The Grande Futapest Hotel Ch. 04

WEDNESDAY

When working nights, one gets used to sleeping in as late as necessary. While working in the coffee shop, there was nothing worse than the feeling of waking up completely rested. That invariably meant that she slept through her alarm.

Layla was alarmed to be thrown out of her dream by someone rocking her back and forth by her shoulder. For a moment, Layla felt she was back at her parent's home, being woken just before she had to leave for school with no breakfast but a granola bar. The days where she woke up with time to spare were the days she actually bothered to ice her Toaster Strudel.

It took a moment for Layla to remember where she was. It wasn't the twin she remembered from home, but one of the many king-sized beds Selena owned. Layla pulled her head up from her pillow and saw Selena through the blur and hair fallen in front of her eyes.

"Wake up, sleepyhead." Selena said.

When at home, Layla would just throw the sheets over her head and groan. When not threatened with being sent to high school, she pulled herself up to a sitting pose, the sheets covering her lap.

Selena set down a plate with an omelet and a fork into Layla's recently formed lap.

Layla rubbed her eye and sniffed. "Breakfast in bed?"

"It wasn't going to be in bed, but you slept really late, so... now we're running short on time." Selena said. "So eat up, because we have less than an hour before we have to hit the road."

Layla started eating. She had to learn how Selena made omelets like this. Maybe it was one of those copper pans they sell on late night TV. Selena must have seen those commercials go by at some point. "Where are we going?"

"We have a meeting with a client in Burbank around eleven."

"What time is it now?"

"Nine-thirty." Selena said, checking her watch. "Which I'm pretty sure is when we went to bed. How do you sleep so much?"

"Sometimes, it takes me a while to get to sleep." Layla said. "I mean, you're sleeping with some random futa babe you met at the start of the week who nobody knows..." She sliced a bit of the omelet off with the fork. "But I'm still sleeping with Selena freaking Grande."

"Well, I sleep with Selena Grande every night, and it's not all it's made out to be. It's pretty boring... until you came around, of course."

Layla ate her omelet, set the plate on the night stand, and went to shower. She kept the water moderately warm this time, surely in enough control to keep from getting hard. As she scrubbed, her mind wandered a bit, imagining Selena sliding the curtain open in some attempt to save water. Of course, they spent more time touching each other than they would by showering separately, but any time spent away from those succulent breasts would be a waste, and dammit, she was hard. She hadn't even touched it.

No matter how much it begged, Layla kept her washing of her cock as just that.

Layla dried off, dressed in a robe and went to the kitchen. Selena was there drinking a can of pineapple juice with a gentle disapproving look on her face.

"What's up?" Layla asked.

Selena looked over. "Hey. Oh, nothing. But there won't be coffee today."

"Why not?"

Selena pointed her thumb away from her. In the corner of the adjacent room... was the automatic coffee maker.

Layla looked at Selena. "Is the coffee maker... in time out?"

"No." Selena looked at the device disapprovingly, as if it had leaked coffee all over the carpet instead of on the paper. "But it's a piece of junk and I need to get rid of it. So I put it over there so I'd remember to actually do that. I would happily smash it so it wouldn't work again, but... then glass and plastic shards would go everywhere, and that'd be bad, considering that I sometimes walk around barefoot."

"By 'barefoot,' you mean 'naked?'" Layla asked.

"Of course."

Some hesitation entered Layla's voice. "If you were going to smash it, would you be smashing it out of anger?"

"Oh, no. I'm not that kind of person." Selena insisted. "It'd just be me forcing myself to get a new coffee maker and stop putting up with bad coffee. I try to keep everything in my life running smoothly and properly, but... sometimes, I'm just too damn busy to buy a new coffee maker. Now, I will... hopefully."

Selena pointed her finger upwards. "Actually, you reminded me of something." She picked up the misbehaving coffee maker and brought it and Layla to the hall, and to one of the many outwardly featureless doors.

"Have I been in this room yet?" Layla asked.

"I don't think so." Selena unlocked it and entered. "This is my junk room. That's why it's locked. I normally don't let guests in here, because it's a mess."

"So long as you don't have the corpses of your seven previous wives in here, I'm fine."

At some point, Selena must have realized she'd rather have storage space than one more bed. The room was filled with stainless steel storage racks, plastic storage tubs and unlabeled lidded cardboard boxes on shelves, or stacked atop on another. One of the plastic tubs seems to have sex toys in it, but that was the only interesting thing in the room.

Except.... up against the wall was a large metal construct about four feet wide in all directions, six armlike extensions webbed with white plastic reaching out from a center base, five of them with propellers. There was a big tear in the metal on one side, and other damage and streaks of dirt about the device.

"What is that?" Layla gestured to the thing.

Selena set the coffee maker on a random plastic tote. "It's a remote-controlled drone."

"You own a drone?"

"I do now." Selena nodded. "We can't fly it because I don't have the remote control. Also, it's broken."

"I could tell THAT." Layla folded her arms. "What happened to it?"

"This thing flew onto my property sometime last year while I was in my backyard doing a little nude sunbathing. When I saw this thing flying pretty close, taking pictures of me on my property, I picked up my bottle of suntan lotion and lobbed it right at it. I hit one of the propellers and the thing crashed. I dragged it inside and got the pictures off of it. I posted a picture to my blog like a fisherman, talking about what a big catch I had."

"I must have missed that blog post." Layla said. "Whose drone is it?"

"I'm not going to say exactly who, since it's not anyone you've heard of, but... I know who it is." Selena said coyly. "I could have pressed charges or something, but then he might try to retaliate and get me to pay for his $35,000 drone that I took out with my $10 bottle of sunscreen."

"This thing costs thirty grand?"

Selena continued without exactly answering. "The funniest thing is... you'd think he'd have a system to live-dump all the pictures and video to his computer or something, but... not this guy. I took the pictures he took of me and sold them to some dumb website for more than the 30 grand! I don't understand why they thought they were valuable. There are pictures of me naked all over the Internet. My penis is the most well-documented penis in the era of Internet pornography."

"So..." Layla began, a little uncomfortable. "You trashed this guy's expensive toy for flying over your house, and then stole his photos?"

"No..." Selena said slowly. "I trashed his unwanted surveillance drone for flying so close that I could actually hit it with something. And I throw like a girl... so to speak."

"But flying a drone over someone's house isn't illegal." Layla said. "Or it wasn't in Oregon."

"Flying over someone's house isn't illegal." Selena said. "But Section 1708.8 of the Civil Code in California was amended to say that flying a drone over someone's property to get images or recordings IS illegal. Trust me, I looked into it. You can fly, you can even shoot video, but you can't do it with the express purpose of getting pictures from someone where someone has an expectation of privacy, like my backyard. It's an anti-paparazzi thing."

"I don't think that means you can keep it."

"If he wants it back, he can have it back!" Selena gestured. "He obviously knows where I live."

"Do you remember..." Layla seemingly changed the subject. "There was a news segment hosted by John Stossel--"

"Holy crap, there's a name I haven't heard in a while." Selena snorted.

"So John Stossel was trying to demonstrate that people were pretending to be homeless to get money from sympathetic passers-by. So... John Stossel pretended to be homeless... and got money from passers-by. Well, whether or not it was right or wrong to do that... it was definitely wrong if he just kept the money he got from people who thought he was homeless, rather than giving it to a homeless shelter, or even giving it to one of his new homeless friends."

Selena set the drone back against the wall. "I think I see what you're saying. I'm a millionaire taking an expensive investment away from... someone who's probably not a millionaire."

"What did you do with the money from the pictures?" Layla asked nervously.

Selena sighed with a gentle self-pitying sneer. "I probably just kept it." She threw up her hands. "It's not that I don't give money to charity. Far from it. But I just... put that money in the bank. I didn't even think about it."

An awkward silence. Layla wished she hadn't brought it up.

"Do YOU want it?" Selena suggested.

"No no no no no." Layla said, rapid as a machine gun, presenting both palms outward. "Not at all. The last thing I want in the world is for you to just give me money. If I wanted more money, I could have kept my day job. I quit that job because I hated working at a coffee shop and I loved masturbating on camera."

"At least you're in porn for the right reason." Selena said, as they both walked out of the room. "Man, I wish I'd seen John Stossel pretending to be homeless. I'd'a gone right up him and said, 'John Stossel?! What happened to you? Did 20/20 getting canceled really just ruin you? Did Hugh Downs take everything in the divorce?'"

Layla waited a second before responding. "20/20 is still on the air."

"Well, hot damn. Now we have something else to watch on... Mondays?"

"Fridays."

"Fridays, then."

"20/20 is how I figured out I was... gay, bisexual, whatever."

"Did they do a story on futa sexuality?"

"Maybe they did. But my mom just said once, 'oh, isn't Stone Phillips so handsome?' and I said... I guess?" Layla started to chuckle. "Evidently that wasn't enthusiastic enough. And that's when I figured out I was more attracted to girls than... Stone Phillips."

"No way, it's Stossel all the way. Give me that sweet 'stache. All the dudes in porn nowadays have that 'stache."

"Do they?"

"No, they don't. The mustache went out of porn in the seventies, maybe the eighties. It's kind of a miracle that of all the dudes in Star Wars, only Lando has the mustache."

They came back to the kitchen. Layla looked around.

"So... there is no coffee?"

"We'll get drive-up somewhere on our way out." Selena pulled out her phone. "And maybe I can get someone to bring me a good coffee maker and install it while I'm gone." She turned her phone out to Layla. "Was thinking about getting this one."

Layla recoiled from the phone like it was a crucifix and she was a vampire, or like Selena had just shown her the face of a high school bully she'd hoped had died in some horrible fashion, but was now the President's special counsel on wedgies.

"Oh, no!" Layla cried. "Not the DRC!"

Selena checked the page she showed her. The full name was DRC-1700S, but Selena's interest was piqued. "You know this machine?"

"That thing is a piece of shit!" Layla shook her head. "It leaks super hot water, that stainless steel surface gets really hot, even though they say it won't, and that handle that holds the espresso... thing in place... I kept catching my shirt on that. Though... you have more room here than behind the counter, so that might not be as big of a deal here."

"I also frequently make coffee naked, but if it leaks hot water... that could be even worse."

"Well, it also makes lousy coffee!" Layla gestured. "But that might have been low quality beans at the shop." Layla pulled out her phone. "Hang on." She tapped it a few times and held it to her ear. "Hey, Tim? It's--"

Layla pressed her teeth together, her cheek muscles momentarily prominent. Layla had stopped herself like stomping on the brake of a car. She looked over at Selena self-consciously, then looked back to her phone.

"It's me." Layla said.

Selena knew what just happened.

Layla had almost said her real name.

"Yeah, do you remember that old machine we used to have?" Layla asked. "That was the DRC, right? OK, I just had to be sure. How did the replacement work out? I didn't use it very often. Oh... well that sucks. Anyway, sorry to call you so early. I just had a friend who was looking to buy a coffee maker and I wanted them to avoid that piece of shit. OK. Yeah, I'll see you later."

Layla glanced at Selena. "I don't know when I can hang out. Soon, hopefully. OK, See ya."

She hung up. Selena's eyebrow bucked up knowingly. "I didn't know you had a boyfriend."

"Tim is NOT my boyfriend. Jesus." Layla said pointedly.

"So you DO have one?" Selena said. "I'm not enough woman for you, I get it."

"Selena!" Layla couldn't help but blush.

"Anyway... I guess I'll do a little more research on a coffee maker." Selena deleted the bookmark in her phone where she'd saved the page for the DRC. "You've just saved me some time and money. Thank you."

"I am here to help you, after all." Layla said. "I don't know how much help I've been, since all we seem to do is screw around, but... I'm having a lot of fun."

"And you got to fuck me." Selena said. "Well, if you tell Tim that you got to fuck a porn star, I bet they won't be impressed, but you got to do it in my bed, which is way less common." She had drifted away from Layla, who was blushing, pulling her lips together shyly, holding her hands in front of her.

Selena looked at Layla with an incredulous smile. "Seriously? I wasn't even trying!"

---

Selena and Layla drove towards Burbank, a half-hour drive when traffic cooperated. Selena almost always gave herself an extra twenty minutes for any appointment. If she was earlier than ten minutes, she might wait in her car. She didn't want to give the impression of being desperate to impress, but she would absolutely not be late if she could help it. If she even thought that she COULD be late, she would call the client and tell them so. She'd normally still get there on time, but no matter how busy she got, she would try not leave anyone waiting for her.

In the short drive, Layla continued asking questions that she hadn't thought of in the last few days. Selena said she would answer a question that she might normally consider too personal for a 'fan,' if Layla would answer a question in return.

"How often do you dye your hair?"

Selena glanced at Layla, unwilling to look away from the traffic for too long. "I don't dye my hair."

"Yeah, you do." Layla said, quickly realizing how silly her contradiction sounded. "Don't you?"

"No, this is natural. I'm a natural blonde."

"But..." Layla ruffled through her deep knowledge of older pictures and videos of Selena. "I swear you used to have brown roots."

"Oh, yeah..." Selena thought back. "Now I know what you're talking about. In the second year, I heard a producer say he wanted me to dye my hair to be more of a bleached platinum blonde, rather than a light blonde. I told him to go find someone else with a twelve inch dick. But it inspired me to do something silly. Have you ever dyed your hair?"

"In high school, I dyed it purple. And I tried dying it blonde once, but it didn't really work."

"Were you trying to look like me?"

"Maybe subconsciously." Layla said. "I'm really not sure why I did it. I didn't want more attention, being one of the only futa students..."

"So, when you dyed your hair, did it come with the touch-up stuff?" Selena asked. "It's like mascara with hair dye in it, and you touch up your roots as they grow in?"

"I've never heard of that. But it's smart."

"Well, that's the thing about porn." Selena said. "Most people don't want real blondes. They want brunettes that have had their hair dyed blonde... dark roots and dirty streaks and all. It's the same thing with the breast implants thing. Porn consumers start to prefer the stuff they see in porn if they watch too much of it. So they actually prefer brunettes dyed blonde to real blondes. So... I dyed my roots brown a few times."

"Why?"

"At first, it was to fuck with that director." Selena explained. "He thought I HAD dyed the rest of my hair, but it was an optical illusion. But then I had to keep touching it up, because my real blonde hair would grow in and I'd have this band of brown between streaks of blonde. I even would touch up my eyebrows to make them darker, too. I just dyed it all black and let it fade back to blonde after a few months."

"I think I've seen some of that stuff." Layla said. "I always assumed it was a wig."

"Well, if I'm in a porn anytime within the last three years or so, and my hair isn't blonde, it IS a wig. I just hated how my hair felt after dying it, and frankly... my blonde hair is part of my brand, and I don't want to mess with it for weeks at a time unless we were doing a real movie. But, as I'm sure you know, porn is produced much faster than real movies."

"Yeah..." Layla trailed off, thinking of the time she 'produced much faster' than even she expected. "You have a question for me?"

Selena was ready. "You ever have trouble... fitting?"

Layla found herself blushing.

Selena took it back. "You don't have to answer if you don't want."

"No, I've never had trouble with... that." Layla answered simply. "What about you?"

"Not everyone can do the full thirteen... but I get most of the way in about... three-fourths of the time." Selena said. "There was one woman... ah, what the hell, I'll just say her name. You ever hear of Jessee Conway? With two E's?"

"No."

"We did a scene, and she couldn't take me more than halfway." Selena said. "She didn't want to break the scene, but she sort of gestured at me, like, don't go any further, please. So I just... halved the whole thing, and the director called cut and said, 'this looks stupid!' and I said, 'It sure feels stupid!' I'd never seen anything like it for someone as tall as her. Jessee is six feet tall, way taller than me, and I've had five-foot women ride me like a cowboy. I look at them and I'm like... where is it all going?"

"How did you finish the scene with Jessee?"

"We flipped her over and did it up the ass." Selena said. "That's the standard solution. Pretty much always plenty of room back there. Man, woman or futa."

It was Layla's turn. "What do you do when you're sick?"

Selena took in a breath. "Take a lot of decongestants, Dayquil, use my neti pot, Fishermen's Friend... and then try to get through it. There was a time when someone couldn't deep-throat me because she had a sore throat."

"Did she do something else, or did you skip the scene?"

"We couldn't. It was Deep Sea Deep Throat 2. That was the whole point."

"So... what happened?"

"We shot everything else, and did pickups closeups of the blowjob another day. That's why there's no long shot of her covered in jizz. It's because we were on a different set and we had to keep the shot tight. So, the answer is... you do what you can. Unless it's the flu or something like that, in which case... I don't go. I'm not getting anyone else sick. Everyone understands."

It was Selena's turn to ask a question. "Do you do any... recreational drugs?"

Layla looked at her. "No. I smoked weed once, but I didn't like it."

"I've never actually tried marijuana." Selena said.