Chapter 7
Pam lay naked on the white bearskin rug. while overhead the hot floodlights flattened her with heat, made her sweaty and restless. "C'mon, Pam," the weasel-faced photographer said beyond those blazing lights, "put some oomph in it, will you? I'm not taking art pictures, you know. That's better. Good. Now move your right leg. We wanna keep our customers, don't we?"
"Damn!" Pam cursed. "You want your pound of flesh, don't you? You'd think you were paying two-hundred an hour instead of forty. Maybe you'll want a free sample afterward too."
"Could be," the man said laconically. "Don't knock it. You've still got a good body, you don't have to pose for this stuff." He needled her. "But if you're getting tired of the money I can always find another gal who's dying to take her clothes off, go through any routine I say. Just give Benny the word...."
"Ahh!" Pam pretended an arrogance she didn't feel. "Don't get all excited, Benny. Can't a gal even gripe once in a while?"
"Seems you been doing an awful lot of griping lately."
"Sorry. Pve got things on my mind."
"Don't let it show. It ruins the shots. And when the psychos out in radio and TV land are paying a buck apiece for glossies like these, they deserve happy little tramps." The man came forward, leaned to where Pam lay.
"Now get on all fours. Yeah, like that. Let those boobs hang. Check. Raise your head. Now, caress those boobs," he snickered. "Unless you'd rather I did that for you."
"No, thanks, sport, " Pam snapped. "I just pose." She rose, teetered on her knees, touched her nipples.
"Okay?"
"Prima. Now cheese, please." Benny retreated to his camera. "Perfect, doll. Look left a little bit. Wowee! What a frame-"
"Spare me the commentary, will you?"
"Now, stand up, kiddo. Get your hands under those boobs, make like you're offering them."
Pam grimaced, felt her stomach heel over. Then she shrugged, it's a living.
In the days following her acceptance of the fact that she was pregnant, Terri moved in a sleepwalker's trance, she existed in a state of permanent shock. While the panic, the desperation, the sense of being trapped constantly hammered at her brain. What could she do?
And though she screamed inside, ached to share the grisly secret with someone, she knew she could not.
She cursed Matt for his carelessness. She cursed herself for trusting calendar mathematics as implicitly as she had. Stupid! After all, anyone with half a brain would know that accidents were bound to happen.
There was a perfectly simple, perfectly easy out, of course. She could tell Matt. She could consent to become his wife.
She could forsake her dreams, surrender her freedom once and for all.
No, she raged in maniacal defiance. They won't get me that way! There's got to be an out! I'll find one, I'll kill myself looking for it before I give in to them!
Them being the persons, forces and circumstances that had ruled and pushed and crowded her all her life. Someone-something-had always been pushing her, had been fighting to cram her into a conformist mold. Her mother and father, Pam, those Waterloo boys. Then Matt, the Hollywood wolves. The whole damned world!
And now, in a monumental push, Matt again! Trapping her, getting his own way at last. Matt how she hated even the sound of his name!
Wouldn't he laugh and rub his hands gleefully, think that now, once and far all, he had the upper hand? She'd have to knuckle under, to be his now.
The humiliation of such a sellout formed a crucible in which was molded the most vehement resolves of all.
They-Matt-none of them-would win! She wouldn't let them. She'd die first!
It was then that Terri found a solution to her problem. Distasteful as it might be, she decided there was only one way out. That alternative was to find a willing doctor, pay his price for his special services. She'd tell nobody of her downfall.
It was further testament to her deteriorating morality that Terri saw nothing wrong at all in this decision.
The matter of finding a doctor wasn't as difficult as it might sound. For in a sprawling, greedy metropolis like L.A., all kinds of doors are openable if one has the key to turn the latch.
There was a woman at Great Western, a harridan file clerk in Receiving named Hilda Fedderman, a woman who drove a Cadillac to work. It was rumored, Terri was certainly not the first to get caught among that vast army of single females, that Hilda knew a man who knew a man. Hilda, as go-between, took hers off the top, lived like a queen at the expense of those deluded ninnies who believed that love-or passion or whatever-superseded everything, conquered all.
Terri discreetly cornered the saggy-jowled Hilda late one afternoon, guiltily out-lined her problem. And very quickly understood how the intermediary could afford so fancy an automobile, the expensive rings and wristwatch she wore. Without batting an eye, fitting her price to Terri's circumstances, she demanded $500.
When Terri hesitated, she hypoed her with further fear, said forbiddingly, "You'd better get with it, dearie. The farther along you are the more dangerous things become. Another three weeks can make a mighty big difference."
Terri had told Hilda she'd be in touch, had fled, feeling contaminated just from talking to her.
Somehow, by dint of Scrooge-like frugality, Terri had amassed a savings account of $300 since coming to Los Angeles. Never thinking of attempting to bargain with the parasite, she wracked her brain to devise a way to raise the extra $200.
Not wanting to expose herself, not wanting to be beholden to Matt in anyway, she dismissed the idea of borrowing the money from either him or Pam. She knew Pam, worldly wise as she was, would tumble immediately.
In fact she'd been extremely cold and distant with Matt ever since her grim discovery; she'd refused the consecutive invitations to dinner, the other more questionably, suggestive invitations to visit his apartment again. Which only served to turn Matt sullen, intensified their strained relationship. Pam, noticing Terri's dark mood and total preoccupation, had, upon inquiring, been given a similar brushoff.
There were loan companies. But again she decided against this also. There was an easier way. A quicker way. All she had to do was to badger Pam, air certain suspicions she'd arrived at in regard to Pam's nighttime absences, to her new prosperity, to the cryptic phone calls she'd been receiving of late.
And suspecting the worst, she justified this fall from grace in a hardboiled way. If this is how the world's made, why shouldn't I jump into line too? After all, in the long run, wouldn't this be the least messy way out? No papers to sign, no payments to make?
Pam jerked like she'd been jabbed with a hatpin, her face turned white when Terri brutally confronted her two nights later, laid things on the line.
"Pve figured out where you've been going all these nights, honey," Terri said evenly, her eyes capturing holding Pam's. "I've figured out what all those phone calls are about, where you're getting all those pretty new clothes."
Pam fought for composure. "Have you, Terri?"
"I never thought I'd see the day when you'd slip so bad. Level with me, Pam. You're hustling, aren't you?"
"You smart witch!" Pam exploded. "For two cents I'd slap your face. You think you know it all, don't you?"
"I think I must be awfully close to the truth to get you as riled as that. I'd like some pretty things too, Pam. I want in. You want to tell me about it?"
"You greenhorn. You don't know what you're talking about. Much less asking to be let in. Is that what you really think? That I've become a call'girl?"
"You don't leave me much choice," Terri smiled acidly. "Unless you level with me, tell me the truth...."
Pam's grin was equally arch. "You really want to know, huh? You think you've got guts enough to go through with a gig like this one?"
"I can only judge for myself. Spill it, Pam."
"Okay," she said, near malevolence in her tone, "you asked for it, kiddo. Since you're so damned nosy."
Then, in a blunt, unflinching way Pam revealed just what her moonlighting venture involved. She told her about putting her name on an agency list, a sleazy, two-bit operation that catered exclusively to photographers, professional and otherwise, who specialized in taking nude shots for girlie magazines.
But the enterprise was even more sticky than that. She told how she went-for a price, usually $40 an hour-to amateur photographers' homes, posed in the nude for shots that would go into their own private collections.
Terri was aghast. This was almost worse than she'd suspected. "Pam," she breathed. "How could you? I thought you were the girl with such rigid standards, the girl that knew all the angles."
Pam's eyes registered mixed self pity and bitterness. "How long do you expect a person to keep banging his head against the door? How long's a person supposed to go on hoping and waiting?" She shivered. "Let's not kid ourselves, hon. I'm not gonna make it. I know it now. Never in a million years. No matter how many guys I sleep with. Sure I got talent, looks, a figure, but that isn't enough. You've got to have the breaks too."
She paused, shook her head, tried to get control of herself. "You were the smart one in the long run, Terri. You didn't believe any of it for a minute. I was the sucker, the daydreamer kid." She looked at Terri, vengeful anger in her eyes. "Well, this kid's had it. Up to here. Since I can't do anything else with this frame of mine, I might as well make it pay off for me.
"I sold out. Terri. I'm going to keep on selling out. I'm making good money now. What with my secretary dough and all. I'm moving up, getting in with some of the better known photogs. Who knows? I might clean up." She sucked in her breath, threw out her chest. "Before these old lungs start to droop."
Terri jerked as if she'd been slapped. "Pam!"
"What's the matter? Wise up, baby. The world's vulgar and cheap and rotten. Everybody's out to take you for all they can get. Take it from one who knows. Get out, Terri, while you still got a chance."
"No," Terri said, the fear fading, her own dire plight remembered. "I'm not getting out. I want in. I could use some extra dough. You're not the only girl in the world who likes pretty things."
Pam's eyes narrowed. "Are you sure that's all there is to it? Say, you're not in a jam are you?"
"No," Terri lied, forcing conviction into her tone, "I just want a dozen pairs of nylons in my drawer at one time. I'd like to buy a dress, some new shoes, whenever the fancy strikes me. Is that too much to ask?"
"You sure you want to try this? I know Kaye would be glad to put you on. Those photogs dig baby-faced types."
"Kaye? Kaye who?"
"Kaye Travis. She runs this so-called agency."
"Aren't you afraid of going to a strange man's house? Posing in the nude? What if he tried something?"
"You are green, Terri. The legit boys we don't have to worry about. They've got studios, reputations to look, out for. But when we go out in the binter-lands we team up. One pose, one watches. We take turns, split the proceeds. It all averages out, but it's perfectly safe."
"But how can you do that? I mean just up and strip for a man you've never seen before?"
"You get used to it, Terri. After a while it doesn't mean a thing."
"Tell me more about it, Pam. Everything."
And while Pam detailed the dubious operation, emphasized the ease with which the money was earned, Terri's mind was already racing ahead of itself, she was already making up her mind. Three or four sittings, she calculated. And I'll have that two-hundred.
Only three or four sittings. I can demean myself that much. I can quit just as soon as I've raised the money.
Anything she vowed. Anything to get out of this damnable trap!