Porn Star(9)

“Logan?”

I snap back to her. “Sorry, what?”

That eyebrow is practically touching her hairline now. “I said we should talk.”

“I’m always happy to hear what a smart lady has to say.” And then I find the small of her back with my palm, leaning in to whisper, “Do you want to find someplace a little less noisy?”

Despite our age difference, and despite the fact that I know she only wants to talk business, my proximity affects her. She shivers and then laughs, pushing me playfully away. “You know how to make a woman feel young, Logan. This way.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I say in a mock-submissive voice, and she rolls her eyes, but a suppressed smile tugs at her lips as she walks past me. I drain the last of my scotch, set the glass down on a nearby table, and follow.

We go down an open flight of steps, all roughly welded metal and dark wood planks, and then we’re in the heart of Vida’s filming operations. As we walk down a darkened hallway to her office, I see rooms filled with St. Andrew’s crosses, rooms furnished like high-school classrooms, rooms filled with nothing more than bare white walls and beds. And not all of these rooms are vacant; as we pass the last one on the right, I see that a small group of people have availed themselves use of one of the beds. They’re all skin and mouths and sloshing drinks, and without thinking, I reach for the doorknob and tug their door slowly shut before I walk into Vida’s office. When I first got into this business, I would have been right there with them, but maybe it’s the threesome I had this morning or the fact that I actually want to hear what Vida has to say, but the whole scenario fails to interest me.

Now, if Devi was in there…

I drop into a chair by Vida’s desk, crossing my long legs as she sits. She appraises me, and I find myself shifting a little. Her gaze is too perceptive…too kind. There’s understanding in her faded blue eyes, and I remember that she’s been divorced twice, that she’s been in this business for twenty-five years. I remember that Vida’s studio was one of those involved in the Great Logan-Raven BreakUp.

“It’s okay to need time,” she says, glancing past me to the door I just shut in the hallway. “We’ve all been there.”

“I’m fine,” I lie, maybe a little too convincingly, because she shrugs like she’s ready to move on, and then a tiny, silly part of me wishes that she would keep asking about it. I’ve kept this heartbreak under wraps for so long, held it inside me, and suddenly I wonder if it would hurt less if I simply talked about it. Instead, I’ve trapped the pain inside myself, a hungry wolf that’s long since devoured my heart and is now gnawing on my ribs, snarling and howling in the empty space where my heart used to be.

But the moment is gone, and Vida is all business once again. “Sinfully Vida has weathered the last year as best as can be expected,” she says, referring to her production company. “But we took a hit with the rape stuff. I won’t lie. It was a pretty big hit, and it left a huge gap in our content.”

The rape stuff. It hit everyone pretty hard here on the west coast, the accusations that one of porn’s biggest stars was a rapist, and then of course, the follow-up allegations that porn had fostered a rape-friendly culture. Studios had hurriedly re-drafted performer agreements, pulled down content featuring the accused, and splashed disclaimers all over their websites. Even I was affected, receiving f*cktons of hate mail from people all over the world, even though I barely knew the guy who’d been accused, and I made consent a huge part of my work.

It sucked. It still sucks.

“Sinfully Vida had more content with him than any other studio,” Vida says, and there’s a note of betrayal in her voice. “And so we not only have a content gap, we have some image rehabilitation to do.”

“Thus the Lelie purchase,” I fill in for her.

She nods, tapping her fake nails on her desk. “Yes. Buying them is good for business. We need more ‘feminist’ porn, and we need it yesterday.” She says feminist with air-quotes, as if it’s some ridiculous, imaginary concept, and if Tanner were here, he’d lose his progressive shit. I bite back a smile as I imagine it, and Vida mistakes my expression. “So you’re onboard?”

Uh, what?

“Pardon?” I ask politely.

“Logan, you are the obvious frontrunner to fill...his...shoes for Sinfully Vida.” I notice how she doesn’t say the other guy’s name, like he’s Voldemort or Rumpelstiltskin or something. “You’re hot, you’re insanely popular, and you’ve got the whole pro-women thing going on.”

“So you want me to film a scene for Lelie?”

She leans forward. “More than a scene. I want you. We can partner with O’Toole Films of course, find a mutually profitable agreement, but I want you long-term. And I want it to be something big, something no one else is doing right now, something that engages a lot of the subscribing viewers we lost last year.”

I like big and new and different, I like engaging, but I don’t know about long-term. The last long-term thing I did ended with me crying naked in the shower while my ex-girlfriend f*cked an Italian half a world away.

On the other hand, didn’t I just promise myself this morning that I won’t let Raven dictate any more of my life? That it’s time for Logan O’Toole to start kicking asses and taking names?