Cheesy Movie | ONC translation

Scene One

"Eto?" Láďa pointed to the object that had caused Arnošt such concern. Arnošt just nodded silently, hoping that the answer to his question would be 'For opening tins.'

Láďa very willingly picked up the heavy, bristly piece of metal from the trunk and said: "I'll use this if someone kills you. I'll get the culprit to tell me the names of his accomplices and I'll find them all."

"You're kidding, right?" Arnošt stammered, beginning to regret not having chosen an albeit slightly more expensive but surely less frightening alternative to this bodyguard.

"Da, yasno." Láďa nodded, but when Arnošt started to feel safer again, he added: "You could be killed by one assassin alone, no need for accomplices."

The smile on Arnošt's face froze.

He was beginning to wonder who he had actually paid for. A guard or a mafia henchman?

Fortunately, the doorbell rang at that moment, freeing Arnošt from the grip of Láďa's frosty gaze.

"Ah, that'll be Lola!" Arnošt exclaimed with joy that his annoying colleague had never aroused in him before. "She's your client, you'll be protecting her, so save some stories about politicians and tortured assassins for her."

Excited to be away from the suitcase full of death for at least a moment, Arnošt ran out into the hallway and opened the door with a smile.

But the smile immediately disappeared from his face again when he saw Lola, the nineteen-year-old actress who was to play the lead in his B-movie, clutching a long half-smoked marijuana joint between two long blue fingernails.

"Damn, girl!" Arnošt shouted, knocking the cigarette out of her hand. "At this pace, you won't live to see our movie premiere!"

"So what? It's gonna be shit anyway, no shame in not seeing it." Lola snapped, flipping a ponytail of unhealthily dry brown hair with bleached ends.

"Look, kitty..." Arnošt tugged at her fluffy, sparkly pink sweatshirt. " I'm responsible for you until opening night. If you smoke yourself  to death in the next few weeks, it's on me, so you'll be behaving. When the credits roll on our shit-movie, feel free to snort all the cocaine in Prague, but until then, don't touch that shit, you got it?"

"Good! All right! You know I don't do cocaine, that would be stupid!"  Lola defended herself, trying to jerk out of Arnošt's grip. "I have the marijuana for medical reasons! The movie business is so stressful!"

"Tell me about it..." sighed Arnošt, taking his hand off Lola's hairy garment. "But you'll have to leave it for a few weeks. I need you to walk out of the cinema alive after the premiere, that's all I ask of you. Is it that so hard?"

"It is." Lola replied stubbornly. But then she smiled and patted Arnošt's cheek teasingly. "But I'll do it for you, darling."

"Very well. Good that we understand each other so well." Arnošt clapped his hands together and quickly pulled away from Lola. The last thing he needed with all his money, alcohol and depression problems was an accusation of sexual harassment. No one would probably pay attention to it, her being a former porn actress, but why risk it, right?

"And why did you invite me here anyway?" Lola said, placing a piece of chewing gum between her pink-painted lips.

"There's someone I'd like you to meet." Arnošt said, pulling Lola by the hand into the living room, where Láďa had packed up his tools in the meantime.

"Lola, this is Láďa. Láďa, Lola, your client." Arnošt introduced the dubious bodyguard to the even more dubious actress. However, no further introductions were necessary. The two of them were already lost in each other's eyes, as if they suddenly found themselves in their own world where nothing existed but them and their filthy delusions.

"Kakaya krasivaya devushka..." gushed Láďa softly, throwing a quick glance in the mirror to adjust his wild hairstyle into a somewhat more acceptable form and cavalierly kissed Lola's hand with the words: "Good day, fair Lola. It will be an honor to kill anyone who even thinks of harming you."

"Glad to hear that, handsome." Lola pouted her kitschy pink lips and fluttered her long fake eyelashes. "If anyone's going to haunt me like some creepy ghost for weeks, I'm glad it's you."

"Well, I'm glad you get on so well..." sighed Arnošt, asking the deities he didn't believe in what he had done so terrible in his life to deserve such punishment.

But at least he had less to worry about now. If there was one thing he could count on, it was that with Láďa by her side, no one would dare even look at Lola. So, if Láďa could keep the dragoness far away from drugs, the lead actress would most likely survive until filming. Yeah... but what's the point of an actress if there's no script?