American Outlaw - Jesse James [84]
“I’ll leave the chopper groupies to you, how about that, Rick?” I sighed. “I don’t think I can handle them right now.”
I had gone out on a few dates since Karla and I split, but they had mostly been a string of extremely well-contained disasters. There was just something soulless about meeting up, going to the Lobster House, and then trying to conjure up some kind of bogus romantic feeling. As much as I hated doing it, I couldn’t stop comparing every woman I met to Karla, the original spitfire girl who never knew how to hold her tongue. Stacked up next to her, most of the women I met just came off as boring.
But then one day things changed. Evan Seinfeld, the lead singer for Biohazard, was at my shop doing a photo shoot on a bike I’d built for him. A friend of his, Kristal Summers, an adult film actress, had tagged along and brought a friend.
“Jesse,” Kristal said, “I want you to meet someone. This is Janine Lindemulder.”
I knew who Janine was. Over the course of the last decade, she had become one of the most famous porn stars of all time, right up there with Jenna Jameson. Janine’s trademark, besides her considerable beauty, was that outside of her homemade sex tape with Vince Neil, she’d never performed on camera with a guy.
“Hey there,” I coughed. “Pleasure to meet you.”
“Hello,” Janine said pleasantly. “This is such a great shop!”
If at first I was a little nervous to be around a famous porn star, that feeling dissolved almost immediately. Janine was bright and engaging, but even more, she was somehow conservative: she wore mom jeans and a thigh-length sweater. No question, she was beautiful, but it came through kind of quietly, in her clean, long hair and her striking, high-cheekboned face.
“You do such nice work, Jesse,” she said, walking around the shop. “I love the colors you use.”
“Well, thanks,” I said. “Do you like bikes?”
“They’re only the coolest machines alive!” she said, laughing. “Man, can’t you tell from looking at me I’m a biker chick at heart?”
She pulled up the arm of her sweater to show a full sleeve of tattoos.
“Hard-core.” I laughed.
“I can’t help it,” she said, giggling. “I really love getting these dang tattoos.”
“Tell me about it,” I said, smiling. I put my own tattoo-covered forearm up next to hers. “It’s addictive.”
Janine let her arm linger against mine for a second.
“They look pretty good up against each other, don’t they?” She gazed up at me, smiling.
“Sure,” I agreed. “Not too bad at all.”
After Evan was done with his shoot, the four of us went out to grab some food.
“I’m going to be honest,” I told the group, laughing. “I’m not really ‘familiar’ with your work, Janine.”
Everyone grinned. “Wow,” Janine said. “Well, I don’t know whether to be happy or offended!”
“Jesse,” Kristal scolded. “How could you?”
“Sorry,” I said, still laughing, “but I’m kind of behind on my girl-girl porn.”
“She’s only the best of the best,” said Kristal. “Cream of the crop, the standard by which all others are measured.”
“Thank you, honey,” Janine said modestly. “But those days are gone. I haven’t done a scene in years. And frankly, I don’t want to.”
“You don’t miss it?” Evan asked, smiling naughtily. “Just the teensiest bit?”
“No,” Janine said. She shrugged. “It was wild, and I would never trade it for anything. But it’s behind me now. It’s the craziest thing, but after all these years, I think I’m finally turning into a grown-up.”
“Man,” I said, nodding, thinking about my own messed-up past—my years spent busting heads and drinking until I didn’t remember who I was. “You said a mouthful.”
She smiled across the table at me. “Well, thank you.”
She blinked her almond-shaped eyes, and I was captivated. For a moment, the others at our table, charismatic as they were, melted into nothingness. All I could feel was Janine’s warm gaze.
——
We were a pair. It was instant.
“I just can’t believe how similar we are,” she marveled.
“Tell me about it,” I agreed. “I’m kind of tripping out.”
For the first time, I felt very matched, in terms of life experience. My world had changed since the