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as mayflies. Everyone was either blond and tan or dyed-black, artfully disheveled, and as pale as a rain cloud—perhaps, he thought, to make up for the lack of any in the sky. Unless you counted the sickly orange smog that painted the Porn Valley sky, the skies were blue and blameless every single day. He missed Kansas, and he knew he would never be back.
    He sat and smoked, playing idle pocket pool through his shorts, thinking about the night before. He was having trouble remembering just what he had done, out there on the decadent streets of Los Angeles. It had left him sexually sated, but something about it nagged at him. Even with the two Viagra he'd popped a half-hour ago, he knew he was going to have trouble getting wood today. His stomach growled, and he wondered idly when he had last eaten.
    Finally the director, Monty, arrived. People started hustling, shaking off the languorous California afternoon mood. The director gathered the two starlets and wandered over to Christian.
    "Hey, guy, how's it goin'. This little blond honey is Sugar. And that one," he pointed to the black-haired one, "is Jynx Spin. Go ahead and get to know each other."
    "Hey." The brunette, who looked more like fifteen than eighteen, didn't look up from her phone. Her nails were long, squared off, and tipped with hot pink rhinestones. Christian's eyes followed them as they danced over the phone's tiny keyboard. Monty wandered away, beating his tablet computer against his thigh and shouting about the lighting set up. The director's mustache carried a fine dusting of leftover cocaine, and Christian could not drag his eyes away from the way each flake caught the sun and sparkled: blue and red and pink and gold—the colors of California.
    Christian turned to Sugar and a bolt of panic shot through him. For a moment he thought the girl was Katrina, back from the land of the dead. Blond hair hanging over her shoulders, long legs. The memory of Katrina as she gasped out her last bloody breaths welled up out of his mind like groundwater. Katrina's eyes, the churned horror of her face, the tears tracking down her skin, the blood dripping. All of it appeared as a ghostly overexposure laid overtop Sugar's face.
    Then she turned to face him, and her dollar-green eyes bored into his.
    Christian pushed the lingering images of Katrina away and stood. "Name's Christian. Nice to meet you." They shook hands bloodlessly.
    "Sugar," she said. "Good to meet you." There was something curious and bold in her eyes that made Christian want to look away,
    The director strode back into the room, rubbing at his nose and sniffling. "OK people, let's go! T-minus ten minutes to magic hour, let's make it count and get out of here on time!"
    "Yeah, right," Sugar said. She smiled crookedly at Christian, who smiled uncertainly back. Once upon a time, girls like her had intimidated him. The pretty, perfect girls in school, always so imperious and cold. He'd never found them attractive sexually, but revered them in the way you would an untrustworthy and possibly dangerous deity.
    The Viagra began to thrum in his head, and with it a warm, thrusting hunger that stirred his belly. The thought of the night before, with all its chaos, danger, and sudden crashing violence, was enough to get his cock semi-hard. He loosened the tie on his robe and waited for everyone to take their places. The light from the accent lamps burned against the back of his neck.
    The script had the actresses playing a couple of college girls (though dressed to look younger) studying in a bedroom, until one thing led to another, and they started kissing and touching each other. Then Christian, playing the role of Sugar's brother, would wander in. He would say a few flirty words, and get right down to fucking the brunette. Sugar would only watch and touch herself. Nothing too rough or crazy, mostly a vanilla fuck, with only a little spit and name-calling. No anal at all—both girls had that in their contract.
    After