Suckers - Jack Kilborn [74]
“I own the negative,” Crofoot said, “and I call all the shots.”
“I want the final card, at the end of the show, executive producer credit.” Eddie hoped the bathroom was close by. He was going to need it.
“You can call yourself Grand Poobah of the Realm, I don’t care, as long as you remember you work for me.”
“Gotcha, Mr. Crofoot.” Eddie downed the rest of his drink. “Could you point me toward the bathroom?”
“Call me Daddy.” Crofoot walked to the desk, opened a drawer and pulled out a manila envelope. “I want you to meet the star of Frankencop. Flint Westwood.”
“What’s his TVQ?” Eddie had never heard of the guy, much less his popularity quotient with the public.
Crofoot opened up the envelope and tossed Eddie an eight-by-ten photo. Eddie looked down at a picture of the biggest hard-on he had ever seen. Crofoot grinned.
“That’s his TVQ.”
A stream of cold air was aimed at Sabrina Bishop’s nipples, and eighty-three people were waiting around impatiently for them to get hard. But her nipples just weren’t team players.
Maybe if she had spent all those years in all those acting classes pretending to be erect nipples instead of a tree, or all old woman, or a dog, she wouldn’t be sitting topless on a pool table, while a stringy haired makeup lady dabbed Sabrina’s face and a gum-chomping special effects man wearily aimed a tiny air hose at her breasts.
Her cinematic lover, Thad Paul, who had already managed to become a has-been TV star at age thirty-five, was huddling with the shaggy young director, just out of USC. They were watching the video playback of Thad’s close-up, taken while he lay on top of her and mimicked orgasm.
Being a method actor, Thad had thought they should experience the orgasm rather than act it, but she wouldn’t go for it, despite his fervent protests. After all, he claimed, Mickey Rourke did it in Wild Orchid, so why couldn’t they? She didn’t care if Ronald Reagan did it in Bedtime for Bonzo, she wasn’t going to prostitute herself for a direct-to-video, erotic thriller—another Postman Always Rings Twice meets Double Indemnity.
In this epic, Scorching Passion, she was playing a sexually frustrated woman in a bad marriage who falls for a mysterious loner—and then becomes the target of her murderously jealous husband. This time she was a frustrated sex therapist, last time she was a frustrated city councilwoman. Sometimes she killed the hubby and framed the lover for it—but it always ended up with her writhing around naked with William Katt, or Andrew Stevens, or Jack Scalia, or Thad Paul, or some other refugee of series television.
Sabrina was born with genuine acting talent, but she was also born with perfect breasts—the kind women bought for themselves and men dreamed of groping. Big without being large, well defined and firm, sloping into soft, smooth curves that led the eye down to her flat, taut stomach and narrow waist.
They were terrific, she had to admit. And combined with her long blond hair, blue eyes, quick wit, and vivacious personality, they had gotten her far. She was momentarily a journalism major at the University of Chicago (where she had successively been an art major, French major, communications major, and English major) when Playboy offered her five grand to take off her shirt in their “Stop the Presses” spread on collegiate cub reporters. She found a new major. Playboy Centerfold. And then she graduated. To Playmate of the Year.
That got her $50,000 and a red Corvette convertible. And it got her noticed in Hollywood. First by sleazy porn producers, whom she ignored, and then by television casting agents looking for something pretty to sizzle up the hundredth episode of their tired detective shows. It wasn’t much, but her brief bounces across the screen got her into the Screen Actors Guild, and gave her enough money when her Playboy prize ran thin to keep her nice