Free Blue Movie by Terry Southern Page A

Boris.
    “There’s no water.”
    “We’ll drink Perrier, it’s good for you.”
    “B. . . .” said Sid, with the maniacal calm of someone trying to prove that the earth is not flat, and at last comes up with the clincher, “B., there are no telephones.”
    “And if you knew what we went through to get these phones,” exclaimed Morty frantically, “I mean, there’s a six-month waiting list for phones. We had to go to the minister hisself—”
    “We’ll use field phones.”
    Both their mouths fell agape with total incredulity, and they spoke almost at once:
    “To talk to the Coast?!?”
    Boris turned to look at them for the first time, removed his shades, breathed on the lenses, and began rubbing them against his shirt.
    “There’s nine hours difference between here and the Coast,” he slowly explained, “and any talking we do will be done from the hotel, at night —when it’s night here, and day there. Got it? Now why don’t you just use your fucking heads?”
    He put his glasses back on and turned to the window again, leaving Sid and Morty face to face in defeat. Sid shrugged. “So? Give him his tower already.”

3
    W HEN T ONY S ANDERS, the hot-shot writer from New York, arrived, the first item on the agenda was to get him laid . . . or so gross Sid had reasoned, because in order to entice the writer away from his novel and onto yet another amorphous screenplay, halfway around the world, Sid’s inducements—aside from the usual cajolery, flattery, appeals to loyalty, friendship, art, and seventy-five hundred a week—had also included the blatant fiction that “it’s a swinging scene, baby!” And to this end, he had contrived to engage an ambulance to meet his plane, and inside the vehicle, two panty-and-bra nifties, who had been given a hundred each with instructions to “do him up right” on the way from the airstrip to the tower. There had been a last-minute hitch in the scheme, however, in that the ambulance, the only one in town, was pressed into some local emergency use, and the single other suitable vehicle to be found was a hearse.
    Sid was at first somewhat disturbed by the necessary substitution, remarking gravely that he didn’t “wantta show no disrespect,” but was reassured when Boris broke up laughing. “Well, that’s show biz for you, Sid,” he said when he was able to speak.
    In any case, Tony Sanders stepped from the extraordinary vehicle, in fine form and fettle, looking completely relaxed after his long journey. He sauntered into the room where Boris and Sid were waiting, champagne in three buckets sitting on the desk. They were already drinking.
    “News,” Tony said, still holding his bag, “I got the title.”
    “Beautiful,” said Boris, handing him a glass of the bubbly, “how about the story?”
    “Story can wait—” he gulped down the drink. “Are you ready for this? Dig . . .” He raised the empty glass and moved it across an imaginary marquee:
    The Faces of Love
    He scrutinized Boris’s face for the almost indiscernible take, as the latter, head to one side, slightly quizzical, stared back at him, waiting for more. “Yeah?” he finally asked.
    The writer, still carrying the bag, walked about the room, gesturing with the empty glass, and talking rapidly:
    “Episodic, right? Stories about the different kinds of love. Five, six, seven kinds of love—Idyllic . . . Profane . . . Lesbian . . . Incestuous, like brother-sister, father-daughter, mother-son . . . Sadism . . . Masochism . . . Nymphomania . . . are you with me?”
    By now Boris was ahead of him, and turned to Sid. “Angela Sterling,” he said, “we’ll use Angela Sterling as the nympho,” then back to Tony, “beautiful blond American heiress from Georgia . . . no, from Virginia . . . tobacco heiress, an only child . . . she’s uptight because she thinks Daddy wanted a boy instead of a girl . . . Daddy’s a very distinguished southern gentleman, mint juleps on the veranda, watching