"Does she sweat?" The key grip, a pimpled youth, wondered aloud.
"Nein, Junge. I glisten!" Brune Adenauer, icon of distraught Europe, whose blonde bob bounced as she turned to face her inquisitor. A choker of silver butterflies chimed along her elegant neck.
The ballroom set for Verlangen (Desire) broiled. Closed in, blackwalled, contemporary salt mine. Film crew toiled in stained jodhpurs, soaked safari shirts, wilted newsboy caps. Under sunstroke lights, stretched across a polished Steinway, a sequin gown cut off midway at her alabaster thighs, Brune sizzled a different way. Slow motions, face smoothed by beeswax, eyelash overkill, kohl flaring away from her peepers ala ancient Egypt. Karl, her leading man, wooden block before a consuming pyre. She gazed not at, nor through, but into his sterling orbs. Finger under the chin. Hand clasped around the collar of his tuxedo jacket. The lines. The lines! They must be right.
Into Karl's ear. Close up, Kamera Eins. Get the shot! Read her lips, words printed for the intertitle:
"Let me inside."
Her breath heated his blood. The director snapped the clapperboard.
"Genial! No more today!" Lang spouted. "Hit the lake!"
"How does she...?" Key grip needed to know while the rest sweltered. Brune drifted off, a breeze of motion. He pursued the vaunted damsel. Beyond the gilded ballroom set. Behind the walls. She sauntered. He crept.
Into her dressing room she glided. Door ajar, he dared peek. There, the Frau, glamor gal, surrounded in gifted pewter and golden biersteins loaded with plump magnolias. Her dress faling. Skin. A clawfoot bathtub, an Arctic Circle of ice cubes. She dipped in, then out.
"Eight times daily til frigid, and I never get used to it." A casual look from her, head titled toward the door.
Key grip lost it. "Frau Adenauer! I...I...!"
"Shh! No worries, Junge. Listen. As I step into this glacier, you take in the scenery. Real good now. Then, shut the door, and...Gute Nacht. Versprechen?"
He never answered. Key grip took stock, perspired, quivered. Door slammed shut, he took off. A story was in dire need of telling.
YOU ARE READING
NEWSFLASH! Dieselpunk Flash Fiction From The Legacy Universe
KurzgeschichtenIn the 20th Century, diesel power in Germany, Russia and beyond is life, competing against the superior micro-steam of America. Beside the grit and grime, fabulous architecture, panic in the streets, espionage, the worst war in history blooms and ch...
