2 comments/ 34201 views/ 0 favorites Here's Looking At You By: bradley_stoke Sam held the black-and-white photograph of his first wife in the gnarled fingers of his hand. "Here's looking at you, kid," he said, holding it up towards his failing eyes, as much aware of the liver spots on the back of his hand as of Jenny's prim beauty. Her delicate hands were crossed over a pleated knee-length skirt and her face shone in the white sunlight of a distant age. All Sam's memories were in black and white. At the time they were in the same colour as any photograph taken in the modern day would be, but as all he ever had to remember his youth, from those grainy pictures of childhood to early middle-age, were in black and white, so too were his memories. Young people, especially those born since the 1960s, knew only a brilliant world of Technicolor but for Sam the past was remembered in the same monochrome as those Humphrey Bogart movies he and Jenny used to watch at the flicks. Except for the odd Hollywood epic or Disney cartoon, there was only black and white and the various shades of grey in between. "Play it again, Sam," he whispered, voicing one of the catchphrases Jenny adopted from the same wartime movie that inspired his own endearment to his dear departed wife. At least, he thought she was departed. For all he knew, though, Jenny might still be enjoying her dotage somewhere, perhaps with the son and daughter she took with her when they divorced and whom he hadn't seen for many decades now. Theirs was a romance, and then a marriage, that spanned the grey days of ration books and the steadily brightening days of the 1950s. It also spanned his years of National Service and study for his Accountancy exams. Two children and a house in Twickenham later, it all ended so messily. The photographs that recorded those precious shared moments he and Jenny had enjoyed together were all that was left now. And she, as unable as he was still to watch Casablanca in quite the same way, was happy to leave these photographed memories to her ex-husband. What tangible memories did she have now? Or were they ones she'd still rather forget. Sam didn't forget, couldn't forget, those happy days, even though right from the beginning he'd been unfaithful to her. There were the whores he visited with the lads during his National Service. The girlfriend he had at college while his guilt still prompted him to bring flowers back to his wife after every evening of infidelity. The syphilis he contracted which brought his deceit, and later his marriage, to an end when he had two women to confess that he'd been more unfaithful than even a mistress and a still loving wife could ever have imagined. A pursuit of the fairer sex that had been both his greatest source of joy and that of his eventual downfall. But bugger it! He'd fucked his way through more women than most men had hot dinners and he wasn't sure he regretted a single moment of it. Although there was no mirror across his cluttered living room to which he could refer, he knew he still cut a fine figure of a man. He might be stooped, his nails as tough as hell to cut, and his hair thinning, but he dressed well and he could still pull the women. Okay, they were women much the same age as him, smelling less sweet than he remembered Jenny's teenage flesh (indeed they sometimes smelt rather more like piss), but he was still a man who could give pleasure. Thank Christ for Viagra! Not to mention the lubricating creams that ensured that a woman whose passion exceeded her stamina didn't suffer unduly from the thrusts of his prolonged and stubborn erections. Modern Science was a wonderful thing and Sam was glad he'd lived long enough to benefit from it. There'd been no mention of medical matters in his conversation with Dorothy during the intermission of the theatrical production they'd both seen the night before. He was sure, however, that her interest in him was not confined merely to his extensive knowledge of the movies referenced by the play. What did modern theatre directors really know about film noir anyway? Dorothy was a stately woman who had learnt that the best way to preserve her allure in advancing age was to be more truly her own self and less a caricature of the girl she once was. But even as he kissed her when their taxis drew up after the show, he couldn't help wondering what it might be to kiss the lips of a woman he'd seen age from youth to maturity, rather than someone who appeared as if she'd always been a sophisticated mature woman. A woman, perhaps, like Jenny. In those early days of courting, when the dance hall and the flicks were the best places to chaperone a dame for the evening, Sam remembered Jenny as a catch whose virginity was as easily prised from her as it was from any of the girls he'd dated while still at grammar school, taking advantage of the bombsites that dotted wartime London. But she was someone special: one whom for so long he was able to forego all other temptation. Indeed, if in his days in National Service he'd never discovered the pleasures of the ladies of the nights and the easy prey of the servicemen's favourite haunts, perhaps he and Jenny might have stayed together until even now. He'd believed he was in love, and perhaps it was love he genuinely felt as he masturbated over the grainy black-and-white photographs he borrowed from his older brother on those evenings he imagined and later remembered the visual delights of Jenny's proud bosom and the surprisingly hirsute curtains that hid the precious trophy of romantic conquest. Although Sam imagined himself as a Humphrey Bogart when he was young, in his attitude towards women he was much more like the hero of those Ian Fleming novels he read so avidly in the 1950s. Women were easy prey and as long as you dressed and acted the part, they were fruit from a tree that never failed to give of its bounty. With a winning smile and a well chosen buttonhole, no woman was safe from his charm. Even now, as long as you made sure you never let your sartorial standards drop, there were plenty of women, still handsome if not as beauteous as they might once have been, who fell prey to his allure. A conquest, even one with hair as thin as his own, was one to relish. Dorothy would be but one in the series of mature conquests that Sam was collecting. There was Betty whose eyes sparkled with the vitality of the youth they hadn't lost. Rose, whose naked breasts had a lift that plastic surgery could only hope to emulate. And, of course, Dulcinea whose exotic name promised treasures between her thinning thighs that even the smell of incontinence didn't lessen. Of course, he could still afford to pay for younger flesh, a habit he'd still not foregone, but there was more pleasure to be gained from sex with a woman who appreciated him for other things than the interest on his investments that rewarded a job well done. Sam still liked a young lady. He especially loved the way younger women exposed so much bare flesh, often letting their trousers hang dangerously close to the zone after which he most lusted. Did they know how much pleasure they brought to an old man as he waited at the bus stop or queued at the supermarket checkout? Only a few hours earlier, he carried with him the memory of the smell and vital warmth of the bare waist that brushed against his left hand while his right hand gripped the strap on the crowded Jubilee Line. But he had lost the ability to distinguish the age of a woman of sixteen years and one ten years older, just as he now had a senior citizen's appreciation of the subtle distinctions of aging flesh. It was after seeing Casablanca with Jenny that their relationship was first consummated. In those days, there were many more cinemas than nowadays and a film would continue to be shown for many months, or even years, after its first release. After all, there was no opportunity to rent out a film on video or to wait till it appeared on television. The Odeon was a grand venue, still boasting a pit where, in the days of silent film, a pianist would keep improvised accompaniment to the madcap escapades of Charlie Chaplin or the Keystone Kops. Sam was much keener on more recent movies and had a talent for mimicking the great actors. He had an excellent take on Groucho Marks, WC Fields, James Cagney, George Formby and Will Hay, but Humphrey Bogart was his favourite. "Here's looking at you, kid!" he said to Jenny. She giggled as he kissed her decorously on the lips. "Play it again, Sam," she said in a higher pitched imitation of the great man's voice. Sam complied with eagerness, grasping his beloved around the trim waist and planting a longer smoochier kiss on her lips. He noted with desire that she closed her eyes in the same seductive way as the screen goddesses of his masturbatory fantasies. "We can make more of the evening if you like," he said at last when their lips parted. He was encouraged by how flushed and excited Jenny looked. "I don't know how," she protested unconvincingly. "My mum will be waiting up for me." "You can always say the bus was delayed," said Sam. "I've borrowed the spare keys to my older brother's flat in Chelsea. He's away on business in Gloucester and he said it was okay." "Blooming heck, Sam!" Jenny exclaimed. "You've got it all planned." Sam smiled, but he didn't want to let on that Jenny wouldn't be the first young lady who'd joined him on the bed in his brother's spare room. Indeed, he most certainly wouldn't admit that his brother's complicity had once extended to sharing a woman of particularly easy virtue who hadn't yet learnt that she could do better by charging her male friends for the pleasure of her company. "We can get there easily on the Circle Line," he said, indicating the drab exterior of a bomb-scarred underground railway station. Sam's brother's flat reminded him in later years of the apartment featured in Brief Encounter, although it wasn't a film he'd seen at the time. Again, although it was as colourful as any Chelsea flat in the late 1940s might be, his memories were in black and white despite the fact that he had no photograph to remember it by. The photographs he had of Jenny of that time, most of them taken at the wedding, had none of the details of the dark brown freckles on her cheeks or the auburn hair that cascaded over her shoulders when she removed her hairpins. And no photograph taken then showed her slim naked body when after many minutes of subtle perseverance he finally persuaded her to divest her clothes. Her screams of passion were unfeigned but compromised by the pain of his initial penetration as bit by bit the intricate folds of her previously unviolated vagina gave way to Sam's thrusts. The second and third times that evening, when Jenny had at last recovered from the first, thankfully not very bloody, incursion, were even more delightful. Jenny had a natural talent for lovemaking that even now Sam believed was the best he'd ever known. In those days, there were few examples, either filmed or photographed, that could guide the happy couple in their frequent abandon. Neither of them really appreciated the extent to which anal intercourse, one of Jenny's 'special treats', might be viewed as a fetish or even a perversion. "Are you sure?" he asked nervously, as she proffered her arse towards his twitching penis. "As sure as I'll ever be!" she said, with a smile that lit up her face more than any studio lights could an actress. "A man's gotta do what a man's gotta do!" said Sam, as he entered territory he'd never appreciated before in such a state of relative sobriety. And the many times she arched above him as he thrust into her from below were done more to accentuate Jenny's desire for deep sensation than from any wish to emulate the unnatural poses of hardcore pornography. There was no doubt in both Sam's and Jenny's mind that sex was both a prelude to and a reward for marriage, along with the delights of the two children born so close together. There were fewer photographs of Jenny in the later years of their marriage and none at all after their shamefaced visits to the clinic. There were no photographs at all of Sam's other conquests in those years, except for Doris, his secretary, on one of the Accountancy firm's occasional excursions. It was ironically taken together with Jenny and the other partners' wives. There she was, simpering just behind the two of them with the sun setting over a stately home. Maggie, wife number two, was even less well represented in the photograph collection. Like Jenny, all memories were in black and white, but there were no children and the marriage suffered very early on from his wife's all too well founded suspicions. His third wife, Lauren, was the first of his wives to be photographed in colour, but now the print was faded and her red hair had lost its tincture just as in real life it must by now have lost all its shine. There was remarkably little to remember Rosemary who was very nearly his fourth wife, and would have been if Sam had not switched his affection to the much younger Raquel whose photographs in brilliant Kodacolor filled more photograph albums than all his other wives put together. Theirs was a marriage that survived for almost as many years as his first, until the naïveté of her youth gave way to the acute disillusion of discovering that hers was not the only young flesh Sam coveted. Although Raquel was the conquest about which Sam reminisced with most pleasure, she was neither as passionate nor as fulfilling a lover as Jenny. There were no shared moments in the 1970s that had as much mutual significance as those early days with Jenny. She had no fondness for Sam's mimicking of Norman Wisdom, Spencer Tracey or Humphrey Bogart, and Sam had difficulty in truly understanding the appeal of Robert de Niro or Harrison Ford. They shared very few cultural pleasures. He really did not enjoy Marc Bolan, Rod Stewart or Elton John. The Beatles was probably as modern as his taste in music ever progressed. And much as he enjoyed Elvis Presley and Buddy Holly, he preferred Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennett. Sentimental fool that he was, Sam once took a holiday to Casablanca in the long gap between wives number three and four. This was a disappointment in one sense. The crowded, sweaty North African city hardly resembled at all the Casablanca of his imagination, except for the minarets and djellabas. There was no Rick's Bar and certainly no eponymous black piano player. He met more possible Ricks in the dives of Tangiers than in the bustling run-down streets of the newly independent kingdom's commercial capital. But, in one way, his holiday was no disappointment at all. The whores he sampled were amongst the very best he'd ever enjoyed and he was able to relish all the more sophisticated pleasures of the flesh that greater exposure to imported, under-the-counter, Soho pornography had stimulated in his imagination. If only he'd known such diversions when he could have shared them with Jenny! He was sure that she'd have been as game as any prostitute and would have enjoyed his experiments very much more. Sam doubted he'd ever be able to relish such deviations now. Even with the prostitutes whose telephone numbers he snatched from telephone booths, he wasn't able to rise beyond the vanilla challenge. However, Sam still enjoyed the thrill of the chase. The women he pursued with such success might be mere shadows of their earlier selves, but he had an eye for which women were still up for it. Many older women had lost the urge, but there were those who were still well turned out and responded enthusiastically to his gentlemanly persuasion. Although his more recent photograph albums were full of pictures of mature women with stockinged ankles, tight jeans, hair dyed deceptively young, and full bosoms in their final bloom, it was the more innocent photographs of a smiling Jenny who hid well the extent of her animal appetite that Sam returned to. "Aren't I enough for you?" she asked, when they'd made up for perhaps the last time, not many months before their relationship approached its final most ugly death throes. She held his erect penis between her fingers, his semen dripping down her cheek as much as it was into the fine hair of his thighs. "Of course you are, my love," he said, sincerely meaning it whilst at the same time reflecting that Doris for all her passion still drew the line at sex that took her mouth away from his towards the true proof of his manhood. "Are you sure?" "There'll never be anyone better in my life," he answered prophetically. "Why would I ever want to leave you?" Jenny smiled as Sam's penis stirred back into full life, in those days with no assistance from a little blue pill. "Ooh!" she said with delight. "Play it again, Sam!" "Here's looking at you, kid!" he said in his best Bogart voice, positioning himself for re-entry into his wife's welcoming vaginal grip. The memory stirred something inside Sam. He held the photograph of his first wife arm-in-arm with him on their wedding. It was a posed photograph, but it captured a truly happy day. At the time he thought himself the luckiest man in the world and he resolved as the rings were exchanged that this ceremony would have real meaning. She would be his Lauren Bacall and he the once dissolute but now reformed Humphrey Bogart. Surely, they would end their lives together with the same schmaltzy sincerity of the best Hollywood movie. What would it be like now if he'd not so foolishly squandered his good fortune? He was sure that hers was an appetite like his that age could never diminish, even if she, like him, would need that little extra help to satisfy it. If only... If only... Sam brushed his hand against his eyes. They felt moist, though he couldn't be sure if it was rheumy old age or sorrow that had made them so. If Jenny were here now, how different would his life be? How much better would it be to have memories he could share? The phone rang. Sam was still not used to the strangulated warbling of a modern telephone and took a moment to stand up and answer it. It was Dorothy, the woman with whom he'd exchanged numbers at the theatre the night before. She had noticed an advertisement in the Evening Standard for a retrospective of Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall films at the National Film Theatre, and was wondering whether they should make the journey to the South Bank to watch them together. "You might remember the films from when they were new," she remarked. Sam most certainly did, but he wondered whether even now he could bear to see films that he recalled watching hand-in-hand with Jenny. Would it be unfaithful to her memory to be seeing the same films with Dorothy? "I have very fond memories," Sam admitted. And then noticing a slight maudlin tone to his voice, he added: "But I'm sure there'll be as nothing to the memory of spending the evening with you!" As a flattered Dorothy giggled, Sam's eyes scanned the room away from the piles of photograph albums he'd pulled out from the chest of drawers towards the collection of blue pills on the dresser. Tonight was going to be another good one, he could see that. And good as his memories might be, and however much he still loved Jenny, nothing, but nothing, could match the pleasures Sam was still able and willing to enjoy. Here's Looking at You Twice, Jocelyn searched Fry's Electronics Warehouse from one end of the store to the other before she finally spied Nate. She would have stormed up to him and demanded to know why he had abandoned her in the major appliance department but something in his expression held her back. He had a faraway look that she had never seen before. He looked like he had fallen into a hypnotic trance. She waited at the end of the aisle for the longest time, watching him stare at racks of blister-packed gadgets. She craned her neck but, from where she stood, she was unable to see what was inside the rows of plastic bubbles. Not wanting to disturb him, she backed partway around the corner and watched him through the space between boxes of disk drives stacked on the end of the shelves. She felt like James Bond trying to catch Dr. No in the act of hatching some evil plan. Eventually he plucked a package from the rack and read the back, studying every word as though he wanted to memorize it. Then he turned the package over and stared through the plastic at the gadget inside, tilting it this way and that to see it from different angles. He looked like he was caught in the throes of a religious epiphany. Saul struck blind on the road to Damascus. Except that he was staring as no blind man ever would. She glanced down and was shocked to see a bulge at his crotch. Something seriously weird was happening here. Looking at electronics was giving her husband an erection. When he replaced the package, he glanced furtively around, but he must not have noticed her peeking between the shelves, twenty feet away, because he picked up a different package and began reading that one. She wondered how long it would take him to read every package on the display. Her feet were growing tired and her patience wearing thin. It must have been twenty minutes before he finally wandered off, fortunately in the other direction, presumably to find her and tell her that he was ready to go home. Before she revealed herself, she had to find out what had held her husband's attention for so long. And, more significantly, what had given him that hard-on. When she was standing on the spot recently ceded by Nate and looking at the gadgets that had been so attractive to him, she was astounded. He had been looking at racks of miniature video cameras. Tiny cameras with lenses the size of nail heads. Battery operated cameras. Cameras that could be mounted anywhere and send videos wirelessly to be recorded on nearby computers. James Bond indeed. This was Q's treasure trove. What would her Nate want to record with these tiny spy cameras? They didn't have children so they didn't have a babysitter to watch. They lived in a low crime cul-de-sac with no vandalism to speak of. He was an accountant with an office in a small building that he shared with several other accountants, all men, so he had no female colleagues to spy on. She was certain that he was faithful to her, so he had no mistress to drool over. That left only one significant person in his life for him to spy on. She thought about his erection. She had never seen him sexually aroused in a public place before. He was not only dedicated to maintaining a flawless conservative image; he was an actual, dyed-in-the-wool conservative from his premature baldpate to the soles of his orthopedic shoes. She would not have believed that he could get an erection in a public place if she had not seen it with her own eyes. A man like him didn't get a stiffie like that in a place like this unless he was gripped by a sexual fantasy that thrilled him to his very core. And, if he was that enthralled by his fantasy, he was going to do something about it. When she caught up to him, she said nothing about the cameras, only suggested that it was time to go home. But she could not stop thinking about what she had seen. She mulled it over all night. This was her husband. She had lived with the man for more than five years. She knew everything about him. She knew that he liked ketchup on his eggs but never used it when other people were around because he was afraid that it looked low class. She knew that he played video games with the sound off when he woke up in the middle of the night. She knew that he liked to look at her when she was getting ready for bed, even on the nights when they weren't going to make love. How could she not know that he was a pervert? A would-be voyeur. * * * On Saturday afternoon, Nate told her that he had some errands to run and went out for more than two hours. He didn't say where he was going nor did he invite her along. She was sure that he was going back to Fry's to buy a miniature camera. Or maybe a bunch of them. They didn't cost that much. She sat in the rocking chair by the picture window with a bestseller in her hands and watched for him to return. When he did, he didn't park in the driveway but drove the car into the garage, out of sight, as though winter had arrived in September. Was he pulling a bag of goodies out of the trunk and stashing them somewhere out there? Or had he left them in the car, intending to retrieve them tonight after she went to bed? "Where've you been?" she asked when he came into the house. She tried to make it sound like casual question, his answer of no special import to her. "Oh. Looking for a new winter coat," he said. To her ear, he sounded like he was forcing himself to sound as casual as her, but less successfully. "Find one?" "No. It's too early in the season. I'll look again when it gets closer to Christmas. Maybe there'll be some sales." * * * On Sunday, she had to get groceries. She invited him along, as always. Often he came with her -- he was a prince -- but this time he said that he was too tired and wanted to stay home. She didn't know why he would be tired. He'd slept in and had done nothing but read the paper since getting dressed at ten. As she was squeezing tomatoes and hefting potatoes, she imagined Nate at home, crawling around the bedroom and the bathroom, drilling tiny holes in the walls, putting miniature cameras in secret places, their lenses glittering darkly as they began waiting to catch a glimpse of her unawares. Her heart felt cold and she felt sick in her gut when she thought about it. But that cold heart pounded hard and hot in her chest. * * * Jocelyn was a freelance graphic designer. She spent most of her days at home, sitting in front of her computer, standing at her easel, or hunched over her drafting table, working with mouse, pencils, and brushes. On Monday, she acted the same as on any other day. But, beneath her calm outward appearance, her mind was seething in turmoil. She usually awoke after Nate was dressed and never got out of bed until she heard him start his car. Their house was small and there was no reason for her to get up and get in his way while he was trying to shower and shave and grab a cup of coffee. Monday morning when she woke up, her first impulse was to try to guess where the cameras might be hidden. She didn't want to be seen searching, so she looked around casually as she swung her feet to the floor. Was that a glint of glass in the cold air register? Had the books on the bookshelf been re-arranged? Did the pupil of the woman in the Lempicka print look a little too realistic today? Was there a fresh shadow against the shade of the light fixture? She wanted desperately to rush about the room and tear it to pieces, looking for the damned cameras. But she dared not do it. If she were right about the cameras, then Nate would have videos of her ripping her house apart like a madwoman. To what end? So that she could hold the thing up in his face and tell him that he was a despicable sneak. If he didn't divorce her then, to preserve her self-respect, she would have to divorce him. She didn't want to have to start looking for a new husband all over again. Divorce would mean throwing away all the years that she had been with Nate. A year and a half of dating and more than five years of marriage. She had no desire to begin from scratch. Not at the age of twenty-seven. And if she searched the house for hidden cameras and didn't find them? What would that tell her? Either that they were hidden too cleverly for her not-mechanically-oriented mind or that she had falsely suspected her husband of being a despicable sneak. That would tell her more about herself that she wanted to know. Instead, she told herself that she was being silly. She had been mistaken about what she thought she saw in Fry's. Nate had been curious about a technological toy but had no interest in spying on her. He could see her naked for the asking. Why would he care to look at glimpses of her on a grainy, ill-focused video screen? She chided herself, laughed at herself, told herself to get a grip. But on Monday morning, she took her clothes into the bathroom, showered as quickly as possible, then got dressed before coming back into the bedroom -- hoping that the cameras were installed only in the bedroom and not in the bathroom. The bathroom would be too intimate to contemplate. She spent all day trying to draw an illustration of a cute puppy sniffing a sausage that had fallen on the ground but she failed. She should have been able to whip up a trite illustration like that in an hour at the most but she simply couldn't get it right. Every time she tried to fix the puppy image in her mind, it was crowded out by images of herself being recorded on a computer hidden in some dark closet. Did the computer have to be nearby? She remembered some of the packages in the store saying that their cameras were "internet ready". They did not have to be connected to a computer at all. They could be directly attached to the Internet. She wasted two hours on the web, researching such cameras and studying the technical descriptions. From what she could understand, Nate could be sitting in his office right now, watching every move she made. She ruined yet another illustration, drawing a puppy that looked a lot like a slobbering wolf about to devour a severed human appendage. There was nothing cute about that. When Nate came home, expecting dinner, he found take-out pizza on the table. Jocelyn had not been able to bring herself to cook, fearing that there might be cameras installed in the kitchen, recording every potato she peeled, waiting in hope that she would be the tomato that got peeled next. * * * On Tuesday she decided to do a little housework. While she was tidying up and dusting, she kept looking for the glitter of little lenses but found nothing. When she vacuumed, she examined the floor for sawdust or plaster dust -- evidence that holes had been drilled in walls. She found nothing. The floor was suspiciously clean. It had been a while since she had vacuumed. Shouldn't there be more dust in the corners? Nate must have cleaned up after himself when he installed the cameras. He was clever. * * * By the end of the week, she was at her wit's end. She tried to ignore the possibility that there were video cameras hidden in her house. She told herself that Nate had no interest in spying on her. She told herself that if he did want to spy on someone, he would choose someone else, not his own wife. She told herself that it didn't matter if he was watching her because she wasn't doing anything interesting. But none of that solved her problem. The mere suggestion that there might be cameras made her conscious of every move she made. Every time she felt warm and loosened a button on her blouse she wondered if Nate were recording that act. Every time she bent over to pick a piece of charcoal that she dropped on the floor, she wondered if her butt looked too big on the screen. She had never been so conscious of her breasts as when she stretched the kinks out of her back after leaning over her drafting table for a couple of hours. She couldn't live like this. She began thinking seriously about a divorce. That dreadful possibility creeps into every married person's mind on occasion and is usually banished with a little common sense. Not this time. This time Jocelyn could not stop thinking that telling Nate to leave, talking to a lawyer, splitting their meager assets, and living on her own again would be less painful than spending every minute of every day thinking about Nate's betrayal of the sanctity of their home. Every minute of the day? Yes. Every minute. Some of the cameras advertised on Fry's web site worked in the dark, using infrared light. Even in the middle of the night when she was fast asleep, her snores might be recorded by some evil electronic eye. * * * On the following Sunday, she went out on her weekly grocery run, as was her habit. Once again she asked Nate if he cared to come along. For the second week in a row, he declined. She drove down the block, parked around the nearest corner, and then walked back to the house. She turned the key slowly and silently in the lock and let herself back in. She caught Nate lying on the couch, reading a Scott Turow novel. "Oh," he said, arching an eyebrow. "That was quick." "Yeah. I... I forgot some coupons. They were in the paper this morning." "I didn't know that you saved coupons." "I don't. I... I thought I'd try them out for once. You know. We're saving for a bigger house and every little bit counts." "Okay. Well, let me know if they work out for you. I can keep my eye open for good ones, too, if you think it's a good idea." "I'll let you know." As she walked back to her car, she wondered if he had a video on his computer that showed her not clipping coupons as she read the morning paper. She didn't give a damn if he did. * * * As the beginning of the second week after the Fry's Revelation, she started rehearsing the speech that she would give Nate when she told him that she wanted a divorce. Not out loud, of course. If he had cameras with microphones hidden in the house, she didn't want him to hear her speech before she had a chance to ambush him with it. In her first draft, she was going to say that she loved him but couldn't live with the uncertainty about being watched all the time. Then she realized that, if she couldn't point out the cameras, he would simply deny watching her. In her second draft, she was going to say that she loved him but felt betrayed by him. He wanted to spy on her. It didn't matter whether the cameras were real or figments of her imagination. His interest in them was real, his erection in Fry's had been real, and he had never spoken to her about it. That was closer to the truth. But he would simply say that he had never mentioned it because she had never asked him about it. He would have told her whatever she wanted to hear if only she had asked. Finally, she admitted to herself that the real problem was that she did not know if she loved him at all. He might have betrayed her and she could not love a man who would be capable of betraying her. They were supposed to be exclusive partners for life, especially in matters sexual. Yet here was a big chunk of his life that he had withheld from her. When she had composed the right speech in her mind, she began to cry. She didn't want to do this. She didn't want to kick Nate to the curb and bring a divorce lawyer into her life. No matter what she told herself, she still loved him. But she had no alternative. She couldn't live like this. Live like what? Being watched? Or being afraid of being watched? Or hating that her husband might be watching her against her will? She gave Nate sex. That was what made her a wife and not merely a roommate. If, to Nate, spying on a woman was part of sex then what was her obligation? She took pen and paper in hand and began writing. I, Jocelyn Svenson, hereby give Nate Svenson unlimited permission to make audio and video recordings of me, at any time using any equipment that he may choose, with or without my knowledge, for as long as we are married to each other. Furthermore, I give Nate Svenson permission to store, use, or publish such recordings in any way that he desires; this permission to be withdrawn and any such publication cease upon termination of our marriage. She signed it with her full name and date. Then she put the document in a sealed envelope and wrote Nate's name and business address on the outside. She had grave reservations about the second paragraph of her release. She did not want to be an Internet porn star. But she couldn't say why not. No one who mattered to her looked at porn on the Internet. Certainly not her mother or sisters. And if someone that she knew did look at porn, what would he do if he saw her? Admit that he cruised Internet porn sites? Maybe in some social circles, a man could admit that. Maybe members of outlaw motorcycle gangs or Hollywood movie producers could brag about their porn habit, but no friend or relative of hers would dare make such a confession. If someone did make some sly comment, she would deny knowing what he was talking about. It was obvious that she would never appear in a porn video. She couldn't imagine doing a thing like that. He must have seen someone who looked like her. So she left the second paragraph intact, telling herself that if she were going to do this thing, she was going to do it all the way. Her heart was pounding as she slid the envelope into the corner mailbox. As soon as it disappeared into the maw of the postal service, she began to regret her decision. But done was done and there was no undoing it now. She couldn't tell Nate that she'd changed her mind. To have acknowledged that she knew he wanted to spy on her was hard enough. To revoke her permission and tell him that he couldn't do spy on her after all would be worse than having done nothing. By giving Nate freedom to do what he wished, she had given him the full responsibility for what happened. He was a responsible person in all other matters. She had to trust that he would act reasonably about this one as well. * * * Nothing changed for the next ten days. She and Nate went on with their lives. Neither mentioned the written release that she had sent to him. He did not start carrying cameras around. No lights and photographic equipment magically appeared, pointing at their bed. She began to wonder if he had received her mail at all. She had put no return address on it. Maybe it was sitting in the dead letter office somewhere in the bowels of the postal service. She struggled to remember if she had written his full office address on it. Had she left off the zip code? Had she forgotten the street name? Had she transposed some critical numbers or misspelled some critical word? Maybe her subconscious mind had intervened and rescued her by forcing her to write something different than she had thought. That changed two weeks after she sent the letter. She got out of bed when she heard Nate's car drive away and, as was her habit, went to her vanity to get her clothes for the day. Every evening, she laid out her clothes because she didn't want to have to make any decisions in the morning before she got her first cup of coffee; and because she knew that if she didn't lay out her clothes, she might not get dressed before she started work. Then she was likely to spend the whole day in her cozy flannel pajamas and that would make her feel slovenly. She would hate to feel slovenly. Today, though, she had a shock. While she was asleep, Nate had been an evil little elf. He had put her blue jeans and green sweatshirt back in her closet. He had replaced them with a bustier, thong, garter belt, and stockings -- all black -- and, to top it off, so to speak, her black leather pumps with a medium heel. She blushed scarlet. Now there was no doubt in her mind that her house was infested with video bugs. The only reason for Nate to care what she wore while he was at work was if he was watching her on his computer. Here's Looking at You This was his way of telling her that he accepted her offer to allow herself to be watched with hidden cameras. It was too late to ask herself if she could do this because that was a useless question. She had made the offer. She had no choice but to prove her sincerity. She stripped off her pajamas and walked to the bathroom to shower. On days when she worked at home, she never wore makeup. But today was a day like no other day. After she dried and styled her hair, she made up her face. Smokey eyelids. Red, red lips. All the mascara that her lashes could hold. Blush so artful that she looked as healthy as a kitten. She put a sensuous sway into her hips as she slunk back into the bedroom, crossing her ankles like a model on the catwalk. Thong first, then garter belt. She put each foot on the vanity bench in turn, pulling and smoothing the stockings over her calves, knees, and thighs with long, graceful strokes of her palms, feeling her muscle and skin tense and flow beneath her hands. Only when the stocking was perfectly positioned did she snap it to the garter straps. She felt like a pretty thing. Finally, she fastened the bustier around her chest. She had to thrust her breasts out to overflow the cups when she reached behind to adjust and tighten the laces that criss-crossed up the back. When she finished dressing, she felt more naked than when she had been fully nude. She looked at herself in the full-length mirror. The costume emphasized her bare shoulders, the patch of round belly between the bustier and the thong, the naked buttocks, and most of all, her smooth upper thighs above the stocking tops. That bit of naked thigh invited, nay, begged a man to part them and slide his hips between them. She had always been told that she was a pretty girl but this time the mirror confirmed that she was not only pretty, she was sexy. She parted her legs to put her hands on the inner surface of those milky white thighs and slide her fingers up until she was cupping her sex where it was so inadequately covered by the black patch of thong. It felt good. Unexpectedly good. She hoped that there was a camera watching her. She rubbed herself through the satin and hoped that somewhere, Nate was getting as hard as oak heart and as frustrated as hell. She closed her eyes, moaned like a pussycat in heat for a few moments, before going downstairs and to begin working for the day. Her current contract asked for a series of nature illustrations that would add interest to a fashion layout for a local mall catalog. She had never before drawn such sensuous curves. Leaves swelled like breasts. Flowers opened like lips. Birds stared like lustful satyrs. She felt inspired. She drew actual nymphs and satyrs frolicking among the foliage, almost completely hidden, only suggested by a hand here, a hairy hoof and bare foot there, and a glimpse of part of a face above. She had thought that she was giving Nate a free hand when she released him from legal liability, but it was her own base, creative spirit that was liberated now. She didn't know if her client, the Woodland Mall, would approve of her sly hints of erotic content, but she left them all there. If the client didn't like it, she had plenty time to revise the illustrations before her deadline. When it grew close to the time for Nate to return for supper, she went back to the bedroom and changed into the jeans and sweatshirt that she had originally intended to wear today. She would reserve her exotic spy-wear for his secret spyware and keep their married life mundane. During supper and afterward, both she and Nate acted like nothing unusual had happened during the day. They cleaned up the dishes and watched a little television. Most nights, he went to bed an hour before her because he got up an hour earlier. Tonight, before he went to the bedroom, he asked her if she would come to bed soon. She said that she would. He made love to her with a passion that she had not experienced since their honeymoon. She reciprocated in kind. The combination of his desperate eagerness for her body and her displaying herself sexually for hours produced a faster, more intense climax than she had ever had. She now knew why women talking about the earth moving. That night, she and Nate almost knocked it out of orbit. As she drifted off to sleep, she mused that forfeiting her privacy might be worth it. Almost. * * * The next day, and for some days after that, she found her jeans and sweat shirts laid out on her vanity just as she had left them. The Woodland Mall clients loved her reclusive nymphs and satyrs. So did their customers. She heard that people were spending hours trying to find every dryad, oread, and niaiad in the catalog. It became a kind of a vaguely erotic, adult Where's Waldo?. The mall clients began discussing a longer-term contract, which included consulting on a new interior design. She began researching the mythology of nymphs, both in ancient folklore and in modern consciousness. The motif was ripe with potential. She kept Nate abreast of her schedule, making certain that he knew which days she had meetings with clients and which days she was working by herself at home. She was curious to see if he would try to dictate erotic clothing on days when she had meetings outside the house. If he did, she would ignore him. She had worked too hard to build her business for too long. She would not allow her husband's sex fantasies to interfere with her professional life. He must have sensed that because he never tried anything on days when she was working outside the home. Or maybe he had no interest in what she wore when she was out of sight of his hidden cameras. * * * On Wednesday, she got out of bed and found a red baby-doll negligee with red lace panties and fluffy red mules. She had her marching orders. To her mind, though this outfit was more revealing than the black bustier and stockings, it was no more erotic. But she liked it. When she looked at herself in the mirror, she could see her nipples through the sheer silk cups. They were erect. The uninterrupted length of her naked legs made them look longer and more shapely than ever before. When she turned she could see how the lace panties drew the eye around the swell of her ass, making her hips look round and inviting. She didn't know where the cameras were hidden so she posed in several places around the room for a few minutes before going to the spare room that served as her studio. Wearing the red baby-doll while she worked felt different than wearing the black bustier. The bustier had made her feel strong and confident, like she should be throwing on an evening dress and going out clubbing. The baby-doll made her feel young and vulnerable, like she should be crawling into bed with her man. After lunch, she was seized with a wicked impulse. In the bedroom, she removed her lace panties and baby-doll and tossed them onto the bed. Naked in the bathroom, she drew a sink of warm water. She fetched her razor and shaving cream from the shower stall, then sat on the edge of the counter and spread her legs. She had no idea if there were cameras positioned in the bathroom or if they could see her when she was looking away from the sink but she hoped so. This would be a show worth recording. She worked the white lather into her pubic patch with slow caresses, then drew the razor across the foamy skin again and again, working her way down from her bikini line to the top of her nether lips. When her mons was as naked as a babe's, she leaned as far forward as she could, spread her legs as wide as possible, and shaved the tender skin from her topmost, innermost thigh over her outer lips, making certain that not a single hair remained. She used a warm washcloth to wipe away any remaining spots of shaving cream and then patted herself dry with her fluffiest hand towel. Her cunt had never been so visible. She had nothing to hide it and did not intend to avail herself of the red lace panties again today. She put the baby-doll back on, slipped her feet back into the mules and looked at herself in the mirror. She looked perfect. Her breasts were full and her nipples dark pink inside the transparent cups of the negligee. Her naked sex peeped out of the bottom, slightly obscured by the narrow lace hem when she stood still and fully revealed when movement made the red lace flutter away from her body. The result was that the pink slit between her legs was never fully hidden and often fully revealed. She returned to her studio and finished her work for the day before changing back into her jeans and sweatshirt to prepare dinner. Once again, Nate returned home, ate dinner, and watched TV without saying a word about what he might have seen of her day's activities. Even when she undressed in front of him to reveal her newly shaved pussy, he made no comment. But, once again, he made love to her with more passion than she thought that he had at his command. That uncharacteristic passion, more than anything else, confirmed that he was spying on her when she was alone during the day. * * * A full week passed without anything unusual happening. She kept her crotch shaved but did not make an exhibition out of it. It quickly became part of her regular routine, the same as shaving her legs and armpits. Then, on a Thursday morning, Jocelyn got out of bed to find that her jeans and sweatshirt had been replaced once more. When she sorted out the scraps of hot pink cloth, she was holding a bikini. Regulation swimwear. Not a thong or microkini or any other exotic variant, not even the minimal excuse for a bikini popularized in Brazil, but an actual, functional piece of beachwear that fully covered all of the important parts of her anatomy, top and bottom. Whatever floats Nate's boat, she thought and dutifully dressed in the bathing suit. She looked good in the full-length mirror. The intense pink made her pale skin look as white and flawless as marble. Her eye was inexorably drawn to her full breasts and plump crotch. She had no need of a bikini trim. With her pussy completely shaved, there was no chance of a stray hair marring her appearance. Her work was going well. She had begun drawing cartoons for the murals that would decorate the Woodland Mall during the all-important Christmas retail season. They had given her a free hand. She eschewed the usual overt references to Christmas. Instead, she kept the pagan underpinnings of the winter solstice festival in the forefront of her mind. She imagined savage Bacchanalian revelries taking place almost out of sight, drawing an imperfect screen of foliage that gave tantalizing glimpses of wild orgies. Enough to stimulate the deep, primeval parts of the brain but never enough for the viewer to say consciously what he was seeing. Was this a branch or the shaft of a phallus? Was that the lower curve of a naked breast or part of a rocky outcropping? Was the thing over there a wild orchid or an inviting vulva? She never told the clients what her illustrations represented. She merely presented a series of studies for the murals without commenting on them. They raved about her sense of curve and shade and urged her to draw more. She billed them liberally and threw herself into the task. That was what she was doing at two o'clock when the doorbell rang. Jocelyn jumped at the sound. What the hell? She was not expecting anyone but that meant nothing. Sometimes, people came to the door uninvited -- Jehovah's Witnesses, neighbors wanting a favor, people begging for charitable donations. Not many sales people. More often, parcel deliveries because she occasionally got artwork or samples of catalog products from clients. She would have rushed to the bedroom and thrown on a sweat suit but reasoned that whoever was at the door would be gone by the time she got back. She peeked out the window through the curtains. Her heart started pounding. A young man was standing on the stoop holding a large flower arrangement. The situation was clear. Nate had ordered flowers and expected her to answer the door in her bikini. That was why he had given her clothing today that was decent. Barely. What was going to happen when she opened the door? Was the deliveryman going to think that she was deliberately enticing him and try to take liberties? Invite himself in? Had Nate given the man special delivery instructions? No. She had limits. She watched through the curtains, until the deliveryman stopped waiting, set the floral arrangement on the stoop and left. It took longer than she expected. When the street was clear, she opened the door and brought the arrangement inside. She had meant exactly what she had said in her original written agreement with Nate -- no more and no less. She shed the bikini, dressed in her favorite sweat suit, sat at her desk and wrote a letter to Nate: I have never agreed to exhibit myself in person to any one but you. Do not put me in such a situation again or our existing agreement regarding photography and video recordings will be rendered null and void. She signed the note, put it in an envelope addressed to Nate at his office and mailed it immediately. When he came home, he made no comment about the flower arrangement that was sitting prominently on the dining room table nor about her failure to answer the door. They made love that night, but it was nothing special. He would have received her note in the next couple of days, but he made no comment about that, either. * * * Nothing happened for the next two weeks. Jocelyn was amazed to find that she was becoming impatient waiting for Nate to do something. She found herself getting up and checking her clothing with eager anticipation, hoping that she would find something special. And being deeply disappointed when she found her jeans and sweatshirt waiting, exactly as she had laid them out, morning after morning. After a full fourteen days, she had to admit to herself that she had found a certain perverse enjoyment in performing for the hidden cameras. She was an independent woman. It was time to show some initiative. She spent the morning working as usual. At lunchtime, she went grocery shopping. As soon as she came home, she deposited her groceries on the kitchen table, then went to the bedroom with her special new purchase. She stripped off all her clothing, including her underwear, and put on a red checked gingham bib apron and red high heels with open toes. She returned to the kitchen and baked two apple pies. When she rolled out the dough, she bent far over the table, sticking her naked ass out and letting the bib fall away from her breasts. They swung freely back and forth as she rolled the pin across the raw crust with exceptional vigor, first one way and then the other. Before she peeled the apples, she polished each one on the bib of her apron, pushing her breasts around, forcing them to peek out the top and sides. When she sliced the apples and put them into the crust, she kissed some of the slices, slowly and deeply, almost fellating them. For each pie, she took the last slice, raised her apron, spread her legs, rolled her pelvis as far upward as possible, and rubbed it the length of her slit, wetting it with her womanly juices. Then she pushed it all the way inside herself before taking it back out and laying it on top of the other pieces. These pies were made with love like no other pie Nate would ever be served. After the pies were baked and cooling, she prepared the main meal. She untied the bib of the apron and let it fall forward, freeing her breasts from their grossly inadequate concealment. She spread a liberal coating of olive oil over them, salted and peppered herself, and pressed mashed garlic on them. She took the small rib roast that she had purchased and rubbed it over her chest, squeezing her breasts with the meat, coating every side of the roast with the spiced oil. To be certain that it was properly prepared, she poured more oil on each breast and rubbed the roast over them again. Next, each of a dozen new carrots was peeled, trimmed, and used as a dildo before it was put in a pot to boil. Each piece of potato was given similar treatment before being put into another pot to be boiled and mashed. This was the first time that Jocelyn had done anything overtly sexual for the hidden cameras. Until now, she had been no more than a Victoria's Secret Angel. Now she was making herself a porn star. That was more than Nate could do to her. It was something that she had to do to herself. She felt wicked. Wicked felt good. When everything was cooking, she went back to the bathroom to shower and dress in her jeans and tee shirt for dinner. She neglected to wear a bra. When Nate came home, he fell onto the meal with a ravenous appetite, taking generous second helpings of everything. Then he took her to bed and gave her a wonderful reward for her efforts. She fell asleep immediately afterward. When she got up the next morning, the dishes were done, the kitchen was spotless, and Nate was gone to work. * * * She cooked again on Saturday, but, this time, did not marinate the vegetables with her bodily fluids. Nate and she were having dinner guests. Kate and Frank were good friends, not their closest friends, but people that they had known and whose company they had enjoyed for some years. Except for meetings with clients every few weeks, Jocelyn's work was solitary. Nate had daily meetings with clients, but no close colleagues. Both needed a social life to have enough meaningful human contact so they were careful to nurture their relationships with their friends. When Jocelyn had invited Kate and her husband for dinner and Kate had mentioned that her cousin, Kelly was staying with them for a couple of weeks, she had naturally told Kate to bring Kelly along. Kelly turned out to be a man, ten years older than the rest of them. He tried hard to be friendly. Maybe a little too hard to be a little too friendly, especially to Jocelyn. Over the main course of salmon, asparagus with orange sauce, and rice soubise, he praised her cooking more than it deserved, spent more time looking at her than at the rest of the company combined, and too often let his eyes stray down to her chest and linger there for too long. She was wearing a pink sweater, not so tight as to be worthy of comment, but fitted well enough that he could easily assess the size and shape of her breasts, which were held in a natural position by a properly fitted bra. Kelly toasted the chef three times, which was two times too many. Somehow, he could not restrain himself from toasting her every time he refilled his glass with the Riesling that she had served to accompany the fish. She told herself that he was nervous about being the stranger at the table and was overcompensating. But he didn't look nervous, he looked interested. Interested in her, even though her husband was sitting at the other end of the table, watching every move that he made and listening to every word that he said. As he was starting on his fourth glass of wine, now the German gewürztraminer that Kate had brought as a hostess gift, he said, "Nate is a lucky man to be married to such a delicious cook." He was looking at her as he raised his glass. She did not consider this to be a toast and did not raise her own but replied, "I'm sure that he appreciates his luck." She smiled at her husband and he smiled back. There was something in Nate's smile that she found difficult to interpret. A touch of the Mona Lisa. She looked back to Kelly. "You're not married?" There was no ring on his finger, but that was not definitive. Here's Looking at You He followed her glance to his naked left hand and said, "I've not been so lucky." Then he laughed and looked at his cousin's husband. "Or maybe I've been lucky enough to have remained single." Frank flushed slightly and Kate wondered what Kelly might have witnessed while staying with his cousin and her husband. Kelly continued speaking. "I've had my share of close calls, mind you. Most recently there was a girl who was a real wild cat. I never had a dull moment with Cherise. She gave me some ride, let me tell you, but I got off before the fare came due. You wouldn't believe the things she--" "So, Nate," Frank interrupted, "what about those Yanks, eh? You think they're going to win the pennant this year or what?" Kelly got the hint and shut up but he didn't look happy about it. He looked like he really wanted to tell Jocelyn about all the wild things that his last girlfriend had done for him. Sports talk sustained the conversation until the main course was finished. Kelly must not follow sports because he had little to contribute. When Jocelyn rose to clear the table for dessert, Kelly sprang to his feet and began helping her collect the dirty dishes. She was surprised because Kelly didn't seem like the kind of guy who would pitch in, especially to do "women's work" but she didn't object. In the kitchen, while she was putting the dishes in the dishwasher, Kelly said, "When Kate introduced us, you seemed familiar to me. I feel like I know you already. But I don't know where I might have seen you." Jocelyn felt herself flush as she bent over the dishwasher. Kelly seemed like the kind of guy who would look at a lot of porn on the Internet. If Nate were posting videos of her, Kelly might have seen her. Bare ass naked. Pushing carrots into herself. She didn't dare answer for fear that her voice would crack. "You didn't go to high school in Indianapolis, did you?" "No," she forced herself to say. "I've never been in Indiana." "I didn't think so. I don't get a high school vibe from you. What do you do?" If he was hoping that she would say that she was an actress in amateur porn videos, he must have been disappointed when she said, "I'm a graphic artist. Mostly I sit in my studio all day and draw illustrations for catalogs." But as soon as she said the words, she feared that she had said too much. If Nate were secretly recording her and posting videos on the Internet, then those videos would mostly show her sitting on her stool drawing because that's what she did all day. Kelly might recognize the scenario and remember where he had seen her. And how she had been dressed. Apparently, he did not because he said, "Nope. I've never had any business with any graphic artists." She sighed in relief. That had been a near miss. "I guess I just have a common appearance. I look like a lot of people. Some people say that I look a little like Anne Hathaway." He looked at her face for a long moment, then said, "Nope. I don't see that. You look a lot better than her. Nope. I'd think that if I'd seen you, I'd remember where. You're not the kind of woman that I'd forget." "Thanks." She had cooked a pumpkin pie from fresh pumpkins -- no canned pie filling for her guests -- and had to whip up the cream -- no cream from aerosol cans, either. When she set the cream to whipping, Kelly changed the subject. "I love whipped cream," he said, putting his head close to her to peer into the bowl. "I used to like it all right, but when I was with Cherise, I learned to love it. You should have seen what she did when she had a big bowl of the stuff. She gave me a real incentive to lick up every drop that she served, if you know what I mean." Jocelyn knew that she should be offended by Kelly's racy innuendo, and the pre-spycam Jocelyn would have been, but the post-spycam Jocelyn was intrigued. She made a mental note to cover herself in whipped cream for the benefit of Nate's cameras some day soon. Instead of telling Kelly to get a grip on himself, she shocked herself by saying, "Maybe some time I'll give my husband an extra special dessert." Kelly grinned. "I bet he'd like that a lot." "He already likes whipped cream." "He'll learn to love it." He leered at her. "He won't even mind the occasional hair." "Oh, that's no problem," she said casually. "I've already taken care of that. There's no risk of him finding a single hair in his whipped cream." Kelly could not help but look down at her crotch, trying to imagine what was hidden beneath her skirt. His eyes were almost bugging from his head. His predictable reaction made her feel powerful. She could jerk him around like a marionette. She halted the beaters, scooped a dollop of half-whipped cream out of the bowl and licked it off slowly off her finger. He licked hit own lips absently as he watched every movement of her finger, lips, and tongue. "That's about as sweet as it should be," she said. He nodded in silent agreement. She almost laughed at him as she turned the beaters back on. "Why don't you join the others in the dining room? I can bring the coffee and pie out myself when it's ready." He looked like he was going to object, then grinned and said, "Some other time, then," and left her alone in the kitchen. She wondered what he thought was likely to happen some other time. She grinned at the thought occurred to her. Some day, Kelly might be looking for some amateur porn on the Internet and find a video of himself leering at her as she licked her finger. If he did, he would likely remember where he had seen her. Kelly called the next day. And the day after that. Both times, Jocelyn assured him that she was faithful to her husband and he would have no hope of ever getting into her pants. Ever. She was surprised that he did not phone a third time. She expected hope to spring eternal in a horny man's breast and was ready to threaten him with a restraining order if he didn't stop calling. A couple of weeks later, when Kate reciprocated with a dinner invitation of her own, Jocelyn asked after Kelly, idly curious. Kate said that her cousin had decided to cut his vacation short and return home much earlier than expected. Only the two couples would be dining together this week. Recalling the tension between Frank and Kelly at her dinner, Jocelyn suspected that she was not the main reason for his unexpected early return to Indianapolis. That was the only time that she ever spoke to anyone that she suspected might have seen her videos on the Internet. She doubted that Kelly had, really, either. He had seemed genuinely surprised when she had indicated that her pussy was shaved. But she was warmed by the thought that she might have fans like Kate's cousin. Distant, anonymous fans who would never see her in real life. * * * Thereafter, if Nate did not provide special clothing sometime during the week, Jocelyn took one of the previous outfits from her special drawer to wear for a few hours. As Nate gave her a more extensive wardrobe of exotic clothing, she could mix and match items, sometimes wearing red lace underwear with black stockings and garter belt, for example, or the pink bikini bottom with a leather halter-top. Sometimes she wore regular clothes differently, like wearing jeans but leaving her torso naked or wearing nothing but a long tee shirt that was certain to creep past her crotch whenever she sat down or reached over her head. On those days, Nate never failed to make love to her with special enthusiasm when he came home. She enjoyed her lace and skin days more than she would have guessed. They added interest to what was otherwise a fairly boring occupation. Her new mindset continued to add a naughty spice to her work. Now that her designs had been turned into actual murals, the Woodland Mall clients were ecstatic about them. Not only had the city paper published a laudatory article about the mall in the Arts section, attendance was up, both compared to last year and compared to other malls in the city this year. Important people were talking about her talent. Potential new clients were contacting her. If more than a couple of them signed contracts, she was going to have to hire some help. One Friday, she found an oddity among the clothes that she had laid out. She had not expected Nate to leave anything because she had meetings with new clients all day and had told him so. That was reinforced when she had laid out a business suit to wear. She thought that he understood that she did not dress erotic outside the home. Whereas her outfit was had always been replaced with fewer clothes than she had laid out, this time more had been added. A note on the top of the pile read: I'm going to have to work at the office tomorrow, even though it's Saturday. Love, Nate She took her business suit off the pile and found a second set of clothes beneath -- a French maid costume, complete with a low-cut black mini-dress, white lace apron and hat, black stay-up stockings, and black high heels. The outfit included a feather duster with a fat handle and long downy plumes. Nate's intention was clear. Normally she and Nate shared the housework on Saturday morning. Today she would go to her meetings as planned, properly dressed, but tomorrow, she would be doing the housework by herself, wearing the erotic maid costume. She was a little miffed at being stuck doing all the housework alone, but it wasn't that big of a deal. As long as he didn't expect this to become the norm. This was a once-in-a-lifetime performance. Well, maybe a couple-times-a-year performance. She could handle that much. After all, he did do almost all the yard work by himself. But she got a second shock late that afternoon when she came home from her meetings. The entryway was clean. Someone had picked up the extra shoes and put the coats in the closet. There was no dirt on the floor. It had not only been swept, it looked like it had been mopped. Supper was ready. A stew was brewing in the slow cooker. The kitchen was spotless. She went into the bathroom. The shower, tub, and sink were sparkling. She ran around the house, looking for the mess, dirt, and disorder that she had left in the morning. She found none. Everything was as neat and shiny as new. The house hadn't been merely cleaned, it had been detailed. Nate hadn't done this on his own. He wasn't that good. She would bet money that a professional maid service had been through her house. On the morrow, whatever she did in the French maid costume, it wouldn't involve cleaning the house. He said not a word when he got home. That suited her. She needed quiet to plan her performance. Nate deserved something good. * * * As on weekdays, when she got up on Saturday morning, Nate had already left for work. As soon as she was wearing the French maid costume, she examined herself in the full-length mirror. Like the black bustier, the bodice of the black dress laced up the back to draw tight about her ribs, pushing her breasts high toward the much-too-low-cut top, giving her amazing cleavage and revealing pink slivers of her areolas. The lower half of the dress was reinforced with piles of white ruffled flounce that acted like fake petticoats to pushed the black outer layer away from the naked tops of her thighs. The black stay-up fishnet stockings make her legs look like a streetwalker's. She was provided with no panties to cover her sex. She could preserve no shred of modesty when she bent over. And housecleaning required a lot of bending. The black heels were higher than any she had ever worn. She would have to walk slowly and cautiously. A tiny white apron served only to draw attention to her crotch. The outfit was completed with a little white cap that pinned to her hair and a small black bowtie choker that made her white neck look long and vulnerable. She looked terrific. How did Nate know that she would look so good in this costume? She was nervous as she went into the living room. She glanced at the drapes. Nate had drawn them closed as he did on every day when he left her a special costume. Nate was always careful about that. He might be sharing videos of her with a million other people on the Internet but he never left a curtain open to suggest that she should let a neighbor see her in costume. That made sense. It would be hard to live here if they had to hear neighbors whispering and see them leering every time they walked down the street. Or maybe he was simply following her instruction that she would not perform for a live audience. She wondered if she should relax that rule. How would she feel if the audience were strangers? If they saw her in a public place where there was no danger that they would try to accost her? She wondered if Nate would like it if she "forgot" to wear panties under a miniskirt when they were out shopping together and "accidently" bent over to pick something off a low shelf. Or if she forgot to wear a bra and had a "wardrobe malfunction" with the strap that held her top in position over her chest. She could hold the ends of the strap together with a straight pin and tie a long thread to the end. A subtle pull at her waist would part the strap at her neck. Two months ago, she never could have imagined herself doing anything like than. Today, the thought was making her wet between her legs. Tomorrow, she might make the fantasy a reality and see how Nate reacted. Even if public exposure wasn't Nate's fantasy, he had instilled the desire in her. She spent several minutes wiping the feather duster over already sparkling clean shelves in a pretense of doing housework. She contrived to strike poses that displayed her assets. She stretched her legs, made longer by the high heels; arched her back to reach high places; thrust her breasts forward, nearly pushing them out of the inadequate bodice, stretching the soft white fabric tight across erect nipples; pushed her naked ass upwards when she bent to dust low places. When she walked in the heels, she crossed her ankles to ensure that her hips swayed dangerously from one side to the other. When she raised her arms, she drew the short hem of the dress high above her crotch. The soft duster with its long black feathers was sensuous and she paused for a time to brush it softly over her face, then down across her neck to her shoulders. The back of the dress was cut as low as the front, enabling her to tickle her back softly. She was breathing hard but the lace bodice constrained her diaphragm, making her chest heave in the low-slung neckline. When she began to dust the mantle, she dropped the duster, making it necessary that she bend over fully to pick it up. She bent slowly and fumbled with the duster for a minute, bending from the hips and keeping her knees straight to give the cameras hidden in the room a long view of her naked womanhood. Nate deserved a generous eyeful. When she stood back up, she was face-to-face with Nate's portrait, displayed prominently above the fireplace in a silver frame. She had put it there before going to bed last night. Now, she reached out and caressed the glass that covered the image of her husband. She picked up the portrait and pressed her cheek to the face behind the glass. Then she kissed the image of her husband's lips. She set the picture on the coffee table, facing the couch, and sat down, looking at it. As she gazed into the eyes of the image of her husband, she pulled a small tube of K-Y lubricant from where it had been hidden underneath the couch and squeezed a dollop onto her fingers. She slouched back and splayed her legs, sliding the dress up to her waist, rendering her hips and crotch naked. Slowly, languorously, she wiped the lubricant between her engorged lips, working it around, feeling the wonderful slipperiness of her fingers against her sex. The feather duster had a round plastic handle that was too big to fit comfortably in Jocelyn's hand but was perfect for another use. She squeezed another generous dollop of lubricant on her fingers and spread a thick coating around and down the length of the handle. Slowly, she worked the handle of the duster against herself, between her lips, and inside, then pulled it in and out, enjoying the feeling of the ersatz dildo sliding past her inner lips. With her slippery fingers, she began working around the little nub of hot flesh that was the source of her sexual pleasure. She did not touch it directly, but squeezed it softly between her lips and worked it back and forth, letting her plump intimate flesh do the massaging under the direction of her fingertips. She worked for long minutes with fingers and dildo until she brought herself to a climax. She did not fake or exaggerate her reaction for theatrical effect, but she did not hide or suppress her moans, grunts and grimaces, either. As she gave herself over to pure pleasure, her hips jerked convulsively against the sofa cushions and her feet curled and pointed in her shoes. Throughout her performance, she kept looking at the picture of her husband's face on the coffee table. Though her mind was occupied by nearly overwhelming physical sensations, a small corner of her consciousness kept wondering what Nate was doing at that moment. She imagined that, as he watched her on a video screen in the privacy of his office, he was engaged in the male version of her onanistic performance. That thought propelled her to a higher plane of ecstasy than the merely physical. Another small corner of her mind wondered if video was streaming out into the world through the Internet. Had a million men around the world been doing what she imagined Nate doing? If so, she hoped that every one of them experienced the same ecstasy as her. When she regained her breath, she stood, restored her dress from its obscene to its merely immodest state, and began dusting again. After giving Nate's portrait a loving kiss, she put it back on the mantle. Then she worked her way out of the room and back to the bedroom. There, she shed the French maid costume and dressed in her standard jeans and sweatshirt. Her entire maid performance had taken a little over an hour. Once again, Nate said nothing about what he might have seen when he came back home, but, once again, he made passionate love to her before taking her out for a wonderful Indian meal. She had been his maid this morning and his lover this afternoon but he didn't want her to be his cook tonight. * * * Jocelyn's life continued to follow this pattern after they moved to a bigger house. Every few days she received costumes, sex toys, and her husband's passionate love afterward. Two years later, she became pregnant with their first child. When the pee stick showed a plus sign, the sex games ended without comment or discussion. Her life became dull, normal, and satisfying. She never found a single camera in either their old or new house and never knew if they had been removed after the games ended. As well, she never knew if Nate had circulated videos of her performances on the Web or not. She tried searching for them more than once, but it was like trying to find a few drops in a sea of porn. She became bored and abandoned the search long before she had any hope of finding images of herself. But she did find videos of MILFs -- Mothers I'd Like to Fuck -- who were often mature women. Even as she entered her forties, gained some weight and felt gravity exert its relentless pull on her body, Nate still liked to watch her undress for bed. She wondered if, when she was fifty and their second child moved out on his own, she would awake some morning to find that her clothing had been replaced by black stay-ups, a bustier, and nothing else.