Chapter 8

When Walt arrived at the Fosters' apartment the next morning, Beth was dressed and ready to go. She jumped up from the dinette table, where she'd been sitting smoking a cigarette and sipping coffee, and hurried through the living room to let him in.

Walt, wearing a sweatshirt, loose white trousers and sneakers, stepped back into the hall when she opened the door, as if dazzled by her appearance. He broke into an approving grin and put his hands on his hips, looking her up and down.

"Wow!" he said.

Beth grinned too, doing a pirouette for his voyeuristic benefit. She had on a tight sweater and miniskirt, with high-heeled boots that fitted her shapely calves perfectly and came to just below her dimpled knees. Her blonde hair was brushed out, soft and flowing, and it billowed out fluffily as she turned.

"Come in, Walt."

He stepped into the foyer and shut the door behind him. "Looking like that could get you a morning lay, baby."

"I don't mind," Beth said teasingly.

He laughed. "Neither do I, but it would shoot the hell out of my workout."

"Promises, promises," she complained, smiling as she tiptoed up to kiss him hello. "Want some coffee?"

"Not before a workout. How about a glass of milk instead."

"You're on," Beth said, taking his hand and leading him through the living room.

Walt turned a chair around and straddled it, leaning on the backrest with one arm. He took the glass of cold milk from her, sipping it as he watched her settle on the other side of the table and light a cigarette. "I thought you'd beg off after last night," he remarked.

She looked surprised. "Why?"

He nodded toward the living room and grinned.

"It was a little wild," she said, blushing slightly, "but I can recuperate quickly. Damn, it was fun, wasn't it? hardly wait till your party."

Walt laughed, and Beth laughed with him. He downed his milk and she left half of her coffee sitting on the table.

The physical culture studio where Walt worked out wasn't at all crowded at that time of day. The proprietor, a body builder like Walt, was doing bench presses when they entered. A skinny, middle-aged man in T-shirt and baggy trunks puffed and hissed as he strained under the unimpressive barbell resting on his shoulders, squatting down quickly, then rising with much effort, his spindly legs trembling all the way up. Another man, also middle-aged but as fat as the other was skinny, hung by his feet on an incline board attached to the wall, sweating profusely as he struggled valiantly to sit up and touch his toes.

In the back was a massive Negro, barrel-chested and thick-bellied, his head shaved completely bald. He was standing with his hands on his hips, taking deep, rapid breaths as he looked down at a very heavy barbell on the floor at his feet. Beth watched the black man steel himself for action. He half bent over and half squatted, carefully placing his hands on the barbell. He stayed that way for a few seconds, poised and ready, breathing even more rapidly and loudly. Then he moved, quickly and surely, putting everything he had into it. A clank of iron filled the quiet studio as he expertly snapped the enormous weight up to shoulder height. Then another clank echoed as he jumped under the barbell and lifted it above his head at arms' length. His dark face strained and sweaty, he stood and straightened his legs, then flipped his leather-banded wrists and lowered the clanking plates of iron on either end of the steel bar. The whole fantastic mess was returned to the floor with only a tiny bump.

"Jesus!" Beth said, letting out the breath she'd been holding. "He could hurt himself that way!"

Walt smiled. "Not likely. He knows what he's doing. He was on the last Olympic team. Hell be on the next one, too."

"Is that all he does? Lift weights? God, he's huge! Big as an ox, and as powerful too, it looks like. His muscles aren't as pretty as yours, though. How come?"

"I'm a body builder," Walt explained. "George there is a weight lifter. It isn't the same. I work at building a perfectly proportioned body, and he goes in for all the strength and power he can muster. But lifting weights isn't all he does. He works, too."

"At what?" Beth asked, still looking at George, who was sipping some concoction from ajar which he'd shaken first. "Wrestling?"

Walt laughed. "No. George is a free-lance photographer."

"Well, I'll be damned," Beth mumbled, suddenly looking at George through different eyes. "I'd have thought his work would be something terribly physical."

"Looks can be very deceiving," Walt said. "George is really a very sensitive, artistic guy. He paints and writes poetry, too. Some of his paintings actually sell."

Beth nodded, then looked around the studio, sniffing "I'm disappointed. You said it smelled of jock straps."

"This is Monday morning," Walt said, chuckling as he led her to a leather couch that looked like it should have been in some plush business office. "Toward the end of the week it gets more 'atmosphere'. You can see the whole place from here. Sit down and relax. There's a girls' john over there if you need it." He pointed toward the door of the ladies' restroom.

"Girls come here too?" she asked, making a face as her warm thighs contacted the cold leather.

"Sure. Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays it's full of guys, but girls use the place on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays ... for reducing and figure stuff."

"Oh," Beth said. "Maybe I ought to come."

"In about ten years, maybe," Walt grinned. "You sure as hell don't need it now, unless you'd just enjoy the exercise."

Beth shook her head, smiling thanks for his compliment.

"Well, I gotta get busy. You just stay up here in front and watch. I'll check with you from time to time. If you get bored, there are some magazines over there."

"I won't get bored," she called as he walked away.

She watched him move through the studio, heading toward the back to change, calling to the other men by name as he passed them. It wasn't as small a place as she'd thought it would be. It wasn't large like a big gym, but she guessed from the equipment around everywhere that at least twenty and maybe twice that many people could use the studio at one time. There was only one ash tray, a theater-type one that sat on the floor and had sand into which the butts could be stuck. She slid along the couch toward it and lit a cigarette.

The fat man was just lying on the padded board now, with his feet still hooked under the strap and his head resting on the board. Beth could hear him breathing heavily, even from that distance. She felt sorry for him, especially when he grabbed at his stomach with both hands and started moaning softly and trying to beat the cramp away with judo-like chops all over his midsection. The muscular proprietor hurried to him and massaged his rotund stomach till the cramp faded.

The proprietor stood, and Beth heard him scolding the over eager convert, telling him it had taken years to get his gut and it would take months to make it disappear, so he should stick to the workout schedule prepared for him and not overdo any of the exercises, especially the sit-ups and leg-raises.

George was starting to do squats while the scrawny little man looked on covertly turning green with envy. The big black was lifting ten times the weight the scrawny man had been using. George puffed and hissed as he squatted and stood with the five-hundred-pound barbell held confidently on his shoulders. Sweat broke out over his dark brown face and veins stood out on his powerful legs. The tendons in his neck popped out each time he stood, then disappeared each time he squatted. After eight reps he returned the barbell to its stand and went back to shaking his jar and sipping its contents.

Beth was amazed at George's strength, all the more so because his muscles didn't show like Walt's. He was a big man, but she thought that in street clothes he'd look fat rather than muscular. In fact, he looked a bit overweight wearing his traditional weight lifter's thing. His torso was like a barrel, and his arms and legs, though big, didn't appear to be particularly powerful.

Wearing a wrinkled sweat suit and dirty sneakers, Walt came tripping lightly down the stairs from the locker room and moved to a rack of dumbbells. He took one, a very small one, and began swinging it up over his head and down between his spread legs, warming up for more strenuous work.

The fat man moved slowly up the stairs for his shower, rubbing his stomach as he climbed each step. His workout was over for the day, and he appeared discouraged. Again Beth fell sympathy for him well up in her breast. He was so serious, trying so hard to whip his long-neglected body into shape.

The skinny man was at a lat machine, pulling down on the bar to raise the weights he'd placed in position. It was funny; she had to choke back laughter at his antlike efforts. He was kneeling on the pad, pulling down with all his might to make the bar touch his shoulders behind his head. Every time he let the bar go up again, his knees would jump off the pad about an inch, then they'd silently fall back when the bar was high enough to release the pull of the weights at the other end of the rope. It was pathetic, really, but still she couldn't help smiling.

After he was warmed up, Walt started his workout in earnest. Squats came first. He loaded the bar with two hundred fifty pounds, then did eight reps. After a moment's breather, he raised the weight to three hundred pounds and did eight more reps. His final eight reps were with a barbell weighing three-fifty.

Beth watched the back of his sweatshirt darken with perspiration. She was a bit disappointed to sec him working with a shirt on. She knew all his beautiful muscles were rippling and bulging under his suit, but of course she couldn't see them. Still, she paid close attention as he went through his bench presses and sit-ups. The way he did his sit-ups was entirely different from her in-bed exercising and the awkward way the fat man had done his.

Walt raised the incline board up the rungs till it was at a forty-five degree angle, then got on it and-effortlessly, it seemed-put his hands behind his head and did three sets of thirty sit-ups. Then he turned around on the board and held onto a rung while gracefully raising his legs till his toes touched the wall over his head for an equal number of times. No wonder his abdomen looked like grandma's old-fashioned washboard! Beth thought. Her stomach hurt just from watching.

The fat man, dressed in a business suit and carrying an attaché case, came down the stairs and left. The skinny man was still at it, back in a corner, doing dead lifts with nearly twice his own body weight. Walt, holding a heavy dumbbell, was bending sideways at the waist with his legs straight, giving each set of muscles in his sides their turn to strain against the heavy weight.

It wasn't exciting to watch, not at all, and the place still smelled perfumey from the women who'd labored in it on Saturday. Beth got a stack of magazines and started flipping through them. All the magazines were in some way connected with health. One in particular appealed to Beth. She knew most women denied any interest in such magazines, and everybody laughingly said they were published exclusively for the gay male trade, but she liked it. It was filled with glossy pictures of naked young men, some lean and some beefy but all very attractive and muscular.

She turned the color pages slowly, studying each of the photos, most of which had been taken in various outdoor settings. She found herself enjoying the magazine much more than she'd enjoyed watching Walt go through his workout. About halfway through the pages she gasped in disbelief and lifted the magazine closer to her face.

There was Walt, a serious expression on his handsomely rugged face, poised to throw a javelin he held in his hand. His body had obviously been rubbed with oil for the photo, for his muscles were clearly defined. God, he was beautiful-just beautiful! she thought. She devoured the picture with her eyes, then flipped through the rest of the magazine trying to find another of him, but that was the only photo of Walt.

She caught his eye and motioned for him to come to her. As he approached, she held out the magazine, open to the page with his picture, and asked, "Is that really you?"

"Yeah," he admitted, grinning as he sat down beside her to take a break from his workout. Its really me. Do you like it?"

"I think it's marvelous!"

He shrugged. "It's part of the way I make my living." "You're a nudie model?" she accused excitedly. "Yeah, I'm beefcake. I often pose stark naked for artists and photographers." "How thrilling!"

Walt was underwhelmed but amused. He grinned. "It's a living."

"I'd love to be a model," Beth exclaimed. "It sounds so exciting and glamorous!"

"You've been reading too many novels, baby."

"Oh, I know it takes hard work," she said. "But Christ, it would be worth it! There you are looking out at me from this lovely magazine -- doesn't that make you just glow inside?"

Walt looked around with mock seriousness, then put his mouth close to her ear and whispered confidentially, "Can I trust you to keep a secret?"

"Of course," she whispered back.

"It did make me glow at first when I saw my pictures in magazines," he said earnestly. Then he leaned back on the couch, crossed his legs and said in an affected voice, "But now that I'm rich and famous, it's all such a bore."

Beth swung her head to look at him, searching his face to see if he might possibly have been for real. As he broke into laughter, she squealed, "Oh, you damned nut!" and she laughed with him. "Seriously, Walt, don't you enjoy modeling?"

"I'm not really a model, not in the high-fashion sense of the word. All I am is beefcake. It isn't a very high calling, I'm afraid. But to answer your question, yes, I guess I do sort of enjoy it. It beats the hell out of punching a time clock. Pays better, too."

"I think I'd love every minute of it," she sighed.

"Even if you had to pose nude all the time?"

"Oh, I wouldn't mind that at all!" she blurted, then dropped her eyes and blushed slightly.

"You could do it-if you're really serious, that is. At least, I think you could. You're damn sure pretty enough and shapely enough. Depends on how photogenic you are, though."

"I've always taken good pictures," she said quickly.

"Then be a model," he said, smiling.

"I wish it was that simple. I wouldn't know where or how to start."

"How about the center-fold of Playboy V Beth shut her eyes and heaved a sigh. "Oh, wouldn't that be dreamy? But quit teasing me, Walt. Damn it, I'm serious."

"So am I, baby. George, there, has photographed two layouts for Playboy and a slew of them for its poorer cousins. He's always looking for new skin. Want me to tell him you're interested?"

"Do you think he'd be interested? Really? Do you think he'd take a chance with me?"

Walt grinned, obviously thinking of making a joke. Then he decided not to and said, "What chance? It's his job to find new bods to shoot, and the film he uses is deductible. Give me the word and I'll tell him you'd like to pose for him. He's a nice guy. He'll at least take a look at you and talk to you about it."

"Playboy," she cooed. "Imagine me in the center-fold of Playboy!"

"Don't set your goal quite that high, baby." "Oh, I'm not, silly. I know there's probably only a one-in-a-million chance for that."

"It's not that slim, but the odds are against it."

"I don't care how slim the odds are. I want to try. If I get in any magazine, it'll just flip me."

Walt got up. "Then you want me to tell him?"

"You don't think he'd try anything-I mean, he does have a studio, doesn't he? And that's where he'd have to take the pictures, isn't it? You don't suppose he might try to do more than photograph me ... ?

Walt grinned. "Are you afraid he'll try to make you, or are you hoping he will? Doesn't sound like you're scared to me.

"Walt!"

He laughed. "Relax, baby. I'll tell him you want to pose for him. Like I said, he's a nice guy. Whether anything comes of it or not, he'll still be a nice guy. And don't worry about going to his studio. He won't rape you. If you wind up in his bed, it'll be because you want to be there."

Beth felt excitement rising inside her as Walt strode through the studio toward George. While they were talking she couldn't hear their words clearly, but she knew from Walt's pointed gestures and George's glances that she was being mentioned. The big Negro smiled at her and nodded, and she nervously returned his smile. Now that she'd become more accustomed to his baldness, she realized he wasn't bad-looking at all, and his smile was pleasant as he looked her way. His white teeth flashed, then disappeared under his sensuously thick lips as he turned back to Walt, nodding as he said something she couldn't hear.

Walt raised his hand and gave the oaky sign, then both he and George went back to their exercises. Grinning from ear to ear, Beth sank back into the couch and let out her breath. With trembling hands she got out a cigarette and lit it, taking a deep drag, then smiled up at the ceiling as she exhaled with a sigh. It amazed her how easy it had been. She was actually going to have the chance to realize her secret ambition! Wouldn't Glen be surprised when she showed him her picture in a magazine?

Of course, nothing about it was certain; she realized that fully. But still, George was going to test her, and she had always photographed well for snapshots and school pictures. Walt, a model himself, had said she had the face and figure for it, so she just knew it would turn out all right. She decided not to tell Glen a thing about it till her picture was actually in a magazine -- then wouldn't he be delighted! Oh, it was exciting!

Suddenly she had to piss. She jumped up from the couch and hurried to the ladies' restroom.

When she returned, George had finished with his workout and had gone to shower. A short while later he returned to the studio, wearing expensive-looking sports clothes, and came toward Beth. Her initial excitement had ebbed slowly but now it came rushing back, even more acute than before, as she watched him walking toward her. She forced a smile and made herself sit still as he stopped in front of her and stuck out his hand.

"Hi. I'm George Hammond."

"Beth Foster," she replied. She saw his teeth gleaming as she looked up into his face and shook his hand. His handshake was on the mushy side, and she wondered if he was that tired or if he was just being careful not to hurt her because of his great strength. She decided the latter was more probable, and liked him for it.

Sitting down beside her, but with a respectable distance between them, George said, "Walt tells me you'd like to be a nude model."

"Oh, I would!" Beth said,, unable to restrain the excitement she felt. "I'd pose for nothing the first time and be thrilled to do it. Do you think I might stand a chance of doing it professionally?"

"The camera is more brutally honest than the human eye, but I think you can stand the test. Yes, I'd say from looking at you that you stand a very good chance. Is everything yours? I mean, you're not padded anywhere, are you?"

A blush came into Beth's creamy cheeks. George had been looking right at her large breasts when he asked about padding. "What you see is all me," she said softly.

He nodded with professional detachment. "Good. I have an assignment I believe you'd work out well in, and you'll get paid the regular fee. I found out a long time ago it's best to handle business in a businesslike way. Want to give it a try?"

"When?" Beth asked eagerly. "Right now, if you have the time."

"Will I have to take off all my clothes?" she asked, feeling an anticipatory chill running zigzag up her spine.

"You won't have to take off anything for this assignment. It's the cover for a detective mag. They want a pretty blonde dressed in mod things. You'll do very nicely as you are right now. I will have to tie and gag you, though. Would you mind that?"

The chill in her spine turned to a tingle. "I've never been bound and gagged," she said, her voice quavering slightly.

"It's necessary for the shot," he explained, "but it won't be for long. An hour at the most, and absolutely no harm will come of it. No rope burns or anything like that."

"All right, I'll do it. I'm ready whenever you are."

George got up and offered his hand to help Beth to her feet. She took it and stood. "Shouldn't you tell Walt you're leaving?" he asked.

Both turned toward Walt, who waved good-bye, smiled, and called good luck. They waved back and started out of the building.

On the sidewalk George looked at his watch, squinting in the bright sunlight. "Are you hungry, Beth? It's twelve-thirty."

"I'm too excited to be hungry," she admitted.

"Well, I'm starving, and there's a very good restaurant in the next block."

"Then let's go. I'll have coffee while you eat ... and maybe a salad or something."

George didn't offer his arm or try to take her hand, but he did move to the street side as they walked, and Beth liked him all the more for his manners.