Dr Zoptic: Pt 4 Audition
"Revenge is a dish best served chilled, my dear Ms Ehrlich," Al told me as we waited in a plushily furnished doctor's office for a salesgirl, a newly recruited starlet, Al 'discovered' at the mall. In the background, the office's piped -- in music strummed the chords of the popular song of the moment, `Every girl is Beautiful.'
I'm Erica Ehrlich. At the beginning of this bicentennial summer, the country was revving up for a Presidential campaign. Few people paid much attention. The contest was between two mental midgets, Jim and Jerry. I was only aware of the race because the governor of this state who towered over both morons was a Vice Presidential nominee.
As a result, we in capital land suffered massive inconvenience when we found streets near the governor's mansion blockaded.
I didn't have much time for politics anyway. My first year in law school, now coming to an end, along with making ends meet by appearing in films shot by Al Mandy, consumed my time.
"Do you think," I asked Al, "this salesgirl will actually show up at a doctor's office at 10:30PM?" Al handed me a contact sheet of a cute honey blond. First image depicted the girl in demure slacks and white blouse, second bare footed in a thigh length undershirt and lacy panties, third bra and panties, fourth smiling in panties with palms covering her boobs. "Cute! Does she know what she might have to do in one of your productions?"
"Only a cup B, but measures are respectable," Al reported, "32, 26, 34."
"Hourglass figure," I commented, "she may tend toward a round butt. The question is whether he will share her obvious eh--talents with an adoring public?"
"Tonight," Al answered, "will be the test: Can she undress for the camera and kiss a girl? Many curious girls come forward to act. Few have the cheek to appear in the buff."
"Cheek to show cheek! How chic!" I laughed at my own play on words. "I guess I'm elected to administer the kiss," I chuckled. "I'll keep my top on. `Every girl may be beautiful,' but I wouldn't want to scare this poor actress fearful that she's been shanghaied off into a freak show."
"Hmm, freak shows," Al offered an aside, "are more deplored by do-gooding white liberals who see evil and exploitation at every turn through public shaming of a person with a physical anomaly than by the performers who used their disability or abnormality to earn good living, even commanding high salaries through public expositions."
"Interesting perspective," I commented, "certainly not in step with the temper of our time."
Al Mandy, tall dark tinged skin with jet black hair, leaned back in his high back chair exuding absolute confidence. "I'm intrigued with the serving ensemble your employer provides: thigh high dark stockings, barely met by a black micro-mini."
"I think," I teased Al, "for some reason, you'd prefer to see it off rather than on. Isn't that why I'm here?"
"Oh, yes. Thanks for the reminder," Al declared as he handed me an envelope with cash in it, "I did sell some of the photos we took of your depressed sternum to a medical researcher. I was paid; now so are you."
"I suspected," I said with a smile as I leafed through the bills, "your prurient interest, obtaining more photos of my deformed chest was the real purpose of dragging me here."
"Indeed, profit is always our purpose in getting together," Al assured me.
"However, I think our main purpose tonight is recruiting this actress to play a role in the assignment Rebecca Barton has imposed on us," Al maintained. "Your friend and flatmate, Becky, excuse me, is now Dr Rebecca Barton, MD. "
"Dr Rebecca Barton, whose nickname -- Zaftig - inspired the face behind the Dr Zoptic series. Yep," I acknowledged, "I was at her graduation -- yours too -- congratulations to you too, Dr Al Mandy. I met her dark eyed, pudgy, stern and forbidding father and her brother Josh who graduated from the law school. Your father was pissed," I shot Al a mischievous smile, "that your name was misspelled on your diploma, Dr Ali Mandy."
Ignoring my jibe, Al observed, "Becky favo-u-rs her father a great deal, not merely in shape. That shape makes a young woman buxom, an old one dumpy. In a hair - trigger temper, there Becky so truly favo-u-rs her father that you might say she's a female version of him. Dr Barton -- Rebecca Barton -- has a mean streak, half a league wide. She screams bloody murder for bloody revenge upon her classmates -- mine also -- who played such a nasty prank."
"Nasty prank?" I questioned, "That's not the right word for what Rebecca's colleagues did to her!" I raged, "Rebecca's fellow graduates now medical doctors -- all, drugged her at a graduation party and stripped her naked. She had to go home wrapped in a dirty old sheet. I call it an attempted rape. I pled with her to report it to the police."
"You learn much more about people when they're stripped of the blandishments and semblances of daily life," Al philosophized.
"Blandishments, Zaftig -- I mean Rebecca, had every right to be pissed." I replied,
"Zaftig was so outraged by the dirty trick played on her at that graduation party that she was going to skip her graduation," I recalled, "Zaftig -- eh Rebecca --sobbed, `I lost all the money I made this winter buying those expensive clothes. My outfit was ripped off my body by my classmates. How can I face them?'"
"Her -- my classmates too," Al said in a soft reassuring tone, "should be ashamed to face Dr Rebecca Barton. My classmates punished Becky and me for gall to earn the wages of sin. They were jealous of their own shortcomings. None of them were daring or enterprising enough to make money the way Becky and I did."
"Going to that party was a bad mistake. I had misgivings," I recalled the night of the graduation party, "But Zaftig--that's my pet name for Rebecca--was proud of that new outfit she had bought with the money we made off the Dr Zoptic flicks and wanted to show it off to her classmates. As we came home from the Westgate Mall, she was thrilled by the rewards of `the wages of sin.' If only," I bemoaned, "I had insisted, Zaftig skip that party!"
"Zaftig," Al declared in his glistening noted, "that's an apt description of our favo-ur-ite." Al loved to emphasize the extra vowel, "newly graduated doctor Dr Rebecca Barton who would have been a roly - poly nun but through the offices and artifices of equal opportunity and push -- ahead - programme escaped the cloister. A prominent bum, bulbous baps cutting a curvaceous figure all crammed down into one feisty little bird would have works so well under those dark robes. Did Becky show you the still photographs, the eh -- class pictures?"
Al passed me 8 X 10 glossy photos of Zaftig cuddled up to Al. Presenting her round rump, Zaftig had slung a leg over Al's body as if she were preparing to mount Al. "Would Zaftig have crushed your rib cage?" I blurted out.
Al chuckled. "Not that I would mind a -- `tall doing a little business with Beck."
Al's erection was evident. "Zaftig told me," I recalled, "your classmates sent those photos to her father."
"Her father was nowhere near as chagrinned as Becky," Al reflected, "He's one of those affable American chaps overly impressed with foreigners. Becky's father was already tallying up potential grandchildren. But here we have poor little Becky is blind with rage."
"And you?" I asked, "How do you feel about this?"
"I'm jealous," Al declared, "that I didn't think of this first. It would have made a most excellent plot for one of my films."
"Al, you're irrepressible," I sighed. "To understand Zaftig's reaction, you would have to have seen how very different the evening of the graduation party began from the way it ended. How proud Zaftig was when I drove her to this graduation party," I recalled, "Zaftig boasted that `the wages of sin' provided her with new steel framed glasses and a new outfit of dark slacks, low heels, and print tunic which identified her as an upcoming young professional. In the ride to the party, I praised Zaftig for presenting herself as an angel without wings. Zaftig laughed at the accolade. 'I starred as Dr Zoptic in soft porn to earn the wages of sin to afford all this.'"
"When my classmates drugged Becky and stripped away her apparel and dumped starkers her kip down in bed with me," Al opined, "they did more than humiliate her; it was more than a physical assault on her person; they attacked her image of herself."
I sighed. "What part in this production will this salesgirl we're waiting for play? Do you believe she'll show up?"
"The mall closes at 9:30PM," Al thought aloud. "Time to straighten up, count out, we have a few minutes to discuss, your potential as a model in medical photography. Let me show you to the studio."
"Studio?" I questioned, "This looks like a medical office not a stage."
* * *
This was not the first of many surprises, this warm early summer evening. Earlier, the North Country summer sun had not yet set when Al surprised me at my job. I was at my job sitting at a table chatting with the cook watching the clock, waiting for closing time at the Via Valencia Restaurant on the western edge of Capitalland. In the background, the current sweet love song, `Every girl is Beautiful' played, 'Beauty gleams in the eye of the beholder // whether in ecstasy or in dolo -- u -- r // a blinding flash makes them bolder...'
Suddenly, the cook suddenly rose, tapped me on the shoulder and pointed to the door. Unexpectedly, tall Al Mandy with an open collared white shirt appeared at the entrance to be seated. "It seems I'm in luck," quipped Al as he looked over scores of empty tables festooned with clean tablecloths and fresh bright red cloth napkins, "Indeed, Ms Ehrlich, it's a slow night in Capitalland. Schools are closed; the legislature had just adjourned for the summer."
"Not good news for me," I replied, "I'm afraid hours would be cut. The owner will prefer locals, rather than students riding out summer here."
Giving me the once over, carefully examining my uniform, a tuxedo shirt dress, a micro mini skirt barely covering my butt, black long-sleeved tunic with imitation French cuffs and a triangular shaped white chest with phony buttons and a black bow tie, Al declared, "quite an outfit for a short order cook." Looking around the dining room, a converted parlor in an old Victorian mansion, with floor length windows, exquisitely curtained, Al commented, "I like the costume. I'll think of borrowing a few for my Alien Abduction feature."
"Alien Abduction," I asked. "I thought you were working on a skit to give Dr Barton her revenge."
