Free Show Me by Carole Hart Page A

husband of her own sister . . . et cetera, et cetera, circles within circles, cheese within cheese.
    The details of the sex were rendered in initials: O (M on F), V.
    Booley immediately translated this. “Oral, male on female, vaginal. Oh, my God, you’re so cool! Are you really going to do this?”
    Zaza answered immediately, “Of course,” although she found it impossible to picture.
    It somehow didn’t help that Booley was a fan of the show. Watching the show with her was the worst thing—there wasn’t a single ordinary-looking person in sight. Booley kept saying, “Oh, you’re beautiful. Anyway, obviously they’ll give you special makeup.”
    Finally, the morning of shooting came. Zaza spent an embarrassed hour having makeup slathered over her entire body. Somehow no one gave any sign that she was too homely, although they did get impatient with her for wearing jeans and an underwire bra to the studio. “God knows if those marks in your skin will come out in time for the shooting. Didn’t they tell you?”
    For the same reason, she learned, the sex scene would be shot first. She was given a black satin robe, like the ones boxers wore before fights, and plush slippers from a laundry bag full of similar slippers. A harried-looking young man led her down to the studio where the scene would be shot.
    The penthouse set was there—one half of a luxurious room with a white carpet, a huge leather armchair, and a bed whose sheets were prerumpled. On the side without walls, there was a chaos of film equipment and cables. It gave her a strange feeling, because she remembered the penthouse from the TV show, but in her memory it was a real room with four walls. On the carpet by the bed a bottle of Jack Daniel’s stood open beside two tumblers.
    “And is that actually iced tea?” Zaza pointed at the bottle, feeling knowing.
    “Oh, that?” the man said. “No, it’s whiskey. Your leading man can’t last ten minutes without a drink.”
    She frowned at him and the man shrugged, saying, “He is the evil twin.”
    Then it struck her: She was going to have sex with a total stranger. She was going to have sex with a stranger on television . At that point, everything began to be a blur. She sleepwalked through the introductions to the crew and the director, Charity Cave, an aging seventies porn actress who kissed Zaza on the cheek and told her—surely out of politeness—that she was “ravishing.” People were smiling at her; someone put a glass of wine in her hand. She had drunk it down in an instant, and immediately began to think about the whiskey bottle. Drinking was clearly the answer. Then she was standing with an empty wineglass in her hand, grinning meaninglessly at a swarm of bustling people, all arguing good-naturedly with one another and waving scripts.
    The thing that woke her up at last was her introduction to Javier, the twin who played Lothario. He took the wineglass from her hand and handed it, without missing a beat, to a passing cameraman, who took it with a frown of irritation and handed it on to an assistant. Then Javier took Zaza’s hand with a melting gentleness and said, “I’m sorry we couldn’t have a drink last night. I would have really loved to get to know you first. Doing it like this seems so . . . corporate.”
    “Oh, do you usually . . .” Zaza found herself blushing.
    “Yes, I was going to e-mail you. But I had to go meet my brother’s fiancée.”
    He was still holding her hand, and the warm pressure of his palm made her tremble inside. A faint pang of anticipation sounded in her belly, and she found herself licking her lips. This man was actually going to kiss her, touch her breasts, fuck her. It was about to happen—nothing could stop it. Meanwhile, he was just as devastatingly handsome—a man with pitch-black eyes and thickly muscled arms whose deep brown skin was striking in the half-unbuttoned white shirt he wore. She couldn’t help glancing at the smooth strip of his