CH01 - No Score

by Lawrence Block

  Aileen blew out a cloud of smoke. She said, “Is that all you want to shoot?”

  “I think so, yeah.”

  “I thought you were going to take some pornographic ones.”

  I didn’t do an enormous double take on that line. I just thought I was hearing wrong.

  But he said, “Hard-core? No, the sonofabitching timer is on the fritz. I don’t know what’s the matter with it. Less than two years old and it just went. Nothing works anymore and nobody gives a damn. The whole civilization is coming apart at the seams.”

  I must have looked puzzled. Aileen said, “It’s a timer on the shutter. He sets up the shot and then he has fifteen seconds to get in the picture with me.”

  “Twelve seconds,” Gregor said.

  She ignored the correction. “That way we can do the more interesting things, Chip. What you could call hard-core pornography.”

  I nodded.

  “What we shot now tonight is called soft-core.”

  “What’s the difference?”

  “Redeeming social importance,” Gregor said.

  “Huh?”

  “That’s what the Supreme Court calls it. You know, that you can argue it’s a work of art and not a hundred percent obscene. If you actually show people fucking, then it’s considered a hundred percent obscene.”

  “In hard-core pornography,” Aileen said, “the man’s core is hard.”

  “That’s an old gag,” Gregor said.

  “Professional humor,” she said.

  “But the point is that the timer is on the bum.” He sucked on his cigarette and clucked his tongue pensively. “I’ll tell you something, you wouldn’t believe what a short time twelve seconds is until you tried to set up a shot and then get in it yourself. You know the worst part?”

  “What?” I managed to ask.

  “Staying up. You know, erect.” His eyes dropped to his trouser front, and mine fought the impulse to follow. “When you set up with the camera and all, you know, your whole concentration is on technical matters. You don’t even think sex. You might have trouble believing this, but when I’m taking these pictures, there’s no difference in my mind whether I’m taking a picture of Aileen playing with herself or of the Chicago skyline. It’s all the same as far as I’m concerned.”

  He was right. I had trouble believing this. I had seen the Chicago skyline, and I had seen Aileen playing with herself, and there was no chance I would ever get the two of them mixed up in my mind.

  “So I set up a shot,” he went on, “and then I have to turn on the excitement so that I’ll get erect, and then rush rush rush to get into the right position before the sonofabitching shutter goes bang. It’s the most nerve-racking thing going. And the thing is, the way I like to work, you know, is to shoot as much film as fast as I can, just one picture after the other. Just keep watching through the viewer and click them off whenever the pose is right. And the same way, Aileen likes to get into the spirit of a sequence and let it build the right way.”

  “To a climax,” she said, with a wink.

  “Yeah, to a climax,” he said winklessly. “It’s the same as whatchamacallit, method acting. Living the part. Look, you don’t know the business, but I can tell you that if you looked at a set of the keed’s photos and a set of the average model, there would be all the difference in the world.” I had no trouble believing this. “The average girl, she’ll put on this sonofabitching mechanical smile that looks painted on her face, or maybe she’ll pout a little, and there’s nothing the least bit natural about it. Aileen, she’s something else. Sometimes I think she has, you know, a climax. Just going through the poses.”

  “Sometimes,” she said, “she does.”

  “But without the timer,” he said, and then he dropped his jaw a few inches and actually snapped his fingers. “Hey,” he said, as an imaginary lightbulb formed over his head. “Now why the hell didn’t I think of that before?”

  “Of what?”

  He pointed at me. “You,” he said. “You could take the pictures. You want to be a photographer, you got to start sooner or later.”

  While I was busy not saying anything, Aileen said, “I’ve got a better idea. Chip’s a smart kid, but he doesn’t know anything about photography. You can’t expect him to have your touch with a camera.”

  “Well, that’s true,” Gregor said.

  “And anyway, I think the world’s getting tired of the same old pictures of you and me, honey. But suppose you take the pictures and Chip and I star in them?”

  They had done this before, Aileen assured me. Twice, as a matter of fact, with a fellow who neither of them really knew very well, as another matter of fact. And it was really perfectly legitimate as far as she was concerned, because after all it wasn’t really sexual. Which was to say that they really didn’t do anything. They would just set up a shot and Gregor would shoot it and then they would swing into another position.

  The other fellow never actually got inside of her, Gregor explained. And that, he said, was an absolute requirement as far as he was concerned. Because while he and Aileen might have a more liberal attitude in certain respects than the average married couple, in other respects they were what you might call old-fashioned, and one of the respects in which they were old-fashioned was that neither of them believed in having sex outside of marriage. He was absolutely faithful to Aileen, and she in turn was a hundred percent faithful to him, and that was the way it had to be.

  The two of them took turns explaining these things and filling me in on the fine points of pornographic photography, and let me tell you, it was the weirdest conversation ever. I wasn’t tongue tied all the way through it, but I think I might as well have been. I would ask various dumb questions and they would chime in with the answers. Wouldn’t Gregor be upset just seeing me in these various poses with Aileen?

  “No, keed, because I know it doesn’t mean anything and nothing’s really happening.”

  Wouldn’t Aileen be embarrassed by doing that sort of thing in front of her husband?

  “Embarrassed, Chip? I’ve got a huge streak of exhibitionism in me. You must have figured that out for yourself. If anything, I got a kind of a kick out of you watching just now, during the soft-core shots. And you know, honey, I like you, and Greg likes you, and if anything I think it would be kind of, you know, fun.”

  Fun.

  “We got time,” Gregor said. “We got all night here and in one of the darkrooms, and we can probably use both darkrooms if it comes to that because I don’t think the other one is booked at this hour. There would be a lot more dough if I had hard stuff for Mark. If you wanted to do it, well, I suppose I could pay you, and I don’t mean any of that buck-and-a-half-an-hour crap. I could afford, oh, what the hell, let’s say twenty bucks.”

  “Greg, honey, how on earth can you be so damn cheap?” She turned to me and grinned conspiratorially. “He’ll pay you fifty dollars, Chip. How does that sound?”

  After a few seconds passed, I realized we were all waiting for me to come up with an answer. “It sounds fine,” I squeaked. If my voice had been any higher they would have thought I wasn’t old enough for the job.

  “Well, that’s fine,” Gregor said. “Fifty dollars—well, sure, I suppose so. The only question, and I guess nobody but you knows the answer, keed, if you know it yourself, is whether or not you’ll be able to perform. Most of the time you can fake it, you know, but some of the shots have to show you—”

  “With a hard core,” Aileen put in. She rolled her eyes in exasperation. “Gawd,” she said. “Of all the stupid questions to ask him. He’s had the hardest core in America for the past hour and a half, haven’t you, honey? So I don’t think he’s going to have troubles now.”

  We got things off to a sensational start by having Aileen put on her dress and shoes. And oddly enough the sight of her with clothes on really got to me. I’m not being sarcastic. I had just about gotten to the point where I was used to her being naked, and now that she had the dress on agai
n I was taking it back off again mentally and remembering what she looked like without it and getting hornier than ever at the memory.

  She sat down and patted the couch next to her, and I sat, and she looked at me and gave me a grin as big as O’Hare Airport. I don’t know if I can explain it, but when she grinned that way I knew that things were going to be all right, that this was my mother-sister-friend-landlady-sweetheart Aileen, and that we were going to have a little innocent fun together without anybody getting messed up. You may have trouble figuring out how she packed all that into a three-second grin, but it was all there and I read it loud and clear.

  “Now the whole thing is to get into the part,” she said. “You tell yourself that you and I are crazy about each other and that I’m very desirable and we’re alone together and we’re going to make love. Don’t even think about the camera for now. It’s just a little clicking noise; it’s nothing to think about. And don’t worry about striking poses, or what angles Greg’s shooting from. Just get into the spirit of the thing and we’ll wind up with some decent shots.”

  I thought, Decent? And then she puckered up invitingly, and I leaned forward, not too sure what came first, and we actually kissed.

  That’s an understatement. We went right off the bat into a deep soul kiss, and not because it was my idea. I was too dumb to think of it, but before I could think of anything at all, her tongue was halfway down my throat and her breasts were pressing against me.

  Click!

  We held the kiss, and she shifted a little and took my hand and put it on the front of her dress, over her breast. I gave a gentle squeeze and felt the nipple stiffen.

  Click!

  She wriggled her hips invitingly. I put my hand under her dress and touched the inside of her thigh. She felt like—I was going to say silk, but it was more like warm glass, except even smoother somehow. I felt the play of muscles in her leg. Her kissing got greedier. She was sucking on my tongue as if she wanted to swallow it.

  Click!

  If this was method acting, I know why they use it. Maybe she liked to think we were just going through the motions, and maybe Gregor liked to think it, but if they really believed it they were both fruity as a nutcake because Aileen was hot enough to burn. I let my hand move higher, and my mind filled up with what I had seen earlier, those pink thighs and that puff of curly blond hair and all, and I touched her and she was all warm and wet, and—

  Click!

  Jesus Christ.

  Click!

  I let her take the lead. It seemed only natural, since she was the experienced one in every sense. Besides, I never wanted to move out of one pose in order to get into another. But she gave a reluctant sigh and steered us to the next bend in the river, which consisted of her opening the dress to the waist and letting me amuse myself with her breasts.

  Click!

  By handling them.

  Click!

  And kissing them.

  Click!

  And so on.

  Click!

  I’m putting all the clicks in to give you an idea of what Gregor was doing, but don’t get the impression that I was always aware of the camera. Some of the time it was as though it wasn’t there at all and the whole sex thing between me and Aileen was entirely real. Then that sensation would fade, and I would be so completely aware of the camera that I almost couldn’t stand it. Then the clicks would seem loud enough to break glass, and I would start feeling like a machine making love to another machine. But this never lasted long enough to let me cool down, and each time I got into the mood completely again I would just be that much hotter than I was before.

  It didn’t take long for both of us to get out of our clothes. Aileen had already been giving my groin some gentle feels now and then, so exposing myself was no big deal to me, and as for Gregor, I wasn’t very keenly aware of him just then.

  Click!

  I did have a second or so of concern after I got out of my shorts when I saw that she was looking at me. I guess every man who ever lived must have done a certain amount of worrying about his equipment at one time or another. And while I don’t think I was more hung up on the subject that most, there were times when I wondered whether it was too small, or funny looking, or ugly, or I don’t know what. Since I had no way of knowing how you could tell a pretty one from an ugly one, or how much was enough, there was no real way to avoid these worries completely.

  So I had that flash of anxiety. But the next second Aileen’s eyes went from the area in question to my eyes, and she gave that grin again, the same as before, and her lips parted just wide enough to admit her tongue, and she ran her tongue hungrily around her lips, and got the most beautifully lustful look in her eyes—

  Click!

  I hadn’t felt so proud since I got my first quarter from the tooth fairy.

  She touched me a little, and I’m sure the shutter went on clicking, but I didn’t hear it. Then she got up on the couch and stretched out on her back with her knees bent. She motioned me on top, and we touched bodies from chest to groin, and my thing proved it had a mind of its own by going straight for her thing. I no sooner touched her than she gave a quick twitch of her hips and got out of the way.

  “Easy,” she murmured. “Remember the rules, Chip. The sign on the door says Private, remember? Admission Restricted To Authorized Personnel.”

  I wanted to cry with disappointment. I had begun to think, somewhere along the line, that all of that business about not going all the way had been, well, something we would conveniently forget when the time came. I had put it in the same bag with her statement that none of this was really sexual.

  I thought about just going ahead and doing it. I could always pretend it was an accident, I thought. Just put it where it belonged and keep it there long enough to finish, and even if she thought it was rape, she wouldn’t be likely to go running through the streets shouting for a cop. And if she and Gregor got mad, well, the hell with them. Whatever happened, I would at least have done the one thing on earth I really wanted to do.

  Lots of luck. I gave a well-intentioned thrust, and the shutter clicked behind me, and Aileen got out of the way with no trouble at all.

  “Naughty,” she whispered. “Bad boy.”

  I guess I could never make it as a rapist.

  At this point it really did become pretty artificial and mechanical and phony. We stopped pretending and just went through the motions as quickly and effortlessly as possible, and it made for a lot less nervousness for both of us (and maybe for all three of us, because I don’t think Gregor was happy seeing his faithful wife an inch away from technical infidelity). So what we did was just get quickly into a position, take shots of it from two different angles, and then get into another position. I had done a lot of extracurricular reading over the years—I suppose that’s pretty obvious, for Pete’s sake—but even with all the times I went through the Kama Sutra and the Ananga Ranga and Eros and Capricorn and The Perverted Village I had never quite realized how many different positions there are to not quite have sexual intercourse in.

  Click!

  Click!

  Clickety clickety click!

  By the time Gregor suggested we all stop for a cigarette break, I had reached a stage where I was just as glad to relax for a while. Not that I was relaxed in any meaningful sense of the word. I mean, face it, this wasn’t a relaxing way to spend the evening. It just plain wasn’t.

  “Got some great shots,” he said through a cloud of blue-gray smoke. “You want to know something, keed, you’re a natural born actor. And how about the wife, huh? One great little actress.”

  He turned the key in the lock, peeked out. “Nobody home,” he said. “Hang on a minute.”

  While he was gone I whispered to Aileen that I was going out of my mind.

  “Poor baby,” she said.

  “I mean I don’t think I can walk.”

  “You forgot the rules for a minute there, Chip. I’ve never done it with anyone but Greg. Not since I met
him, and it’s been almost six years now. You have to understand.”

  “I suppose so.”

  “You know, you’re very nice looking.”

  “Oh, come off it.”

  “You mean you don’t know it yourself? You’re a good-looking guy, and you’ve got a dreamy body.”

  “Cut it out. My bones stick out, for Pete’s sake.”

  “I like the way you look.”

  “I mean—”

  “I think we’ll look good together.”

  She was beginning to get to me all over again. I started to say something, God knows what, but then Gregor came back in with his bottle of shitty peach-flavored brandy. I had the most unbelievable urge to take the bottle and shove it up his ass. I had the feeling that if I could just get him out of the picture, him and his goddamned camera, I could spend the rest of my life balling Aileen, and I couldn’t think of any way I’d rather spend it.

  He was saying that he thought we were all entitled to a drink. He tended to think of alcohol as a reward. I didn’t know if I could hack the taste of that crud just then.

  Aileen said, “Honey, I think just a short one, unless you’re out of film.”

  “There’s plenty,” he said. “Why?”

  “I thought like one more roll, that’s all. I didn’t do anything oral.”

  “I didn’t know you were going to do that,” he said warily. “I didn’t even think of it.”

  “Well, it would be a case of faking it, really.”

  “I suppose,” he said. “Son of a bitch, if they don’t go for that stuff. You sure you want to?”

  “Oh, I don’t mind.”