Chapter 12

We slept in the big room that night, after the party. Our naked bodies were covered with whatever we found, thrown over us.

The sun woke me up early, shining down through the ceiling. Marlis was already up. As I lay, looking up through the skylight, I noticed for the first time that the glass needed washing. I studied for a long time, trying to see how one would go about doing that. I was not feeling too good. My head hurt and my stomach felt a little of hangover. I could hear Mar someplace in the big room. She was reading a magazine, I guessed, from the sound of pages turning occasionally.

After some time I called out, "Good morning."

"Good morning," Mar called back sweetly. I didn't think she sounded as if she was suffering from a hangover.

I began to get up. Mar was sitting by the big wooden table, drinking coffee. She was dressed in a furry bathrobe with great fur slippers.

"If you had your hair up in curlers you would look like Mrs. Middle America this morning," I teased her.

She said nothing but tipped the magazine toward me so that I could see the picture on the page. It was a giant color photo of two people making it in an odd position.

In spite of myself I felt my naked body responding.

"Stop," Marlis cried, then laughed.

"I have a headache, anyway," I said.

She poured me a cup of coffee, adding the cream and sugar for me as she had learned to do. Then she pushed the bottle of aspirin toward me.

"There is some orange juice in the pitcher there," she said. "Take a couple of aspirin and then look at these pictures."

"Just a second," I said and went to find my pants.

I took the aspirin and the orange juice and the coffee. Then she pushed the magazine toward me. "What's this?" I asked.

"It's a mag I work for, sometimes," she told me.

"Did you take these?" I leafed through the book, it was full of fuck pictures, but all of the best quality photography. Each one seemed to be a separate statement of some variety of sex.

"No," she said, "a friend of mine did." She poured more coffee for herself. "Look at this one." She took the magazine, turning pages rapidly until she found the picture and pushed it toward me.

I looked at it for several minutes before I began to remember that I had seen both the guy and girl someplace before; I could not remember where. The picture was one of face to face love-making of an angelic atmosphere, both the participants seemed young and vulnerable. It was quite an attractive picture.

"Both of them were here last night."

"Last night." I tried to remember, to sort out the number of people who had come last night, who could have been this innocent-looking couple.

"You remember Eddy Norwitch?" Mar said.

"Yeah. He was the weird...oh.. . . " Suddenly I realized. "These are the kids in those wild robes?"

"Right. His name is Jud. Hers is Nan." Map took a long drink of coffee and shifted in her chair uncomfortably. '"I've invited them over here today for a picture-taking session." She said it uncertainly.

"Good," I shrugged. "I think "I'll watch."

"I was hoping," she said quietly, "that you would work with them?"

I looked at her for a moment and took a long drink of coffee. I didn't want to, but I wasn't quite sure why. After all, Fd made the movie.

"We could work it all ways," she went on. "Dramatic pictures, color, figure work and so forth."

I'm kind of worried," I hesitated, "I mean, if my picture is published . . . "

"You mean about your friend from the drug store?"

"Yeah."

Mar looked at me. "I suppose you're right," she said. "The pictures would be published, nationally."

"I don't suppose she reads magazines like this, though, and she is the only one who would recognize me."

"Actually, your real name would not be published and the photographer does not have to furnish the right names...I mean, like to the police," Mar said.

I thought for a moment. Fd dug making the movie-after all it was a local thing. But this was a national magazine. There was always to be considered whether the folks back home might not get drift of it, or whether, at some time in the future, when you are a teacher or a judge or a who knows what, someone could come up to you and say, "Hey, "I've got these pictures of you, I thought your wife might want to see them." Besides I had a lot more reason not to be recognized since I'd made the movie. Mar seemed a little contemptuous of my hesitation.

"You mean the...all that . . . " She gave a wave of her hand to indicate that she understood all the possible repercussions but was not too concerned about them.

"Well, yes." I was a little embarrassed to be playing the puritan at this point. "I mean, everyone's got a family some place."

"I haven't," Mar said. "So, fortunately, I have always done just what I want."

"You had an old man, think how you would feel if he were still alive." I shook my head violently. "Hey, but wait, I didn't say I wouldn't do it, Fm just thinking about it, that's all."

"Who do you think got me started in this life," Mar said, evidently referring to her father.

I said nothing. If she wanted to make a family revelation, it was up to her.

That's right," she said, "dear Papa."

I had a bad feeling about what she might be hinting at and the keen sensation that it would perhaps be better if I didn't hear more of it.

"I told you, didn't I, that Daddy built this place?"

I nodded. She had mentioned it

"He was a painter, this was his studio at first That's why all the skylights. Then later he started having parties and that's when all the rest of it was added."

"Hey." I was a little confused, wondering why she had suddenly begun to tell me. "You don't have to tell me all of this."

"Don't you want to hear it?"

"I thought you were going to tell me about this picture-taking session we are going to have."

"I thought you wouldn't do it," she snapped.

"I didn't say that, damn it, we got off on this family thing."

"I'm sorry," she said, tucking her chin into the fur of her robe. "I didn't know the subject was taboo with you."

"It isn't, god damn it. My father runs a shoe store in Ohio. My mother loves candy and weighs three hundred pounds and I think my sister is a whore in Minneapolis, or maybe she's a secretary. I blurted it out, but the more I said, the more tangled my mind became.

"Hey, hey . . . " Mar reached out and put her hand on mine on the table. "Wait. You don't have to tell me."

"My old man's a holy roller. That's why my sister won't go home." I shrugged, all of this was making no sense at all now. "That's also why I won't go home."

"All right, all right, all right." Marlis threw up her hand. "Compared to that my old man was probably a saint." She looked at me and poured me another cup of coffee. While she stirred in the sugar and cream, she opened the fuck magazine again.

"I have several ideas for pictures," she said, becoming very professional suddenly, her eyes frowned slightly and her mouth took on an air of concentration. Her furry bathrobe might have become a tweed suit the way her elbows stuck out of it suddenly as her fingers etched little figures on the table or pointed aspects of the pictures out to me. "I've been planning this series for some time. I don't know yet how many people it will take, but they have to be just the right type." She took a drag off her cigarette and slowly let the smoke out as she chose her words. "It's going to be kind of modern...well, let me get at it this way. You remember those kids last night, there was something pure and sweet about them, yet animal. Like this picture." She tapped the magazine. "There is some kind of innocent animal carnality about them that excites me very much."

"Where do I fit into that?"

She looked at me for several seconds. "You have that same quality." Her dark eyes told me that this was a surprise she had been saving for me.

I looked up at the hot sun, nearing the peak of the glass roof.

Tdo?"

Mar went downstairs to let the innocent animal kids in when they arrived; I put on my shirt and shoes. She was talking to the boy when she brought them up the stairs, the girl trailed behind several steps.

"We'll take some in the studio here," she was saying, "and a lot on various locations." He nodded understanding..

"Paul will be working with us and later we might bring in a few others." Mar let the girl steal off to one of the big sofas, unnoticed.-She brought the boy over to the table. "Paul," she said. "This is Judson."

I turned and looked at the girl deliberately. She had curled herself up on the big sofa and sat, like a cat, watching us.

"That's Nan," Mar said. "She likes to be left alone."

That seemed to me somewhat odd, considering the enterprise we were supposed to be undertaking. When I turned back, Jud's hand was waiting to be shook.

"Jud," I said, shaking his hand. "I believe we might have met last night."

"Who knows?" he shrugged.

Mar poured more coffee. "What I want," she said, "is a series of good quality shots depicting a new kind of sex. Frank, open, honest animal sex."

Jud was a type familiar to me. He wore a pea jacket with the collar turned up, against the wind, presumably, but in reality against the world itself. His mouth had a cruel turn to it. It was a part he played, a facade, yet there was much truth to it or would one day be. He was a young man, I guessed, who had experienced too much too soon in life and had found his only defense a tolerant bitter cynicism.

Yet the boyish innocence was also there. He would smile appealingly and for a moment be all white, gleaming teeth and charm. Had this been his ,only aspect he would have been a very appealing character. However, as it alternated with growling violence, one found oneself waiting at each mood for the other to reappear.

Mar, I could see, did not share my apprehension about her friend. She showed him several of the photos in the magazine, including the one of himself and Nan. He, in turn, carried it to show Nan. I watched her carefully as she looked at the picture, she grinned in obvious delight, but said nothing.

When he came back to the table, Mar let us finish our coffee before she said, "Well lefs get started."

Mar had told me that the warehouse contained a photography studio. Her father had built it for her twentieth birthday. It was on the second floor.

I watched Nan as we went down the stairs. She was a strange creature. Her aloneness was maintained, even then. She seemed to hug the railing, slithering down like a sly cat or a snake. She was dressed in a thirties thirties' clinging dress and a very tattered old fur coat. Her hair was a dark brown and hung long and unlooked after, around her face and shoulders. Her eyes, peaking out from the ever changing patterns of hair, were half lidded but extraordinarily large and had a frightening luminescence, a vague piercing quality which at once seemed to announce that they saw right through you and did not care, that they knew all your secrets but did not bother to formulate the knowledge. I saw this when she glanced up at me on the stairway. A spark ignited deep in my loins, a spark which she saw and acknowledged with a faint faraway, yet promising, smile. I grinned back at her and felt foolish doing so.

When Mar opened the door to the photography studio she turned the other way and disappeared into another door which faced it in the hallway.

Nan moved quickly through into the darkened room and like a cat found a chair in the dark and curled up on it. Jud looked around the walls for a light switch and finding it, filled the room with a strong white light. He looked around professionally. I wondered if he had ever been in this room before. Then I wondered if he had ever been Mar's lover!

Jud looked at Nan and smiled. The communication between the two of them seemed to be complete. They spoke no words to each other but smiled or looked at each other almost constantly. Everything that happened was communicated between the two of them. I felt as though they were speaking a foreign language and as though they were-speaking about me in a tongue which I did not understand.

Mar came in, dressed in a pair of levis and an old blue shirt, which I knew without asking had once belonged to her father.

"Well, kids," she instructed us, "take off your clothes and we'll see what we can get." She had a large artist's notebook under her arm which she laid on a table and leaned over, turning page by page, studying each carefully.

Jud wandered off to a corner and was divesting himself of his pea jacket. Nan sat in her chair and effortlessly wiggled out of her tattered fur coat, letting it fall behind her and then the top of her dress slid down over her shoulders.

Mar looked up at me and then followed my gaze across to Nan. "She's a beautiful little girl." Mar's comment was studied, she looked back at her notebook.

Nan wriggled out of her skirt on the chair and sat, curled in a welter of clothes, like a white porcelain doll, still and serene. One of her breasts slipped over her arm and looked out at me, its nipple a dark brown, its form an unexpected perfection, neither large nor small, but soft and perfect. She looked up at me and smiled knowingly. This time I could not answer, but stared at her.

Naked, Jud was bigger than when he had his clothes on. He did not hunch, but stood proudly upright He patted Nan on the shoulder as though to console her, though as far as I could tell, she did not need consoling.

"You don't have to get undressed right now," Mar said to me, "unless, of course, you want to." Was she jealous of the way I looked at Nan. It seemed unlikely.

"I have to try out moods and so forth," Mar said, almost to herself. "I want to take you one at a time at first. The book will probably start with singles anyway, so maybe I can get something I can use."

"Nan," she called. "Come here."

While Nan crawled up on the stool Mar indicated, she muted the lights and lit a small spotlight On a tripod. This she used to illuminate Nan perched on the stool, her legs curled up and her head down so that her hair hung down, concealing most of her.

"Well have to do most of our work outside," Mar murmured to herself.

It was one of her habits, I realized, to talk to herself while she worked and the model who succeeded with her was the one who listened to her and realized her intentions. She took several shots of Nan, one which she seemed pleased with had Nan, facing front, her hair and shoulders relaxed, her legs hanging downward, revealing the dark triangle of hair between them. It was the relaxation she was after.

She started with Jud in this same position, sitting relaxed, a serious face, his body relaxed in every way, using barely enough muscle to keep himself on the stool.

She took several more pictures of each of them, concentrating, not on their sex organs, but on their personality. Before she was through with Jud, she called to me to take off my clothes.

When Jud crawled off the stool, he went to stand behind Nan, who was back in her chair. They looked at each other and then at me. I was nervous already and their disinterested eyes were not a help to me. Nor was Mar's professional gaze.

I had the distinct feeling I was not measuring up. Mar smiled at me professionally, trying to reassure me. The girl I had made love to everyway imaginable could not now even smile as though she knew who I was.

"You're tense, Paul," she said, putting her hand on my shoulder, massaging it lightly. "Worried about your family?"

It was an insult which I could not react to, since I had brought it up.

"Maybe this isn't my bag." I could hear the rigidity in my voice.

Mar looked at me and smiled knowingly. Everyone seemed to know something around here, but me.

"Nan," she called. "Come here."

I looked over as Nan uncurled herself from her chair. Jud stood behind her, still impassive. Nan walked toward us, her walk was serpentine, she moved over the floor toward us, her body fluid and motionless. The tenseness in my spine took a sudden new turn. Mar's hand slipped unconsciously down onto my thigh and burned there. Nan stood against me, my knee against her belly, her great luminescent eyes looking into mine. The lumps in my body reorganized themselves quickly.

"He's a little nervous," Mar said. If there was any jealousy in her it was gone. Now she was merely trying to get her job done. She stepped back and picked up her camera. I glanced at Jud one last time. He stood watching us without emotion.

Nan placed her hands on my thigh and looked up at me with open eyes. Then I saw it for the first time. Deep in her eyes was an ignited spark, the fires of hell burned in her. It was this secret that she kept at such a distance and nursed, curled up against herself.

The iron rod forged itself under her hand. My hand filled itself with her warm breast as I leaned to take her mouth in mine. From somewhere in the dark I heard the click, click of the camera.

Nan's voice, which I had not heard before, murmured down into my mouth, communicating to me the dark secret of her lust and desire where no one else could share it. Our tongues prodded and entwined, our teeth struck each other as my hand slid down over her body, feeling the perfect rounding of her hips and ass, then gentle parting of their cheeks and the dark crevasse between. I pulled her against me so that her legs parted around my leg, the warm wet fur between them against me, pushing the fire onto me until my balls ached with the hardness of my penis.

I pulled her upward over my body until her feet left the floor, not out of any desire to take her on the top of a high stool, or to accommodate the photographer, who I had entirely forgotten, with an uncommon and uncomfortable position, but because we had started in this way and the momentum could not be broken. It never occurred to me to come down off the stool, or to push her backward and lie on top of her.

Clinging to her thighs from behind, I lifted her up until her arms were around my neck and her legs were open around my hips. She helped me, pulling her body still higher, feeling the length of my cock as she did so slide down her belly toward the right position. At last we succeeded .and my cock dropped down between her legs, aiming upward. She clung, desperately to my neck as I lowered her, holding her thighs wide with my hands until I felt the tingling fur of her cunt reach for my cockhead.

And then the warm lips themselves enfolded the head of my cock. I let her slowly down as her desperate empty crevice swallowed an engorgement of my flesh hot and hard inside her.

A groan of relief suddenly escaped my lips and brought me back . 'o the fact that we were not alone. I heard the click of the camera and realized that it was but a few inches from my balls, recording for posterity the scene of my cock sliding into this beautiful, mysterious body.

I felt a ripple over my cock deep inside the girl. A tugging, tightening, sensual ripple that sent the sensations of hell's own fire burning in my loins. Nan sat still on my lap, her great dark eyes closed, her head slightly back, like a snake digesting a heavy meal in the hot sun of our one bright light. She did not move but still the waves of sensation rippled up my length inside her. It was a terrifying sensation which I had no control over, but rather possessed me and used me.

Slowly a low moan seemed to come out of her. It ascended into a fearful howl, an incantation. I grabbed her body in my arms, tightly, and holding her hard began to flex my ass against the stool, driving short strokes in to her, even through the rippling of her incredible, gripping passage.

I lifted her higher and took control, lifting her off my long pike and slamming her down on it once again, holding her down hard to savor the sweet sensation of her rippling sweet, sucking cunt all over me; then I picked her up once again and brought her down.

Vaguely I was aware that the light was changing position all around us, sometimes in my eyes, sometimes it seemed to be behind us. I no longer heard the click of the camera though I suppose I was aware of it in that small portion of my mind that had not slipped down my spine and oozed out the long rod of my flesh where it now threatened with each aching stroke to spurt violently out into her.

At this last moment, I took her hips themselves in my hands and, gripping them with hard hands, bounced her off my lap with rapid short strokes. The turbulence built inside me like a tornado, swelling up my body until I was only a penis about to spurt into an unknown crevice all that I was possessed of, my mind, my muscles, all of my organs bent now to only one requirement, one all consuming need. The need to rid my body of the fluid that boiled and burned inside me, the need to deliver into the hot demanding body the meal that it craved, the fluid that would put out all the unendurable fires.

Nan screamed when the explosion began, a long low ritual scream. My arms were wrapped hard around her waist, still bouncing her against me, even though the pleasure of it verged on desperate pain as my ejaculation eased off and my body began to lose its stiffness and contortion.

When it was over it was the stiffness of my prick inside her that held her on my lap atop the high stool, my arms were without strength. Her body draped against mine, her howl subsided to a low whimper, her arms hung limply down.

It was Jud, who, putting his arm under her shoulders and lifting her off my still-solid stake, took her up like a sleeping baby in his arms and, kissing her tenderly, carried her back to her chair.

Mar was covered with sweat when we had finished, her dark hair clung around her neck and forehead, her old blue shirt stuck to her, bringing out the form of her upper body, proving that she wore no bra.

The thought struck me that she was sexually excited. Some bits of information began to put themselves together in my mind. The parties her father used to throw, her in this house. She perhaps, had grown up on other peoples sex, and it had left its mark on her, not a bad mark, but a distinction in her personality.

She was breathing heavily and smiling brightly as she came over to me. Putting her hand on my thigh, she kissed me ardently on the mouth.

"That was wonderful," she said breathlessly. I think we got some good shots there." She turned toward Jud and Nan sitting in the chair, still smiling happily. "I want to do some stills now," she said, "or at least what I call still lives." She went across the room to get her notebook.

Jud's eyes locked for a second on mine and the current of absolute hostility passed between us. I glanced at Nan, sitting in the chair, her great secret giving eyes had retreated under the flush of brown hair once again but her face glowed hotly in the reflection of the single hot light.

Mar came back with several sheets of paper which she spread on the floor and sat down. I walked behind her and looked at them over her shoulder.

The papers were in fact renderings of pictures she intended to take, pencil sketches of exact scenes and cropping with notations in the corners as to the size of blowups and the type of film to be used. Leaning on her knees she considered them one at a time, sorted them out and then made still more notes on the bottom of the pages.

"You draw well," I said softly so as not to cut into her consideration.

She did not answer for a moment, then looked up over her shoulder with a sardonic smile on her lips.

"Papa was an artist," she said.

The picture she had in her hand had the title "P and B series."

She held it up. "Let's try these," she said. "Then we'll have some lunch. What I want," she explained, getting up, "is a series of close-ups of just a prick and a tit with nobody showing."

She handed Jud a sketch of a flaccid penis pushed into the side of a full breast.

"I can crop," she told him, but I need as much room as I can get, so try to keep your leg back as far as you can and try not to get it up because I want several shots of it soft." She smiled at him as though these were not the most natural instructions in the world.

"I don't know exactly how we are going to do it," she said. "Paul would you get me that bench over there."

I brought it quickly and, removing the stool, put the bench in its place.

"Nan," Mar called. "Now this won't be too difficult for you, just sit still and lift your breast out as much as possible." She sat Nan down properly on the bench and maneuvered Jud next to her so his penis was nested into her breast. "Rotate yourself out so I can get your leg out of it," she instructed.

Jud did as he was told, pushing his pelvis forward so that his genitals pressed into the side of Nan's breast very much as in the sketch.

Quickly Mar got her camera and readjusted the light. "Okay," she called. "Now, Jud, turn just a little to face me...there, that's right." Quickly I heard the camera click, not once, but several times.

Jud's penis slowly lengthened against Nan's breast. He tried to control it, but could not I'm sorry," he said, "I just can't help it."

"It's all right," Mar said. She continued to snap as Jud's penis jerked upright and at last it stood dark and hard across Nan's breast.

She maneuvered him this way and that pushing Nan backward and forward, and always clicking her camera. She pressed the big phallus between Nan's breasts and under them and down from the top of them. She took very close-up shots with a different camera of the giant head of his penis pressing gently into one side of her nipple.

As I watched her work in this way, now with a detachment and concentrated authority, I realized she was indeed an artist, that she used her own sexual feeling to excite her to the tempo at which she could create, to arouse in herself the energy to build the moment to a pitch at which she could get the picture she wanted. Her careful planning, all the sketches, they were not the working of an overwrought sexual nature or a frustrated voyeur but rather it was the other way around, she brought her sexual nature into the service of her art.

The human genitals to her were as flowers or landscapes; the entire area of human sexuality for her was a study in beauty, her own sexuality an active part of it

She took several pictures before lunch, ending with his prick deep in Nan's mouth and several shots of his sperm flowing onto her tongue.

I had dressed quickly after my part in it and stood at a good distance, unwilling, somehow, to expose that part of me which was interested and excited by what was happening, unwilling also to dilute by my presence what was obviously a deep working harmony of the three people involved.

When they were through, Mar was flushed and excited. "Good," she cried when they had finished. "Really nice," she kept repeating as she watched Jud and Nan dress. "I think we got some really good shots. Really Nan," she cried in enthusiasm, "you should have seen the look on your face when he started to come. It was absolutely angelic." She took Nan's face enthusiastically in her hands. "Absolutely what I want," she cajoled a reluctant grin out of the girl.

Then, perhaps carried away by her enthusiasm, she took Jud's face in her hands as she had Nan's, and kissed him firmly on the mouth. "You were beautiful, as always," she said softly.

A shot of jealousy raced through my body. i remembered the look he had flashed me. He considered himself my rival for Marlis!

"You were beautiful, as always." What did she mean by that? Then suddenly I was aware of how stupidly I was feeling. How could one have a jealousy of this sort under these circumstances. How foolish it was of me. And yet had I not detected a note of it in Mar's voice when she had approached Nan and me earlier? All of this was uncertain and unreal, I had no way of knowing what was really happening.

Mar ushered us out of the studio after that, and back upstairs for the promised lunch. I wanted desperately to be alone with her, but she seemed to want to continue what, for her, had been the euphoria of a good day's work. We drank wine and ate sandwiches around the table near the fireplace. Overhead, the sky, always so palpable in this room, was clouding over.

I did not speak to Jud during the meal and he did not speak to me. I wondered if Mar was aware of this, aware that we had commenced, perhaps against both our wills, a struggle for her attention.

At the table, I must confess, I did not do well in my competition for Mar's attention. Jud, who was still basking in his more recent success in front of the camera, showered her with his boyishness, the ultimate manifestation of which she had so recently been involved with, and so obviously enjoyed.

By the time they had gone I was feeling sorry for myself, I had spoken quietly to Nan as they left, thanking her for the good time. She smiled up at me invitingly. Neither Jud nor I made any attempt at leave taking.