The veranda railing supported me as I fingered the vial while overlooking the Pacific touched by the morning sunlight. The waves were crashing softly beneath the blue and white sky. I was in a green bikini, a color which I’m sure means something about freshness, hope, spring or exoticism somewhere, but not to me.

My parents had divorced when I was eight, just diagnosed with Juvenile Diabetes. They both lived elsewhere now and had other children, my better halves. For my parents, I had been a useful weapon as a child, an object that could help them extort money from each other and emotionally wound each other. It was an old story and did not need recounting. I have always been an object for obtaining money.

The color green embodied another persona: Klover, my shield against the world. My legal name was Julia, but I was professionally known as Klover. The green-eyed, tan-line free Klover always dressed or ready to be undressed in green. Looking at the sea, I told myself it was the false Klover that was responsible and that perhaps the contents in this vial would end her.

"Julia," it was the soft voice of my ex-fiancée, Kyle. He was at the gate.

I turned and regarded him for a moment. He was here again out of idle curiosity or to offer himself as a savior. He was dressed in a lightweight gray suit, complete with designer sunglasses. His sweetly scented cologne whisked its way through the salty air. I listened to the waves in the background and focused my eyes on him. Different from the sea, yet a creature from it.

"Well, hello Professor," I said. "To what do I owe this visit?"

"Academic interest," he said.

"Should I take off my top or would you like some iced tea first?"

He shrugged. "Things have changed."

"Some things never change," I said. "We’ll always remember the past differently and I’ll always be a diabetic. Would you like to come inside?"

"You know I have no interest in being surrounded by your walls."

He held up a videotape. There was no label on it, but I knew what was on it. It had been released in such haste that half of the first production line lacked printed titles. This was done for fear that the Internet crowd would get a hold of it and deny the celluloid its value via digital transcendence. Now the whole tape was out there; instead of logging on, people were forking over hundreds for it. It was deemed as being the real thing. I thought of it as an inside look at a private terror.

He took a seat, put the tape on the table, and asked for iced tea. I went inside and enjoyed the task. It afforded both of us space for reflection. It kept me from talking and him from asking questions. When I finished pouring the two glasses of iced tea I looked at them to bide some more time. They were equal in quantity and makeup and each glass had three ice cubes. They were similarly prepared individuals about to enter two entirely dissimilar worlds. I brought the drinks out to him.

"Are there legal ramifications?"

Good, a shallow question. All of that had been supposedly taken care of by George.

"Not really," I said. "The story–"

"That’s the official story," he said. "I know you, and I watched the tape. I know better."

Yes, he knew better. So did the whole world, that’s why they were buying it. But it couldn’t be proven, and there was an even greater truth behind it.

"So what if you do? People want reality," I said. "They want something real and we gave it to them. How does it matter how it came about?"

"Are you going to–" he stopped.

He sipped his drink and looked at the ocean.

"You didn’t like her?"

"No," I said. "None of us did."

"The performances on this tape would suggest otherwise."

I smiled at his juvenile statement, sipped my tea and slowly licked my lips while considering my answer. After all this time, for all his research and learning, he was still puzzled by the nature of human nature: the disassociation between the craving for the warm flesh of youth and the more elusive warmth of inner humanity, unique, timeless, and rarely found.

"She had a beautiful body," I chose my words carefully. "She was an attractive girl." And I knew what phrases would sicken him and torment his mind. "She tasted good."

The act was one thing; the imagination engaged in ruminating on it was another.

"Where is she?"

"Back home."

"With her family?"

"Don’t you watch the tabloid shows?"

He sighed. It wasn’t important if he had seen it. The sensational content was general knowledge: current events on the level of an impeachment hearing, a war against an Arabian tyrant, or the birth five or more children in a remote section of the United States where it was still possible not have local Internet access.

I had the show on tape. I watched the fifteen-minute interview it featured with her. She broke down and cried for ten of the fifteen minutes. She voiced her desire to be used as a lesson for the youth of the country. What kind of stupid statement was that?

Family members were profiled. Television portrayed them as mid-western America’s stock working class folk. The father had owned a picture framing business. When that business had failed he had become a dealer in Vegas. The mom worked the graveyard shift at the local convenience store. The store had been robbed once, and she suffered from minor brain damage caused by the thief who’d wielded a lead pipe. The younger brother was a contractor. At the end of the show, a shorter interview segment was added in which she appeared with a priest.

"Have you viewed the material, Father?"

"Yes," he said. "Liz is a lost sheep to whom I must tend. We are overjoyed that she has come back to us."

A pretty young girl who could have a future in our business came on the screen, "When we come back tomorrow we will get reactions from professionals in the business." They cut to a series of faces I recognized and had worked with.

--The people who did this better just watch out because people are not happy about this kind of stuff, a young man said.

A more lucid young woman who had recently starred in her first interracial film was questioned on a street corner outside of a club.

--They said there was a switch at the last minute and there were a lot of new faces on the set and it wasn’t safe. The people behind this have to pay. These were unsafe working conditions. Liz was setup. They knew. That’s why they videoed it.

--And we’ll talk to the sought-after director of this sought-after movie, George Cordette.

--The young people I work with are like athletes. They are in great shape and have immeasurable stamina. I won’t tell you that there are not risks. With this film there were some changes, some replacements added at the last minute. Everyone came to work with documentation stating they had a clean bill of health. Let me state for the record that there were new faces, but only one person has received this news so far. It didn’t necessarily happen on the set.

--Have you received all of the results?

They cut to the cast party and rolled the credits.

I watched my commercial-free tape continuously. George called me.

"Did you see that program last night?"

"Yes."

"Did you see that priest?"

"Yeah."

"What was the name of that parish? The Church of Eternal Forgiveness or Forgetfulness? Good actor, maybe we can hire him for our next film," he said. "Maybe we can even do a legitimate documentary about her coping with life after–"

"Whatever," I said and that made him pause, but only momentarily.

"Luscious Lips just called me up," he said. "They want to do a special issue devoted to the making of the video. They want to talk to you about your reactions as you filmed her response to the news."

I hung up.

Interviews on major shows were planned for Liz. Luscious Lips was calling George for me. No words I had ever spoken had ever been printed anywhere; they were always added later by a pimply faced intern who’d adjusted the lighting while the cameraperson told me: "Now pretend you have a tight piece string attached to your tailbone and it is being pulled high over your head. Good, it’s getting just a little tighter, raise it just a little more, hold it. Now give me that satisfied look. Don’t move. Don’t even breathe. Chelsea, can you drape a few strands of her hair over her cheek. Good, keep it high Julia. Chelsea, it looks like there is a fuzzy on her left lip that is ruining the shot, can you get it. Perfect."

Health and Life Management classes across the country were talking about Liz and showing the black and white segment I had filmed. She was an icon, everything the people in our business wanted to be. The tape in its entirety was being added to college curriculums.

"I was teaching last night," Kyle said. "Night school."

"You want to watch it? I have it on tape inside."

"Have you seen the tape?"

"No," I said. "I starred in part of it and filmed the true climax."

"And climaxed yourself."

"Faked, honey. Or has it been so long that your memory of real and fake is leaving you?"

"The students have been asking me about you again."

"It was a student that ruined our life."

"No," he said. "It was my fault. Father Nacci warned us of problems of that kind and I didn’t heed his advice. If I had listened–"

"It was just a part-time job, I was going to graduate from the dance stage to the aisle of bliss," I said. "I was going to go back to school full-time, I was going to–"

He put a finger to his lips. It was a silencing action he did whenever I started to revise history. Losing Kyle was the first time I realized that I had to take responsibility for my choices. Though much time had passed, I was still learning that fact. I knew that Liz was too. She was learning about the consequences of nature; I was learning about the consequences of conscience.

"Why are you here? To be close to the action? Everything between us was so long ago."

"No," he said. "I’m here to see if you need help."

"Well, I don’t," I said. "And if I did I wouldn’t accept any help from you."

"What will you do now," he said.

"I have some interviews to do."

"Interviews?"

"To sell the product."

"Why? Adults have stopped watching mainstream movies this week. They’re spending their money on your entertainment. They’re showing your performances and camera work to their children."

"Because I’m being paid," I said. "I need to do this now because I need as much money as possible so I can get out of this business. So I can get out of here."

My desperate temper left us both silent. We finished our iced tea listening to the hypnotic rhythm of nature’s water. He put a key on the glass table.

"It’s the spare to my apartment," he said. "If you need help or anything."

He left without any further communication. When I heard his car start, I walked to the fence and peered over it. He had his sunglasses on and was looking in the rearview mirror as he pulled out. I assumed he did not see me. Once he had backed out of the driveway, he kept his face turned in the direction of the road, never stopping to even glance back at the home he had been so impressed with at the time of its purchase.

He hadn’t asked why. To that question there was really no clear answer, except money. George had picked me because he knew I would film it. He also knew I hadn’t been with any of the "new faces"–some of whom were from overseas and whose health records were dubious–and that my results would not affect my ability to film Liz. He also knew I hated her.

We had known each other for two years. Friends and partners on-screen, we had shared a drug habit off-screen. We starred in some films together, toured the dance circuit, and did stint at the Mustang Ranch together where we went for a very high price. A year after we met, we had an argument on the set of a film in which she was the star. I had kicked my drug habit–it had made me very sick–and didn’t want to pay a special visit with her to a gang lord who used to supply us with drugs in exchange for our joint service. She retaliated by cutting me from the film. That in turn got me cut from what would have been my first radio interview with a shock jock and that had disastrously affected my earning potential. Since then I hadn’t cleared forty thousand and my career was in trouble.

I had been assigned to get an interview for Luscious Lips. I was mainly a reviewer, but I had a penchant for detail and a mission to get down, with as much accuracy as possible and a little embellishment, Klover’s feelings about what had happened and her role in it. I took copious notes as I exited my car and prepared to enter her domain. Her place was beautiful, semi-secluded with a veranda that overlooked the Pacific. I sketched the scene, the sun was seeping beneath the water and a calm had descended on this reclusive strip of residence. I wrote down a line about the incessant sound of the waves crashing below the domicile of the woman whose black-and-white epilogue to one of the best-selling adult films of all time had become an instant American classic, hungered for by people around the globe. It featured over two hours of constant procreativity rendered in full color, accompanied by the Dolby-enhanced surround sound audio that caught every moan and squeal, and was punctuated by a death sentence captured by the analog technology of yesteryear. The film editing received an A-plus for integration and featured quality heretofore unseen. A new version scheduled for release later in the week would include scenes from a cast party.

"Are you going to come in?"

At the front door was a figure in a short silk emerald robe that ended where her long tan legs began.

I walked toward her and extended my hand as I introduced myself. She held the door open.

"I’ll call you George," she said, "come in."

The interior was plush, filled with furnishings my instinct recognized as expensive, but my single male status denied my ability to commit to paper; I was untutored in the art of home décor. So I wrote that down and then wrote down what caught my attention immediately: pictures, not just pictures of family and friends–all non-entertainment business strangers to me–but pictures of professionals. Down a seemingly endless hallway my eyes imbibed studio headshots, enlarged photos from magazine pictorials, and stills from Klover’s movies.

"No camera?" she asked.

"No," I said.

The magazine planned to recycle earlier publicist-approved shots.

"This was my first layout," she pointed to a photo in which she was wrapped in red and white-feathered boas.

I wrote it down and realized this might be a good way to start the article, a recap of her career. I would suggest it to my editor, Joanna Kerns. She gestured to a shot of five nude women in a dugout.

"This was from the movie that won the top award in ’98, Playin’ Snatch."

I briefly remembered seeing the five-some on a seventy-some foot screen at an awards ceremony.

"This was my first anal," she said and added, "last year."

My body responded to the enticement of the pinched look on her face. I hadn’t seen the movie. I’d have to check with Joanna to see if we had a copy in the archives.

"This is one of my career highs: the Uncut Gangbang video. That won a few awards."

"Yes, I remember that," I said. "That was an incredible performance, you and seven uncircumcised guys."

She smiled: "At the end of the video, they took me in rotation. I had three cocks in my mouth, one in my cunt, another in my ass, and one in each hand. That was an amazing day in a pretty amazing year. I cleared over eighty thousand dollars that year."

She seemed sad it was in the past. I noted that down and looked at the questions I had prepared for her.

I felt it was unprofessional, but I was aroused and I thought she knew it. The perfect creases at the base of her ass had been peeking out from beneath the edge of her robe as I followed her and I’d been staring at it. I followed her into her den. I inhaled the scent of incense, and there was a video camera setup on a tripod overlooking the den. She clicked the button and we were recording. I wondered if she was high.

She shed her robe; a mint green thong hugged her loins. She sat down on her couch and faced me with quiet confidence; a serenity settled over the house in which I felt all power was with her. I sat down across from her; a glass coffee table separated us. I took out my notes.

"Do you do many interviews?"

"None like this," I said. "Mostly I do them over the phone, sometimes with the actors but mostly with the directors. They know what they want in the magazines. Do you often interview like this."

I pointed out her lack of attire.

She shrugged and smiled.

"No," she said. "I’ve never been interviewed, but if you believe the stuff in print that is attached to my stage name–that I suppose some directors created–this is how I would receive an interviewer."

"So this is a bit of fantasy for my benefit?"

"No, George," she said. "This is reality benefiting from you."

"My name is–"

"George," she said.

"Klover?" I queried.

She nodded.

I could get her real name later. Mine would not be printed in the article. She stood up from the couch and looked around.

"Should we begin?" I asked.

"Well, perhaps," she wondered aloud as though some other distraction had just revealed itself. Then she refocused on me and stepped over the glass coffee table. She straddled my lap and whispered something about reality. Just then a facial transformation seemed to take place, her eyes grew almost watery, her cheeks were infused with the color of rose, and her full red lips parted with the freshness and yearning of a budding daffodil in spring.

--How do you feel about what has happened?

--How many times had you worked together in the past?

--How was the sex on the set that day?

--Were you friends?

--Did you know why you were asked to carry the hidden camera into the clinic that day?

--Was it difficult to shoot the scene with the hidden camera?

A group of editors would transform the transcript of the interview into the following:

Question: How do you feel about what has happened?

Q: How many times had you worked together in the past?

Q: How was the sex on the set that day?

Q: Was it difficult to shoot the scene with the hidden camera?

For the third consecutive night we had preempted the White House as the lead off subject matter for the late night show monologues. America was titillated by the horror of what was circulating. George called me to make sure the interview had gone well.

"It was a short interview."

"What did you tell him?"

"The truth, mainly," I said. "I gave him the reality of our world."

"You what?"

I hung up not wanting to explain myself.

I had been carrying Kyle’s key with me since the interview had concluded. Outside, the temperature was dropping. I stepped out onto the veranda. The ocean-chilled air embraced my body. At night, the ocean was ominous. The chaotic crashing of the unseen waves resounded the uncharted depths of torment I was experiencing.

I looked out into the darkness and then retreated into my home. I dressed and went out to my car. I had not left my home since the release of the tape. I had initially thought that I would be the object of paparazzi and reporters, but for some reason the story was solely focused on Liz, the production company, the medical clinic, and to a small extent George. Though I had carried the camera, I wasn’t on film in the final scene and my role had somehow been diminished. I was thankful that I had the trappings of peace. I got in my car and drove to Kyle’s.

The apartment complex was dark. I kept close to the shadows and turned up the collar of my coat to avoid recognition. I knocked on the door but received no answer. I used the key and entered the apartment. There was a curious absence among the still familiar objects that were arranged in an efficient manner about the living space. I went the kitchen and poured myself a glass of wine. I sat down in the recliner and sipped the drink. It was something that I had done many nights when he was teaching at the college. He taught classes covering composition, psychology, and history. I closed my eyes to today and sought the peace of a patient memory. Years had past since we had been together, but we had remained in touch as we were a negligible distance from each other. A student who was not embarrassed about her film watching habits had confronted Kyle. When the rest of the faculty realized it, it was more than he could take.

I inspected the apartment to gain a sense of Kyle’s daily life and the parts of it that he valued. His degrees were posted on the walls. The papers he was working on were stacked haphazardly near his computer. Early next year, he would be going to an academic conference concerned with depression. There were a good number of textbooks unrelated to his subjects piled on his desk. In the medicine chest, I found her perfume which I poured down the bathroom drain. In the bedroom I discovered the stuffed animal collection that was the property of Sharon, a former student I had met at the house in the past, my replacement. I stuck pins between the legs of all her animals. After I finished the wine, I left the key on the kitchen table.

The church doors were open, the basement full of homeless. I avoided the basement and their eyes and followed the signs to the rectory. The bare hallway offered closed doors and weak, yellow lighting strained through the bodies of fallen insects. One room, the office where Kyle and I had once been for counseling, was open and lit. I heard the knock of plastic that accompanied sound of a phone being hung up; I burst into the office asking for Father Nacci.

The man did not respond to my request. He seemed shocked that someone had penetrated this deeply into the building this late at night. He stood behind the desk waiting for more information. Did he recognize me?

"I don’t mean to be a bother and I don’t need a place to stay, but I need to speak to Father Nacci."

He took a measured breath.

"Young lady I have a lot of work to do tonight and Father Nacci is not here."

"Who are you?"

"Father Franzetti," he said and I could tell that his patience had run short though I could not say why I knew that; it was a talent of the clergy. "Now you have told me you do not need a place to stay and I really have an incredible amount of work to do tonight. The people downstairs need me to start distributing the meals; I’m late as it is."

He looked at his watch.

"Father Nacci will not be back till morning. He is visiting family in Mount Carmel," he said. "Can you help me with the food distribution downstairs? Perhaps after that we can sit down and talk. What did you say your name was?"

"Diane," I said. I could include this as part of my confession later.

"Diane," he said. "Can you help me Diane? I must go downstairs now, dinner is very late. We are short on staff tonight. We desperately need the help."

I agreed to help him. Perhaps he could be of some help, but I really wanted to speak to Father Nacci. I felt he understood my situation for some reason. I followed Father Franzetti downstairs to the basement which was a gymnasium. The beds were arranged in four long rows that stretched well beyond the markings of the basketball courts. They were occupied by mostly men, a mixed group of tramps, but the flesh tones favored mostly darker hues. There were some women with children. Blankets were being handed out. The buffet was set up along the wall. Food came out in steamer trays. A nun in a traditional habit brought out a cart holding vats of hot soup. Father Franzetti told me her name was Sister Tarnas and instructed me to help her with the soup. The sister was an austere woman who was purposely playing up her role. She said little as we moved the vats from the cart. She formally thanked me for helping her setup the soup station, and then she wheeled the cart back behind the double doors where I assumed the cooking was taking place. Father asked me to dole out the soup–a watery, reddish broth stuffed full of broccoli, carrots, onions, peas, corn, potatoes, and peppers–to the line that was just beginning to form to the right of the buffet along the wall of the gymnasium.

Sister Tarnas appeared with her cart stacked high with trays, plates, and soup bowls. She began taking tickets from the people in line. For the ticket, they received a tray, a plate and a bowl. I filled up their bowl first and then they moved down the line. Father Franzetti gave them a slice of meatloaf. Finally, a young man, whom I’d just noticed was looking at me, gave them mashed potatoes, and a slice of bread.

I ignored the young man and concentrated on not spilling the soup. The women and children were first in line. Sister was efficient and I had to quicken my pace to keep the line from backing up. This was true assembly line work and I felt the strain in my hands from lifting the ladle after about twenty minutes. The vision of women in developing nations working in cramped conditions, creating my lingerie, formed in my imagination.

The men came next; they did not pass as quickly as the women. The women were quicker in getting their food and said little. The men asked for extra potatoes, most said thank you and one commented on my looks. Sister admonished him and told the line to speed up. Instead of speeding up, the line seemed to slow down. Some men who had received their meals had not gone back to their cots. A small group was forming in front of my station on the other side of the line. A discussion group was growing, gesturing and incredulous head shaking had started. I felt the pull of a string tightening around my tailbone.

"Peter, watch what you are doing," Father Franzetti scolded the young man who had just dropped a lump of mashed potatoes on the floor. But the young man did not notice the priest, he was watching the men, and he was watching me.

Finally, one of the men stepped forward. He looked to be in his thirties, in soiled and ripped jeans with a coat to match. He looked back at the group that had seemingly elected him to approach the buffet. They urged him on with their hands. I had stopped serving soup.

--Yo, Roger.

The man who was supposed to receive his soup next turned around and looked at him.

--What man?

--Get out of the way.

I put the ladle to rest in the vat.

--What man? What do you want Jerry?

--Diane? Sister Tarnas said.

--Just for a second, he said. Just step out of the way for a second. The boys are trying to figure something out.

The man stepped back.

They all stepped forward.

I looked toward Father Franzetti and the young man who was now tugging on his arm.

--I think it is.

--I’ll be damned.

--Klover! Someone shouted as though to ignite an involuntary recognition on my part.

I broke into a run. All reason had left me. There was no thought that preceded my actions, I heard no one behind me as I ran up the stairs and burst out into the chilly night. My panicked body slammed into my car. Spastic fingers full of irrational fears sought my keys in my diminutive pocketbook. I got into my car, locked the doors, and almost backed into a tree in my haste to get to the road. The church remained silent throughout all of this. No one, not the men, the young man, Sister Tarnas or Father Franzetti, ascended the stairs to see what had become of me. I was gone and they were back to their business of eating dinner.

Back in my home I locked and shut all of the doors and secured all of the windows. I lit a Jasmine-scented candle and went to the kitchen to get a bottle of vodka. I took a double-shot and carried the glass and bottle into the den. I sat down, took another shot and inhaled the soothing scent. I imagined it entering my bloodstream, journeying through the complex grid system of my body, taking an inventory of the fluids within: the pancreatic juices, red blood cells, the white blood cells working to stave off the effects of the antibodies injected into my system by the saliva and excretions of various partners, and the acids in my stomach eating the semen of the various men I had filmed with recently. I thought of the continuous battle between my ephemeral body and the eternal condition of genital herpes. The scent enveloped my body with its tranquilizing effect. My nerves calmed.

There was a report about the incident at the church. Reporters were searching for me; earlier, my home had been found empty. A picture of my home was on television, along with a segment of the video featuring my face hovering over a distorted penis. An overdubbed voice gave a history of my career and my connection to Liz. The scene cut to Liz and I pleasing each other on a blanket in a sunlit, fresh, green field; the bodies were appropriately blurred but the audio was untouched. The narrator talked about our conflicts and personal animosity. My acts transcended the cold studio lot and the cellulose tape that was for sale; I was transferred through satellites, an immortal sequence of living images captured outside of space and time.

My eyes closed and revisited internal conceptions and reminiscences of the fresh young body that turned to pure cash during the onset of full adulthood, no longer the object but the instrument itself. How wrong I’d been about the limits, the risk. The body and soul were inextricably linked to the third-life present in the undeniable atoms of the digital world, the static eternity the human form could now truly realize.

I turned off the television and took down the photographs that lined the walls. I laid them out on the table for examination. I took out my accounts for examination. I did the numbers, including the money that George had told me had been wired to my account for my role in the film, a standard fee, and the filming, a percentage of the profits. But even with the promise of future earnings, it would not be enough. The studios and the financiers kept too much for themselves.

I took out a map of the United States, Canada, and Mexico. Alaska and Hawaii occupied their own separate squares. I felt a rush of excitement that more places than the map contained were watching me. There was nowhere I wasn’t present.

And now it was over. I could not work again. I thought about Liz and realized that the worst part of it all was the betrayal. I could not face the betrayal from which she was suffering. Though I wasn’t sure if she realized it or not, others had.

I mused at where the video would go. Who would find it? Would it receive immediate worldwide transmission or would it be underground like the Zapruder film once was, worth thousands of dollars in cash to the rich and eccentric who wanted it for private screenings.

I didn’t write anything down. I was sure that the media, when they couldn’t find me in the city, would come back to my home. The camera was perfectly positioned on the tripod; I inserted a fresh blank tape. I rearranged the contents on the glass table so they were facing the camera, the pictures beside the money rested on the bed of the map which curled at the edges; the vial occupied the central position. I retrieved my emergency diabetic kit from the bedroom and returned to the den. I posed it on the table and hit the record button. Liz had used the syringe the day after filming; she had stayed with me after George’s cast party where we had officially forgiven each other for past grievances. At my house we’d had sex, and she’d gotten high with some very high-grade product George had given us.

I sat behind the glass table.

I took out the syringe and took the cover off the vial, and made the preparations in the same exact way I had for Liz. There was enough of the drug in there along with the ingredients of the disease. I would experience the same satisfying high she had. Contracting the disease on the set was possible, but contracting it from my needle was assured. I could imagine us dying side by side in the same hospital ward.