The brilliant sun threw a wide shaft of light on the thick carpet as it streamed through the opened curtains and flooded over the bed where the Edwards were still deep in slumber.
Stephan woke slowly as a gentle early morning breeze blew in through the half-open window and ruffled the sheet against his body. He squinted his eyes and raised his arm over his forehead as a shield against the daylight, then turned on his side on the bed in an attempt to escape the glittering yellow light. His arm curled around his wife's naked waist, his fingers trailing through the wispy pussy hairs that graced the juncture of her limply spread thighs.
She sure is sound asleep, he thought with a broad smile brightening his face. Taking those movies must have really turned her on-God! The way she was fucking me last night!
His eyes opened to confront a smooth tanned patch of his wife's shoulders. He opened his eyes completely, rolling over on his back, and glanced at the lovely, sweet-smelling body sleeping next to him. Her face was buried between uplifted lithe arms, leaving visible only a strand of long blonde hair, glistening golden in the early morning Sunday sunshine.
"Honey," he whispered, wanting to awaken her gently. A deep moan answered him. He repeated it, this time to be answered by a low, "Wanna sleep some more." The bedclothes rustled as she lay flat on her stomach.
Stephan silently lifted the covers and slid out of bed, heading for the kitchen where he filled the tea kettle with water. Instant coffee would do this morning. A mewing at the patio screen door alerted him to Gillian's cat's mournful face as he pressed his face to the mesh screen; he mewed again with greater insistence.
"Damn cat," growled the young husband, realizing that his morning ritual of drinking his first cup of coffee for the day in the nude would have to be altered by the demands of the cat. Christ, thought the irritated man, last time I let that cat in and fed it when I was naked as a jaybird, old Miss Prichett called the police. He padded over the thick living room carpet and, spying his bathrobe, picked it up and slid one arm through each sleeve. His sleep-puffy eyes fell on the film cassettes of his sexy young wife, and a broad salacious grin showed off his even white teeth. He went back into the kitchen.
With film cassettes in hand, he gave the cat a good morning greeting with a scratch behind each ear. He put the film in the viewer and watched them as he had watched them last night. Goddamn but she's sexy in these movies. Frank was right! They really do turn you on-and if I'm not mistaken, that means Gillian, too. Got to thank that brother of mine; that little son of a bitch is always right!
The tea kettle whistled its completion and, with a smile still jeweling his face, Stephan heaped a teaspoon of instant into a coffee mug and poured the steaming water into it, thinking: that's what I'll do! I won't go golfing with my pigheaded partner. Christ, if it wasn't for the investment I've been trying to pressure him into I wouldn't give him the time. Instead I'll go over to Frank's private studio to ask for some pointers. Besides, if I'm in luck maybe he'll be doing some shooting today.
Minutes later, after having checked in on his wife who lay cuddled in the middle of the bed, the covers pulled over her head to ward off the imminent morning sunlight and double-protected by Stephan's pillow hiding her blonde tresses, he slipped into the dressing room and pulled a shirt from its hanger.
Having written his wife a short note telling her he would be gone for a few hours, he slipped out of the house and into their Mercedes, a whistle on his lips and a song in his heart.
Frank was sitting having coffee with a friend of his, the owner of a film processing lab in the Big Apple, when Stephan rang the buzzer to Frank's private studio situated in a high rent district of New York City.
"Morning, Stephan," his younger brother greeted him, following his words with a cordial slap on the back. "Just having some coffee here with a friend of mine. Come in and meet Basil."
Stephan noticed the deep wrinkles lining his brother's eyes and the puffiness of the eyelids-a sure giveaway for a hangover. Secretly, Stephan wondered if Frank had taken one of his instant movie cameras along to the party. It was supposed to be a real swingin' affair; wasn't that what he said? Must be great having a social life like that.
The older brother envied him.
A slender blond-haired man offered his hand to Stephan: "Pleased to meet ya. I'm Basil."
"Basil and I are trying to get our heads back on our shoulders after that party last night, isn't that so, Basil."
"That's no lie," chuckled Basil, reaching for a half-emptied bottle of brandy sitting on the end table by the sofa.
"I guess we did overindulge a little," admitted Frank ruefully. Frank indicated a director's chair with his name written in bold letters across the back, a gift from his wife, and seated himself on the sofa next to Basil. He cleared his throat, meeting Stephan's eyes; his own were twinkling. "Did you and Gillian, ah, try out the camera last night?"
Stephan felt heat inadvertently rise on his neck and cheeks as the remembrance of the previous evening's activities with his wife sprang full blown into his mind once more. "Well, we…" His eyes darted over to the sofa where Basil grinned knowingly at him. Damn, he thought. I wish Frank wouldn't be so open about these things. "We did take a few feet of film if that's what you mean."
Basil chuckled softly between sips of his brandy-coffee. "Ah, ha, the old movie-camera-on-the-wife trick," he rambled sagely.
Stephan searched for words, but none of an appropriate nature came to mind. It was as if his entire thinking process had stopped. He finally managed, "It's a great invention."
"Yep, did you take some naked movies of your wife?" asked his younger brother with embarrassing insistence.
Stephan's face grew even darker red, even beneath his bronze tan. "Yes, we took some of Gillian in the living room on the sofa."
Jesus, thought Stephan, I wish Frank would leave these questions for a more private meeting. How the hell do I know this idiot Basil won't call up Gillian and spill everything. She'd be on the phone to her lawyer in a second if she knew I was telling anybody about those movies.
"Did you take any in the bedroom?" the owner of the film laboratory asked. "That's the beauty of the timer."
"The timer?" Stephan assumed the innocent pose.
"The fifteen-second timer, the one I left for you to try out, remember?" His brother sat forward on the white sofa, waiting patiently for an answer. Then he leaned forward even further, dropping his voice conspiratorially. "How far would she let you go? Just a little cheesecake, or did she give you the whole pie?" He laughed heartily at his own humor.
"I…I'm not sure what you're talking about, Frank."
"Listen," started Basil, now on his feet, his empty coffee cup in hand en route to the kitchenette in the corner of the room. He rested his hand on Stephan's shoulder and, leaning down, said, "There's nothing to be ashamed of, you know. Almost everybody who tries out those instant Polaroids with the timers has the same ideas and does the same things.
They're great little intimacy arousers. Gets you hornier than hell, especially if you use the timer so that you get shots of you and your cunt fucking away."
Immediately Stephan noted the use of the word cunt instead of wife.
"…Christ, you should have seen the girls get off on it at that party last night." He gave Stephan an extra pat on the shoulder before sauntering off for a refill. "Sorry, I didn't ask, but anybody else for a coffee and brandy? Sure does set you straight after a hangover, kinda like a good fuck when you're all uptight and strung out." He laughed and poured himself a cup.
Stephan stared at Basil. From the moment he set eyes on him he hadn't liked him. Well, my intuition served me right again. That man is sleazy as hell. Don't understand what Frank is doing with friends like that.
He knew that Frank was often open about his sex life, but he was never coarse like Basil. Why, he was practically suggesting that he, Stephan, engage in lewd practices like well, like voyeurism, for God's sake!
Self voyeurism was no better than jerking yourself off!
Basil settled himself back on the sofa, once more pouring a healthy shot of brandy into his steamy coffee and wincing with the scorching of the first sip. "When I first got into the film business, I owned a processing lab on the other side of town. I was really amazed at the number of fun-loving people who shared my interest. Christ! You should see some of the photographs people come in with to have blown up to life size and hang on their bedroom walls. And the movies, absolutely wild. Hell, I figured, why should they be having all the kicks?"
"You mean you take pictures of your wife? Naked?"
"Sure as hell do, Stephan." Basil crossed his long legs and set down his coffee cup, leaning forward on the sofa as if giving a sales pitch.
"We take movies of each other fucking almost every night. Christ! You oughta see our collection. Why, thousands of people do the same thing all over the country these days. It's the in-thing to do." It was out of self-protection that Basil referred to 'his wife.'
Frank allowed his smile to widen. "That's why I suggested the movie camera, Stephan. Give you and Gillian's fucking a little lift. What's it been? Three years now? Sex getting a little too predictable for your tastes, huh?"
Stephan moistened his parched lips uncertainly. His brother had put him in an awkward position: what he and his wife did in the privacy of their own home was nobody's business but their own. But then again, this whole business of taking movies was getting out of hand, Frank putting it on a masculine-pride level and, assuming the role of the elder knowledgeable brother. Stephan refused to admit his naivete.
It wouldn't hurt, really, he reasoned to himself, to tell Frank about the movies he'd taken of Gillian last night. It was all innocent anyway. Gillian would never have to know: her communication with Frank was on the level of pure cordiality, with terse hellos and goodbyes.
Stephan placed his elbows on the arms of the chair and said in a low voice, "Well, we did get some good footage last night. Some…some cheesecake as you say."
"Good," said Frank with a broad grin. "Did you get a kick out of playing movie director?"
"Sure did, Frank."
Basil laughed. "Nude shots?"
Stephan felt himself flushing again. "Well, not really. More like old Coca-Cola calendar ads. Cheesecake, as you call them."
"Got a surprise for you, Stephan." Basil leaned forward on the sofa again. "Now I wouldn't show these to anybody but Frank, but since you're his brother and all, and because I like you, I'm gonna give you a Sunday morning lift." He reached down to his brief case at the edge of the sofa and clicking it open, removed a bulky white envelope.
Stephan's nervous grin gave way to a frown. This was getting out of hand. With trembling fingers he tore open the envelope and looked up to see Basil staring fixedly at his expression.
"Let me explain: these are some film cartridges taken from a different movie film. A couple people sent the film in for me to develop. I take out the good parts and take them with the Polaroid movie camera. I get all these cartridges and they get their film. Pretty, good racket, you know?" He laughed and settled back comfortably on the sofa.
Frank rose to his feet, his hand stroking his forehead nervously.
Jesus, he thought, I wish Basil wouldn't explain his operation to everybody who steps foot in this studio. One of these days he's gonna get busted and I don't want to have my name and address on a warrant.
"Hey, guys, 'scuse me, but I gotta set up for a shooting session tonight."
Stephan watched his brother disappear through the doorway into the studio. There was no way out of it, he was stuck with Basil and his lewd ideas of fucking.
Basil went over to a closet by the couch and came back with a viewer.
He set it up and in a few seconds was showing the first cartridge.
Stephan sucked in his breath sharply as his eyes watched the first frame on the screen. "My God!" he managed to whisper.
The first cassette was of a lithe, buxom blonde with an angelic face.
From her innocent face, Stephan guessed her to be no more than eighteen years old. She was lying completely naked on her back in a lounge chair; her slender legs raised and widespread, hanging over the sides of the soft blue cushions so that the whole of her naked loins were displayed to the eye of the movie camera. Her hands were cupped teasingly around her blonde-furred pussy, framing the wide-splayed splendor of her cunt. She was smiling coyly between her ruby-nippled alabaster tits. Stephan blinked and looked as the movie went on.
Another sharp intake of breath, and a small gasp. The same young blonde, looking just as innocent and angelic as before, but a darkhaired handsome male had joined her in the chair. The blonde was straddling the man's loins, her widespread pussy lowered down on the man's hardened cock, so that fully half of his huge, wetly glistening cock was sunk into her open cunt. She was holding its base between her thumb and forefinger, her small pink tongue held tightly between her full red lips and her eyes squeezed tightly shut in ecstasy. Her other hand squeezed her huge tit, very hard, so that the jutting nipple seemed to point directly at the camera lens.
"That's one of my favorites," smiled Basil.
"But this girl can't be over nineteen and the guy looks twice her age," protested Stephan.
"That's her father."
Jesus Christ, thought Stephan, beads of sweat lacing his forehead and a rising hardness in his loins. He watched as the film finished with the young blonde sucking the man's cock to cumming in her mouth and then the viewer's screen went blank and Basil put on another cassette until all of them had been seen. One showed a different balding man kneeling between the opened thighs of a brunette, with huge pear-shaped breasts, his long tongue snaking out to touch the hotly swollen nipple of her clit nestled between soft, fleecy brown pussy curls. Another depicted a voluptuous blonde girl barely out of her teens with her coral-colored lips voraciously sucking the throbbing prick of a muscular man while he fucked the middle finger of one hand into the wetly glistening hole of her soft pink cunt. Her leg was raised so that the full extent of her cunthole was presented to Stephan's view while she sucked the man's cock and toyed with his cum-laden balls. Still another cassette showed two couples, both in their mid-thirties, engaged in an orgiastic group session which Stephan could not believe upon first sight, since one woman was being fucked by one man while that same man was sucking the cunt of another woman who in turn was licking the balls of another man.
It was a mass of flesh, raw naked flesh, and Stephan couldn't imagine anything being that obscene until that cassette ended and another was placed in the viewer. This one was of two girls-obviously sisters-and a double dildo. The girls took the huge fake cock and inserted it simultaneously into their cunts. Moaning loudly, they began to writhe on the dildo, their tits heaving as they came loudly!
Stephan was sweating profusely, his breath coming in short gasps as his own cock tingled with arousal, by the time the obscene film ended.
"Good God, Basil," he managed limply. "I've never seen anything like it!"
"And these are just a sampling, Stephan," said Basil. "I've got files of movies back there in the lab in case you ever…"
Stephan wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. His throat felt raspy and he wished he had a cold glass of water to soothe his nerves.
"Isn't this against the law?"
"Naw, they're just average Americans like you and me, Stephan-average people looking for a few kicks out of life, that's all. You'd be surprised at some of the people who bring in their films to me.
Doctors, lawyers-God, even a grammar school principal's wife, Joan."
"What?" Stephan looked incredulous. The image of the movies lingered in his mind. They really made him hot, they made him hotter than anything he'd seen since he was a kid living in Texas. Just thinking about them made his prick tremble and begin to rise.
"Some people even exchange movies. Not a damned thing wrong with it, as far as I can see. All they do is get themselves and their wives turned on watching some other people fucking away, and they're doing the same thing watching us. And it does get your cock riled, believe me."
I believe you, all right, thought Stephan. I can remember how excited I got last night, taking pictures of Gillian-and they weren't anything more than some harmless cheesecake. I wonder if I dare take some of us fucking, or even of just Gillian naked with her beautiful tits trembling and her cunt sparkling.
He shook his head as if to clear it. No, there was no use even thinking about trying to carry his thoughts past the pure daydream stage.
Gillian would never allow him to take movies of her stripped completely naked, even though she had agreed to let him take movies of her with her titties swaying nakedly last night, and she would most definitely never allow anything as lascivious as movies of him fucking her. For God's sake, even if she did agree to go that far, she would certainly not agree to let anyone else, much less strangers, see the movies.
And he couldn't expect her to, damn it; what was the matter with him?
Gillian was a sweet, moral girl, faithful and passionate and able to satisfy his every need up until now-so why was he thinking about asking her to pose naked and fuck on film, something which fairly shouted of perversity and lack of respect for privacy and personal intimacy? Why should he be so excited at the possibility of seeing more of the lewd films which Basil had just shown him? Why should the thought of watching other people fucking and performing perversion on a regular basis bring the sweat out on his forehead, and bring a tightness to his chest and loins? Well, he couldn't explain it; it was beyond his comprehension. He knew only that the idea of seeing his sweet, innocent young wife, with her tits hanging nakedly in front of the camera lens, as he had for the first time last night, had turned him on like he had never been turned on before. And the sight of these movies of strangers fucking and sucking wildly together today had had the same physical effect on him.
"Any time you want to come over to my lab and see more, just give me a buzz or stop by. I try to reserve special hours for my special customers," he said, smiling, reaching into his brief case and pulling out a business card. "Here, this is how you can get in touch with me."
Stephan reached for the card and stuffed it in his shirt pocket. He put the films back into the envelope and then held out the envelope for its owner to claim.
"Oh, no! That's a gift. Take it home to your wife and show them to her, it'll turn her on, I guarantee. One peek at that reel and she'll be begging for you to fuck her."
Stephan wished this stranger wouldn't make such presumptuous remarks about Gillian.
"No, I couldn't show this to her," Stephan said, shaking his head.
"Gillian would never talk to me again!"
"I think you're underestimating your wife and all women in general. Why not give it a try? You're interested, I can tell from the way you were droolin' over the footage. Take it from me, all you've got to do is put the bug in the wife's ear and get her on the right track. Once they see the kicks involved, they're only too happy to go along. I know, by golly; Taffy, Frank's wife, she was the same as your wife. What's her name? Gillian…shy and retiring. Now she's open and much warmer-and one hell of a hot fuck, so Frank tells me."
Stephan felt uncomfortable in the face of all this candidness, the unexpected admissions and ideas and concepts which he had been subjected to. He got up from the chair, a twinge of embarrassment warming his cheeks when he felt the pressure of his hardened cock pulling tightly against his pants. Nervously, he let the envelope swing from his hands, covering the telltale bulge.
"Ah, thanks a lot…Basil. I gotta go now. Just want to say goodbye to my brother before I leave and thank him for the use of the movie camera."
But, overhearing their conversation, Frank came bounding through the doorway, "Hey, Stephan. Just want to tell ya that we're gonna have a little fun here later tonight. Tell Gillian that if she'd care to come along, she's more than welcome. Taffy should be here and one of the actresses, too." He shrugged his shoulders, "You know, a little drink and a few instant cameras. Nothing special, just a little fun."
"Thanks a lot, Frank, but Gillian and I were planning to…"
"Aw, come on. Maybe I can give you a few pointers."
"We'll see." Stephan was halfway to the door when he suddenly remembered the camera. "I've got the camera in the car, you know the one you lent me yesterday and I forgot to bring it in."
"That's okay, brother. Save it. I have a feeling it's gonna come in handy for you and Gillian in the near future."
When he unlocked his car door, Stephan knew that there was no use kidding himself any longer; he was going to take Basil's suggestion about leaving the film in a place where Gillian would be sure to find it, he would have to leave the viewer out in plain sight. Feeling a strange coupling of guilt and mounting excitement at what he was about to do, Stephan drove to a small neighborhood park three blocks away from his home and turned off the motor.
Christ! he thought, am I really going to have the balls to show these to my wife? With trembling fingers, he opened the white envelope and glanced at the obscene black cassettes again. His prick seemed to jerk spasmodically in his pants as he remembered the lewd, tremendously stimulating acts being performed in the full color splendor of the cassettes. The ones that had really turned him on the most were those that had depicted oral fucking: soft feminine mouths closed eagerly, hungrily, over the lust-hardened cocks of their husbands; masculine lips and tongues paying devoted homage to the warm secret cuntlips of their wives. These he would put on top, so that they would be the first ones Gillian would see when she placed them on the viewer; maybe they would convince her of the beauty, of the rightness, of sucking cock and pussy.
He started to put them back into the envelope when a sudden frown creased his forehead and he stopped. Some of the other cassettes, besides those depicting oral fucking, were pretty animal and raw for the innocent eyes of his wife; instead of being turned on, being interested and excited by the films as he intended, she would probably become angry from viewing such blatantly carnal acts as ass-fucking and three-ways and four-ways. He couldn't include those films, not now, not for a while yet-just the milder ones, the ones showing a man and his wife screwing in all the possible ways.
Quickly, he sorted out the cassettes, putting those he deemed too daring for Gillian's mild taste in a separate pile; the rest he shuffled back into the white envelope. Then he got out of the car and with a wide grin on his face, threw the rejects in the garbage can.
With a smile of perversity, he jumped back in the car and headed home.
Gillian was in the back yard weeding the flower bed when he got home that afternoon.
"Hi, honey!" he called from the living room where the plate glass door was slid open, emitting the warmth of the July Sunday afternoon.
The kind of afternoon where everything seemed in slow motion, lazy and blissful.
"What have you been doing, Stephan?" Gillian tried to sound calm and relaxed to disguise the anger in her voice. Sundays had always been a day to be spent together and shared, but this morning Stephan had left the house, not even bothering to awaken her, and left a note. "Be back soon." No explanation, no phone number where he could be reached. He had to be up to something surreptitious.
"Oh, just went over to Frank's studio…" He took a long swallow of his cold beer, and that seemed to oil his throat muscles somewhat.
"Why don't you come out here so I can hear you?" Gillian pulled at an obdurate vine that would not loosen its hold around a bush. "Just a second." He waved his arm and then slipped off to his study where he put the envelope on top of the bookshelf. Obviously this was not the time to confront his wife with such matters. He could tell by her metallic voice that she was disturbed by his abrupt departure that morning.
"Any phone calls for me?" he asked boldly, offering her a cold beer which she gratefully accepted with a gloved hand.
"Just one from your partner, says you stood him up for golf. Sounded a little angry." She went back to trimming the rose vine, her beer can precariously perched on a fence post.
Stephan tilted his head back and took a healthy swallow of icy beer.
Christ! How am I going to tell her I'm leaving again tonight? I really would like to go back over there to the studio and catch a little of the action. I won't get involved, just sit there and watch. Gillian should be able to understand that I need to be around people in other fields than business. Christ, it gets to be a bore sometimes, listening to all that shop talk. It's time I start broadening my interests before I'm too old to enjoy such things as film-making.
"Gillian."
She lifted her head, her large-brimmed straw hat framing her angelic face, so innocent and trusting. With just a bit of flush in her cheeks she looked like the young eighteen-year-old in the photos, now safely tucked away in his office. For Gillian had the same rare, wide-eyed look.
"Gillian, I've decided to take some film-making classes," he began.
"I'm getting tired of reading nothing but Fortune and U.S. News and World Report, you know? Like you've got your garden," he said expansively, stretching his arms to encompass the small back yard scarcely larger than the living room-except for the swimming pool.
"But all I see all day is fat, paunchy businessmen. Frank has agreed to give me a few pointers and get me started." He looked down at his wife, waiting for her negative response, the same predictable response whenever Frank's name was mentioned.
But it didn't come.
"I'm going over there tonight to start. I met this guy who's got a film laboratory, you know, processing and editing animation, and he says he'll give me a real deal on any work I give him. Film-making is expensive, you know."
She stood up, took another swallow of her beer, and bent down to resume her weed pulling, her motions interrupted only once when she pulled off her right-hand glove to yank back a strand of blonde hair that had escaped her hair clip.
"Well…" he said expectantly.
"Well what? I think it's great, Stephan. It'll take your mind off dirty cheap pictures for a change."
She sat on her haunches, picking through the ground cover. Gillian felt a small sense of foreboding, as if there was something Stephan was not telling her, as if there was some other motive behind his sudden interest in movie films. She thought back to the previous evening, and to the films Stephan had taken of her-with her dress hiked up and her panties showing; thought back to how excited he had been, how obviously aroused by the sight of her posing so provocatively before the eye of the movie camera and in its sixty-second lasting capture of it. A small involuntary tremor coursed through her soft young body. She must never let Stephan do that again, take movie pictures of her naked like that; it was wrong and wicked and it had no place in a happy, fully consummated marriage such as theirs.
"Honey," he began, caution in his voice. "Let's go out to eat and then I'll bring you home before I go over to Frank's studio. There's a movie you can watch on T.V. tonight, supposed to be a real thriller." he added with a note of encouragement.
And judging from her response, it was a perfect idea.
They enjoyed a leisurely dinner at a well-known French restaurant not far from their suburban home, and Stephan managed to steer the conversation to many things of little consequence, so that Gillian would forget about last night, this morning, and what he was about to do that night. Her anger subsided with a full stomach and several glasses of excellent French wine. By the time they left the restaurant and went out to the car she was relaxed. The Mercedes swerved into the driveway and he kissed her, promising he would not be late. She whispered in return, "Come home early and fuck me tonight, Stephan darling." He promised he would, kissed her again, and said goodbye, feeling once more that odd mixture of guilt and mounting excitement as he backed the car out of the driveway.
All the way to his brother's studio and all during the time he was with his wife Stephan kept telling himself he wouldn't ask her to pose for any more of those films, concentrating instead on fantasies of what it would be like to be a movie director. It wasn't the actual movie, he reassured himself, that turned me on; if was the creative process of taking them. Or imagining a picture and watching it develop.
It was Basil who greeted him at the door of his brother's private movie studio.
"Hi, Stephan. Glad to see you could get away from the ol' wifey long enough to come play with us."
The richness of Stephan's dinner began a slow churning sensation as the unctuous sound of Basil's voice slurred on. It was obvious he'd been drinking all day, judging from the slap-happy way he repeatedly pawed at Stephan's shoulder and the way his feet kept getting in each other's way.
"Did you show them to her?" Basil's thin arm encircled Stephan's shoulder and Stephan could smell alcohol mixed with cigarette smoke.
"Show them? Oh, oh, no. Didn't have time." Stephan felt his face color.
"What? You mean you didn't show her any of them?"
Here we go again, back in the same embarrassed defensive position I was in this morning. God, but this guy is getting to be a pain in the ass …
"Naw. I don't think she'd be interested."
"She'll get into it. Jes' a matter of time. Seen a lot of women, shy as can be at having their naked tits and cunt in a movie, at first and after a little while, you can't hold 'em back. Tell you what, how 'bout I fix us each a drink and then we can go on with this man-to-man talk and I'll give you some more pointers."
Frank, having heard his brother's voice, came bounding through the doorway, a tripod in hand.
"Hello, there," he said, extending his hand, a big grin on his handsome tanned face. "Glad you could make it, with or without Gillian."
"What's up?" Stephan tried to appear casual, relaxed, but he couldn't find a comfortable place for his hands that seemed to get in the way of every gesture. Giving up, he finally plunged them into his pants pockets.
"Setting up for a couple of shots. If it turns out as usual, it'll end up in a party." He chuckled lightly and motioned with his free hand for Stephan to follow him, an invitation that he readily accepted. Anything to get away from Basil. Stephan felt uncomfortable, acutely so, as though again he was getting more than he'd bargained for, but there wasn't any way he could see of getting out of it. He had an inkling that they were setting up for more nude scenes, but now that he was here, what was he supposed to do? Leave? Have his brother think him a hen-pecked conservative prude?
"Here you go, pal." Basil handed him a double bourbon on the rocks.
He was about to refuse, but on second consideration, reasoned one drink or two wouldn't make any difference. Besides he could use it, he told himself; he had a bad case of the jitters at the thought of those filthy movies on his bookshelf at home. Christ! I should have put them in my filing cabinet. Gillian keeps her magazines on that top shelf.
And if she found, them…he took a sip of his drink. Well, he didn't want to think about that right now.
It took only minutes for the ice cubes to rattle emptily in the bottom of the glass and, not missing his cue, Basil was at hand, as always, with another bottle that tilted and gurgled into Stephan's empty glass.
Appreciatively, Stephan raised the cool rim to his lips, nodding at Basil who stood close to him, glued to his body wherever he went, like the right half of Siamese twins.
"Sure is nice to know that Frank has a brother who's a real swinger."
His eyes lifted to the director, Frank, now on the top rung of the ladder where he was reaching overhead to replace one of the light bulbs in the strobe fixture. Basil stared up at him, admiringly, "He sure is one hell of a guy, that Frank…"
He was interrupted by the sight of a young girl, probably no more than eighteen, emerging from the dressing room adjacent to the large empty room cluttered with tripods, lights, and cameras, and now a large woodframed waterbed.
Stephan felt a sharp, bony elbow mash into his ribs. "How ya' like the looks of that stuff, eh, Stephan? Our fun for the night," Basil said with a wink.
The tall, lithe blonde, her luminous green eyes sparkling nodded. "Hi!
My name is Kitty."
"And I'm Stephan."
"Pleased to meet ya, Stephan."
"Hello down there!" called Frank from the top rung of the ladder. "I'm havin' a few problems here with this circuit, so make yourself comfortable. It may be a while."
She looked up at him and nodded.
"Have a seat and a drink. Have you met my brother yet?"
"Sure have! He's a real groovy cat, Frank," she said, licking her lips and sticking out one narrow hip to rest the palm of her hand on.
"Anybody got a joint?" Kitty's green eyes surveyed the negatively shaking heads of the three men.
"What a drag," her mouth twitched with disappointment. "Tell you what, if somebody'll give me a lift to my folks' house I'll bring back a couple of reefers. Just got some good shit from a friend of mine who just came back from Columbia."
With a double bourbon to bolster his courage and erase any tremor of guilt, Stephan, anxious to get away from Basil, sat his empty glass on a filing cabinet and said boldly, "I'd be happy to give you a ride, Kitty. I don't smoke the stuff myself though," he admitted sheepishly.
So with Basil and brother Frank exchanging knowing looks and smirks of suspicion, Stephan held the door open for the teenager to slip through.
Basil watched from the window overlooking the street as the Mercedes revved to life.
"That brother of yours doesn't know what he's getting himself into."
Basil climbed three rungs of the ladder, just high enough to hand a bourbon and water to the movie director who smiled down at his comradein-sin.
"Do him good," he muttered, still looking upward toward the burned-out light. "He hasn't had any extracurricular cunt since he married that little wife of his. She's one hell of a looker, but she's so uptight.
Needs a little loosening up." He looked down at Basil who had climbed down the ladder. "Maybe the old Steve needs a good piece of Kitty's cunt. She can show him how to set his old lady straight!"