AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“It means the life of the party. That is you.”
“A party girl?”
“Like someone who is the heart of life.”
“And my character?”
“She is the kind of woman every man falls in love with. It was originally written for a French woman, but I have just decided tonight that if you will do it, I will fire her.”
“That’s not nice.”
“She’s not you.”
I smiled, surprised at both his charm and his eagerness.
“It is about two men who are petty thieves, and they are on the run to Switzerland when they are distracted by an incredible woman they meet on the way. The three of them go for an adventure in the mountains. I have been sitting here with my pages, trying to decide if this woman can be American. And I think she can. I think it’s more interesting that way. It is a stroke of luck. To meet you at this time. So you will do it?”
“Let me sleep on it,” I said. I knew I was going to take the part. It was the only part I could get. But you never get anywhere good by seeming amenable.
“Yes,” Max said. “Of course. You have done nudity before, yes?”
“No,” I said.
“I think you should be topless. In the film.”
If I was going to be asked to show my breasts, wouldn’t it be for a French film? And if the French were going to ask anyone, shouldn’t it be me? I knew what got me famous the first time. I knew what it could do a second time.
“Why don’t we discuss it tomorrow?” I said.
“Let’s talk tomorrow morning,” he said. “Because this other actress I have, she will show her breasts, Evelyn.”
“It’s late, Max. I’ll ring you in the morning.” And I hung up the phone.
I closed my eyes and breathed in deeply, considering both how beneath me this opportunity was and how lucky I was to be given it. It’s a hard business, reconciling what the truth used to be with what the truth is now. Luckily, I didn’t have to do it for very long.
* * *
TWO WEEKS LATER, I was back on a film set. And this time, I was free of all the buttoned-up, innocent-girl stuff that Sunset had pinned on me. This time, I was able to do whatever I wanted.
It was clear for the entire shoot that Max wanted nothing more than to possess me himself. I could tell by the way he looked at me in stolen glances that part of my allure to Max the director was my allure to him as a man.
When Max came to my dressing room on the second-to-last day of filming, he said, “Ma belle, aujourd’hui tu seras seins nus.” I had picked up enough French by then to
know he was saying he wanted to shoot my scene coming out of the lake. When you’re an American movie star with huge boobs in a French movie, you quickly learn that when French men are saying seins nus, they are talking about you being topless.
I was fully willing to take my top off and show my assets if that was what it took to get my name back out there. But by that point, I had fallen madly in love with a woman. I had grown to desire her with every fiber of myself. I knew the pleasure of finding delight in a woman’s naked body.
So I told Max I’d shoot it however he wanted but that I had a suggestion that might make the movie even more of a sensation.
I knew my idea was a good one, because I knew how it felt to want to tear a woman’s shirt off.
And when Max heard it, he knew it was a good one, because he knew how it felt to want to tear my shirt off.
In the editing room, Max slowed down my exit from the lake to a snail’s crawl and then cut the footage a millisecond before you can see my full breasts. It simply cut to black, as if the film itself had been tampered with, as if maybe you’d just gotten a bad cut.
There was so much anticipation. And it never paid off, no matter how many times you watched it, no matter how perfectly you paused the tape.
And here’s why it worked: man, woman, gay, straight, bisexual, you name it, we all just want to be teased.
