The Destiny of Nathalie X Read Online Free PDF Page A

desperately unhappy. Money. Not so. Consider this: everybody who matters in this town has more thanenough money. They don’t need any more money. And I’m not talking about the studio heads, the top directors, the big stars, the people with obscene amounts. There are thousands of people in this town, possibly tens of thousands, who are involved in movies who have more money than is reasonably acceptable. So it’s not about money, it can’t be, it’s about something else. It’s about being at the center of the world.
    “She loved you,” Kaiser Prevost said. “She’s all over you like a rash.”
    “Any news of Delphine?”
    “Who? Ah, no. What did you say to her, to Lanier? Bob called, she’ll do it for nothing. Well, half her normal fee. Sensational idea about Kit Vermeer. Excellent. Why didn’t I think of that? Maybe that’s what swung it.”
    “No, it was her idea. How are we going to finish the film without Delphine?”
    “Aurélien. Please. Forget Delphine Drelle. We have Lanier Cross. We fired Friedrich, we got Tashourian writing the flashback. We’re in business, my son, in business.”
    N AOMI T ASHOURIAN . I have a theory about this town, this place. Don’t be a woman.
    Aurélien sat in the cutting room with Barker Lear, an editor, as they ran what existed of
Seeing Through Nathalie
on the Moviola.
    Barker, a heavy man with a grizzled ginger goatee, watched Delphine sit down at the pizzeria and order a beer. She drank it down and ordered another, then the sound boom, which had been bobbing erratically in and out of frame for the last few minutes, fell fully into view and the screen went black.
    Barker turned and looked at Aurélien, who was frowning and tapping his teeth with the end of a pencil.
    “That’s some film,” Barker said. “Who’s the girl, she’s extraordinary.”
    “Delphine Drelle.”
    “She a big star in France?”
    “No.”
    “Sorta hypnotic effect, she has …” He shrugged. “Shame about the boom.”
    “Oh, I don’t worry about that sort of thing,” Aurélien said. “It adds to the verisimilitude.”
    “I don’t follow.”
    “You’re meant to know it’s a film. That’s why the end works so well.”
    “So what happens in the end? You’ve still got to shoot it, right?”
    “Yes. I don’t know what happens. Neither does Delphine.”
    “You don’t say?”
    “She gets drunk, you see. We watch her getting drunk. We don’t cut away. We don’t know what she might do. That’s what makes it so exciting—that’s ‘the destiny of Nathalie X.’ ”
    “I see … So, ah, what happened at the end of the first film?”
    “She goes to the café, she drinks six or seven beers very quickly, and I can see she’s quite drunk. She orders another drink and when the waiter brings it she throws it in his face.”
    “You don’t say? Then what?”
    “They have a fight. Delphine and the waiter. They really hit each other. It’s fantastic. Delphine, she’s had this training, self-defense. She knees this guy in the
couilles
. Boff!”
    “Fascinating.”
    “He falls over. She collapses, crying, she turns to me, swears at me. Runs off into the night. The end. It’s amazing.”
    Barker rubbed his beard, thinking. He glanced at Aurélien covertly.
    “Going to do the same thing here?”
    “No, no. It’s got to be different for the USA, for Hollywood. That’s why I gave her the gun.”
    “Is it a real gun?”
    “Oh yes. Otherwise what would be the point?”
    B ARKER L EAR . I definitely had him for a wacko at first, but after I spent an afternoon with him, talking to him, it seemed to me he really knew what he was doing. He was a real calm guy, Aurélien. He had his own vision, didn’t worry about other people, what other people might think of him. And it was the easiest editing job I ever did. Long long takes. Lot of handheld stuff. The walk had a few reverses, a few mid shots, dolly shots. And the film was kind of exciting, I have to admit, and I was really