Chapter 20

They only had about sixty small packages left to process when Josh’s phone rang. He answered it and said, “Hi, Mom.” He listened for a moment and looked at Bob.

“She wants to talk to you.” He handed the phone to Bob.

“Hey, Josh’s mom,” Bob said into the phone.

“Do you have a thumb drive for me?”

“I do.”

When you bring Josh home I’ll have an overnight bag for him and you can give me the drive. I already called Megan and she said he’s welcome.”

“So, tonight’s the night.”

“Yes!”

“Are you excited?”

“I’m frantic! What if he gets mad? What if he hates them?”

“Mona, no man on Earth would hate them. Give yourself a break. Just tease him and have fun.”

“Okay. Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me. You’re the one who looks like you. Okay, we need to get back to work. We can get done by quitting time if we keep at it.”

“Okay. Bye!”

Bob handed the phone back to Josh.

“How would you like to visit Megan’s house again, tonight?”

“Why? What were you talking about to my Mom?”

“Your mother and father want to have another romantic night, which you should not see or hear.”

“I agree!” said the boy. “But why did she talk to you instead of me?”

“I did her a favor and she just wanted to thank me. While we were talking she asked if I could bring you home to get an overnight bag and I said I would.”

“Okay,” said Josh. “Wow! Another night with Erica.”

Bob looked away and said, “Okay, people. We’ve been doing really well and we can get finished if we’re efficient. Chop chop.”

“Ewww,” said Erica. “I found the nipple rings.”

She started picking up packages to ferry to the photo set and then stopped, peering at something.

“I’m going to gag!” she squealed. “Oooo. Oooo. Oooo. Oooo. Nasty!”

Josh, of course, ran over to her and looked at what she was pointing at. He picked up the package to look at it.

“What’s got you all worked up?” asked Megan.

“This one is a surgical steel penis ring,” said Josh. He was reading the back. Then he dropped the package like it was red hot. “You have to poke a hole in the penis to put it through!”

“All right, all right,” said Megan. “Stop looking at them and just bring them to us. Josh, you keep marking them off. I’ll call off each number as we shoot it and Erica will put it in a box. We don’t need to know what everything is.”

“It’s nasty! That’s what it is,” moaned Erica.

“I agree,” said Megan. “Josh, since your mother is not here to advise you, I’m sure she would forbid you of ever getting one of those put on your body. So never do it, okay?”

“There’s no problem there!” He shuddered. “Man, oh man. There are some weird people in the world!”

“That there are,” said Megan. “I’m sorry you had to be exposed to that.”

“Actually, I’m glad to know stuff like that exists,” said Josh. “At least I know to look out for guys who would do that.”

Erica had found a plastic grocery bag and was dumping small handfuls of body jewelry in it. She was going, “Eww, eww,” with each handful. Finally she picked up the bag and handed it to Megan.

“You and Bob take care of this. Just dump the bag and then put each thing back in the bag. When the bag is full I’ll take it to the shipping box. I do not want to see any of that stuff.”

“So if I see something I like, am I allowed to get it?”

“Like what?! Mom, what in there could you possibly want?”

“Ohh, I don’t know. I kind of like the little barbells you stick through pierced nipples.”

Erica got pale and she looked like she was going to topple. Suddenly Josh was there, coming up from behind. He put his arms through hers as her knees buckled. He caught her, but his hands had landed on and were full of her breasts. He staggered with the additional weight and then Erica got some strength back and stood up. She did not move his hands as she looked at her mother.

“Don’t ever do that to me again,” she said, her voice hard.

“I’m sorry. I promise never to pierce my nipples or anything else. I was thinking about getting some belly button jewelry. I saw some really pretty stuff earlier, but I won’t do it if it upsets you.”

“Thank you,” said Erica.

“And you have to promise me never to get your clitoris pierced,” said Megan, with a straight face.

Then she ran, as Erica came after her yelling and screaming.

Bob got between them and said, “I don’t even want to know. We have work to do. Josh is staying over again tonight. If you want to lollygag we can work until it’s dark, but I’d rather get some pizzas delivered.”

“Josh is staying over?” asked Erica.

“Yes, Dear. Mona called me and asked if he could. I said yes.”

“If you don’t want him at your house he can batch it with me here at the studio. I have two beds, now,” said Bob.

“Bob!” Erica yelled. She stamped her foot. “Why is everybody giving me such a hard time?”

To everyone’s surprise, Bob pulled Erica into his arms and gave her a very long, very intimate kiss. When he pulled back, he said, “I never said you couldn’t spend the night here, too, Pumpkin.”

Megan came and broke them apart with her hands.

“We have work to do! Then you can molest my daughter while I molest Josh.”

“Oh, man, Oh, man, Oh man,” Josh groaned.

Everyone looked at him and at the hands he was using to cover his groin.

Bob and Josh walked up the sidewalk leading to Josh’s house. Before they could knock the door opened and Mona stood there.

“Hi, Baby,” she said to her son, as she handed him the same gym bag he had used before when he stayed overnight.

She turned her attention to Bob, who held out a thumb drive between his thumb and pointer finger, and an 8X10 manila envelope in his other hand. Mona took them and then, to both men’s astonishment, pulled Bob into her arms and kissed him.

“Thank you so much,” she said when she stepped back. “I will never forget this.”

“Good luck,” said Bob, resisting the urge to rub his lips.

“Now go! Both of you! I have plans to make and Dick will be home very soon! I told him to go for a ride and give me some alone time.”

She stepped back and abruptly closed the door with a solid thump.

“What was that?” asked Josh, staring at Bob.

“I’ll tell you in the car. Let’s go.”

Josh followed Bob back to the car and just held the gym bag on his lap as they strapped in and began moving.

“Your mother asked me to do some glamour shots for her and I did. That’s what I delivered, just now. She’s going to show them to your father tonight and she hopes it will spice up their sex life.”

“Man!” Josh gusted. “I never thought about sex before I was Erica’s boyfriend. Which I still don’t understand. Why would she want me to be her boyfriend?”

“You’re overthinking it,” said Bob. “You asked her out and when you did that she liked you. As you spent more time together she decided she liked you a lot. I know where you’re coming from. I was kind of a nerd when I was your age. I didn’t have an Erica, but when I went to college I found out girls liked me. I didn’t get it, either. What we have to do is trust our women, Josh. Erica is fiercely loyal and if she has said she’s your girlfriend, she means it. Has she talked about the future?”

“Future?” Josh frowned. “No.”

“You are her first real boyfriend. She’s dated lots of boys, but none of them made the cut. So that means you’re special. You guys will both graduate, one of these days, assuming they let anyone graduate, and she is not going to want to go her way while you go yours. What are your plans for after high school?”

“I’ve always wanted to teach science, maybe in middle school. My folks can’t afford to send me to college, though. That’s why I’m trying to get good enough grades that somebody will give me a scholarship.” He blinked. “Come to think of it, Erica said she’s saving money for college. She said she has a special account that you two set up and it’s her college fund.”

“Did she tell you how she gets money to put into it?”

“Yes,” said Josh.

“And how do you feel about that?”

“I don’t like the idea of strange men seeing her like that.”

“I understand.”

“So why did you suggest that she and I make videos?”

“I was just pointing one option out. Porn exists, okay? And you two exist. Those are just facts. All I did was put the two together in my mind and see if I thought it would work. I do think it would work, and if the two of you made three or four videos, I think your scholarship might just show up. And I’m talking a full ride.”

“Okay, so let’s say we do that. I don’t know what ‘that’ means, but let’s just assume we do whatever it is. Now strange men will be looking at both of us, naked. I don’t feel any better about things.”

“If you decide to do that, the way you’ll have to think about it is that you get the girl. They get to watch you having the girl, but everybody knows they’ll never get the girl. Not in real life. They’ll never get to kiss her, or touch her, or have sex with her. All they can do is watch her loving you and wish they were you. If you think about it that way, all that’s happening is that you get to do some playacting while you actually make love to the girl of your dreams. The cherry on top of that sundae is that you actually get paid for doing it. I believe they call that a win win.”

“Erica would never do that,” said Josh. “She’s told me we can’t go that far.”

“And she meant it,” said Bob. “But that can change and it can change astonishingly quickly. Now, I jumped ahead in our little discussion to making videos. What comes before that are what are called sets.”

“Erica said something about you doing some sets.”

“Yes. Basically, a set tells a short story in still photographs. The models pose as if they are about to kiss. Then maybe they pose actually kissing. Then they take their clothes off in a group of ten pictures. Now they kiss naked and so on. You’re not moving and you are portraying something, but not necessarily doing it. You can be positioned so the observer thinks you are having sex. It’s all a fantasy. In your case, it happens to be a fantasy you really like and get to do.”

“How does it tell a story? It sounds like you’re just taking pictures of two kids fooling around.”

“Okay. I’ll give you an example of a plot I’d do with you two. Keep an open mind, here. What I’m doing is imagining what will sell like hot cakes. That’s all it is, just selling something lots of people want. I’m not suggesting it’s a great idea for anybody to do in real life.”

“This sounds ominous. I hope it’s not human sacrifice.”

“No, but I could work with that concept, too. Okay. We have a shot of you, standing in front of a door that has a sign that says ‘Brothers stay out!’ and ‘No entry for brothers!” The sign makes it clear that she and her brother don’t get along. It also suggests that you are her brother. The next shot is of your hand turning the doorknob. Then there is one of you, peeking through a two inch gap in the now open door. The next shot is what you see, which is your sister, lying on her bed, masturbating.” Josh made a sound but Bob went on. “So the scenario is that you go in. Maybe you’re wearing a robe. She sees you and tries to cover her good bits. There’s a shot of her obviously angry face, yelling. Then we see her eyes stop and get wide. The camera angle changes to show that your erection has popped out, between the halves of the robe. From there it can go in several directions, but in all of those directions the two of them end up naked, doing things siblings aren’t supposed to do. The last shot is of the sign that was on her door in the trash can.”

“And that sells,” said Josh.

“Like it was the last bottle of water on the planet,” said Bob.

“Incest sells.”

“The fantasy of incest sells.”

“Okay, I see what you mean, now, but I could never do that. I’d have to have an erection while you were taking pictures of me ... of it! There’s no way I could even get an erection under those circumstances.”

“I assume you got them while we were doing the sex toy shoot.”

“Yes.”

“And I assume they did not disgust Erica.”

Josh blushed.

“No.”

“I have a feeling she could make you get erect if the two of you were standing stark naked in front of city hall. To you, she’s hot. She’s your dream girl. She loves you. Those are powerful ideas. It’s possible you’d have some trouble initially, but in that scenario, your erection would only be shown a few times. We could shoot all the other scenes first, to get you used to posing. Up to now all you’ve had to do is stand there. In this your face would have to show emotion. Sometimes just shooting one view of the face can take an hour, because the director may want something the model has difficulty producing.”