Chapter 18: Upset

I got about four hours of sleep and then went out to call Uncle Nate.

“I think I might have a problem,” I said without preamble. “Do you know the patrons and their families?”

“Families? I know who they are. We’re not friends. I’m not actually friends with any of them. What happened?”

“Levi called me and said he’d gotten an urgent request for a photo sitting last night. I got there with Theresa and Leanne and at six o’clock a woman—about forty if I’d guess—introduced herself as Sylvia. She said she wanted as many raw sexual photographs of herself as I could take and print in a night. She offered me $500 if I’d stay and work all night. Of course, I couldn’t keep Theresa and Leanne there all night. They left at 8:30 and Levi closed the store at 9:00. I took pictures until after midnight, and then she stayed with me in the darkroom the rest of the night and I printed fifteen 8x10s. None were real works of art, but most looked like good Attic Allure photos, if occasionally a little more explicit.”

“Did you fuck her?”

“No. But there was a lot of contact, you know.”

“And she just took the photos and left in the morning?”

“About 5:30 this morning. When I packaged them up for her, she seemed really happy. Then she said her husband had been cheating on her. I thought she wanted to show him what he was missing, but she said he’d seen me work a couple of times and called me a fucking Casanova. He’d know exactly what went on to get those photos.”

“Well, crap. Sylvia? Must be Sylvia Drummond. You wouldn’t have known her regardless. She never took her husband’s name. Not that he wasn’t warned often enough about her. Still, he’s been running around with an actress a lot lately.”

“What should I do?”

“Are you finished with your finals?”

“One more tomorrow morning at eight. I’ll be out by ten.”

“Okay. Pack up. Get everything loaded in your van and ready to drive away in the morning. Don’t worry about the studio. I’ll go over and pack it up now. I need to tell Levi what happened. He wouldn’t have known who she was either. I don’t think there will be any repercussions on you, but it will be better if you’re 150 miles away until it blows over. Let me run a little interference and I’ll see you in Tenbrook tomorrow afternoon.”

“Okay. I’ll just stay inside today,” I said.

“Good idea. Thanks for calling and alerting me to the problem. Don’t worry about it.”

Right. Don’t worry about it. As if. I packed everything in my room. It fit in a suitcase and a box.

“Hey, you leaving?” Devon asked as I hauled my stuff out of my room.

“Yeah. As soon as my last final is over tomorrow morning. When do you get out?” I asked.

“I’m sticking around for summer session. My ... um ... parents found out I’ve been performing and told me not to come home. I have to figure out what I’m going to do and how I’m going to live. I might need some new photos if I want to move someplace else. It kind of sucks.”

“Shit, man. No kidding. I’d offer you a place to stay, but I’m only going to be home a month before I take off for Vegas.”

“Vegas? I could dig that.”

“Um ... I don’t know if I’ve got room for another down there. Here’s my phone number in Tenbrook. I’ll try to find out what else is going on this summer. Things are a little up in the air just now.” I handed him my card and put my Tenbrook phone number on the back. Then I picked up the suitcase and tried to maneuver the box into my arm.

“Hey, man. Let me get one of those. I can carry.”

“Thanks, Devon.”

We walked to the parking ramp where the bus was and I told him about what was going on with the summer. The problem was that now I didn’t know if the thing with Sylvia Drummond had screwed up my opportunity in Las Vegas. If her husband decided I wasn’t worthwhile any longer, he might just tell them to pull the plug on it.

I really needed to reevaluate my entire process of getting Attic Allure photos. Someplace along the line, the expectation had become that I would seduce my model in order to get a sexy alluring photo with a piece of junk. I was thinking it was a little out of control. I didn’t think I was still acting like a therapist for my models.

I spent the rest of the day in the library, preparing for my Writing and Rhetoric exam. I had no idea what she’d ask on it, but I was pretty sure it was going to involve a lot of writing. At six, I met Beth for dinner and then we went to her room, where her roommate tolerated my presence for the night.

“You can spend the night as long as the two of you don’t make too much noise when you’re screwing,” Holly said. “And as long as Beth doesn’t mind you seeing me running around naked. That’s the way it is here.”

“Uh ... Right. Thanks for the warning,” I said.

“I don’t mind you running around naked. We do it all the time,” Beth said. “You just have to expect, though, that Nate will have a boner pointing at you. You’re a sexy bitch.”

“That would be novel,” Holly said. “I haven’t seen one of those since Bret and I broke up at Christmas. Get it up!” She whipped off her shirt and bra in an act of bravado, but then she just curled up on her bed with a book and studied. They were nice boobs.

I gave Beth sincere kisses and quiet loving before I took off in the morning for my last final and to head for Tenbrook. I promised I’d be back in a couple of weeks, though Beth’s spring term didn’t end until mid-June. We heard Holly joining us in a sigh of contentment when we finished making love and she jumped out of her bed naked to run to the bathroom as I was getting up. Beth sucked me into her mouth just to get me stiff again to face Holly when she returned. She reached over and just flipped my cock as she went past.

“Boink.”

I got dressed and left.

The Writing and Rhetoric class wasn’t all that bad. I actually finished in ninety minutes. I picked up my book bag and headed for the parking garage. In ten minutes, I was on the road to Tenbrook. I hadn’t seen any sign of trouble.

I went immediately to see Patricia at Center Marketplace where she was working. I scooped up little miss from her toddler cage behind the cash register and kissed Patricia.

“Your Uncle is here,” Patricia said. “Ronda and Anna are upstairs with him.”

“He brought my equipment from Chicago. It was kind of a stealthy escape,” I said.

“I understood there was a story to be heard. I guess you need to take me out tonight so I can hear it,” she grinned. That sounded good to me.

The inside stairs were unlocked, so I put Toni back in her playpen and skipped up to the third floor studio where I found Uncle Nate with Ronda and Anna, sorting through a pile of photographs.

“Hi! Wow! What is all this?”

I caught Ronda in a hug and kissed her since she was the nearest. By the time I could part from her lips, Anna was in my arms. Eventually, I got around to listening to my uncle explain what all he had.

“We’re assuming the Chicago studio could be toxic for a while,” he said. “Levi didn’t know who it was he set the appointment for, but agreed that it was prudent to take precautions. So, we packed up your camera equipment, a box of film, all the pictures you had in your Chicago gallery, and your books and files, including all the negatives and proof sheets and releases you had in the fireproof safe there. Now it is up to Anna to get it all sorted out and put away in the files here. She tells me that we’ll need a second file cabinet, so I’ll be staying a few days and making sure you have everything that’s needed.”

“I sure hope this doesn’t blow back on us here,” I said. “Is this going to screw up the whole plan for Las Vegas?”

“I don’t think you need to worry about that. I called and talked to Don and he’ll come out later this week to go over all the details. Photosensitive Productions is a corporation that is several levels above your patrons. Once they got involved and made an offer to you, the patrons became nothing more than minor shareholders. I expect I’ll stay in town or nearby most of the week. I want to make sure the Vegas project is secure and that you have everything you need,” Uncle Nate said.

We spent the rest of the afternoon sorting through things and I got my Chicago gallery photos integrated with the Tenbrook gallery. Anna and Ronda handled integrating the files of releases, finances, negatives, and proof sheets. Nate said he’d go into Dubuque and get another cabinet delivered for us.

When school got out in Tenbrook, Kat came racing up the stairs to see me and say hi to Uncle Nate. Julie, Danny, Brian, and Vanessa were pulled along in her wake. At fifteen, Danny was looking like a strapping kid and I found out he was looking at the possibility of quarterbacking the football team as a sophomore next fall. Julie made a snide remark about making sure he didn’t get his face messed up. She’d once described him as a Ken Doll. It didn’t seem to hurt their relationship, though.

“Nate, I need studio time this weekend to finish my final art project,” Kat said. “We can work with others in the studio as long as you don’t mind us being here.”

“Um ... Not before ten tomorrow. I have a special project I need to work on in the morning and can’t have anyone in the studio. I’ll even make sure Patricia locks the gates from downstairs,” I said.

“Who wants to get up before ten on Saturday?” Kat said. “Two more weeks of school! I can’t wait until it’s over.” She grabbed hold of Brian’s hand and dragged him back downstairs with the others following.

“Well, with your sister home, I’ll bet that your mother will start wondering why I haven’t reported in,” Uncle Nate said.

“Yeah. I haven’t reported in yet either,” I said. “Anyone coming home with me?”

“We agreed to let Patricia have a date tonight. Ronda and I are going to watch Toni,” Anna said. “Tomorrow night is Ronda’s turn and Sunday night, you get me—all night long.”

“I love coming home,” I said. Uncle Nate and I went to face my mother.

Saturday morning early, Sandra was at the studio. She summarily stripped and asked me to see if anything had changed. It had been four months since I’d managed to have a session with her and there was certainly something even more lovely about her than I had seen last. I thought she was wearing a little makeup, too.

It was hard to identify exactly what else had changed in her. We sat together looking at the prints and comparing them to earlier photos. Sandra was sixteen and a half now, and when I say we sat together, I really mean ... Let’s just say that as usual, Sandra hadn’t dressed after her photos. She had entered the darkroom with me and made sure I was fully aware of her naked body pressed up against mine while I processed the film and printed the enlargements. Then, when we sat at the table to examine them, she sat on my lap as we looked from print to print.

I had a lovely naked sixteen-year-old sitting on my lap, and somehow my hands just naturally gravitated to her tits and then down between her legs. She was in constant motion, thrusting her pelvis at my fingers, encouraging their invasion into her wet center.

“I think we are seeing an indescribable difference in maturity,” I said. I pushed two fingers up into her and she pulled my face to her tit as she whined an orgasm.

“Thank you,” she whispered pulling me up for a kiss. Yes, there was definitely a new maturity in the lithe young woman. “That will keep me from fucking Bruce for at least a few more weeks. I really want to see if he is worthwhile before I succumb to the pressure.”

“Is he pressuring you to have sex?” I asked. I don’t know why I should be concerned since I still had two fingers soaking in her pussy juices.

“Not exactly. What they don’t tell you in the books is that it doesn’t have to be one partner pressuring the other to go all the way. I think you generate your own pressure. Having been spurned by my first love...” she kissed me to indicate who she meant, “ ... I feel a pressure building within me to open myself to this feeling and find the intimacy that my body craves. I want to fuck! Wow! I find myself evaluating each guy I meet to determine if he would be a good one to go all the way with. Currently, Bruce is at the top of my list. We’ve been out twice, and I kissed him. That’s all. Just a kiss. And now when I see him, I just want to take my clothes off and have him do what you are doing to me now. Only, like, with his dick.”

I started to pull my fingers out, but she grabbed my wrist and pushed them back in.

“One more time? Please?” she said. I picked up the thrusting as we kissed some more and then I lowered my head to suck on her tender young nipples. When I felt her pussy tensing for her orgasm, I bit lightly on the bud and she slapped a hand over her mouth as she whined out her orgasm.

“Will that hold you now?” I asked.

“I think so. I should really get dressed and leave. Oh, Nate. I still wish it was you. Don’t worry. I know it isn’t. I just wish, you know?”

“I know, sweetie. Now stop tempting me and go get dressed. I’ll package up your photos.”

The girls all showed up shortly after ten and we mostly just sat at the table with the package that Don had left with Uncle Nate. My parents and he had gone over it the previous night after dinner, but Patricia and I went out so we could find a nice place to make love. Now that she was getting regular sleep, she was filling out and beginning to look like her old self again. Uncle Nate had given me the envelope before I left for the studio in the morning and he and Dad took a drive up to Dubuque to the office equipment store.

“What does it mean that we’ll have a production assistant assigned to us at all times?” Anna asked.

“We’ll be staying at the Sands, but it’s a couple of miles downtown to the new Arts District. That’s where this theatre is that we’ll take over. A lot of stuff in Las Vegas shuts down in the summer, I guess. The theatre season is about the opposite of what we found in Stratford. There they have productions from June through September. In Vegas, the theatre season is October through April. I guess even some of the shows on the Strip close down for a week or two, or even a month, so the performers can all have a vacation,” I said.

“So? The PA?”

“Yeah. I guess job number one is to drive us around Las Vegas so we can get from the Sands to the theatre.”

“Aren’t you driving down?” Ronda asked.

“It’s 1600 miles from here. It would take us a week and we’d be staying in cheap motels along the way. And I couldn’t carry us all in the VW anyway. There was some debate over whether it would be more economical to fly us all down or to charter a bus. I think they’ll go for the bus idea. But that’s one of the things our PA will be responsible for coordinating. Not just the transportation, but if we need food, lodging along the way, bathroom stops, or whatever.”

“It makes me uncomfortable to think of having a guy with us like all the time,” Patricia said. “It will sure inhibit how we run around in the studio. It might even inhibit the models. How are they going to handle this whole observation thing?”

“There’s a booth in the theatre. Anyone who comes in to observe is restricted to the booth. I think that was one of the things that they figured out when they observed me in Chicago. For one or two people, they could compensate the model enough to tolerate the audience. They even paid a prostitute for one of my demos. And Rose last month was told to do whatever I told her to. She figured she was being paid enough that as long as I didn’t hurt her, she’d comply,” I said.

“So, somebody’s going to be watching us, but we aren’t supposed to know it. I’m still not sure I’ll want to go naked when we’re getting things ready,” Anna said.

“There is no rule that says you have to.”

There was a bit of commotion coming up the stairs as Kat and her models found their way to her corner of the studio. Judy was right behind them.

“Oh, good! Everyone’s here!” Judy said as she rushed to kiss and hug all of us. Then she started to pull off her shirt. Ronda caught her and pointed over to Kat and her models. “Oh, yeah. Kidlets. Wow. That puts a damper on things, doesn’t it?”

“We were just discussing how having observers might change how we behave in Las Vegas,” Patricia said.

“What’s happening in Las Vegas?” Judy asked. I launched into telling her what the deal was and inviting her to join us. “Yes! Yes! I was afraid I was going to be selling burgers at Dairy Queen. My professors will be thrilled that I have a job managing costumes in Vegas!”

“You and Patricia on costumes. I’m hoping to get to Pris and have her join us to work on lights with Theresa. If Debbie can join us, she’ll be an all-purpose helper to move sets and props. I’d like Ronda to work with Leanne on makeup and hair. Anna and Cassie, of course, will have to manage the schedule, releases, and finances,” I said.

“Chris?” Judy asked.

“I talked to her this week,” Ronda said. “She wished us all the best and said it sounded exciting. She’s been offered an internship at a company down in Springfield for the summer and won’t be coming back up to Tenbrook.”

I could see a sparkle of tears in Ronda’s eyes and pulled my girlfriend to me to sit on my lap as I held her. We had talked the previous afternoon for a while about the situation. I wanted to call, but it just didn’t seem right.

“And Mom,” Patricia said. “She’s thrilled to act as our house mom and official babysitter.”

“Oh, I’ve always liked Elise,” Judy said. “I’d have suggested Janice come to practice up on child care, but she’s already complaining of the heat. I think she took the first time Pete fucked her bareback. The baby’s due the first of October.”

“I hope she knows she’s still welcome to come and hang out with us sometimes,” I said.

“I’m surprised she hasn’t come to see you in Chicago. Pete’s studying at Coyne and gets his Architectural Drafting certificate next month,” Judy said. “They’re living out in some suburb and Pete rides the train to school each day. I’m going to visit to help celebrate his graduation.”

“Does anyone know what Pris and Debbie are doing?” I asked.

“Debbie is at Piggly Wiggly in Huntertown,” Patricia said. “Pris is living at home and attended Huntertown Vo-Tech this winter to get her electrician’s license. She’s a step ahead because she’s been working as an apprentice in her family’s business for two years. I assume she’s planning to stay with the family business.”

“We could really use a licensed electrician with us in Vegas. You wouldn’t believe how much stuff Theresa has had to come up with in Chicago,” I said. “It’s nice to have Leanne around to assist now, but even though she’s had the same lighting course I’ve had, her real focus and love is makeup.”

“I’ll call her and get her over here tomorrow,” Judy said. “Debbie, too. I’m sure that girl would love to do anything besides smile and check out groceries.”

“I sympathize,” Patricia laughed. “But we’re much more laid back here in Tenbrook than at Piggly Wiggly.”

“Speaking of which, will you be able to get time off?” I asked. Patricia was now managing Center Marketplace, though the Barkleys’ retirement was iffy at best.

“You know, Dave and Renda are almost like another set of grandparents for Toni. I think they gave me the job just so I’d keep bringing her to the store,” Patricia said. “But they’ve told me almost every week that I should plan time to get away with you and not to be afraid to take time off. I think they’ll be good with me taking a month to go to Las Vegas with my family. And I’m sure they’ll still be cool with me taking a week or two to go to Canada house shopping.”