"You really have to want it yourself?"
"I do! Otherwise I wouldn't say it."
"And when you want to start with it?"
"Soon. Next weekend?"
"Okay. Yhen I have some time left to arrange some things."
"What kind of things?"
"All kinds of things I'll need. Photo, video and more of that."
"Where will they be processed? I don't like to know that they all see my..."
"No no, don't be worried. Video is ready at the spot and the photo negatives will be sent to a discrete lab. So many are processed there that those people even don't look at them."
"But you know what's the deal! If it doesn't work out once in a while you mustn't start nagging."
"Yes yes, but you too mustn't start stopping. Like me you have to keep strictly to the deal. Or it's nonsense to begin it at all."
"I did promise that, didn't I? Don't be afraid."
"Well, okay. So next Saturday."
The first ten minutes I can only breath heavily. It's obvious I am no fifteen anymore and sitting for years takes its toll now.
For a second I get an image in my head of a passerby looking upwards and seeing up there in that enormous fir the shape of a grown man, laden with cameras and bags. Quickly I force myself to think about something else. How ridiculous it may be, this is the only way to fulfill my 'task' well.
For a week I have spent all my free hours to make preparations. Shopping, scouting the surroundings of the house, this time with completely different eyes than before. Several times I feel like a boy of fifteen who is eager to have his first secret meeting with his beloved.
I quickly discovered that I could be only successful from two corners: the front and the back of the house. I was happy now that Karen always had insisted to get as much light as possible into the house. So no trees or high bushes at the front or back of the house. Her only concession to nature was a high hedge running at the side of the house, alongside the drive to the garage, planted ten years ago and grown into a monster of at least five yards. The side of the house only had one window. My study was there.
As few tress and bushes are in our front and back garden, the more there are across the street, in the front garden of the neighbours, among those a giant fir. Neighbors who don't mind shadows in their house. But they have a second house, situated at the seaside, where they spent most of their free hours. Every Friday the pack their car and every late Sunday they unpack. Good.
When I have again enough air in my lungs I take the wires from the bag, attach them to two branches, pull those apart as much as I can and fasten the wires. At once I have a wide opening giving way to the window at the front of our house.
The curtains are closed, as they always are when night has started. But like always they don't close completely. At the right side the stop still isn't repaired, so often a crack of about 10 inches can be seen. And at the top in the centre the two curtains don't shut well too. Just a too strong pull and the rollers bounce back a bit and a crack shows running more narrow to the bottom, but at the top sometimes can be more than 10 inches. Like tonight. Karen has again closed them nonchalantly. But after all that has been the deal. Act the same as always. With the curtains that is. For the rest I'm very tensed waiting for what will come.
That's something that disappoints me when I look through the telescope of the camera. Alternately I'm peeping through the centre and through the right side and I see karen walking through the room, sometimes sitting down, the rise again and actually not doing anything special. I become impatient, but then I think that she doesn't know if I'm already looking. That was a part of the deal too; everything has to be as normal as can be; she's a woman living alone and she even isn't allowed to know me; to make it even more real I yesterday took a hotel room and only tomorrow I'll come home again. So I have to be patient and wait till she decides to do whatever she wants to.
Something strange is happening in my head. Already an hour I'm peeping at her and more and more she stops to be my own wife. The familiar face, that known body, more and more they seem to belong to another one.
She has loosened her hair and I see her unbuttoning her blouse. Shot. Gotcha! The blouse slides down and is thrown away somewhere. Her breasts are bulging above the white bra. Shot. Something's moving in my old jeans, but at this moment I don't have neither time for it nor interested in it. At last action starts, there across the street in that room.
Ah, I see her sitting on the sofa, leaning backwards lazily. She puts her feet onto the coffee table. Is the TV on? Or a CD? Her hands slowly creep over her bare belly, upwards, over her bra, her breasts. One hand disappears into the bra, the fingers are moving like lazy snakes beneath the white clothe, the other hand slides to the back, the bra's unfastened and slides down. Both hands are lying on the breasts, the fingers spread, two pink brown buttons peep between them into the room. Shot, shot. Oh God, how exciting. Hope no one will pass, see me here and warn the police. Not now.
Her hands move and start a lazy journey downwards. Now, no, she doesn't unfasten the skirt. The hand move lower, over the skirt, the legs, until they are stretched completely. Bit by bit the skirt moves up, until it's half over the thighs. The gingers are caressing the upper side of the legs and then slide to the inner sides, first downwards, then slowly up. Shot.
Now change quickly. The video, not that the real action starts. Zoom in, yes, and run. Rrrt...
Ah, there they disappear. Dammit, why doesn't she lie down onto the sofa, so I see her frontally?! Well, okay, it's just beginning.
A good thing I put on these pants and not a tight one. It's quite some time ago such a thing happened to me. Maybe more than ten years ago. But after all this is very new to me. Such a woman, there on the sofa, who doesn't know someone can see her from a tree. And recording it too! In a minute all the stuff will be off. Swish, down with it. And then...
Dammit, why doesn't something happens. Two hands beneath a skirt, a slight lump beneath the cloth and almost no movement. Come on, girl! Action! Are her eyes opened? Is she looking through the crack of the curtains? Is she suspecting I'm in here? I'll move the camera upwards to see.
