[cont.]
Apparently, he was completely honest with them. He told them from the start that he would never leave his wife. He confessed, often with convincing agitation, that after meeting them, he struggled to banish them from his mind but found he couldn’t write, he couldn’t eat: all he could do was imagine himself undressing them. Each was told she was a “rare beauty.” Looking at their footage in the editing room, Barbara didn’t see any rare beauty. The camera does add weight and her lighting was deliberately unflattering. They were all merely attractive, but women do age badly. When he had them, they probably were more beautiful than they were now. How funny that each of them smiled the same saccharine smile as they quoted his compliments, like they thought having sex with him made them literary Bond girls or something.
He used the same seduction technique on every one of them, often the exact same words. And it worked. They all provided any kind of sex he wanted, although none of them would elaborate on what kind of sex that was, and they all took the end of the affair, always at his instigation, with a sad calmness. Every single one of them confided that when they were with him, they felt like he existed only for them, for their pleasure. One said being with him was as intense as “falling through the sky.” And having him focus all of his energies on them made them want to please him. It was pathetic really, this need to please the “great” man. So infantile.
After watching the four best interviews back to back one afternoon, she got a great idea. She decided to try his strategy on women she met in bars. It was a legitimate part of her research after all. The first time she used his technique, Barbara thought she had a career as an actor since she found repeating his words worked so effectively for her. When she reviewed the video of her first seduction, she realized she really wasn’t much of an actor. Just seeming to care, even feebly, and using his body language while shelling out compliments were enough. She tried the same routine six more times and it worked five out of the six. The sixth woman turned out to be in a committed relationship. Much to Barbara’s surprise, no amount of flattery worked with that one.
Back in her editing room, she decided to intersperse elements of the interviews with footage of her seductions. Nothing would be staged, no “Nanook of the North” liberties, but her seductions were increasingly scripted to match quotes from the interviews. Learning to repeat Larry’s exact lines was actually more effort than she had expected. How did Shakespearean actors memorize pages and pages of such gangly prose? Actors had to have great memories to ply their craft. And then she realized that if she put it together right, the film could also be marketed as a how-to-seduce primer. That would guarantee a lot more attention. This was going to work out really well.
Now Barbara’s biggest plot dilemma was how to incorporate Odessa’s interview. She couldn’t believe that Larry’s normal routine had been effective with Odessa. But maybe semi-depressed widows nearing sixty were even more vulnerable to charm than younger women who had more options. She’d have to do some research on that and take notes before questioning Odessa. The real dilemma was how hard to push those questions. Would Odessa be of help for future projects or was she expendable?
Return on Friday for the next chapters of Just Like Suicide.
