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There was a chilly morning mist hugging the ground when Dorothy came outside. She did some loosening up exercises then jogged down to the big wrought iron gates. The guard inside the gatehouse, a stoic-faced black man, had the look of someone who would rather be anywhere else—like in a warm, cozy bed, spooned naked with someone equally cozy and warm, but he returned her wave with a good-natured smile.

She jogged in place and surveyed the grounds. She could catch glimpses of the estate’s perimeter wall uphill through the trees and judged it to be about a mile—maybe a little more—from where she was now, around the inside of the wall, back to here. She had promised Quentin five miles to work off what she had pigged out on last night; she would do five laps. She started off at an easy jog.

Dorothy was mad, upset, disappointed. She didn’t want to think about what was angering her, so she concentrated on her running, letting her mind dwell solely on navigating the uneven ground under foot, weaving through the trees and around the bushes, and not on why she was pissed. She never saw the man appear out of the trees to her left. In fact, she wasn’t even aware that it was Lincoln until he was jogging along side her.

One look at Dorothy’s face was enough to let Lincoln know that she was teed off… and he couldn’t blame her. He wanted to apologize, tell her why he hadn’t made it to her room the night before. The absolute last thing he wanted was Dorothy thinking he thought of her as nothing more than just another piece of cheap white fluff that could be blown off.

But, Lincoln never got the chance to so much as open his mouth. Dorothy kicked her running up a couple of gears and was darting through the trees like a rabbit. It took all he had to catch up with her. “Better slow it up,” he cautioned when he was once more running alongside her, “or you won’t make your five miles.”

Dorothy glanced over at Lincoln. His legs were almost twice as long as hers and he knew the grounds much better. She would never be able to out run him. She slowed back to a jogging pace, but maintained her stony silence. “One,” she said as they approached the front gates five minutes later.

“Actually, a full circuit is closer to a mile and a half,” Lincoln commented.

“One and a half,” Dorothy snorted and continued on past the gates.

Even though he had to adjust his stride because of Dorothy’s shorter legs, Lincoln was still working to stay with her. The girl was setting a steady, ground-eating pace; one that, unless she was a daily jogger down in the city, he knew she wouldn’t be able to maintain… not for the entire five miles.

“Three,” Dorothy counted when they jogged past the gatehouse for the second time. She was getting winded and couldn’t understand why. She wasn’t a compulsive jogger—a couple of miles, two or three days a week, at best—but, even still, three miles was nothing. Or, it shouldn’t be. Why were her calf muscles beginning to burn like she had run the full five miles?

They ran side by side up the mild incline; Lincoln courteously dropping back a couple of steps whenever they were weaving and twisting through the trees, pulling back alongside Dorothy when the land opened back up. The ground flattened out somewhat at the top of the circuit, with a gradual downhill slope back around to the front gates. “Four and a half,” Lincoln counted as they jogged past the gatehouse. He had to; Dorothy didn’t have enough wind left to say anything.

Dorothy forced herself to keep jogging. What the hell was wrong with her? Her heart was pounding like a trip-hammer, she could barely draw in a ragged breath, her leg muscles were starting to cramp up… and Lincoln wasn’t even breathing hard. She hardened her determination; if he could make it all the way around to the gates once more, then “Damnit!” she could, too.

At the top of the circuit, Dorothy stumbled. Only Lincoln skidding to a halt, wheeling around and catching her just in time kept her from landing on her face. “Let me go,” she yelled, trying to extricate herself from his arms, “Damn it, let me…” The fight suddenly went out of Dorothy and she collapsed. “Why…” she gasped.

“You’re not acclimated to the altitude,” Lincoln explained as he lowered her to the ground. “This isn’t sea level, you’re up around two thousand feet here… the air’s thinner.” He partially unzipped the front of her jogging suit. “Deep breaths, Dot. That’s a girl, concentrate on getting your breathing back to normal. You’re going to be okay in a couple of minutes, baby.”

Dorothy could tell Lincoln was saying something to her… his lips were moving, but the rush of her own blood was too loud inside her head to clearly hear him. If she could just catch her breath…

“You’re lucky you didn’t try this in the Rocky Mountains, Dot; the air’s a whole lot thinner up there,” Lincoln continued. He sat back and wrapped his arms around his knees. “I remember running in a meet at University of Wyoming, in Laramie… that’s in the Medicine Bow Range, elevation over a mile high. Anyway, this guy I’m running against—long, lanky white dude… my recorded time’s almost two full seconds faster than his and this guy goes by me like I’m jogging backwards. And why? Cause he was used to there being so little oxygen that high up and I wasn’t.

“We got to yakking after the race and he tells me he was born and raised in the northwest corner of the state—little bitty town called Meeteese, if I recall right. Anyhow, he tells me this town’s elevation is like twenty-five times higher than it’s population, which was around three hundred.” Lincoln plucked a long blade of grass and stuck it in the corner of his mouth. “Couple months later, UW comes down to our neck of the woods and this guy whizzes right by me for the second time, cause now he’s breathing what almost amounts to pure oxygen for him.”

Her breathing finally back to normal, Dorothy sat up. She was going to be okay. “Don’t that beat all,” Lincoln drawled, “a cowboy makin’ ME look like I’m out for an afternoon stroll, and not once, but twice… the second time on my own turf.” He fell back on his elbows. “Just had to buy that ol’ boy a beer and get him laid for doin’ that.”

Dorothy had to smile; Lincoln was playing the good ol’ hick country boy to the hilt. Then, she remembered. “I’m mad at you.”

“I know,” Lincoln answered dryly. “And you got every right to be. Get me out of the doghouse if I say I’m sorry?’”

“No.” Dorothy got to her feet. She wasn’t feeling light headed any longer, but she didn’t feel like running anymore. She started off downhill through the trees for the house. Lincoln was up and alongside her in a couple of strides. They walked without talking. A minute ticked by, then two, the strained silence between them deafening. “Why didn’t you come to my room last night?” Dorothy finally demanded. “Like you promised.”

“The meeting lasted longer than I wanted it to. A lot too long.” Lincoln wanted to tell her what had gone on in the meeting, explain to her why he hadn’t been there when he said he would. But, he couldn’t. “I did come by after the meeting, but you were sound asleep.”

“Had to be after 3:00,” Dorothy said. That had been the last time she remembered looking over at her clock. But, knowing Linc had come by after all… this made her a little less angry.

“It was 3:30, quarter to four,” Lincoln explained. “You were sleeping on top of the bed, that little nightie you were wearing not covering a whole lot.” Affection—more than for a friend, but short of something indefinable—accompanied the mental picture he had of Dorothy sleeping. “Anyway, I managed to get the covers out from under you, got you tucked in, then sat on the edge of your bed for a couple of minutes.”

“Why didn’t you wake me, instead of tucking me in?”

“I didn’t want to.” Dorothy had looked so pretty, so innocent in her slumber, like a young girl without a care in the world. “I sortta liked… just… looking at you.”

That brought Dorothy to a halt. “You didn’t want to touch me? Why, there something wrong with me? A little girl like me not up to your he-man standards?”

“Quite the opposite,” Lincoln retorted. He had wanted to touch Dorothy… badly. Who in his right mind wouldn’t want to touch someone so proportionally prefect? Take her perky breasts in his hands… tenderly tweak the pink nipples to hardness… caress her taunt, rounded buttocks… slide his hand between her legs… feel the moist feather-soft down of her pubic hair against his palm. But, he hadn’t done any of that. There had been a reason for not doing it, not a very good reason in his estimation, but still a reason he had agreed to. “I did touch you once. Briefly.”

“Where?” Dorothy asked. She had wanted Lincoln so bad it had been like a dull ache inside her. She had all but told him out loud how mach she wanted him to touch her, to take her. That was why she had worn the babydoll nightie without any panties, so there would nothing much to get in the way of Lincoln’s strong black hands touching her anywhere he wanted. All it would have taken was Linc copping a feel and she would have instantly been wide awake. “Where did you touch me, Linc? Please tell me.”

“I gave you a goodnight kiss,” Linc confessed with a smile. “Before slipping out and locking the door behind me.”

A tremor ran through Dorothy; she thought she had only dreamed that Linc had kissed her goodnight. What was left of her mad evaporated; she wanted this handsome black man, more than she had wanted him last night. Right here. Right now.

For his part, Lincoln wanted Dorothy, possibly more then vibes she was giving off screamed the she wanted him to take her. He had not wanted anyone so badly in life. But, he had promised that nothing would happen between them. Absolutely nothing, not until it was just the right moment for something sexual to happen between them. Quentin’s time frame, not his own.

But, could a simple kiss… between friends… be considered sexual? Lincoln didn’t care. He wanted to taste Dorothy’s sweet mouth again, drink in her fresh cleanliness. And Quentin wasn’t here to break it up. Impulsively, he lifted Dorothy off her feet the same way he had out on the veranda the night before.

The second her feet were off the ground, Dorothy wrapped legs around Lincoln’s trim waist and locked her heels together behind his back. Her arms went around his neck and their mouths met half way. They kissed and, at least to Dorothy, they were instantly in their own world; their mouths hungrily trying to devourer each other’s; their tongues fencing in a sliding, slithering duel neither of them could lose. Dorothy’s breasts were pressed flat against Lincoln’s heaving chest; she felt herself dissolving in his strong embrace; felt the molecules of her body and Linc’s fusing together; their souls becoming one with each other.

This was more than a simple kiss, but it wasn’t sexual, not entirely. This was something more… and was rapidly becoming a whole lot more. Lincoln had to break the downward spell Dorothy was weaving around him. Another minute… Hell, another ten seconds of this and they would be on the ground, tearing at each other’s clothes like animals in heat.

He managed to pull his head back, enough to separate his mouth from Dorothy’s. “Damn, girl, you kiss like no one I’ve…”

“I’m not a girl!” Dorothy spat. She tightened her legs around Linc’s waist and ground her pelvis hard into his flat stomach. She had to show him that she was woman enough to know what she wanted. “Damnit, Linc, make love to me.” She would prove to this devastatingly handsome man that anything, everything was okay with her. Anytime, anywhere, anyway… She wanted Linc to take her and make her his… all his.

It was the hardest thing he had ever done, but Lincoln somehow managed to force Dorothy to disentangle herself from him. His arms were shaking as he gently set her back on her feet. “It’ll happen between us, Dorothy. I swear it will. Just… just not right now.”

“Why, Linc?” Tears were welling up in Dorothy eyes; tears of anger and frustration; tears of want, of need… of undeniable desire. “Tell me why not.”

“For reasons… reasons I can’t go into. I wish I could. God help me, I wish I could explain it to you. But… but I can’t.” Lincoln stepped back. “Now, pull yourself together. Please.” He took another step back to further increase the proximity of their bodies. “You’ve still got twenty laps to swim,” he said in an attempt to distract her. “And…. and then you’ve got a screen test at eleven.”

Hearing that she had a screen test scheduled cooled Dorothy’s ardor, but it didn’t quench it entirely. That would require her and Linc being together… naked… one of these fucking days. It did, however, jolt her back into the real world; driving home the reason she was up here at O/D Production’s secluded estate like nothing else could. She took a shuddering breath. “How many ah… costars are going to be in my screen test?” A polite way of inquiring how many black dicks were going to be using her on screen.

“Four,” Lincoln answered, more harshly than he had intended for it to come out. “Quentin has it set up for you and four Othellos. But they’re all good guys. Honest. If they sense that they’re really hurting you, in any way, they’ll back off. I promise.”

Dorothy took another couple of deep breaths and tried to steel herself for what was to come. It would be just her and four guys with hard black dicks; them using her white body, one after the other, probably two at a time, maybe more; her naked under the hot lights, the white center piece of a blackdick gangbang… with others watching, filming every last nasty slut thing she did to those guys, or allowed them to do to her.

She turned away from Lincoln. She could she the house from here. The morning sunlight was glinting off the pool’s glassy surface. “Let’s go for that swim and… and cool off a bit.”

“I’m not much of a swimmer, Dot,” Linc confessed as they walked down the incline to the pool. “But, I’ll sit on the edge and count laps for you.”

Dorothy stopped at the pool gate and without looking back at Lincoln, asked, “Will you be at my screen test, Linc?”

“I’ll be there, Dot. I promise.”

Dorothy knelt down and unlaced her running shoes. “I’d appreciate that.” She stood up and kicked her shoes off, unzipped her warmup jacket, shrugged it off and tossed it aside, then skinned off her running pants. She was now as naked as the day she had come into this world. “Might as well get after it, right?” She walked to the edge of the pool and stopped. “I do want to be… be fresh as a daisy for my screen test.”

And with that, Dorothy launched herself from the side of the pool, arching out over the water, her form perfect, her naked body slicing into the still water cleanly, like a hot knife going into butter… barely a ripple.

*

Quentin rubbed his temples, digging his fingers in as hard as he could. Not even 9:00 and already he was getting a headache.

He got up from behind his desk and went to the window. He could see Dorothy in the pool, swimming in the nude. Lincoln was sitting on the edge in his black jogging suit, his knees drawn up. He had seen that “thing” passing between the two of them, the thing that could spell performance death to a porn star, male or female. He had seen it before breaking them apart out on the veranda; at the dinner table… the way they had looked at each other when they were shaking hands. It was going to take every once of influence he had with Linc to keep the two of them apart. Until just the right moment. And that moment—captured correctly—would be priceless.

Quentin watched Dorothy swim to the far side of the pool, underwater; watched her surface, take a deep breath then push away from the side of the pool and glide through the water. She was a good swimmer; her feet fluttering like tailfins, her arm strokes clean and smooth; propelling her through the water effortlessly… like a fish.

Yeah, Dorothy was a fish, all right; a lily-white fish, who was going to have some degrading things done to her before the cameras stopped rolling today.

A demanding knock at his office door pulled Quentin’s attention away from Dorothy and Linc. Uninvited, Star Brite stormed into the office and his headache intensified. As his tempestuous, pain-in-the-ass starlet flounced angrily across the room, demanding—as expected—that he get that new “fucking” cunt the hell out of here “Right fucking now!” he retreated back behind his desk.

Already exhausted, the head of O/D Productions plunked down in the chair and sighed heavily. Problems. Always problems.

* *

Linc and Quentin were huddled together with one of the cameramen when Dorothy came onto soundstage 4, wearing only a lightweight satin robe. It was all the cover she had needed to cross from the house to the huge barn-like structure that housed O/D’s production facilities. Not that it really mattered; when the director called for action, the producer/director, the camera people, and especially her costars weren’t going to want her wrapped in even this much.

Intensely curious, Dorothy stood for a moment and took it all in. She had been on a lot of stages—in high school and the countless times, both on and off Broadway, for auditions for parts that she never got, but she had never been on an actual soundstage. She had expected to see a bustle of manic activity; people frantically rushing around, orders being barked, equipment being moved about. But, surprisingly, there seemed to be very little going on; a lot of people standing around; some drinking coffee or sodas, smoking cigarettes; a few fiddling with cameras or lights; most of them looking bored.

There was one aspect to be found on an O/D soundstage, however, which would contrast drastically from other soundstages. It would probably take someone a while before they caught on to what felt so different, so unusual about their surroundings, but when they finally did figure it out, it would stand out like white rice liberally spilled on a black satin bed sheet. Succinctly put; it was a distinct (and intentional) demarcation of gender. Regardless of their expertise—performers, crewmembers, stagehands, or other staff—Black faces belonged solely to men; whereas Caucasian, Latina, Oriental, or South Sea Islander faces were all female… there were no exceptions to this hard and fast O/D Productions tenet.

Dorothy noticed this, but she didn’t think much about it. She was pretty much accustomed to seeing this ultra racial/sexual separation all around her; in less than two days, it had become the non-threatening norm to her. She was as comfortable at this racially mixed, yet at the same time sexually segregated, estate as she had always felt herself to be in the outside world. Providing she made the grade in this screen test—and she had every intention of doing so—she knew (without any doubts) that she would feel just at home here, as an accepted, contributing member of the exclusive O/D Production family, as she previously had in her mother and father’s warm comfy living room back home.

“Once upon a time…” “Long, long ago…” “Way back when…” “In the time before…”

Dorothy shook her head to clear away the encroaching cobwebs. She’d always had an affinity for the melodramatic, and those kinds of thoughts had been crawling very close to ominous melodrama. But, as she made her way to Lincoln’s side, Dorothy, from predominately Caucasian Oz, wondered how uncomfortable stepping into this starkly contrasting world would make another unsuspecting actor or actress. How would they react at discovering the glaring (decidedly non-pluralistic) delineation of the sexes here at Othellos and Desdemonas Productions was based exclusively on race?

“Going over camera angles, Dorothy,” Quentin said as she approached them. “You might as well get in on this, since you’re going to be center stage.” He nodded in the direction of a big round bed. “The bed will be the focal point, so you’re going to have to keep yourself within the box at all times.”