beautiful face turned toward the pink pillow, biting it as if to contain the spilling ecstasy, to extend it. Quickly, Jimmy pulled out his cock, and pumping forward from his hips, he came in a jetting arc. Holding the sputtering cock like a shooting gun, he aimed the cum at Amber's magnificent breasts. When the sputtering diminished, he rubbed the sticky thickness on her nipples. He moved his dripping cock in an arc over her breasts and made a whistling sound with half-smiling lips.

Amber stood. The mound of red pubic hair shocked the creamy flesh into greater nudity. In the bathroom now, she stretched her resplendent body in a sunken tub. Following her there, Jimmy turned the shower on. Water streamed onto Amber's breasts. Leaning her head back, eyes closed, lips licking at random drops, she rubbed the water on her breasts, between them, on her nipples. Spread-legged, Jimmy stood over her in the shower. The intercepted water ran down his shoulders, his chest, his stomach, his cock—and from there it jetted down over her breasts. Then he turned the shower off. He stood over her again. The liquid flow continued—now only from his cock. “Rub it on good, babe!” his twangy voice commanded. “Drink that— …”

“Goddamn that son of a bitch!”

“Shhh.”

“Shut up!”

“Shhhhhh!”

The irritated admonitions came from the darkness of the theater. In a row toward the back, Amber Haze turned away from her reflection on the movie screen. As if anticipating that moment in the film, waiting for it, a man in front of her gasped, then surrendered into the velvet seat. Amber was aware of at least two other men nearby—concealing convulsed movements.

This was the time of day, just after lunchtime, when there were the fewest people in the Pussy Cat Theater on Hollywood Boulevard, where Meat, starring Amber Haze and Jimmy Steed, was breaking attendance records. She had waited for this early day in the week, this hour of the day, to see the film for the first time.

In the theater now, she wore a bandanna to hide her famous, identifying mane of red hair—its real color; and she had changed her makeup. That son of a bitch! Anger stabbed more deeply. For a few moments she did not move, still facing away from the screen, hearing her recorded voice reciting stupid lines, silly double entendres, which Jimmy Steed—the worst “actor” in the world—was trying to answer in his slow drawl: “Wanna eat th’ sweet candy, li'l girl, while I eat— … ?”

Until she heard the man's whimpered, smothered sounds, she did not realize she had been looking in the direction of a man sitting in the same row but across the aisle from her. Having waited too long, he was coming now, during one of the few unsexual moments in the film. Amber thought she should want to laugh. She wondered why she didn't, didn't want to.

Removing the concealing bandanna, she stood up, releasing the red crown of her hair. She walked out of the theater. Nobody even glanced at her—eyes fixed on the flickering garishly colored figures on the screen. Another man, in a back row, was choosing his moment to masturbate. Amber glanced back at the screen and saw a full shot of her nude body exposed. She had always loved that, the knowledge that men would fantasize about her, her body, long after the movie was over.

The lobby of this theater is carefully decorated—mirrored, gold and red, pseudo-neo-“Victorian.” Because Amber Haze was one of the three top female stars—perhaps the top female star—in pornographic films, her movies did not play in the rancid, crouched, stenchy, black-squashed theaters along the lower part of the boulevard.

Standing in the bright light of the lobby, Amber frowned. She was staring at her own reflection in a mosaic of mirrors that decorated one whole wall. Her reflection was chopped into glass blocks, individual body parts separated by the partitions between the small mirrors. Spread apart in the reflection, her breasts seemed extracted from the rest of her body, which appeared distorted. She turned away from the fragments of herself in the silver mirrors. The usher—wearing white gloves—recognized her; she knew that look. He was about to speak, but already she was outside in the sweating heat of Hollywood Boulevard.

The trashy street shimmered in the heat—or perhaps it was the assault of afternoon brightness that made it seem so. The sweetish odor of smog tinged the unseasonably warm air. A chilly night had become a coolish morning, which was giving way to a sudden warmth, shoved in by the desert winds.

Amber pushed the bandanna off her neck, releasing her hair freely—her pride, yes, as much as her breasts. The blowup outside the theater and behind glass exhibited them fully—her hair, her chest; longish scarlet hair over creamy white breasts. STEED MEETS AMBER IN “MEAT” AND IT SIZZLES! The tips of the M in the title pointed to her exposed nipples. Behind her, the thin body of Jimmy Steed was rendered full-length, the lower portion of the T in the title concealing yet emphasizing—and exaggerating—his famous cock.

Wearing a gray jacket in the hot weather, a red-haired youngman faced her. Nearby, an extremely pretty girl revealing freckled shoulders over a white-embroidered blouse stood next to a tall youngman with a cowboy hat, shirt open, the two were looking from the poster to her. The other youngman frowned at her, and the frown transformed his face entirely; moody, angered.

Automatically, Amber shook her hair in defiant abandon, and her lips parted as she moistened them—that was her automatic reaction when she sensed a verbal assault about to be unleashed. But the man, still staring, said nothing. The “cowboy's” eyes shifted from her to the poster, as if to intensify the feeling of radiating sexuality.

“Did you get your name from Forever Amber?” the girl asked her in a voice that was not unkind, not at all.

“Partly—but also from the color of my eyes,” Amber said. She looks like me, in a new way, she thought, feeling instantly close to the girl. “But my real name is Barbara, Barbara Leighton.” It was the first time she had told anyone her real name in— … How long! Years. Years. This girl was so young, so unaffected; she made Amber feel old, at twenty-nine.

“Bodies,” came the voice of the man Amber had expected to hear speak first. Though the single word was uttered softly, it left a disturbing echo.

She turned away from it. She strode away in the loose, leggy style she had made her own—her proud gait, both bold and shy, sexual and elegant. It began, her walk, in preparation, with a quick toss of her head, her hair brushing her cheek as she turned her face just barely to the right, her chin raised for a second, then back as if in qualification of its overt assurance. Her left shoulder and hand swung slightly back, and her right leg extended in a long assertive step against the always-adoring fabric of her dress, which shifted to greet the advance of her left leg—now the right shoulder swung back in opposite complement. It was an assertive, joyful, sexual walk—which might pause uncertainly for only a moment before it resumed with the quick toss of her head again.

She had parked in a lot near Max Factor's on Highland Avenue. She had to journey through the shattered spectacle of Hollywood Boulevard. Rows of ignored bronzed stars, bearing the names of famous and not-so-famous movie people—hers would never be among them—are embedded into the concrete of the sidewalks; shabby, tacky reminders of one of myriad attempts to restore “glamor” to this vanquished street of squeezed game arcades—machines pinging, tiny electric colors measuring out tiny victories; oniony food stands; frothing fruity-drink counters; army surplus stores with limbless manikins; and, at intervals, grand atavistic theaters, temples, now triplexes, fragments of their Art Deco heritage assaulted by flat plastic additions, partitions. Along the blocks, people waited for buses; others just waited. And there were hustlers of all kinds, all sexes, all types—pushing sex and cheap dope.

On hot days there is much nudity on this street—young girls in cutoffs that show the crescents of their buttocks; squads of shirtless, sinewy youngmen. Lounging, moving away, coming back, moving away. A mobile indolence.

Amber passed the pale lavender building on that strip: Frederick's of Hollywood. In the windows, pretty pouting manikins are dressed in the type of clothes she often wore in her movies—lacy black corsets designed not to close in the middle, frilled brassieres through which nipples peek out, nightgowns that open strategically in cut-out heart shapes to reveal flesh, bikinis that part at the lower tip of the wider V. In attitudes that are meant to be sexually provocative, the giant sex-dolls behind the polished glass looked crazily desperate to Amber today, all bunched together, coy hands meant to flutter but paralyzed in alarm. It was as if these frozen creatures were wandering through a pretty disaster. The head of one sultry manikin was tilted too far to one side. The neck looked twisted under the see-through pinkish peach material of the open-striped creation she wore.

Disturbed all at once by the odd conglomeration of fantasy bodies, Amber retreated from the window. On it, her own reflection was ghostly. Pulling back farther, she bumped into a meek man emerging nervously out of the store. He clutched a large box to himself as if to hide it. “Excuse me,” he apologized. “That's all right,” Amber said quickly, “that's really all right.” “Thank you,” he said. The man looked so mild, so lost, like the man who had waited too long to masturbate in the theater earlier.

Walking slightly faster, avoiding the tarnished copper stars on the sidewalks, Amber passed an army surplus store. In combat uniforms, the manikins there were truncated torsos with featureless faces.

She stopped for a red light. Across the street, near the shiny kaleidoscope of pulpy colors—magazines lined in outdoor racks next to a yellowish coffee shop—young male hustlers gathered. Cheap odors wafted from the cafe, like rancid perfume. Many shirtless, some skinny, masculine youngmen loitered among pretty, androgynous boys. Both groups stared invitingly at cars that drove circling the block. Some of the youngmen motioned hopefully at the drivers, then flung resigned middle fingers at them when they didn't stop.

Crossing the street, Amber almost ran into a muscular shirtless youngman in his late teens. With him—leaning lovingly on his bare brown shoulder—was a youngman of extraordinary blond beauty. He had golden long hair. He wore denim cutoffs, a short shirt cropped just below his nipples. The more masculine of the two pretended—obviously pretended—indifference, loving indifference. Their open closeness pleased Amber. “Hi,” she said. “Hi,” they echoed.

By the time she reached the parking lot, the walk had stilled Amber's rage. She had gathered strength from this wounded but defiant street. The courage she had come to search in the theater showing Meat asserted itself. Next to a liquor store was a series of exposed phone booths. The first one swallowed her coins without connecting her to anyone, anything. “Damn!” She wanted to avoid becoming anxious, nervous. The receiver in the next naked booth had been torn, the coiled wire like a silver cut vein. She moved away quickly. The third phone worked.

“Landers’,” the woman's voice answered.

“Theodore, please,” Amber said. She had been about to greet the familiar receptionist, but her breathing became instantly irregular.

“Mr. Landers is not— …”

“It's Amber; tell him I have to talk to him.”

“Oh, Amber,” said the receptionist, “you sound so different. Theodore's talking to Jimmy. He tried to call you earlier, to tell you that— … Well, I'll let him tell you.”

“Amber?” came the steady voice of Theodore Landers. “I just tried to telephone you earlier, darling. What a coincidence. Jimmy's here. He brought me the Reporter. It confirms that Meat has already surpassed The Devil in Miss Jones in gross profits. A few more weeks and we'll go after Deep Throat.”

Jimmy's voice called out: “Tell her what they called us!”

“Jimmy wants me to tell you,” Theodore Landers said, his voice cool as always, “that the Reporter called you and Jimmy the Jeannette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy of the erotic film circuit.” He never said “sex films,” never said “porn” or “porno” or even “pornography.”

“Who's supposed to be who?” Amber attempted to release at least one coil of tension. She heard Theodore tell Jimmy Steed what she'd said.

“You cummon over and I'll show you!” Jimmy yelled at the phone.

“Darling,” Theodore said, “I've got the ideal script for your next film—you and Jimmy again—and it's better than Meat.”

Script! “I have to see you—tomorrow, Theodore,” Amber emphasized. “It's important.”

“Of course, darling, let's have lunch,” he said. No questions; that cunning, easy “acceptance.”

He knew it was about Meat, Amber was sure; she had told him last week she was seeing it today. “And I'd like Jimmy to be there,” she said. She looked away and saw that the street where the ruined phones were was lined with rows of extremely tall, skinny palm trees; they all tilted slightly toward the same side. Toward the ocean? Away? A gusty wind was rising, shaking the dried leaves drooping under green branches that open like fans. She heard Theodore's voice, then Jimmy's.

“Jimmy says the pleasure is his,” Theodore Landers said. “And mine.”

Amber took a deep breath and then said, “At Chez Toi.” She had chosen the most flagrantly—showily—“exclusive” restaurant in the city. It was where Theodore took the wealthy backers and bankers who made his “quality erotic films” possible. But he had never taken her there.

Hardly a second of silence, then the cool voice said “Chez Toi it is, darling.” His tone was a riddle. “How's twelve-thirty?… You, me, and Jimmy—and whatever you want to tell me. … Ciao, darling.” Before he hung up, Jimmy Steed's voice pushed into the receiver. “Chow, sweet!”

As she drove up into the wind-scrimmed distance off Sunset Boulevard to her home in Laurel Canyon, she felt the air, not cool at all, rush at her in her small, shiny new red MG. Often, with nothing to do, she would drive about the city—into the freeways—going nowhere, and then she would feel exhilarated by the wind brushing her flesh. Now she did not feel triumphant. Was it that Theodore had agreed so easily and that, expecting some resistance and therefore geared for battle, she had not had to fight? This unfought battle might render the war itself savage.

She entered the area that meanders into the Hollywood Hills. She lived off Lookout Mountain. Wild with trees and flowers, Laurel Canyon has gone through several vicissitudes in the last years. In the Sixties, rock stars pretending gypsy poverty and offering weekly smorgasbords of expensive drugs clogged the area with dazzling sports cars. In the Seventies, the new “hip” film-makers and the “new” serious actors and actresses asserted their need for “space” and wore expensive working-class clothes. Many of them remained, along with the newer tenants, stars and demistars of nervous television series.

This area, not inexpensive, is seasonally threatened by torrential rains. When soaked soil moves, houses fold into rivers of mud. During thirsty spells, the threat of fire is a constant reminder with the ashy odor of smog. Still, the area—constantly rebuilt and reinforced after every disaster—survives, desirable.

Amber parked her MG in the small garage under her sunning porch. Her house clutched more deeply into the soil, and so it resisted the crawling mud. A handsome structure of glass and wood, it was shoved against a mottled-green hill. That protected it from the sheets of water in the rainy season; rocks blocked the flowing rain and sent it in an arc over the house. Flowers grew wild. Amber liked the crash of bright colors, the jagged forms and varied heights.

Inside, the house was sparingly furnished. She preferred uncluttered, open rooms. She sat on the dark brown leather falcon chair she preferred. She felt sad, tired. But her body seemed charged with inner energy. The erotic film circuit! How she hated Theodore's phrase. Circuit, like electricity. An electric circle.

Standing up, she removed her clothes, almost as she did before the camera, slowly, sexually—but this time for herself, enjoying her own private sensuality. She walked naked onto the porch, which perched over the hill. Sometimes deer came to the edge of the house. She had tried to feed one once, but it had fled. They always stood so proud and free, lithe, almost delicate. Then impulsively they'd rush into the crackling brush.

Amber never attempted to get a tan. Her fair skin warred with the sun; and, too, it was the creamy whiteness of her body that emphasized the copper of her hair, especially between her legs. In her films, it was tinged with a dot of brilliantine. She touched her body with both hands, and felt aroused in the naked warmth. It was spring, but like summer. She would have welcomed skipping over the cruelty of spring, the end of winter's hope.

The next morning, the heat had abated—but it was edging in—as Amber drove into Sunset. She wanted to be just slightly late, let Theodore—and Jimmy—be waiting for her as she walked into Chez Toi.

The main appeal of Chez Toi is not its food—it is sometimes good—but its vaunted, expensive snobbishness and exclusivity. Its telephone number is listed in the name of the maitre d'hotel. Only those chosen by wealth or extreme fame, or those who can purchase attention, are welcome into what looks at first like a plain, smallish house over which a huge plastic parachute has fallen and been reinflated. The translucent plastic distorts the reflections of the entering guests into melting figures. Fat, overfed shrubs squat along the narrow walk.

It is the ambience of restriction that makes Chez Toi exclusive, sought after, craved, courted—and a source of despair to many, and that despair renders it even more desirable for those who do not have to feel it. In this city of shaky wealth and status, the maitre d'hotel of Chez Toi has been allowed the papal power to bless or excommunicate the anxious courtiers who pay to see who else will be allowed, who turned away—a salubrious, regular ritual. Telephone-accepted reservations may be denied—if a name or reference is not recognized at the door. Dress at lunch may range from expensive—always expensive—tennis shorts and shoes, armies of sewn, tiny green alligators proclaiming the correct label displayed like combat badges—to the outrageous—one round producer holding often daily court in draped caftans of tangled spectrums—to the doggedly chic—original dresses and suits purchased just moments earlier on Rodeo Drive, for this one lunch, this one entrance—and exit—this one trip to the restroom, which can become a journey through a mined war-field of appraising eyes, meanly strained necks. But anything is acceptable if there is enough wealth, enough power behind it.

Like everything else about it, the inside of the restaurant is at best ordinary. Beyond the plastic-sheeted patio, there is a tiny bar and, upstairs, a room for sealed parties. Within a certain imperfect social circle, one's reception at Chez Toi is an essential component in determining status.

Outside, the squat house recedes a few feet from the street. In a small dirt lot before it, uniformed attendants park only Rolls Royces, Corniches—free advertisements for the restaurant. Lesser cars—the fleets of ordinary Mercedeses ubiquitous in this city—are rushed to hidden lots surrounding the restaurant.

Inside, the tables are arranged to allow exposure to the important and obscurity to the candidates, who may graduate into prime visibility, or its orbit, through larger tips and contacts, if they are willing to wait.

Amber parked in the lot. A young Mexican attendant ran to open the door. She stepped out and dazzled him into momentary disfunction. She wore a sleeveless dress of diaphanous white silk. No jewelry. A swirl of wind wrapped the silk about her legs, outlining them lovingly. Barely kissing her nipples, the soft touch of silk hardened them so that her breasts asserted themselves with subtle daring. Her copper hair emphasized the exposed portions of skin. Sexual, glamorous—refined.

The attendant drove off to hide her car.

She was not sure whether or not she wanted to be recognized. Certainly being a “sex star” carried an amount of fame, awesome to some, tarnished for others. She knew she wanted to be admired, yes, and would be. Her stark beauty commanded that, always—even in a city of beautiful women. Again the wind wrapped the silk about her legs, carving the long limbs.

“Wow!”

She turned.

Leaning against a silver gray limousine parked in the place of honor with other powerful, impervious cars basking in their wealth was a chauffeur in a gray uniform, the color of the car. He was good-looking, yes, a man beginning to show—and to attempt to disguise—his age; early forties, tanned, broad-shouldered, brown-haired; he had a blondish moustache, perhaps brushed with bleach to conceal white obtruding hairs.

Amber remembered Rhett Butler eyeing Scarlett O'Hara on the steps of Twelve Oaks—that look that still made audiences sigh, just as Amber had when she first saw that film she loved. This man, this chauffeur— …

“Wow! Sweet! Suh-weet!”

Those words—the kind she was used to, expected, and welcomed at other times—sent stabs of panic through her now, because she knew he would not have dared utter them to any of the other women here, no matter how beautiful, alone or unescorted.

Without having been to Chez Toi, Amber had always detested it, all the rancidity it stood for. Its brutal hauteur had a radiating power. It could extend to contaminate even those who did not go—care to go—there. She had chosen it as the site for confronting Theodore because of what she knew it represented to him. It was here that he came with the people he took seriously, his “equals.” She chose it as her battleground.

She looked away from the chauffeur. The bone-colored heels of her shoes clicked assertively as—in her inimitable, impossibly elegant, sensual style, her long legs thrusting against the clinging silk—Amber Haze strode into Chez Toi.

At the entrance to the square plastic patio were two men in tuxedos, one of them a step behind the other. Amber recognized the man in front—often photographed, a powerful man simply because as maitre d'hotel he reigned over Chez Toi. He looked like a failed gigolo. “Madame?” His voice pounced on the last syllable. For a second she felt her beauty being drained by the chilled voice.

“With Mr. Landers,” Amber said. Eyes in the patio were already on her. For now, her extravagant beauty would be her passport, even if her identity, known, might restrict its terms. The tuxedoed man in front nodded to the man slightly behind him—small, pudgy, all scrapes and bows. Amber knew she was being relegated to the assistant. She wondered whether Theodore, with Jimmy, had been. No, not Theodore.

“This way, madame.” The squat man led her in.

A drone of voices that remains at one level is constant at Chez Toi. Faces turn quickly, eyes shift slyly—then away. All here have learned how to look just slightly, to appraise in one glance—and even to stare in accusation, even opportunistic admiration.

Passing a long table, Amber saw a woman she recongized from photographs—Margaret Manfred. One of the richest women in the world, she appeared constantly in society photographs—and on the front pages of trashy scandal sheets. Sitting like an empress and surrounded by two suited men and three women, the rich woman was looking so overtly at her that Amber paused near the table. Margaret Manfred had a pallid white face that seemed to have been ironed, the wrinkles pulled away, the skin cut, sewn behind the scattered strands of brown hair. Dressed in a high-necked gray dress even in this day of whitening heat, she sat stiffly as if the clasped skin had been traded for any expression indicating emotion. In its severe lineless agelessness, the face became ancient. Amber turned away from the stare of the woman, just as one of the men leaning toward the rigid face whispered: “… woman in that thing called Meat.”

Near them, laughter erupted in high, false peals. A stumpy, fat man in a ridiculous oriental robe waved his long sleeves like colored ribbons. Bits of crushed caviar tinted the edges of his fleshy mouth. He was entertaining a clutch of strident men and women—who leaned toward him and automatically echoed his laughter—a second or two after each burst. Never on him, their eyes constantly ricocheted about the room.

Amber saw Theodore Landers—and Jimmy. They had not been shoved into the shaded purgatory in back. Although she had never really liked him, she felt a sigh of warmth at the sight of Jimmy Steed, at ease anywhere.

The assistant maitre d'hotel pulled out a chair for Amber. Theodore Landers stood up. He had resplendent, old-fashioned manners. Beaming, Jimmy Steed tipped his chair—he loved being seen with beautiful women. The only thing better was being seen with beautiful rich women. Theodore Landers placed cool lips on Amber's cheek: “Darling.” Amber sat down, aware of the looks swirling about her, the buzzes perhaps identifying her. Jimmy leaned over and kissed her on the mouth; his tongue automatically attacked her throat.

“Theodore … Jimmy,” she said. Jimmy! So well dressed, his hair so lovingly styled, his shirt open one button past acceptable daring. A man under forty—how far under, or how near, was a matter for conjecture; that he was tall was apparent even when he was sitting down. Despite the careful grooming, he was still ordinary. Not threateningly handsome, he did not alienate the heterosexual men who saw all his movies. That near-plainness—and his enormous cock, which men fantasized was theirs—made Jimmy Steed the top male sex star in films. He was also an expensive prostitute. His fan mail was impressive.

It came from men—whom he always turned down, Jimmy announced periodically—and from women, who would offer to pay his fare for bought assignations. Usually in a happy, loose mood, Jimmy could be brought down deeply by any aspersions on his penis—which he took with profound seriousness. “It looks bigger on screen” sent him into a serious sulk.

“You look smashing, darling,” Theodore approved of Amber.

“Good enough to eat, yum-yum,” came Jimmy's expected remark.

The captain filled her glass with wine—good wine, Amber knew, and as cool as Theodore.

Theodore Landers was not fat, he did not sweat, he never huffed, his tie never became loose or askew, he did not have a balding spot, and he never chewed cigars or used profanity. No, the most successful producer-director-manager in the production of “erotic films” looked and acted like the high-paid legal advisor of an international, powerful corporation. In his middle fifties, with neatly cut graying hair, he wore conservative but fashionable suits. Producing “erotic films of quality” was his business. “Quality” meant big budgets, careful sets, audible dialogue, clear, focused, imaginative shots—and bookings only in the best theaters available. “Russ Meyer,” he was quoted as having said, “is a very vulgar man.”

“Sorry I'm late,” Amber called attention to the fact.

“That's all right, darling,” came Theodore's cultured, modulated voice. “Jimmy and I were enjoying this excellent wine—isn't it?—and Jimmy's been recognizing some of the women he's been with— …”

“That's that rich millionaire woman,” Jimmy Steed indicated Margaret Manfred in tones meant to suggest he had been with her. But Jimmy was not subtle. If he had been with her, nothing would have stopped him from announcing the details of the encounter. “Must've fucked half the women at this Shay Too, and that's the truth,” he drawled in his shanty tone.

“You're lying, Jimmy,” Amber challenged. Oh, yes, the wine was fine—and self-assured.

“Well, at least a dozen,” Jimmy reduced the number of his conquests.

“You're still lying, Jimmy,” Amber said.

“Okay, then, two—and that's for sure. That woman over there with those two others? She don't—doesn't—know I know who she is, but she's the wife of a very powerful politician or judge, something like that. I saw her picture in Beverly Hills People.”

“You read that?” Amber asked in amusement. That was the “house organ” of the chic restaurants and social affairs in the city.

“Sure. Get to know my rich ladies.” Jimmy winked.

Amber's eyes glided toward the woman Jimmy had just indicated. She had an anxious face, which she kept touching at the edges of her hair. She caught Amber's look—merely another in the constant magnetized trajectory of glances that sometimes become stares. She almost smiled, absently.

The captain was bowing at Theodore's table; the waiter stood next to him. A cute busboy was fussing unduly with the silver, napkins, water at their table, flinging entranced glances at Jimmy. Amber ordered poached salmon. Theodore chose the mixed grill. Jimmy said, “A large, blood-rare steak, and some A-1— …”

“Monsieur?” the captain stopped him, in premature accusation; his eyebrows collided.

“A-1 Sauce. With the steak,” Jimmy said easily. “Never have meat without it.”

“If monsieur— …”the captain began.

Theodore said, “The gentleman would like a New York-cut steak please—very rare—and some A-1 sauce. Kindly bring that to him.”

“Of course.” The captain was in full retreat.

Amber couldn't help admiring Theodore. He had frosted the captain. Yet it would be that same ability which he might use against her, his controlled performance warned her. He could give—seem to give—in abundance, and then take more, much more—all.

Margaret Manfred's eyes were on Amber again. The lips had managed the slightest smirk, harsh tilts at the tips.

“Darling, I have great news,” Theodore began. He frowned in annoyance because his wine glass was empty. Filled! “I have the largest budget ever for your new film. It will be pure quality.”

“Is that the title?” Amber said. She wanted Theodore to perceive more of her purpose in her sarcasm.

He cleared his throat, as if for words he was already gathering.

“Dynamite.” Jimmy was enthusiastic. “You're married to this middle-aged guy, Amber—this is the story. And the only way he can get it up—listen to this—is by showing movies of this big sex star before he fucks you. Guess who plays the sex star and the wife? You! See, you are the star, moonlighting, but he doesn't know it. I play your partner in all the movies he watches before he fucks his wife, who's really the star—he just has to pretend he's fucking a whore. In one skit in the movie, I play an electrician fixing your electric oven, and I'm carrying this long, long wrapped wire.”

“And it unwinds,” Amber said.

“Yeah. It's supposed to represent my cock.” He let his hand drop into his lap, and the busboy gaped.

Over his wineglass, Theodore's eyes locked on Amber.

Amber said casually, “Have you heard, Jimmy, that there's a new … star … who's bigger than you? Young kid, too; got a movie coming out, talk of the town.”

Ambushed, Jimmy Steed needed emergency reassurance. He sought the awed busboy and deliberately dropped his fork. The busboy leapt for it. Finally, he handed Jimmy a clean one.

The boy said quickly, “Hello, Mr. Steed, it's a pleasure to meet you.” Jimmy flashed what came as close to being a dazzling smile as he could muster. “Thanks.”

“Real cute kid,” Amber said.

“You're bullshitting about that other guy,” Jimmy recovered.

I'm the biggest—and in this country big is best, right, Theodore?” He felt flushed with patriotism; he knew Theodore was very patriotic. “Hey, babe,” he said to Amber, “what the hell's eating you? It's not me—at least, not this moment,” he laughed, satisfied.

Amber faced Theodore. “I saw Meat yesterday.”

Theodore did not stop his wineglass on its trek to his lips. But when he put it down, he twisted it in a full circle, his fingers sliding on the skinny stem.

“You never saw it?” Jimmy Steed marveled. He was still basking in the busboy's awed attention. “Was everyone jerking off in the theater, Amber?” Jimmy asked her. “At night you get the better clientele—the hip young swingers, the women and the men. The early part of the day, that's when the guys come alone, or come back, alone. You get off on people jerking off watching you fuck, Amber? I sure do!”

“Yes,” Amber said. “I do.”

“Those guys imagine they're me,” Jimmy Steed said, “that they got the big ding-dong, and they're fucking this gorgeous whore— …”

“That's the second time you've called me that, Jimmy,” Amber said calmly, not wanting to spend any of her stored anger on him, not now. “Just for the record, I have nothing against prostitutes, but I've chosen not to be one. You're the famous prostitute, Jimmy.”

“Shit,” Jimmy gave the word three syllables. “Men can't be prostitutes.” He glanced at the woman he had pointed out earlier; their glances collided. The wife of the famous man touched her hair again. She said something to another of the three women with her, and they all looked at Margaret Manfred, who faced Amber. “Hey! Get this. Somebody sent me this little bottle in the mail—well, it wasn't really little—and guess what they wanted me to shoot in it?”

The waiters arrived, the captain began serving. The A-1 Sauce was in a small peaked vial. With a flourish, the waiter placed it next to Jimmy, who devoured the meat with his eyes. The busboy rushed over, about to pour more water into the filled glass. He retreated just in time, but Jimmy granted him another smile.

In the moments of the serving, the noise of Chez Toi asserted itself in broken cacophony. Jimmy poured all the sauce over his steak, coating it. A waiter looked wounded. Theodore began cutting the varied cold meats, neatly, tasting the chicken first, then the liver. Now he cut a piece of lamb and held it up between his plate and his mouth. The piece of meat was impaled on the fork, slightly away from him—almost as if he were going to toast Amber with it.

“All right, Amber,” he said, the meat still in mid-journey, “Tell me what you're playing so I can play, too.”

Afraid her words would drown in anger, she looked down at the salmon, a slab of pink flesh. She put down her fork, her appetite gone.

“So! You saw Meat today—and you didn't like— …” Theodore paused like a judge about to pronounce sentence “… —yourself.”

“I love seeing myself naked,” Amber asserted. “I like sex, sometimes I love it, and it excites me that men masturbate looking at me.”

“You like other women's bodies?” Jimmy asked absently.

“Yes,” Amber said.

“You're not a lez?” Jimmy felt stung—somehow.

“No—but I can still admire other women's bodies. What about you, Jimmy? You like other men's bodies?”

“Hell, no,” Jimmy protested. “I'm no fag, you know that. Hell, I turn down— …”

Theodore interrupted. “You're very serious, Amber—but you don't seem to know about what.”

That strategy, that strategy! It allowed him to win without even fighting. “I am serious, very serious,” Amber said, “and I do know about what. And so do you.”

“Tell me, tell me, tell me,” Theodore fired the words at her—but still softly. He said, “You didn't like how you looked fellating Jimmy?” Nothing sounded sexual coming from him, he rendered everything neuter. “We light you splendidly, you know. The best!—everything to display your beauty.”

“I didn't care how I looked eating your pussy, yummy,” Jimmy said. “Meat—that's a great title, isn't it? … Hell, I love being a hunk of meat—a great big prime salami.”

“Why are you suddenly ashamed of showing your body?” Theodore thrust at Amber.

“You're doing it, Theodore, you're doing it—trying to confuse before anyone even explains.”

“Then explain!” he said.

Amber placed her hands on her lap, to contain her premature rage; he wanted to dissipate it, she knew. She glanced at Margaret Manfred. The woman ate carefully, tiny pieces on her fork, brought into her mouth, which hardly opened, her movements almost like those of a puppet, careful, guarded. When someone spoke to her, she merely leaned, slightly, in that direction.

“I'm proud of my body,” Amber said, and then she formed the words: “You tricked me, Theodore.”

“How did I trick you?” came the controlled words. “You get very well paid—the highest!—and more for this new film. You get well treated—always! You thought I wouldn't bring you to Chez Toi—oh, I knew that—but here you are. And just look at how that Manfred woman is looking at you. She hasn't taken her eyes off you. You know why? Because she'd give all her millions to look like you. Think of that. And have I ever even asked you to meet the people who make the big budgets possible—who want an introduction to you as a contingency? I tell them no, I won't stoop to that, I'm not a procurer, you're not a harlot— …”

“Hell,” Jimmy said.

“Did I ever force you to do anything?”

“No,” Amber conceded. “I'm not ashamed of any of it.”

“Damright.” Jimmy shaved at a strip of fat on his plate.

Theodore lowered the fork with the stabbed meat, releasing the lamb onto the plate. He cut the liver. His appetite seemed aroused.

“That scene where you had Jimmy hold his cock over my breasts while he made that hissing sound— …” Amber started.

“Hot scene,” Jimmy enthused. “That's the one guys come back to see—alone—that one, but mostly the one it sets up.”

“Which one?” Amber thrust. In his clumsy way, Jimmy would lead her into the territory where she was faltering.

“Golden showers,” he said easily. “That's probably the main reason the movie's such a big hit.”

Amber breathed in audibly. “You created the impression that Jimmy was pissing on my breasts, Theodore. And in my— …”

“I was,” Jimmy said casually. He ate the stripped fat.

The owner of Chez Toi was making his late lunch rounds now. Faces strained eagerly for his benediction. He chose those to honor, shaking a man's hand, kissing a woman's. Those passed over were shrouded in gloom. He approached Theodore's table. He glanced at Jimmy, quickly away; then at Amber, slowly, coolly. “Monsieur,” he touched Theodore's hand—more lightly than at other times, Amber knew, from Theodore's slight frown. Because of that perhaps, the owner reached to kiss Amber's hand. She dropped it to her lap. He glided away to dance about Margaret Manfred's table.

“You're lying, Jimmy,” Amber said softly. “That scene was faked.”

“Yeah. And no.” Jimmy chewed on the red, red meat.

“It was water I rubbed on my breasts!” She faced Theodore's unblinking gaze. “You shot Jimmy pissing alone into the bathtub, then you spliced the film so it looked like he was doing it on me, and you inserted his line telling me to drink— …”

“Some of it was piss—on your breasts,” Jimmy said easily. “When I stood under the shower with you in the tub, remember? Theodore told me to get a few drops in the water, make the fake golden showers look even realer.”

Amber felt cold, hot, cold.

Theodore fired: “I don't understand you, Amber. The camera has been almost inside you; you've been sodomized, you've fellated, you've had cunnilingus performed. And whether you pretend or not, you're the most convincing actress in erotic films. Everybody feels you love it—all.”

“Goddammit, Theodore, what the hell was sexual about that scene—which you had to fake!” Despair echoed in her voice.

Theodore's words were softer than ever, every word modulated, precise—the expensive corporate adviser explaining the most intricate transaction in the simplest terms. “You really don't understand, Amber. You're not just a woman on the screen. You're the beautiful woman. And you are—a perfect face, a beautiful body, the most famous breasts. When those men see Jimmy urinating— … pretending to urinate— …”

“I did piss, you told me,” Jimmy emphasized.

“…—on you,” Theodore continued without a break in his words, “they can pay you back for all the times they've wanted you—the beautiful woman they've longed for, long for, without being able to have. You. They come to see you turned into raw meat. It's revenge, Amber—that's what you don't understand.”

The buzzing in the restaurant drilled into Amber's ears. She saw the fat man in the oriental robe wave wildly at a woman in tight jeans, boots, t-shirt. Black oily liquid smeared the man's lips.

“Did Jim piss on me?” Amber asked Theodore.

“Yes,” Theodore's lips sealed the word with a forkful of cold lamb. “Just what do you want, Amber?” he asked her.

“Not piss,” Amber said.

“You want to be a serious actress?” It was the only time Theodore had allowed overt derision to sweep his voice “If you do, reduce your breasts. Have breast reduction. That's the only way anyone will take you seriously.”

“Repeat that!” Amber commanded. Her hands were wet on the white silk.

Theodore chewed on a piece of chicken. Jimmy basked in the attention of the people looking toward them.

“That's what you've been doing all along,” Amber said, “reducing my body, my breasts, my sex—until no sex was left. Just revenge. What did you have planned for the next film?” She stood up.

“Sit down, Amber. Everyone is watching,” Theodore said.

Amber looked down at him: “I know why you are always so cool, Theodore, because you're always sweating and panting inside.”

She walked away. Margaret Manfred's eyes seized her. The undisguised look wrenched at her even when, standing very near her, Amber challenged it. The maitre d'hotel froze, the captains stopped their movements about the room, all eyes in the restaurant swiveled. The two women stared into each other, deeply. It was Margaret Manfred who withdrew—looked away. Flustered, the captain snapped his fingers at all the waiters. In the rare silence of Chez Toi his Snap! was like the crack of a bullet. Margaret Manfred winced.

Then Amber walked out of Chez Toi, hearing, behind her, like the hurried breathy prayers of commiseration at a spontaneous wake, the urgent whispering around Margaret Manfred.

Outside, the young Mexican attendant ran to get Amber's car. She stood in the small lot, isolated—thinking she was isolated, until she heard the man's whistle and knew it was the same chauffeur.

He took a step away from the haughty silver gray limousine. “Hey, Amber,” the chauffeur drawled, “you really come that good all the time? Or you just fake it, huh?”

No, that wasn't how Rhett had looked at Scarlett in that scene she loved, Amber realized. Rhett's look had contained desire, sexual desire, not hatred disguised. How many times had she seen this man's look, even—yes, she faced it—courted it without knowing it, because she expected it, that look that had nothing to do with sex, like the scene in the tub?

Words of rage formed inside her. She sought exact ones to hurl out. But what were the words, how exactly was that look of contempt formed? She didn't know the vocabulary or what went with it.

She could learn! She closed her eyes for a moment, as if to contain everything in an ordering bright darkness. The cherished sensual lightness of the silk asserted itself on her breasts. She felt a delicate flush there. She opened her eyes onto the shimmering day, and she thought, Do I want to? Do I want to learn that ugly, cruel vocabulary?

No.

Like an anxious private, the chauffeur came to attention. He moved back to the limousine. Margaret Manfred and her entourage were emerging. This time the frozen woman did not turn in the direction of Amber—but the others did, quietly. The chauffeur opened and closed doors. Margaret Manfred and her court entered the limousine. The chauffeur moved briskly into the driver's seat. Behind the tinted windows of the brutal car, Margaret Manfred's face looked dead.

Amber shook her red hair against the rising whirls of wind. The heat hugged her. Then the wind swirled the silk about her body, pushing the material to outline the V at her thighs. She welcomed that, the pleasurable, sensual warmth there.

Even in the ugly wavering plastic that forms the enclosure of Chez Toi, even in that distorted reflection, her magnificent hair glowed—gloriously—in the light of the fascinated sun.