Walk on the Wild Side - By Karl Edward Wagner Page 0,20

however, hate to see a sweet kid burned like that, and he offered her a lead role in Hot & Horny. This one would be straight X—or XXX, as they liked to call them now, but a lot of talented girls had made the big time doing their stuff for the screen, and Candi Thorne just might be the next super-X superstar. He had the right connections, and if she played it right with him...

It wasn’t the Big Break Candace had dreamed of, but it was money. And they did need money. She worried that this would damage her chances for a legitimate acting career, but Rick told her to stop being a selfish prude and to think of their future together. His break was coming soon, and then they’d never have to worry again about money. Besides, audiences were already watching her perform in Malibu Hustlers, so what did she have left to be shy about?

The problem with coke was that Rick needed a lot of it to keep him and his macho image going. The trouble with a lot of coke was that Rick tended to get wired a little too tight, and then he needed downers to mellow out. Smack worked best, but the trouble with smack was that it was even more expensive. Still, tomorrow’s male sex symbol couldn’t go about dropping ’ludes and barbs like some junior high punker. Smack was status in this game—everybody did coke. Not to worry: Rick had been doing a little heroin ever since his New York days—no needle work, just some to toot. He could handle it.

Candace could not— either the smack or the expense. Rick was gaining a lot of influential contacts. He had to dress well, show up at the right parties. Sometimes they decided it would be better for his career if he went alone. They really needed a better place to live, now that they could afford it.

After making Wet ’n’ Willing Candace managed to rent a small house off North Beverly Glen Boulevard—not much of an improvement over her duplex in Venice, but the address was a quantum leap in class. Her biggest regret was having to leave her cats: no pets allowed. Her producer had advanced her some money to cover immediate expenses, and she knew he’d be getting it back in pounds of flesh. There were parties for important friends, and Candace felt quite casual about performing on camera after some of the things she’d been asked to do on those nights. And that made it easier when she was asked to do them again on camera.

Candace couldn’t have endured it all if it weren’t for her selfless love for Rick, and for the coke and smack and pills and booze. Rick expressed concern over her increasing use of drugs, especially when they were down to their last few lines. Candace economized by shooting more—less waste and a purer high than snorting.

She was so stoned on the set for Voodoo Vixens that she could barely go through the motions of the minimal plot. The director complained; her producer reminded her that retakes cost money, and privately noted that her looks were distinctly taking a shopworn plunge. When she threw up in her costar’s lap, he decided that Candi Thorne really wasn’t star material.

Rick explained that he was more disappointed than angry with her over getting canned, but this was after he'd bloodied her lip. It wasn’t so much that this financial setback stood to wreck his career just as the breaks were falling in place for him, as it was that her drug habit had left them owing a couple thou to the man, and how were they going to pay that?

Candace still had a few contacts to fall back on, and she was back before the cameras before the bruises had disappeared. These weren’t the films that made the adult theater circuits. These were the fifteen-minute-or-so single-takes shot in motel rooms for the 9-mm. home projector/porno peepshow audiences. Her contacts were pleased to get a semi-name porno queen, however semi and however shopworn, even if the films seldom bothered to list credits or titles. It was easier to work with a pro than some drugged-out runaway or amateur hooker, who might ruin a take if the action got rough or she had a phobia about Dobermans.

It was quick work and quick bucks. But not enough bucks.

Rick was panic-stricken when two large black gentlemen stopped him outside a singles bar one night