At a few minutes past midnight I heard John's car pull up in front of the house. I didn't bother looking out the front window but walked directly to the hallway closet to get ready to watch Nancy entertain her male friends.
She came through the door first and switched on the lights in the living room (two floor lamps on either end of the couch). Then followed Dean, John, and the young man who seemed to be with Dean. As soon as they were indoors, Dean's cell-phone went off and he walked into the kitchen to answer it. The boy, who must have been sneaking beer at the bar, plopped down on the couch and somewhat blearily watched Nancy take off her heavy coat and lay it across the back of an armchair. He kept watching as she bent forward to remove her boots and was rewarded, I think (her back was to me), by yet another view down her loose sweater top. John headed down the hall to use the toilet.
I could hear Dean in the kitchen talking to someone on his phone but couldn't quite make out what he was saying. A minute or so later Nancy joined him there and I heard her say, "Oh, really? That's too bad." Then Dean and she walked back into the living room. Dean had a serious expression on his face as though he'd received bad news.
I watched Nancy turn to face the hallway and say, "Dean just talked to his wife. Sounds like there's some kind of mess at home and he has to get back right away."
She was speaking to John, who had finished in the bathroom and was standing too far to my left for me to see him.
"Can't you stay a little while?" asked John, walking into my field of vision. "Remember what Nancy said at Curley's about your birthday present, letting you see what you missed by not being at the horny video session. Isn't that a good reason to stick around?"
John, Dean, and Nancy were standing within a few feet of my peephole so I could hear everything they said clearly. This little complication with Dean's wife appeared to be a setback to our plan (well, Nancy's plan), whatever it was. Did she really mean to reenact for Dean all the things she did with Nick and John β the cunnilingus, the fingering to orgasm? And what about the kid sitting on the couch looking goofy? Was he old enough to be involved in any of this?
"Are you kidding?" said Dean. "I'd love to stay awhile. But, damn it! One of the kids is sick and, well, she's using it as an excuse to play the martyr." He was really perplexed and frustrated now. "And I've got to figure out something to do with Pete." (This was obviously the name of the nerdy kid.) "I can't bring him home like that. I thought we could give him a while to sober up. I mean, he's just eighteen and my wife'll never stop letting me have it for getting my innocent little nephew drunk."
"Hey, I'm not innocent. Fuck." This came from Pete on the couch. Saying "fuck" was meant to prove his point, I guess.
"I know that," said Dean, "but you know Marianne thinks you are." Marianne must have been his longsuffering wife's name.
Dean moved over to Nancy and hugged her. "Maybe we could stay for about thirty minutes," he said to John over her shoulder. "Would you mind driving us home then? I'd really appreciate it."
"Maybe there's time for Nancy to give you an abbreviated version of what you missed," said John.
Nancy laughed and said, "Sure. But are you sure it's all right in front of Pete?"
"Hey, I'm not fucking innocent," said Pete, trying again to sound a lot harder than he was.
Dean still hugged Nancy. He ran his hands up and down her back, slyly caressing her ass each time his hands got down there. "It would do him good," he said. "At that prep school he's been going to they never get to even look at a girl. Much less a doll like you. He's led a disadvantaged life for a rich kid."
John said to Nancy, "You still have that cute little skirt and top you wore in the video, don't you? That schoolgirl outfit? I know Dean would like to see you in that. So would I. And, well, you did promise."
"OK. I'll go put it on now, but I'm not wearing that silly wig with the pig-tails." She broke loose from Dean's grasp and headed to the kitchen. I heard her open the refrigerator door. "There's some beer in here you guys can have while you're waiting." She reemerged from the kitchen with a can of beer in her hand, walked over to the sound system and switched on an FM jazz station (setting the volume low), and headed up the hall to our bedroom.
Dean and John went into the kitchen and returned with beers for themselves and one for Pete. "Make this your last one, Pete. I've contributed to the delinquency of a minor enough for one night. And we're going to have to figure out something to do with you tonight. Maybe I can distract Marianne while you sneak into the guest room."
John sat in a modified lotus position on the carpet in front of the coffee table and Dean sat on the opposite end (on the left end, from my vantage point) of the couch from Pete. I took my eye away from the peephole and sat down on the floor of the closet to wait for Nancy's return to the living room. No use tiring out my eyes watching three guys drinking beer.
A few minutes later I heard Nancy's voice back in the living room. I returned to the peephole and noticed that, good to her word, she was wearing the same flared skirt and white button-down blouse that she'd worn at the video shoot. Even without the little-girl wig, she looked about Pete's age. Standing next to John, still sitting on the carpet, Nancy put a hand on his shoulder for balance, lifted her right foot, and set it down on the coffee table. Then, striking a clichΓ©d movie-actress pose with her right hand behind her head, she asked, "How do you like this outfit?"
Dean smiled and said he liked it a lot and the kid, sitting at the other end of the couch, just stared at her crotch. I couldn't be sure from my vantage point, but the way Nancy was standing was probably letting the two of them see whether or not she was wearing panties.
"From what I heard," said Dean, "the video shoot was a making-out scene with this foreign guy. Are you going to show us some of that?"
"Sure, I guess so," said Nancy. "After all, erotic modeling is what I do, right? And it doesn't always have to be for money. Who's going to be Nick's stand-in, though?"