Scotch Rutherford

Two Smoking Hot Girls

JUNE 8, 1980

Fairfax Boulevard marinated in a vermillion afterglow, touching the date palms, simmering against the show and flow of slick glossy chassis rushing past in an electric stream of posh and style. Designer duds on sun-kissed hard bodies strolled past. Stellas and studs. It was all feeding into the kinetic pulse that rippled through the back lot of Canter’s Deli, and was now vibrating between Stephanie McGrath’s thighs. Stephanie was the early-out. They always had one last cigarette—Penelope and Stephanie, whenever one of them was the early-out. One for the road.

Penelope Wise’s cheeks hollowed as she sucked hard on the tubular white forerunner to emphysema. The fiery tip glowed against encroaching dusk. She blew smoke.

“So…it’s like a throbbing, euphoric ache with a hint of…Technicolor TV static?”

“Yeah”. Stephanie took a drag, and a long exhale. “Throbbing and like a stretching sensation inside…”

“Like your body getting ready for something to go inside?”

“Yeah.”

“Blue walls.”

“Blue walls?”

“Yeah”, Penelope said. “Like what happens to guys. “I’m hip, man. Been there, had that.”

Penelope was hot shit, and she knew it. 26 and laughing at the reaper. As though he showed up to assign her that first set of wrinkles, and instead she gave him the best blowjob this side of hell, and sent him merrily on his way. Brunette and curvy, half Jewish and half guido grease monkey on her mom’s side. But all scrappy broad.

“I don’t know. I think it’s something else.”

“Like what? Coke?”

“No,” Stephanie said. “Nothing like that. Last night I went to that party over at…”

“UCLA. With ah, Patrick?”

“Patrick.” Stephanie choked on smoke mid-exhale when she giggled. “Yeah.”

“Okay. Spill it.”

“It was our third date…”

“Third. First. C’mon, kiddo. Who cares.”

“I…” Stephanie cleared her throat, and lowered her voice, then looked around, and said, “Gave him a blowjob. I tried to give him a blowjob…”

Penelope burst into laughter. “Oh, honey. You have to maintain eye contact…”

“He…You know. Lost his hard-on…”

“Oh sweetie. It wasn’t your fault. But full range of motion…Play with his balls…”

“I just…I panicked and ran off…But I met this other guy. He was older. He kind of looked like my uncle Rod.”

“His name was Rod?” Penelope giggled. “Gross.”

“No. His name was like Steve, I think…But my Uncle Rod was kind of hot. He died in a car wreck.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, kiddo.”

“He took me for a ride on his Harley Davidson on my sixteenth birthday. We rode around my small town back in Iowa. All the girls in school were like He’s so groovy. I’d make out with him.”

“So this Steve guy looked like your uncle?”

“Yeah. And he was like I guess a professor at UCLA, of farm-a…”

“Pharmacology.”

“Yeah. And he gave me these pills…I guess he wasn’t supposed to…”

“What do you mean, wasn’t supposed to?”

“They were like, experimental. Called Adam.”

“Like Adam Ant?”

“Yeah. It was called Adam. It was called Adam, because they felt it returned patients to a more innocent state.”

“Like Adam and Eve?”

“Yeah. It was supposed to get people in touch with their sexuality. I got like so high.”

“Looks like it worked.” Penelope took a drag. “So did you guys fuck?”

“Fuck who?”

“You and Uncle Rod?” Penelope filled in the silence. “The guy who looked like your Uncle Rod.”

“Oh. I don’t know,” Stephanie said. “I don’t remember anything. I woke up naked in my bed. With heart palpitations. And feeling like this.” 

“Trippy, man. Did your drunk asshole old man cash in on your ah…Altered state?”

“Fuck no. He was passed out in his clothes on the couch.”

“Stephaine. Oooh. When are you going to get rid of that asshole? The one time you’re actually horny…” 

“I get horny…”

“He can’t even get it up. C’mon, look at you. You’re rock candy baby…You’re hard sweet and sticky…C’mon look at you. Strawberry blonde…Contours for days. A chassis like a friggin’ Corvette Stingray. Look at those tits!” 

“Stop.” Stephanie looked around the nearly vacant back lot to see if she should be embarrassed.

“Better use it up before it gets old.”

“Oh, look who’s projecting.”

“Oh screw you, man.”

“How long’s it been?”

“Like three weeks. On top of that it’s going to be that time of the month. Like any minute now.” 

This wasn’t news to Stephanie. They spent so much time together on and off shift and on so many smoke breaks, they had the same cycle.

“No wonder you’re so goddamn horny!”

They both laughed.

Penelope grounded out the remnants of her cigarette into the curb. “How’d that audition on Friday go?”

The New Backstage came out every Thursday morning with a list of open calls. Come Thursday at 10AM, Penelope and Stephanie would be hovering over the counter at Sam French on Sunset and Stanley. They’d find the general auditions—ones that weren’t union, and didn’t require an agent. On audition day, they’d get up before dawn to get into a line (they were never first) that stretched sometimes three blocks long. But this past weekend Penelope had to work.

“Oh hoho. Oh…You won’t believe it…” This required another cigarette. Stephanie slid a Virginia Slim between her cherry red lips and fired up the tip. “Okay, so I read the sides. And okay, it’s a guy. The casting director’s a guy. Like how often do you see that?”

“He was cute?”

“Oh fuck no. Total poindexter. Okay, so I read the sides…And then he goes turn around. Let me see your behind…Let me see you from behind, that’s it.”

“Your ass.”

“Yeah, he wanted to see my ass.”

“And?”

“And. I said, I don’t fuckin’ think so. And walked out.”

“So he saw your ass anyway.”

“Oh, okay…”

“So you might as well have shown him your ass, you know…”

“Politely?”

“Yeah, politely. And maybe you would have gotten a call back.”

“Oh fuck that.”

“Who was it for?”

“Oh. The director? Wes Craven.”

“Wes Craven. Oh, you fucked up, man. The Hills Have Eyes. The Last House on the Left.”

“Yeah, okay. Alright,” Stephanie said, sucking in a nice long drag. “I prefer a little more chivalry.”

“Chivalry? You want chivalry go to a Ren faire, man.”

“What? You think you don’t deserve chivalry?” The pulsating shudder Stephanie felt between her thighs gave way to the throaty rumble of high-performance engine. 

“Of course I do,” Penelope said. “Here comes my knight in shining armor now.”

The Cavallino Rampante, a prancing black stallion, was center stage as the front grill of the inferno-red Ferrari plunged into view, searing the edges of their POVs, flexing its muscle in a deep-throated growl. “Four point four V12 engine with 352 horsepower,” Penelope said. “Ferrari Daytona, 1972. Holy shit. That’s Jon Peters.”

“Barbara Streisand’s old man. Total womanizer.”

“Bet you’d show him your ass.”

Jon Peters had style. Watching him get out of his Ferrari was a performance. 

So now Penelope had the newly lit cigarette hanging out at the very corner of her mouth, gripping it by the tail end of the filter. Probably thought she looked sexy. She did. 

“Nobody’s rocked a beard that hot since Jim Morrison,” Penelope said.

A chocolate velvet blazer with a navy blue wide collared shirt belted into Guess blue jeans.

“Check out the blazer. Looks like Yves Saint Laurent.”

“Nah,” Stephanie said. “Halston.”

Both girls were quiet, as he pushed the door shut and stepped up onto the curb. There was only one true test to know if a guy had style, or he was a sleaze: Footwear. Jon Peters had on Gucci loafers.

“Thanks for saving me a space, girls,” Jon Peters said. 

He was staring at Stephanie when he said it. All she could do is stare up at her reflection in the midnight blue lenses of his Carrera aviators. Her work tee had shrunk on the first wash and now she was pitching tent poles.

“Anytime”, Penelope said, as he walked past them. “Come again.” They watched him discreetly slip in through the back entrance. 

Penelope cocked an eyebrow. “Way to show him your ass, Steph. Jon fucking Peters just spoke to you, and you couldn’t even say hello. Total deer-in-the-headlights, man”. She dropped the latter half of an unfinished cigarette onto the asphalt and stamped it out. “I’m totally grabbing his section.”