ZADIE AND THE FILM DIRECTOR

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ZADIE AND THE FILM DIRECTOR

By Robert Davidson

Zadie was at the end of her rope. In order to secure the main role in the film she would have to sleep with the director.

In the crowded bar-lounge Clement hesitated a moment, looking about for a table. Everyone seemed to be with someone else. And here was he going to a pub to be among people for the sake of it. He made his way through the crowd to stand at the far end of the bar where several couples were hovering. Coming up beside them he ordered a beer. He then made his way across to the far side of the room. ‘Mind if I sit here?’ He asked a girl sitting on her own. Her skirt revealed most of her thigh. ‘You’re not waiting for someone are you?’

‘No, she flashed him a brilliant smile from a lush mouth. Giving it full in his face, beckoning him to join her. Those parted lips, he thought. A lipstick of the bloodiest hue. She tugged at her skirt, adjusting it by about half an inch. She was on the lookout, he was convinced. The sleeve fell back from her rather thin, but elegant arm as she took up her glass. After a few moments of small-talk, she held out her hand.

‘Zadie.’ She spoke in a low throaty voice. ‘Zadie. Zadie Tyburn, It’s a stage name, of course,’ she quickly explained. ‘On the stage. Small parts. Film and TV work.’ She said, recrossing tanned, beautiful, well-developed legs. Her voice now held a bronze-like resonance and she spoke rather fast. ‘I’m just waiting for the right part to launch my career.’ Her bright mouth laughed. A perfect Botticelli face, he thought. Her features had a harmonious flow of line. The ultra-feminine type, he told himself with a smile, admiring the good definition of her legs, the tight fitting skirt. One who’d cling to you and submit, A complete contrast to his last girlfriend, who insisted on being dominant in the relationship. Zadie’s enough to make a man feel twice his size.

Zadie studied her glass before removing a particle from it with a long red fingernail. A half mocking smile was playing in her clear, china-like eyes. He’s a bit of a lone dog, Zadie was considering. But he’s about my age, and that’s a change. Clem thought, she’s quite a tonic. Very feminine and playing up to me. Just what I need. He felt she yearned to be compelled and subjugated.

More people came crowding into the bar, mostly students and a few solitary drinkers. Clem was rooster pleased when Zadie readily agreed to go on to another pub with him, then on to a disco dance later that night. Clem was convinced that with a girl like Zadie, he would be playing a much more masculine role than with Olga, his previous girl.

He returned with Zadie to her room later that night. She lived in the glassed-in end of the veranda of an old terrace house in South Melbourne. An although they had spent much time in the back seat of his car touching and caressing one another, he sliding a hand up her thigh, she holding back sexually saying: ‘Not on the first date!’ And when he protested she made a mocking mouth at him.

And as men will always want what is withheld, Clem spent a lot of time and effort pursuing Zadie over the next few days. His need to assert his manliness, he felt. At the same time he knew full-well that he was simply trying to cope with stress by sexual release. Always it seemed in human relations there was the need to enter and consume the other. Always there was the urge – the need to let something out of oneself.

The following afternoon Zadie rang Clem at his office. ‘Listen,’ she said excitedly. ‘I want you to meet a woman named Phyllis Loman. She’s Production Designer for Parker-Anderson Productions and she wants me to audition for Nathaniel Parker, the Producer and Director of a new TV Mini-series called ‘Breakwater’. They’re going to try me out for a major role. It’s terribly important. Phyllis is giving a dinner at the Sheraton Hotel in the city to meet some of the crew. Saturday night. My agent spoke to Phyllis this morning and says it will be a fantastic opportunity to meet the people who count.

As she made her way across the room to the front table, Sadie spoke aside to Clem. ‘I’m carefully concerned with every public appearance I make. Of projecting the right body image. Elegance, self-possession, style is my forte.’

But to make matters worse Zadie played up to several of the men outrageously during the meal. Said it didn’t mean a thing, that the people she carried on with were useful, vital to her, could help her to get jobs. But in lust - one loses all pride. Later Clem felt the need to engulf her. To absorb Zadie completely. But still she held out on him sexually when he drove her home. His uprushes of longing left him restless and moody.

On another Saturday night at a city restaurant, Zadie introduced Clem to TV producer/director Nathaniel Parker. Nat was an educated man who made great efforts to sound like an outback Australian when he talked, Clem thought Nat was a little, fat, oily man who leered like Silenus. Eyes brittle and bright under bristling eyebrows. As his eyes took in Zadie’s low-cut silk-taffeta dress, they narrowed, the predator sizing up his prey_. His paunch touching the edge of the table.

Nathaniel was saying that it was necessary to grab whatever life can give you. ‘A thing like TV or film depends largely on the blokes you know in addition to you being who you are. ‘It’s the crucial handshake that matters and the mates you make along the way, that gets you in, while a lot of brighter sparks are often left out.’ He looked sideways at Zadie as he spoke, ‘but the sheilas have always got to show it off, share it around. Now, I can get you in anywhere you want, I can get you to where you want to be’ Zadie ever seeking for more than she had, was looking up into his face like a dog eager for a bone.
Nathaniel, as it turned out in the course of conversation, was auditioning Zadie for a major role in a new TV mini-series. Breakwater, a romantic costume drama set against the Great Barrier Reef. He stood there with his fat fingers locked around a beer glass, fingers tufted with hackles of little black hairs. When he lowered his glass, you could see the fleshy bulges where his belt was eating into his stomach.
But there was a condition, Zadie later explained to Clem in the car on the way back to her room. She’d get the part in Breakwater, which meant everything to her. She paused. Providing she slept with Nathanial. This was the offer she couldn’t refuse. Zadie then went on to explain, ‘Seventeen girls did screen-tests and Nat could have given the part of Myra to any one of them. Such is the supply and demand of talent in show-business. My career would never get off the ground otherwise. So I’m quite prepared to sell my body to launch myself.’ She went on to add defensively. ‘It’s my body and I have a right to do what I like with it.’

Clem reflected as he settled into her room’s one armchair. I had wanted sex with Zadie. Apparently I was not getting it. Nat Parker only had to snap his fingers. Or wave a contract. The lady is a tramp, but she doesn’t come cheap!

Then to his surprise Zadie did invite Clem into her bed later that night. Zadie made gestures that Olga never rose to. At least she went through the moves of feminine seduction, he thought watching her undress. Made you feel male. Did it matter very much whether or not there was any deep feeling behind it?

Suddenly they came together, she desiring him even more than he wanted her. And there was an urgency in him which made him impatient and domineering but also stumbling and clumsy. So what was born in him - was still-born. The loving with Zadie, such as it was, was brief and unsatisfactory.
‘What you need is a girl who’ll make no demands,’ she said later. Clem could not keep the hurt out of his voice. ‘You are upset!’
‘No, I’m not. Why should I be?’

Zadie then told Clem how a few nights ago Phyllis Loman told her she should go up to Nathan’s suite at the Sheraton Hotel to audition. Phyllis said that most movie industry power brokers worked this way. That this was the quickest way to boost her career.

And what was Phyllis, Clem wondered - a procuress?

Zadie told Clem that on Friday night last Nathaniel had greeted the two women at the door of his suite dressed only in a bath-robe. ‘You’ll have to excuse me,’ he said. I’ve just stepped out of the shower.’

He ushered them into the room and offered Phyllis a whisky and asked Zadie what she would like to drink. He smiled when she said she said she’d like a sherry.

He then walked over to a table in the centre of the room a looked through a pile of scripts. He handed one copy to Phyllis and asked if she would look through it, make any corrections and print a dozen copies and if she could do this now.

Phyllis finished her drink and made her way to the door, which Nathaniel held open for her. Nathaniel then walked back to the table and handed Zadie a script in a different coloured folder. ‘It’s a copy of Breakwater and I want to start with the love scene on page sixteen. Is that o.k with you?

‘Yes,’ Zadie grinned, anxious to begin.

‘You read Myra’s part and I’ll take Sebastian’s lines. They’re in a hotel bedroom, similar to this one. Myra is sitting on the bed, naked. Are you all right with that?’

‘Yes,’ Zadie said a little nervously.

‘Now, I want you to take off your clothes,’ Nathanial said.

Myra stammered, ‘But ...’

‘It’s in the contact that there are several nude and simulated sex scenes in the series. Are you willing to go ahead now?’

‘I’m a bit unsure as this is only a reading.’

‘It’s an audition!’

When she objected Narthaniel said persuasively, ‘You will give a better audition if you are comfortable getting naked in front of me. This is how the movie business works.’

‘Do you mind looking away for a moment?’

‘If you insist.’

Nathaniel walked over to the table and picked up another script and leafed through it.

Zadie quickly slipped of her blouse and skirt, then took off her underwear and stockings.

Zadie was now explaining to Clem. ‘When he turned round, he looked at my body as if I were a piece of meat. It was a horrible experience.’

Clem then asked, ‘How did you feel about this?’

‘Uncomfortable.’

‘I bet you were.’

But he didn’t touch me or come any closer.’

‘i’ve already auditioned several other girls,’ Nathanial was saying, ‘and they were quite willing to be nude. But none of them has the right body shape I’m looking for.’

‘How do I measure up?’ Zadie asked with a cheeky grin. She was now feeling a lot more at ease.

‘Quite well. In fact, you might well do for the role.’

‘Don’t you want to hear me read?’

Nathaniel looked flustered for a moment. ‘Yes, of course. Turn to page seventeen where she becomes aggressive and kisses him, then read on from there.’

Zadie reached out to Nathaniel and put her tongue in his mouth. Nathaniel responded with much enthusiasm and cupped Zadie’s breasts with sweaty hands.’

‘I’ve been waiting for this, Myra,’ he stammered. Then he tossed the script aside and put his arms around Zadie.

‘The part’s yours, he said. ‘But I expect you to be ‘nice’ to me. In exchange you might have the pick of the scripts of my next three films. You know I’ve been contracted by 21^st Century Films as producer with choice of directors and stars. I could make you very big in America, if you play your cards right.’

Clem then interrupted Zadie, saying. ‘And you took him seriously?’

‘Yes. He signed the contract for Breakwater there and then. I was so excited I kissed him again.

‘What happened then?’

‘He said he would set me up in a penthouse apartment on the Gold Coast overlooking the Pacific ocean, as long as he could visit me three or four times a week.’

‘And you agreed to this?’ asked Clem.

‘Yes. I spent the night with him I didn’t want to ruin my chances. I knew if i didn’t give him what he wanted, he would drop me.’

‘Were you attracted to him at all?’

‘God. No. Not at all. He was fat and repulsive. And he slobbered over me.’

‘Did you resist him at all?’

‘Yes. He swore at me and said. ‘Don’t provoke me, bitch. Or I’ll slap you.’

‘You know that kind of behavior today can be classed as sexual abuse?

‘Yes. After that he told me he could make me big in the US, with a lavish life-style staying at the top hotels, if I would be his girlfriend.’

‘And you would let him slobber over your body in return.’

‘Well, as I said before, it’s my body and I have a right to do what I choose with it. It’s the only real commodity I have.’

‘You see your body as a commodity. And you would use it as collateral?’

‘As I see it I don’t have a choice. That’s the way movie industry power brokers operate. But Nathaniel’s not as bad as you might think. Later that night after we had sex, he got me to lie nude on the bed. Then he examined my body from every angle, much as an artist would. It felt a but creepy at first. Then he led me into the bathroom and insisted I watch him take a shower. I soon realised that here was a man who was totally in love with himself.’

Clem’s thoughts moved to the times Olga posed naked in front of him as she did her exercises. At least she was young and had considerable beauty. But was also narcissistic.

‘Under the shower Nathaniel indulged in all kinds of different poses and admired himself in a floor-length mirror on the far wall,’ Zadie went on to say. ‘Then he started playing with himself – sexually, I mean. I didn’t know whether to laugh or applaud.’

‘I bet you didn’t laugh,’ Clem said.

‘No,’ Zadie quickly replied.

‘So, what happens now?’ Clem asked.

‘Well, I’m catching a plane at lunch time tomorrow for Brisbane, then I’ll be picked up by private car, and driven out to the Gold Coast.’

Later that night Zadie told Clem she wanted to continue having an affair with him after she begins sleeping with Nathaniel. She said she must have a young male body in her life. ‘I could fly down to Melbourne on a regular basis,’ she smiled.

‘I don’t think I could manage a ménage a trois,’ Clem said after a pause.
ZadieTyburn. Her passion was calculated. Her body was beautiful but her smile was a smirk. If Zadie wanted to hang herself there was nothing he could do. To Clem her ambition seemed self-consuming - she was like a moth caught in a lamp.

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