Final Cut

The Saturday routine had been going for nine weeks before either Brigitte Vans or Jamee Stringer admitted to herself that the routine was no longer the routine.

For the first three Saturdays Brigitte had finished the brunette. Saturday One on her deck, mat, scissor; Saturday Two on her deck, pool wall, scissor; Saturday Three on her deck, against the back wall of the deck near the floor lamps, with Jamee Stringer's wet brown hair pressed flat against the stucco and Brigitte's blonde-furred cunt grinding the brunette's defeated long pink clit one slow circle at a time until the brunette's brown body had bowed against the wall and the brunette had said the word Brigitte made her say to finish each Saturday, which was the word her own. The yellow bikini Brigitte had thrown into her own pool the first night still hung over the back of the deck chair where the brunette could see it across the canyon every morning. Three Saturdays in a row Brigitte had stood up off the brunette and sent her home down the driveway and up the brunette's own, and three Sundays in a row Brigitte had come out onto her deck at eight a.m. to find Jamee Stringer already on her own deck across the canyon doing sit-ups in a fresh sports bra. Three Sundays in a row the brunette did not look across the canyon. Three Sundays in a row Brigitte had stood at her railing with her coffee cup and watched the brunette's tan-lined cleavage rise and fall through five sets of crunches without missing a rep, and Brigitte had known what the brunette was doing because Brigitte was doing it too: she was training all week for next Saturday.

Saturday Four had been a fight. The brunette had walked through the door at seven fifty-five with three pounds of new shoulder muscle on her, and she had pinned Brigitte against the railing for the first eight minutes of the engagement, and Brigitte had had to spend twenty hard minutes wrestling the brunette back to the mat from the rail, and the scissor at the end had been close. Saturday Five had been closer. Saturday Six the brunette had lasted forty minutes on the mat and Brigitte had ended it with the kind of grinding, drained climax against an exhausted brunette that no longer felt like a clean win. Saturday Seven Brigitte had thought briefly during the third hour of fighting that she might lose it. She had not. The brunette had said her word at the end. But the word had come out without conviction, and Brigitte had lain awake afterwards with the brunette's smell still on her cleavage and the realization that the brunette's breasts no longer flinched off her stabs, the brunette's clit no longer bowed under her grind, the brunette's broad brown back no longer arched the way it had used to arch under her hands. The body that had walked through Brigitte's door three Saturdays ago was not the body that was walking through now. The body that was walking through Brigitte's door now was a body that had spent six days a week thinking about exactly one other body in the entire greater Hollywood basin and had been quietly redesigning itself to beat it.

Saturday Eight had ended in a draw. Neither of them had said the word. They had fought four hours on the mat with the floor lamps burning down on two oiled, panting, equally bruised tan and milky-white nude bodies, and at the end of the fourth hour Brigitte had rolled off Jamee Stringer onto her back without a finishing climax and the brunette had rolled off Brigitte without one too. They had lain side by side on the canvas with the canyon going pre-dawn pink behind them at four-thirty in the morning, neither of them saying the brunette's word, neither of them saying any other word at all. Then Brigitte had walked the brunette to the door and the brunette had walked back across the canyon at a quarter to five with the sunrise coming up red over Hollywood and Brigitte had stood at her own front step watching the brunette's silhouette move down the driveway and up the next driveway and disappear into the next house, and Brigitte had known sometime around five a.m. on Sunday morning of the eighth week that one Saturday very soon now the routine was going to break.

Saturday Nine she had not been able to break the brunette either. Five hours that night. The brunette had not broken her. They had separated on the mat at almost six in the morning, and Brigitte had not even sent her home. The brunette had gone down into Brigitte's pool by herself without a word and floated there in the warm chlorinated water for forty minutes with her brown hair fanned out around her face and her bare brown body slack and open under the surface, and Brigitte had lain back on the deck mat under the dawn light and stared up at the lavender sky and thought about every other woman in Hollywood she had ever envied and how none of them was the woman in her pool. Eventually the brunette had come up out of the water and walked dripping across the deck, picked up her black biker shorts and her black workout bra, dressed without saying anything, and walked out the door. And Brigitte had let her go.

That had been a week ago.

Saturday Ten, tonight, Brigitte had cleaned her deck twice. She had vacuumed the pool. She had filled the floor lamps with fresh bulbs. She had washed and slicked her platinum bob the same way she had washed and slicked it nine Saturdays in a row, oiled herself the same way, dressed herself in a fresh white workout bra and white biker shorts, and she had stood in front of the foyer mirror at seven forty-five p.m. and looked her honey-tanned, broad-shouldered, heavy-busted thirty-five-year-old self in the icy blue eye and asked herself the question she had been quietly avoiding for two Saturdays running.

The question was: what happens if I cannot finish her tonight.

The question was: what happens if she cannot finish me tonight.

The question Brigitte was avoiding underneath both of those questions was: what does either one of us do tomorrow morning if neither one of us finishes the other tonight.

The doorbell rang at seven fifty-six. Brigitte was in the foyer waiting for it. She had been in the foyer for eleven minutes.

She opened the door.

Jamee Stringer stood on Brigitte's threshold in a white workout bra and white biker shorts. Not black. Not red. White, cut to match the white workout bra and white biker shorts Brigitte was wearing, with the same low scoop of cleavage and the same high cut of hip, and the brunette's brown hair was washed and slicked back off her famously sculpted forehead the same way Brigitte's was, and the brunette's hands at her sides were closed loosely the way a woman closes her hands when she has decided eight hours ago what she is going to do with them tonight and has stopped thinking about it.

Brigitte looked at the white outfit. Then she looked at the brunette's face. The brunette's brown eyes were not flat tonight. The brunette's brown eyes had something in them Brigitte had not seen in nine Saturdays, and Brigitte realized after a beat what it was: it was not hate. It was not the cold thirty-five-year-old grudge Brigitte had been answering in inkind for nine Saturdays. It was a question. The brunette had walked across the canyon tonight asking Brigitte the same question Brigitte had been asking herself in front of the foyer mirror, and the brunette had decided that the answer to the question was not going to be hers to give alone.

"You're wearing white," Brigitte said.

"You're wearing white," Jamee said.

"Yes."

"I figured we'd run out of the other colors," Jamee said quietly.

Brigitte stepped aside. Jamee Stringer walked past her into the foyer the same way Jamee Stringer had walked past her nine Saturdays in a row, and Brigitte closed the door and locked it behind her, and the two of them walked through the house to the deck the same way they had walked through the house to the deck nine Saturdays in a row, and the deck was waiting for them the same way it had been waiting for them nine Saturdays in a row: pool full, mat laid out, two floor lamps burning, the lavender canyon going dark behind. The yellow bikini was still on the back of the deck chair. The brunette's eyes flicked across it once, the way the brunette's eyes had flicked across it every Saturday for nine Saturdays. Then the brunette walked to the dead center between pool and mat and turned to face Brigitte, and Brigitte walked to meet her.

They did not undress. Not yet. The two of them stood in matched whites at the dead center of Brigitte's deck under the warm orange lamp light with the lavender canyon behind them and looked at each other for a long quiet beat.

"Same rules," Brigitte said.

"There weren't any rules, Brigitte. There never were."

"Right."

"I'm not saying my word tonight," Jamee said. Her brown eyes did not move off Brigitte's face.

"Okay."

"Are you saying yours?"

Brigitte did not answer that for a moment. The question had snuck up on her even though she had been chewing on it in front of the foyer mirror for eleven minutes before the brunette had rung the bell, and now hearing it out loud in the brunette's quiet voice with the brunette's quiet brown eyes a yard from her face changed the question's shape. "I don't have a word," Brigitte said carefully.

"Yes you do," Jamee said. "It's the same one."

Brigitte looked at her. Brigitte's mouth went slightly dry. Brigitte realized that the brunette had figured out something Brigitte had been avoiding figuring out for two weeks. The brunette had figured out that the word the brunette had been saying for the first seven Saturdays, yours, had also been the word Brigitte was going to have to say one Saturday too if either one of them was going to break the other.

"Then I'm not saying mine either," Brigitte said.

"Good."

"Then this isn't a fight tonight."

"It's a fight," Jamee said, "until it isn't."

Brigitte looked at her another long beat. Then Brigitte reached up and hooked the white workout bra at the bottom and peeled it slowly off the same heavy honey-tanned globes the brunette had pressed bare against ten times now, dropped the bra on the deck chair behind her, and shook her platinum bob free. The half-moon teeth marks on her cleavage from Tuesday morning ten weeks ago had faded almost to nothing now. The new ones the brunette had given her on Saturday Six were almost as faded. Brigitte's bare bosom came back out into the orange light.

Jamee Stringer reached up and hooked the white workout bra at the bottom and peeled it slowly off the same heavy milky-white tan-lined globes Brigitte had pressed her own pair against ten times now, dropped the bra on the deck chair, and shook her dark loose hair down. The faded marks on her cleavage caught the same orange light. Her bare bosom came back out.

Two pairs of pink-shafted heavy bare breasts in matching white biker shorts on a deck overlooking a lavender canyon at eight o'clock at night. Brigitte breathed in. Jamee breathed in. They walked.

Their two heavy globes met dead center between them with the same wet heavy slap that had rolled out across the canyon for ten weeks. Both bodies absorbed it the way both bodies had been built to absorb it. The two long brown rods on Brigitte's chest stabbed deep into the brunette's milky aureoles and the two long pink rods on the brunette's chest stabbed deep into Brigitte's honey-tanned ones, and Brigitte's hands went to her own hips and Jamee's hands went to her own hips, and the two of them locked into the slow press they had locked into ten Saturdays in a row, only tonight the press was not exactly the press it had been any of those ten Saturdays.

Tonight the press did not move.

The dead-center line at the dead center of Brigitte's deck did not move six inches in the next two hours.

Brigitte led with her left breast and Jamee answered with her right; Brigitte led with her right and Jamee answered with her left. Brigitte's pelvis pivoted half an inch and Jamee's pelvis pivoted half an inch; Brigitte's chin pressed against Jamee's chin and Jamee's chin pressed against Brigitte's. Their two pairs of long hard rods bent against each other and slipped past each other and twisted around each other, brown around pink and pink around brown, and there was no twist either body could manage that the other body did not match inside of one breath. Brigitte forced the brunette backward by the half-inch a press has to give to be real and the brunette gave her half an inch and took it back; Jamee forced Brigitte backward by half an inch and Brigitte gave it and took it back. Their bare oiled bellies kissed and stuck and slid; their broad muscular thighs spread the same and spread the same; their two pairs of white biker shorts ground crotch into crotch through the thin fabric the way they had ground crotch into crotch through the thin fabric a thousand times now and neither blonde-furred mound was hotter than the brown-furred mound it was pressed flush against.

"You're not pushing me anywhere tonight, sugar," Brigitte breathed.

"I know," Jamee breathed back.

They went up the deck and they went down the deck and they went around the pool and they went back to the dead center between pool and mat and they held each other there. Brigitte tried the corner where Brigitte had pinned the brunette four mornings ago in week one and the brunette walked her sideways back out of the corner before her back hit the rail. Jamee tried the back wall where Brigitte had pinned the brunette in Saturday Three and Brigitte walked her sideways back out of it before her wet brown back hit the stucco. They tried each other at the rim of the pool, neither one tipped in. They tried each other in the dead center; the dead center held.

Brigitte was sweating now in a way she had not sweated nine Saturdays in a row. Sweat ran down between her bare honey-tanned globes in long continuous sheets and pooled in the waistband of her white biker shorts; sweat ran down between Jamee's bare milky tan-lined globes in long continuous sheets and pooled in the waistband of her white biker shorts; their two waistbands met against each other belly to belly and the sweat from one pair of waistbands was indistinguishable from the sweat in the other.

Brigitte's right hand came up off her own hip after an hour and a half. The brunette's left hand came up off her own hip at the same instant. The two of them broke their own unspoken rule of ten Saturdays without thinking about it and at the same moment, hands on each other's bare flexing waists for the first time tonight, and the press shifted from the pure shoulder press it had always been into a full-body clinch with hands on hips, hands on backs, hands eventually on the back of each other's slicked-back wet hair, holding the other woman's mouth in close. Their open mouths pressed against each other under the lamps. Their tongues did not duel, their tongues moved against each other the way Brigitte had felt the brunette's tongue move against hers exactly twice in ten weeks of fighting, on the brunette's own deck on Tuesday morning of week one when Brigitte had pinned the brunette to the railing the first time and the brunette had licked Brigitte's lipsticked mouth lasciviously without biting it, and again last week Saturday Nine on Brigitte's mat in the third hour when both of them had lost track of which mouth was whose. Tonight the move was the only move they were running.

"What are we doing," Jamee said quietly into Brigitte's mouth.

"I don't know," Brigitte said.

"Yes you do."

"Yes I do."

The brunette's hands slid down off Brigitte's slicked back hair, down the broad muscular shoulders, down to the bare honey-tanned waist, and the brunette hooked the white biker shorts and pulled them down over the flaring honey-tanned hips. Brigitte's hands hooked the brunette's white biker shorts and pulled them down over the flaring brown hips. Two pairs of stretch shorts hit the deck. The two body doubles stood naked at the dead center of Brigitte's deck under the orange floor lamps, and tonight neither of them put any space between the two bodies after the shorts came off the way they had every other Saturday night. Bare blonde fur kissed bare brown fur on the same beat.

They walked sideways slowly to the mat. Neither one of them led. Both of them led. Brigitte's bare oiled honey-tanned thigh moved with the brunette's bare wet milky brown thigh, and the two of them went down to their knees on the canvas of the mat the way they had gone down to their knees on the canvas of mats four times now, only tonight neither one of them was setting up to scissor the other one.

Brigitte's hands went to the brunette's bare brown hips. The brunette's hands went to Brigitte's bare honey-tanned hips. The two of them eased their pelvises in until the same blonde-furred mound met the same brown-furred mound for the eleventh wet time in ten weeks, and the two long hard pink-and-pink clits met each other from inside their respective tangles of fur, and Brigitte felt the touch and Brigitte stroked one slow circle, and Jamee Stringer did not arch backward off the canvas the way Jamee Stringer had arched ten Saturdays in a row at this exact stroke. Tonight Jamee Stringer answered. The brunette's hips rolled forward by the half-inch a stroke has to give to be a stroke and the brunette's stroke ground Brigitte's clit one slow circle in the opposite direction, and Brigitte's wet honey-tanned back tightened against her own spine and Brigitte heard a long low sound come out of her own throat that was not the sound of a fight.

They went over to the canvas slowly. Not Brigitte on top. Not Jamee on top. They went over together onto their sides facing each other, the broad shoulders of both of them across the canvas in a parallel line, the bare globes of both of them piled flush, the bare bellies of both of them belly to belly, and Brigitte hooked her right oiled honey-tanned thigh over Jamee Stringer's left oiled brown thigh and Jamee Stringer hooked her right oiled brown thigh over Brigitte's left oiled honey-tanned thigh and the two of them locked their pelvises together with both clits wedged hot and hard between them, and they ground.

It was not a scissor.

It was something the two of them had spent ten weeks being too proud to do, and tonight the pride had gone out of both of them and what was left underneath was a hot wet body lock that two body doubles who had been thirty-five-year-old rivals for ten years could finally allow themselves at three a.m. on a Saturday night on Brigitte's mat under floor lamps with no one in the canyon awake to see it.

Brigitte's mouth was on Jamee Stringer's mouth. The brunette's mouth was on Brigitte's mouth. Their hands had moved up off each other's hips into each other's slicked-back wet hair, gentle now, neither one of them tugging. Brigitte's right hand on the brunette's nape and the brunette's right hand on Brigitte's nape, the two hands not pulling either head closer because neither head needed pulling closer, neither head was leaving. Their two long pink-and-brown clits ground each other on the same slow shared circle and the climb up the inside of Brigitte's spine started up the inside of the brunette's spine at the same instant.

"Brigitte," the brunette said. Quietly. Into her mouth. The brunette had not called Brigitte by her own name in four months. The last time the brunette had called Brigitte by her own name had been in a public restroom at the Egyptian on Friday night of week one, the night before Saturday One, when the brunette's voice had been steady and her brown eyes had said walk back out, save what's left.

"Jamee," Brigitte said back. The brunette's eyes were very close. The brunette's brown eyes were wet but they were not crying, they were the eyes of a thirty-five-year-old body double looking at the only other thirty-five-year-old body double in Hollywood who had ever been able to hold her off, and the recognition in them was full.

"I'm not finishing you tonight," Jamee said.

"I'm not finishing you either."

"What are we doing instead."

"This," Brigitte said.

She rolled her honey-tanned hips one more slow circle and the brunette rolled her brown hips one more slow circle and the climb up the inside of Brigitte's spine became the climb up the inside of the brunette's spine and Brigitte's mouth opened against the brunette's mouth and Jamee Stringer's mouth opened against Brigitte's, and they came on the canvas of Brigitte's mat at three twelve a.m. on a Sunday morning, both at the same instant, both with their two pairs of bare oiled globes piled flush and their two heads on the canvas slicked-back-platinum tangled with slicked-back-brown, and the climax bowed both bodies off the canvas in a single mirrored arc and the canyon air went cool across all four exposed flanks and the two of them came down off it together onto their sides still locked together, neither one of them tipped on top of the other, neither one of them tipped underneath, hips still pressed, mouths still touching, eyes still open.

For a long time after, neither of them moved. The orange floor lamps burned. The far edge of the canyon was already going pre-dawn pink. Somewhere up the hill a coyote barked and was not answered. Brigitte's hand on the back of the brunette's neck was warm and the brunette's hand on the back of Brigitte's neck was warm. Their breath came down together. Brigitte felt the brunette's heart finish hammering through the brunette's bare cleavage into her own and slow to the regular thirty-five-year-old well-trained athlete's resting rate, and Brigitte's heart slowed at the same speed. The two of them lay there body-locked on the canvas of the mat that had been the floor of every Saturday night for ten weeks, and neither of them needed to ask any of the questions Brigitte had been asking the foyer mirror at seven forty-five p.m. anymore, because the answer to all of them had landed under both of them at three twelve a.m.

"Don't go home tonight," Brigitte said, quietly.

Jamee Stringer's brown eyes did not move off Brigitte's face for a long beat.

"Okay," she said.

Brigitte got slowly to her feet on the mat. Her honey-tanned legs were not steady. She held her hand out and Jamee Stringer took it and Brigitte pulled the brunette up off the canvas the same way she would have pulled an opponent up off the canvas if the canvas had been a mat in a stunt-double rehearsal at five o'clock in the morning twelve years ago, and the brunette came up off the mat without resistance and stood naked in the orange floor light an inch from Brigitte's bare body, and Brigitte tucked one strand of wet brown hair back behind the brunette's ear, and the brunette tucked one strand of wet platinum back behind Brigitte's, and Brigitte led her by the hand the way a woman leads a woman she has just decided not to fight, off the deck and through the dark house and up the staircase and into the bedroom Brigitte had not let any other person walk into in eight months.

She did not turn the bedroom light on. The lavender pre-dawn through the bedroom window was enough light for both of them. Brigitte sat the brunette down on the foot of the bed and knelt between her bare brown knees and put her platinum head against the brunette's bare wet milky-tan-lined cleavage and stayed there for a long quiet beat with her cheek against the heat and her hands flat on the brunette's bare flexing thighs, and the brunette's hands came down on the back of Brigitte's slicked-back hair the way the brunette's hands had come down on Brigitte's nape on the mat. They stayed that way a full minute. Then Brigitte tipped her head up and the brunette tipped her face down and they kissed the way they had kissed on the mat, slowly, wet, no teeth, the kiss they had kept the bottoms of their lips off of for ten and a half weeks of fighting.

Brigitte slid her honey-tanned mouth down the brunette's bare throat and across the long sculpted line of one collarbone to the heavy curve of one milky tan-lined globe and put her mouth on the long pink shaft she had pinched and twisted and sucked and bit ten times now, and put it on it slow this time. The brunette's broad muscular brown back arched off the foot of the bed at the touch the way Brigitte had been waiting weeks to make it arch, but not because the brunette was being broken, because the brunette was being touched gently by the only other woman in Hollywood who knew that pink shaft on contact. Brigitte spent a long minute on it and a long minute on the other one, and when she came back up the brunette's brown eyes were closed and the brunette's lush full mouth was open and the brunette was breathing the way a woman breathes who has spent ten weeks under enemy hands and is now under hands that are no longer enemy.

The brunette opened her eyes. She put her hands flat on Brigitte's bare honey-tanned cleavage and slid her mouth slowly down Brigitte's bare throat and across Brigitte's collarbone and onto the bigger of the two faded half-moon teeth marks Brigitte had been displaying across the canyon for ten weeks. The brunette pressed her lush full lipsticked mouth against the old bite she had given Brigitte on Tuesday morning of week one and held it there. Brigitte's hand came up and lay flat on the back of the brunette's wet brown head, and stayed.

They ended up on Brigitte's bed naked side by side, neither on top of the other, and they tasted each other the way two body doubles taste each other when neither of them has tasted another woman in her whole life and both of them have spent ten weeks tasting nothing else in their imagination. Brigitte slid down the long muscular line of the brunette's bare brown body and put her platinum head between the brunette's bare wide-spread brown thighs and tasted the same brown-furred mound she had ground her own blonde-furred mound against on a poolside deck eleven times now, and the long pink shaft she had ground her own clit against eleven times now bowed against her tongue without a fight in it, and the brunette's brown thighs trembled along the length of Brigitte's platinum bob, and Brigitte took the brunette down into a long slow climax with her tongue that bore no resemblance to any of the climaxes she had taken the brunette down into on the deck downstairs.

The brunette pulled her up off the climb afterwards and flipped her over and went down between Brigitte's wide-spread bare honey-tanned thighs and tasted Brigitte the same way Brigitte had tasted the brunette, slow and exploratory and reverent, and Brigitte came on the brunette's tongue inside of three minutes the way she had not come on the brunette's clit on the deck mat downstairs in nine Saturdays of trying. They wound up afterwards under the sheet of Brigitte's bed, the brunette's broad bare brown back fitting flush against Brigitte's broad bare honey-tanned chest the way the broad bare brown back had been carved to fit flush against the broad bare honey-tanned chest, the brunette's loose dark hair tangled with Brigitte's slicked-back platinum on the pillow, Brigitte's one bare honey-tanned arm draped across the brunette's narrow toned waist with the brunette's hand laced into Brigitte's, the warm canyon-cooled night air coming in the open bedroom window. Brigitte fell asleep inside of two minutes. The brunette fell asleep inside of three.

Brigitte woke up at eleven o'clock in the morning the next day to bright Hollywood sunlight pouring through her bedroom window and the heavy bare warm weight of the brunette's bare globe pressed against her shoulder blade and the brunette's loose dark hair under her platinum chin and the brunette's strong bare brown hand still laced into hers across her own bare honey-tanned belly, and Brigitte lay there with her eyes open in the bright light for a long time and did not move and did not need to. Across the canyon her own deck was empty. Across the canyon Jamee Stringer's deck was also empty. Brigitte was looking at one of them through her bedroom window and the other was the woman pressed against her back, and there was no one in either house Brigitte had ever wanted to be on either deck with except the woman in this bed, and Brigitte realized she had not realized that before.

Jamee Stringer woke up against her ten minutes later. The brunette's bare warm body shifted against Brigitte's bare warm body. The brunette's brown eyes opened against the back of Brigitte's neck. The brunette's mouth moved against the nape and said, very quietly, the same word the brunette had been saying to Brigitte for seven Saturdays in a row, only this time the word came out without anybody losing.

"Yours," the brunette said.

"Mine," Brigitte said back. "And yours."

"Yes."

"Stay."

"Yes."

The yellow bikini stayed over the back of the deck chair on Brigitte's deck for another two days, and then Brigitte took it down and threw it in the trash, because the yellow bikini had been a private joke between two women who had been fighting each other for eleven weeks, and the women were no longer fighting.

The Saturday routine ended that Saturday. There was no Saturday Eleven. There was a Sunday morning instead, and a Sunday afternoon, and a Sunday evening, and the brunette did not walk back across the canyon to her own house until Monday morning at nine, and when she did walk back she walked back in a fresh white robe of Brigitte's that did not fit her exactly the way it fit Brigitte but that fit her closely enough that the photographer parked at the bottom of the canyon for an entirely unrelated stake-out who saw the platinum blonde walk down the platinum's driveway and up the brunette's at nine a.m. on Monday morning would have to have been forgiven for thinking he was looking at the same woman in two takes of the same shot. He did not take a picture. He had no reason to take a picture. Two body doubles walking each other home in the morning was not a Hollywood event yet.

By the end of the second week after Saturday Ten the canyon between the two decks had a small footbridge laid across the narrow point at the back of the lots, a contractor's quick pre-dawn job that neither one of them ever publicly acknowledged commissioning. By the end of the third week the brunette's morning workout was happening on Brigitte's deck and Brigitte's morning workout was happening on the brunette's deck, alternating, and the bright red biker shorts and the white biker shorts had migrated freely across the canyon and ended up half in each closet and half in the other one. By the end of the fifth week the brunette's stylist and Brigitte's stylist had begun showing up at one front door instead of two and complaining about it less than either of them admitted. By the end of the eighth week the two body doubles were turning down two of the same parts in a row at the same casting call because they had decided in bed Tuesday night that neither of them wanted to play opposite each other in the kind of picture the part wanted them to play opposite each other in, and the casting director called both their agents in confused fury and got the same answer twice from two different houses on two different sides of the same canyon.

By the end of the year the producer who had hosted the after party at the Roosevelt eleven weeks before the morning Brigitte first walked down her own driveway and up the brunette's was sending one bottle of champagne to one address with two names on the card.

The first morning of the new year the two of them stood on the brunette's deck at sunrise in matched white workout bras and matched white biker shorts looking out across the canyon at Brigitte's deck and at the small wooden footbridge that crossed the narrow gap at the back of the lots, and the brunette in the white workout bra had her loose brown hair down on the bare brown shoulders, and the platinum blonde in the matching white workout bra had her platinum bob slicked back the way the platinum bob had always been slicked back, and the brunette's hand was at the platinum's bare honey-tanned waist and the platinum's hand was at the brunette's bare brown waist, and the canyon was very quiet and very gold in the new sun, and Brigitte Vans turned her sharp Nordic face the half inch she needed to turn it to put her platinum mouth against the side of Jamee Stringer's lush brown one, and Jamee Stringer turned her sculpted brown face the half inch she needed to turn it to take the kiss back, and the two body doubles who had been the only other woman in the canyon for either one of them for eleven years stood at the railing of one of the two decks they now shared and watched the new sun come up across Hollywood with no other women in it.

On Saturday nights after that, late, with the canyon dark and the lavender sky going pre-dawn pink, sometimes for old time's sake the two of them met bare-chested at the dead center of one of the two decks and pressed their two heavy bare bosoms against each other for a minute or two with their hands on each other's bare flexing waists and their oiled tan-lined cleavages flush against each other under the orange light of the floor lamps, just to feel it once more in the week, just to remind both bodies that the only body either body had ever met that was the same body was the body pressed flush against it.

Then they walked off the deck. Together. And went to bed. Together. And neither one of them said the word.