From: smart_book2001@yahoo.com   
      
   Advisory: The following excerpt contains explicit language and adult   
   material.   
      
   Star Struck   
   by Pamela Anderson   
   Published by Atria Books; August 2005;$24.00US/$33.00CAN; 0-7434-9283-8   
   Copyright © 2005 Pamela Anderson   
      
   It just wasn't possible to tell him no.   
      
   After talking with Jimi on the phone for three hours that first day, Star   
   agreed that she and her friends from the shoot would meet him and his   
   friends for drinks at the hotel bar. It seemed like innocent fun, and it   
   was, at long last, something to do on her vacation that involved leaving her   
   room besides work. Star had had just about all the rest and relaxation she   
   could stand, and a little tequila and a lot of dancing sounded like just   
   what her holiday needed.   
      
   Best of all, it was the first offer she'd made the others on the shoot that   
   had drawn any interest at all. Missy, her makeup and hair girl, three of the   
   other models -- Diane, Cindy, and Kat -- and Roberto, one of the boys on the   
   crew who was also one of the girls, all jumped at the chance to come along   
   to see what would happen that evening.   
      
   Just knowing that they were going out that night enlivened Star on the next   
   day's shoot. She'd made quite the hit learning to windsurf for the cameras.   
   Afterward, she'd snagged some of the summer line they were there to model   
   and enlisted Missy, who'd been doing her makeup for the shoot, to help her   
   get ready so she could make a real entrance at the bar that night. She made   
   quite the project of it.   
      
   The truth of it was, Star hadn't been all that interested in Jimi. She   
   didn't even intend to see him after she got back to L.A.   
      
   "Okay, Missy," Star said, making like she was cracking a whip as she emerged   
   wearing a bikini top, Gucci short shorts, and stilettos. "Bring on the   
   eyeliner."   
      
   *   
      
   "I'm sorry, but the señor will not be permitted in the hotel bar," the   
   maître d' said with a little sniff. "You are not dressed properly for the   
   Ritz. Perhaps the Hilton will be more to the señor's liking? They have no   
   standards there that I can detect."   
      
   Star, Missy, and the others were enjoying the show from their table inside   
   the Land's End, the bar to which the maître d' was attempting to refuse   
   entry to Jimi and his scruffy lot. Clad more or less identically in saggy   
   jeans, black Frankenstein shoes, and wife-beaters, they looked like   
   someone's backup dancers.   
      
   "Which one is he?" Diane, one of the other models, whispered to Star.   
      
   "I honestly don't know," Star confided with a tiny shrug. "They all look   
   alike. They're all hot."   
      
   "I noticed that. Is he in a rock-and-roll band or a marching band?" Missy   
   teased, laughing at her own joke.   
      
   "I'm not so sure." Star shrugged. "But it looks as though he's not going to   
   be in here anytime soon."   
      
   "Look, Jeeves," Jimi shouted loudly enough to be heard at Star's table. "We   
   are supposed to be meeting guests at your foofy, uptight place. You should   
   be happy we're here. Look around."   
      
   "That's him, the belligerent one." Star nodded disgustedly, recognizing the   
   attitude from the fight he'd gotten into when he'd broken into her trailer   
   only a week earlier and surprised yet another intruder who'd beaten him to   
   it.   
      
   She smiled at herself.   
      
   She had broken up the fight in her trailer and gotten Jimi to leave by   
   promising to go out on a date with him when she got back from Cabo if he   
   stopped stalking her. She also agreed to read a movie script that the other   
   intruder, Steph Golden, had broken in to leave for her. And there she was   
   going out with Jimi in Cabo and she'd not read a word of the Hy Voltz   
   script. Not my most successful negotiation, she thought ruefully.   
      
   "He seems very, um, persistent," Cindy fished for a compliment as she sipped   
   at the straw in her fruity drink. "That's always a good sign, right?" Her   
   head bobbed back and forth like a tennis spectator's as she watched Jimi   
   trying to outflank the implacable maître d'.   
      
   "Yeah," Star said, bemused as security stepped in to prevent Jimi from   
   coming to her table. "You've got to admire his determination."   
      
   "Sure, what the fuck?" Kat said, toasting with her coconut shell.   
      
   Star rose to rescue him before he wound up in some seedy Mexican jail.   
      
   "A man will follow his dick off a cliff." Diane shrugged, stirring her drink   
   with the straw.   
      
   "Is there a cliff nearby?" Star called over her shoulder with a little laugh   
   and a toss of her head that brought both Jimi and the security guards up   
   short.   
      
   "Hi," Jimi said, twisting his goatee nervously, unable to manage much more   
   than an adolescent croak. "You look fucking amazing."   
      
   "Is there a problem?" Star asked without addressing Jimi directly.   
      
   "Señorita e'Star," the maître d' fawned. "I am so sorry I did not realize,   
   is this man a guest of yours?"   
      
   "Yeah. What's wrong?"   
      
   "I'm afraid that the Ritz has a very strict dress code," the maître d' said   
   with an obsequious bow. "I can offer you and your guests a table by the pool   
   perhaps? Or in the cabana? But I cannot allow gentlemen without jackets in   
   the Land's End Club after six. My sincerest apologies."   
      
   "No worries," Star said, waving the nervous man in for a landing with a   
   gentle gesture. "Tell you what. I haven't gotten to see much of Cabo.   
   Perhaps you could recommend a nightclub. Something local and not too   
   touristy? Where we could go for a little drink in the company of gentlemen   
   without jackets?"   
      
   "I'm sure Miss e'Star could get in anywhere in the world she cared to call,"   
   the man said with another bow. "But, perhaps Madre de la Perla?"   
      
   "What?" Star asked. The name brought her up short. "What's the name of the   
   place?"   
      
   "Madre de la Perla," the man repeated. "In inglés, Mother of Pearl. It's an   
   open-air cantina de la ostra -- oyster bar."   
      
   "I'm home," Star said, flinging her arms around Jimi's neck and hopping up   
   and down as she spun him around. "Shuck me, suck me, eat me raw!" she   
   shouted.   
      
   "I thought you'd never ask," Jimi said, grinning as he took her in his arms.   
      
   *   
      
   "They're actually supposed to be a 'hypochondriac,'" Star explained to her   
   mystified party as she drained the oyster shell of its contents and chased   
   it with a shot of tequila. "That means they'll put lead in your pencil," she   
   added with a confidential giggle. "Who wants an oyster shot?" she asked as   
   she dropped the hollow shell into the gold, spray-painted coffee can that   
   had been placed on their table to collect the empties.   
      
   The whole place had the same sort of makeshift feel to it. Formerly a   
   dockside gas station and general store catering to local fishermen, with a   
   little imagination and a lot of spray paint, the place had been converted   
   into a dockside gas station, general store, and a bar. There were a few   
   rough wooden tables, benches, and an odd assortment of old webbed lawn   
   chairs, where local fish and seafood were served fresh off the fishing boats   
   that bought gas and shopped for supplies there.   
      
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)