Star Read online

  “Just a little spit and it’s ready, muffin,” O.Z. said, licking the paper with his pointy lizard tongue.

  “Where can I change?” Star asked Brandi.

  “Oh, right here’s fine.” Brandi shrugged. “I do it all the time. Nothing he hasn’t seen.”

  “Well, I can think of a couple of things he hasn’t,” Star giggled, using her Mother Pearl’s tableside manner to manage a moment that made her blush. She stepped just out of view into the hallway and slipped on the oversize shirt as she tossed the smock back through the doorway, Gypsy Rose Lee style. Star tried not to die as she tied the excess of what was clearly one of O.Z.’s oxford-cloth shirts at her waist and re-emerged with a flourish.

  “Looks better on you than it ever did on me,” O.Z. said, his tongue still flicking lazily at the joint.

  Brandi drove out to Sunset Point and parked the car. “This is my favorite spot to watch the sun set,” Brandi explained, leading the way. “We can burn this and kill some time until the coast is clear back at casa mía.”

  They spread out their picnic on a recently felled palmetto log.

  “So, you’ve never smoked pot before?” Brandi asked incredulously. “What’s the weather like on your planet?”

  “I’ve never even smoked a cigarette.” Star shrugged. “Remember, I was a jock in high school, so none of that.”

  “You’re doing okay with that beer,” Brandi snorted. “Okay, so watch me. You breathe in a little smoke through your mouth…careful, not too much. You hold it for a minute and then blow it out. Like this.” Brandi demonstrated a couple of hits and then passed the joint to Star.

  Star accepted the joint and the challenge. Taking a big manly puff, she dissolved into a huge coughing fit. Brandi laughed, losing her toke.

  “Nice job,” Brandi said, recovering. “Try just a little ladylike toke this time.”

  “I don’t know,” Star said, a little light-headed.

  “Aw, come on,” Brandi urged, taking another for herself and then insistently pushing the joint Star’s way.

  Star made another attempt, this one more successful and coughing-fit-free. The two sat silently on the log to watch the sun sink into the glowing orange waters of the Gulf. It didn’t take too long for the joint to do its work, and it soon went out from neglect as both were too stoned to remember they were smoking it. Brandi laughed and tucked it into the cellophane of her Salem Lights cigarette pack.

  “What’s so funny?” Star asked, finding herself unable to resist the urge to laugh anyway. “I’m hungry.” She giggled, though she couldn’t have told you why.

  Brandi laughed again and tore open a bag of chips. “Here,” she said, offering. “You won’t believe how good these are.”

  “I’ve had these before.” Star shrugged. “They’re all right.” She took one. The taste exploded on her tongue. The texture, the salt, the almost burnt quality of the dark brown kettle chip ran riot across her taste buds. Suddenly she was starving. “These are amazing,” she raved, taking a handful as Brandi laughed at her yet again.

  “Yeah.” Brandi nodded. “A lot of stuff is amazing after you smoke a jay. Here, lean back; I’ll rub your shoulders. You’ll see.”

  A seagull startled them with its hoarse strangled cry as it settled onto the sand nearby, eyeing them.

  “Hey, fella,” Star called. “You want a chip, don’t you?” She tossed him one from her stash.

  “Lean back,” Brandi said, placing a hand on Star’s shoulder and guiding her back to rest against her warm, firm hands. Brandi slowly began to work through the knots of tension left over from Star’s day. The beers, the joint, and the massage combined, and soon Star was so relaxed that she was limp, moaning and giggling. Brandi slid her hands under the loose-fitting shirt and un-hooked Star’s bra.

  “That’s better,” Star groaned as she let the bra fall to the ground.

  Brandi continued the massage as Star slumped down onto the log. Every now and then she’d take another chip for herself and toss one to her buddy the gull. “Oh, this is so perfect,” Star said, bathed in the orange glow of the sunset and the warm haze of Brandi’s attentions. As the sun languidly slipped toward the water, Brandi’s skilled hands worked their way down Star’s back and slowly she turned to Jell-O. Brandi worked the heels of her hands into the small of Star’s back, and Star started to drift off, lying forward on the log they were straddling.

  Suddenly Star’s eyes sprang open.

  A finger slipped under the leg of the loose-fitting shorts she was still wearing from work. It wasn’t unpleasant, but it was unexpected. Maybe it was just an accident, Star thought, as Brandi’s hands worked down her thigh. Again she nodded, and again her eyes flew open with a start as that errant finger slipped more insistently through the loose-fitting leg of her uniform. Clearly this wasn’t an accident.

  “Br…Brandi,” Star began, but her objections were over-ruled, when all at once the finger found its purchase with a practice no man could have.

  Star gasped again, but this time not from shock.

  Probably not a good idea, but so, so good, she thought. The finger became more insistent and Star shuddered…. She never imagined being so close to Brandi, to any girl. Her breath got shorter and her body tingled and shuddered. She arched her back, raising her head and bringing it back down to rest facing toward the sea, the beautiful waters lapping insistently at the shore. Lost in the moment, Star’s lids fluttered open when she suddenly realized that they were surrounded by hundreds of seagulls, all just standing and staring at them.

  “Brandi,” Star said urgently.

  “Shhh,” Brandi soothed, working a second finger under the panty line and gently raking the tender flesh with her fingertips, just brushing. “It’s okay. Don’t tense up now.”

  “But, Brandi, I think you should know—”

  “It’s okay, it’s perfectly natural,” Brandi urged, silencing her with tiny hungry kisses. Star fought and then succumbed, soft lips on soft lips. “It doesn’t mean a thing…”

  “Brandi, look around us,” Star hissed, reawakening from the pleasure. “We’re in a fucking Alfred Hitchcock movie.”

  Brandi looked up and gasped. One of the gulls let out a harsh cry and Brandi screamed. That was it. Suddenly the whole flock exploded into flight, surrounding both screaming women with the beating wings of hundreds of startled and frightened gulls.

  Star abandoned her bra, the chips, and even Brandi as she wrapped the shirt around her face and ran. By the time the two were back to the car, they were laughing so hard they could hardly breathe. They sat on the warm hood of the Gremlin and leaned against the windshield as they watched the last of the sunset and caught their breath.

  “Well,” Star said, cutting the uncomfortable moment short and dusting herself primly. “I’ve never had sand there before.”

  The two girls lay back on the hood and laughed the laugh of the stoned.

  “Thank God nobody else was around for that,” Star chuckled.

  “It’ll be our secret,” Brandi said with a Cheshire grin.

  2

  “Louie Louíe”

  Star’s eyes came open suddenly. For a moment she didn’t know where she was or how she got there. But it all came back when she tried to sit up and her skin made that awful ripping sound as she detached herself from the cheap vinyl sofa.

  Silently, she surveyed the room. Brandi was nowhere in sight and O.Z. was asleep with his face in the rolling tray, slumped over the edge of the hideous “Mediterranean” coffee table, the one that matched the hideous Naugahyde sofa. The light of the TV, playing with the sound down, made the room feel like that scene from Poltergeist. “They’re here,” Star wanted to scream.

  “Oh my God,” she cried out, realizing from the VJ miming on the screen that it was after nine. The photo shoot.

  “What the fuck,” O.Z. said, sitting up abruptly, bits of pot and a single wide paper stuck to one side of his face.

  “Brandi,” Star called, jumping to her f
eet. “Brandi, we’re going to be late.”

  “Jeez,” O.Z. said, rousing himself. “I’ll get her. She’ll die and take all of us with her if she blows this.”

  “I’ll make some coffee,” Star said, looking around for the kitchen. She seemed to recall its being behind some louvered doors on the far side of the living room, but that had been years before and the louvered doors now opened into a greenhouse of some sort. Puzzled, she looked around, opening a few doors until she happened on a closet with foodlike things and a coffeemaker.

  “She’ll be right out,” O.Z. said, startling Star as he came back into the front room.

  “Where’s the water?” Star asked, looking around for the sink.

  “Oh.” O.Z. laughed. “We’ve been batching it for so long that I just turned the kitchen into my office. There’s a hose over by the far end of that rack of cuttings,” Oz called, peeling the paper off his face.

  “Hose?” Star asked, looking around and finally spotting the green rubber coil hanging off an end of the crude wooden rack. As she got closer, she realized the rack was the bare frame of the former kitchen cabinets. The doors, drawers, and facings had all been removed. “Your office?” she questioned as she filled the coffeepot with the spray attachment. Then of course she realized what the plants were. “Oh, right. Your office.” She winked.

  “So this is a real photo studio,” Star gasped.

  She followed Brandi into Visage Studios, a large complex of studios for hire situated in a flatiron upfit at the crotch of the Miami River and the Seybold Canal. Visage was left over from the days of Miami Vice and looked it. A pink marble atrium with ridiculous colors and absurd amounts of glass block made Star want to hum a Don Henley tune.

  Teal green bowling balls served as finials to the brushed-steel newels flanking the Alice in Wonderland staircase. Gray-industrial-carpeted treads and risers twisted absentmindedly around the bare neon chandelier suspended from the skylight-pocked ceiling. Inaccessible, multicolored ductwork, blanketed in dust, cluttered the ceiling of the unfinished warehouse, which had once housed a shoe factory. Such was the price of letting coke-heads do the finish work.

  “Oh, Star,” Brandi said, laughing at her. “You’re so sweet. Have you never been in a photo studio before?”

  “Well, my mom bought a portrait package from Olan Mills over the phone that time. But other than that, no,” Star admitted. “Have you?”

  “Here we are,” Brandi said, opening the door to Studio B, neatly avoiding the question.

  Nobody seemed to notice Star and Brandi enter the room. A shoot was in progress with another potential Mann model. A sexy Cuban woman in a well-fitted bathing suit was sprawled on a beach chair. Her café-au-lait skin and catlike features set off her mismatched blue and green eyes, which seemed to glow and spark under the storm of little explosions. There were electrical pops and flashes of man-made lightning as the photographer barked staccato instructions to the girl in the beach chair.

  “Now, crawl toward me,” he snapped. “Stalk me. Make me your prey. Good. Good. Now strike. That’s it. Seduce me. Make me want it. Make me. Make me. Excellent.”

  Everyone focused as she writhed in the chair in time with the lightning flashes.

  She is so beautiful, Star thought as she unconsciously ran her hands over her own body, comparing. She was fascinated by the interaction between the photographer and the model. Her response to his constant barrage of instructions was so immediate and complete that it almost felt as if he were narrating her actions rather than leading them. Star was drawn toward the activity, a moth to a flame.

  “Good, good,” the photographer cooed. “And one more for fun.”

  The model pushed up her nose so that it looked like a pig snout. Everyone laughed as the photographer reeled off the last shot.

  “Great job, Chita,” he said, giving the model a distracted little pat. “Okay, ten minutes and then back here to reset for the next one. Is she here yet?”

  “Are you Brandi?” a young woman said to Star, looking up from a clipboard and noticing the two for the first time.

  “Oh, no,” Star said with a nervous laugh.

  “That would be me,” Brandi volunteered, stepping forward and extending her hand.

  “I’m Star. I’m just here to help with hair and makeup.” Star raised the old yellow tackle box she had converted into a makeup kit. There were still bits of tackle in the bottom should she decide to go surf fishing.

  “Oh, really?” came a rather operatic reply from over Star’s shoulder.

  The voice dripped with meaning. Turning to see whether it was a fight or hurt feelings, Star came face-to-face with a truly remarkable specimen of manhood. Over six feet tall and thin enough to slip into Star’s jeans, the reedy singer smirked out at her from under perfectly sculpted brows that were arched to heighten the meaning of his musical question. Aside from the jeans, he was wearing only a leather vest and a lot of jewelry—much of which Star coveted, some of which she already owned.

  “Yes, really,” Star said bravely, still unsure of the meaning of what was clearly more a remark than a question.

  “Well, is that the sweetest thing,” said a second man, darting around his statuesque friend to rush Star and take her free hand. “And this must be your kit?” he said, patting the tackle box. “I can’t wait to see what you’ve got in there,” he went on, dragging Star along. “I’m Billy and the beanpole is Skip, though we all just call him WB, short for ‘wicked witch.’ ”

  Star tried not to laugh.

  Skip sighed expressively as he followed along behind them.

  “Let’s just get set up for Miss Brandi,” Billy said, dragging Star into the small makeup room off the studio. Skip followed dourly in their wake.

  “You’re Brandi?” the girl with the clipboard asked. “I hope you don’t mind, but the magazine sent along Skip and Billy to do your hair and makeup. No offense, just part of the package.”

  “None at all,” Brandi said with a laugh she’d heard on some soap opera. “No, I’m relieved, actually. Really just doing her a favor, but glad to work with professionals.”

  “Okay then,” the assistant said, a bit chilled by Brandi’s cold dispatch of her friend. She took Brandi’s elbow and led her into the light toward the rest of the crew. “Let’s meet Ron, the photographer you’ll be working with today.”

  “You know you’ve only got on one earring,” Star said, trying to be helpful. Skip looked up from his copy of W and dispatched her silently with an eyebrow. She’d been trying to make conversation ever since Billy had deposited them both in the hydraulic makeup chairs and dashed off to get them coffees. The silence was killing her. Star tried again. “It probably came off around here somewhere. I’d be glad to help look. It’s really too nice a set to let it go—”

  Skip’s laughter brought her up short.

  Once again, Star had no idea how to react.

  “You’re serious, aren’t you?” Skip asked, tossing aside the magazine. “Are you for real?” He rose and embraced her.

  It didn’t really make her feel any better, but it was less menacing than everything else he’d done so far.

  “I see you two have made up,” Billy said, backing through the swinging doors into the room, his hands balanced with coffees and a few purloined cookies and doughnuts. He turned balletically to face them as he carried on. “I’m glad. This way we can have so much more fun.”

  “Star just offered to help me look for my other earring,” Skip said, putting his arm around her and dragging her across the room to where Billy was laying out the coffee and treats. “Is she just the deal?”

  “I love that!” Billy exclaimed, giving her a little peck on the cheek. “Cream, sugar, or dangerous chemicals?”

  “Dangerous chemicals?” Star asked, wary after her night with the Fescues.

  “Sweet and fake? Nondairy whitener?” Billy offered, clarifying. “Or high test?”

  “Oh, got it,” Star said. “Real sugar, no dairy, pleas
e. I read somewhere that it really never gets digested and just turns into mucus.”

  “That’s horrific,” Skip groaned. “Let’s make a deal not to talk about the food we eat while we’re eating it.”

  “Or after for that matter,” Billy added, stirring vigorously.

  “I just try to be careful,” Star said with a shrug. “Sorry, no offense.”

  “Oh, darling,” Skip said, squeezing her shoulder with one arm as they made their way back over to the makeup chairs. “You’d need a year of very specialized training to offend me. Food facts just make me queasy.”

  “Got it,” Star said.

  “Okay,” the assistant with the clipboard announced from the door as she led Brandi in. “We’re going with a smoldering-brunette thing. Put her in black lace. Put the hair up, but make it easy for her to take down.”

  “We could put a bone in it, Wilma,” Skip suggested nastily.

  “Along those lines,” clipboard lady said. “Maybe a touch more sophisticated and a little less masticated?”

  “You are a wit today, Miss Flintstone,” Skip said, taking Brandi’s hand and leading her to the chair. “Now let’s have a look at you. Perhaps there’s hope.”

  “Play nice,” Billy warned. “Star, why don’t you help me pick out a few things from the rack and then we’ll get started on your friend’s face.”

  “That would be great.” Star nodded like one of the bobble-head spaniels in the back window of her Impala. Keen to learn what she could, Star set her coffee aside and followed Billy into the next room, where a few rolling racks of surprisingly small clothing had been staged as a sort of make-do costume shop.

  Star had a really great time helping Billy and Skip. The two were funny with one another and really brilliant at what they did. She took it as a chance to learn and asked questions about each step of the process.