Love Her Madly Read online

  I kept still, barely breathing, and willed my eyes to stay shut. Their sheets rustled, reporting that some sort of caress was taking place. I wished I could be anywhere else. He kept on whispering. Every once in a while, she would respond with a soft utterance. It was a small mercy to me that the air conditioner was on, its low rumble obscuring their words. As the minutes dragged on, I realized that they weren’t having sex. But as he kept whispering to her, I felt a jealousy worse than what I would’ve felt if they had been.

  Deep inside, I smoldered. I knew they didn’t know I was awake, and even if they had, they weren’t doing anything disrespectful. I had no legitimate reason to be angry, but I was steaming. Raj didn’t talk to me like that. He didn’t make up elaborate stories starring me just to get me to smile. Maybe I had made it too easy for him. Or maybe he just loved us differently, as I’m sure we loved him in different ways. It was a nice thought, but alone on the floor, I couldn’t feel the truth of it. I just felt wretched and lost.

  True morning.

  I woke up first. Cyn and Raj lay entwined in bed. I only glanced. I was not curious. I used the bathroom and found my shoes. Cyn stirred under the sheets. She peered at me through the dim light.

  “Hey,” she said groggily.

  “I’m heading back.”

  “You sleep okay?”

  I shrugged. “Not the best. I’ll see you later.”

  “Glo,” she said, stopping my progress out the door. “I’m sorry about last night. I hate that I interrupted you and made you sleep on the shitty futon.”

  She looked so regretful that I had to smile. “No biggie.”

  “It is a biggie. You’re a great friend. I love you.”

  “I love you, too. Quit that job today.”

  She rolled her eyes and fell back on the bed. I closed the door, and in the morning light, made the walk of shame back to my room.

  Cyn didn’t quit, but she did cut back to just two shifts a week. Raj, or both Raj and I, would drop her off and pick her up in her car so she was never in the parking lot alone. Business was unusually slow; even Cyn’s regular clients weren’t showing up as often. She would count out her evening’s take on her bed and shake her head in disgust.

  When she finally sucked it up and shared her money problems with Gabe, E Two’s manager, he suggested she try modeling. There was a friend of a friend who needed a girl for some lingerie shoots that were destined for the Internet. Booking the job would require nothing more than his making a phone call. Without hesitation, Cyn agreed.

  Raj wanted to be there for the shoot, but Cyn declared it too weird. Instead, I went with her. The shoot was at a photo studio in a strip mall, the kind of cheesy joint families go to for portraits taken in front of a fake fireplace. We were told to show up after business hours. Cyn was wearing huge false eyelashes that made her look even more like a living Barbie. She fluttered them at me while making insect noises at every stoplight, determined to make light of the situation. I think it scared her. But on the surface, she was smiling and happy, so I kept my apprehensions to myself.

  We knocked on the door, and for a few minutes, no one answered. We stood there, awkwardly, watching families file out of the frozen yogurt place a few doors down. The door finally opened, revealing a thin guy with glasses who swiveled his head back and forth between us like an oversize praying mantis. He smoothed his wan face and tawny mustache, immediately giving me the creeps in the way that only seemingly normal guys with weird sidelines in pornography can do.

  “Lance,” he said gruffly, introducing himself.

  Cyn shot me a look that clearly said, Fake name. What a geek.

  He directed his bulgy eyes toward me and extended his hand. “I only need one girl.”

  “I’m just here for moral support,” I said, wiping off the clammy residue his loose handshake left behind.

  “She’s my pose coach,” Cyn enthused, batting those falsies with vigor. I noticed that her voice had risen half an octave. I wondered if this was a defense, part of her burgeoning porn persona.

  If Lance was surprised by our tag team act, he didn’t show it. He led us back to the larger of two portrait studios. It was dark, except for several bright lights directed at a white backdrop where Cyn would model. There was a cardboard box full of frilly things in clear plastic bags and a checklist. He pointed it out to Cyn.

  “Those are the catalog items that we’re shooting today. Some of them have props. They’re bagged and labeled. Get dressed in the first one. If you work fast, we can bang this out by eleven. Did you bring shoes?”

  “Yes,” she said, awkwardly dropping her bag and nearly tripping on a strip of wires. Cyn was as nervous as I’d ever seen her. I found a folding chair and set it against the wall, out of the way. She dug out the silver platforms and presented them.

  He grimaced. “There are black ones in the box. If they fit, we’ll use those.”

  Cyn pulled out the first plastic bag, a French maid’s outfit. She held it up to me and made a face.

  “What’s the number on that item,” Lance demanded, preparing a whiteboard.

  “It says 401,” Cyn said.

  He wrote the number on the whiteboard. Cyn looked around for a dressing room.

  “Just go behind the backdrop if you must,” Lance snapped, lighting a cigarette. “And make it fast. We’ve got a lot to do.”

  Cyn and I exchanged brow raises. She emerged moments later as a naughty French maid, and Lance snapped away for about thirty seconds. Her nervousness had vanished, and she moved through different poses like she’d been doing it all her life.

  “Done. Next.” He snapped off the principal spotlight and stepped out of the room. The air conditioner was no match for the hot lights, and soon even I was sweating. Cyn took a moment to apply some powder.

  “Not so bad, huh?” she whispered. “He’s only a little weird. Still, I’m glad you’re here.”

  “You’re doing good.”

  She stuck out her tongue in disgust. “Point curves toward camera and let the lens do all the work. It’s just that easy.” She grabbed the next bag and hurried behind the backdrop as Lance reentered and pointedly looked at his watch.

  She worked through about eight more outfits, which got progressively skimpier as the night went on. The last one didn’t have a top to speak of, just a translucent mesh drape. The bag was labeled “The Zenana.”

  “Tits up and out,” Lance grumbled from behind the camera, for the fifteenth time that night. Cyn arched her back. “Better.” He snapped off a few more shots. “Good. That’s it. We’re done. Get dressed.”

  It was only ten thirty.

  When Cyn was dressed, Lance gave her an envelope with four hundred dollars. “I need more next week, if you’re available.” Then he gestured at me. “This one I can use, too. If you wanna do a girl on girl, I can get a good rate.”

  Cyn smiled charmingly at Lance as she pulled me toward the exit. “I’m in for next week. My friend is camera shy.”

  “Well, if you change your mind . . .” He unlocked the door, releasing us into the cool freedom of the night.

  And thusly, Cyn broke into the adult photography industry. Her professional name was Cinderella Velvet, and despite what the media said later, her “career” consisted of exactly three shoots. Even to my admittedly conservative eye, the photos she took that first night really weren’t that racy; I’d seen worse in swimsuit catalogs at the dentist’s office. The lingerie she was modeling was corny and slightly silly, even. It seemed harmless enough.

  With the first-time jitters out of the way, Cyn didn’t ask me to go to the next shoots. I only know what she told me about them. The second session sounded very much like the first, but at the third shoot, things got sketchy.

  When she got there, there was no box of catalog items. Turns out, it was no longer a lingerie shoot but was, instead, a “fantasy”
shoot. Cyn balked at first, but she needed the cash.

  “What does ‘fantasy shoot’ mean?” I’d immediately asked.

  “I’d rather not talk about it,” she groaned, climbing onto her bed. She lay there, face buried in her pillow for a long moment. When she surfaced, she said, “It was a series of pictures aimed at people with particular kinks. Some fetish stuff. Pretty awful. I learned tonight that latex is not one-size-fits-all.” She flattened her lips in disgust. “I don’t even know if those things were cleaned from the last girl who wore them. I hope to god they were. The only consolation is that it paid six hundred.”

  “Did you have to show your—”

  “No. I was nude at times, but usually with some sort of draping. I had to transition between poses carefully because Lance was working handheld, and I’m sure he was totally gunning for a beaver shot. I kind of kicked him once because he got in too close.”

  “That sounds very awkward,” I commented neutrally. On the TV screen, Lucille Ball’s mouth stretched into an O of horror, mirroring the reaction I was having inwardly.

  “Yeah.” She rolled on her side to face the TV, her hair creating a privacy wall between us. “I tell myself that these pictures will simply disappear into cyberspace and not affect me. I mean, I’m not planning to go into politics or be famous or anything that would make anyone want to dig them up. If people stumble across them, that means they’re actively looking for dirty pictures, so if they out me, they’d be implicating themselves, too.”

  “I think you’re right.” She needed reassurance, and I was happy to downplay the whole thing. “I wouldn’t worry about it. I mean, there are billions of those sorts of pictures out in the world. You’ve only done a handful, and under a fake name. Odds are, they never see the light of day.”

  She was quiet for a moment. Then she laughed out loud. “If my parents ever found out about this, it would kill them.”

  She rolled onto her stomach, a strange smile on her face, and began preparing a joint. Cyn so rarely mentioned her parents that I sometimes forgot she had any.

  “I never told you the full horrible tale because it’s all too depressing and trashy, but the reason my sister stopped living with us was because my folks disowned her when they discovered she wasn’t a virgin.”

  “What? No.”

  She nodded. “They made me take her stuff out of our shared room and pile it all by the curb while all the neighbors watched. It was so embarrassing and sad. She was sixteen. I was ten. Part of their rationale, if you can call it that, was that they didn’t want her being a bad role model for me.” She laughed mirthlessly. “So, Meg went to go live with her boyfriend’s family in the next town over. Married him at twenty. My parents didn’t even go to the wedding, which blew my mind. They were still angry with her, even though she’d found love and a really good, solid guy. At first, I believed they thought their god would want them to stay angry forever, but now I think it didn’t have much to do with faith; they were just stubborn like that. I started to visit her alone, riding across town on my bike, and things changed between us. We got close. She realized that I was almost fourteen, and knew what was ahead for me if I stayed at home. She invited me to move in with them into their tiny cottage for my high school years. It probably saved my life.”

  She lit the joint and rolled onto her back. Her eyes found the TV and seemed to go far away.

  “Saved your life because your parents would have killed you?”

  Cyn smirked. “Not literally. Saved my soul, maybe. Saved my authentic self. For a long time, all I wanted was to please them, but it was getting harder and harder. My parents were furious with both of us. Total cold war. Last I heard, though, they’ve begun speaking to her again. Small steps.”

  “What is your sister up to now?”

  “She’s busy. Three little girls. Her husband, John, is a contractor. Been in and out of work. It’s been tough for them financially. She’s really smart, though. She does some bookkeeping for a doctor part-time. She could do a lot more, but there just aren’t a lot of jobs where they are.”

  “Would your sister care about the modeling?”

  Cyn laughed. “Meg would find it hilarious. She always knew I was going to be a free spirit of sorts. I think that’s why she rescued me from my parents. But, no, she’s not uptight at all about that sort of thing. She’s the one who introduced me to weed.” She held up the joint and smiled. “If I have the cash, maybe I’ll go visit Meg and John and my nieces during break before Costa Rica. She’s like my only family, except for you and Raj. I miss her.”

  It turned out that Cyn would not have the cash. Lance called Cyn about another shoot. This one would be a longer session and would pay one thousand dollars. Was she interested? She was.

  When she arrived at the shoot, it was business as usual. Nothing seemed amiss until she went into the studio and saw a platform dressed like a bed and a male model sitting on a stool, wearing a robe.

  “What is this?” Cyn asked.

  “The set,” Lance snapped.

  “Who’s the guy?” The model smiled and said hello.

  “He’s your partner,” Lance said, pointedly ignoring Cyn’s distress.

  “Excuse me,” she said to the male model and headed straight for the front door. Having another guy present, especially a big muscular one like the model, was a deal breaker for Cyn. When she started working at E Two, she crafted contingency plans for what to do if she felt endangered. Her approach to modeling was no different. Dealing with two strange men instead of one tipped the scales. It was too easy for things to go awry. She pushed at the front door, but it was locked, and there was no latch to unlock it. She remembered the key ring Lance always carried, the one he would jingle impatiently while she changed costumes. She heard the keys clinking on his belt as he approached.

  “Where do you think you’re going?”

  “Can you unlock this, please?”

  “Why? Are you going to run out on me?” Lance said lightly, as if he was joking.

  “I left something in my car,” she lied.

  “You don’t need it,” he said. Any hint of friendliness was now gone.

  “Unlock the door.”

  He moved in closer. Cyn uselessly scanned the empty parking lot for anyone who might hear her if she screamed.

  “And who is going to pay my session fees? I’ve promised this other model work. Are you going to cover his fees or rent for the studio space this evening?”

  “That’s bullshit. You didn’t say anything about partner work. If you had, I would have told you I don’t do it. Your fees are your problem. Now open the door, or I’ll call the cops,” Cyn said, her voice rising.

  “What’s going on here?” The male model had emerged from the studio, frowning handsomely.

  “Dickface here is creating a hostage situation.”

  “I’ll handle this, Enrique,” Lance snapped. “You renege on this job, bitch, and you owe me five hundred dollars.”

  “No. I don’t owe you anything.”

  Lance nodded his head, then lashed out, explosively slamming his palm against the door, inches from Cyn’s face. The glass boomed and wobbled from the impact. Cyn was frozen in shock. She told me that she saw a blur of white cotton, and then Enrique had Lance pinned against the wall, one forearm forcing his head back in a way that looked sublimely painful.

  “Why don’t you give her the keys?” Enrique suggested.

  Lance’s hand squirmed into his pocket and fished out the key ring. Enrique nodded at Cyn, and she snatched it from him and unlocked the door. She picked up her bag and fled, leaving Enrique with Lance still squirming and pinioned under his arm.

  It was her second close call with danger via the adult entertainment industry, and in my opinion, two times too many. I was surprised when she showed up at the room an hour after she’d left. Unlike the pickup truck incident, t
he tale of her rescue via male model seemed to delight her. She sat me down and breathlessly recounted the entire scenario.

  “I’m only disappointed that I didn’t think to thank Enrique. If I had known he was such a caballero, I might have stayed for the shoot and taken the one thousand dollars,” she said with a laugh. “Anyway, let’s not tell Raj about this. He’ll probably feel some obligation to go punch the guy out.”

  “Yeah. I won’t say anything. But we’re now in violation of the ‘no secrets’ rule.”

  She snorted. “Good one, Glo. No secrets rule. As I see it, it’s for his own protection. He might look like an action star, but I don’t think he’s ever been in a fight in his life. Besides, even if he doesn’t go all Rambo, it’ll still make him angsty.”

  “You mean, more angsty?”

  “Definitely.”

  Raj was in a pissy mood fairly often those days. He was stressed about fall semester finals, like we all were, but he was also unhappy that Cyn and I would soon be gone for four weeks, leaving him all alone. Confounding us further was that he’d recently started talking about quitting the sciences altogether to become an actor. A professor complimented his performance during an in-class staging of Titus Andronicus, and he’d had a revelation: he wanted a life on the stage. He signed up for acting intensives at the local conservatory that same afternoon.

  He would come back from these night classes either elated and convinced that he was going to go all the way as an actor or utterly defeated. I never knew which it was going to be before he walked through the door: comedy Raj or tragedy Raj. We were his test audience for whatever new monologue he’d found and de facto scene partners when he needed to run lines. In my eyes, he came to life when performing, and I loved to help him practice. I’d make time to read the plays he was studying, and when we were alone, we’d geek out together about all the different interpretations he could do. Once I got over the shock, and saw how much he cared about acting, I was behind him all the way. Cyn, however, had a different take on it.