The Desert Rose by Larry McMurtry Page B

with you, Pepper,” he said. “Do you know what usually happens when I make movies of young girls?”
    She didn’t, she had kind of been wondering, maybe he had closets full of the real scuzzy stuff, little cunts to look at whenever he wanted to. After all she was only there a few hours a week, other girls could still be coming for all she knew.
    “Usually I just dress them and photograph them a time or two and then I undress them and photograph them and that’s usually it, I never see them again. Oh, maybe we fuck or maybe we don’t but pretty soon they’re gone.”
    “Why?” she asked, she just wanted to know what he made of his own behavior.
    Mel shrugged. “I get bored so easily,” he said. “If I get bored with someone visually then I don’t even care if I sleep with them. I’m very visual. I like really complicated effects, but most people just aren’t subtle enough, either visually or sexually. Sexual effects can be very good effects but mostly they don’t vary that much. Usually there’s a kind of time limit, before I get bored.”
    She could sort of follow it, already with Buddy the fucking could seem boring. He was so obsessed with himself that he tended to grind away, well past the boring point.
    “Now with you that’s not true,” Mel said. “You’re never boring visually, because you’re never the same.”
    She knew it was a big compliment, he was looking at her sort of keenly.
    “You’re very beautiful, Pepper,” he said. “A lot of beauty is static, but not yours. You never look quite the same to me. Whatever happens to you shows up in yourface or the way you move—there are always subtle differences. Like today it was a fight with your boyfriend, you were angry but very beautiful.”
    She liked hearing that, it was interesting, what he was saying.
    “You don’t understand yet how selfish I am,” he said. “I made all this money for myself, so I could enjoy myself absolutely any way I want to. I’m very snobbish visually, and very easily bored. I need someone like you, extremely beautiful and very subtle. Also you’re not scared of the unusual. I think if we’re adventurous the effects could keep changing for a long time.”
    “I’m not saying no,” she said. “So would we ever fuck?”
    “We certainly would,” he said. “For periods. Probably there’d be other periods, when we wouldn’t.”
    Then he grinned, sort of appealing, his looks were growing on her more and more, the curly hair certainly didn’t hurt.
    “The problem is how to preserve some effects that we both find exciting,” he said. “Most things get monotonous, you’re too young to really know that yet. We want to try and keep some kick.”
    The words made sense, so far as she knew, it was just nothing she felt she had to worry about.
    “I’m forty-five,” he said. “You’ll have to live nearly thirty more years before you really understand what I mean. I won’t get bored with you because just looking at you is exciting, but what’s going to keep it interesting for you?”
    Pepper had no idea, she just wasn’t too worried. At the moment she was more interested in why he wanted her to work at the Stardust.
    “Why do you want me to take the job?” she asked. “It’s two shows a night.”
    Mel shrugged. “It’ll keep you in town,” he said. “Besides,you’re a dancer, you’re not going to stop dancing just for me.”
    Nope, sure wasn’t. “Maybe I should leave town though,” she said.
    Mel grinned the appealing grin. “That’s right,” he said. “Maybe you should.”
    Still, where she worked wasn’t the big issue, there was one for sure that was more important.
    “So what about guys?” she asked. “What if we weren’t doing much and I got involved?”
    “Of course you’ll get involved,” he said. “You’ll have many, many men. You’ll draw them like moths and most of them you’ll just burn up in a twinkling. I don’t want to be one of the ones that’s burned