Chapter 3
"Is this the way you treat all your female stars?" Jill asked, sitting across from Erik Gordon at dinner that evening.
"All of them," he nodded, grinning as he put a piece of before-dinner melon into his mouth.
He was wearing a simple yellow shirt hanging outside his brown pants, and he was admiring the lithe form Jill had slipped into a tight-fitting pair of denims with a matching denim shirt, both black.
"Why?" she asked.
"Sometimes I think you people are considerably dumber than you look, but the truth is, I know you much better than to underestimate you. So let me explain my philosophy of life, just this once. I like all the pleasurable things in life, and I even take great pleasure in earning the kind of money I do in the way I do. Because I have so much money, and because I'm a producer, I have control over the lives of countless other people. In life, there is no middle ground. Either you control, or you are controlled. You can't withdraw into a shell and say, leave me alone and I'll leave you alone. My pleasure is, among other things, enjoying great multitudes of women. I don't deny that it helps to know I'm fucking a famous woman, a woman other men have wet dreams about, but I get just as much enjoyment out of fucking a starlet who isn't famous if she's particularly beautiful. More often than not, I make her famous. So it works out the same."
"Doesn't it disturb your conscience to know you're simply using people?" Jill wanted to know.
"No more than it disturbs yours," he replied. "If you had been able to con me into giving you the acting job without putting out for me, you'd have considered it a great coup. After all, you're Jill Allen, the great star, and I ought to be honored to have you in a movie for a mere two hundred thousand. But the truth is, if I didn't get you, I'd get someone else, and probably for less. Even though you've made two flops in a row, I'm certain you're still well known enough to make my new movie, RAPE OF A HOUSEWIFE, a tremendous success. People have been dying to see what you look like, naked, basically just because you're a famous movie star. They're not only going to see you naked, but in Europe, they're going to see you being fucked."
"Now wait a minute," Jill insisted. "I was told this would be soft core. The sex is supposed to be simulated."
"What's the matter?" Erik laughed. "Are you afraid to do on camera what you've been doing off camera?"
'That wasn't part of the deal," she insisted.
"You're right," he nodded, smiling the kind of smile Jill didn't like. "Don't worry, don't worry."
But Jill was worried. What had that crumb of an agent gotten her into this time? If she had any sense, she would pack up and get the hell out of here. But she had already been violently raped by this man, and that, if nothing else, had earned her the right to work on the movie in order to collect her two hundred thousand.
'There's a copy of the script in your room," Erik told her, belching a little. "After dinner, go on up and read it. You'll find it definitely does have a story in spite of the sexual involvement. At eleven, I want you in my bedroom, in my bed."
"Again?" Jill asked, raising her eyebrows.
"Again," he nodded. "I intend taking full advantage of you, honey, full advantage. Again and again."
Jill shrugged fatalistically knowing she wasn't able to change things.