10. A contrived mini-crisis and slightly awkward preliminaries.
A few seconds later the three of them entered the studio cabin. I shook Ben's hand and he introduced me to his soccer teammate Karl.
Karl was shorter than I imagined he'd be, maybe only five-seven. He had a full head of curly black hair and was very broad-shouldered, so he probably weighed around 180 pounds. He had recently shaved, but I could see that he had the sort of thick, dark beard that probably needed shaving twice a day. He would've been handsome if it weren't for his rather narrow-set eyes and long nose.
I offered the guys beers, which they gladly accepted. Nancy stood near us holding a glass of white wine as though she were at a cocktail party. I asked the two guys and Nancy to sit down on several folding chairs that stood just in front of the raised platform.
I got right to it. "So, Karl, did Ben tell you what we're doing today?"
"Yes, he did tell me," said Karl, leering at Nancy. She sat next to him, with the hem of her summer dress pulled way up to reveal most of her bare thighs. "I think this one is going to be Ben's girl, right?"
"That's the plan," I answered. "I'm still waiting for Cindy, the one that's for you. She was supposed to be here forty-five minutes ago. I gave you her number, Nancy. Could you give her a call for me? She wasn't answering when I called awhile ago."
Nancy stood up, pretending to be more tipsy than she was, and said she'd left her cell phone in the living room. She staggered out of the studio cabin to make the imaginary phone call.
While she was in the house, I told Ben and Karl that Nancy had come to my house early to bend my ear about her husband. They'd had a fight that morning. I told them she was furious, that she wanted to get even with him for being unfaithful to her. I'd tried to calm her down, but as she drank she got angrier and angrier.
"Yeah," said Ben, "she did seem pretty annoyed when she met us at the door. She said something about wanting to 'show' her husband."
"She was pretty mad, OK, but I think she gave you a big kiss," said Karl. "She sure likes you a lot. You gave her good sex last time, right? She remembered that, I think."
I laughed and asked them if they thought she was too mad to want to have sex.
"Maybe not with me," said Karl. "But with Ben, yes. I saw her put her tongue in his mouth real deep! She just shook my hand and that was all."
A few minutes later, Nancy, still walking unsteadily, returned to the studio cabin. She seemed quite frustrated. "She's still not picking up! I left a message asking her where the hell she is. This is really fucked up. How can we have this photo shoot without her?"
I tried to work up a feeling of fake concern. That damned "Cindy"! You just couldn't count on her.
The guys suddenly looked confused and maybe angry.
"So there is no girl for me?" asked Karl, with a frown.
I stood up and walked over to Nancy. I put my arm around her and said, "Look, we'll just have to improvise. Do you think you can pose with both guys? I'll make it worth your while if you do."
She looked at me with an expression of dismay. Then she looked at them, sitting in their chairs looking up at her, and back at me again.
"I don't know," she said quietly. "I mean, at least I know Ben. But I just met Karl and . . . ."
"Well," I interjected, "if you really want to get even with your husband, doing two guys would be even better, don't you think?" The irony of her real husband telling her this wasn't lost on either of us.
She smiled at me and said, "I know he'd hate it. He thinks he has a right to have sex with another woman, but if he knew what I'm about to do he'd go nuts. I actually wish he was here so he could watch me with another man or, like today, with two other men. I'd like to see the expression on his face when he realized he wasn't the only guy I'd let enjoy my body."
"What about limits? You know, with two guys it could get pretty raunchy."
She pretended to flare up in anger. "Raunchy? I'm no girl scout, even if my prick of a husband thinks I am! As far as I'm concerned, we can do anything we want except something really weird like handcuffs or pain. I can handle pretty much anything else. In fact, it'll be a treat to be with guys who might want to try something besides the missionary position."
I let this sink in and glanced at the two guys. Karl was grinning lasciviously at Ben, who was trying his best to keep a poker face. Had Nancy just given them permission to fuck her in the ass? I'd just have to wait and see what happened.
We spent the next fifteen minutes drinking beer and listening to Nancy go on and on about how furious she was with "Bill" and complaining about what a lousy sex partner he was. She said part of his problem was a small dick. She used to like it well enough when she didn't know better, but (patting Ben on the thigh and looking at him meaningfully) now she knew better.
Ben and Karl, at my suggestion, took a piss in the studio cabin's toilet. Then, because everyone seemed to be through talking, I clapped my hands and said, "All right, let's get down to business now. Give me a minute and I'll see if I can come up with some sort of imaginary story line for Nancy being with two guys at once."
Actually, Nancy and I had already decided on one. But the guys didn't need to know that.
"What I think might work is something pretty simple," I announced. "Think of it as theater. Nancy will play the part of an erotic model posing with a male model, played by Ben, for a photographer, played by Karl. As Karl photographs them having sex he gets more and more aroused until he has to join them."
None of them responded to the idea, so I continued as though it had been accepted. "And Nancy, your role here is to be pretty submissive. Like most female erotic models, you're not making many decisions. You just let the guys do whatever they want to you, OK?"
She nodded, actively consenting to the idea of playing a submissive.
"I'm going in the house to get my video camera for Karl to use as a prop. I'll be back in a few minutes." Saying this, I went into the house and fetched the camera. I also got a tube of lubricant from our bedroom. It might or might not be needed.