Read Dirty To Me
by Lubrican
Chapters : 1 | 2 | 3-7 Available On
PLEASE NOTE: This is a preview of this novella. It is available for purchase in its entirety via
Foreword
Authors write. It sounds simple and, in one sense, it is
simple. I sit and I write what comes into my head.
But it doesn't end there. In fact, that's really just the
beginning. It’s not ready for the reading public, just
because it’s written.
That’s where an editor comes in. Some authors edit
their work themselves. I did that for a long time, until,
quite by chance, I “met” a reader who
I’ll call Peaches. Out of the goodness of her
heart, she offered to do “a little editing” for
me. She has since been tireless in her efforts to polish and
improve what I scribbled, and I think she’s made a huge
difference in the quality of my work.
I don’t get paid for writing, so I can’t pay
Peaches for her work either.
But I CAN write something for her. That’s what this
story is.
Chapter One
It started quite innocently, really. He was a relatively
conventional 57 year old man who had knocked around over
quite a lot of the world, and she was a 23 year old part time rebel
with a mohawk, tattoos and a child she hadn't planned on having.
What brought them together was complicated, but at the same time, quite
simple.
That sounds like a strange sentence, but the key word is "together,"
which has many levels of meaning. We can start with the
simple side of things.
Their first "togetherness" was based on both of them applying for jobs
reading books onto tape. It was just that simple.
They both needed some extra income and applied for jobs at the same
place, which offered both full and part time employment. He
had a background in theater and a deep voice, which qualified
him. She had the perfect voice for portraying innocence and
youth that belied her chronological age.
Their initial meeting was simple too, and happened just like thousands
of people meet other people every day.
"Hi. My name is Bob," he said, holding out his hand to
shake. "Well sometimes. People call me lots of
other things too.“
He was like that. His thought processes ebbed and flowed
constantly. He had a philosophical bent and enjoyed examining
everything from just about every angle, even when it was as simple as,
say, a pencil. If he'd been born a lion, he would have been
sitting on the savannah, his eyes flickering from potential prey to
potential prey, thinking "Am I hungry enough to go for that ibis over
there? Do I need to scratch that itch, or will it go
away? I could use a drink of water right now.
Where's that lioness I've been watching? I wonder if she's
gone into heat yet. What just moved over there?"
It wasn't that he was scatter brained. It was just that he
wanted to see and do and experience and be part of everything possible,
all at the same time. It was a quality that had allowed him
to submerge himself into a dozen foreign cultures and fit right in
while he watched and learned.
She was as simple as he was complicated. She'd been through
the school of hard knocks and was much more pragmatic about things.
"Layla," she said.
His eyes lit up. "What a beautiful name.
It motivates me to wax poetic. I'm sure that's what they'll
want when we read."
She examined him. He was muscular, but carried a
bit of extra weight too. His eyes had that funny quality of
looking blue one minute and green the next. He wasn't
balding. In fact, the bushy beard thrusting from his chin
made her think of a loufa, for some reason. He was
looking at her, which she was used to. Most men looked at
her. Most people looked at her, for that matter.
Her hair was a vermillion shade this week and the long mohawk flopped
to one side, drooping down to tickle her right eyebrow.
Sometimes the area below the mohawk had a quarter inch of hair on it,
but she'd shaved the sides of her head before coming in for the
interview.
She had expected the interviewer to take one look at her and tell her,
"Thanks, but no thanks." He hadn't. He'd simply
said, "Your voice is perfect for what we have in mind. You're
hired. Be here on Tuesday at eight."
Now this man was looking at her too, but again, his reaction wasn't
what she was used to. This man ... this old guy ... this guy
old enough to be her father, if not her grandfather, was looking at her
like a man looks at a woman. He didn't seem to be at all
ashamed to let his eyes flicker up and down her
body. Yet, somehow, he didn't ogle
her. He looked at her all over, but it was ... all
over — not just at her girly parts. On impulse, she
looked him all over too, staring at the front of his pants, where there
was the inevitable bulge. It looked about like most other
bulges she'd seen.
He looked about like most other men she’d seen.
"I guess we're reading together," he said.
"Great," she thought to herself. "I'm saddled with one of
those masters of pointing out the blindingly obvious."
That attitude only lasted an hour. But much happened in that
hour, before it changed.
They were standing in a small room. The walls were covered
with what looked like foam egg carton type material and the ceiling had
those tiles with all the little holes in them. There were
microphones hanging from the ceiling on moveable booms and stools to
sit on. Layla and Bob were the only people in the room, but
there was equipment for four or five. It was both bare and
small. The door opened and a man walked in with a
sheaf of papers in his hand.
"Here's the story we're starting with for you two," he said.
"This will just be a run through, to work out any kinks. When
we get an actual take, we'll overlay the narrator's part and any sound
effects during later production runs. Right now we just want
you two to try to get the feel for things and see how it
goes. Some people can do this and others can't. You
never know until you try."
He smiled, but it was only with his mouth. He went to one of
the hanging microphones and pointed to a switch on the side.
“Slide this up when you’re ready. If you
have to cough or anything like that, please turn the mike off before
you do that. OK?” He didn’t
wait for anyone to say anything was OK. “Either one
of you can read the narrator’s part today,” he
said. “It will be overlaid later, so the only parts
that matter are your characters’ spoken lines.”
Layla took a stack of papers. The man handed Bob a
similar stack and then left.
Layla glanced at the heading on her stack: Adventures in
Babysitting. The author's name was
"Lubrican." She had to look at it for a while to make sure it
didn't say "Lubricant." It didn't matter.
Below that was a list of characters. Her character
- she assumed she was the babysitter - was named Megan. Below
that was a description that said:
Megan is a sixteen year old virgin, raised by a single
mother. She is Rod Wilson's neighbor and has known him for
many years. He fixed her bicycle when she was younger, and
has done other neighborly things for her and her mother over the
years. She likes him a lot. She has dated, but not
any one boy seriously. She has been kissed a few
times, but is otherwise innocent of things sexual.
Layla blinked. That sounded like a setup for something
pornographic! She looked further down to see a bold line that
read: Mister Wilson/Rod.
The description of him was: 35 year old man who is suddenly
raising a three year old boy alone. His wife had a gambling
problem and shoplifted to get money for the casinos. She was
arrested recently and given three years in jail. He
has watched Megan mature, both physically and emotionally, and has a
finely tuned appreciation of her body. He is already sexually
frustrated by the forced separation from his wife, who also confessed
to having an affair with one of the men she owed money to.
She blamed everything on Rod, and has said she intends to get a divorce
while she's in jail.
She looked deeper into the pile. Words jumped up off the
pages ... words like "nipples," "prick," and "pussy."
"This is PORN!” she yelped.
Bob was doing the same thing with his script.
“It appears it is,” he agreed. His voice
was calm.
Layla looked around. She went over to a microphone and leaned
her mouth up close to it.
“HEY!” she yelled.
Bob stepped over and slid the switch on the microphone to the
“ON” position. Layla leaned even closer.
“HEY!”
They heard a muffled curse through the door, very faintly.
“THIS IS PORNOGRAPHY!” she yelled.
The door opened and the nameless man came in.
“Please don’t yell into the mike,” he
said. “We have a script outside in the sound booth,
and can make adjustments when we know a loud voice is coming
up. You don’t have to yell. We can
compensate for your normal voice.”
“This is a dirty story!” said Layla, her voice
level. She sounded dangerous somehow.
“Yes,” admitted the man. “This
is for our adult series.”
“If I’d wanted to do phone sex, I would have
applied for that kind of job!” she said, obviously upset.
Bob held up a hand. He faced the man.
“Why don’t you give us a few minutes,” he
said. “We weren’t expecting
this. We need to talk about it.”
The man was only too happy to leave. Bob turned
back to Layla.
“There is nothing to talk about!” she
snorted. “I’m not reading this
crap!”
“Why not?” asked Bob.
“It’s just words ... lines. You
read them and then you’re done and you get paid.
Isn’t that what you’re here for?”
“I have a four year old little boy!” she
moaned. “When I told him I was going to
read books onto tape, the first thing he asked for was one of the
tapes!”
Bob smiled. “Well, obviously you won’t
give him THIS story to listen to. We can make a different
tape for him.”
“I can’t do this,” she moaned.
“I don't have any experience with this kind of
thing. This is ... smut!”
“Oh,” said Bob. “I
didn’t know you’d adopted your little
boy.”
“Huh?” She looked confused.
“Aidan isn’t adopted.”
“Then you DO have some experience at ... this sort of
thing,” said Bob. “I mean you had to have
sex to have a baby.”
She blinked, and frowned.
“Well, OK, but this isn’t like that. This
is perverted!”
“What’s perverted about a man wanting to have sex
with a woman?” he asked.
“She’s only sixteen!” Layla’s
voice was strident.
“Your voice sounds a lot like a girl that age,”
said Bob.
“I’m twenty-three,” she pointed out, as
if that was a rational response to his comment.
“So you got pregnant when you were nineteen?” he
asked.
“Eighteen,” she corrected him.
“Wait! What does that have to do with
anything?”
“I was just trying to get a handle on how much experience you
had,” said Bob. “So you had sex once,
when you were eighteen, and Aidan was the result.”
She glared at him.
“Of course not!” she almost snarled.
“I’ve had sex more than once, not that
it’s any of your business.”
“Naturally,” he said, bowing to her in an almost
formal manner. “But you never had sex when you were
sixteen ... right?”
She opened her mouth, then closed it. She’d been
having sex since she was fourteen. But that was none of his
business and it didn’t have anything to do with this.
“Well, since you never had sex when you were sixteen, I have
to agree that there is no way in the world you could be realistic in
your portrayal of a girl that age, who is attracted to an older man,
who is also attracted to her. Yes ... I’m
afraid this won’t work. I’ll
have to tell them to get me another partner.”
“You’re going to DO this?” she asked,
unbelieving. He had to be in his forties. Men that
age were conservative. She was sure he’d be just as
outraged as she was.
“I’ve got a house payment to make,” he
said, shrugging his shoulders. “But I understand
that a woman of your high moral standards couldn’t do this,
to say nothing of the fact that you have no sexual experience to draw
on for the role.”
He was dismissing her! She felt her blood begin to
boil. Adults had been dismissing her for years.
Even now, after she'd voted in two national elections, people dismissed
her. Usually it was because of her appearance, which was none
of their business. But this man ... this OLD man ... was
dismissing her because she wasn’t a slut!
“I’ll have you know I have PLENTY of
experience!” she blurted.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“I didn’t mean to make you feel bad.
It’s just that you’re obviously uncomfortable with
this. I was just trying to make it easier for you to withdraw
gracefully.”
“Oh yeah?” she said, unhappy with her last blurted
comment. “Then why did you keep me here to talk
about it?”
“I like you,” he said.
“You don’t even know me!” she objected.
“I have to know you to like you?” He
smiled. “Why can’t I start out liking
you, and then change my mind if you turn out to be somebody I
can’t get along with? Why should I make you prove
something to me before I like you?”
There was a knock on the door. The man stuck his head inside.
“Look, I don’t really care if you do this or not,
personally, but we’re burning daylight here. I need
to get something on tape today. If you two aren’t
going to do it, fine, but don’t do it somewhere else,
OK?”
“SHUT THE DOOR!” yelled Layla.
“WE’RE GOING TO DO IT! WE’RE
JUST NOT READY YET!”
The door closed with a thump as the man hastily withdrew.
Bob stood there silently, waiting for a few seconds, and then spoke.
“I’ll start as the narrator,” he said,
stepping up to a microphone. “Are you
ready?”
He’d taken her at her word, shouted though it was.
Layla wasn’t at all sure she’d actually meant
it. She thought about her own rent. She needed this
money. She’d look for another job later, but this
outfit paid by the day, and she needed to leave with some cash in her
pocket.
“OK,” she said, somewhat sullenly.
Bob flipped the microphone on and started reading.
Outside, in the sound booth, Charles gave a sigh. It was
almost impossible to get anyone stable to do this kind of
work. Perverts loved it, but they were impossible to deal
with. They always wanted to adlib or change the lines to
match their own sometimes twisted fantasies. Of the
non-perverts who would actually take on a job like this, most just
didn’t have the voice for it. The average reader
was in his or her fifties or sixties, and was usually supplementing a
retirement with some added income. The adult books
on tape promised to be very lucrative, but only if they could get some
decent readers to do them.
As he heard Bob finally start reading, he smiled. This one
was a narrator, at least. When the girl chimed in with her
part, Charles gave another sigh. She was perfect!
Her first line, “Hi Mr. Wilson, isn’t it a great
day?” made him close his eyes and imagine the girl that lived
two doors down from him. She was a cutie, one of the reasons
he’d accepted taking on this particular book to
produce. It happened to fit his own fantasy.
When they took a break for lunch, they’d only gotten through
twenty pages. Layla’s attitude had softened a
bit. Whoever this Lubrican person was, he wasn’t
what she’d expected. Well, the text she was reading
wasn’t what she’d expected, based on those few
words that had jumped off the pages when she’d first looked
through the script.
He had made her character into a sweet young girl, happy, but curious,
and in a way that didn’t make her seem to be the least bit
slutty. And Bob’s part wasn’t the
slavering dirty old man she had expected either.
His feelings for Megan were complicated, like hers were for
him. It was very flirty, thus far. She liked the
flirty feel of it. You didn’t get a chance to be
flirty very often, without upsetting somebody.
They hadn’t actually gotten to anything patently
sexual. There was a lot of teasing by both of them, and
innuendo. There was a yearning kind of quality to the story,
so far. Both of them were tempted to be naughty, but both of
them resisted that temptation, at least to some degree.
The nameless man had opened the door at a chapter break. He
was smiling now.
“Go get some lunch,” he said.
“You’re doing fabulously. Take the
scripts with you, if you want, so you can look them over before this
afternoon. I’ve already got a lot of stuff down
that’s perfectly fine for the final production. You
two are making amazing progress.”
It’s pretty hard to be surly when someone compliments you
like that, and Layla was no exception.
“You want to split up or go together?” asked Bob,
breaking her train of thought.
“You don’t want to eat with me?” she
asked. Somehow, she’d almost believed the lines he
had spoken to her ... that he found her interesting, and fascinating,
even though he was older and shouldn’t do that.
There was a funny kind of blurring of the lines between reality and the
story they were reading, because he really was older and he had really
sounded like he found her fascinating.
“Of course I want to eat with you,” he
said. “I’m just giving you options,
that’s all.”
“Well, I choose the option where we eat together,”
she said firmly.
“Great,” he said.
“Burgers?”
“Ewwww,” she said, making a face.
“And put all that grease and blood in this body?”
She almost jerked as his eyes raked over her T shirt and
jeans. He was looking at her like a man looks at a woman
again.
“Obviously not,” he said, appreciation in his voice.
“Are you flirting with me?” she asked, unbelieving.
“Is that a bad thing?” He smiled.
“It’s totally inappropriate,” she said,
almost pouting. “You’re old enough to be
my gramps.”
His hands went to his chest and he made his face twist into an agonized
mask of pain.
“Ouch!” he said, staggering backwards.
“For such a slip of a girl, you sure pack a punch.”
“I’m NOT a slip of a girl,” she said,
trying to stand taller. “I’m five feet
eight inches tall!”
“And I’m NOT old enough to be your
gramps,” he came back, looking like he was trying to stand
taller too. She saw his stomach suck in a couple of inches
and almost giggled as he tried to look manly.
“I’m a vegetarian,” she said, getting
them back on the subject of food.
“I should have known,” he sighed.
“What’s wrong with vegetarians?” she
pouted.
“Nothing, if you’re not interested in
taste,” he said.
She knew, somehow, that he was teasing her. She wondered why
she found it so much fun to be teased by him, but was distracted by her
stomach growling. He laughed and she knew he’d
heard that growl.
“We’d better get something in your stomach to feed
that thing, before it eats its way out and attacks me.”
He took her hand and pulled her, to make her walk beside him, as she
tried to think of a comeback. He didn’t give her
time.
“There’s a place up the street that should be able
to cater to both our tastes,” he said.
Lunch continued to enable her to change her attitude towards
Bob. Without being pushy or nosy, he asked her all kinds of
questions about her, both her past and present. Somehow she
found herself telling him things she had never thought to mention to an
almost complete stranger. Like the fact that her love life
was unhappily flat, at the present, almost dismal in some
ways. Not that she was a raging slut or
anything. She just liked sex and always had. She
thought about sex as being in roughly three categories. There
was “good sex,” which she remembered having
fondly. Then there was “just
sex,” which was OK if that was all you could get.
Then there was “that was a miserable excuse for
sex,” which was all she’d been getting lately.
“That’s too bad,” he said, sitting across
from her.
She blinked. She couldn’t believe she’d
actually told him all that. This weird situation she had
gotten herself into, and that stupid story, must have caused her to
babble.
“I shouldn’t have said that,” she said.
“Oh, don’t worry about it,” he
replied. “I won’t tell
anybody. I just think it’s a shame that a
vibrant, beautiful young woman such as yourself has to settle for ...
what did you call it? Miserable sex?"
"A miserable excuse for sex," she corrected him automatically.
"Well, whatever, it's a shame. You’re at your
sexual peak. You deserve to be glowing with sexual satiation,
and gloriously and thoroughly pregnant.”
“That’s the silliest thing I've heard in
weeks!” she said. “And I’m NOT
getting pregnant again. Once was more than enough for
me.”
"Complications?" he asked casually.
There! He was doing it again! He said it
so casually, but it was a request for intimate ... private information.
"If you call being nauseous all the time, and being white as a sheet
and swollen up like I swallowed a beach ball complications, then yes
... complications," she heard her voice say. Where had that
come from? This was none of his business! Why had
she answered him?
"That's too bad," he commiserated. "I know all kinds of
remedies for nausea. And you may think you were pasty and
bulging, but I bet you were gorgeous when you were pregnant."
Layla frowned. Where did he come off saying things like
that? Who was HE to say she must have been
gorgeous? She knew better. She knew she'd been a
mess, most of the time, dragging around, never far from a toilet, back
aching.
"You're very nosy and ... " she couldn't think of the right
word. Her grandmother's speech came to her.
"Impertinent!"
"Yes," he said, looking away. "I suppose I am. I've
always had that problem. I like getting to know
people. Especially fascinating people."
"And that's another thing! " she said, trying to glower at
him. She wasn't very good at glowering. Her face
was too smooth. "You can't just go around telling women
they're gorgeous and fascinating, especially when you just met them!"
"Of course I can," he said. "This is America.
Freedom of speech and all that."
"You know what I mean," she argued. "It isn't polite."
He leaned forward.
"Layla, my dear, I think you ARE gorgeous, and fascinating. I
wish I were thirty years younger so I could make a complete fool of
myself and beg at your feet for a date." He leaned
back. "That isn't being impolite. That's simply
telling you how I feel."
"That could be viewed as sexual harassment these days," said Layla, but
there was neither heat nor warning in it.
"Am I harassing you?" he asked.
She thought about that for a minute. Really all he had done
was pay her compliments. He wasn't actually suggesting
anything.
"I suppose not," she finally admitted.
"Well," he said, smiling. "I'll just have to try harder."
She ignored him, picking up the script. She was secretly a
little pleased that he was ... interested. It had
been a while since she’d felt desirable.
He was being silly, but it was still kind of nice.
She looked ahead, to what they'd be reading after lunch.
"Ohhhh no," she moaned.
"What?"
"I can't read this," she sighed.
"Why not? You've been doing wonderfully."
"It gets naughty. There are moans and sighs and I can't do
those. I'd feel silly."
"Surely you've moaned and sighed while having sex before," he said,
looking at his own copy. "Mmmmmm."
"What?" It was her turn to ask what was wrong.
"I'm going to like reading this. That's all."
"Gramps!" she chided. "You're as naughty as the story
is! I thought you weren't a dirty old man."
"I'm not," he said. "I'm a sexy senior citizen."
"Ha ... ha," she said, sticking her tongue out at him.
"I don't blame you," he said. "I wouldn't want that nasty
thing inside my mouth either." He grinned.
"My tongue is NOT nasty!" she said, trying to bristle.
"I'd have to be the judge of that," he said instantly. "I'm
an expert, you know."
"NOW you're harassing me," she teased.
He looked serious, suddenly.
"You can finish this. I know you can."
"Not if I have to moan and groan. It will come out as
laughter. I can't do that. It's just too silly."
"We're a good team," he insisted. "I don't want to have to
start all over with somebody else. I'll think of something to
help you."
"Like poking me with a pin?" She smiled.
The look that came over his face was startling. It was a
leer. There was no other way to characterize it.
His eyes went to her modest breasts - she could probably look sixteen
if she tried - and he made a growling noise in his throat.
"Oh, it won't be a pin I try to ... poke you with."
She was shocked. He looked so completely
different! This wasn't the same man she'd been sitting here
with only a few seconds ago. His face showed pure lust, but
his eyes were something else. They looked dark green, and
seemed to probe deep into her, looking for something that he knew was
there. She felt a zing of fright based on his face, and a
zing of something else based on his eyes. It was like looking
at what you’d thought was a big dog, and suddenly realizing
it was a wolf.
Then he was back. It all disappeared, somehow, and
he was just an older man, with a bushy brown beard. Once
again his eyes were light green, with brown flecks in them, and his
cheeks rose in a smile.
"That's called acting," he said. "That's what we're doing,
kind of. We're putting ourselves into the characters and into
the story, and trying to convince people who listen to us that it's all
real.”
Layla realized she was panting. She realized her muscles were
all tight, as if she had been ready to run screaming from the
restaurant. She relaxed them.
"You scared me!" she sighed.
"I'm as harmless as it's possible to be," he said, taking a huge bite
of his cordon bleu. "Like I said, I was just
acting. You can do that too. I heard it in your
voice, this morning. You just have to put yourself into the
role. That's all."
Sitting there, knowing that that wolf hadn't been real after all, and
yet feeling the rush of adrenaline that had shot into her veins, Layla
tilted her head and looked at him. He had called her
fascinating. He was the interesting one. However he
had done that, she'd FELT the lust, in waves radiating from
him. She'd KNOWN that he wanted her ... wanted her
as a woman. It wasn't sexual harassment she had
witnessed. This was more primal. With complete
embarrassment she became aware of the dampness between her
thighs. Her body had reacted to the fear.
But it had also reacted to something else ... something that caused
sensations in her that were anything BUT fear.
They chatted some more and then left. Now it was her turn to
ask him questions about his life. She upgraded him from
interesting to full-fledged fascinating. He'd been to fifteen
different countries. He'd been a Scoutmaster. He'd
worked in the oil fields in Oklahoma, and lived in Alaska for three
years. He had children, grown and gone. He
characterized himself as a Jack of all trades and master of none.
By the time they got back to the studio, Layla was quite sure she had
only scratched the surface. He didn't seem so old, somehow,
or carry as much extra weight as she had first thought. He
held the door for her and, as she walked through it, put his fingertips
in the small of her back. He didn't push her, but she could
still feel strength in those fingers. Not that much had
changed, really. They were still exactly the same
people they had been four hours ago. But, somehow, he had
transformed, in that mystical phenomenon that sometimes takes
place. Instead of being "that guy"... now he was "Bob."
She was still quite sure that the first time she had to say something
like, "Mmmmmm, that feels good, Mister Wilson," that she'd burst into
laughter.
She listened to his voice as they started reading again. He
was doing the narration, and he used a slightly different voice, that
was flatter or something, than when he was speaking Rod Wilson's
lines. His voice wasn't a monotone and he didn't read with a
measured cadence. In fact, it didn't sound like he was
reading at all. It was more like he was an old time
storyteller. She was so fascinated that she missed her lines
twice, and they had to go back and do those portions of the story again.
Then it was there. Mister Wilson came home, to greet his
babysitter, after working overtime. It was dark
outside and he had offered to feed her supper. She had called
home and said she'd be late. While they ate, he had
asked poor little inexperienced Megan all about her boyfriends and what
they had done for her. He had just asked her if the boys had
ever kissed her.
She was supposed to stutter and sound shy. The dialogue was
clearly written that way. But it seemed so silly to be
standing in a little room, talking into a microphone.
"Of course they kissed me!" Layla said, her voice perky.
Bob looked confused and stared at the paper in his hand. The
door opened and the same man as before stuck his head in.
"Please don't adlib," he said. "Just read the lines like
they've been written."
Layla looked at what she was supposed to have said. It was
"Well ... yes ... sometimes ... a little bit, I guess."
He went back and started that paragraph all over again. She
managed to get through her lines without giggling, but felt like she
sounded about ten, instead of sixteen.
"Did you like it?"
"I guess so." That one wasn't so hard.
"I bet you've never REALLY been kissed," said Bob. "Not a real kiss,"
he added after a short pause.
"Isn't a kiss just a kiss?" That one wasn't so bad either,
and Layla tried hard to remember what her first kisses had been like.
"Not at all," said Bob. He looked over at her
before going on. "If I kissed you, I don't think it would be
anything like what you've felt before."
Layla grinned and put her hand over her mouth. She was
supposed to say "You want to ... kiss me?" The text after
that said, "she asked anxiously."
She couldn't do it. It was just too silly. She
started giggling and the man came all the way into the room.
"You were doing so well," he complained. "What's wrong?"
"It's SILLY!" said Layla, giggling again.
The man rolled his eyes.
Bob held up a hand again.
"We'll start over. I have an idea. Let us work this
out, OK?"
The man tossed a hand in the air, but left the room.
Bob turned his microphone off and stood up from the
stool. He turned Layla's microphone off and leaned
toward her.
"I'd like very much to kiss you, Layla," he said softly. "I
look at those lips and they look so soft. Reading
this is getting me horny and I want to kiss you."
She sucked in breath and held it. He was so close!
He wasn't the wolf again. Not really. But it was
clear that he DID want to kiss her. She felt shaky
inside. Why was he doing this?
"Now," he said. "Remember how you're feeling right
now. Hold onto that feeling. We'll just do that one
paragraph and stop."
He flicked her mike on and then his own and started
reading. Her heart was still
pounding. She'd read these lines before, but she
paused when her first one came along. Bob waved at her and
made his hand go in a circle, over and over. She knew he
meant "GO ON!"
"Well," she said, reading while she felt her heart still pounding in
her chest. "Well ... yes ... sometimes ... a little bit, I guess."
"Did you like it?" His eyes looked smoky as he stared at her.
"I g-g-guess so," she said weakly.
"I bet you've never REALLY been kissed," said Bob. His eyes went up and
down her body. "Not a real kiss."
He stood up, pulling his mike up to stay next to his mouth.
Layla's pulse was still racing. Was he going to come
closer? Again, his hand went in an urgent circle and she
looked back at the script.
"Isn't a kiss just a kiss?" She suddenly wondered what it
would be like if Bob DID kiss her. Would it be like kisses
she'd had in the past?
"Not at all," said Bob. He took one step closer to
her, moving the mike with him again. "If I kissed you, I
don't think it would be anything like what you've felt
before." He emphasized the word "anything." He
hadn't done that before, and her heart pounded.
His hand was moving again and she looked down.
"You want to kiss me?" She even sounded scared to herself.
She looked up at Bob as she said it. That look was in his eye.
"I know I shouldn't," he said. "But yes. I'd love
to kiss you, Megan." His hand went in circles again.
Layla looked at her script. Her next line was one
she actually wanted to say right now.
"But just a kiss ... right? I mean you wouldn't do anything
else ... would you?" Her voice went up half an octave, and
she didn't do it on purpose.
"I'd never do anything that would make you want to leave," he said.
The next line was one she wasn't sure she could force out.
She felt her throat constrict and she wanted to move away from him.
"I ..." she started. "I guess ..." She had to pause
again, even though there was no pause in the script. "I guess
just one kiss would be OK." She had had to rush
through it to get it all out. It wasn't
right. She knew she sounded terrified, because she FELT
terrified. She waited for the man to come in and tell them to
start again.
Nothing happened. Bob just looked at her. She
looked at the script. The narrator was supposed to describe
how Mr. Wilson took the girl in his arms and kissed her.
There were "mmmmmm" sounds she was supposed to make, and he was
supposed to make them too. Then she was supposed to say
"Wow!" and "I liked that! I liked that a lot!"
Bob went to the door and opened it.
"Can we pause, to get ready for the next part?"
"Sure," said the man's voice. "That was great. She
did a tiny bit of adlibbing, but it was perfect."
Bob closed the door.
"You OK?" he asked.
"No," she moaned. "How do you do that?"
"I told you, it's just acting."
"No, I mean how do you make me feel like you're about to eat me up?"
"I was just trying to get you to act," he insisted.
"It seemed so real," she said. "Like you really wanted to
kiss me."
"I do," he said. "But that doesn't have anything to do with
this."
She goggled. "You DO want to kiss me?"
"Do we have to go into this again?" he asked. "You're a good
looking woman. I'm a man. Of course I want to kiss
you. I'm old, but I'm not dead."
Put that way it didn't seem so ... scary. In fact,
the calm way he said it made her feel better for some
reason. He was just a man, acting like men do
sometimes.
"How do you feel about the next part?" he asked. "Can you do
it?"
"I don't think so," she said. "How do you go MMMMM like
you're kissing somebody, when you're not kissing anybody?"
"Could you do it if you really did kiss somebody?" he asked.
"What?"
"If you kissed me, could you make those sounds?"
"You're just trying to get me to kiss you!" she yipped.
"Maybe a little," he admitted. "But we need to get through
this. You've been kissed before. I don't have any
diseases. If it helped you make the noises, what harm would
one little kiss do?"
"I just met you this morning!" she said. "I can't just kiss
you like that."
"Think of it as acting," he said. "Screen actors do it all
the time. We're not going to swap spit or anything.
Just put your lips up against mine and make the noises. You
can kiss my cheek if you want. I don't care. I just
want to get past this point. You've done so well.
Let's not blow it all because of some kissing noises."
"OK!" she said defensively. "It's just weird, OK?"
"It can be weird all day long, as long as you make those noises," he
said.
Layla looked at him. He wasn't ACTING like he wanted to kiss
her very much. All he seemed to be interested in
was getting her to make noises. Fine! She'd show
him! She'd give him a kiss he'd remember for years!
She stepped toward him.
"Hang on, girl," he said, grinning. "We have to get the mikes
ready. You only want to have to do this once, right?"
He went to the door and opened it.
"We're going to make a bunch of noises. You guys can cut and
paste, or whatever you call it, right? We'll just make the
kissing noises and eventually get back to the dialogue, OK?"
"Great," came the man's voice.
She was ready for him when he got back. They put both mikes
together, right by their faces. He was two inches
taller than she was, so she had to look up slightly. He had
his papers in his hand and looked at them again.
"As soon as we make the noises, we go right back into the dialogue,
right?" he asked.
"Sure," she said, flippantly. She was in control
again. She was going to teach this man a lesson.
She could kiss. She loved to kiss. And this time,
when something went wrong, it was going to be because they were going
to have to call the paramedics to help him recover from what she was
about to do to him.
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