Chapter 4: Film Studies
The eggs Manuel made were perfectly scrambled, fluffy and pale yellow, but they tasted of nothing. Barney ate them mechanically in the sterile kitchen, the clinical smell of the pool house still clinging to his sinuses. He washed the plate, the routine a small, desperate anchor.
The intercom crackled at noon. “Barnaby. Home theater. I’m feeling nostalgic.”
The mansion’s home theater was down a carpeted hallway that muffled sound. He pushed open the heavy door and was hit by a wall of scent: stale popcorn butter, spilled soda, and the cloying, floral decay of old perfume. The room was a tomb of faded glamour. Rows of plush red velvet seats, worn bald in spots and stained with mysterious spills, sloped towards a massive, cracked screen. The only light came from the flickering projector beam, which cast dancing dust motes in the air.
Delilah was enthroned in a giant leather recliner, the room’s centerpiece. She wore a leopard-print caftan, loosely tied. A silver bucket of ice holding a bottle of cheap champagne sat beside her. The film on the screen was grainy, the colors oversaturated. A man with a thick mustache was spanking a woman with a towering blonde bouffant.
“Sit,” Delilah commanded, not taking her eyes off the screen. She pointed to a footstool near her right hand. “No, closer. I don’t want to shout over the artistry.”
He dragged the stool until his knee was almost touching the arm of her recliner. The air around her was warm and smelled of champagne and musky sweat.
“This,” she said, gesturing with her flute, “is ‘Behind the Green Door.’ Amateur hour, but revolutionary for its time. I knew Marilyn. Lovely girl. Couldn’t deep-throat for shit.” She took a long drink. “Now this,” she said as the scene changed to a chaotic party, “this is where cinema became truth.”
On screen, bodies became a single, undulating organism. Delilah narrated with the authority of a film professor. “See the lighting? They’re hiding the double-chins. And the sound editing—all the grunts are dubbed later. I did a film with the same director. ‘Sodom and Gomorrah II: The Reckoning.’ They had to hose down the set every hour.”
Her voice was warm with nostalgia. She refilled her glass, the bottle now mostly empty. Her free hand lay in her lap, idly tracing patterns on the leopard print over her thigh. Then the pattern changed. Her fingers crept beneath the fabric.
Barney stared rigidly at the screen, his ears burning. The sounds from the film—exaggerated moans, slap of flesh—merged with the wet, rhythmic squelch beginning just beside him. He dared a glance.
Delilah’s eyes were half-lidded, fixed on the cinematic orgy. Her breathing had deepened. Her hand was a firm, moving mound under the caftan. “That’s Frankie,” she slurred, pointing at a man on screen entering from frame left. “He had a curved dick. Like a banana. Useful for certain angles, a menace for others.”
The film grew darker, weirder. Leather, chains, and props appeared. Delilah’s narration grew more personal, more graphic. “Took ten once,” she said casually, as if recalling a picnic. “Not like that pussy scene there. A real ten. Backstage at the Odeon. I was the glue that held the pyramid together.” Her fingers worked faster. The wet sounds grew louder, more insistent, cutting through the film’s soundtrack.
“You should be taking notes, Barnaby,” she breathed, her head lolling back against the leather. “This is history. The anatomy of ecstasy. Most people… ah… they just see the fuckin’. I see the footwork. The grip. The… leverage.”
A low, rumbling fart escaped her, a bass note to the slick percussion of her fingers. She didn’t seem to notice. Her face was flushed. “Scooch closer,” she demanded.
He inched the stool forward. Now he could feel the heat radiating from her.
“Closer.”
His leg pressed against the recliner. The smell of her, champagne and arousal and something animal, was overwhelming.
The scene on screen reached a frenzied, almost violent climax. Delilah’s movements under the caftan became frantic, her whole arm tensing. Her breathing hitched. “Hold my shitter,” she grunted, the command guttural and immediate.
His mind went blank. For a horrifying second, he thought she meant now, literally.
But her free hand, the one not buried in her caftan, shot out and gripped his forearm. Her nails dug into his skin. She wasn’t asking him to touch her there. She was anchoring herself, using his bony arm as a tether against the wave building inside her. Her grip was iron-tight.
She let out a raw, ragged cry that had nothing to do with the moans from the speakers. It was a sound of profound, unvarnished release. Her body shuddered violently, making the giant recliner creak. The hand under the caftan went still.
For a long moment, the only sounds were the film’s closing score and Delilah’s ragged panting. She released his arm, leaving half-moon indentations in his skin. She pulled her hand from beneath the fabric, wiped it casually on the caftan, and reached for the champagne bottle, draining the last warm dregs directly from the neck.
The screen went to static. The projector clattered to a stop. In the sudden, dim silence, she turned her head towards him. Her makeup was smeared, her hair a wild frame around her face. She looked ancient, and utterly satisfied.
“See?” she said, her voice hoarse. “That’s what they can’t bottle. That’s the real stuff. Everything else…” She waved a dismissive hand at the empty screen. “Just shadows.”
She heaved herself up from the chair, the leather sighing in relief. She adjusted her caftan, not a flicker of shame on her face. “Manuel will need help with the groceries at four. Be sharp.”
She left him there in the dark, the static hiss filling the room. Barney looked down at the red marks on his forearm. They didn’t hurt. He felt curiously empty, a vessel that had been scrubbed out and left to dry. The screaming face from his ceiling, the nausea from the pool house—it was all gone, replaced by a numb, buzzing clarity.
He sat in the lingering smells of sex and decay until the static felt like the only sound in the world. Then he stood, turned off the projector, and walked out into the bright, indifferent hallway to find the grocery list.