Nightwork (23 page)

“You said you’d give it to her.”

“Exactly.” He beamed. “Out of gratitude she offered me twenty percent of the profits.”

“And you said you’d take it?”

“No, I held out for twenty-five.” He beamed again. “I may be a friend, but I’m a businessman first.”

“Fabian,” I said, “I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.”

“In the long run,” he said, “you’ll smile. At least smile. They’re having a screening of what they’ve shot thus far this evening. We’re all invited. I guarantee you’ll be impressed.”

“I’ve never seen a pornographic movie in my life,” I said.

“Never too late to begin, lad. Now,” he said briskly, “I suggest we go down to the bar and wait for Lily. She can’t be too long. We can cement our partnership in champagne. And I’ll treat you to the best lunch you’ve ever eaten. And after lunch we’ll take in the Louvre. Have you ever been to the Louvre?”

“I just arrived in Paris yesterday.”

“I envy you your initiation,” he said.

We had just about finished a bottle of champagne when Lily Abbott strode into the bar. When Fabian introduced me as an old friend from St. Moritz, she did not show, by as much as the blink of an eye, that we had ever gone so far as to shake hands in Florence.

Fabian ordered a second bottle.

I wished I liked the taste.

W
E WERE EIGHT IN THE SMALL
screening room. My feet ached from the Louvre. The room smelled of twenty years of cigarettes and sweat. The building on the Champs Élysées was a shabby one with creaky, old-fashioned elevators. The peeling signs of the businesses on the floors we passed all looked like advertisements for concerns that were well into bankruptcy and minor evasions of the criminal code. The corridors were dimly lit, as though the people who frequented the building did not wish to be clearly observed as they came and went. With Fabian, Lily, and myself were Fabian’s delightful French lady, whose name was Nadine Bonheur. At the console in the rear was the cameraman on the picture, a weary, gray professional of about sixty-five who wore a beret and a permanent cigarette hanging from his lip. He looked too old for this sort of work and kept his eyes almost completely closed at all times, as though he did not want to be reminded too definitely of what he had recorded on the film we were about to see.

Seated together on the far aisle were the two stars of the film, a slender dark young man, probably a North African, with a long, sad face, and a pert, pretty young American girl by the name of Priscilla Dean, with a blonde ponytail, an anachronistic, fresh-faced relic of an earlier generation of Midwestern virgins. She was primly dressed and looked as proper as a starched lace apron. “It’s a pleasure, I’m sure,” she said, her voice pure Iowa. I was introduced without ceremony to the others, the atmosphere businesslike. We might have been assembled for a lecture on the marketing of a breakfast food.

A bearded, long-haired man sitting apart, who was wearing a soiled denim jacket and who looked as though he had just bitten into something extremely distasteful, merely grunted when I said hello.

“He’s a critic,” Fabian whispered to me. “He belongs to Nadine.”

“’Appy to make the acquaintance,” Nadine Bonheur said to me, looking up from a clipboard and extending her hand. Her hand was silky. She was small and slight, but with a perky full bosom, half of which could be seen over her low-cut black dress. She was tanned a beautiful even shade of brown. I imagined her lying naked on the beach at St. Tropez, surrounded by equally unclothed dissolute young men. “See what that hassole of a projectionist is doing,” she said to the cameraman. “We only ’ave the room for teartty minutes.” Her accent in English was the sort that sounds charming to Americans.

The cameraman shouted something in French into a telephone on the desk in front of him and the lights dimmed.

For the next thirty minutes I was pathetically grateful that the room was dark. I was blushing so furiously that I felt that although nobody could see me, the raw animal heat of the blood in my face must be raising the temperature of the room like a huge infrared lamp. The goings-on on the screen, in color, were what my father would have described as indescribable. There were couplings of all sorts, in all positions, in a variety of backgrounds. There were triplings and quadruplings, animals, including a black swan, lesbian dalliance, and those caresses which we have been taught by
Playboy
to call fellatio and cunnilingus. There was sadism and masochism and behavior for which I, for one, had no name. As Fabian had said, there was something for everybody. The period seemed to be some time in the middle of the nineteenth century, as some of the men wore top hats and frock coats and the women wore crinolines and bustles, briefly. There were hussars’ uniforms, boots and spurs, and an occasional shot of a castle, with buxom peasant girls being led behind bushes. Nadine Bonheur, scantily dressed, with her mischievous, incorruptible schoolgirl face topped by a long black wig, played a kind of mistress of the revels in the film, arranging bodies with the cool grace of a hostess preparing flowers in a salon before the arrival of her guests. Fabian had told me the script was literate, but since there was no sound or dialogue it was difficult for me to judge just how accurate his estimate was. The film was to be dubbed later, he told me. From time to time, there was a shot of an angelic-faced young man in a long pink robe, trimmed with fur, clipping hedges. Occasionally he stared soulfully off screen. He was also to be seen seated on a thronelike gilt chair in a stone hall lit by candelabra, observing various combinations of the sexes in the throes of orgasm. He never changed his expression, although once, as the action reached a climax, he languidly picked up a long-stemmed rose and sniffed at it.

To her credit, I heard Lily, seated on the other side of Fabian, suppress a giggle.

“The story’s simple,” Fabian explained to me in a whisper. “It takes someplace in Mittel-europa. The young man in the robe with the clippers is a prince. The working title, by the way, is
The Sleeping Prince
. He has just been married to a beautiful foreign princess. His father, the king—that’s going to be shot next week—wants an heir. But the boy’s a virgin. He’s not interested in girls. All he’s interested in is horticulture.”

“That explains the clippers,” I said, hoping that proof that I was still capable of speech would somehow pale my blushes.

“Naturally,” Fabian said impatiently. “His aunt, that’s Nadine, has been commissioned by her brother, the king, to stimulate his libido. The princess, his wife, awaits him, weeping in one of the towers of the castle, lying in the unused wedding bed garlanded with flowers. But nothing—and, as you see, every possible attraction is tried—nothing arouses him. He looks on with glazed eyes. Everybody is desperate. Then, as a last resort, his aunt, Nadine, dances alone in a diaphanous gown before him, holding a red rose between her teeth. His eyes lose their glaze. He sits up. He drops his clippers. He moves down from the throne. He takes his aunt in his arms. He dances. He kisses her. They fall to the turf together. They make love. There is cheering in the castle. The king declares the marriage to the princess annulled. The prince marries his aunt. There is a three-day orgy in the castle and behind the bushes to celebrate. Nine months later, a son is born. Every year, to commemorate the occasion, the prince and his aunt repeat the dance, in their original robes, as the church bells ring out. It’s all pretty Iranian, if you tell it baldly like this, but it has an earthy charm. There’s a subplot, of course, with a villain who is plotting for the throne himself and has a thing about whips, but I won’t bother you with that …”

The lights went up. I made believe I had a coughing attack to explain the blaze of my cheeks.

“That’s it,” Fabian said, “in a nutshell. It’s camp and it’s not camp, if you get what I mean. We’ll get the intellectuals, as well as everybody else.”

“Miles,” Nadine Bonheur, switching smoothly from her role of incestuous seductress to serious businesswoman, stood up from her chair two rows in front of us and faced us, “’ow you like it, eh? It will lay them in the haisles, no?”

“It’s jolly,” Fabian said. “Very jolly. We’re bound to make a packet.”

I avoided looking at anybody as we trooped out to the elevator. I took especial care not to glance at the American girl, who had featured prominently in all the most lurid scenes, and whom I would recognize, even with a sack over her head, on any nudist beach in the world. Lily, I saw, also showed an intense interest in the floor of the elevator.

As we walked down the Champs Élysées toward an Alsatian brasserie for refreshments, Nadine took my arm. “The little girl,” she said to me. “What you think of ’er? Talented, eh?”

“Extremely,” I said.

“She only does these on the side,” Nadine said. “She is paying ’er way through the Sorbonne. Comparative literature. American girls ’ave more character than European girls. You think so?”

“I’m not much of an expert,” I said. “I’ve only been in Europe a few weeks.”

“You think it will be big success in America?” She sounded anxious.

“I’m very optimistic,” I said.

“I’m just afraid maybe we ’ave too much what you call class for the general audience.”

“I wouldn’t worry,” I said.

“Miles, too,” Nadine said. She squeezed my arm, her motives ambiguous. “He is wonderful on the set. A smile for everybody. You must come on the set, too. The ambiance is beautiful. One for all and all for one. ’Ow they work! Overtime, double overtime, nevair a complaint. Of course, the salaries are very small and the stars are on percentages and that ’elps. Will you come tomorrow? We ’ave a scene where Priscilla is dressed as a nun …”

“I’m afraid I’m in Paris on business,” I said. “I’m awfully busy.”

“Welcome hany time. Do not ’esitate.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“Do you think it will pass the censors in America?” Again she sounded anxious.

“I imagine so. From what I hear they have to pass everything these days. There’s always the chance, of course, that a picture can run into trouble with some local police chief, who can get a theater closed down for a while.” Even as I said it I realized that I was giving myself something else to worry about. If I were a local police chief I’d have the film burned, law or no law. But I wasn’t a policeman. I was, whether I liked it or not, an investor. To the tune of fifteen thousand dollars. I tried to sound offhand. “How about France?” I asked. “Will it pass here?”

“It is terrible here.” She squeezed my arm illogically again. “You never can tell. A old fart of a bishop makes a speech one Sunday and hall the theaters go dark the next day. And if the wife of the president or a cabinet minister ’appens to walk by and see a poster …You ’ave no hidea how narrow-minded French people can be about hart. Luckily, there is halways a new scandal next week to take the pressure hoff.” Suddenly, she stopped, releasing my arm. She moved off two steps and looked searchingly at me. “To the naked heye,” she said, “you look very nicely built. Ham I wrong?”

“I used to ski a lot,” I said.

“We ’ave not yet cast the role of the villain,” Nadine said. “’E has two very interesting scenes. One with Priscilla alone and one with Priscilla and a Nubian girl. …Maybe it would hamuse you.”

“She’s offering you a job, Douglas,” Miles said. His voice seemed to boom out over all the noise of the avenue traffic. “Protect your investment.”

“It’s very good of you, madame,” I said to Nadine, “but if my mother in America ever saw it, I’m afraid …” I was ashamed to bring my dead mother into this affair, but at the moment it seemed like the quickest way to end the conversation.

“Priscilla ’as a mother in America, too,” Nadine said.

“There are mothers and mothers in America. I’m an only son,” I said idiotically.

“Oh, take it,” Lily said. “I’ll go over your lines with you on the set. And we could rehearse the difficult bits back at the hotel.”

“Sorry,” I said, glaring at her, “I’d really love to do it. But I may be called out of Paris at any time.”

Nadine shrugged. “The trouble with this business,” she said, “there hare nevair henough new faces. Halways the same hequipment, the same horgasms. Some hother time, maybe. You have something—ha kind hof underground sexiness, like a young cure. … Ham I right, Lily?”

“Absolutely,” Lily said.

“It would be beautifully perverse,” Nadine said. “Hinnocently rotten. A new dimension. The bishops would gnash their teeth.”

“Some other time,” I said firmly.

“I will work hon you.” Nadine smiled her incorruptible schoolgirl smile.

The two beers he drank one after the other in the brasserie seemed to have aroused the critic with the beard. He began to speak excitedly in French to Nadine.

“Philippe,” Nadine said, “speak Henglish. We have guests.”

“We are in France,” Philippe said loudly through his beard. “Why shouldn’t they speak French?”

“Because we’re stupid Anglo-Saxons, dearie,” Lily said, “and, as every Frenchman knows, undereducated.”

“’E speaks Henglish very good,” Nadine said. “Very good. ’E was in Hamerica two years. ’E was in ’Ollywood. ’E wrote criticisms for Cahiers-du Cinema.”

“Did you like Hollywood?” Fabian asked.

“I hated it.”

“Did you like the pictures?”

“I hated them.”

“Do you like French pictures?” Lily asked.

“The last one I liked was
Breathless
.” Philippe swigged at his beer.

“That was ten years ago,” Lily said.

“More than that,” Philippe said complacently.

“’E is very particular,” Nadine said. “Halso political.”

“How many times …” He turned angrily on her. “How many times have I told you the two invariably go together?”

“Too many times. Don’t be an
emmerdeur
, Philippe. He likes China,” Nadine explained to us.

“Do you like Chinese films?” Lily asked. She seemed to take delight in baiting the man, in her offhand, ladylike way.

“I haven’t seen any—yet,” the man said. “I wait. Five years. Ten years.” His English was heavily accented, but fluent. His eyes glittered. He was the sort of man who would debate happily in Sanskrit. I had the impression that if he ever got into a conversation with anybody who agreed with him he would jump up and storm out of the room.