Shane and Carmen: The Novelization Ch. 19

Chapter 19 Frankie Goes to West Hollywood

Sometimes, like a Ritalin-deprived preschooler wired on Count Chocula, love sneaks up behind you and bites you on the ass. Or something close to love, anyway. It's not always easy to figure out what exactly that emotion is.

Cherie Jaffe lived in a gated mansion in Belair, and also in a beach house in Malibu, because everyone needs two mansions only a few miles away from each other. (The Jaffes had a house in the Hamptons, too, but lately didn't fly east all that often.) Cherie's husband Steve had a ton of money and the brains to not only keep it but make it grow. And anyway, the beach house was a deductible business expense because they did a lot of entertaining there.

Cherie (neeVerna Marie Peroni, a.k.a. Cherie Danish, a.k.a. Cherie Sunrise, a.k.a. Cherie Valentino, and -- in her one and only porn movie, a two-minute appearance in a naked crowd scene in Thong of Bernadette that not even her husband knew about, made when she was 17 and had lied about her age -- a.k.a. Jaki Swallow) had just enough talent and just enough ambition to bring her to Hollywood and a career as a D-list actress. Her primary skills were three: lying and fantasizing, which taken together could pass for "acting" on a good day in the bottom tier of thespian employment, and the third was cocksucking. Those skills plus a pretty, sharp-faced, feline appearance and a pixie haircut landed her a couple of bit parts (although mainly it was the cocksucking) and a brief five-episode story arc as an ingénue in the soap Grover's Corners, which eventually brought her to the attention of Steve Jaffe, a talented, workaholic real estate developer and sometime producer of movie schlock, half of whose work took place not in Hollywood proper but out in the valley's porn industry.

Steve had for a partner an equally skilled businessman, Harry Samchuk, a gay man he'd met at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Their genius in the porn industry came not from making the product, but rather from owning and renting out the dozens and dozens of studios, editing facilities, storage facilities, mailing/shipping mills and Internet shops -- the infrastructure -- that the industry needed to do its work. They also owned and leased out a major proportion of the expensive houses and estates the porn people used as sets. Thus they earned a tremendous amount of income from the porn industry without ever having actually to be "in" it. They owned warehouses and office space and leased the equipment; what other people did with it wasn't their concern, and anyway one could depreciate the hell out of the inventory. With those profits they could afford to dabble on the outskirts of the "legitimate" movie industry. The one-gay, one-straight combination worked out amazingly well for both of them; among other things, it meant they never competed for the same sex partners in their private lives, and it gave them a broader range of sensibility than some others might have had. Both realized early on how well the symbiosis of their relationship worked, and they were therefore scrupulously honest with each other in their business dealings.

Cherie initially dated Steve to advance her career, but after a few months she began to understand that being his wife might provide for a more secure future than trying to be an actress, which after all not only involved hard work, but also required more talent and more luck in being at the right place at the right time than she seemed to possess. Comparatively speaking, giving Steve frequent access to her mouth, still-tight pussy and still-taut rosebud was not only much easier and more pleasant, it had a much higher probability of the big payoff. For his part, Steve was besotted having his own worshipful sex minx hungrily gulping his joy juice a couple times a week without disrupting his busy schedule, and before he knew it he was in love, he was married, and a few months later he was an expectant father-to-be.

Cherie herself transitioned quickly from Golden Globe diva-in-waiting into a Real Housewife of Beverly Hills a decade and a half before the show ever ran. She discovered and nurtured newly acquired talents including shopping, spending Steve's money, hostessing events and business cocktail parties, and being a capo in the LA charity mafia. Best of all, she didn't have to relinquish any of her diva skills. It was win-win-win-win. As long as Steve was serviced on a regular basis, he was so absorbed in his work he paid little attention to how Cherie spent her nine-to-fives. And hell, give the man credit: he really wasn't a bad fuck at all. He really did do most things he turned his hand to very well. And he really loved his trophy wife. Sometimes that happens.

After their daughter, Clea, was old enough to go into a high-end and tony daycare center for privileged children, Cherie roamed the shops and stores of Rodeo Drive and Beverly Boulevard, the spas, the salons, and all the trendy places. Before she was thirty, she had built herself a discreet but impressive list of masseurs and cabana boys she had fucked and sucked -- often in lieu of a tip -- plus a couple of gardeners and pool maintenance men, plus one or two casting execs she blew for old times' sake and just to keep her hand in. Early in her career she'd discovered that not only did an ambitious gal need to suck a cock once in a while to get a role, in egalitarian Hollywood sometimes she had to suck a pussy instead. This opened up a new avenue of her personality and by age thirty-five gave her a select, highly talented list of masseuses, hotel maids, aroma therapists and other tradeswomen who regularly serviced her. There were three different sales girls on Rodeo Drive alone who sometimes met their monthly sales quotas in the changing rooms of their shops on their knees tongue-buffing Cherie's clit. And then there was the lovely Asian flight attendant Cherie had met on a shopping trip to Hong Kong, who whenever she landed at LAX spent her layover in Cherie's bedroom, playing with anal toys and buttfucking or being buttfucked by Cherie and her strap-on. Steve knew nothing about any of it.

Plus a line or two of blow every now and then. A little e. A little oxy. Lots of Grey Goose. Personal trainers, male and female, some fuckable, some not (by orientation; there was a gay guy who had incredible, inspired hands, but he simply wasn't interested in pussy). Parties at the beach house. Liposuction. A tuck or a tightening, a little tweaking. Once or twice a year an MFM or an FFM, not so often it got boring, just often enough to keep it interesting and a little different. Parties at the Belair house. Two trains, but only one as a participant, in Puerto Vallarta. She was only a spectator during the one in her own pool cabana.

Life was good.

Cherie added Shane to her list of multi-tasking playmates-for-hire through the somewhat unorthodox route of gay Harry Samchuk and Shane's gay prostitute friend Clive. Several months before Harvey had died, Shane went looking for Clive on Santa Monica Boulevard, and it took her three days to find him. He was struggling and not doing well, and Shane's sudden disappearance from his life hadn't helped. Shane helped him get his shit together and they kept in loose touch over the years, a fine example of Shane's very best qualities, her loyalty, her refusal to judge people, and her generally sympathetic nature. If you were Shane's friend, she would give you the shirt off her back, and in Clive's case that's almost literally what she'd had to do.

With her help Clive had cleaned up enough as a gay prostitute that he'd eventually worked his way up the food chain until he had the good fortune to be picked up by Harry Samchuk, who was enamored of Clive's cocksucking skills much the way his business partner enjoyed that same skill from the former Jaki Swallow fifteen years earlier. Hollywood and the TV and movie businesses relied upon the ability to spot talent, and cocksucking was as much an appreciated skill as set design, hairdressing, sound mixing, acting, show-running or sitcom development. Clive began to hang around the fringes of Harvey's circle, and one night brought his friend Shane to an industry party Harry threw. Harry, who liked the andro/boi look, took an immediate liking to Shane and even made a pass at her, thinking she was a guy. Shane demurred politely, though, without offending Harry or being offended, and eventually set him straight, so to speak, about her true gender and orientation. Harry took it well, and for some reason remained fascinated by her; he had even gone so far as to lend Shane the use of his yacht one day so Shane could invite all her friends over to it to have a pussy party on board. Maybe Harry just needed the tax deduction: Entertained client S. McCutcheon and posse.

And then as sometimes happens, fate played dominoes. First, Shane got picked to do Pink's faux Mohawk hairdo when she filmed her Bitter Pill video. That led to a one-time shot doing Madonna's hair on a location thing when Madonna's regular people couldn't make it. Madonna added her rave to Pink's. Next thing Shane knew a major studio exec named Ellie Zimmer got a recommendation from Harry (via Clive) to give Shane a try. Harry didn't like Ellie Zimmer much, but figured what the hell, if Shane did a good job, that was great and it would get Clive off his case about Shane all the time. And if Shane fucked up, well, that was on Clive and on Shane, and too fucking bad, Ellie. But Shane did a great job, and when Cherie Jaffe saw Ellie at a benefit looking better than she'd looked in decades, Cherie was impressed ... and jealous as hell.

When Cherie's favorite hairdresser finally succumbed to AIDS and flew home to Stockholm to die, Clive asked Harry to recommend Shane, as least for a tryout. Thus it was on a sunny afternoon in November 2003 that one of Steve's minions -- a minion he happened to be balling, although Cherie didn't know about it -- arrived at Lather, the salon where Shane worked, performing advance work for Cherie, who arrived a few minutes later for her haircut. And then it was just one of those things, just like a year later when Shane ran into Carmen in Arianna's dressing room. Kismet, chemistry, hormones, destiny: whatever. Cherie looked in the mirror at Shane, and Shane looked in the mirror at Cherie, and there was more electricity in the air than could be accounted for by the static in the comb in Shane's hand.

Shane put her in the chair, spun her around, looked in her eyes, and said, "Tell me what you want."

"I want so many things," Cherie replied, looking away demurely, reprising her role as the shy ingénue from Grover's Corners, "but in terms of what you can do for me, I want a change. I want ... something new."

Shane ignored the inuendo -- too much processing, she was on the clock, and sensed correctly that Cherie was doing some kind of meek act -- and studied Cherie's face and hair. "Excellent," she said, and spun Cherie around again to face the mirror. "I know what to do."

Forty-five minutes later Cherie got up from the chair and was so anxious to call Harry Samchuk that Shane was still fussing with the final look. "Harry? You asshole! I'm calling to say thank you for begging me to go to Shane--" she held her cell phone up to Shane's ear and commanded, "Say hello, Shane."

"Hello, Harry," Shane said dutifully.

Cherie giggled into the cell phone. "It's amazing! She's a genius!" She leaned over and gave Shane a fast, meaningless Hollywood peck on the cheek. "First of all for giving me a great haircut," she continued, walking away from Shane without looking back, "and second of all for not sleeping with you. Yeah. So call me when you get out of your K-hole, okay?"

Shane stood, watching her go, and wondering what the hell that was all about. Apparently Harry was doing some Ketamine, that's what K-hole meant. Hollywood. Movie people. Go figure. She leaned over the railing of her loft work space and watched Cherie walk downstairs and to the check-out desk. She heard Cherie praise Shane's work to John, her boss at the register.

A week later Lather got a visit from the minion asking for Shane to be sent out to the Jaffe house in Belair; Cherie had a benefit for the Woman's Cancer Project that evening and needed her hair done. She gave Shane the address and told her to be there at five sharp.

At five of five Shane pulled into the driveway, parked her old Toyota pickup behind somebody's sleek, fast, silver Boxster on the edge of the parking circle, and walked to the front door. A Latina maid answered her doorbell ring, expecting her. "The meesus, she wait for you upstairs," the maid said.

Shane stood in a large circular foyer that looked like the castle keep scene in Robin Hood and looked up around the curved staircase that led to the second floor. Up above, Cherie Jaffe looked down at her, smiling enigmatically. She wore a black peignoir and had a tall, fluted wine glass in her hand. She said nothing, just watched as Shane climbed the stairs. Shane's heavy Doc Martens clunked loudly and echoed in the foyer. Cherie turned and went down a hallway, knowing Shane would follow. They entered what turned out to be Cherie's capacious dressing suite under the eaves of a wing of the house. For some reason the phrase "batcave" came into Shane's mind, unbidden. The suite had its own walk-in closet, an eight-foot-long makeup table with an eight-foot mirror, and its own private bathroom at the far end. There were built-in shelves that were used as shoe cubbies; Shane thought there might have been fifty or sixty pair neatly tucked away. In front of the built-in table there was a chair similar to one of Lather's hairdressing chairs.

Cherie sat in her chair, sipping her wine and still not saying anything. Shane stood behind her ready to go to work. "Okay, so should I do what I did last time?" she asked.

Cherie looked into the mirror at Shane's reflection and smiled that same enigmatic Mona Lisa smile. "I was hoping for a little more," Cherie whispered, as she and Shane stared into each other's eyes in the mirror.

Shane, no more articulate now than ever, asked, "Oh, uh. What kind of more?"

Cherie turned in her chair and faced Shane, her face at Shane's stomach level. "Lots more," she whispered.

Shane was wearing jeans and a man's white dress shirt, untucked. Cherie surprised her by reaching for the bottom button of the shirt and unbuttoning it. Shane flinched in surprise and said, "Uh." Then she looked down as Cherie unbuttoned the next button, and the next. Cherie pulled on the shirt, bringing her close, her mouth kissing Shane's navel and belly and stomach. Shane put her hands on Cherie's ears and pulled her up to her feet and into a kiss that only lasted a second before Cherie opened her peignoir and dropped it to the floor. She was wearing a black brassiere, black panties that were two square inches away from being a stripper's G-string, and long, black, thigh-high stockings, all sheer and expensive. They clinched, kissing and caressing each other as Cherie found and unbuttoned the last button of Shane's shirt, dropping it to the floor. Shane wore no brassiere, of course, and Cherie's mouth went to her breasts right away, suckling the hardening nipples, eating them hungrily, nipping and biting.

"My God," Cherie murmured between sucks, "you've got the most beautiful nipples I've ever seen!"

And before Shane knew it they were on the floor by the chair, Cherie on her back with her legs in the air, knees bent as she skinned her thong down her legs and then pulling Shane's head down to her pussy, and in the blink of an eye Shane found herself kissing, licking and sucking Cherie's liquid center. Cherie's hands forcefully guided Shane's face, pulling her head into the demanding twat. Rarely had Shane ever seen a woman so excited and so hot and so ready this fast.

"Suck my clit," Cherie demanded, tugging Shane's head into position and wrapping her legs over Shane's shoulders and around her neck. Shane was happy to do so, although in the normal course of events she'd have spent ten or twenty minutes getting around to it, instead of grabbing for the brass ring after less than a minute of prep. Shane thrust two fingers into Cherie's pussy. It did the trick, because Cherie immediately started grunting and thrusting, whimpering into a cum that washed Shane's face with Cherie cola. Shane knew without having to process it that Cherie must have been drinking her wine and diddling herself before Shane arrived, in anticipation. The cool, silent act when she'd arrived must have been because Cherie was so stoked she'd had to stifle her every impulse to keep from jumping Shane at the front door.

Her cum had no sooner ended when Cherie sat up, bringing Shane to her knees in front of her, Shane holding Cherie's face in her hands and kissing her, thinking this was like fucking a wild mare.

"Fucking amazing," Cherie murmured, "I can't wait to tell Harry, he'll be so jealous."

"Cherie!" They heard Steve Jaffe call from the foyer. "Cherie," he called again, coming up the stairs.

"Oh my God!" Cherie blurted. "It's Steve!"

"Fuck!" Shane swore as she scrambled to find her shirt while Cherie found her thong and laid back on the floor to pull it up her cum-and-sweat dampened legs. Shane scrambled toward the bathroom with her shirt, tripping and falling but rapidly getting the door closed just as Cherie stood up and Steve Jaffe, unaware, entered the room. Cherie smiled at him, breathlessly, holding up her black peignoir in front of her.

"Honey! You're always interrupting me when I'm not ready," Cherie whined to Steve.

"I thought you'd be dressed by now," he said, sauntering toward her.

"I was just getting my hair done," she told him, putting on her peignoir.

He looked at her hair, which was shaggy, disheveled and mussed.

"Ummm," he grunted. "Looks good."

"It's the just-fucked look," Cherie said, patting her hair into place.

He leaned forward and they kissed. "Yeah? Well, works for me," he said, fondly.

Just then Shane came out of the bathroom, dressed. "Uh, hi," she said.

Steve walked toward her, his hand outstretched to shake. "You must be Shane," he said cordially.

She gestured with her hands, not wanting to shake.

"Uh, my hands are wet," she said, as though she'd just washed them. It was true they were damp -- and a little sticky as well.

"That's okay," Steve said, smiling and friendly.

Shane glanced at Cherie. "Uh, yeah, you look great," she told her.

"It's good to be able to put a face to the name," Steve said, never realizing Shane had just put that face somewhere else. "Harry won't stop talking about you."

"She's the best," Cherie said.

"Okay," Shane said, heading for the door. She stopped in front of Cherie, flicked a strand of hair off her forehead, fussed a little bit, and regarded her non-work. "Excellent," she said. "You look lovely." She turned to Steve. "It was nice meeting you." She spun and headed for the door as Steve waved goodbye.

"So ... um ... if I need a touch-up I'll call you," Cherie said.

"Yup, yup," Shane said going through the door and down the hall as fast as politely possible.

***

Shane did Cherie three more times (and her hair twice) before Thanksgiving, when the Jaffes flew to Cabo for a five-day weekend. Then she did Cherie and/or her hair once a week up until Christmas. For the second post-Thanksgiving appointment Cherie's minion had booked a room at a hotel near the Kodak Center, and had asked for Shane to be there at one o'clock, and for her to spend the rest of the day there, as Cherie wanted Shane to do the hair of a friend of hers as well.

When Shane knocked on the door of the hotel suite at five of one, it was answered by a stunning, petite Asian woman wearing a white half-slip and a white bra she didn't really need.