The Santa-Ana had picked up.  It moved through the streets beside Rachel with a deafening whisper, gliding along like a convoy of black limousines.  It was after midnight when she pulled up at the address on Fountain Avenue in West Hollywood.  As she got out of the car, a styrofoam cup flew past her.  The street door was open and Rachel walked inside, out of the wind.  The sudden calm reverberated in her ears.  She pushed her hair off her face and walked up a flight of carpeted stairs to apartment #3.

There was no light under the door and the hallway was silent.  She heard a car skidding on Sunset, a squeal of rubber that ended with an angry burst of car horns.  The wind roared by steadily.  She knocked, and waited. There was no movement from inside.  She knocked again.  Nothing.  She felt a stinging flush of relief: maybe he wasn't home.  The thought startled her; she hadn't realized she was afraid.  She heard footsteps.  A bar of light came on under the door; she flinched back from it.  More steps.  She took a long deep breath and let it out slowly as the locks clicked and the door swung open.

In the first second that he saw her, surprise flickered across Todd Richter's face; then it was gone. "Hello.  The wind is making everybody crazy tonight."

"Don't talk," she said softly.

She stepped into his apartment, put her arms around his neck and kissed him.  The hunger leapt between them, pent-up for hours.  Todd kicked the door shut and pulled away long enough to say, "Bedroom."

She was already pulling his shirt off, kissing the matted hair on his chest.  Still kissing her, not breaking the tangled connection between them, he started walking her down the hall.  She let him guide her, seeing herself suddenly through his eyes, the woman he had wanted, probably since the first time he had met her.  But he hadn't known how to approach her; his one attempt had been a disaster. Perhaps he had even given up, after this afternoon.  And now she was his, utterly his, about to be laid out in front of him like the smorgasbord at Scandia; taste anything, eat as much as you want.

She'd seen his eyes flick to her legs when she crossed them in a skirt; she had caught him studying the outline of her breasts, her nipples stiff under the light cotton of a short-sleeved shirt.  She had sworn that she would never let him come closer than that.  She had actually enjoyed his frustration.  It had given her a taste of power over him; she realized that now.  It diminished his control.  Somehow she had known that he couldn't dominate her completely as long as she withheld her body from him.  Her back was to the bedroom door, then the door was opening behind her.

She shouldn't be here.  She should get out.

Todd was dangerous.

And yet the danger excited her even more.  Her fear and horror turned to lust; everything turned to lust.  She was hurtling down the curves of a mountain pass, brakes disconnected, aching for a crash.

The bed hit the back of her knees and she was falling.  She seemed to fall for a long time before the soft mattress caught her.  She watched as Todd untied his robe and shrugged it off.  He was naked underneath, his massive powerful body covered with black hair.  His erection stood stiff out of the coarse shadows between his legs.  It was shockingly big, a separate animal, one-eyed and alert.  She saw herself leaping off the bed, dashing for the door, but she felt too heavy, pressed into the soft comforter by the weight of the swollen craving between her legs.

He loomed over her and every nerve in her body seemed to be pulling upward towards him.  He unbuttoned her pants and unzipped them.  The rasp of metal on metal tore at her, but she lifted herself with a dream-like absence of volition and he slid them off.  They vanished and he was beside her, enclosing her in the heat and the harsh musty smell of his body.  They were kissing again, deeper kisses, his hands moving over the soft material of her shirt, feeling the contours of her bare breasts beneath it.  The pleasure jumped through her and she wanted his flesh on hers.  But he was playing with her, kissing her shirt, circling the wet fabric with his tongue.  She ran her hands down his back, the chain of muscles and fur that led to his buttocks.

He slipped his leg between hers and pulled her shirt open.  He stopped then, just looking.  She was trembling; his stare was almost tactile in its intensity.  He started kissing down her throat to her breasts, his tongue flicking her nipples.  She heard herself moaning and she arched her back, pressing herself to his mouth.  She wanted his mouth everywhere, his hands everywhere at once.

He was moving down her body, and she felt his fingers under the waistband of her panties, easing them over her hips and down her thighs, over her knees, freeing them from her feet and throwing them across the room, baring her.  He rose on his knees between her legs, just staring at her again, memorizing her naked below him, stomach muscles fluttering with tension, thighs parted.  She felt delirious, absolutely possessed, twisting under his gaze.

"Now," she said, "please, now."

Todd smiled.  "Oh, no.  Not yet.  Not for a long time."

He started with her feet; kissing them, sensitizing them, running his tongue between the toes, then moving up her calves, pausing behind her knees, then working his mouth and teeth up the insides of her thighs.  His hands were caressing her ass, lifting her, sliding between her and the bed, separating the cheeks.

Rachel was writhing and crying out now, panting, twisting the comforter in her hands.  The longing felt like a serrated knife edge, a cut that was sugar on her nerves, parting the flesh without blood.  His tongue came to the brink of her vulva again and again.  She could feel his breath taunting her.  She hurled herself up towards him and felt the first hot touch of his tongue, opening her, finding the slippery oyster of her clitoris, drawing it into his mouth, releasing it stroking her, first delicately then harder, bearing down until she felt an orgasm begin to sizzle in her blood.  She was pulling at his hair, reeling on the brink, and he pushed her over the edge.  She started to come, bucking up and down, but he stayed with her, relentless and pleasuring until the ecstasy receded.

He moved up her body again, drying his face against her hips and her ribs, and kissed her.  She was famished for his mouth.  Finally he entered her, the head of his cock parting each layer of resistance, deeper and deeper.  She had never had a man that deep inside her. It was soft and gentle at first; then he pulled himself almost all the way out and the avid wanting rushed back.  He plunged himself in again, speeding up, and she was thrusting her hips in rhythm, raising her legs to have him deeper still, their bodies slapping together.  She crossed her legs around his back.  Waves of ragged bliss rose up inside her but refused to break. Todd seemed to know it.  He varied his rhythm, slowing down into languorous, circular stabs, stirring and coaxing her.  His fingers were parting her ass, caressing down from her vagina, exploring.  They lunged together, perfectly synchronized now, faster and faster.  He found her anus, brushed it lightly and then let his finger slip inside and out again, matching his thrusts.

She almost passed out in the sudden surge of pleasure; then she was coming over and over again uncontrollably, the steep waves finally crashing on the sand and she was crying out with each breath, gasping as Todd pumped himself into her and she felt his explosive orgasm pulsing inside of hers.

 

2

 

Todd rolled away first.  Both of them were slimed with sweat and the bed was drenched.  The wind was still rushing down the deserted streets.  The room was hot and airless.

"How about a long, cool bath?" Todd asked.  "I have the biggest bathtub in Los Angeles."

Rachel found this hysterically funny.

"Let me have it," she said. She reached over for his arm and pulled him down onto the bed again.

It was another two hours before they finally wobbled into the bathroom and slid into the giant tub.  It stood apart from the wall on four clawed feet, twice as long and half again as deep as the prefabricated ones in most apartments.  They sank into the cool water and let their legs mingle.

"Where did you get the tub?" Rachel asked.

"A girl bought it for me.  Some shop on Melrose.  Paid a fortune."

"Who was it?"

"Just a girl, Rachel.  Just a girl.  We broke up a long time ago. She wanted a relationship.  You know the type -- went to a shrink and called him a 'therapist'.  Tried to get me eating health-food slime -- raw fish, soy bean pudding, whatever the hell it’s called."

"Tofu."

"Tofu, right.  Fucking slime.  She kept saying, 'you don't relate to me. All we do is screw all the time.  Is that all you want? Am I just a sex object to you?'  So I told her, I said, relating bores the shit out of me. Relationships are a dime a dozen.  But a good sex object is hard to find. What can I say?  She left me.  But I got custody of the bath tub."

There was a long silence. The tap dripped.  A dog started barking in another apartment and stopped just as suddenly.

"Say it," Todd murmured.  "It's all right.  Say it."

"You know what I'm going to say?"

"I'll say it for you.  You want the same thing."

"Maybe. But I'm not the same person."

"I know.  Believe me, I know.  Listen, I'll tell you something.  Most people out here are idiots.  No education.  No stamps on their envelopes if you know what I mean.  Tofu for brains.  But everybody has a few words that sound smart, or they've picked up some funny-farm philosophy they can spout at you.  You get used to that shit -- you get used to dating actresses who have some issue they're angry about, and they've memorized Oprah Winfrey’s opinions, and they can bark them out, just like a trained dog."

Rachel laughed.  "But you like it.  You like the starlets. They're easy for you."

"You were pretty easy yourself."

She kicked him. "Watch out. You’re just getting to the hard part.”  

“You know, I knew something was up when I read Escapade.  I figured you'd be a real wise-ass like your characters.  Not letting anything get by you, calling all the bullshit. Some fat, clumsy broad who has to make jokes to get by.  There's a lot of women like that. Men too. Look at the writing staff at any sitcom.  Go down to the Improv some night. Best of all –- check out the L.A. film critics. Dorks on parade.  Anyway, the point is, what the fuck am I saying? Oh yeah -- I didn't think you'd be beautiful."

Rachel winced and Todd pounced on it.

"I know that expression.”

"What expression?"

"A little flattered.  Mostly annoyed.  You've heard it all before. That’s the problem.  You've been told you're beautiful too many times by all the wrong kinds of men."

She was intrigued. "What kinds of men?"

"You know -- young ones.  Stupid ones.  Weak ones.  Romantic ones.  The usual crowd of losers."

"What kind are you?"

He smiled. “You tell me.”

"All right.” She squinted at him critically for a few seconds. “You’re romantic. No, I mean it.  I saw that champagne in your office today."

"And you drank it, too."

"I certainly did. Way too much of it."

They both laughed.

"You're wrong, though.  As far as I'm concerned, love is just a good way to get your ass kicked.  I was in love once -- all I got out of it was guilt and scar tissue."

"What happened?"

"Just about everything."

"Anything in particular?"

"I'll tell you someday.  Not tonight."

There was another silence.  "You were looking at me, weren't you?" Rachel asked after a while.  "At the end?"

"You noticed that?"

Rachel nodded.

"All right, I'll tell you.  I love to watch a woman's face when I'm making her come.  It's the only time I feel like she's really mine."

"But that's absurd!  For all you know, she's fantasizing about someone else.  Or just faking it."

"You weren't faking it."

"No."

He ran his foot up the inside of her thigh under the water, caressing her with his toe.  A low charge of pleasure flared through her and she squirmed.  "It wasn't just me, though," she managed.  "You were there, too; I felt it."

"I know, but it's secondary.  What I really love is taking a cool, self-possessed woman and making her totally lose control, when I put her through so much anticipation that she's about to explode and she's begging me to let it happen, and then so much pleasure that she's screaming and thrashing around on the bed, and her toes are cracking and she's just an animal, totally wild, and knowing I took her there.  I made it happen.  That's what I love.  Sometimes I don't even come at all.  It doesn't mean that much to me."

She stared at him. "It did tonight."

There was a strange moment of silence, like the shifting light when clouds filter the sun for a few seconds and make the spring air melancholy.

"Yes, it did," Todd said finally, speaking to the bathwater.

She took his foot in her hands and stroked it. "Tell me why."

He looked up; and the clouds moved on, releasing the sun.  "First you tell me something.  What did you think, the first time you saw me -- that first day you came into the office?"

"I thought, this is the most attractive man I've met in years. Which means he’s probably a total nightmare and I should be running away as fast as my feet can carry me.”

“So what do you think now?”

“I think it’s too late to run. I’m in his bath tub.”

“And maybe you were wrong.”

“What? So you’re really a nice guy who just acts all mean and tough to hide the vulnerable little boy inside him?”

“Fuck you. Like you’d spend five minutes with that guy.”

Rachel splashed him. “So what did you think that first day?”

"When you walked in my office?  I thought -- this is your chance, buddy. Right out of nowhere, some friend of one of Foley's clients. A total fluke. This is it. And I had this sick idea that if you ever left I'd never see you again."

“You were pretty self-controlled.  I thought there was nothing on your mind but contracts and commissions."

"Good.  I didn't want to take any chances.  Scare you away."

"But you shouted at me and hung up on me and -- "

"That was business.  It still is. That’s not gonna change, and you wouldn’t want it to.” 

He leaned over and kissed her.  It made her lighthearted and she realized that he was right. She liked the cruel streak in him.  It made her feel safe. It was like a vicious Doberman Pinscher licking her hand.  He was on her side after all.  Besides, she had always rooted for the villains in cartoons and movies.  The heroes were just dull.  There was something inherently tedious and one-dimensional about all that stalwart nobility.  Inane handsome guys charging around doing good deeds put her to sleep faster than a slug of cognac.

When they finally stood to towel off, the fatigue hit them.  It was almost three-thirty in the morning.  They walked back to the bedroom.  Todd kissed her once, climbed into bed and put his back to her.  He punched the pillow down and appeared to fall asleep.  Rachel had wanted to talk some more, and this abrupt ending to the night irritated her.  It was like lights out at summer camp.  She stood in the middle of the floor for a few indecisive seconds and then slid between the sheets gingerly.  Todd didn't stir.  Could he possibly be asleep already?  She felt uneasy.  Wind continued to flood the streets.  A car without a muffler punched a diminishing series of holes in the silence.  Todd's bed was too soft.  She didn't belong here. She didn't even have a toothbrush or a change of clothes.  She decided to get up and get dressed.  She could be home before dawn if she moved fast enough and the deserted streets would be pleasant in the half-light.  She needed to sleep in her own bed.  She needed to have breakfast with Stacey and hear the sane, measured things Stacey would say to her.  She was pleased with this resolve and she rolled over on her side for a few seconds before leaving.

 

3

 

Todd was gone when Rachel woke up.  The room was full of harsh morning light and the clatter of traffic from Fountain Avenue.  The room still smelled of last night's sex, an aroma that Rachel classed with half ­finished drinks and full ashtrays.  It was ten thirty in the morning.  She had slept badly, dreaming that she was back in high school.  In the dream, it was almost summer and she realized in horror that she had been skipping science class all year.  Oddly enough, no one had seemed to notice, but now she was going to have to take the final exam.  She was totally ignorant of the course work, and when she showed up for the test the teacher would realize that she had been cutting class for months.  Someone, was it the Principal?, was saying "This is one mess you won't be able to talk your way out of," as she was escorted to the classroom.

 

She woke up in a miserable fog of dread, and as the particles of her consciousness assembled, the sense of dread remained.  The memory of her dream was already fading, but the memory of last night remained alarmingly vivid.  She was certain she had made a disastrous mistake. She pushed the covers back and walked into Todd's bathroom.  It was alien, full of male paraphernalia: a bottle of after-shave, a hair-choked razor, condoms, slivers of raw-smelling soap.  He hadn't used the condoms last night. Rachel wore an IUD, but he hadn't asked about it.  He obviously didn't care.  Pregnancy wasn't his problem; his women looked out for themselves.  Abortions were legal in California and Rachel could afford one; that was all he needed to know.

She took a long shower but it didn't help.  She still felt soiled and sluggish.  She faced herself in the bathroom mirror.  Why had she come here? How could she have let any of this happen? Most important, was there anything she could do about it now?  Well, first of all, she could get out of his apartment.  She pulled on her clothes as quickly as she could, and walked downstairs to the street.

There was a ticket on her car.  This was street cleaning day, between eight and ten o'clock in the morning.  Of course the street hadn't been cleaned.  The gutters of Fountain Avenue were littered with paper and soda cans and cigarette butts.  She took the ticket off her windshield and flipped it over.  It was going to cost her sixty dollars.

She swung over the door into the driver's seat and soon she was headed west on Sunset.  She didn't like Todd Richter.  That was the simple point at the center of this raw mood.  He was weird.  He drove like a lunatic.  He was always on the brink of a tantrum.  He was unstable.  And what was all that stuff about watching women come? It had seemed so charming and vulnerable in his big bathtub, but the sincerity of his confession seemed transparent to her now: the Junker cordiality of a Nazi. 

She had been dazed with sex last night, sated and stupefied. That was another thing. There was something hideous about the sex itself. It was ghoulish.  It was perverted. It was so one sided, so out of her control. He had taken over completely and even joked about it later.  He made no secret of his preference for sex objects or his contempt for women.  But despite her anger and disgust a little secret worm of pleasure was moving through her, even now in the glaring light of the day.  She liked being his sex object.  Some part of her liked it; but the fear she had felt was real, and though it had turned into lust last night, the lust had burned out and the fear was left, sour and gritty like ashes, like the cigarette butts she hated so much.

Rachel accelerated off Sunset toward the San Diego freeway.  She stared at the city as she drove down the ramp.  There was a good view from this elevation and it was breathtakingly ugly.  In the few seconds above it before locking herself into the mass of traffic, she realized why.  The cheap buildings, low to the ground, dwarfed by the infestation of signs and billboards glittering in the desert sun and swathed by pollution were the accidental by-products of greed.  The city had helped her to understand greed: it was the state of mind in which everything came second to money. Everything - aesthetics, taste, style, humor, affection, ordinary human feeling, even health and safety.  Los Angeles was a transient town.  People came to get rich and then escape; they'd been doing it for eighty years and Los Angeles in the year 1999 was the sum of what they'd left behind.  It had the cheap, temporary look you might expect from the worker housing and saloons thrown up by the big mining companies at the turn of the century.  It was a boom town at the moment, but Rachel could easily imagine it going bust.  It had the look of a potential ghost town already.  She could just see the sand blowing through the prefabricated doorways and the weeds sprouting through the cracks in the sun-baked asphalt.

She hit a pot-hole and the car shuddered.  All right, she said to herself.  You made a mistake.  That's okay, people do it all the time. You made a problem for yourself.  But you can solve it.  The solution was already forming in her mind.  Fleeing Todd's office yesterday, her very first thought had been to fire him and get a new agent.  That was a good idea.  The thought of daily contact with Todd Richter after last night was preposterous. Of course, she had signed a one-year contract with ICM, and she couldn't invoke the ninety-day clause since Todd had actually procured work for her. Todd could fight her legally.  She shrugged.  Let him: Sam would help her -- it would become a legal matter to be decided in court.  And she would never have to see Todd Richter again.

She had to smile; it was a bracing thought.  It cheered her as she swung off the Marina Freeway and started up Culver Boulevard toward the ocean and home.