Now, porn was virtually homemade, with dozens of small companies in the business. They shot on tape, never on film. A producer was somebody with five thousand bucks, a good source of coke and six willing friends. There were few superstars like John Holmes or Annette Haven or Seka or Georgina Spelvin. Shelly Lowe was as famous as anyone. (With a tough glance at the camera: "Hell, I've got five hundred films under my belt. So to speak.") But stars' fame was limited to New York and California mostly. In Middle America Shelly Lowe was just another face on the boxes of tapes offered for rental in curtained-off corners of family video stores. If she'd been in the business in the mid-seventies she would have done live appearances at theater openings across the country. Now, that didn't happen.

Making a film was easy: A three-person crew rented a loft or took over somebody's apartment for two days, set up the camcorders and lights and sound, shot six to ten fuck scenes and twenty minutes of transitions. The script was a ten-page story idea. Dialogue was improvised. In the postproduction house two versions were edited. Hardcore for sale to the adult theaters, mail order, peep shows and video stores; soft for sale to the cable stations and in-room hotel movie services. Movie theaters weren't the biggest outlet for adult films anymore; they went out of business or put in video projection units, then went out of business anyway. But people rented porn tapes and took them home and watched them. Four thousand X-rated videos were made every year. They had become a commodity.

"Mass production. It's the era of pornography as Volkswagen."

"What about you? Like personally?" Rune asked. "You get forced into the business? Were you like kidnaped? Molested when you were ten?"

Shelly laughed. "Not hardly. I wanted to do it. Or maybe 1 should say that the pressures were subtle. I wanted desperately to act but I couldn't get any legit jobs. Nothing that paid the rent. Porn was the only job I could get. Then I found that not only was I acting but I was making great money. I had control. Not only creative control but sexual control too. It can be a real high."

"Weren't you exploited?"

Shelly laughed once more, shook her head. Looked straight into the camera. "That's the myth of pornography. No, we're not poor farm girls who get enslaved. Men have the power in legitimate films but in porn it's the other way around. Just like with sex in real life: It's thewomen who're in control. We have what men want and they're willing to pay for it. We make more money than men do, we dictate what we do and what we don't do. We're on top. Forgive the joke."

Surprise in Rune's voice: "So you like the business?"

A pause and the sincere eyes glazed back easily into the Betacam's expensive, glossy lens. "Not exactly. There's one problem. There's no sense of… beauty. They call them erotic films but there's nothing erotic about them.

Erotic connotes emotional stimulation as well as physical. Close-ups of people humping isn't erotic. I think I said this to you before: The business has a real low common denominator."

"So why have you stayed with it?" Rune asked.

"I do some legitimate theater now. Not much but every once in a while. And most I've ever made has been four thousand dollars a year. Making porn, I made a hundred twelve last year. Life's expensive. I took the path of least resistance."

Shelley slumped an inch and Rune noticed something. The tough, flirty woman who'd begun talking, the Shelly with the facts and figures, the Shelly with the newscaster's grit in her voice, wasn't the same person who was talking now. This was someone different: softer, sensitive, thoughtful.

Shelly sat up, crossed her legs. She looked at her watch. "Hey, I'm beat. Let's call it a wrap for tonight."

"Sure."

The hot lights went dark and made tapping noises as they cooled. Immediately Rune felt the chill of the evening envelop them.

"How did it go, you think?" Rune asked. "I thought it was super.

Shelly said, "You're a very easy person to talk to."

"I'm not even using any of my questions." Rune sat in the lotus position and flapped her knees up and down like butterfly wings. "There's so much material… and we've hardly started talking about you yet. You're so good."

"You're still interested, we can go to that party."

"You bet."

Shelly asked, "Use your phone?"

"Sorry, remember? I'm Miss Incommunicado."

"A ship-to-shore radio. That's what you need. Then let's stop by the studio for a minute? I've got to see if there's a shoot scheduled for tomorrow." She noticed Rune's small JVC camcorder. "Why don't you bring that. You can do some taping at the party."

"Great." Rune packed the small camera. "You think they'll mind?"

Shelly smiled in a way that was also a shake of her head. "You'll be with the star, remember?"

Lame Duck Productions' soundstage was only three blocks from Rune's company.

Both were located in Chelsea, a neighborhood that changed block by block-while L amp;R's building sat next to an overpriced, gentrified restaurant, Lame Duck's squatted in a gray and greasy stretch of Korean importers and warehouses and coffee shops. Rune smelled garlic and rancid oil as they walked along the street. Cobblestones shone through the asphalt. Battered cars and delivery vans waited for another day of abuse on the streets of New York City.

They walked into the lobby of the building, stained with the residue of a thousand halfhearted moppings. Shelly said, "I'll be right down. I just have to check the scheduling board. Is it too dark to shoot some exteriors?" She nodded toward the video camera.

Rune said she would.

The security guard said, "Oh, Miss Lowe, phone message for you. It says urgent."

Shelly took the pink message slip, read it. She said to Rune. "Be right down."

Rune wandered along the sidewalk outside. She held the camera to her eye but the low-light warning flashed through the eyepiece. She put it back into her bag. The garlic was making her hungry and she wondered what there was to eat at pornographic film parties.

Food, like everybody else, girl. What do you think? Shelly's just like anybody else. She-

"Hey, Rune!" Shelly's voice filled the street.

Rune looked up but in the gloom couldn't see which window she was calling from. Then she saw the actress outlined in a third-floor window. She called back, "What?"

"I'm shooting at eleven tomorrow. You want to watch?"

"I guess," she said quickly and then just as quickly realized that she did not in fact want to see the shoot. "You think it's okay?"

"I'll make it okay. Let me make this call. I'll be right down." She vanished inside.

This could be totally weird. What was the set like? Would the crew seem bored? Did the sets turn into one big orgy? Maybe some of the actors would proposition her-though if all the actresses were tall and blonde and beautiful like Shellythat probably wouldn't be a problem. Did men and women just walk around naked on the-The ball of flame was like a ragged sun, so bright that Rune instinctively threw her arms up over her eyes, just saving her face from the bits of concrete and glass and wood that hurtled into the street, on the heels of a roar so loud that the slap of the concussion landed like knuckles all over her body.

Rune screamed-in terror at the thundering volume and in pain as she slammed into a battered Chevy van parked on the curb.

Smoke rising, flames…

For some time Rune lay in the gutter, her head wedged against the concrete curb, her face resting in a patch of oily water. The ringing in her ears so loud she thought a steam pipe had ruptured.

God, what happened? A plane crash?