Porn Star

Movieland - Chapter 17

She.

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17

Porn Star

The young woman was in a hurry, and it did not surprise her that when she entered the lobby with a whoosh of the glass door, the two people on the divan stopped in mid-conversation.

Heads turned whenever Pauline Charles, also known as “Stormy Rivers” (her nom de porn), also known as “Goldilocks” (the recurring character she played in a series of popular adult films), strode into the room on her long showgirl legs. 

"Is this thing over yet?” she asked the young soldier in a demanding tone. He stared back dumbfounded like one of the idiots in her films, and so she turned to the blonde woman.

"The class?" she repeated, impatiently tapping an invisible watch on her wrist. Her voice was deep and full of resonance. “This is the Palatine Theater in Venice, isn’t it?” 

But Eden was taken aback. She had never seen a glamorous Black woman before. The woman might have been sewn into her shapely tailored jeans. Her boots, which came up to the knee and were folded over Three-Musketeers style, were of a buttery caramel that she had taken pains to match to her own slightly more coffee coloring. 

Before Eden could think to reply, the woman, with an annoyed look, strode briskly toward the auditorium doors and disappeared into the theater.

Eden watched her go. Now a flood of memories. The cry of seagulls. A misty morning in San Francisco, and Eden in her white coat, ash-white French twist, blending in with the white sky. A man — could this be her husband? … she couldn’t place the face — enthroned on a high chair outside the Ferry Building, getting his wingtips burnished a reddish tan. Below him — no one in her set would ever say “Black”; the genteel term was "colored" — a colored man … a shoeshine boy — though why a man in his 60s should be called a “boy” had never struck her as odd until this moment … part of her new awareness here. 

Another memory pressed in, another scene from her befogged San Francisco, preserved forever in Technicolor and the year 1959, this one set in the powder room of the Fairmont Hotel, colored maids in white-cuffed uniforms scurrying to and fro. Eden had, in the way of her class, seen these colored “girls” and “boys” without really seeing them, spoken to them civilly, tipped them generously, but they never had any dialogue before. They were merely ornamental punctuations in the background, an invisible servant caste celebrating the prestige of the white swans they fetched towels and aspirins for, the men of the world whom they serenaded with whistled ditties as they buffed their shoes. 

The striking woman returned from the theater moments later, and Eden leaned forward on the divan to get a better look. The woman was so full of purpose! So much her own person! It was unnerving. Eden wondered if she could ever truly feel that way about herself … here … or anywhere.

Pauline Charles leaned against the wall. In the theater she had found some old black-and-white film playing on the screen — that’s not why she came. She tossed aside a dip of bouncy hair that had fallen over one eye and searched the messages on her phone. She was almost resigned to it: the message not being there. The message that would explain everything. She had been searching for some communication since Tuesday night. This morning, two days out, her anxiety had curdled into dread. He always drove too fast in that silver Porsche he was so proud of, strutting around like a peacock before he hopped into the low-slung sports car, peeling off with a screech.

Pauline cracked the door. In the dark auditorium, illuminated only by the flickering images, there was no telling who was who. She let the door go and began to pace back and forth to the glass lobby doors, too wrapped up in her own insistent hopes to pay attention to the conversation the soldier was trying to initiate on the low divan.

"We're both stuck here in Hollyweird,” the buzz-haired private was telling Eden. He assumed a sporty, off-hand manner. “I know, I know, showbiz is a tough racket.” For a moment he didn't sound like himself. “I mean,” he added appeasingly for he saw his impersonation had made her uneasy, “you wouldn’t be here, otherwise." He fumbled for words. “In …Hollywood, I mean. You must be an actress.”

“No,” said Eden, a bit flustered

“You’re pretty enough,” he confided in a low voice. And now quite seriously “More than pretty." 

Eden didn't know what to make of this and shot the pacing woman a look, an appeal, but the woman took no notice.

“May I tell you a secret,” the soldier said, lowering his eyes. A faint blush crept up his lightly furred, sunburnt cheek. “I’ve been watching you for a while.” He risked a glance. "Don't be upset. It’s just that …" His voice took on a pained earnestness. “You're the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.” 

He gazed up at her directly now, his eyes black, penetrating. "Women …" He faltered. "Women can be cruel. They look through you like you're dirty inside. But you! There's a sort of glow about you. You're something… that stepped down from the stars. " His voice became wistful and pained again. "Did you know your name — your name Eden — means … paradise?"

Slowly Eden rose to her feet. He caught her hand, but she slipped it free with a firmness that was new for her. “I have to go now,” she said in a flat, measured tone.

 Just then Pauline, who had cracked the auditorium door again, exclaimed, “Finally.”

“Wait,” Eden called out. “I’ll go in with you.”

Moments later Eden was following in the wake of the Black woman, who was striding forthrightly through the stream of students leaving their seats. Seeing the young faces, Eden thought again of the lovesick soldier she had left in the lobby. He never did give her his name. 

She had a funny face.

"A bitchin' bod made for sin," it said on the jacket of one of her DVDs, but a face made for comedy. Her features were oversized, exaggerated, the pillow lips that favored wet-look cherry-red lipstick, the upturned pug nose, the wonderfully expressive eyes, 100-megawatts bright, whose forte was the slow-boil double-take. It all came out right somehow. Fanboy crushes, the long autograph lines at the Las Vegas Adult Film Awards — even Eden, a classically beautiful woman, sitting on her low divan, had thought her glamorous. There was something quite audacious about the large, telegraphic features, something very human and easy to love.

And of course, there was the body. The endless showgirl legs, the soft starlet hair that dipped casually over one eye and needed to be tossed aside, the warm buxom silhouette in her mocha turtleneck as she came down the aisle of the Palatine Theater.

She was Miss Pauline on Sundays. Babygirl to her mother, who pretended that her smart, well-spoken daughter clerked at a law firm and no longer had time to practice with the choir at Blessed Assurance Church of Zion. She was Stormy Rivers on the dotted line, on the swag and the posters, the real deal in an industry that tossed around the title “porn star” to anyone who moaned in front of a film crew. But were you to run into one of her fans, one of the ones holding close to his heart a poster of her in eye-popping lingerie, he would tell you her true name, her dream name, for to all Guydom, she was forever “Goldilocks.”

In an outrageously fake Dolly Parton wig, curls cascading everywhere, Pauline had created the character “Goldilocks” for a series of porn titles that made her something unique in the business: In porn films, the expositions are perfunctory — the plumber finds the cheerleader in the shower; the bodacious lady gets a flat — it’s the stuff guys skip through to get to the action. But in a Goldilocks film, the actress’ flare for killer ad-libs and zingy retorts — rarely crude, tending rather toward a winking Mae Westian wit — regularly left her male co-stars standing around looking as dumb as carrots (a beloved signature of the series). 

Often you could hear the film crew trying to suppress laughter. There were animated gifs of just those moments when one of Goldilocks’ on-the-fly zingers landed a priceless look of profound befuddlement on the face of some knucklehead actor who was then supposed somehow to master her. As a result, the Goldilocks expositions became the longest and most anticipated in the business, increasingly scripted entirely by herself. 

With an eye to marketing, the “Goldilocks” name was trademarked and now had to appear prominently in the title of the many films that comprised her incidentally hilarious oeuvre. Imitators in towering rodeo wigs sprung up, but their efforts were vapid farces, haltingly enunciated. Goldilocks was special. It wasn’t just the showgirl body — plenty of girls in the trade had traffic-stopping curves — it was the combination of the outrageous wig and the café au lait complexion, the flip of the buttercup curls and the swift knowing double-take. 

At the moment, however, coming down the aisle with just her own chestnut brown hair bouncing about, her pace too brisk and willful for Eden, who trailed farther and farther behind, the striking woman was … well, not quite Pauline, not simply Pauline. At the moment, she was all business. And Tom, putting away his papers at the lectern, felt the stir in the air. He looked up. Boys’ heads were turning. Stormy Rivers was approaching, her look alert, determined. 

She met him at the steps as he came off the stage. 

"I'm trying to track down one of your students," she said. Her voice was deep, full-bodied. ”His name is Dante Alessandro. The last anyone heard from him was a call he made on Tuesday from this theater. The call was to me, to meet that night at a recording studio. He was very excited about it. We both were. The space was rented for the night, engineers, backup singers, a producer were hired!" She paused to gain control of herself. "He never showed up."

“Are you sure the call came from this theater?"

“It came in at 9:46 a.m. Tuesday. And I’m sure it came from this theater because he was very serious about this course. Dante is a producer, and he wanted a formal education in film. To take the next step.” She narrowed her eyes, and Tom had the feeling he was being sized up. "Perhaps you've heard of him? Dante Alessandro? Bad Boy Studios? The Spring Break films? 'Goldilocks and the Thirty-Three Bears?'"

That she was an actress, Tom had no doubt. He could tell that just by the way she had accepted everyone’s stares with a theatrical toss of her shoulder-length hair, the calculated obliviousness as she came down the aisle, the sense that all the while she was as aware of the male commotion as a backstage cat whose erect ears swivel toward every faint footfall in the darkest reaches of the theater. 

Tom shook his head. He had never heard of the Spring Break films or the Thirty-Three Bears.

The actress opened her handbag, caramel-colored to match her complexion. "I have a photo of him," she said, taking out an iPhone. She thumbed through the screens.

Tom recognized the snapshot immediately. It was the arrogant jerk in the dark glasses with his feet up on the plush seats, the one in head-to-toe black — all black, always a pushy wrong note in sunny California. Tom remembered now the surly tight-buttock strut as the young man headed for the lobby, phone to ear, scoring some obscure machismo point against the professor.

"I did see him," Tom admitted, "before the class. Whether he stayed to the end of the lecture, I don't know."

“Then you’re the last person to see him at all.” She shook her head despairingly. “I was hoping he might be here today. That there’d be some explanation. But that’s not Dante. He wouldn’t just flake off. He wouldn’t burn through all that studio time with money on the line and not show up. Something happened to him last Tuesday. Something not good.”

“Have you called the police?” 

“They won’t help, not without evidence of foul play. That’s what they told me. A child goes missing, and all the alarms go off. Every two minutes there’s an Amber Alert on the radio. You see ‘Child Missing’ come up on the freeway signs. But a grown-ass man? Dude has to be gone for a good month before they even start filing the paperwork.” She met his eyes, gathering her resolve. “You can help me, though.”

“How is that?”

“What’s your cell number, professor.”

 Tom told her and a moment later heard the faint harp glissando that meant a text had arrived.

“Would you check it?” she asked. “I just sent you Dante’s photo.”

The snapshot, now that Tom studied it, was, in its way, iconic. The smugly handsome face, chin lowered, the half smile that was close to a smirk, the hand that held the dark glasses at half-mast at the forehead, the eyes that looked up in a confrontational way and yet seemed to be smirking too. The photo summed up everything Tom had disliked about the disdainful young man. Tom, in his mind, with his scholar's penchant for species classification, pinned down this Dante Alessandro like a black moth in a shadowbox: Douchebag Americanus Hollywoodiana.

"Does he always wear black ?” Tom asked. 

"That's sort of his trademark."

Tom met the woman’s eye and noticed now that Eden had caught up to them. She stood to one side listening dutifully. He had an idea. He remembered that the boy in the theater wore a thin linen hoodie, the hood hanging over the back of his trim jacket. "Eden," he said "is this the man you saw backstage? The one in the black hood?"

Eden had never seen a cell phone before and scrutinized the slim plastic object when it was passed to her before examining the photo. "It was dark," she said, looking back up at Tom helplessly “I just remember a dark figure. I was in such a hurry—”

Pauline interjected, "Was he wearing glasses?"

“I didn’t see—.”

“Dark glasses?”

“Nothing like that, no.”

"Couldn't be Dante then.” Pauline pursed her lips, looking momentarily comic. "The boy's blind without his glasses. Pretends he doesn't need them. He’s vain like that. Pretends he's some fly-ass cat in shades. I tried them on once when he was in the shower. My God! My head spun! My eyes ached! I pulled them off so fast! Couldn't be Dante because my Dante can't see the nose in front of his face without thick, heavy lenses."

She turned to scan the theater: most of the class had left. She heaved a resigned sigh. “Maybe you could show the picture around,” she said. She was about to leave when she remembered something. “I forgot to give you my card. You don’t even know my name!”

“Stormy Rivers” was written in script on the fuzzy cream stock in a slightly raised burgundy font, under which was a phone number and a web address (Goldilocks4Ever.com)

“That’s my screen name,” she said, “but that’s not my direct number. That’s the number of Bad Boy Studios.” She flipped the card over, and as they were standing at the foot of the steps, placed the card flat on the stage, which was roughly at desk height. She took a gold pen out of her handbag and in flashy gold ink wrote “Pauline Charles” on the back of the card and under that a cell number, the one that would already be in Tom’s message log.

“Call me if you learn anything,” she said putting the card in Tom’s breast pocket. He found the gesture unexpectedly intimate, rather theatrical, copied from a dozen rom-coms where flirtation is in the air. But then he suspected this was probably just her way with everyone, being in the business, so to speak, of intimacy.

Now, scanning the theater one last time, as if hoping against hope to turn up her lost partner, Pauline Charles headed up the aisle with long polo-pony strides, watched in silence by Tom and with an odd sense of admiration by Eden. How bold this woman was! How refreshingly free of mystery! 

Pauline Charles disappeared behind the auditorium doors.

“Excuse me.” A slim, smartly dressed woman with blond streaks had come up to Tom. She was one of the students in the front rows that his eye would occasionally land on as he lectured. “I couldn’t help overhearing,” she said. “But you mentioned a guy in dark glasses. Were they Ray-Ban Wayfarers? Was he wearing a Hugo Boss leather blazer and a Varvatos hoodie?” 

This was amazingly specific, but Tom had no idea what labels the missing student was partial to. He brought up the photo on his phone.

“That’s him.” Her expensively streaked bob fell on a perfect diagonal as she looked down at the cell. Tom noted that she had a rather sculpted ski-jump nose not found in nature. “I saw him go up to the balcony. You can’t go up there, I told him. There were all these signs. But he said rules were made for other people.”

“Mmm,” Tom nodded, and though he did not know the boy, confidently remarked, “That sounds like something he would say.” 

He thanked the young woman, and when she had gone, he brought Eden over to an aisle seat. “I want to check the balcony for a moment.” 

“Must you?”

“Just for a moment.” He pressed her hand. “Don’t look so worried. I’ll be right above you. All the house lights are on. Nothing can harm you.”

She watched him go with an imploring look that he did not see. Then she sat alone. How vast the red plush auditorium looked with no one but herself in it. She waited for sounds of movement from above. The morning was passing into noon, and a lethargic pall fell over the empty seats

Nothing could harm her, she repeated to herself.

Nothing, she insisted as the mood in the theater deepened

Then a start. A troubled thought.

Nothing, that is, that existed in the light.

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Preview: Now, about that temple on the roof …