Chapter 21

Emma looked incredible. And I don’t just mean she looked good for a woman of her age, I mean she looked incredible for a woman of any age. Heads turned to catch a glimpse of her when we walked into The Inn on the Pier, the Gastro-pub at the end of the largest of Westmouth’s three Victorian-era piers.

Dom and Mel had helped with her hair, which looked like she’d just stepped out of a shampoo commercial—soft and sleek and bouncing gently as she walked. Her make-up was subtle but more than enough to enhance her natural beauty. She wore one of those outfits that looks thoroughly professional and decent but hints at a true wildcat within. It consisted of a tight, grey, sleeveless dress with a high waist and even higher hemline. On top of that she wore a simple black jacket, but it was those nylon covered legs and high heels that really set it off.

Jim was waiting for us at a table by a window overlooking the sea. He stood to greet us as we approached, looking decidedly nervous. Perhaps he thought that Emma was there to take him to task for setting up my audition—that, in effect, facilitated my cheating on my wife, after all. Or perhaps he thought she was going to demand to know why he hadn’t informed her of the events of the last few days—he’d been keeping her up to date for the past twelve months after all, why stop now?

Emma smiled a warm, friendly smile and held out a hand to Jim. “Hi, Jim,” she said, “Nice to see you again.”

“Hi. How have you been?”

“Oh, you know. As well as can be expected given I’ve just found out my husband has been fucking three young porn stars.”

She didn’t speak quietly. Her attitude towards conversations in public for as long as I’d known her had always been that she didn’t care if other people overheard because her conversations were none of their business and they shouldn’t be listening. Still, I was surprised to hear her talking so brazenly. There were certainly a few heads at the surrounding tables that snapped around to look then quickly looked away again.

“Er ... Emma look, I—”

“Don’t worry about it,” she said, cutting him off. “I’m not.” She sat down, leaving Jim and I standing, then grabbed a menu. “Have you ordered yet? I’m starving.”

We quickly picked out what we wanted and Jim went to order it from the bar. When he returned, Emma deferred to me to lead our discussion, just as we’d planned on the way over.

“So,” I said, “What did you want to talk about? Have you got some proposals for me to take to my investors?”

Jim glanced at Emma before focusing on me again. “Er ... Yeah. Well, no. I mean ... I haven’t got anything detailed. I mean, I can’t tell you how much money you’d make or anything—”

“That’s not really much use to me, then is it? I can’t very well recommend investing in something without knowing the sort of returns my clients can expect. Can I?”

He glanced at Emma again. “I ... I guess not.”

“Bobby, Honey, why don’t you tell Jim what we decided with the girls?”

“Decided?” Jim said, looking from Emma to me repeatedly. “What do you mean, decided?”

“We’ll get to that,” I said. “For now, I want to hear this idea that you were so keen to tell me about even though you have no idea if it’ll make me any money.”

“Oh, it’ll make you money. I know it will.” He glanced at Emma again. “I just ... I just don’t know how much. Yet.”

“So...? Let’s hear it.”

“Okay ... I...” He took a deep breath. “Emma, do you remember what it was like back in the day?”

“How do you mean?”

“I mean the way we used to make actual movies. Full-length features. An hour and a half or two hours long. They had plots. Okay, so the plots were usually just excuses to get people fucking, but they were still plots—all the sex scenes had a reason for being in the movie. It made sense when people started fucking.”

Emma nodded. “I remember.”

“Then something changed. When everything went online and people stopped buying VHS or DVDs, the idea of a porn movie with a plot just kind of faded away. Instead, we all just make scenes now. What plots there are, are so minimal as to be non-existent. Okay, so the big studios in Porn Valley still turn out parody movies but that’s about it. Meanwhile, every pervert with a HandyCam and rented server is putting out cheap and nasty stuff and ... And it makes me angry. Pornography shouldn’t be about just watching people fuck for the sake of fucking. It should be about taking the time to get people aroused. Get them turned on. Damn it, the tension of the build-up to the next sex scene should be just as sexy as the sex scene itself.”

“I agree,” Emma said. “Some of the films from the eighties, in particular, were great at that.”

“Exactly!” Jim was pretty animated by now. “But we’ve lost that. And ... And I want to bring it back. I want to make movies. Proper, feature-length movies. I want to tell a story. Okay, a story with lots and lots of fucking in it, but a real story.

“I’ve spoken to Daisy about it and she’s as excited by the idea as I am. I really think we can make it work. But making that kind of film will cost a lot more than what we’re doing now. We’ll need to shoot the equivalent of four, five maybe six scenes that we’re currently shooting, plus the acting bits in between to link it all together and tell the story. We might need location shoots. Someone will have to make sure we have the right attention to detail—that the continuity is in place. Stupid things like making sure the actors are wearing the same clothes and their hair is the same from one scene to the next and—”

“So what you’re asking me is if I can get together the money to finance a project like that?”

He nodded. “More than one, I’d hope. If the first one did well, then it opens up the door for more. I know it might seem like a risk because it’s different from what we usually do but—”

“But how would it generate any profit? I thought you said that with the subscription model, the idea was to produce as many scenes as you can for as little cost as you can. High volume to bring in subscribers.”

“Yeah, that’s our current model, but I gave some thought to something you said and did a little research. You thought we sold individual scenes for download, and I think it’s not a bad idea. I think the market could take it. You might well get people who wouldn’t pay fifteen quid a month for a sub but would download a couple of scenes at two-fifty a pop or something. I mean, we put cut-down versions of some of our scenes on these free sites along with a link to our subs page saying see the full scene here. No reason we can’t do the same and instead link to an individual download instead of the subs.”