The Last Deep Breath by Tom Piccirilli Read Free Book Online

making small talk while eating soup and drinking wine.  Grey figured this was some kind of homage to German expressionism or some shit.  The girl had fake breasts that didn’t move an inch no matter how many acrobatics she and Harvey threw into the mix.  A boom handler kept the mic up close on the performers.  The director kept calling out positions.  “Now into cowgirl...now reverse...now Mish...”  Harvey followed through as commanded.  The rest of the diners started to join in and soon an orgy was in progress.  Harvey’s girl was making orgasmic noises that sounded so fake and painful that Grey figured she was going to hyperventilate soon and pass out under the candelabra.
    “My biggest movie we had a crew only half this size,” Kendra said.
    “You’re in the wrong biz.”
    “I suppose I am.”
    They watched the shenanigans for a little while longer.  It was much more boring than Grey had been expecting.  Harvey had trouble finishing off.  The director told everyone to freeze until Harvey got his shit together.  It seemed like it was going to take some time.
    “Let’s get a coffee,” Grey said.
    He and Kendra crashed the caterers table and munched on some buffalo wings and antipasto.  Between bites she asked, “So what do you think of him?”
    “I don’t know yet.”
    “Up close, I’m not impressed.  He gets a lot of help in the editing room.”
    Besides his non-functioning twelve-inch wonder of the world Harvey looked like pretty much any other guy on the block.  He kept his hair closely cropped, wore a little peach fuzz beard, had tribal tattoos to show he was a man of the world.  He had an armband crown of thorns that matched Ellie’s.  Grey couldn’t really read his eyes because Harvey was caught up in his fuck face expressions.
    “Are you going to pull the gun on him before you introduce yourself or after?” she asked.
    “Which do you think will make the biggest impression?”
    “Probably before.”
    Kendra knew one of the lighting guys and struck up a conversation.  Grey watched as Harvey finally pulled the trigger to the applause of the cast and crew.  Folks shook his hand.  Grey wondered why in the fuck anybody would shake anybody’s hand during a porn shoot until after they’d hit the showers, but clearly he didn’t know how things worked around here.
    Harvey put on a robe and followed the girl he’d just banged up a large staircase.  A few of the other performers marched upstairs as well.  Grey wondered if he should wait for Harvey to clean up and come back down or approach on the move.
    He told Kendra, “Back in a minute,” but she was so busy primping for the lighting guy that she didn’t respond.
    Grey stood at the bottom of the stairs and tried to imagine what Pax would do.  But he figured Pax would have waited until Harvey got home to his place in the valley and wouldn’t attack him in the middle of a porn set cleanup.
    Well, Pax was making the world safe for democracy and wasn’t here.  Grey took the steps three at a time.  The second floor had two large hallways with six or seven doors.   It wasn’t hard finding the right one.  The sound of squealing emerged from the end of the corridor.  Grey figured what the hell and walked in.
    It was a bathroom about three times the size of his old apartment in New York.  To the right was a claw-foot bathtub with two hot chicks in it, a huge shower currently occupied by several folks behind a beveled glass door, a sink you could bathe in, and a counter covered with three different drugs he could name and a couple he couldn’t.  Two of the orgy guys were sniffing coke off the rock hard tits of the girl who’d been Harvey’s partner.
    To the left was a large hot tub.  Harvey was alone in it.  He had lain back and looked half-asleep.
    Grey thought, Where’s the toilet?  A thousand square feet of bathroom and no shitter?
    He shook his head, stepped over to Harvey, and said, “I’m Ellie’s