Chapter 17

Henna fumbled with a cigarette, her hands flicking the lighter again and again. Her hands were shaking, and she desperately needed something to calm her down, but no matter how many times she flicked the flint, nothing but sparks came out. It was empty.

She had been so caught up in Cockzilla’s career and Nekkie’s mysterious leave of absence that she hadn’t checked the company books until a few hours ago, and they were enough to make her shudder in terror. To say that the coffers were dry would be an understatement. After the investors withdrew their bids, expenses had been piling up like wreckage behind a strained dam. The company was massively in the red, thanks in no small part to long lines of mysterious charges made to the company credit card. Someone was renting limos, buying alcohol, and mostly making large cash advances like there was no tomorrow. And Henna knew exactly who.

After finding some matches, Henna finally managed to light her cigarette. She took a long hard drag, the smoke filling her lungs. Until last month, when she had met Cockzilla, she had remained smoke free for almost twenty years. But now she was back to her old habits in more ways than she remembered. Her fingers moved the mouse gently, letting her scroll up and down through the long list of company transactions. No matter where she looked though, the answer was the same. If the business was going to remain solvent, there would need to be a lot of firings. And even that was no guarantee. The next movie they made had better sell well, and they were going to have to push the website hard. No more hiring free agents and rolling the dice. It would need to be big names and hardcore.

But that still left the problem of Cockzilla. Yes, he wasn’t bleeding out as much cash as he could have, but the losses wouldn’t be so bad were 111it not for his blatant abuse of the company credit card. What had she been thinking when she gave him the use of it? She didn’t even let Nekkie or Norris use it except in her presence, and both of them had been with her for at least three years at this point. Three years! The day they were hired, Cockzilla hadn’t even reached legal age yet. And here he was, draining the accounts and harassing the talent. Where had it all gone wrong?

Henna kept a bottle of bourbon in her desk when she needed to impress and seduce investors, but lately she’d been hitting it simply to help her relax. Whenever she wasn’t with Cockzilla, she began to get jittery, her body twitching and shaking like she was a junkie in need of a hit. He had a power over her, the power of forgetting. When she was with him, she wasn’t a forty-something CEO, but a twenty-something pornstar lusted over by all the cute boys. Sex with him was incredible, unlike anything she had felt in years, and though he handed it to her sparingly, she wanted nothing but more and more of it. When he was with her, nothing seemed to matter. Not the money, not the actresses, not even the way that he was on stage. All that mattered was the way she felt. But that high came at a price, one that was becoming ever more dear as time went on.

Henna took out the bottle and tipped it up, chugging the foul liquid in strong gulps. It was disgusting this way, the fine distilled beverage turning into bad medicine as she drank it hard. But she needed something to blow her away right now. What could she do? She had sunk all her hopes on Cockzilla being not only her lover, but a new star to replace the ones she had, the ones she had much too late realized were her only friends. In her blindness, she had gambled and lost. Maybe she could sell the company and move on, hopefully to something that was a bit more respectful. She was getting old, after all. Maybe some dead-end job in an office cubicle was just what she needed.

Just as she was tossing the empty bottle into the trash, her door began to open it. From the brash and forceful way the door flung open, she could tell right away it was Norris. Even Cockzilla had the decency to knock, and besides, he had gone off to some party for the night. Henna sat back in her seat and sighed, expecting him to have come to complain about the weight room, or the lack of food in the fridge, or one of his other petty complaints. He was almost as big of a diva as Laycee sometimes.

“Henna, we’ve got to talk,” he said. As he entered, Brad came up behind him, holding a large sheaf of recently printed documents. This was interesting. Usually when Norris came to whine and complain, he did so alone. And he’d never brought so much as a single sheet of paper, except when he wanted to claim some piece of box art didn’t show him off the way he wanted.

“Look, I’ve got a lot of financial stuff to deal with,” said Henna, turning back to her computer. If Norris had a real complaint, he’d push, if not, she needed to at least make a list of who she needed to fire and what services needed to be cut. “Can’t it wait until tomorrow?”

“It’s waited more than long enough,” said Brad. He dropped the pile of documents on Henna’s desk, sending them spilling this way and that. They were mostly photo proofs, the sort that ended up on the cutting room floor or shredder because they were not properly printed or lit or just didn’t look good when blown up. They were all of Cockzilla, and none of them were ones Henna had seen before. There were printed documents too, all reflecting the same sort of financial data which Henna had pulled up on her computer. “Cockzilla has to go. And you’re making him leave.”

“Where did you…” Henna’s eyes went wide as she thumbed through the photos. They were clearly taken with company equipment, and by one of the staff, but they were of scenes and material that Henna had never authorized. Cockzilla was fucking girls like crazy, making some of them cry, making others go limp. Mostly they were freelancers, but one of the stars stood out: again and again, there were scenes of Sunset having an orgasm, all taken from Studio 3. She remembered authorizing a scene of the two of them together, but nothing like this. She could see Cockzilla turning his talents on Sunset the same way he had on Henna, making her cum like crazy all over his enormous shaft. It was almost like discovering he was cheating on her.

“We leaned on Michael, that fat rabbit who shoots the cheap gonzo shit,” said Brad. “The little fucker is Cockzilla’s accomplice. A few hundred here and there, always lifted out of the petty cash, and he keeps his mouth shut or even helps the fucker out. Pretty much all of those photos are Michael’s work.”

“The other papers tell me stuff I guess you already know,” said Norris. His voice was stern and angry. Henna had almost never seen him like this. He had gotten irritated and upset before, but that had always seemed so petty. Right now it felt more like he was looking for an excuse to pick her up and hurl her out of the window. It was frightening. “We’re in the red because we’re not selling any films, because we haven’t MADE any films. And you know why? Because Cockzilla’s been helping himself to the company coffers while fucking and driving off our big stars. Here, look at this.” He tossed a small cell phone on top of the papers, one that Henna instantly recognized as the one she’d bought for Cockzilla. “He left it in his trailer, which was unlocked, by the way.”

Henna thumbed through the cell phone and found a long list of names, all of stars and freelancers who’d passed through the facility. On the phone were numerous photos of him fucking them behind dumpsters, in bathrooms, and in his own trailer. Most damning of all, however, were 113the ones of Nekkie. Henna didn’t know the whole situation, but she had no doubt that there had been a flare-up of infidelity between Nekkie and her boyfriend. The fact that there were photos of Cockzilla fucking the both of them on his phone confirmed this. And from the look on their faces, clearly he had started it, whatever their guilt for giving in.

With all the answers staring her in the face, Henna broke down, burying her face in her hands and sobbing. Thanks to her neglect, and probably her complicit behavior as well, Cockzilla had managed to make a royal mess of the place. Whatever he did to Nekkie had driven her off, and from the look of it he was giving Sunset the same dose of bad medicine, explaining her sudden shyness around Brad and subsequent drop in ability to perform on camera. Ultimately, Cockzilla was behind all of the trouble, from the raided company coffers to the best stars walking away or going soft. Henna was crushed with guilt, the weight of her weakness pressing down hard on her shoulders.

“I…I just wanted…” sniffed Henna, “I just wanted to be young again, you know? I was a big star back then. Every boy wanted me. And I was rich, too! I could walk into any store in LA and just grab whatever I wanted. When I was growing up in India, we had to scrape and pinch just to get enough money to send me to school. But by 18 I was the star of Antipodes, and by 25 I was running it. Do you know what that’s like?”

“No, I don’t,” said Norris, huffing his disgust in Henna’s face. “But I do know what you need to do next. You need to get rid of Cockzilla, that’s all that matters.”

“It’s not as easy as just telling him to leave,” said Henna. “How could I be so stupid? I practically let him write his own contract…I explained to him how to fuck me over! And I gave him complete access to everything. How could I be so blind?” Henna buried her face in her arm as she resumed sobbing, causing Norris to kick her garbage can in frustration. It bounced against the wall, spilling torn papers and diet bar wrappers all over the floor. But as Norris growled in anger, Brad bent forward, patting her on the shoulder and kissing her on the cheek.

“Look, he fooled a lot of us,” said Brad. “He created a beautiful dream for you, and you believed it was real because you needed that high. But what matters now is what we do next. Cockzilla has given us a big mess to clean up. But we’re up to the task, right? We can fix this mess!”

Henna sobbed a bit longer, but then looked up at Brad, nodding and wiping at her runny makeup. Brad smiled at her, and though Norris glowered at her with disdain, she knew that she could count on him. These guys were true friends, honest with their words and emotions, and not afraid to tell her things were wrong. “Well…What should I do first?”

“The first thing you need to do is call the bank and have them kill the company credit card,” said Brad. “Second, I learned enough about contract law to find some very interesting bits in the boilerplate you put on every one of our contracts. One phone call to the right people and Cockzilla will not only be out of a contract, he’ll be someplace he can’t hurt anyone at all, not even you…”