The vacuum cleaner made a familiar crackle as it sucked up the sand often tracked from the beach onto the carpet by careless guests. Elizabeth didn't mind, on the days her cleaner couldn't make it she took comfort in the diligent cleaning only someone who cared as much as her could provide.
Elizabeth was the landlady of four holiday rental properties, but the beachfront condo in South Oregon meant the most to her, it was her first property, the only one she had bought with Jamal. She smiled knowingly as she wiped that bit of the doorway alcove the cleaner always seemed to miss, she gave the house such care as it was the legacy of the only man to care about her.
Elizabeth had met Jamal on the set of Altogether Found, a sitcom about a multi-ethnic adopted family coming to terms with their identities as best as they could while being written by an all white writing team. It was drivel, but Elizabeth's parents pushed her for the role of Bao, a spunky Japanese girl who was terrible at maths.
She first met Jamal at the cast party following her successful auditions. While her parents were preening and circulating, telling anyone who would hear them about how excited Lizzy was to play her heritage, Jamal was the only one who listened to her complain that she was Thai, playing a Japanese girl with a Chinese name. Similarly she loved listening to the thoughtful teenager elucidate that treating his character, a nerdy black kid, as some sort of crazy anomaly was pretty messed up as well. The whole thing was tone deaf, bland, and stupid, naturally there were 8 seasons and it only ended when Elizabeth and Jamal turned 18 and publically turned their back on the show, their parents, and acting in general.
The headlines were relentless, first at the news that two actors who played siblings on TV were actually dating, then that they were so scathing about the show that had made their careers, and finally that they hated the show so much they even estranged themselves from their parents for forcing them to work through their childhood.
With all the Altogether Found money suddenly available to them, they started investing in real estate, it was the safest place to put their money and secure a future free of fan meetups and spin off pitches. The beach house was to be the first of many in their joint empire, Jamal was even finding some great houses on his laptop as he recovered from surgery on his kidney, surgery that was unsuccessful in removing all the cancer that clung to him.
It was now a year since Elizabeth cried next to an empty bed Jamal was supposed to return to after routine tests. She dropped a bottle of champagne into the fridge, a welcoming burst of happiness that kept the good reviews coming in, some happy couple was going to look out over the beach and dream their own dreams in the house, the life, that Jamal had planned with Elizabeth.
...
Elizabeth's face turned red with fury and confusion as she scrolled back to the start of the video. The busty co-ed and her sugar daddy were writhing with each other on the white corner sofa Elizabeth and Jamal agreed filled the living room so perfectly. She jumped forward to the busty blonde woman, cinematically thrusting her head back and forward on a large muscular man's penis in front of the huge french windows that Elizabeth had to scream at the handyman to come reinstall when it started leaking on the rain, warping the wooden laminate floor she was kneeling on.
Elizabeth even recognised the section of beach they were on as the blonde women went skinny dipping in the sea, then laughed as passers-by stared in disbelief. There was no doubt about it, that man had rented her house to shoot a porn movie.
She was sure it was the man as his profile on the porn website had the same man doing various things with various women. She scoured his profile looking for clues to who he was, page after page of women playing along with the muscular man's deviant desires. The stuff he had filmed at her house at the mild end of the scale, his brand being the total domination of the women enamoured by his wealth. While the man was an odious character, Elizabeth saw the look in his co-star's eyes and admired their devotion. She remembered her days giving her body to Jamal and swooned with the memories of their sexual exploits.
During one video, Elizabeth finally got the clue she needed, the main actor in the video was using a felt tip pen to write horrible things on the woman he was performing with. At one point he wrote 'Mike's cunt' on her pubis, and now Elizabeth had a name. She took a moment to compose herself, banishing the hour of smut she just ingested from her mind to focus on the task at hand.
Elizabeth looked through her past rentals and found she had only twice rented the beach house to someone called Michael, but one of them was before she had gotten the fancy enamel paint for the kitchen walls, clearly visible in the scene where the man was spanking her with a wooden spatula that Elizabeth vowed to burn next time she was there.
She got up the contact details for Mike Hunt and full of rage and condemnation, she called his phone number.
"Hello" a surly voice answered.
"Is this Mike Hunt?" She pointedly asked.
"Who wants to know?"
"This is Elizabeth Kim, you rented a property from me four months ago, the beach house south of Gold Beach Oregon." She stated as clearly as she could.
"Yeah, so what? Hang on, where do I know that name from?" He absentmindedly mused.
"Probably from our conversations about renting my house. It has just been brought to my attention that you used my house to shoot a pornographic movie..."
"There was no rule against it." He interrupted.
"It was a private holiday rental and as such it wasn't zoned for movie production, let alone porn."
"That sounds more like a you problem, if your contracts don't forbid commercial recording you're the one who's liable, not me." Elizabeth quietly fumed, of course a long term porn producer like this guy would know the law. "Wait a moment, are you Lizzy Kim, from Altogether Found, I fucking loved that show."
"Don't change the subject, you are going to take that video down or I'm going to get my lawyers involved?"
"Yeah that's not going to happen. The way I see it you got three options: option one, you calm your tits, ignore this and not lose any sleep. Option two, start a big protracted legal battle that will cost you loads and not amount to anything. Option number three, which is the option I think will do you the most good, you could rent me the beach house again, put on something pretty, and come star in my next movie. What do you say?"
