Chapter 38 – Serving the Market

The set was bigger than expected.

Chloe followed a runner down a short corridor and entered a spacious room that looked like the bedroom from a glossy real estate catalog. Cream-colored silk bedding on a huge bed and lots of props, like candles and even a TV, to make it look real.

Technicians bustled around, adjusting spotlights and discussing which camera angles to mark. The air conditioning hummed quietly, keeping the temperature on the fine line between “comfortable for the crew” and “not too cold for bare skin.”

And then she saw her co-star.

DaShawn McDaniel was standing next to one of the spotlights, scrolling on his phone. He was… tall. Really tall. At least six foot two, maybe more, with broad shoulders and muscular arms.

Oh God. He’s huge.

She was definitely nervous, but not because of his skin color, but because of his sheer size.

As she approached, he looked up from his phone. No surprise, no interest, just a brief acknowledgment of her presence.

“You’re Chloe?”

“Yes, hi!” She held out her hand and put on her best Chloe Heart smile.

His handshake was firm but brief. Businesslike. Then he let go of her hand and turned back to his phone.

Okay. Not the talkative type.

“Is this your first time at Dark Desires?” He asked without looking up, as if he were just maintaining a minimum of conversation out of politeness.

“Yes.”

“Hmm.” A nod. Then, after a short pause: “Don’t be surprised, Lucia is a little different from other directors. She’ll probably reposition you twenty times before she’s happy with the lighting. She’s obsessed with the whole contrast thing.” A hint of dry humor resonated in his voice. “Black on white. Dark and light. You know.”

“I can’t wait,” Chloe said.

He snorted softly, put his cell phone in the pocket of his sweatpants, and looked at Chloe properly for the first time. Not in that greedy way Randy had always stared at her when they were filming, but more like a craftsman examining his material.

“You’re smaller than I thought,” he said matter-of-factly.

“I hear that a lot.”

“It’s going to be tight.”

Was that a joke? Or was it meant to be a serious warning?

His face gave nothing away.

He left her standing there, sat down on a folding chair at the edge of the set, and took out his cell phone again. He hadn’t asked her a single personal question. Not how long she’d been in the business, what she expected from the scene, none of the usual small talk.

Strangely enough, it was almost refreshing. No false compliments, no fuss. And she could calmly prepare herself mentally for the scene without having to keep a conversation going.

But there was also something unsettling about this complete indifference. As if he had fucked in front of the camera so often that it was nothing more than assembly line work for him. In, out, take the check, go home.

Maybe that’s the healthy approach. Maybe I should learn from that.

“Chloe!” Lucia’s voice cut through the room. “We’re starting. Come here.”

Lucia was already standing in the middle of the set with her arms crossed, intensely scrutinizing the scene.

“Here.” She pointed to an armchair next to the bed. “Sit down. We’ll start with the phone scene.”

Chloe sat down, but before she had even settled in, Lucia was already dissatisfied. Without asking, she grabbed Chloe’s chin and turned her face slightly to the left.

“The light falls better this way.” Her fingers were cool. “Shoulders back. No, not so stiff. You’re bored, not scared.”

Okay, she hasn’t heard of personal space yet, I guess.

Lucia stepped back, looked at the result, then came closer again and pushed Chloe’s leg a few inches to the side. She touched her completely shamelessly and moved her body into the position she wanted to see, without any consideration for the fact that there was a human being sitting there.

The crew seemed to be used to all this. While Lucia pushed Chloe around, the cameraman adjusted his angle accordingly without looking up, and a lighting technician moved a reflector what looked like three hair’s breadth to the right.

“The scene.” Lucia stepped back and crossed her arms again. “You’re on the phone with your best friend. You’re complaining about your boring boyfriend Brad. He fucks you every other Saturday in missionary, nuts after two minutes, and asks if you came too, even though he doesn’t really care.”

She said it as matter-of-factly as if she were reading the weather forecast.

“You’re frustrated,” she continued. “But not only that. There’s also curiosity. A hunger for something else that you hardly admit to yourself. I want to see that in your face. Frustration, yes, but also that flicker of… possibility.”

That’s asking a little more than moaning and looking pretty.

“Got it,” Chloe said.

“Not yet.” Lucia moved closer again. “The corner of your mouth. You pull it up when you’re nervous. Don’t do that. Relax your face.”

How does she know that?

Chloe forced herself to neutralize her expression.

“Better.” Lucia nodded curtly and handed her a cell phone prop. “Camera rolling.”

The red light came on.

“I don’t know, Sarah,” Chloe sighed into the phone. “It’s not that Brad is a bad guy. He’s just so… predictable? You know what I mean?”

She paused as if listening for a response, letting a hint of exhaustion wash over her face.

“Cut.” Lucia stepped into the frame. “Your eyes. You’re staring into nothing, but it has to be a specific kind of nothing. You’re thinking about something. Someone, maybe. A fantasy you haven’t put into words yet.”

A specific nothing. Of course.

Chloe took a deep breath and tried again. This time she thought of… she wasn’t sure what. Maybe she could get something from a hot dog stand when the shoot was over?

“Better.” Lucia nodded slightly. “Again, from the beginning.”

They shot the same scene five times. Each time, Lucia had a new comment about something she didn’t like. Sometimes it was the position of Chloe’s fingers on the phone, then the way she brushed her hair back, or a barely noticeable twitch at the corner of her mouth that supposedly expressed “too much self-pity.”

It was exhausting. But also strangely satisfying. On the fifth take, Lucia just nodded.

“That’s it. Let’s move on guys.”

While the crew changed angles for the next scene, Lucia came over to Chloe and sat down on the armrest of the chair. Too close, but she didn’t seem to notice, or she didn’t care.

“You understand what we’re selling here, right?”

“Interracial content?”

Lucia snorted. “That’s the label. What we sell is the forbidden. The taboo. The contrast.” Her eyes sparkled behind her thick glasses. “Light and dark. The good white girl and the dangerous black man who gives her what her boring boyfriend never could. It’s a fantasy built on centuries-old fears and desires, and we package it in pretty pictures. People buy the meaning first and foremost, not just the sex. They can get just sex anywhere.”

She spoke with a weird passion.

“Some people think it’s all about big dicks,” she continued. “BBC and all that crap. But that’s just the surface. What they’re really looking for is the meaning behind it. The transgression. The irrevocable crossing of a line, the Rubicon made flesh.” A narrow smile. “And we give them that.”

Chloe nodded, trying to organize her thoughts.

It’s so strange. This whole complicated story about race, desire, taboos, racist stereotypes, and in the end, it just becomes a flavor for the product being sold.

Whatever Lucia’s artistic vision was, at the end of the day, they were producing a product for consumption. And that was it.

Don’t think about it. You’re here for work, not philosophical musings. Just nod along.

But part of her felt uncomfortable. Not because of the sex, which she would have regardless of skin color, but because of the whole framing, the heavy emphasis on “contrast” and the things she would have to say.

We are consenting adults, just like our audience. It’s a fantasy. People want what they want.

Some of it was just so… ridiculous, like that over-the-top dialogue suggestions she had read.

My God, Chloe. Not your problem. Get fucked, collect the cash, and look for clues about Samantha.

“Next scene,” Lucia called, standing up. “Chloe, you’re getting ready for your date. We see you in lingerie in the mirror.”

The jeans and top disappeared, and Chloe stood there in the black lace that Marla had helped her put on earlier. A dressing table had been moved into the frame, with a large mirror.

“Take the lipstick.”

Lucia positioned her again, this time her shoulders, then her head, then the angle of her arm. Chloe felt like a mannequin being adjusted.

“This is an intimate moment,” Lucia explained. “You’re getting ready, but it’s more than that. It’s a decision. You could still turn back now, go back to Brad, to your safe, boring life. But you don’t. You don’t want to.”

The camera was rolling.

Chloe took the same lipstick Marla had just applied to her and pretended to apply it, just a few dabs. She reached for the perfume, held it in her hand for a moment as if she were hesitating, then sprayed it on her wrists.

“Good,” Lucia murmured from behind the camera. “Now look in the mirror, take a really good look. You see yourself and you wonder who you will be after tonight.”

Chloe stared at her own reflection.

Who will I be?

The question hit harder than she had expected. Not because of the scene, but because it had another meaning, one that Lucia didn’t know and hopefully never would.

“Cut.” Lucia sounded satisfied. For the first time that day. “That was perfect.”

A few people in the crew raised their eyebrows in surprise at this praise as they rearranged the lights for the main scene. DaShawn sat at the edge of the set, now wearing only boxer shorts, through which he was already massaging his cock, still swiping away on his phone.

Chloe stood in front of the mirror and took a deep breath before standing in front of the bed, where DaShawn joined her after groaning as he heaved himself out of the folding chair.

“Action!”