The 420 Bus to Hollywood

In the late spring of 1995 I was living with Scottie Taylor in a North Hollywood pool house. The homeowner, Dennis, ran a strip club off West Pico Boulevard. Dennis' dancers sunbathed nude by the pool in the mornings. They were Jesus freaks and read the Bible like a choir of fallen angels. Scottie and I were sinners in their eyes.  We ran a nightclub in Beverly Hills. The Milk Bar. Decor very CLOCKWORK ORANGE. Clientele; young, semi-famous, and druggy. We closed late.

Every morning the naked sunbathers' prayer session interrupted my sleep and I stuffed my ears with cotton to reduce the words of the Bible to mutterings. Jesus was not saving my soul. My wake-up hour was noon, after which I ate breakfast at a diner, then played basketball at North Hollywood Park. A bicycle was my transportation. I had bought it from a junkie on Vineland. He wanted $50. I gave him $20, which was probably $10 too much. My cousin Sherri lived on Hartsook. I spent my afternoons writing in her house, while she filmed XXX films with lesbians over in Van Nuys. Some of those girls were Jesus freaks too. None of them broke ranks with men, especially for a nightclub doorman without a car.

Only losers walk in LA, because walking got you nowhere. Scottie was my ride to the Milk Bar most nights. We opened at 8. He drove a mud-colored Pinto with questionable steering and shuttering brakes. Riding in the passenger seat was a test of courage, however Scottie and I had another problem. The trip from North Hollywood to Beverly Hills took twenty minute by car. The Simpson aired Sundays at 7:30. The show lasted 30 minutes. No one told jokes in LA. No one told stories either. Laughs were hard to find at the Milk Bar. Homer Simpson filled the gap.

"I can't believe you are going to be late for a cartoon show." Scottie only watched the History Channel. He liked to be serious.

"It's not a cartoon. It's the Simpsons. You could always watch it with me." My baby brother eas dying of AIDS in Boston. I couldn't be with hi to hold his hand into the darkness. THE SIMPSON. He loved the Simpsons and I know he watched them evey night from his hospice bed. We talked about them the next day.

"I own the club. I have 20 people who work for me. They get there at 8. I get there before them. Otherwise they'll come in late. Like you."

"I'll take alternative transportation."

"Such as what?"

Hitchhiking was illegal and the train system was a work in progress.

"I don't mind taking the bus." The 420 ran over the Hollywood Hills to Sunset Boulevard. I caught another bus on the corner. It went to Beverly Hills.  The other passengers were mostly Latinos or the demented homeless. I belonged to neither, but fit right in. The trip lasted 45 minutes. Sometimes less. Sometimes more. On the bus I read a book and never made eye contact with the other passengers. 

"Besides no one comes until 10." 10pm to 2am. Those were our hours of business.

"You ever think about giving a good impression." It was an odd question, since Scottie didn't shave, his clothing dated back five years, and he drove a battered Ford Pinto.

"Not out here." 

I wasn't trying to be in the movies. My novel was about the last man on earth. Pornography too. Dirty cops. Lesbians. Murder. High-tech sex. I was on chapter 23. 200 pages plus. THE END was off in the distance.

"I'm on time the nights the Simpsons aren't on."

"What about the nights with Star Trek?" Scottie knew my schedule.

"That's VOYAGER." Jeri Ryan, the Seven of Nine Borg, was sexier than any of the Bible strippers. "Monday night."

"I can't believe it." Scottie left me in the pool house.

I sat before the TV with a glass of water in my hand. The clock on the wall ticking its way to 7:30. It was time for the Simpsons. No matter what, because a good laugh was a treasure in a city without any laughs. And Homer Simpson was always good for "Ha ha ha.", which were hard to find for a man riding the 420 bus.

JUNE 29, 1995 NORTH HOLLYWOOD - Journal Entry

Before the dawn the poolhouse in North Hollywood lurched from side to side and ground grinded like a herd of mammoth teeths and my skin shivered with each tectonic shift. Scotty shouted, "Earthquake.

Last evening I had once more punished my body and soul with drink and drugs. The Milk Bar never recovered from the Beverly Hills FD RAID. My purpose here has lessened each night. No one comes anymore. Bemused by the funhouseque shaking, I groggily ask, "Does this get any worse?"

"No,it's over," Scottie answered the poolhouse's from far corner, sounding relieved having experienced the last 6+ 0n the Richter scale earthquake. "Good." It was only my second earthquake. The previous one had been in Encinitas the Summer of 1974. Stronger than this one I had first thought the riotous rumbling was a train passing on the nearby train tracks. My friend AK knew what it was as had everyone in the bungalow nect to the Botanical Gardens. Rumble, shake, the scent of jasmine on the night air mixed with the stink of eucalyptus. Like a Joni Mitchell cover song. I returned to my semi-coma thinking it had been a dream. Imwas wrong. Later in the day everyone spoke about, then again people in LA had little to day anything other than traffic and the glorification of their existence.

Nothing else could be expected from the promised land of Southern California.

NORTH NORTH HOLLYWOOD - CHAPTER 6 By Peter Nolan Smith

SIX

The 757 descended for its final approach to Las Vegas. The passengers tightened their safety belts and the male steward knocked on a bathroom door. A single passenger was missing from the flight.

"Sir, you have to get back to your seat."

"Just a second." Sean Coll was unraveling the turban of toilet paper in front of the bathroom mirror. The blonde man in the reflection resembled an aging extra from a 1960's biker flick. The wedges inside his shoes added another inch of height and his rumpled black suit shadowed his persona with a nondescript aura. He exited from the bathroom and said to the steward, "Thanks for being so patient."

The steward was visibly dismayed by the passenger's bizarre appearance, especially since no golden-haired man had boarded the plane at JFK.

"What seat are you in, sir?"

"32-A, I can show you my ticket, if you would like."

"No, that won't be necessary."

Satisfied by the steward's bafflement, Sean proceeded past the passengers gaping at the wonders of Las Vegas below the 757. They should have been recoiling in fright like they were meeting a thief in a dark alley, yet none of them cared a fig whether they won or lost at the gaming tables or slots as long as they weren't home watching television.

A black boy about eight years old had changed seat for the view.

"Are you the same guy here before?"

Sean raised his eyebrow to indicate 'maybe'.

"Where's your mom?"

"She's waiting for me at the airport." The boy peeked out the porthole.

"First time flying?" Sean stashed his bag before buckling into the aisle seat.

"Yes, sir." His small hands gripped the armrests for dear life.

"Empty planes never crash." Sean imitated the exact tone with which his own father had calmed his son on a shuttle flight from Boston to New York decades before, except the boy slouched fearfully into the seat.

"Mister, last year I seen this movie, where a plane crashes in the mountains. Everyone had to eat everyone else."

"Trust me, I won't eat you." Sean reached over to tighten the boy's seatbelt, as the 757 dropped with a wiggle of its wings. Seconds later the tires touched down on the runway. The young boy had survived the worst of his fears and proudly announced, "That was nothing."

"Just like I said and you'll be with your mom soon."

The 757 stopped at the terminal gate and the young boy was escorted by the steward. Sean positioned himself behind two beefy men in Giants paraphernalia and shuffled from the plane in a slouch. Inside the gangway a bearded air marshal dismissed the bleached-blonde man as a danger only to himself.

Two old ladies elbowed him out of the way and scuttled over to the nearest WHEEL OF FORTUNE slot machine. All seniors loved that show.

Waiting friends, relatives, lovers, and drivers ignored Sean and no one called his name on the ride down the escalator or as he walked out of the terminal into the warm desert air. He had visited Vegas in 1971 and gazed dreamily at the hazy outline of distant mountains. Somewhere over those peaks lay Death Valley and California.

A rough voice short-circuited his attempt to flag a taxi.

"Nice outfit, Tempo, "Although it's a little late for Halloween, ain't it?"

"You know the East Village." Sean turned around hoping the voice belonged to a mirage, but he should have known that deRocco would have never sent him on that plane without his maddog partner being on the receiving end.

"Yeah, it's Halloween all the time with those losers." Driscoll's eyes ping-ponging back and forth. The invalided cop was on a binge of speed and dope.

"So I didn't fool you at all?"

"No, but I almost bust a gut seein' you do this hobo thing. Where'd you learn that shit anyway?" Driscoll was in a dark suit a size too small for his waist, but his belly didn't matter, because ex-cops like Driscoll never ran from trouble.

"I went out with this married make-up artist in Paris. She disguised me to keep from finding out her husband from seeing that she was going out with a man."

"She did you up as a woman?"

"Yeah." Sean was telling the truth. "That deception lasted about six months and finally the husband came up to me at a bar. He was a big guy about your size and showed me some pictures. At first I thought they were me, but the husband told me they were of her old boyfriends."

"Why he tell you that?"

"He thought I was her lesbian lover and wanted to go out with me."

"I woulda liked to seen you as a girl. You have nice hair." Driscoll?s laugh stuck in his throat. ?I woulda thought you got the disguise thing from your ex-wife. She's an actress, right? Or your friend, Vic Granollers. Now he's really big in films now, right?"

"I didn't know you were such a movie buff."

"I like to know all about my friends and their friends."

They entered the shade of the parking garage and Sean changed the subject.

"Where we going?"

"I'll tell you, when we get there." Driscoll ran his hand through his thick hair.

A blue-jacketed peace officer was ticketing a car and Driscoll jabbed Sean's ribs with what felt like a pistol muzzle. "He's havin' a good day, so why would you want to spoil it?"

"Not me." Sean walked past the local policeman to a fire engine red Mustang 5.0.

Driscoll forced him into the front passenger seat and handcuffed his wrist to the door.

"Just think of the cuffs as an extra safety feature."

"What if we get into an accident?"

"This piece of shit has dual air bags, Seano." Driscoll got behind the steering wheel, and revved the engine once before peeling out of the parking lot. Sean took the wedges out of his shoes and the ex-cop chuckled at the show.

"What's so funny?" Sean rubbed his feet.

"Whatcha gonna do with your hair?" Kevin Driscoll pointed at his head.

"Let it grow out." Sean smoothed down the brittle blonde hair and looked out the window at the throngs of tourists. Even the sorriest of the casino fodder was better off than he was.

"It might take some time."

"And I have plenty of that, right?"

Driscoll didn't answer him and drove under I-15.

The glittering hotels and tourists on holiday were replaced by car repair shops, sleazy go-go bars, truck stops, cheap motels and transients permanently down on their luck. Driscoll pulled into a heat-warped parking lot of a run-down motor lodge and stopped the car before room #7. He undid the handcuffs from the door and said, "Get your own bag, cause I ain't no bellhop."

Sean got out of the car.

Dust devils swirled across the vacant lots into the desert where Las Vegas ended for better or worse.

"There's nothin' to see here." Driscoll pushed him into the small room. Two single beds were topped by faded polyester spreads. A Formica card table and two plastic chairs leaned into the corner and the bureau was missing its bottom drawer.

"How romantic." Sean dropped his bag on the mildewed carpet.

"Cheap and cheerful, not in the middle of town, so no one sees us come in or out."

"Place stinks." The disinfectant had failed to kill the smell of a thousand illicit affairs.

"This might help." Kevin Driscoll twisted the AC to the max. "Now strip."

"What for?" Fear crawled like a million fire ants on Sean's skin.

"Be cause I said so." Kevin Driscoll performed the finger-breakings, the baseball bat beatings, and the killing for the two-man team. The ex-cop took off the gray suit jacket. Sweat stained his white shirt. A shoulder holster held a 9mm Beretta, his weapon of choice.

"What if I don't want to?"

"You don't want to know." Driscoll wasn't usesd to people saying 'no'.

"Since you put it that way, no." Sean took off his jacket, trousers, and shirt. Once he was down to his boxers, Driscoll said, "Stop there. I don't need to see your pecker."

"You sure?"

Several years back deRocco and Driscoll had staked out a cocaine warehouse on Avenue D. A lookout spotted the unmarked car and three Dominican gunmen surrounded the car to discover one man fellating the other. The dopers told the maricons to get lost. When the warehouse was busted, Driscoll capped the three witnesses to his giving head and earned a citation for the killings. Later deRocco had joked that his partner was the only cop in NYPD history to get a medal for sucking cock. Driscoll never thought it was funny and was very touchy on the subject.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Nothing."

No one in the 9th Precinct had had the balls to ask what his cock were doing out at the stake-out and Sean followed their lead. He lifted the handcuff on his wrist. "What about this?"

"Thanks for reminding me." Driscoll holstered his weapon and snapped the open manacle onto the TV stand.

Both men eyed the telephone and Kevin Driscoll tugged the wire from the wall.

"Sorry, it just broke."

"I wasn't calling anyone anyway."

"That's for sure." Driscoll punched Sean's arm.

It was not a playful gesture and Sean slumped into the wall.

"I'll see you."

The door slammed shut and five seconds later Sean tugged at the chain, but the TV stand had been bolted to the wall by anti-theft experts. These four cinderblock walls were his Las Vegas.

No showgirls, roulette, blackjack, craps, or even a nickel slot machine and he couldn't help from asking himself aloud, "What I ever do to deserve this?"

His first bad deed had been erased from his memory, but his most recent sins shone crystal-clear; greed for fencing those watches, lust for trusting Mira, and pride for thinking he'd fool Driscoll. He slammed his fist into the wall. The shock of pain to his long-abused knuckles was enough to prevent any repetition and Sean turned on the TV.

Its bright glow wavered across the bleak room. He was in purgatory and his only release from this limbo depended on his breaking the 5th Commandment.

Sean attempted to visualize whether his target was a man or woman, good or bad, young or old, usually ending up with the image of a lowlife criminal deserving of this death sentence, as if this boldfaced delusion could render homicide more doable in his eyes and Sean once more tried to free himself from the TV stand.

After futile five tugs he rubbed his chaffed wrist, resigned to the fact that the world's population had been savagely reduced down to three people; Driscoll, himself, and the unknown victim. Everything had become very simple, when kill or be killed were your only options.

Ten minutes later Kevin Driscoll entered the room with two large paper bags from McDonalds.

"Dinnertime."

"Great. I guess the condemned man doesn't get a choice of last meals."

"What wrong with Mickie Ds?"

"The beef is everything of a cow other than the moo and I don't think there's any potatoes in the fries." His mouth watered upon smelling the fries. Hunger does strange things to the mind.

"You're wrong. The fries are 65% potato. I read it on the wall, besides you're not gonna do the dying, so stop the drama." Driscoll flipped one bag to Sean, who caught it without spilling the soda inside and lifted the cuff.

"Think the prisoner can eat with his hands free."

"Stop rushin' me." Driscoll snapped before freeing Sean from the TV stand.

"What about my wrist?"

"What about it?" Driscoll ignored whatever Sean was implying until headed across the room and Driscoll asked, "Where you think you're going?"

"My teeth are floating. Mind, if I go to the bathroom?"

"Knock yourself out," Driscoll mumbled through a mouth filled with fries, as Sean entered the bathroom.

"Don't shut the door."

"Can't I do this in private?"

"What and let you slip out the window? No way."

Once Sean finished, he squeezed past Driscoll to sit on the bed with his food. The barely-warm cheeseburger tasted good after having not eaten anything for seven days. The ex-cop ate a second burger in three bites.

"Everything is go for tonight."

"Tonight?" Sean choked on his food.

"Yeah, tonight. It's better this way. You come into town and do the job, then you're history. A quick in-and-out."

"You mean, I go in, kill him, and come out alive? No one seeing me?" The burger trembled in his hand.

"That's the way it's supposed to go."

"And who am I killing?" Sean doubted whether Driscoll had any idea as why the victim was being targeted. To him it was just another job.

"You ask that question, when your French whore poisoned those businessmen?"

"That was different."

"Take it from a pro. The Whos and Whys are unimportant. Names only make you remember the faces later."

"So I kill a total stranger and then what?"

"You go your way and I go mine."

"After you give me the five grand."

"You think I'm gonna welch on you."

"Sorry to hit your sensitivity button, it's just that I never killed anyone before."

"Don't think nothin' about it, this is basically your 'wham-blam-thank-you-ma'am' deal." Driscoll stroked the barrel of the 9mm inside his jacket.

"Nice to put a sexual angle on it."

"Hey, everyone gets their kicks different ways."

"If you say so." Sean had no doubt murder gave the ex-cop a hard-on and finished his meal in silence, as Driscoll brushed the crumbs from his lap.

"Get dressed, Seano. We got places to be."

"Now?"

"Now." Driscoll repeated with a directness detouring any argument.

Sean dressed in his black suit and the ex-cop patted him down. He pulled out the $5000 from deRocco and handed back the roll.

"All you gotta do is pull a trigger. Boom, and you get another five Gs. Ten Gs for a day's work. Good deal?"

"You keep telling me that and I might believe it." Sean stuffed the money in his pant pocket and checked himself in the mirror, thinking he looked more like a defrocked priest than an initiate to murder.

"You'll be thanking me once it's over. 10 Gs for a minute's work."

"Too bad I'm not working every day."

"Too bad is right." Driscoll left $50 to cover the mini-bar and the damaged telephone. He swiftly policed the room for any trace of their presence and plucked an empty Fed-Ex package out of the trash, then pushed Sean toward the door.

"I'm not going anywhere, till this cuff comes off." Sean dug in his heels.

"No?" Driscoll flexed his knuckles and the tendons of his neck stuck out like a garrote was cutting off his wind.

"No." Sean prepared to dodge a punch, however the ex-cop unlocked the handcuff.

"You happy now?"

"Happier, yes. What about you?"

"I would have been happier killing you a few seconds ago."

"You wouldn't kill someone who owed you $10,000?"

"I'd grease 'em like lightning," Driscoll spoke with a cold-bloodedness of which only true killers are capable. "When you want to kill someone, screw the money. Now pick up your shit and let's get out of here."

Sean grabbed the leather bag, stuffing the extra French fries and a packet of ketchup into his jacket pocket.

"I thought you didn't like Mickie D's."

"I didn't, but I might get hungry later."

"Have it your way."

The two men exited from the motel room.

Only two other cars were in the parking lot. Their passengers had not come to the Desert Inn to look out the windows. The distant mountains were tipped with snow and across the street a train hauled a long piggyback of boxcars southward on the Union Pacific's tracks. The squeal of the steel wheels on the rails mingled with the peal of a couple's laughter from a motel room. "This why I like this place. No one is nosy, so nothing can connect us to here." "I'll remember that next time I want to kill someone in Vegas." Sean pulled up his collar against the cold wind and lifted his head to the sky. The stars seemed bigger in the desert night.

"You'll have plenty of time to stare at the stars later." Driscoll shoved Sean into the Mustang's passenger door. "Throw your shit in back and get in the car. The door's not locked."

"Okay, okay, chill your jets." Sean strapped himself into the seat, wishing he was a couple of inches taller or had studied Kung Fu or Frank deRocco had not found him at the diner this morning or he had not blown the money Mira Lachelle had left him or he had not met her in the first place.

deRocco started the car.

"Put on your seatbelt. I don't want the Vegas PD stopping us for somethin' stupid."

The car's V6 revved into the tach's red zone and Driscoll stomped on the gas. The Mustang burned rubber out of the parking lot to cut off a commercial van, then accelerated through a yellow light to catch up with the flow of traffic on Las Vegas Boulevard.

"So much for doing nothing stupid." Sean shook his head.

"I'must driving like the rest of the losers. How about a little mood music?" Driscoll tuned on a country-western station.

"Country?" Sean reached for the dial.

"Yeah, country." The driver karate-chopped his left arm. "Don't touch that dial. I love Willie Nelson."

Sean rubbed his wrist and stared out the window. The only signs of human life were the heads and shoulders wrapped inside cars.

"We're goin' to where we'll do it later." Driscoll steered past a slow-moving camper with Michigan plates. ?It's a glassed-in stairway. You wait on the second-floor landing. Out of sight. There are no video cameras. No guards either. When the 'guy' shows up, you stick the gun in his ear and pull the trigger. The bullet will do the rest. You get his wallet to make it looks like a robbery. You come out and meet me. I give you your money and we split. One, two, three, maybe four, five, six, sounds easy, huh?"

"A snap." Sean rotated his wrist, which he had broken three years ago on the Thai-Burma border, when an opium farmer's pick-up truck rammed his motorcycle head-on. He had been shocked to have survived that crash and sometimes thought that this existence might be the After-Life, although tonight was not one of them.

"After checking out the hotel, I'll take you out to the desert to pop off a few shots.

"Target practice?"

"You're gonna be too close to miss. Just get used to pullin' the trigger, so you don't freeze up."

"You have a picture of this person or do I have to guess who he will be?" Sean scratched at the day-old stubble.

"You're doing him." Driscoll handed Sean a photo of old man in his 70s.

Somewhere along the line he had committed an offense great enough to warrant his being wanted more dead than alive.

"Why don't we give him a couple of weeks to die of natural causes." Sean passed back the photo.

"Cause that's not the way this works. The next time you see that guy, you're gonna do him." Driscoll inspected his passenger's shadowed face, trying to ascertain whether he could go through with this. Not many people could, but twenty-two years ago he had seen Sean beat a Russian Mafia member close to death, which meant somewhere he had it in him to go all the way and if Sean couldn't, then doing Sean would give him the right motivation for doing the stranger.

"It'll be over before you know it." Driscoll drove into a hotel parking lot across from the Casino Center.

"Yeah, that's real comforting."

All that was required was a little nerve and a few ounces of pressure on the trigger.

A little more than a breeze.

How easy a steel-jacketed bullet ended the universe for another human being bothered Sean, but he would find out soon enough how hard it really was.

SIX

The 757 descended for its final approach to Las Vegas. The passengers tightened their safety belts and the male steward knocked on a bathroom door. A single passenger was missing from the flight.

"Sir, you have to get back to your seat."

"Just a second." Sean Coll was unraveling the turban of toilet paper in front of the bathroom mirror. The blonde man in the reflection resembled an aging extra from a 1960's biker flick. The wedges inside his shoes added another inch of height and his rumpled black suit shadowed his persona with a nondescript aura. He exited from the bathroom and said to the steward, "Thanks for being so patient."

The steward was visibly dismayed by the passenger's bizarre appearance, especially since no golden-haired man had boarded the plane at JFK.

"What seat are you in, sir?"

"32-A, I can show you my ticket, if you would like."

"No, that won't be necessary."

Satisfied by the steward's bafflement, Sean proceeded past the passengers gaping at the wonders of Las Vegas below the 757. They should have been recoiling in fright like they were meeting a thief in a dark alley, yet none of them cared a fig whether they won or lost at the gaming tables or slots as long as they weren't home watching television.

A black boy about eight years old had changed seat for the view.

"Are you the same guy here before?"

Sean raised his eyebrow to indicate 'maybe'.

"Where's your mom?"

"She's waiting for me at the airport." The boy peeked out the porthole.

"First time flying?" Sean stashed his bag before buckling into the aisle seat.

"Yes, sir." His small hands gripped the armrests for dear life.

"Empty planes never crash." Sean imitated the exact tone with which his own father had calmed his son on a shuttle flight from Boston to New York decades before, except the boy slouched fearfully into the seat.

"Mister, last year I seen this movie, where a plane crashes in the mountains. Everyone had to eat everyone else."

"Trust me, I won't eat you." Sean reached over to tighten the boy's seatbelt, as the 757 dropped with a wiggle of its wings. Seconds later the tires touched down on the runway. The young boy had survived the worst of his fears and proudly announced, "That was nothing."

"Just like I said and you'll be with your mom soon."

The 757 stopped at the terminal gate and the young boy was escorted by the steward. Sean positioned himself behind two beefy men in Giants paraphernalia and shuffled from the plane in a slouch. Inside the gangway a bearded air marshal dismissed the bleached-blonde man as a danger only to himself.

Two old ladies elbowed him out of the way and scuttled over to the nearest WHEEL OF FORTUNE slot machine. All seniors loved that show.

Waiting friends, relatives, lovers, and drivers ignored Sean and no one called his name on the ride down the escalator or as he walked out of the terminal into the warm desert air. He had visited Vegas in 1971 and gazed dreamily at the hazy outline of distant mountains. Somewhere over those peaks lay Death Valley and California.

A rough voice short-circuited his attempt to flag a taxi.

"Nice outfit, Tempo, "Although it's a little late for Halloween, ain't it?"

"You know the East Village." Sean turned around hoping the voice belonged to a mirage, but he should have known that deRocco would have never sent him on that plane without his maddog partner being on the receiving end.

"Yeah, it's Halloween all the time with those losers." Driscoll's eyes ping-ponging back and forth. The invalided cop was on a binge of speed and dope.

"So I didn't fool you at all?"

"No, but I almost bust a gut seein' you do this hobo thing. Where'd you learn that shit anyway?" Driscoll was in a dark suit a size too small for his waist, but his belly didn't matter, because ex-cops like Driscoll never ran from trouble.

"I went out with this married make-up artist in Paris. She disguised me to keep from finding out her husband from seeing that she was going out with a man."

"She did you up as a woman?"

"Yeah." Sean was telling the truth. "That deception lasted about six months and finally the husband came up to me at a bar. He was a big guy about your size and showed me some pictures. At first I thought they were me, but the husband told me they were of her old boyfriends."

"Why he tell you that?"

"He thought I was her lesbian lover and wanted to go out with me."

"I woulda liked to seen you as a girl. You have nice hair." Driscoll?s laugh stuck in his throat. ?I woulda thought you got the disguise thing from your ex-wife. She's an actress, right? Or your friend, Vic Granollers. Now he's really big in films now, right?"

"I didn't know you were such a movie buff."

"I like to know all about my friends and their friends."

They entered the shade of the parking garage and Sean changed the subject.

"Where we going?"

"I'll tell you, when we get there." Driscoll ran his hand through his thick hair.

A blue-jacketed peace officer was ticketing a car and Driscoll jabbed Sean's ribs with what felt like a pistol muzzle. "He's havin' a good day, so why would you want to spoil it?"

"Not me." Sean walked past the local policeman to a fire engine red Mustang 5.0.

Driscoll forced him into the front passenger seat and handcuffed his wrist to the door.

"Just think of the cuffs as an extra safety feature."

"What if we get into an accident?"

"This piece of shit has dual air bags, Seano." Driscoll got behind the steering wheel, and revved the engine once before peeling out of the parking lot. Sean took the wedges out of his shoes and the ex-cop chuckled at the show.

"What's so funny?" Sean rubbed his feet.

"Whatcha gonna do with your hair?" Kevin Driscoll pointed at his head.

"Let it grow out." Sean smoothed down the brittle blonde hair and looked out the window at the throngs of tourists. Even the sorriest of the casino fodder was better off than he was.

"It might take some time."

"And I have plenty of that, right?"

Driscoll didn't answer him and drove under I-15.

The glittering hotels and tourists on holiday were replaced by car repair shops, sleazy go-go bars, truck stops, cheap motels and transients permanently down on their luck. Driscoll pulled into a heat-warped parking lot of a run-down motor lodge and stopped the car before room #7. He undid the handcuffs from the door and said, "Get your own bag, cause I ain't no bellhop."

Sean got out of the car.

Dust devils swirled across the vacant lots into the desert where Las Vegas ended for better or worse.

"There's nothin' to see here." Driscoll pushed him into the small room. Two single beds were topped by faded polyester spreads. A Formica card table and two plastic chairs leaned into the corner and the bureau was missing its bottom drawer.

"How romantic." Sean dropped his bag on the mildewed carpet.

"Cheap and cheerful, not in the middle of town, so no one sees us come in or out."

"Place stinks." The disinfectant had failed to kill the smell of a thousand illicit affairs.

"This might help." Kevin Driscoll twisted the AC to the max. "Now strip."

"What for?" Fear crawled like a million fire ants on Sean's skin.

"Be cause I said so." Kevin Driscoll performed the finger-breakings, the baseball bat beatings, and the killing for the two-man team. The ex-cop took off the gray suit jacket. Sweat stained his white shirt. A shoulder holster held a 9mm Beretta, his weapon of choice.

"What if I don't want to?"

"You don't want to know." Driscoll wasn't usesd to people saying 'no'.

"Since you put it that way, no." Sean took off his jacket, trousers, and shirt. Once he was down to his boxers, Driscoll said, "Stop there. I don't need to see your pecker."

"You sure?"

Several years back deRocco and Driscoll had staked out a cocaine warehouse on Avenue D. A lookout spotted the unmarked car and three Dominican gunmen surrounded the car to discover one man fellating the other. The dopers told the maricons to get lost. When the warehouse was busted, Driscoll capped the three witnesses to his giving head and earned a citation for the killings. Later deRocco had joked that his partner was the only cop in NYPD history to get a medal for sucking cock. Driscoll never thought it was funny and was very touchy on the subject.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Nothing."

No one in the 9th Precinct had had the balls to ask what his cock were doing out at the stake-out and Sean followed their lead. He lifted the handcuff on his wrist. "What about this?"

"Thanks for reminding me." Driscoll holstered his weapon and snapped the open manacle onto the TV stand.

Both men eyed the telephone and Kevin Driscoll tugged the wire from the wall.

"Sorry, it just broke."

"I wasn't calling anyone anyway."

"That's for sure." Driscoll punched Sean's arm.

It was not a playful gesture and Sean slumped into the wall.

"I'll see you."

The door slammed shut and five seconds later Sean tugged at the chain, but the TV stand had been bolted to the wall by anti-theft experts. These four cinderblock walls were his Las Vegas.

No showgirls, roulette, blackjack, craps, or even a nickel slot machine and he couldn't help from asking himself aloud, "What I ever do to deserve this?"

His first bad deed had been erased from his memory, but his most recent sins shone crystal-clear; greed for fencing those watches, lust for trusting Mira, and pride for thinking he'd fool Driscoll. He slammed his fist into the wall. The shock of pain to his long-abused knuckles was enough to prevent any repetition and Sean turned on the TV.

Its bright glow wavered across the bleak room. He was in purgatory and his only release from this limbo depended on his breaking the 5th Commandment.

Sean attempted to visualize whether his target was a man or woman, good or bad, young or old, usually ending up with the image of a lowlife criminal deserving of this death sentence, as if this boldfaced delusion could render homicide more doable in his eyes and Sean once more tried to free himself from the TV stand.

After futile five tugs he rubbed his chaffed wrist, resigned to the fact that the world's population had been savagely reduced down to three people; Driscoll, himself, and the unknown victim. Everything had become very simple, when kill or be killed were your only options.

Ten minutes later Kevin Driscoll entered the room with two large paper bags from McDonalds.

"Dinnertime."

"Great. I guess the condemned man doesn't get a choice of last meals."

"What wrong with Mickie Ds?"

"The beef is everything of a cow other than the moo and I don't think there's any potatoes in the fries." His mouth watered upon smelling the fries. Hunger does strange things to the mind.

"You're wrong. The fries are 65% potato. I read it on the wall, besides you're not gonna do the dying, so stop the drama." Driscoll flipped one bag to Sean, who caught it without spilling the soda inside and lifted the cuff.

"Think the prisoner can eat with his hands free."

"Stop rushin' me." Driscoll snapped before freeing Sean from the TV stand.

"What about my wrist?"

"What about it?" Driscoll ignored whatever Sean was implying until headed across the room and Driscoll asked, "Where you think you're going?"

"My teeth are floating. Mind, if I go to the bathroom?"

"Knock yourself out," Driscoll mumbled through a mouth filled with fries, as Sean entered the bathroom.

"Don't shut the door."

"Can't I do this in private?"

"What and let you slip out the window? No way."

Once Sean finished, he squeezed past Driscoll to sit on the bed with his food. The barely-warm cheeseburger tasted good after having not eaten anything for seven days. The ex-cop ate a second burger in three bites.

"Everything is go for tonight."

"Tonight?" Sean choked on his food.

"Yeah, tonight. It's better this way. You come into town and do the job, then you're history. A quick in-and-out."

"You mean, I go in, kill him, and come out alive? No one seeing me?" The burger trembled in his hand.

"That's the way it's supposed to go."

"And who am I killing?" Sean doubted whether Driscoll had any idea as why the victim was being targeted. To him it was just another job.

"You ask that question, when your French whore poisoned those businessmen?"

"That was different."

"Take it from a pro. The Whos and Whys are unimportant. Names only make you remember the faces later."

"So I kill a total stranger and then what?"

"You go your way and I go mine."

"After you give me the five grand."

"You think I'm gonna welch on you."

"Sorry to hit your sensitivity button, it's just that I never killed anyone before."

"Don't think nothin' about it, this is basically your 'wham-blam-thank-you-ma'am' deal." Driscoll stroked the barrel of the 9mm inside his jacket.

"Nice to put a sexual angle on it."

"Hey, everyone gets their kicks different ways."

"If you say so." Sean had no doubt murder gave the ex-cop a hard-on and finished his meal in silence, as Driscoll brushed the crumbs from his lap.

"Get dressed, Seano. We got places to be."

"Now?"

"Now." Driscoll repeated with a directness detouring any argument.

Sean dressed in his black suit and the ex-cop patted him down. He pulled out the $5000 from deRocco and handed back the roll.

"All you gotta do is pull a trigger. Boom, and you get another five Gs. Ten Gs for a day's work. Good deal?"

"You keep telling me that and I might believe it." Sean stuffed the money in his pant pocket and checked himself in the mirror, thinking he looked more like a defrocked priest than an initiate to murder.

"You'll be thanking me once it's over. 10 Gs for a minute's work."

"Too bad I'm not working every day."

"Too bad is right." Driscoll left $50 to cover the mini-bar and the damaged telephone. He swiftly policed the room for any trace of their presence and plucked an empty Fed-Ex package out of the trash, then pushed Sean toward the door.

"I'm not going anywhere, till this cuff comes off." Sean dug in his heels.

"No?" Driscoll flexed his knuckles and the tendons of his neck stuck out like a garrote was cutting off his wind.

"No." Sean prepared to dodge a punch, however the ex-cop unlocked the handcuff.

"You happy now?"

"Happier, yes. What about you?"

"I would have been happier killing you a few seconds ago."

"You wouldn't kill someone who owed you $10,000?"

"I'd grease 'em like lightning," Driscoll spoke with a cold-bloodedness of which only true killers are capable. "When you want to kill someone, screw the money. Now pick up your shit and let's get out of here."

Sean grabbed the leather bag, stuffing the extra French fries and a packet of ketchup into his jacket pocket.

"I thought you didn't like Mickie D's."

"I didn't, but I might get hungry later."

"Have it your way."

The two men exited from the motel room.

Only two other cars were in the parking lot. Their passengers had not come to the Desert Inn to look out the windows. The distant mountains were tipped with snow and across the street a train hauled a long piggyback of boxcars southward on the Union Pacific's tracks. The squeal of the steel wheels on the rails mingled with the peal of a couple's laughter from a motel room. "This why I like this place. No one is nosy, so nothing can connect us to here." "I'll remember that next time I want to kill someone in Vegas." Sean pulled up his collar against the cold wind and lifted his head to the sky. The stars seemed bigger in the desert night.

"You'll have plenty of time to stare at the stars later." Driscoll shoved Sean into the Mustang's passenger door. "Throw your shit in back and get in the car. The door's not locked."

"Okay, okay, chill your jets." Sean strapped himself into the seat, wishing he was a couple of inches taller or had studied Kung Fu or Frank deRocco had not found him at the diner this morning or he had not blown the money Mira Lachelle had left him or he had not met her in the first place.

deRocco started the car.

"Put on your seatbelt. I don't want the Vegas PD stopping us for somethin' stupid."

The car's V6 revved into the tach's red zone and Driscoll stomped on the gas. The Mustang burned rubber out of the parking lot to cut off a commercial van, then accelerated through a yellow light to catch up with the flow of traffic on Las Vegas Boulevard.

"So much for doing nothing stupid." Sean shook his head.

"I'must driving like the rest of the losers. How about a little mood music?" Driscoll tuned on a country-western station.

"Country?" Sean reached for the dial.

"Yeah, country." The driver karate-chopped his left arm. "Don't touch that dial. I love Willie Nelson."

Sean rubbed his wrist and stared out the window. The only signs of human life were the heads and shoulders wrapped inside cars.

"We're goin' to where we'll do it later." Driscoll steered past a slow-moving camper with Michigan plates. ?It's a glassed-in stairway. You wait on the second-floor landing. Out of sight. There are no video cameras. No guards either. When the 'guy' shows up, you stick the gun in his ear and pull the trigger. The bullet will do the rest. You get his wallet to make it looks like a robbery. You come out and meet me. I give you your money and we split. One, two, three, maybe four, five, six, sounds easy, huh?"

"A snap." Sean rotated his wrist, which he had broken three years ago on the Thai-Burma border, when an opium farmer's pick-up truck rammed his motorcycle head-on. He had been shocked to have survived that crash and sometimes thought that this existence might be the After-Life, although tonight was not one of them.

"After checking out the hotel, I'll take you out to the desert to pop off a few shots.

"Target practice?"

"You're gonna be too close to miss. Just get used to pullin' the trigger, so you don't freeze up."

"You have a picture of this person or do I have to guess who he will be?" Sean scratched at the day-old stubble.

"You're doing him." Driscoll handed Sean a photo of old man in his 70s.

Somewhere along the line he had committed an offense great enough to warrant his being wanted more dead than alive.

"Why don't we give him a couple of weeks to die of natural causes." Sean passed back the photo.

"Cause that's not the way this works. The next time you see that guy, you're gonna do him." Driscoll inspected his passenger's shadowed face, trying to ascertain whether he could go through with this. Not many people could, but twenty-two years ago he had seen Sean beat a Russian Mafia member close to death, which meant somewhere he had it in him to go all the way and if Sean couldn't, then doing Sean would give him the right motivation for doing the stranger.

"It'll be over before you know it." Driscoll drove into a hotel parking lot across from the Casino Center.

"Yeah, that's real comforting."

All that was required was a little nerve and a few ounces of pressure on the trigger.

A little more than a breeze.

How easy a steel-jacketed bullet ended the universe for another human being bothered Sean, but he would find out soon enough how hard it really was.

NORTH NORTH HOLLYWOOD by Peter Nolan Smith Chapter One

Six women crowded the honeymoon suite of the Coastal Motel north of Ventura. The buxom 'groom' patiently lay on the bed for her 'bride', while the brutish camerawoman glanced at the director and tapped her watch.

"Lena, are you ready yet?" A bead of sweat trickled down the wiry director's spine, as she knocked on the bathroom door.

"One more minute," the female lead shouted from inside the tiled room.

"That's fine as long as it's sixty seconds." Sherri Conti signaled the camerawoman to prepare for the money shot, acutely aware that the different segments of a movie set operated at contradicting speeds within the same time frames.

Technicians were habitually fast, except when they had downtime and the talent was traditionally slow, especially when they were being rushed by the producer.

A director's job was to ensure the contrasting sides of the camera meshed during the actual shooting and Sherri checked the equipment for any potential miscue. Everything was in place, except for the girl in the bathroom.

There was no way that Lena was suffering stage fright. The young starlet had performed sex before a camera over fifty times and had not once gone up or blown her scene. Lena was simply dropping into her persona. Sherri had undergone the identical transformation in hundreds of hotels, condos, and ranch houses over her twenty-year career in XXX films.

The extra time had been worth the wait, because once Sherri had heard the word 'action', her body had exhibited a tangible hunger for sex and the camera had never lied in an industry with no special effects.

During the 80s Sherri's name had blazed on marquee lights in Times Square and her body had filled millions of TV screens for audiences of one. A devoted fan had amassed a list of her on-screen lovers. The number ran into the thousands. In the 90s the standouts had vanished from the Valley like animals hunted into extinction. Sherri could have easily joined the missing, except her near-miraculous rise from the dead had granted the forty-five year-old director the status of living legend.

The accolades, setbacks, or sins were meaningless to Sherri, for porno was a business and time was money. She turned to the black woman on the queen-sized bed.

"Josie, give us a sound check."

"You got it, boss lady."

Big Josie Cane had worked for Sherri ten times.

The ex-actress' production company paid better than the standard daily of $500 and the director had never blindsided the actresses with bizarre requests, so Josie saved her best performances for Sherri. These girl-on-girl scenes were especially easy with Lena, for the Spanish girl shone in a business where most actresses were mere light bulbs.

Rising off the mattress Josie spoke into the overhead boom.

"Testing, one, two, three." Josie cinched the belt of the strap-on dildo, which she didn't want to slip out of place during the shoot. This was going to be one long take and she meant to make the most of it.

"How clean is it?" Sherri asked the soundwoman.

Even with the taped windows and heavily blanketed door the microphone caught the wet sizzle of 18-wheelers on the rain-drenched Ventura Freeway.

"Nothing I can't fix in the sound studio." The soundwoman had heard worst background noise.

The battery of Soft Ks, 10Ks, and Mighty Mole lights around the room raised the temperature. Sherri surveyed the sheen of sweat on Josie and figured that the film's viewers would appreciate the glistening ebony skin. "It's a go, once the 'jig inky' is in focus." The stocky gaffer in jeans studied the bed without seeing a shadow on the sheets.

"Okay, we'll deal with that when Lena is in place." This scene needed to be shot and Sherri nervously fingered back her brown shag-cut hair. "Lena, that minute is up."

"Ready or not here I come."

The raven-haired actress emerged from the bathroom and struck a provocative pose displaying the natural tautness of her girlish body. A neutral-toned blush heightened the smoothness of her olive skin, while kohl-black mascara accented her green eyes' Oriental cant. Her coal-black hair was cut to mimic Cleopatra, Queen of the Nile and this suggestive exoticism converted into star quality, which had earned Lena a 'best new starlet' nomination in the upcoming XXX awards in Las Vegas.

"Finally." Sherri clapped her hands and the crew snapped to attention.

Lena crossed the room to her off-screen lover.

The actress was an inch shorter than Sherri and her pouting pelvis grazed the director's thigh. The older woman stiffened, wishing that she were on the bed, instead of Josie, however the director had retired from that side of the camera five years ago.

"Nervous?"

"Nervous? I was born for this."

The younger woman glided out of reach and every woman's gaze followed her nakedness across the room. Lena wouldn't have it any other way, for she was as much an exhibitionist as a voyeur.

Her character in the film was called Desiree, a runaway who had never been with a woman. Lena had fled her home at the age of fourteen. She lay on the bed to become a white trash virgin at the mercy of a bull dyke. The metamorphosis was simple, for young actress had lived every aspect of this role over the past six years.

The market for most adult entertainment was predominantly male, however Lena's audience was evenly split between men and women, despite purely lesbian content of her films. A good part of her appeal had to do with Lena's youth, however the invulnerability of her years hadn't lasted long in the meat grinder of adult film industry and Sherri was determined to protect Lena from suffering her fate.

The young girl deserved to be in real films and Sherri had a plan to get her on the silver screen, but now was not the time.

"Everyone set?" Sherri asked the crew.

"Ready, when you are, boss lady." The gaffer retreated from the lights and Lena's hand dropped to her shaved vagina. Soon it would be replaced by that of another woman. The old Jefferson Airplane song SALLY GOES ROUND THE ROSES popped into Sherri's head and the chorus repeated in her mind.

"Saddest thing in the whole wide world is to see your baby with another girl."

"Josie, take your position."? Sherri waved the make-up woman from the bed. Filming Lena with another woman was becoming increasingly difficult, but she was a professional in the end.

"Places."

Big Josie Cane assumed the 'top' position for the classic 'cowgirl reverse' shot and the Super 8mm video camera transmitted a pixilated image of Lena speaking her lines onto the monitor. The picture was a little fuzzy.

"Sharpen it a little," Sherri ordered the crouching camerawoman.

"Got it." The camerawoman crystallized the focus with the deftness of a safecracker.

Sherri prayed a technical failure would halt the filming, except the words, "Lights, camera, action" transported the crew and actresses into the magic world of movie-making.

While the camera wasn't 35mm and the budget was less than $20,000, every woman in the room regarded today's film as a magic carpet to Hollywood, that most promised of Californian lands, and no one was refusing a shot at the silver screen matter how big or small the stage.

Any god or goddess would have known the truth, that only the very lucky and the very good are blessed with such opportunities, although sometimes the very bad reached the Promised Land and one look through the viewfinder was proof that Lena de Gama was destined for that heaven, because the camera never lied about the truth.

The End of NORTH NORTH HOLLYWOOD by Peter Nolan Smith (unpublished)

PAGE 291

Their lovemaking lasted until midnight. They showered together and packed their bags. They didn't have much. Vanessa locked the door to her friend's bungalow. She sat in the passenger seat and Sean got behind the wheel on the Lemans. They bought coffee at a 7/11 on Ventura Boulevard. Sean restarted the engine.

"You ready to go?"

Vanessa nodded with a shrug.

There wasn't anything left for them in North North Hollywood.

After leaving LA at Pomona they headed east on I-10. Sean pulled onto I-15 at Ontario and crossed the California stateline into Arizona at dawn.

NORTH NORTH HOLLYWOOD - Chapter 20 -by Peter Nolan Smith

Two seconds after the woman hung up, Sean Tempo dialed 911.

"Yes, may I help you?” the 911 operator answered within ten seconds.

Sean explained the nature of the emergency and gave the operator the woman's address. Several seconds passed in silence before the operator stated, "EMS no longer responds to that address."

"What do you mean? No longer responds?"

>"EMS has logged seven suicide attempts, four domestic violence calls, and four reports of attempted break-ins from that address in the last year. Always from the same caller. Che Chasta."

The name strummed a chord in Sean's memory.

"Which means?"

"No one will answer that call. Not the EMS, the Fire Department, or the police. Sorry."

"So what am I supposed to do?"

"Go over yourself,” the operator suggested and signed off saying, "Have a nice day."

If the State of California was abdicating its social responsibility, then he would answer this woman's plea, if only to take her to a hospital. Sean star-69ed the caller's number. The phone was busy, and he reckoned the caller had dropped it on the floor. He searched the Yellow Pages for a taxi service. A dispatcher informed him that a cab would arrive in less than five minutes and the ride over to Hollywood at this time of the afternoon would take no more than twenty-five minutes.

Sean hung up and stuck the sheets from the bed in the dryer, then plucked a real $100 bill in his pocket. He snatched a set of house keys off the kitchen counter and left the apartment. The door shut behind him. Maybe he should have left a note for the women, but every second counted in matters of life and death.

The corridor led to the elevators. The walls were unpainted sheet rock and the hallway smelled of damp concrete. Most of the doors to the other apartments had no knobs or locks. Light bulbs hung by a wire from the ceiling by a wire.

Whoever had financed this repair project had run out of money, but at least the elevator was working and Sean stepped inside the car.

When the doors opened on the ground floor, Sean ran through the dusty atrium to the waiting taxi.

He gave the driver the destination and the Sikh driver pulled out of the parking lot.

Rain bounced off the pavement of a broad boulevard lined with body, brake, and transmission shops. The lights ran in sequence to the Hollywood Freeway. Sean could barely see out the windows and cracked open the window. The driver chattered in Punjabi over the radio, as the taxi swerved through traffic. The cab narrowly missed sideswiping several trucks, although none of these close calls fazed the driver. At Highland he sliced across four lanes to the exit and slipped past the single queue of vehicles to stop abruptly at a yellow light.

Sorry, sir, there are too many policemen to burn the light." "No worries."

The driver waited out the oncoming traffic, then swerved right onto the boulevard, maintaining the speed limit until turning onto a street of sad bungalows. The taxi halted before a dull green house with an overgrown lawn. The rain had let up, but the air was thick with a cold damp.

"Just wait a few minutes." Sean opened the taxi door.

"No problem, if you give me something to hold."

"You mean like money?"

"Exactly, sir."

Sean was a little hesitant about handing the Sikh a hundred, but this woman might need a ride to the hospital, so he noted the driver's permit number and said. "I'll be right out."

"And I shall be waiting, sir." The driver held up the bill.

Sean got out of the taxi.

Several stray cats sulked through the lawn's high weeds, ignoring a crow pecking at a crumbled piece of trash. The only sound was a dog barking in he distance. People lived in these houses, but no one was walking around in this weather.

Overhead dark clouds were preparing for another downpour and a wet wind rustled through the bushes.

Sean tried the front door. It was locked. On a hunch he lifted the doormat and found a rusty key. It turned the lock.

The scent of musty mildew welcomed him into the living room. An old RCA TV was surrounded by stacks of videos and the furniture was buried under soiled clothing. The fireplace was filled with take-out containers and garbage overflowed from two trash cans. Whoever had called him earlier certainly didn't hold with cleanliness being close to godliness and he heard a phone off the hook.

"Anyone here?”

No one answered him and he studied the life-sized posters publicizing the various adult videos. They featured a big-breasted blonde surrounded by muscular men. The photo told the storyline of the movie in one word.

Gangbang.

Many men with one woman.

Sean connected the face and body with the name Che Chasta.

Six years ago he had seen her dance at the Triple Threat Theater in Times Square for ten men at the afternoon show. This had to be her place.

He pushed open the last door. The busy signal was coming from inside. The bedroom was surprisingly tidy in comparison to the rest of the house.

A video camera was pointed at the blonde woman on the bed. She was naked other than the cuffs restraining her to the bedposts. Che Chasta was in the proper position to perform her cinematic specialty, except Sean wasn't sure she was breathing. After shutting off the video camera and hanging up the phone, he touched her neck. His fingertips felt a pulse under the deathly cold skin. He tapped her face.

"Wake up."

The blonde opened her eyes and croaked, "Who are you."

"Me?" Sean stared at how her unnaturally firm breasts were stretched to a translucent thinness.

"Yes, where did you come from?" Her eyes wandered in and out of focus. A needle mark reddened the inside of her elbow. Someone else had shot her up and tied her to the bed. The video was for fetishists into sleeping women. There was an audience for every genre in porno.

"From Sherri's." He resisted touching her breasts, but undid the cuff from her wrist and then loosened the restraints on her ankles. "I came, because you sounded like you were in trouble."

"I still am.” The blonde lazily rubbed her wrists, as her eyes drifted up inside her skull. The taxi blew its horn outside.

"Who's that?"

"The taxi." The smell of woman roiling in his nostrils. His arousal felt like a betrayal of Sherri and he stepped back toward the door. Sean was not the type of man to take advantage of a woman in this condition.

Even of a porno star.

"Where you going?"

"I was going to take you to the hospital."

"No hospital." An expression of recognition passed over her face. "I know you."

"How?"

"You're the man from the highway."

"I am?"

"Yes, the man from nowhere."

"It seems to be my new name."

Che had fit in another piece in his puzzle.

He saw himself asleep in the back of a car with Lena and Che in the front seat. His mind played a dirty movie. Looking down at Che he started another. The horn blew outside. "I got to pay the driver. I'll be right back."

Sean threw a blanket over the blonde and ran to the street. The driver gave him the change and Sean handed him a $10 tip. He returned to the house and locked the door. When he entered the bedroom, the blonde said dreamily, "Funny, you showing up again."

"Why?" Sean sat on the edge of the bed.

"Just we help you that night and now you help me." The blonde actress touched his face, as if she were a blind person trying to read his features.

"So I guess we're even, but who did this to you?"

The blonde licked her parched lips.

"I'd love to tell you everything, but I need a glass of water first."

"Sure thing." Sean went into the kitchen. finding a clean glass was impossible. He washed a tea cup in the sink. When he got back to the bedroom, Che Chasta was crashed out in a distorted parody of Sleeping Beauty.

Sean rechecked her pulse.

It was stronger, but she didn't react to his touch and he surrendered to the temptation of caressing her breasts. They were as hard as they looked. His other hand fingered her soft hair. She was completely at his mercy, yet however easy as it was to think about doing it, which in many women's minds that was just as punishable as rape, he was incapable of executing the actual deed.

Sean pulled the covers over her body and unplugged the telephone, since Che needed sleep a lot more than any contact with the outside world.

Sean entered the living room and cleared off the sofa room. His body was shaking with frustration. He hadn't been with a woman in six months and nothing in the last two days suggested that this stretch of celibacy would end in the near future.

The only women he had met in Los Angeles were two lesbian lovers and a drugged sex star.

Both scenarios were promising in his fantasies, but not in reality.

He sank onto the couch and noticed the hundreds of videos scattered around the TV.

They were all X-rated.

Che was in every one.

Sean flashed Che Chasta watching these videos as Gloria Swanson had viewed her old black-and-white films in SUNSET BOULEVARD. He fought off the disturbing image, since he cast himself as William Holden, and picked out a box titled NEW PUSSY ON THE TOWN. The video dated back to the early 80s. The starlet wore her darker hair in a Farah Fawcett shag and her body mirrored the nubility of a teenager out for her first wild fling.

Sean decided to reward himself for saving her life by setting in motion a one-man Che Chasta Film Festival. He armed himself with a remote control and pressed the PLAY button for YOUNG AND BAD, which captured Che right off the pumpkin truck. None of the bearded studs were memorable, while Che demonstrated a star quality ready to blaze nova.

He fast-forwarded through the inane dialogues and the repetitive sex scenes. Hundreds of males spurted semen onto her breasts, backside, thighs, face, belly, yet never inside, for long ago someone in the porno business had decided that the money shot was more visually dramatic than the man just groaning in pleasure.

Psychologically this institutional coitus interruptus also helped the masturbating viewer regard his own onanistic orgasm as the greatest sensation a man could experience. None of it was the truth.

Somewhere in the middle of the retrospective Che Chasta's body artificially morphed the physical ideal the worshipped by brainwashed American males, though this corporeal modification thrust her into a maelstrom of more and more men and women.

Pornography was supposed to be sexy or maybe even erotic, yet Sean was unaroused, until selecting A THING CALLED LUST whose cover portrayed Che and Sherri embracing a nude statue.

They were both ten years younger and their eyes glowed with scorn for damnation. He slipped this video into the VCR and returned to the sofa, pressing the remote control's PLAY button.

The film's quality was low-grade, the dialogue worst, the lighting muddy, however the sex scenes between Che and Sherri was like watching two cougars fighting over the same kill and for the first time this evening Sean wished a time machine would transport him back in time to the two women on the TV screen.

Thwarted by temporal physics, Sean did the next best thing and undid his jeans. Part of him became Che, while his stroking hand mimicked Sherri's vagina and tightened. A lava flow surged from him with a shudder, though within seconds the fire died out and the dream was over. He was just watching a TV and zipped up his trousers, feeling emptier than ever, for there was something about the act that no longer fulfilled him. He was tired of being alone, but that was not going to change tonight or any time in the foreseeable future.

Worse was that he would have no warning, when it all went to shit, but then that fate went with his territory.

It went with the territory.