Blue Movie (21 page)

Boris laughed. “Well, we thought you’d have it covered, Sid.”

Sid grimaced. “Okay, look, it’s outta my league, right? I mean, Christ, I’d give
five years of my life
to fuck Angela Sterling . . . but it’s outta my league, okay, I
know
that . . . but
you
and
Tony
. . . I mean, what the hell’s the
matter
with you guys? You into some kind of
fag bag
awready? What’re you guys, On
dope
or something?” He paused and wagged a severely accusing finger at Boris. “I mean,
one
of you guys better start taking care of business, and
fucking that broad!”

Boris shook his head, blinking his eyes. “Wow, am I tired . . . Christ, I don’t think I could get it
up,
Sid. Listen, why don’t you just give her some head?”

But Sid was adamant. “I’m
serious,
B.—I tell you, the
first thing
Les Harrison is going to wantta do is
get laid
. . . relax his tension after the trip, right? Okay, who’s he going to hit on?
Angie,
right? Well, if she’s not getting it from one of
you
guys, then she’ll get it from
him,
for Chrissake! I mean, broads feel . . .
insecure
when that hole is
empty
—believe me, I know!”

Boris shrugged, half asleep now. “Okay, suppose
both
of us are fucking her—Tony and me—and
you’re
giving her head, right? How does that keep her from
still
being nailed by Les?”

Sid’s fat hands flailed the air with his objections. “No, no, no, what I’m talking about is an
affair . . .
this is a
romantic lady
—she’d have an
affair
with one of you guys, and when Les hits on her she’d be
faithful
for Christ-fucking-sake, she’d tell him to get lost . . . Jeez, don’t you know anything about a woman’s
love
and
faithfulness?!?
Well, I mean it’s only for
two or three fucking days,
for Chrissake!”

He looked at his watch. “It’s ten-thirty—she’s probably still awake. But it don’t matter she’s awake or not—you just go in there, she’ll be glad to see you, believe me, I know—if she’s not glad to see you, it’s just because she’s sleepy . . . it don’t matter, knock her down and take it off her . . . a big solid piece of it! B., she’ll thank you later, believe me, I know.”

But B. was asleep.

“Oh Christ, Christ, Christ,” Sid wailed, “what a terrible business!”

F
ILM-MAKING IS A
fragmented and tedious process, and the day’s shooting that had so exhausted Boris had begun in the most ordinary way—with neither ide nor omen to suggest any departure from the norm.

When the lighting for the first shot was finally right, and the camera had been walked through its move several times, Angela demurely stepped out of her blue wrapper, handed it to Helen Vrobel, and lay down on the bed. Between her legs was a flesh-colored strip of rubberized canvas, the same length and width as a sanitary napkin, secured by tape just above the pubic hair, and again beneath each cheek of her buttocks. From the side, of course, neither canvas nor tape could be seen.

About half of the Senegalese spoke English, or at least understood enough of it to take direction—so to play the first scene with Angela, Boris had selected one he considered to appear somewhat less menacing than the others, perhaps more intelligent, and who seemed to understand English perfectly. His name was Feral, a tall, straight blue-black, whose mouth was open in a constant pearl-tooth smile.

“We ought to lose that smile,” said Lazlo to Boris. “That’s going to look pretty
weird,
isn’t it—balling a chick and smiling like that?”

“Let’s do one
with
the smile, and one
without.”

“Right.”

“And stop being against something just because it looks ‘weird.’”

“Right.”

After introducing him to Angela, Boris explained the scene to the loinclothed Feral. “Now, you understand what’s happening, Feral—it’s a simple love scene. You are making love to Miss Sterling here, and she is responding to your caresses . . . to your lovemaking.”

Feral nodded, grinning. “Make
real
love?”

“Make real love, yes.
Intercourse,
right?
Zig-zig,
right?
Fuck-fuck,
right? Well, I mean that’s how it’s going to
look,
you understand. You don’t
actually
make love, but you
pretend
you’re making love—we want it to
look like
you’re making love. Understand?”

“Yes, understand, yes, yes.”

“And while you’re making love, I want you to keep kissing her . . .” he reached over, pointing, “here, here, here, and so on,” touching her mouth, throat, shoulders, and breasts. “Keep your head
moving,
right? Don’t cover her
face
from the
camera,
understand?” He indicated the camera lens and traced a direct line from there to the pillow where Angie’s head lay, her great blue eyes somewhat wider than usual.

Feral agreed eagerly. “Yes, yes, understand.”

“Okay, let’s try it—take off your Tarzan suit and climb aboard Miss Sterling.”

Boris turned to go to the camera, but was stopped short by a shriek,
“Oh Christ!”
unmistakably from Angie. He wheeled about to see that Feral, having dropped his loincloth, was standing by the bed, grinning insanely, and sporting a monstrous erection—thrusting straight out, throbbing up and down like a metronome, and, either by chance or design, pointing directly at Angie.

“What the hell does he think he’s
doing!?!”
she demanded, sitting up in bed, folding her arms protectively across her breasts. Helen Vrobel rushed forward and draped the wrapper over her shoulders.

Boris slowly returned to the bed. “Uh, listen, Feral,” he said, nodding at the offending member, “you won’t
need
that . . . I mean, not in
this
scene—in
this
scene, you just
pretend
to make love . . . later on, in a
different
scene, you can
really
make love, but right now,
no
. . . it’s just
playlike,
understand?”

Feral nodded enthusiastically. “Oh yes, understand, understand.” He looked down at his organ, shook his head, as grinning as ever. “I no
try
to make like that! Just happen! I no try!
No real zig-zig! I understand, no real zig-zig!”
He shrugged to indicate his helplessness.

“Hmmm.” Boris scratched his head, considering it, then crossed over to the smoldering Angela. “Pretty weird, huh?” he said, managing a weak smile.

She didn’t return it. “I thought you said he could understand
English.”

“Uh yeah, well, the thing is he actually
does
understand that he’s not really going to make love to you.”

She seemed quite skeptical. “Oh yeah? Then why the oil derrick?”

“He says he couldn’t help it, it just
happened.”

She glowered past him toward her co-actor. “Well, tell him to just
unhappen
it!”

Boris sighed and looked over at Feral, standing as he had left him, grinning idiotically, and no sign of abatement member-wise.

“You couldn’t, uh, play the scene like that, I guess,” he asked, coming back to Angela, “I mean even if he
does
know it’s not going to be for real . . .”

She took a sharp breath between clenched teeth. “I’d rather
die,”
she hissed.

Tony, who had been writing on the other side of the set, joined them at the bed, walking past Feral as he did, and glancing back at him briefly. “Wow, that’s some
whacker
that guy’s got on him, isn’t it?!? Jesus Christ, a girl could
choke
to death on a piece of that, couldn’t she, Ange?”

Angela turned her head away with a snort of disgust.

“Angie says she won’t do the scene with him like that.”

“Oh?” Tony frowned down at her pelvic area. “You look pretty secure in that rig,” he playfully reached out and gently snapped it,
“and
perfectly adorable. I can’t say I blame the savage black.”

She struck at his hand. “Will you get out of here!” She turned to Boris. “Will you please tell him to get out of here!”

“All right now, let’s just cool it. We’ve got a problem—”

Angela’s impatience was mounting.
“Some
problem—why doesn’t he
jerk off,
for Chrissake!?! Just send him over to a dark corner and have him
jerk off!”

Boris scowled at her. “You can’t ask a man like that to jerk off . . . they’re a proud—”

“Then get him laid, for Chrissake!”
she fairly shouted.

“Why don’t you use a different guy?” asked Tony.

“No, I like this guy—that
grin
of his, that could be pretty strange . . .”

“Okay,” said Tony, “how about sticking his cock in an
ice bucket!”

“Great,” said Boris, “
that’s it,
for Chrissake! We’ll stick it in an ice bucket, bring it down, then we’ll spray it with novocaine!
Terrific!”
He signaled to Props. “Joe, get an ice bucket up here—half ice, half water. And
keep
it here, ha, we may need it again.”

“Better make it a
big
one, Joe,” Tony shouted after him, then smiled down at Angie, “Right, Ange?” and gave her a big wink. But she just glowered, took a deep breath, and turned away in smoldering indignation—an abrupt movement which had the incongruous effect of causing her perfect breasts, seen from above through the parted wrapper, to jiggle briefly, almost comically, before settling down, and into—or so it seemed, with the nipples poking out like angry little mushrooms—a permanent pout.

The ice-novo combo had proved wondrously effective, and Angie was so relieved to notice that Feral’s org (“like some kind of terrible black
club,”
she’d said earlier) had finally subsided to a shrivel of innocence that she went all out in the scene, allowing him to hunch against her rising mons with apparent wild vigor and abandon—though, in actual fact, quite flaccidly—while she, in turn, sobbed, twisted, writhed, moaned, scratched, screamed, swooned, in a superbly feigned display of outlandish passion.

“Print
all
of it,” said Boris when they’d finished, and then to Angie, after Feral had gone: “Wow, that was
fantastic!”
He sat down on the bed by her, while she slipped into her Helen-held wrapper. He laughed, shaking his head. “And you said they didn’t turn you on. Ha.”

She lit a cigarette. “That’s right, honey,” and when Helen Vrobel left them alone, she had a quick surreptitious glance around the set, then took his hand in hers and discreetly guided it through the parted wrapper, between her legs, and beneath the strip of rubberized canvas covering the mons, pressing one of his fingers inside the lips of her vage—while her smile glittered up at him fanatically.
“Dry as a bone . . . right, B.?”

S
ID, WITH CHAUFFEUR
in the big Merk, met Les Harrison’s plane at the airstrip, and, as they started for the hotel, he opened the refrigeration compartment and took out a bottle of champagne.

“All the comforts of home,” he said with a quick chuckle which did not quite camouflage the anxiety beneath it.

Les shook his head grimly. “It’s a little early in the day for me,” then continued in terse tones: “How’s Angie taking all this?”

“Huh? You mean the
picture?
Oh she’s fine, fine.”

“No, I didn’t mean the
picture—
whatever the hell
that
may be—I meant the twelve-million-dollar breach-of-contract suit we’re contemplating against her.”

“Uh, well . . . Jeez, I don’t know, Les . . . I mean, I don’t think she’s mentioned that.”

Les sighed, wagging his head. “The girl is
sick,
really
sick.
First, that New York acting-school nonsense, and now
this
. . .” He closed his eyes, lowered his head, massaged his temples with thumb and forefinger.

“Hey, wait a minute, Les,” Sid went into his effusive style, “don’t
knock
it! This could be the hottest thing since
Funny Girl!
I mean, you guys have got an investment here
too,
you know! Don’t knock your own picture, Les!”

Les opened his eyes, and turned his dead-blue killer’s gaze on Sid. “We ‘have an investment here too,’” he repeated with maniacal calm, Rod Steiger style,
“we
have an investment . . . in
Angela Sterling,
we have a
big
investment in Angela Sterling.” Then he leaned forward to continue, almost whispering, as in mock confidence: “Let me tell you something, Sid—Angela Sterling’s last two pictures grossed
eight million
apiece. All right, she’s good for another five years, maybe six. At four pictures a year, you figure it out . . .” From the extreme deliberation with which he resumed, patiently gesturing with his fingers, as though explaining something to a child, it was apparent that his inner turmoil was threatening to get out of control. The pressure on the floodgates was mounting.
“Four . . . times . . . eight . . . is thirty-two. Six . . . times . . . thirty-two is one hundred and ninety-two . . . and you . . . you say we have an investment here? An investment? AN INVESTMENT? YOU’RE TALKING ABOUT TWO HUNDRED MILLION FUCKING DOLLARS! IS THAT AN INVESTMENT!?!”

As the floodgates burst, and Les was leaning forward and screaming at the top of his voice, he seemed on the verge of actually lunging at Sid’s throat—but, with the crescendo, he stopped, visibly trembling, then slumped back down in the seat. And when he spoke again, it was with quiet, consummate control. “The girl is
sick,
Sid. She’s in
desperate
need of psychiatric attention.”