The forty-five-year-old oak towered thirty feet above the finely manicured lawn, its myriad branches lost in the glorious red and brown leaves that had flourished through the wet months of spring.
Buried deep in its branches, the man, unshaven and short in stature, brought the viewfinder on the Canon EOS to his right eye for what he hoped was the last time. He flexed his right index finger only briefly and the telephoto lens captured thirty-six, tight, high-resolution images of the events occurring fifty yards from the base of the old oak, on the other side of a seven-foot privacy fence.
He lowered the camera, checked its digital display and found the memory card nearly full. "That ought to do it," he muttered. He then unscrewed the lens and deposited the two pieces of equipment into a hip-sack that had been secured around his bony waist. A crooked smile -- more of a smirk -- deformed his thin lips as he carefully descended the tree's trunk and scurried across the backyard, into the tree-line, and toward the lime green 1989 Chevrolet Impala that he had parked on a nearby street.
* * *
Her career was in shambles. Her marriage, too. Though "shambles" might have been too generous. "Over," on both accounts, might have been more appropriate.
Annie Davidson had worked long and hard to achieve what she had now lost. A graduate of the Columbia School of Journalism, she had immediately entered the broadcast arena. Her concise and incisive reporting had kept her for not long in smaller -- but increasingly larger -- markets such as Des Moines, Iowa, Mobile, Alabama and Denver, Colorado.
After five short, ladder-climbing years, Annie found herself renting an apartment in Chicago's Gold Coast neighborhood, having been hired by one of the major networks as sort of a roving reporter. Annie's ascension continued after she settled in Chicago. The market appreciated her largely objective reporting of local events, and she earned increasingly meaty assignments, as well as accolades from her peers.
Certain aspects of that market -- men, mostly -- also appreciated her from a physical perspective. She stood nearly six feet tall. Blond, nearly platinum, tresses flowed over her shoulders to below her shoulder blades. Her body was lean and perfect posture thrust her significant breasts forward. For this part of the market, she was watched intently -- but not always heard.
After six or seven years in Chicago, she felt that she had reached the height of her career in that market and began to set her sights on a more national forum, positioning herself for a transfer within the network that employed her to a posting in Washington, D.C. or New York. While she bided her time, she continued to push larger and larger stories and to rack up awards and honors.
In the meantime, Annie maintained an active social life. She could often be found after work at Tavern on Rush and similar venues, enjoying a few cocktails with friends. Through it, she met and married Jim Angelo and over the next few years two children were born of the couple.
But in a matter of hours, her career had shattered like so much fragile glass.
* * *
The weasel's assignment had been to observe -- and capture on film -- visitors to the home over the course of several weeks. Who they were, how long they stayed. During certain deployments, he had brought with him a parabolic microphone and thus: what was said.
Six times he had secreted himself in the old oak tree. On three other occasions, when he had determined that the subject's neighbors were vacationing, he had gained surreptitious entry to their home and lain upon a small balcony off the master bedroom, which had afforded him an obstruction-free vantage point of the subject's backyard.
Through these visits, he had captured nearly 3,000 still images and four hours of video (two of which were accompanied by an audio soundtrack). For the most part, the images were of little value to anyone. His subject had received family members, friends of his children, various maintenance personnel, his lawyer (the weasel was prohibited by his principal from using the parabolic during the lawyer visits). Not receiving any value for his investment, his principal had called off the surveillance, instructing the weasel this last shoot was in fact the last shoot.
When the twitchy, unkempt man entered his principal's office that final afternoon and laid the memory card on the news director's desk, he shrugged. "Don't worry, Alex. Turns out you got your money's worth." He paused, a nasally chuckle emanating from this throat. "And then some." He then turned and left.
The news director watched him go, the memory card untouched on his desk. When the door clicked shut behind the weasel, he picked up the memory card, turned it over between his fingers. Swiveling in his chair, he inserted into a port on the face of his computer, transferred the contents to his hard drive, then deleted the files from the memory card.
* * *
The images, captured at the noon hour, were the lead story on one of three Chicago news broadcasts at 5:00 that June evening. They were soon picked up by a second local service and hit the national wires within the hour. A collective gasp rose from the local community -- fans and detractors of Annie alike -- as images of her flashed across television screens from Lockport to Zion.
Her tanned, bikini-clad body caught in still-frame as she strode across the deck of the pool toward a hot tub.
Easing herself into the hot tub -- her breasts high and firm on her chest, a diamond pendant resting snugly in her substantial cleavage -- the man across from her raising his glass to her.
Annie sliding around the edge of the hot tub toward him, her nipples blurred but impliedly erect, and his smile broader, toothier, than it had been a few frames earlier.
Their lips meeting, a peek of her wet pink tongue slipping into his mouth, her hand disappearing beneath the frothy waterline.
The man putting his arms behind him, lifting himself out of the hot tub.
A blurred image of his bathing suit mid-way down his hairy thighs.
And then a shot of Annie from behind, her face buried in the man's crotch, one hand resting on his thigh, the other tweaking his bare nipple between manicured nails.
Annie's adultery was not newsworthy in and of itself. Infidelity is not what made her the lead story for the two competing networks during the 10:00 broadcast later that evening. But the man whose house she had visited -- the man she had been caught fellating -- was the suspect in an ongoing, high profile police investigation into the disappearance of his business partner. He had been the subject of much reporting in the local media, some of it undertaken -- incredibly --by Annie herself.
Not to put too fine of a point on it, but Annie had been caught on film with a mouthful of cock belonging to a murder suspect that had been the subject of her own investigative reporting. And the implication was clear: she had given up her mouth and vagina and who knew what else to get the "interview."
* * *
The aftermath had not been pretty. Whatever she had gained from the "interview" never saw the light of day, all semblance of objectivity now having been blown out of the water. Annie was immediately placed on paid administrative leave. But that didn't last long. In a few short days, as the story continued to be reported in local media, her leave became unpaid and, soon after, permanent. The network to which she had devoted the better part of a decade had abandoned her: she had been terminated.
In the months that followed, she sought in vain to secure a new position in the broadcast world. She interviewed for jobs in larger markets like Boston, Atlanta and Seattle, then in Minneapolis, Tampa Bay and Raleigh, and finally in Lafayette, Indiana, Grand Rapids, Michigan and Durango, Colorado. No one would touch her. She was, as one anonymous source had so indelicately put it, toxic. Her career in broadcast journalism -- any aspect of reputable journalism, really -- was effectively over.
Her marriage had fared little better. It had, thus far, survived, but that survival gave new meaning to the phrase "hanging by a thread." Initially, Jim had sought to stand by her. He remained stoic in public when approached by the reporting masses, and when the two were seen out they were holding hands, playing with their children in the local park and otherwise seeming the perfect couple whose largest concern was what to cook for dinner that night.
But as Annie's attempts to secure new employment in the journalistic world fizzled, the strain on their marriage increased. She was depressed, which led to expressed discontentment in her life. Each rejection letter brought about fraternity-style binge drinking followed by inconsolable hang-overs. She began withdrawing from Jim, from the children, into her own dark world permeated with self-loathing.
And while Jim had at first given her wide latitude, the months took a toll on him, as well. To begin, while he had maintained a positive public attitude, his wife's infidelity -- so shockingly caught on film and so publicly displayed in the mass media -- had been humiliating. And though he loved her and sought to provide for her the emotional support that one offers a loved one, he knew deep down that he could never forgive her betrayal.
That led, of course, to a distancing between the once happily-married couple. Intimacy subsided, to say nothing of their sex life. Not that she was terribly interested, wallowing as she was in misery and booze. But Jim could not help but wonder, every time he looked at the outwardly beautiful woman, where she had been touched. And by whom? And how many times? How many of them had there been? His pride did not allow him to ask these questions and his resentment of her -- of the unknown -- grew consequently, deepening the divide.
They were soon leading largely separate lives. He moved her into the guest room of their spacious Lincoln Park home and soon thereafter filed for legal separation. They rarely ate together. They didn't socialize as a couple -- he had his events and she hers. And over time, Annie began to suspect that Jim was having an affair, and the suspicion was reciprocal. But Jim's thoughts weren't as civilized or so kindly put -- he simply believed that Annie was a fucking slut.
His belief was well-founded.
* * *
(A Year Later)
The cool water felt good on her hot flesh. She breast-stroked toward the ladder at the deep end of the pool atop the East Bank Club. Her long, elegant fingers grabbed at the rails and she gracefully pulled herself out of the pool. She stepped onto the pool deck and water cascaded down her tanned, fit body, erect nipples evident against the hot pink top of her bikini.
As she walked toward her chaise lounge, her large breasts bobbed inside the top, which appeared to be a size too small. She tilted her head to the side and knocked a little water from one of her ears and then reached behind her, wringing water from the locks that were plastered to her skull and the nape of her neck, before settling onto the lounge. A waiter stopped and asked her if he could get her anything and she ordered a vodka-and-lemonade. He gave her a questioning look, as it was barely 11:00 am on that glorious Saturday, but then quickly moved on.
'Its noon somewhere,' she thought to herself as she leaned back, allowing her golden flesh to soak up the heat of the sun, and reached into her bag for a fashion magazine.
Annie tended to spend Saturdays at the club. Jim stopped complaining about it months ago. She'd wake up and, once the kids were out of bed, she'd feed them and watch a little television with them before their weekend sports activities started. Then she'd leave, announcing only, "Be back later," leaving Jim to run around town all day to different parks and sports facilities.
At the club, she'd change into a pair of shorts and a tank top and spend thirty minutes on the treadmill, thumbing through People and US Weekly and, occasionally, Newsweek. She would then run a circuit of machines to tone her muscles before settling into the steam room and a quick shower.
During the summer months, and when weather permitted, she'd make her way up to the pool, situated on the roof, and lie in the sun, swim a little and, more often than not, have a few drinks. 'Just to take the edge off,' she'd tell herself.
The waiter returned with her drink and she took it from him without thanks or even a smile. When she finished it, she ordered another and then another -- "Make it a double this time" -- occasionally sliding her lithe body into the pool to cool her sizzling flesh. Midway through the afternoon, as she was reading the latest People, a voice sounded over her left shoulder.
"Mind if I sit here, ma'am?"
"Whatever you wanna do," she intoned, flipping the page and not even bothering to look up. A bead of sweat, and then another, gathered at the top of her cleavage before coursing down the chasm formed by her breasts.
The man made himself comfortable and ordered an iced tea from the waiter.
After a while, Annie looked up, found her drink and brought it her soft lips, the rim smeared with her frosted pink gloss. Her eyes roamed easily over the man's body before she realized that, if a man, he barely was one. His chest and washboard stomach were well-developed and largely bereft of hair. His legs were equally muscular. But when her eyes rested on his smooth face, she realized that the man, strikingly handsome as he might be, could not be far from his teens. Her previously cool demeanor thawed a little.
