"I'm a writer, darling," Fitzgerald said, drawing her closer to kiss her. "I write, well it's kind of hard to explain."
"Try," she said, letting her breasts dangle gently on either side of his face. Fitzgerald reluctantly closed his eyes to concentrate; Vanessa lay on her back. "I write copy for men's magazines. You wouldn't know about this, of course, but Playboy does a little, well, EDITING of the material it gets from its models." He paused. "Anna Nicole Smith, for instance. That was heavily edited. Nobody really wanted to know that her name was Vicki Smith, that she was divorced, and that she had a son--who's almost old enough for high school himself, now. No one wants to read a biography of her that says "Playboy found me dancing in a titty bar in Houston." It would destroy everybody's illusion of her. So she goes straight from working in a fried chicken shack in Mexia to Playboy, with no marriage, son, or topless dancing in between. We don't actually LIE, we just leave out all the stuff that no one wants to hear, really." Pause. "It was the same with Christy Carrera. That's not her given name, you know. Playboy found her dancing in Houston, too. A lot of them seem to come from Texas, I don't know why. I've never seen a Playmate from, say, Rhode Island."
"Suzanne's from Texas. She was on the Texas Bikini Team," Vanessa offered, looking up at the ceiling.
"I didn't know that," said Fitzgerald. "Anyway, Penthouse does the same thing. But they're much bigger liars. I had to rewrite an entire bio for this one Pet. I made her into an executive in corporation that ran a chain of gyms. No one wanted to know the truth: that she was a topless dancer in a titty bar when Penthouse found her. That's hardly glamourous at all. I think she was May of 1987."
"Ever get to meet them?"
Pause. "Nah. I just get to see the pictures and work from those." Pause. "No, wait, come to think of it, I DID get to have lunch with the Pet of the Month for May in 1987."
"What was she like?"
"More like a topless dancer than a gym company executive."
Vanessa got out of bed and walked to the bathroom to shower. Fitzgerald leaned over and reached for the phone, punching "0":
"Operator."
"This is Fitzgerald."
"Goddamn, it's good to hear your voice, sir."
"Is my office ready yet?"
Pause. "Fifteen minutes."
"Great. I'll write you a vacation sometime."
"Thank you, sir," said the voice.
"Thank you," Fitzgerald said, hanging up. When he looked back at the place where Vanessa had left her clothes, there were fresh clothes, neatly folded, were in the same place. Fitzgerald put on his clothes and walked out into the living room, closing the door to give Vanessa some privacy while she put her clothes on.
They left the room together, walking to the elevators, and took an elevator to Office Floor 4. They walked to the entrance to #404.
On the door was "404--F-Cup Fitzgerald's Offices."
They went in. The front room was a reception area where a secretary would ordinarily be seated. They walked through into another, larger room. It looked like the office that a well-to-do executive would've occupied back in the 1930's. [See Albert Finney's office in "Miller's Crossing" for an approximate idea.]
"Nice office!" said Vanessa.
Tue Apr 24 14:41:22 2001