“I moved to San Francisco and started making my own films. Shelly was auditioning at the theaters in North Beach — the legit theaters. Actually I picked her up in a bar is how we met. We started going out. When I told her what I did, well, most girls'd go, I'm outa here. But Shelly was interested. Something about it really turned her on. Something about the power... She was reluctant, sure, but since her theater career was going nowhere I talked her into working for me.”

Or she let you think you talked her into it? Rune asked silently. Just how well did you know your girlfriend? She couldn't imagine talking Shelly into anything.

“I saw one of her films,” Rune said. “I was surprised. She was good.”

“Good? Man, forget about it! What it was, she was real. I mean, real. She played an eighteen-year-old cheerleader, man, she was a cheerleader. She played a thirty-five-year-old businesswoman, you believed her.”

“Yeah, but with those kinds of movies, do the audiences care?” Rune asked.

"That's a good question. I didn't think so. But Shelly did. And that's all that mattered. We got into some wild fights over it. She'd insist on rehearsing. Christ, we'd shoot a film a day. There's no dialogue; there's a couple-page treatment is all. What's this rehearsal bullshit? Then she'd insist on setting up the lighting just right. I lost money on her. Cost overruns, missed delivery dates to the distributors... But she was right, I guess — in some kind of artistic sense. The films she made, some of them are fabulous. And a hell of a lot more erotic than anything else you'll see.

“See, her theory is that an artist has to know what the audience wants and give it to them, even if they don't know they want it. 'You make the movie for the audience, not yourself.' Shelly said that a million times.”

“You're not in the business anymore?”

Tommy shook his head. “Nope. Porn used to be a classier crowd. And a smarter crowd. Real people. It was fun. Now, there's too many drugs. I started to lose friends to overdoses and AIDS. I said, Time for me to move on. I wanted Shelly to come with me but...” Another faint smile. “I couldn't exactly see her working for my new company.”

“Which does what?”

“Health food how-to videos.” He nodded at the baba-gounash. “You ever hear of infomercials?”

“Nope.”

“You buy a half hour — usually on cable — and make it look like a real program, something informative. But you also sell the product it's about. They're fun.”

“How's business?”

“Oh, not great compared with porn, but I'm not embarrassed to tell people what I do.” His voice faded. He stood up and walked over to the window, pulled aside a stained orange drape. “Shelly,” he whispered. “She'd still be alive if she'd quit too. But she didn't listen to me. So pigheaded.”