Blue Movie (14 page)

“But you didn’t
come, chéri.
”

This thought seemed to agitate Pamela considerably. “Well, I didn’t
come
—no, of course not . . . I mean, I don’t very well see how I can do
that,
and still know what I’m doing. Good heavens, I practically forgot where the
camera
was just now!”

“Don’t worry about the camera,” said Boris. “Just try to relax and enjoy it.”

Arabella agreed heartily. “Oh yes, if you just relax and enjoy it, it will be such a wonderful scene . . . so beautiful.”

Fred the First came over then and said that Du Couvier was waiting in Arabella’s trailer, to check her makeup.

She kissed Pamela on the cheek before getting up. “You are ravishing,” she whispered, and hurried off.

Pamela sighed. “Oh dear, I just wish she weren’t quite so . . .
zealous
at it—I’m not at all sure I can cope.”

“How do you mean, ‘zealous’?” asked Boris.

“Well,” said Pamela, somewhat at a loss, “I really don’t know—I mean, I guess I just didn’t know they did it like that—I thought it would be more of a . . .
kissing,
instead of . . . that.”

Boris was intrigued. “Instead of
what?”

“Well, I’m not entirely sure, you see—it feels more as if she were sort of . . . well,
sucking
it, and then sort of, I don’t know . . .
biting
it. I must say, it’s the most unnerving sensation I’ve ever experienced.”

Boris regarded her quizzically. “Didn’t any . . .
man
ever do that to you?”

“No,” said Pamela primly, “decidedly not.
Kissing
it, yes—but not
that
. . . not doing
that.”

“Hmm . . .”

“I’m not suggesting, you understand, that I’ve led a particularly
sheltered
life—I’ve had the usual number of affairs, etcetera—it is simply that I have not, or
had
not, encountered an experience—or sensation, if you like—such as this. Now you’ve both suggested that I just ‘relax and enjoy it’ . . . even to the point of having an orgasm—well, you don’t need an
actress
for that, Mr. Adrian, you merely need a . . . well, that sort of
girl.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Boris saw the white terrycloth robe as Arabella stepped from her trailer, in animated converse with Du Couvier. He felt he didn’t have much time. “Surely you can’t believe,” he said to Pamela, after fixing her with his most darkly serious look, “that there isn’t more to the
role
. . . the
character . . .
than that? I
know
that you must recognize the
symbology,
and the
parable,
underlying the sequence—perhaps the
most important
sequence in the entire film.”

“Well, I
do
like to think that there’s more to it than just . . . well, of course I’m sure that there
is
more to it than that—otherwise, none of us would be here—”

“Right,” Boris said hurriedly. “Listen, I’ll tell you what—I’ll ask Arabella to, you know, sort of
take it easy,
so to speak . . . and
you,
in turn, try to . . . well, kind of go along with it . . . like
method,
okay?”

He gave her a solid wink of conspiracy, just as Arabella arrived, glowing.

“Bon,”
she said, “now we
work,
yes?”

Boris got up, and helped Pamela to her feet. “Yes, let’s,” he said in his best Laurence Olivier manner, “we’ll take it from the top, shall we?”

Pamela looked at him beseechingly, before moving a few steps away so he could speak to Arabella alone—but it was Arabella herself who seized the opportunity. “Well,” she whispered urgently, “how did she like it?”

Boris nodded, gave the Sid sign of circled thumb and forefinger and a big wink. “She
loves
it,” he said, “absolutely
loves
it.”

Arabella was delighted. “Oh wonderful, wonderful!”

“Yeah, it’s beautiful,” said Boris, “you just hang in there, you hear?”

She squeezed his arm. “Oh,
chéri,
you can count on that!”

A
T ONE O’CLOCK
in the afternoon, Lips Malone returned from a two-day trip to Paris, and a mission of considerable import. It had been his task to comb the streets, clubs, and whorehouses of Montmartre and the Champs Elysées, in search of a girl whose legs and bottom resembled Arabella’s—at least adequately enough that, in the close-ups of Uncle-penetration, it would not be discernible that it was, in fact, a different girl. He had succeeded remarkably well, considering the short time in which he did it. She was twenty—or so she said, and didn’t look much over it—dark eyes, and the right skin coloring. After some painstaking work by Du Couvier, including an Arabella hairpiece, the resemblance was quite astonishing. Most importantly, however, she had Arabella’s slender willowy waist, her long rounded dancer’s legs, and her perfect derrière—the principal parts slated for the silver screen.

Her name was Yvette, and her price was one hundred francs (N.F.), about thirty-five dollars, for what she termed an
“acte normal”
—all deviations therefrom being negotiable. After learning the nature of the job, and that it might engage her for as much as two days, she made certain calculations and announced that her price would be 4,800 francs.

Lips, who was accustomed to getting things wholesale, or at least at a discount when buying in bulk, couldn’t understand. “Forty-eight hundred francs? That’s fifteen hundred bucks, for Chrissake! How’d you figure that?”

“I think one hour per customer,” she said, “that’s one hundred francs per hour, times forty-eight hours, is forty-eight hundred francs.”

“But what about
sleeping?”
asked Lips, “don’t you ever
sleep?”

She shrugged. “Sometimes I go forty-eight hours without sleeping.” Then she added, “Besides that, Arabella is rich, and so are movie companies.”

“Okay,” said Lips, “what the hell.” Actually he had been prepared to go much higher than that for the right girl—and Yvette was right . . . as Boris and Sid agreed when they met her now back at the studio.

Sometime before lunch, it had started to rain, putting an end to shooting at the lake for the day; so the company had returned to the studio—which was perhaps just as well, since Pamela had twice reached the breaking point, and very nearly the point of
collapse.

On the first retake, she had been more relaxed, in the beginning—lying there closed-eyed, her hands back alongside her head as though pinioned at the wrists, her body writhing slowly in, presumably, feigned response . . . while Arabella, kneeling between her legs, massaged her breasts and ran her tongue up and down the lips of her vage, pausing at the top every second or third time to dart it playfully against her clitoris.

Then, as the camera came in very close, she dropped her hands from the breasts to the lips of the vage, and slowly drew them apart.

“Are you getting it?” Boris asked Lazlo in a whisper, referring to the glistening pink-pearl clit which the opened lips revealed, while Arabella paused momentarily, just gazing at it, as in anticipation, before reaching out to it with her equally pink tongue.

“Got it,” Lazlo whispered back, “the highlight was beautiful.”

The shot had been lit for exactly that—to catch a point of shimmering light on the top of the clitoris—and Arabella had been instructed to pause momentarily before flicking her tongue out lizardlike, and then slowly obscuring it with her whole beautiful mouth.

Afterward she placed her hands under Pamela’s buttocks (which she had earlier described as “like two foam-rubber cantaloupes”) and applied herself, lips and tongue, with renewed zeal, while the distressed Pamela sighed and moaned, eyes closed, her head thrown back, moving from side to side.

“Now, Pam,” said Boris, “as you get more excited, bring it up to meet her—bring your thing up to meet her mouth. And raise your legs a little more.”

It was a sound-take, of course, but they would lose his voice in the cutting—and Pamela obeyed, straining upward from the waist down.

“That’s it,” said Boris, “now put one hand—your
left
hand—on her head, and pull it toward you, and move your right to your breast and hold it. Beautiful. Now just try to go with it, Pam. Please.”

“I am, I am,” she murmured, almost painfully, “Oh, God . . .” and her breath began coming in gasps, and then she was moaning, biting her lower lip and tossing her head from side to side, before her body was seized with a violent shudder and her head back, her mouth opened in a soft wail, “. . .
oh God, please, please, oohhhh
. . .” and she gave a great gasp and began to sob, pulling away from Arabella, and putting one hand protectively over her vage.

“Okay, cut” said Boris quietly and went out to comfort the girl, who was crying profusely.

“It was
beautiful,
Pam,” he said softly, “absolutely
beautiful.
You’re a really
great
actress.”

“What does
acting
have to do with it?” she asked tearfully, but it was apparent that the compliment had at least a modicum of appeasing effect on her, and she began dabbing at her eyes.

Helen Vrobel noticed as she arrived with the robes, and called out over her shoulder: “Makeup—tissues please!”

“I mean it, Pam,” Boris continued, “it was terrific—you too, Arabella,” he added, putting an arm around his super-star, she who seemed vaguely annoyed.

“But why did we
stop?”
she wanted to know.

Boris looked at Pam. “Yeah, it was so great . . . I mean, I thought you were going to
come.”

“But I
did
come,” exclaimed Pam, looking from one to the other in astonishment. “Good heavens, couldn’t you tell?”

Arabella’s hurt and sullen expression stayed the same. “But that’s no reason to
stop,”
she said, “and to push me from you—that way it looks like you did not enjoy it.” She turned to Boris. “Is it not true, Boris?”

“Well—”

Pamela couldn’t believe it. “But I thought I was going to
faint
or something. I mean,
surely
you don’t believe I could have kept that up?”

“Well, the thing is,” said Boris, “we need to go out on your
submission
to her—I mean, we can’t go out on your
rejecting
her, can we?” He thought about it for a second. “You know, the
fainting
thing might not be a bad idea.”

“Well, said Pamela ruefully, “I can’t very well
faint
if she doesn’t
stop,
can I?”

“Yeah, well maybe not
faint
exactly, but just sort of look . . . you know,
satisfied.”

“But that’s what I’m
saying—
I can’t do
anything
if she keeps on doing it . . .”

“You mean after you come?”

She sighed, and demurely looked away. “Yes.”

“Well . . . what if you come twice?”

This suggestion caused her to burst into tears anew. “Oh, I just
couldn’t, I couldn’t,
I
couldn’t
. . .”

“Okay,” said Boris, “we’ll work it out.” And he smiled to himself. Great, at least now she had accepted actually having an orgasm as part of the scene.

The third take went according to plan—except, of course, that Arabella didn’t stop as promised, and Pamela came twice—the second time, almost hysterically, when Arabella inserted two fingers while still sucking and biting her clit—and then she fell limp like a broken doll.

T
HE COVER-SHOT
—that is, the shot which was scheduled as an alternate to the lake sequence in case of rain—was the love scene between Arabella and her uncle . . . uncle to be played by a certain gross Sid Krassman.

“If Sid actually tries to stick it in her,” Boris was saying to Tony, “she may get pretty uptight—I mean, like actually violent . . . you know,
scratch
his face, try to
disfigure
him, or something.”

Tony went into his deadpan minstrel routine: “Now, er, uh, Mistah B., does yoah mean
dis-figure,
or does yoah mean
dis-membah?
Hee-hee-hee!” and he did a quick soft-shoe two-step.

“Well, the thing is,” Boris explained, “we ought to get one shot of his face while he’s
coming,
right? Now, the only way to be sure of getting that is with the
other
girl . . . Yvette—I mean, we can’t count on
Arabella
to stand still for that sort of thing, can we? And most of all we can’t risk her blowing her stack, and walking off the picture. No, we better shoot all the stuff with Sid and the hooker first—you know, all the penetration stuff.”

S
ID, UNDERSTANDABLY, WAS
somewhat nervous, making his screen debut in such an auspiciously questionable manner.

“You look great, Sid,” Boris told him, when he came out of wardrobe.

Sid studied himself—dirty, faded coveralls, gray workshirt, and big brogans—in the long mirror. “Christ, I must be outta my mind, letting you guys talk me into a thing like this!”

Tony feigned astonished admiration. “Now I can
see
it, Sid—your true and fundamental nature! A man of the soil! From the great heartland of America! ‘ . . .plowing your swift, broad acres . . . as the wind carries the smell of pine and dung across the fields, and the rhythm of an old, old work enters your soul.’ Underneath that veneer of cynical corruption, Sid Krassman, you’re a
simple honest farmer!
The backbone of this grand land of ours! How’s about a
quick cornhole?!?”
And he rushed against Sid’s great bottom with out-thrust pelvis.

Boris broke up, but Sid was not amused. “Will you guys be
serious,
for Chrissake! Here I am, about to make a
real schmuck
outta myself, and you guys kid around . . .”