Chapter 1

The folks at the Census had gotten around to mailing out some paperwork for us to fill out. I passed and it went out with the trash.

The folks at the government can be annoyingly persistent and they sent around this kid just out of high school, who figured out that because there were two mail boxes, there had to be two apartments and the little bastard came up the stairs while I was trying to get the Cat to yodel. Nancy and the Cat and I had been at this party and on the way back to where we had left the VW in the parking lot of this Roman temple looking place they put up for the World's Fair in 1908. I'd been grabbing her playfully by the crotch (Hey, she started it!) in this domed area. She grabbed me back and I jumped and went "Whoa!" We'd been walking, (sort of... ) and the sudden echo from the dome we were walking under echoed it back loudly. We'd all gotten fascinated (okay, so there was drugs involved) and played with the sound. Then someone said, "It would be really cool to ball and hear that kind of reverberation coming back at you." And pretty soon, I have my hands around the Cat's tits under her sweater, she's leaning back against me and Nancy is standing lookout one way while egging the Cat on with whispers and fingers in her pie. The Cat can sometimes make an amazing noise when she comes and she got into it big time. So much so that a group of young guys started over our way to investigate. Nancy saw them coming and let loose with a hell of a yodel, which matched into the Cat's cries. Nance had twitched her head to point out the guys and we'd whooped and hollered and Nancy said, "You're terrible! Can't take you anywhere!" And the Cat laughed and folded her tongue up at Nancy in the best illustration of 'pure teasing bitch' that I had ever seen on her face. I got my hands out of her sweater, her skirt dropped down, we were decent again and away we walked. So getting the Cat to yodel was a private joke that a few of us shared.

The Cat and I had been fooling around in the hot tub, and only people who knew where the stairs were could find their way up to the place. So here comes this kid up the stairs and into the back yard. I have the Cat on the deck, I'm playing 'pop the weasel' with her, and I'm on the slide it up her slit part of it when he shows up. We paused to look over to see who it was, and...

"Kathleen?"

"Terry?"

I had almost forgotten that the Cat even had a real name. She hung out with us so much that everyone just accepted her as an adult. Yeah, it had been a kind of sneaky thrill for the first times, but hey, you aren't making it with numbers, you're making it with someone, so you just kind of forget about it for a while.

Click! This could be very awkward...

"I take it you two know each other?" I said conversationally.

"Uh, yeah, you were in my advanced English class my last year in high school."

"This is so embarrassing. Terry, Tony, Tony, Terry. So you're working for the Census, huh?"

He had a big button on that said, Official Census Taker or some such, and a big canvas USCensus bag over his shoulder with the paperwork. The Cat was laying on her back on the deck with my dick playing plow and mushroom games as I stood on the bench. Maybe it was the shrooms, but I could suddenly picture my next photo assignment: What It's Like Living With A Roommate Named Bubba.

Well, fuck that, get your mind on what Cat's going through: This gets around her high school, it could be bad for her. She'd mostly hooked up with our group for her social life, but still had friends there.

"Well, come on up. Any friend of the Cat's is a friend of ours. Make yourself at home, there's some iced tea on the tray if you're thirsty."

"I can come back later if you want." The kid's face was the color of a bad sunburn with embarrassment. Well, huh. The kid would probably be calling up every guy he ever knew with this story.

"Naw, come on up. I gotta leave town for four days and I might as well get it over with." I stepped back down off the seat and the Cat sat up with a pull from my hands. "Thanks for the massage, Tony. That felt great."

"Anytime." She sat down on the bench. Evidently that "graze one over, then one in" little trick we'd been playing was a "massage." You want to buy a bridge in Brooklyn? That wasn't the Cat's clit sticking up there, girl, so let's see you close this sale!

With the both of us just shoulders out of the water, the Cat came over to the side of the tub closest to the walk. The kid got up enough courage to come the rest of the way up from the top of the stairs. "I'm really sorry to barge in like this..." he began. The Cat cut him off.

"Wow, I haven't seen you since you graduated, Terry! How do you like Berkeley?"

"Uh, it's great. I really like my classes and I've gotten to study under some really good teachers. Well, mostly good!" He chuckled.

They traded gossip for a while and he sat down and began to pull out the paperwork. My dick went down during this time and I was about ready to get out when he passed over a clipboard with the forms on it. The Cat and he chatted and I started listing all of the junk that the government wants to know about its citizens. Sex. Where's the yes box? I thought as I worked my way down it. I got out of the tub on the deck and wiped my legs down and went back to it. The Cat got out of the tub and paraded naked into the house. Terry kind of gulped and his eyes were suddenly finding something interesting in the far back yard. The Cat came back with another glass and sat down in the papa-san chair across from him and began toweling her hair. Terry was kind of flustered by all that girl flesh sitting across from him, but as she was toweling her hair, he looked. I was checking out how this was going to play out from under my eyebrows, while still looking like I was enthralled by the paperwork. The porch they were sitting on had a fiberglass roof over it and a trellis on one side. The tub was out in the back yard and I was on the deck in back of it. Even though people there are only ten or twelve feet away, it seems like they are further away because of the hanging plants and such.

"So what are you doing in your time off?" Cat was drawing him out and she was done toweling her mop of dark brown hair. He said that he had been studying so much to maintain his scholarship, and then doing the Census, he was sorry, but he forgot what the term meant. Cat laughed. "Well, that's what comes from being a bright boy. People want to make you work!"

He asked the Cat what she'd been doing. She got into telling him about her photography. He politely said he'd like to see some of her work sometime. She beamed at him. "Okay, I'll be right back!" And bounced up out of the chair and zoomed into the house. A minute later, she popped her head back in. "Where's the Twins set?"

"Bottom drawer, brown filing cabinet."

"Okay if I show him them?"

"Sure. They're your work."

"Yeah, but it's your ass, buddy!"

I laughed as the screen door slammed. Terry didn't get it, but it wouldn't take him long.

The Cat took a bit longer to come back then I though it would and Terry finally mustered up his courage to ask, "How do you know Katherine?" Biblically, I thought instantly.

"The Cat? I teach her photography and she's a friend of ours."

"Oh." That 'ours' I put in would have made Nancy proud of me. It put him at ease, having a defined kind of picture of me and another girl besides the Cat.

She brought out the envelopes and a blue binder of her "public" work. She tossed them on the table and said, "This is some of my stuff."

"What should I look at first?"

"The stuff in the blue binder," I called over. "That other shit'll make you go blind!"

Cat flipped me the bird.

"Uh, can I use your bathroom? I had a lot of iced tea with lunch and..."

"Sure, Cat, show him where it is."

While he was taking a whizz, the Cat and I had a quick talk. She pulled on a robe and sat back down in the chair she'd been sitting in.

Terry had a kind of stunned look on his face when he got back. I think it was Gwen's picture hanging in the bathroom, right above the toilet. I wondered what he would think if he knew that the Cat had taken it?

I think Terry was a bit disappointed when he got back to see her covered up in a thin cotton wrap. The Cat had some nice dark areas with bumps sticking through them that seemed to hold his attention. Being nude was one thing, but he was seeing her as clothed now, so he was okay with looking at her.

He flipped through the blue binder and offered complementary comments on stuff. I knew her best stuff was good, but it was just learning stuff. Pretty postcards. Still lifes, scenery, stuff you shoot when you're learning, some of it good, some of even better than good. I was about two thirds of the way through the forms, and it was the long form.

"This is the type of stuff that I've been doing recently," the Cat said as she passed him the brown envelope. "It's a change of genre for me, but I think I've improved as a photographer technically also. What do you think?" I was dumbfounded at the Cat's artistic bullshit, delivered in the best gallery opening chit chat: The unsuspecting straight guy was being set up by a master of the game. Where the Hell do women get it?

"Hey, Cat, you start talkin' like that, Nance's going to think we're corrupting you!" She laughed.

"I just had to try that out!" I laughed back at her. Terry opened the envelope and his eyes got wide.

"You did these?"

"Hell ya, I did. Do you see this in the corner?" It was a stylized little cat, its tail saucily formed by the letters "t" bent to one side and the "h". Hind quarters, ass-on to the viewer, a chubby e slewed arount to form the body and a suggestion of foreleg. The "c" became the cat's face, winking back at the viewer. "That's my trademark!" And it was, too. Her alcoholic attorney dad had done the paperwork for it as a present to her, somewhat bemused at her odd request.

The quick glance he shot my way was all the verification he needed to tell me he'd figured out that remark about it being my ass Cat had made. He was stunned by the stuff in his lap. "Told you it would make you go blind!" He grinned weakly over at me.

"Are you sure that you want me to see these?"

"Aw, go ahead. I talk about stuff in front of models all the time, so I guess I can take it."

The Cat excused herself to use the john and I rolled over and put my back against the light post at the edge of the deck. I was now facing away from him and he could take his time in privacy looking at the photographs Cat had shot of me and Katrina. I hoped she'd pulled out the last of the sequence when she was taking so long in finding them. Oh well, I shrugged mentally. She knows the guy so don't go borrowing worry.

The Cat came back after a while and sat down across from him again. "So. Whaddya think?"

"Wow, these are amazing, I mean, they're really good!"

"Oh goodie!" She jumped out of the chair and kissed him a quick one on the cheek, grabbing his head while she did so. Then she bounced back to the chair and twirled and sat down. I know she knew exactly what she was doing in that robe as we'd bought it specifically for a shoot and she knew exactly how when she twirled like that, it would fan out and show her ass. "That is so cool! I mean, I can't show anyone I know these, so saying you liked them means a lot to me! Thanks!" Jesus, is this really the Cat? It sure didn't sound like the one I knew.

"I don't know what to say, I mean, they're really... uh..."

"Pornographic or erotica?" The Cat stuck in quick.

"Uh, Yeah."

"No, I mean, what are they? Pornography or eroticia?"

"Uh, if I was forced to label them, I'd say Art." Nice dodge, buddy.

Last fuckin' page!

Cat laughed. "Thanks, but I'm really curious, what would you call them?"

"Hmmm... I usually think of Victorians when I hear the word erotica, but I'd say that it almost fits. But these are photographs, and somehow, I don't generally think of photographs and erotica in the same way. I mean, Victorian erotica. But Victorian photographic erotica is sepia toned and brown, petticoats and, and..."

"Big hairy bushes?" I suggested.

He glanced over at the Cat, who was just laying back in her papa-san chair and grinning at him. "Yeah," he said, somewhat hesitantly. "Not color. That's not what I think of in my mind when I hear photographic and erotica used in the same sentence."

"Not like this, hey?" and the Cat flashed him a quick peek at her beaver, just lifting her leg and lowering it quick. He choked. "Cat got your tongue!" Then she blew him a raspberry. And broke up again.

It was an old game we played.

"Hiyall! How's ya all doing?"

"I just... right... now..." I said as I signed my name to the form packet, "finished the census!" I sat up and handed them to her. "Da DAH! Your turn!"

"Shit. Gimme a minute to get out of these clothes and have a doobie and some wine. I just got here, for Chrissake!"

"Sure, hon. How about I get you some wine and a nice neck rub before you start it?"

"Wonderful. Go get the wine out for me and I'll be right back."

Nancy wasn't having a great day, I could see. So I dug out the wine and some snack food and took it back out. I had just finished filling her plastic around the tub wine glass as she came back out. The Cat had not been a slouch in the welcome home Nancy department either, having pulled out the tray from under the side table on the porch and whipped up a rather good sized bomber. She had the second one just finished when Nancy came out in her birthday suit holding a towel. Terry had been checking her out in her clothes, and she was damn great looking in them, but having this blonde suddenly out right in front of him, leaning over to get the joint Cat was holding out to her, tits a-dangling right in his face. Wide-eyed doesn't even begin to cover it. "Nance, this is a friend of mine, Terry. He's working for the Census." Nancy took a lungful in and held out the joint to him. "pleased to metcha" she choked out around holding the toke.

"Likewise," he said as he reached for it. She plopped down the bench that faced the two chairs. They passed the joint around and I came over and sat beside Nancy after giving her a quick kiss on the lips. I had wrapped a towel around my waist and we sat and chatted and passed the joints.

"Well, I am going to get my ass into that tub before it falls off. Anyone care to join me?"

"I promised you a neck rub, sure, I guess I can make the sacrifice."

"Terry, we've got some clean towels if you want to take a tub."

The classic deer in the headlights moment. "Yah, come on. Tubs are great." Cat said.

"Uh, if you're sure?" We all said it would be cool and moved towards the tub. He stood up awkwardly and put the envelope on the table reluctantly. The sizeable bulge in his pants made him somewhat shy. "You have to use the bathroom shower to rinse off in first. I'll go grab you a towel." Nancy said. "Follow me." I almost felt sorry for the guy. Nancy had her usual major impact on the guy, as she does on most guys. I'd give pretty decent odds that he would have followed that wonderful back and ass and legs all the way to Hell if given half a chance. And I'd also bet that there would be some quick handy work going on before he got out of that shower.

The Cat and I were in the tub talking about how Terry knew her through her sister. They'd been on the gymnastics team together and the Cat had hung out at their house after practice a lot. His sister now had a boyfriend to fill her free time with, so their friendship wasn't as close as it had been when they were thirteen. Terry knew a lot of her classmates as he'd just graduated the June before. So we were all well briefed on who he was. Then Cat said she'd had a crush on him in school, but hadn't done anything about it. Nancy interpreted that to mean, "So you behave, Tony!" "Got it. No hiding the salami in the jail bait." I made a face. "I hate the fuckin' census!" We heard the shower stop and a moment later Terry came back out. He somewhat diffidently took off his towel and climbed in. I motioned over to the side of the tub. "Can you sit over there next to Cat so I can work on Nancy on that wall?" It was the only part of the tub without a bench, so you could stand and lean over the deck. I stood with my back to it and Nancy took a drink of her wine, put her glass down and came over and stood in front of me. I started to rub her shoulders.

"I'll give you a week to stop that," She groaned out.

"Promises, promises," I told her. "Relax."

Nancy leaned back against my lap and I worked her shoulders. "Neck, too."

"Right."

"I noticed the Cat showed you her work. What did you think of the Twins?"

"They're really good," Terry said. "I'd never seen stuff that good before."

"The Cat's good." Nancy said. "Myself, I think the one in the bathroom's the best."

"You took that?" He asked the Cat incredulously. She blushed and shyly nodded.

"Wow!"

"My reaction exactly. It's the first photograph she ever sold." The Cat dimpled at me.

"Tony told her the day he bought one of her pics would be the day she was a photographer." Nancy said. "I like her stuff myself, but not everybody does."

Terry blurted out what was on his mind. "How did you get her to pose like that?"

"Gwen always wanted to see what she looked like coming. So she hired me to shoot her as she liked my Twins stuff."

"Wow," he said again.

Cat grinned at him. "Guess I've changed a bit from when I used to hang out with Sarah, eh?"

"I guess." He said. "It's pretty amazing stuff you shot."

"Yeah. I think so, anyway."

"She's got most of the technique down, and she's good at working with people." I offered in praise. "She's going to go far."

The Cat beamed at me and jumped up and gave me a kiss, leaning right over Nancy to get to me. "Thanks!"

"Welcome." I said back to her and smiled. I knew this kid didn't know me from Adam, so he didn't know I was becoming kind of minor name in photography. He didn't know about how much I had torn in to the Cat's work, how stinting I had been in my praise for her. So this was kind of gushing praise from me. I also realized, somewhat sadly, standing there in the tub, that this teenager had been taught about as much as I could teach her. Yeah, there were some odds and ends of this and that, but she'd found her own true voice and I knew she hadn't far to go before she was recognized. Or disillusioned with the commercial world and the hassles of trying to become recognized and put it away a few years from now. Talent and competence don't always make it in this world, you have to have drive, stamina... and luck.

The Cat plopped back down in the tub and found out a bit more about what he was up to in school.

After that icebreaker in the tub, I don't know what Terry thought of the Cat. She started to see him on weekends about every other week. I don't know exactly what the relationship was, just knew that she was dating him.

I wonder what it was like, dating a girl in high school while going to college? She'd go over to Berkeley and hang out at his shared house and I am willing to bet that nobody in the house knew that she was in high school until his sister dropped by to find her in the living room with some of his hipper roommates smoking dope. She asked about the Civics final in Mr. Durpee's class and the Cat was out of the bag, so to speak. How old are you anyway? Quickly followed by terms like "a minor" and "we could get" and his straight arrow roommates had a quick house meeting and the Cat couldn't come over and play weekends any more. Two of them were into the Berkeley Student Young Republican whatever.

Of course, having been barred from the house didn't keep Cat and Terry from getting together. We gave her permission to use the house when they couldn't find a place. Sometimes it was the living room and when we were out, our bedroom. The so-called guest room had gained a whole bunch of junk spread out in it and was off limits while I got the book together. I had a system of sorting out stuff that is best described as pure chaos. I liked to stand and look at the pictures and move them around to see what went with what and what was next after that. Considering my usual anal-retentive work habits, it was slob city and everyone understood that the penalty for moving even one envelope was a very unhappy Tony, so the room was verboten.

The Cat was a very serious person under her happy-go-lucky style. She knew what she wanted at a very young age and photography was IT as far as her career goals went. She was in high school, but that was just a holding pen for her, a day job so that the parents would support her and she could get her diploma and go to the Art Institute. I could understand her drive, as I had it myself. I am not sure that Terry could.

Thinking about how damn advanced the Cat was, I can see how it went wrong. Or maybe where it was supposed to go. The Cat and Terry were into that lust bubble that people sometimes mistake for love. Or maybe they did love each other. I don't know. Sometimes I could hear them when I was walking up the steps to the tow of them going at it in our bedroom with the window open: Giggling and thumping away and the calls and groans of lust coming out of the window. It sounded like she was having a good time.

When it went down, it was strange what broke the two of them up.

There was a woman-run vibrator store over in Berkeley a friend of ours worked at. They would put up erotic art on the walls to sell to people and our friend had suggested the Cat take over some of her photos to see if she could get an exhibition and make some sales. They liked her work and she was accepted to display her work in January.

The Cat later told me that Terry had been a virgin the first time they got it on. That was about three or four weeks after we had crossed paths at the house. They'd been at a film festival in Berkeley and she'd blown her BART/bus connections to get home, so had stayed at Terry's place for the night. Usual first time quick to fire, followed by a nice night of 'practice makes perfect' exercises. She'd become a regular visitor to the house and then came the scene with Sarah blowing her cover.