The vibration in the pool was no longer subtle, and had again shifted in frequency: to the slower, more evocative beat known as “Theta”. Around the circle, legs were spreading open, nipples and erections were stiffening, membranes moistening, limbic systems reacting, anuses unclenching, breathing slowing, muscles moving in a rolling rhythm, third eyes blinking.

A sound could be heard, but only to those in the pool: an inner sound like a thin, piping whistle or piccolo. Tuan automatically classified it as an artifact, a “beat” created by wave amplitude interference of the deeper frequencies. Which was more or less his last coherent thought on the subject. The pulse dropped lower and their bodies started rising, abdominals fluttering, inner visions seeing a long tunnel with a watery, golden light at the end.

Copper, veteran of hundreds of acid orgies, took it in her proprioceptive stride, opening herself to the beginnings of white waves of orgasmic release. Her lips grew cold and trembled, seeming to whistle a simple air like that of a piper.

Xchab, a virgin emotionally if not technically, had no vocabulary of stimulus or response to refer to. As wavelets of energy lapped at her mind she retreated into the stolid non-here of an Indian, then to the unreasoned purity of childhood. Her body floated upward, her mind sank into a vortex. She felt good. She felt. She…………

Winston, another inveterate shocktrooper in the campaigns of sex and psychedelia, had long since hung a Gone Fishin’ sign on his brain and surrendered serenely to what was happening. Which, judged by the storms and tsunamis his mind/body had weathered previously, was shaping up to one hell of a blow. He felt his legs spreading wider, his feet brushed the toes of Xchab and Charity on either side.

The vibration was slowing even more, and nobody involved would have, at that point, described what they were experiencing as due to pulsing water pressure. It was inside them, around them, all over and about them. They were strings being strummed, chants being hummed.

Bannock was on alien shores, but nothing in him resisted it. His spread feet touched MeiMei’s, then Loris’ and he was profoundly conscious of being in the right place, among the right people, at the right time, of the right stuff. He wasn’t really aware of his body floating slowly up in the water, of the tip of his straining penis breaking the surface like a periscope seeking visions and orientation.

Beside him, MeiMei felt her left foot touch Bannock, and a second later her right foot contacting Tuan’s. But she really had nothing to do with any of that. She was a disembodied point of view ascending a molten staircase of golden light, her arms spread wide to embrace the source of that light, which seemed to radiate from all around her, from an invisible bird calling above her head. The bird’s song was as sweet as a gold flute. She no longer climbed, she drifted up like a bubble in a tall flute of champagne.

The beat of the night had slowed further, hovered at about one hertz. The frequency was fixed in each person in the tub, their hearts synchronized at sixty beats a minute, the blood in their arteries lub-dubbing in unison. Once a second: one hippopotamus, two hippopotamus, three hippopotamus, four. The inner circuitry of their brains was also firing as one, running subprograms that released treasured molecules into their brain fluid and blood. They vibrated like insistently plucked harps, shook like the columns of wind twelve-toned saxophones.

Ganzo was almost completely horizontal at this point, his dick poking out of the water like the other guys’, one of a ring of standing members moving to inner fluctuations of blood pressure. He could feel Curtsy and Xchab touching him, could feel the music of inner tides and currents, the neaping and seeping that made him. He was alone in the dark except for that black, compelling littoral music. Then a star shone above him. As he looked at it, it widened. A comet, a moon, a distant sun. He lay as limp as he had very laid on a beach recovering from a deep dive. And the sun rotated, sucking his gaze into it, pressing down on him in a rhythmic massage. As he stared into that single light, something happened in him, as abrupt and definite as the flick of a switch. Ganzo woke up.

Seagull had felt like a third wheel when he first slipped into the water between Copper and Aphra, a useless membrane between them. But as his feet touched theirs, and as his fingers clutched around their necks and he felt other twined fingers on his own, that changed. He felt as though he stood between them on a high platform, singing while they harmonized, cosmic backup singers stepping up to do a trio turn as the piping grew stronger and the vibration shook deeper down. It was a shell, like the Hollywood Bowl, or more like Red Rocks. And in the darkness in front of him, as he sang his cellular choir, little points of light were coming on. A dozen flames out there in the night, a hundred flares held overhead by an audience of everybody who’d ever lived, a million, million stars that claimed him as their own. His mouth came open and his teeth stopped chattering. He ran to the edge of the stage and dived into the light.

Copper spun at the center of the sun. Surrounded by fire, warmed like soft wax in its radiation, buffed to metallic glory in its scarlet light, ignited with the proximity of all she had ever sought, she gave herself to the fire that moved upon her. It exploded into her eyes and she burst into flame like a bird bursts into song, like a shell bursts into a hot white flower of final flame. She was burning now, smoke coming off her in twisting, Sanskrit patterns, Tibetan flames layering out of her darkening skin, as her pubic hair rose above the surface of the pool, her nipples shed water like an emerging helldiver…she burned up and was gone. Finally rid of that. All gone. All gone.

The piping sound grew faster, louder, more piercing. It was an icepick now, sixty hertz buzz drawn out into a white lance that ran them all through.

Townsend had fought against what he had no wherewithal or reason to fight off. And seen his inhibitions blown to smithereens, his defenses flattened. He was taken and squeezed flat, kneaded like a tube of toothpaste, forced into a constricted passage of darkness. He was massaged through that black tunnel for centuries, knowing no time or space but the eternal, prodding pressure toward something he couldn’t imagine or anticipate. He felt himself longing to be there, to emerge from this bowl of blackness into something open and light. And finally a time came when he could see it, somewhere in the distance or future. He squirmed toward it in vain, but was pumped on towards that light by the constrictions around him. He stop fighting to be born and let himself flow out into the world. He slipped into blinding light, light that burned him clean and dry, polished him like ivory. He looked up at the lights above and realized he was held by hands. And the hands lifted him upwards and the light became a face. This was where he came from, he realized in exultation. This is my source! And he felt the love of it. It was not familiar to him, so it came over him like twilight, but it was The Love. He loved his parents for giving him life, he loved the children to whom he would some day return it. He loved the world for coming into existence, and for going back to nothing. For the first time since he was born, Townsend felt the motes of rock-deep, unbound, star-high love. His tears blew back out of his eyes, fell the ground and sprang up as small beings of light.

Aphra, head lolling back on Townsend and Seagull’s laced hands, legs spread open to receive the subtle but insistence pulse in the water, thought she saw something forming in the steam cloud the hot water generated in the moist night air above it. There was a swirling in the mist, then a bunching and compounding, then it was as though a shaft of mist–or light, or impulse or hallucination, or something–flared up into the sky; a column of quivering vapor that lanced as far up as she could see. Damn, she thought before she moved way past thoughts, ET calling home for real. Hope he isn’t on roaming rates. Then her eyes dropped shut under the onslaught of internal sensation, the rhythm in the water deepening and spreading up through her body, down through her nervous system, out through her mind. Her head flopped back into cradling, shuddering hands, her long flat stomach muscles fluttered, then convulsed into a running throb. Her head filled with colors, with boomings, with sparkles and spangles and the wide pounding of oblivion.

Loris stood on top of a hill, looking up the Milky Way, which extended from the center of her eye to the end of the universe. She raised her hand towards the glow of it and her hair was blown back by an almond-scented breeze. The rising wind plucked the pure white cotton robes off her, blew them away behind her. The wind was caused by her own movement: she moved steadily up the causeway of stardust, led by the light of the center of All. The rising wind blew off her hair, then teased away her skin, which rippled back and away from her. The rest of her flesh was also blown away by the rising sirocco of her own acceleration. She was lying horizontal now, flying like a harpoon into the center of the center of the center. Her bones turned to dust, more dross to curl way into her wake. She elongated as her velocity approached that of light, she was expanding, becoming the only object in the universe, streaking forward pulling an infinite cone of change towards the point of her death and birth. She was beam, a ray just one point wide and infinite points long, motion no longer meaningful. As she pierced the eye of the cosmos… she bloomed.

All six men in the pool ejaculated at once, a tiny Vegas fountain in the glowing water. All six women orgasmed as they had never before, blasted into that sweet death as though lashed onto big rockets. They all shook and spasmed, arching up out of the water as though it had been electrified.

Then they went limp and subsided, slowing sinking back down, their feet touching the bottom, their butts drifting down onto the benches. But they continued to embrace each other, their eyes still closed. Their lips parted. Their throats loosened. In some cases, their balls descended.

From the window of his bedroom in the Lodge’s highest room, Francis Ford Coppola looked down at his jungle hot pool. It looked like a carnation, like a fractal star, one of those Esther Williams musical numbers. Twelve people he didn’t know from Adam, naked and arranged around the pool with their legs forming a Moravian star in the center. They seemed to be doing some sort of dance or exercise, kind of throbbing. He opened the mosquito screen for a better view through the dome of glowing mist over the pool… just in time to see it spring upward as though somebody had turned on one of those opening night searchlights under the pool. The shaft of golden light, the same diameter as the pool, leaped up, shone into the night sky, didn’t diminish as it shined out of sight, had no end.

Then it went out and the whole pool plunged into darkness. Great, Coppola thought. Now they’ll have to drain the pool to change the bulb.

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Francis Coppola emerged slowly from the hot pool and stood for a moment savoring the jungly scent of the night and the sounds of the waterfall into the pool. He was the last one out, the others slipping away to let him enjoy his soak.mayancalendargirls.com He didn’t understand why these guys would get into hot water to relax, then get all stressed-out jabbering about projects and budgets and agents and residuals. Especially those two latecomers. God, they were insane: talking about directing a film by séance if he got their drift. What I need up here, he suddenly realized, is a steam room.

Definitely. Why hadn’t he thought of it before? That was an offer to relax nobody could refuse. There was something really East Coast and borough about steam. Guys with Yawk accents sitting around naked in the mist, walking around in rough Turkish towels. This whole hot tub thing was so California by comparison.

He rubbed down with a soft, fluffy towel and shook drops from his beard into the hot water. Thinking, kind of like me, maybe? Gone California? Or have I just disappeared into some global stratosphere, a tower in The Cloud?

Chuckling at himself, he turned to head to bed and almost walked into a half dozen really beautiful young women, also wearing only towels or shifts. His eyebrows raised as he smiled at them appreciatively and waved them towards the pool.

“Aqua termal,” he said in his best Corleone rasp. “Prego.”

The girls laughed. All except the stone-faced little Maya girl, who was starting to fascinate him. What a face she had, really. He couldn’t help framing her whenever he saw her.

“Mr. Coppola,” the tall brunette said, “We really appreciate your hospitality here. It’s such a beautiful, serene place.”

“You’re fairly beautiful and serene yourself, my dear,” he told her. “You do massage, I understand?”

“I do. And I’d be honored to give you one any time you like.”

“I’ll take you up on that. Maybe tomorrow after breakfast.”

“Any time. I just love your work. I saw Goodfellas six times.”

He almost laughed his towel off. “Good one. Thanks for the laugh. You ladies are taking a really late soak tonight.”

“We need to cleanse her skull,” Copper offered as she shed her towel and slipped into the water.

He looked at Loris’ hair a little differently, hoping it wasn’t infested. “Please don’t put any soap in the water.”

Loris smiled, held up the towel-wrapped object she’d been carrying, and let the towel slide away from oXo, grinning at the director with eyes aflare from the mosquito torches on the deck. “He doesn’t need soap, just running water,” she said. “And love.”

He fought the impulse to cross himself. “Okaaaay.”

He backed away towards the lodge. As he walked off he heard the girls all giggling, a sound as bright and clean as windchimes. But he didn’t even consider going back to bask in their beauty and youth. There were plenty of attractive young people who weren’t nuts. Turning, he saw them all shedding their wraps and slipping into the hot water like sirens of many colors. He called back, “Just don’t leave a ring.”

Xchab was the last into the pool, even with the other girls teasing her and beckoning her in. She looked balefully at Aphra, timidly at Copper and Curtsy. But when MeiMei smiled and waved her in, she stepped down to the stone bench that ran around the perimeter of the pool, standing there thigh-deep in her cotton huipil, frozen. Finally Loris walked the length of the pool and looked solemnly into her eyes, holding that spooky glass skull between her breasts. Slowly, gently, she reached up and rolled one shoulder strap down the Mayan girl’s shoulder, then the other. Xchab didn’t try to stop her shift from sliding down into the water and when Loris held up her free hand, she took it, stepped out of the floating garment, and lowered into the water. Loris beamed at her, turned and moved towards the other end of the pool.

She waded back across the pool to the waterfall that animated its narrow end, the other girls watching as she marched towards it holding oXo in front of her like a sacrament. She extended her hands and the glassy skull slipped under the little cascade, water flowing around the smooth contours rather than splashing off. She stood motionless, head bent forward and eyes closed, as oXo luxuriated in the wash of moving water.

Aphra was playing a little submarine footsy with Copper, and wouldn’t have minded sitting within hands-on range of the redhead, who it turned out contained a sexuality as wild and fiery as her own. But for whatever reason, the girls were all sitting a little too distant to touch, evenly spaced around the pool, heads leaning on the rim, watching Loris and oXo. So Aphra bided her time, and watched with them.

Curtsy luxuriated in the hot water, which almost seemed to be rhythmically palpitating her body. She played with the underwater sealed-beam floodlight beside her, trying to make shadow puppets in the water, her hands starting to move in time with the beat she felt in the water. The whole pool started to flicker in a slow, sure rhythm. She spread her thighs, then pushed them together. Her nipples tingled. She closed her eyes and for some reason had an image of Puch Pop, standing on top of a pyramid at Cobá, just looking at her.

MeiMei was feeling the same insinuation in the water and “decided” to just lay back and like it. It figured that wealthy directors would have devices like this in their hot tubs. She wriggled her hips around on the smooth tier, watching Loris’ careful laving of oXo, but caught movement from the corner of her eye and looked back towards the buildings. And saw Tuan and Winston strolling down the path, in quiet but intense conversation. She was glad to see OB, but wondered if he was crashing one of those “all-girl moments.” Then she saw Townsend and Bannock behind them, also talking with interest. And behind them, that “Seagull” character chattering to Ganzo, who regarded him with a serious gaze. Tuan saw her and smiled and she giggled, “Company, girls.”

Aphra opened her eyes and saw a group of males arriving, ringing the far side of the pool. They stood watching the women for a moment, probably impressed by the general tableau. Breaking the calm, she said, “Damn. There go the neighborhood.”

Everybody but Xchab laughed: she was eyeing the men a little nervously. And suddenly the big indio that had come up with the blonde just stepped in the water right beside her, took off his wet towel, and tossed it back on the deck. Curtsy, on Ganzo’s other side, smiled at him and reached out to stroke his hair as he settled down between them. Faced with the typical hot tub dilemma of what to do with his hands, he chose the usual approach and spread his arms along the rim of the pool. Curtsy leaned her head into his left hand, smiling happily. His other hand brushed the back of Xchab’s torrent of black hair but she didn’t shy away, for some reason. She looked sideways at him and he was looking back at her, his expression as blank and noble as a dog’s. One thing she realized at that moment: whatever else there was about Ganzo, she knew she would never have to fear him. She sunk a little deeper in the water, also feeling the beguiling pulse in the water and reluctantly starting to respond. A few minutes later she put her own arms on the pool rim, her left hand slipping behind Ganzo’s head, the other laying on the nape of Winston, whose other hand was buried in Copper’s cuprous curls.

Curtsy hadn’t been the only mermaid getting an eyeful as Townsend and Bannock, standing side by side, peeled off their trunks and eased towards the pool. Couple of major swinging dudes, was the way she sized things up. Classic match-up: showy class versus brute power. It was hard not to linger on the sheer beauty of the slide of Town’s abs and pecs, but the scars and welts made a tour of the big lug’s torso rather interesting as well. She wondered what they’d look like out swimming. She watched Townsend move around and slip in beside Aphra, and the look she gave him. Something going on there, for sure. Didn’t think that muff-mistress swung that way. He also laid his arms along the rim as he unwound and Aphra gave him a “Oh, please, whitebread” look, but didn’t move away from his hand on her shoulder.

Bannock moved in between MeiMei and Loris, who smiled at him as she continued facilitating oXo’s brain scrub. Mei felt his hand brush her left shoulder at the same time that Tuan slithered into the water like an otter, ducked his head, then shook it off before settling beside her and placing his left hand under her hair to caress the down on her slim neck. She extended her arm to give him a friendly Dutch rub, before resting it on his hard deltoid. His right hand moved behind Curtsy, who reached behind his neck to twine her fingers with MeiMei’s.

Loris, who had been standing a few inches from oXo as she held him under the waterfall, had been exposed more heavily to the pulse that the skull was emanating. She moved slowly and dreamily as she turned around to face the circle of faces ringing the pool. Her nipples were tight, her aureoles puffy, her thighs tender, her face muscles slack and creamy. She moved to the center of the pool and bent forward to gently place oXo on the bottom. For a moment she appeared to everyone else as a sleek form on the surface, an hourglass of buttocks, fluted back and wide shoulders riding above the water like an island.

She straightened up and looked around, noticing the slackening and loosening going on around her. The Love, she thought, is the ultimate massage. Then she had another thought, which she knew she should share. “We are about to hear something,” she said. “It’s called the First Tone. There will be four Tones before this is over.”

As she backed away from oXo, towards her place by Bannock, MeiMei asked, in a voice so relaxed she could barely articulate, “Tones? Like the Calendar? What does that mean?”

Loris smiled as she moved away from oXo, to the edge of the pool. “I guess we’ll find out.”

Nobody else asked why she had done what she did or said what she said, nobody spoke. Nobody even really thought. oXo had begun to “broadcast” his pulse of live, whole, movement stronger and at a slightly lower frequency. A frequency that those who give names to such things call “Alpha”. She moved back to the edge and sat down. Immediately Bannock cupped the base of her skull. He extended the thumb and finger of his huge hand to rub behind her ears, like you’d do to a big dog. She closed her eyes in pleasure. Nobody ever thinks that massage people like to be rubbed, too. But this guy did.

She put her hand behind his head, as well, idly ruffling his short, wiry crop. She extended her other hand behind Townsend, then removed it to lift his hand behind her own head, then replaced it at the base of his skull. All twelve people were now touching, a dozen heads woven together by intertwined arms and hands. And in the water, an intimate pulsation was throbbing stronger and deeper, a righteous somatic dub that synchronized twelve heartbeats into a single chorus.

Kenny and Gareth discovered that somebody had walked off with their all-important director and spiritual leader and immediately spun into frantic, mostly ineffective motion. They blasted around the dark lodge, pushed into empty rooms–even Bannock and Loris’ room, which would have scared them green to intrude on in other circumstances. They burst out onto the side deck and looked down at the pool, where they could make out people lounging around in a gold mist suffusing the air above the water. They tore along the porch until they hit the stairs, then stopped as if they’d run into an invisible fence. Kenny was at the point of tears as he wailed, “It has to be down there. That bitch took it down there to play with in the fucking water.”

“I guess,” Gareth said, feeling extremely strange and out of place.

“Well, why don’t we just march our perfect butts down there and seize it?” Kenny demanded.

“Nah,” Gareth demurred. “You go ahead if you feel like it.”

Kenny stared at the mist, which seemed to be vibrating in some way, his mouth working. “Well,” he finally said, “As long as they bring it back.”

“It’s not like they can go anywhere,” Gareth hastily added. He turned back and headed for bed. After a few tortured seconds staring down at the pool with fists clenched, Kenny followed.

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Bannock’s head rested on his laced fingers, a straw hat low over his eyes. One leg dangled out of the huge cotton hammock, an occasional flick of his toe keeping him in a gentle rocking motion. He kept his eyes on the view down to Privassion Creek and the valley below, taking in all the delicate and charming graces of Blancaneaux lodge, but mostly the foreground of view of Loris giving a very intense massage to Shane Black.

Not, rather pointedly, on Kenny and Gareth sitting forward in their cane chairs, their positions and faces advertising supplication.
mayancalendargirls.com Or even on Curtsy, perched on a table over by the wall and moving her head back and forth to follow the conversation. She’d been following the “Melrose Mafia”, as Loris called them, for three days, practically underfoot. Gareth actually saw possibilities in her for the film–apart from his more immediate schemes for her lush flesh–and had really nailed her when he mentioned they’d need a dolphin wrangler and that Hollywood was practically begging for people who could get cetaceans on their marks.

Continuing his abject crawling to Bannock, Gareth wheedled, “Listen, Big Guy, you did a fabulous job getting oXo for us and it was very small of us to quibble over the money. We felt shitty immediately and hope you’ll accept…”

“Now you need something else,” Bannock said quietly, his eyes half closed as he watched Loris’ hands running over the writer’s shoulders in an almost hypnotic sequence.

“Well not really need,” Gareth said.

“And not so much else,” Kenny stuck in.

“Look, Bannock,” Gareth moved on with an urgency that indicated he might come to the point of their barging in on his siesta. “We’ve taken some meetings behind the skull, and now we’re here. Here in the same house with Coppola and Cage and Shane Black and Marty Bregman and Pacino might even show up and…”

“But we’re getting no love,” Kenny pouted. “We need interface, capische? Input, liaison, face time.”

“You want face time with a skull?”

“You know what he means,” Gareth almost begging for sympathy and succor. “We’ve got access, the director of all time, building a cast…and we can’t talk to oXo.”

“Did you call his agent at Morris?”

“What?”

“Just fucking with you, man. You need some answers from oXo.”

“Exactly. You nailed it.”

“Well, you came to the right place.”

Gareth turned to Kenny, gushing. “I told you. This man has a few rough spots on his diamond, but he delivers.”

“I didn’t say ‘the right person’. I said the right place.” When Gareth stared, puzzled, he nodded his head at Loris, now working on Black’s fingers as he seemed to be liquefying.

“Of course. Didn’t I tell you, Kenny…”

“You most certainly did not ‘tell me, Kenny’. You said…”

“Okay, okay. But look, do you think she’d…”

“Ask her when she’s done tenderizing Mr. Kissy Kissy Bang Bang, there. And you guys might consider having her work you out, too. You’re both way too uptight.”

Gareth looked at Loris, now kneading the soles of Shane’s feet, and approved. Even Kenny seemed open to having a woman put her hands all over him. “So when will she be done?”

“A massage therapist’s job is never done,” Bannock said with mock gravity. “But I’d say that guy’ll be medium well in about another twenty. Long as you’re up, could you shag me a beer?”

Townsend flowed into the dark bedroom like moonshadow. Moving silently but surely, he took a position in a dark corner to await alarms and gauge the breathing from the bed. He held his fist up to his face, reading his responder without releasing the tiniest amount of glow from the LED’s which were all working overtime in the immediate presence of their obscure object of acquisition. It took two reads before he believed it was sitting in plain sight on the dresser. He ghosted over and scanned it, his stylish glasses giving him a view of it, all twisting, psychedelic color-maps with digits dancing at the sides of the projection. Just sitting there.

Just sitting there in the middle of a big, confused pile of silverware from the dining room, two glass windchimes from the pavilion, and various other odds and ends piled up in a gleaming game of Pick Up Stix. He bent as close as he could without his display feeding back too much to read, but knew there was no way to remove the teetering cage of noisy junk without toppling it onto the steel tray it rested on. Shit. Well, more ways than one to get a cat skin.

He crept to the door sticking close to the walls, opened the door six inches noiselessly, and exuded.

On the bed, Aphra watched the dim triangle of light on the ceiling narrow and disappear before relinquishing the butt of her Detonix, under the pillow. That man was a thief in the night, that’s for sure. Could feel you up and knock you up but not wake you up, no doubt.

Speaking of which. She slid her arm softly over Copper’s ribcage and cupped her firm breast. With just the tip of a fingernail, she gave a tiny pluck at the end of her nipple. No response from the redhead, who must be pretty exhausted, all told. So she scissored two fingers around said nipple and started to move them slowly together and apart. It took about a dozen little squeezes like that before she felt a hand reach back, grab her pubic tangle, and slide down to cup her warmth and do a little finger-walking of their own.

Loris sat in a lotus position, regarding the producers with a neutral calm. Behind her, Shane Black was snoring lightly on the massage table. She thought out the two metrosexuals’ dilemma, to the point where they were about ready to jump out of their skins from anticipation, and said, “Have you tried drugs?”

“Well, I’ve experimented a little,” Kenny offered demurely.

“Tried them?” Gareth expostulated. “He’s like indicted them. Convicted them. He’s like, rounded them up and exterminated them.”

“She means on oXo, you twit.” Bannock continued his slow rocking motion and languorous expression.

“How could we do that?” Kenny asked, genuinely stumped. “Maybe a sort of inverse bong-out?

“Kenny,” Loris said, “He doesn’t breathe. He’s a rock.”

Gareth pointed two pistol fingers at her. “You are, baby.”

“Oh, so now he’s just a rock?” Kenny whined. “Before, he was some ascended soul brother.”

“He’s a great, transcended oversoul. He’s a spirit, a mind. But then so am I. We all are. But here’s the deal with him, and it’s kind of sorry, really. He’s been in shifty hands around L.A. for a long time and he’s picked up, basically, a nagging drug habit. He’s the ultimate monkey man. Likes to bring people around him and interact with them when they’re stoned. He’s right in your mind when you blow it and he likes the feeling.”

Gareth stared at her. “So he surrounds himself with telepathically linked stoners and feeds off their energy?”

“If you want to put it like that.”

“Not a problem. I’ve worked with directors like that before.”

“And he’s worked with weaselish Hollywood types before you two. That might help. But maybe not.”

“What? Other producers and directors have had access to him? Why haven’t we heard about this before? Part of the appeal here is novelty…”

“I only know a couple of names, but they’re big names, that I recognize.”

“Name me one,” Kenny challenged with his lip stuck out stubbornly.

“River Phoenix.”

“Oh my God, don’t even bring that name up.” Kenny held his hands to his cheeks, stricken. “I could just sob every time I see that perfect face. And the hair to die for.”

“Not the only bodily fluid you seep out at the very thought, I’m sure,” Gareth observed waspishly. “But look, if he’s such a great seer and fortune teller and all that, it didn’t seem to help River much did it?”

“Because he wasn’t listening. Or asking the right questions.”

Kenny shot a look at Gareth. “This is getting complicated.”

“It always does,” Loris admonished. “Because you turkeys always think he’s a wild joker to cheat with or an ego medallion you can use like bling or a hood ornament. You have access to unlimited energy and use it to pull your puds, then go to smash in your own greed and silliness. You don’t need to worry about him helping you, you need to worry about ending up worse off than when you started. Take my word for that. Or do whatever you want.”

“Okay, what can I say?” Gareth saw no point in getting cute with Loris: she saw through everything he threw out. “You got me… I’m a weasel, I play angles. I got needs. So kill me. But I need to…. see?”

“Maybe you can hire somebody else to ask questions for you,” Kenny sniped bitchily. “Some slut who had a three month run on Jeopardy.”

“Shut up, Kenny. No, wait, wait a second, you’re right. I got it.” He turned back to Loris, excited, “You know how to work him, don’t you?”

“I definitely don’t know ‘how to work him’. Haven’t you been listening to me? It’s more like I’m learning how to let him work me. He’s an influence.”

“More like under the influence to hear you tell it.”

“You paid a quarter million dollars for him, don’t you think it’s worth listening a little?”

That shut Kenny up but Gareth had seen the Route To Riches. “Yeah, yeah, that’s what I’m saying. I’m seeing it now. We need you. On the picture.”

“Look, if you’re just going to play Hollywood games, I…”

“No, no, serious. We need somebody to liaise here. F2F peripheral. We’ll put you on salary, you handle him for us.”

Loris thought a minute and said, “I can handle that.”

Gareth looked at Bannock, who had turned his head toward them as soon as he started talking about using Loris. “Full salary, above the line. No points, but hey, gimme a break. On the production payroll as of now. What I’m saying, she’d have a job and we’d treat her right.”

In a low tone, almost a growl, Bannock said, “That’s what I’d suggest.”

“Sure, Biggie, no problemo. We’ll list her as a scout.”

“I was a scout once,” Kenny mused idly.

“Really? Did you make Eagle?” Bannock asked him.

“Double bogie, I think they said.”

“Look, she’s on the film.” Gareth scrambled to get back on track, nail it down. “You come along. No pay…hell we already paid you. We’ll take care of her.”

“If you know what’s good for you.”

“You bet, Bannock. Might even be a speaking part for you in this.”

“You talk like you’ve seen a script,” Loris said evenly.

“Nah, sorry,” Gareth grinned apologetically. “Just reflex. It’s my nature. See, that’s why we need you.”

“First thing we’re going to do,” Loris said with an understated forcefulness, “Is clean up his aura. Give him a nice bath.”

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John Milius sat up, beaming mindlessly. Loris knelt in front of him, smiling. “I’m a writer,” he said, “I should be able to think of something to say other than ‘Oh, wow’.”

“That’s what I said when I found out you wrote ‘Apocalypse Now’ and ‘Dirty Harry’.”mayancalendargirls.com

Milius grinned as he slowly stood up. “Let me ask you,” he said, still beaming. “Do you only massage people with superb physiques like mine?”

She laughed. “Tall, short, skinny, fat, broken. Each one its own universe.”

“Well, screenplays are the same way. Each one is totally different. But when I sit down and crack my fingers, they’re all made out of the same stuff.”

He turned and walked to the door, feeling two inches taller and floating an inch off the floor. He opened the door and turned to say thanks and good-bye, but was immediately nailed by Kenny and Gareth, who must have been laying in ambush for a half-hour.

“I think you’ve seen we can bring a show,”

Kenny gushed. “And these girls and talent here are in the film. Are the film, really.”

Milius hid his wince at having his serenity crash down to Biz with these two yapping yorkies, but maintained his manner. “Does that Mayan girl even speak English?”

“Xchab? No way. She’s authentic all the way. Tribal. Magically realistic.”

“She’ll play the Mayan princess,” Gareth yammered. “Speaking Mayan, English subtitles.”

“Except in, you know, foreign distribution,” Kenny tacked on, nodding.

“Didn’t Mel Gibson already to that?”

Gareth shook his head forcefully. “No way. He was just spouting a bunch of weird bullshit and they subtitled him with a booking number.”

He rounded the corner to where the main deck gave views of the gardens and on down the tiers of enchangment to the river below. And saw their host standing at the bannister, intent on the lawn below. He moved closer to speak, hoping it would scrape the Valley Boyz off his shoes since they were desperate to importune Coppola, but too intimidated to even cross his shadow. He saw the hand held up in warning and stepped quietly to the rail where only he could hear the soft, “Have you seen this, John?”

He looked where Coppola was pointing at Copper, practicing her firespin with two tennis balls on her chains, each trailing three feet of bright ribbon. The chains spun a web around her, the ribbons defining a twisting sphere of influence as though trying to weave themselves into a solid ball of color.
And three paces behind her, Xchab continued her apprenticeship, moving with the flame dancer step for step, her arms echoing each movement.
And each of her movements was traced by a hovering cloud of hummingbirds.

A brilliant buzz in the green-tinted sunlight, the flock meshed and morphed behind her, tendrils of vivid birds outlining every movement of her hands, the mantle of irridescent feathers spreading and whirling behind her like a cape.

“That’s the really amazing thing up here,” he said quietly to the writer. “Things happen in real life that would be preposterous to try to bring to the screen.”

Gareth cleared his throat and stepped forward, holding up a timorous finger. “Excuse me, Mr. Coppola, but actually we have some ideas on that…”

Aphra figured she could get in, grab the goodies and be back at the well-provisioned dining table before anybody thought she was taking a long time answering the call of Nature. This whole wide-open, secure feel of the Lodge was great. Totally unsecure. She slipped into the room where Tuan and MeiMei were staying in a Robinson Crusoe With Luxuries setup, everything rustic and Tarzan/Jane where it counted and the jungle just outside and doing it’s damnedest to come on in and get homey. Her tracking gizmo was in her hand, blinking and twittering to itself as she panned the room and oops, there it was, over there in the dresser. The little subdued signal it gave from its own min-battery, meaning somebody had removed the camera battery. And in a place like this, with scenery outside yelling for attention and every other guy you run into some famous movie type, that would mean they were hip to the camera doing a little multi-tasking. Smarter than your average slope, these two, and that’s damned smart. But us corn-row niggahs known to come up with a few wiles, our ownselves.

She had her spare sender-cam ready, but under the circumstances took three seconds to open it and dump the batteries out into her pocket. The one she wanted turned out to actually be behind the dresser, but it’s all good. She pocketed it and carefully taped the ringer back where it had been, shoved the dresser back to the wall and headed back to the dining room. This place had to be good for some scrumptious kind of dessert.

Loris reached for the ceiling, staring straight up, stretching powerfully and rotating her fingers as their voices dwindled down the walkway from this mediation room to the main lodge. Those poor saps needed more than she could give them in a weekend. She thought about oXo again, sitting in their room on a dresser. She could just walk in, pick him up, and walk out. But she knew that wasn’t the right thing. Or not the right time.

She slowly brought her hands down, then lowered her head. And found herself looking right at Aphra Alisander, modest in a big white terrycloth robe. And saying, “So, you do women, too?”

“Massage is equal opportunity,” Loris said, patting the straw mat flooring. Aphra flowed down into a prone position, the robe drifting off along the way. Loris arranged her arms and head, pulled her feet together, rubbed scented oil on her hands, and leaned into a long push up the black girl’s spine.

After a minute she felt some of the residual guardedness start to unwind, but was waiting. And sure enough, Aphra said, “Believe I asked if you do women, too?”

Hands ringing her biceps, working in for the concreted fascia, Loris said, “My relationships with people are about who they are, not what sort of plumbing they have.”

“You sound like my kind of girl,” Aphra purred. After another minute she said, “Course you got that hunky boyfriend. Kind of a new one if I read the signs and scent correctly. Looks like he’s plumbed pretty good.”

“I haven’t known him long, but I think it’s something that’s going to last and grow.”mayancalendargirls.com

“So how’d you kids meet?”

“It was a business deal.”

“Turned into a pleasure deal. I cotton to those myself. Hint, hint.”

She turned over face up, sliding snake-like under the oil and light coat of sweat. She faced Loris, supine, and spread her legs a little. “I been liking you since we met, honey. And I’m wide open to getting to know you better, you see what I’m saying.”

Loris adjusted her rub to her new position, working silently, but keeping her eyes on Aphra’s.

“So listen,” she went on, starting a slow and subtle movement under Loris’ hands. “Turns out I’m the kind of person gets to know things and find out shit beyond the average schlimizzle gets his 411 from Google.”

“That’s what I hear.”

“Ah, my reputation precedes me? We should talk about that sometime. But let me tell you about the studly Mr. Bannock there. At least his third surname, by the by.”

“It suits him well enough.”

“There’s girls kind of cream over your bad boys, them roughup scary types. But they’re going for the image, not the real item, they gotta a brain left in they head. But your guy there is the real thing. I’d even go so far as to classify his tight ass–and this is not a term I drop lightly–as a rather badass motherfucker.”

“He’s done pretty well so far.”

“Not a guy to take crime lightly. Oh, no… quite serious is how the man takes his crime and punishment. Like Federal time, for instance. And would still be doing that time if they could’ve nailed down a couple of unfortunate fatalities that he was believed to have had guilty knowledge of. Heard anything about that?”

“Not until just now. But how about you? Have you ever been in prison?”

“Nah, there’s still some of us sassy black folk ain’t been rounded up yet.”

“Because you seem a little dangerous yourself. And nosy. And maybe the type who doesn’t pay much attention to laws and orders.”

“No, I’ve not yet had the privilege of incarceration.”

“Well if you did, do you think you’d do whatever it called for?”

“Oh, you just know it, sweetie.”

“I appreciate the information. I know you mean it well. Well, more or less.”

“Ah, ‘More or less’. Pretty much my M.O.”

“I mean, you’re also hoping to weaken a relationship I’m growing increasingly content with, so you can get your hands on me for ten minutes.”

“Ten minutes? Give me some credit, Slim.”

“Flattering, but also kind of, well… you know. You must run into it all the time. So let’s try something different.”

“Hey, something different…”

“No. I mean different thinking, also. Listen to me, okay?”

Aphra seemed to hit a deeper level of relaxation, subsiding on the mat and looking up without the arch manner she’d been showing since she walked in. Might not be a bad idea.”

“Why go to the trouble? Why not just relax?”

“Girl, I was any more relaxed, I wouldn’t have any vital signs.”

“No, you’re on the prod. Playing angles.” She put a finger over Aphra’s lips to stop the game. Then said, “I read people. No name on it or anything. I just have the gift to read people.”

Aphra’s legs edged wider apart. “Now me, I’m just an open book.”

“More than you know. You think of yourself as a very sensual, sexual person. But I think you’re playing yourself.”

“I always thought if they make a movie of my adventures I could play myself.”

“People use sex as an expression of love. They use it to get pleasure, to feel good and released at a deep level. But that’s not what you do.”

Aphra had a half-dozen quips to lay on that one, but instead was quiet under the seeking, calming hands.

“With you, it’s all about power. You play a game you can win, you use your body to get things from people, get things on people. You seem selfish, and maybe you think you are. But actually, you aren’t really getting any for yourself. You’re just wasting it.”

It took Aphra, her eyes closed and mouth soft, several long minutes to respond to that. Finally she said, “Okay, Dionne Warwick, what you think I should do? Long as it don’t take wearing white clothes and coffee enemas.”

“Don’t just do something,” Loris said, “Lie there. Try thinking about yourself instead of me. Try feeling instead of reacting.”

Aphra spoke very softly at that point, no longer making the rhythmic movements. She said, “Just lay here? Think only of myself? I think I can swing that.”

“You lay still, keep your awareness on yourself, what you’re feeling. Not me. And I’ll give you a very special massage.”

“Oooo,” Aphra murmured in a voice so low Loris could barely hear it. “I hope you’re talking about the famous happy ending.”

“I don’t believe in endings,” Loris said, shifting her weight forward onto her probing hands. “Just cycles.”

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