The following Monday, after a lengthy conversation with Borman, Dippy Gallagher sent for Tiffany. He was on the phone when she went into his office, a tiny leprechaun of a man, completely bald, intensely nervous, perpetually scowling, almost hidden by a huge desk cluttered with stacks of glossy photos portraying both male and female nudes in various provocative poses and obscene acts, most of them covered with a fine film of dust and cigar ashes.
"What!" he was screaming into the phone in a high-pitched anguished voice. "She shaved what…! Her pussy! So she gets a merkin – a pussy wig! Whaddaya mean they don't make pussy wigs? Shit yes, they do, oh hell! Then get another broad. Throw the dumb cunt out on the street."
He slammed down the receiver and stared ferociously at Tiffany. "In the year of our Lord nineteen seventy-three," he intoned dramatically, "the decade of Hair! She goes and shaves her pussy. Who does she think she is, Dolly Dimple? I swear to God if my mother wasn't Jewish I wouldn't be alive today. Show biz! Do me a favor. Go tell it to the East River. Siddown, kid."
He popped a pill into his shark-like mouth, washed it down with a swig from a bottle of vodka he kept stashed in his desk, and leaned back with his hands clasped behind his head to survey Tiffany with his beady little eyes.
Tiffany avoided his gaze. The office with its shabby dingy walls, plastered with more obscene photographs, and its odor of stale cigar smoke and… she sometimes imagined… stale cum… depressed her beyond words.
To begin with it hadn't been so bad. In fact, the first time she went there in answer to the ad for girls with acting experience the atmosphere of corruption and decadence, even evil, which pervaded the office and the enormous loft upstairs where most of the films were shot had perversely excited her. She had had it up to here with the neat orderly life at home in Maryland, her constantly complaining father and her sister June's prudish domineering ways, so she plunged enthusiastically into her new life as an actress in blue movies. She was getting paid pretty good money for doing what she had loved to do since she was fourteen – fucking and sucking… and as a whole the actors she performed with were handsome virile studs with big potent cocks, even though a lot of them were strung out on drugs, mostly amphetamines, because needle marks were hard to hide even with the best of make-up creams. Then there was always the hope of Hollywood shimmering in the future, the hope cleverly planted and nourished by Dippy Gallagher that any day a talent scout would see one of their films and sign her up for the Big Time.
But Tiffany was getting discouraged. Already three movies in two months and not the slightest nibble. The glamour in the business, what little she had ever thought there was, had faded and that afternoon she was feeling particularly down. She had just finished a scene where she was anally raped by a satyr, complete with plastic horns and hooves, against a backdrop of an idyllic glen deep in the ferny woods of ancient Greece, painted by a bombed-out character from Houston, Texas, by way of the East Village. Anyway, the horsehair or whatever they made the satyr's costume out of had rubbed her tender ass-cheeks and inner thighs raw and she couldn't wait to get home and hop into a hot bath.
Gallagher saw the sulky pouting expression on Tiffany's rather wan heart-shaped face and decided he knew exactly what she needed… A little jolt in the tookus.
"Let's see your tits, kid," he snarled. "C'mere."
"God, haven't you seen them enough," Tiffany protested sullenly, getting up nevertheless and going around the desk toward him. She knew she had to… anyway Dippy had never been known to screw around with any of the members of his "troupe". One rumor had it that he was completely impotent, another that he had a two-hundred pound wife ensconced in a mansion on a big estate on Long Island somewhere. Nobody knew anything for sure about Dippy except that after work he disappeared into the canyons of New York like a rabbit up a magician's sleeve… and was never known to screw around with his actresses. Tiffany obediently unbuttoned her dress and pulled it down so that her girlish but shapely breasts swung free, rising in comely succulent arcs from her smooth-skinned torso.
"Ice 'em!" Dippy snapped.
"Wh-at? Wha'd you say?" Tiffany stammered, taken completely off guard. She stared down at her breasts as if she had never seen them before.
"Put ice on 'em," Dippy spat at her. "They're sagging already. Get some ice packs. Freeze 'em the first thing in the morning and the last thing at night. You wanna stay away from silicone, right, kid? Nobody knows the long run effects. But the show's gotta go on, and the tits gotta be firm. So… ice packs! And another thing!" he yammered before Tiffany could get her wits together. "Humpty-Dumpty's gotta go!"
Tiffany's heart sank. Humpty-Dumpty was Gallagher's derisive nickname for Cliff Farrow. "He-he didn't come back here, did he?" she faltered. "He promised me he never would again."
"Humpty-Dumpty," Dippy recited, "took a great fall. He's downstairs right now, puking in the hall."
"Oh Goddd," Tiffany groaned. Ever since Cliff had found out what she was really doing he had been impossible. Impossible! Following her around all the time, making terrible drunken scenes in public places. "Listen, Mr. Gallagher," she put as much persuasion as she could into her voice. "He'll never come back again, I swear he won't. I'll tell him I'll never see him again."
"Nix, baby, you already tried that," Dippy reminded her irritably. "And it didn't work. We don't want sloppy drunks hanging around our Stage Door Entrance. It gives the studio a bad name. Uh-uh! The next time he shows, you're out! And that would be a shame. Because you got talent, kid. You got what it takes. You still wanna go west, don'cha?"
"You know I do, Mr. Gallagher," Tiffany wailed as pathetically as she could. "I enjoy working for you and all that but…"
"Yeah, yeah," he muttered gruffly. "Spare the act. I bring 'em up from Nowheresville, give 'em exposure, and overnight they're million dollar stars. Out in Hollywood. Rome. Paris. The whole world over. But they don't forget old Dippy, kid," he added milkily. "You know why? Because old Dippy don't forget what he knows about them. Which brings me to June."
"Huh…?" Tiffany was caught off balance again.
"Yeah, June!" Dippy yapped at her. "Not April, May or September. June! Big sister June. Humpty-Dumpty's ex-fee-ann-say. The one who caught Humpty humping you that afternoon last summer back in Laketon."
"How did you know that?" Tiffany gasped. She had been super-careful never to breathe a word about where she came from to anybody in the troupe. Of course, there was that letter from June she thought might have been missing from her purse; she couldn't be sure she hadn't thrown it away after showing it to Cliff. But, anyway, there had just been the letter, no envelope or address. So how did he know where she came from? Actually her home was four miles from Laketon but he was too close for comfort.
Gallagher was enjoying her consternation. "Oh, I got ways, kid, I got ways," he jeered knowingly at her. "Anyway, June's the answer to your problem. Get her up here, get her in the sack with Humpty again, and five gets you ten he goes back to Nowheresville with her."
"Oh no, you're wrong, Mr. Gallagher," Tiffany objected quite positively. "Cliff adores me, and anyhow, June wouldn't have anything to do with him after… after what happened…"
"I got other information," Dippy grunted, continuing to follow out Borman's instructions. "Let me worry about the details, will ya, kid? Just do what I say. First get Humpty to send June a telegram saying you're in bad trouble and he needs her help des-purr-ately. Send it yourself and sign his name. She'll come, won't she?"
"Ye-es," Tiffany had to grudgingly admit. Even after all that had happened, June with her Goddamn Puritanical sense of responsibility would probably be on the first train out of Baltimore.
"Tell her to wire arrival time at this address," Dippy went on, shoving a piece of paper at her. "Second, tell Humpty that you want out of this business and that the only way you can get out is to bring in a new broad. Sister June! And that he's got to break her in."
"But that's impossible!" Tiffany wailed in despair. "I mean it doesn't even make sense. You don't know my sister. It won't work."
"That's our worry, kid. What's it gonna be? Hollywood or back to Nowheresville? See ya tomorrow." He clamped the slimy butt of a half-smoked cigar in his mouth and shuffled some glossies around on his desk by way of dismissal. Personally he didn't think the scheme would work either, and sometimes he wondered why he was letting a crazy sex-mad nut like this Axel Borman handle his money for him. But his stocks kept going up and up and up, so who's to complain…?
Tiffany was sitting naked on the big bed in her room in the grimy but fairly respectable hotel not far from where she worked. She was buffing her nails while Cliff Farrow strode back and forth, ranting and raving, clutching his head and occasionally drinking from a pint bottle of gin he carried in the coat pocket of his rumpled suit. In three short months the once handsome, dynamic and dapperly dressed star salesman of the Chisolm Realty Company had become a shambling, bleary-eyed wreck of a man, an obvious candidate for Skid Row.
Finally Tiffany interrupted his rambling drunken tirade. "Listen," she said sharply. "If you really love me and want me to get out of this business, then you've got to fuck June while Gallagher films the scene. He seems to think she'll do it. Personally, I don't care if you have to rape her."
"But if you really want to get out, why can't you just quit?" Cliff plaintively wanted to know.
"What! And have Gallagher send Daddy a batch of those shots of me sucking cocks and fucking gorillas! It would kill him." Tiffany exclaimed indignantly. This was the brilliant idea she had come up with on the way home and it seemed to be working.
"But if Gallagher threatened to do that, it's blackmail. We could go to the police," Cliff pursued doggedly.
"Ha… after they saw some of those shots they'd just laugh." Tiffany shrugged. "I wasn't forced you know. I signed a contract that protects Gallagher." She changed her tone to one of appealing persuasion. "Listen, Cliff, I made a terrible mistake and I admit it. But now I just can't take it any longer, and I've got to get out of this cruddy business. I want us to go away somewhere and have a happy life together. And the only way is for you to fuck June on camera. Don't ask me why because I don't know. It's just one of Dippy Gallagher's brainstorms."
Cliff sighed and gazed forlornly at her with a sheepish hangdog took. "But you know I can't get it up any more," he reminded her pitifully.
"Brother, do I ever know it!" the young girl exclaimed contemptuously.
"Well, it's your fault!" Cliff flared back at her, knocking down a big slug of gin from his bottle. "Every time I think of what you're doing every day with those other men… it's killing me."
"It didn't used to bother you that I fucked other guys in school. Remember? You were the big shot then. The big frog in the little puddle," she mocked him mercilessly. Then changing tone again, she said more kindly, "It's the booze, Cliff. You've got to stop drinking. You should see yourself. Honest, I was ashamed to bring you in here tonight."
"Well, I'll try," the haggard man sighed despondently. "But I still don't see why it has to be me."
"Maybe Gallagher thinks you have hidden talents," Tiffany suggested sarcastically.
"I used to be as good as those guys you work with, didn't I?" Cliff asked in a pathetic tone of voice, stung by her allusion to his impotence.
"Oh, better, Cliff, much better," she reassured him. "But that's not much help right now."
"I can still suck," he said eagerly. "Can I just suck your sweet little cunt some, Tiff. Maybe my cock'll get hard." He looked longingly at the fluffy golden vee nestling up between her slender girlish thighs.
"No," she refused after just the briefest hesitation. It would be fun to just lean back on the pillows and watch him slave away down there on her pussy, the roles reversed for a change, but the dark stubble of beard on his jaw deterred her. The tender skin between her thighs had been scratched enough for one day by that Goddamned satyr costume… and she always had the vibrator one of the girls in the troupe had turned her on to. In a lot of ways it was better than a tongue. "No," she repeated firmly. "No pussy until you get me off the hook. Call me tomorrow and I'll let you know what's going on. Now, good-night, Cliff. They're shooting a big sandwich scene tomorrow, and I want to look my best."
After another long forlorn dejected look at the beautiful young body he had once possessed so completely, but which was now forbidden him, Cliff silently left the room. As soon as Tiffany had heard his footsteps plod away down the hall outside she called up Room Service to send up a bucket of ice and began to unwrap the two ice packs she had bought on the way home. That Goddamn Gallagher was a sonuvabitch liar, she decided as she carefully studied her slim but curvaceous form in the bathroom mirror. Her breasts weren't sagging at all, but maybe the ice would do them some good anyway. Why take chances…?