Celia broke the kiss before it could become any more passionate. “Mmm,” she said with a sigh. “You taste like cinnamon gum.”
“What was that for?” Suzie asked, breathless.
Celia smiled. “I just wanted to see what it could be like,” she told her. She then released the embrace. “Keep in touch.”
“I will,” Suzie promised.
Celia gave her one last smile and then walked out of the aircraft. She headed for the terminal without looking back.
She climbed into the limousine with the members of her band. Instead of heading to a hotel—usually near the airport somewhere—it began to head for private houses, dropping people at their actual homes, one by one. Celia was the third to be deposited at her front doorstep.
Greg was inside waiting for her. He greeted her warmly, clearly happy that she was home. He never had made it out to see her during the tour.
“Jake came by yesterday,” Greg told her. “He just got back into town from Oregon two days ago.”
“That’s nice,” Celia said. “Let’s go to the bedroom.”
Greg smiled. “Don’t you want to see what he brought you?” he asked.
“Later,” she told him. “There’s something else I need to see right now.”
“Well ... if you insist,” he said, feigning reluctance.
“I insist,” she insisted.
She wasn’t sure if she really missed him or not—she thought maybe she did, at least a little bit anyway—but she certainly missed legally sanctioned sexual relations (as Nerdly would say).
The next hour was quite pleasurable for both of them.
Both of them dozed off after the sex was over, sleeping the sleep of the finally contented. Celia was awakened by the sound of the shower running some time later. She creaked open her eyes and saw that it was just past noon. She pondered getting out of bed for a moment but then decided she was just too comfortable. She stayed there, looking up at the ceiling fan and thinking about nothing in particular.
Greg came out of the shower room, naked as the day he was born. She took a moment to admire his form on an aesthetic level. He was thirty-eight years old and still quite hot looking. His face was handsome in an all-American sort of way, his body fit and trim from the eight to twelve hours a week he spent working out in the weight room. He was a Hollywood actor, after all, and physical fitness and attractiveness were mandatory for the position.
And then she found herself remembering what Jake had looked like naked. This sent a little burst of lust through her. Though Jake’s face was not as handsome as Greg’s, his body not as toned and tight, his muscles not as well-developed, he still cut a pretty good form. And then she started wondering what Suzie might have looked like naked. This sent another burst of lust through her as she pondered this thought.
At some point she noticed that her husband was not just getting dressed, but was getting dressed up. He had put on slacks and a dress shirt, was knotting one of his ties in a double Windsor.
“Uh ... are you going somewhere, hon?” she asked him.
He looked at her, as if trying to decide whether she was joking or not. “To Merrimack Studios,” he finally told her. “To attend the meeting with Johnny and Jerry Lancing and Frank Graham. I told you about it the last time we talked on the phone.”
“Oh ... yeah,” she said, remembering that now. Johnny was John Stapleton, Greg’s longtime agent, the man who had stood beside him even after the Northern Jungle fiasco. Jerry Lancing was one of the premier film producers of the last ten years, someone Greg had never worked with before. And Frank Graham was the head of production for Merrimack Studios, one of the more powerful media companies that operated out of Hollywood. They had a new project in the works and were interested in Greg Oldfellow as the leading man for it. They were going to meet today to talk things over. “I didn’t realize that was today.”
“I told you on the phone it was the day you came back,” Greg said. “We even had a discussion about how we’d have to get our first relations out of the way before I left for the meeting.”
She did not remember that part of the conversation at all, perhaps because she had been about a bottle and a half of wine in and Suzie had been sitting in her sitting room at the time. “I guess I just forgot,” she told Greg now. “Sorry. Being on the road makes me scatterbrained sometimes.”
“Apparently so,” he said, though not without a degree of affection. “Anyway, I’ve got a good feeling about this project. And after the success we had—that we’re still having—with Others, Lancing is really hot to get me into this film. He says I’d be perfect for the part.”
“What’s this flick going to be about?” she asked, seeing (with a fair degree of amusement) him wince at that word.
“Project,” he corrected sternly, “or film. I do not undertake consideration to appear in a ‘flick’.”
“How about a movie?” she asked.
“Now you’re just being sardonic,” he accused.
“Perhaps,” she said. “All right. What’s this project going to be about?”
“Some kind of a cop movie,” Greg replied.
“A cop movie? Hasn’t that been quite overdone?”
“That’s what I asked, but Lancing says that this cop movie will be different. He says it will be a realistic portrayal of a long-term street cop and what he goes through. Alcoholism, divorce, family issues, psychological problems, the whole bit. And there’s only one shootout in the whole thing, and that’s supposed to be a realistic portrayal of a police shooting as well.”
“Hmmm,” Celia said, pondering. “I guess that could be interesting.”
“I agree,” he said. “But then, I said that when the Northern Jungle was suggested to me as well. We know how that turned out. I’ll reserve judgement until I actually get a chance to read the script for the project.”
You read the script for the Northern Jungle project and you still signed up for that one, she thought, but did not say. “Well, I hope it works out for you,” she said. “I’m very happy things seem to have turned around in your career.”
“Me too,” he said. “And your career as well. Did I hear your last album just cleared triple platinum?”
“You did,” Celia said with a smile. “The tour did wonders for album sales, even after we raised the prices.”
“I can’t wait to hear the numbers at the next quarterly financial,” Greg said. “You might end up pulling in as much as I do this year.”
“Or maybe even more,” she said with a smile.
“Perhaps,” he said, though he did not seem to be terribly thrilled with that idea.
“I guess that selling out and raising those ticket prices was the thing to do after all,” she said. “True, I’m accused of being a money-hungry puta by a few, I’ve had people tell me to my face that I’m nothing but a corrupt record company lackey—all of which hurts me on a fundamental level, because that’s really not what I am—but people keep listening to me on the radio, and buying my CDs, and I sold out every venue I played. Every single one.”
“Yes, you did,” he said, coming to the side of the bed. He leaned over and gave her a kiss on the lips. “I’ve got to go now. The limo should be outside any second.”
“All right,” she told him. “Good luck at the meeting.”
“I make my own luck,” he told her.
He left the room a moment later, closing the door behind him as a signal to the maid that she should not go in there just now. A few minutes later she heard the single honk of a horn that signaled the limousine was here. There was a muted beep from the alarm control box, letting her know that one of the doors had opened. He was on his way to Hollywood.