Angel Lost in the Dark Ch. 08

The first thing I did upon entering the house was to escort Angel to the dining room. “Would you prefer red or white?” I asked as stepped into the adjoining kitchen and opened the refrigerator door.

“Wine? Either, I suppose, but nothing really sweet or really dry. Do you have Chablis, or a Rose?”

I opened the Chablis and brought the bottle along with two imitation crystal wine glasses back to the table and began pouring.

“To your employment,” I said, “and to the next twenty days.

Her liquid blue eyes lit up when she heard what I’d said. “You mean you’re offering me the job?”

“Do you still want it?”

“Of course I do.”

“Can you start tomorrow?”

“I…well…sure, I guess so. I had something planned but I can always schedule it for later.”

“Would you mind? I’m anxious to get this project started and the sooner the better.”

“Tomorrow’s fine.”

I sat across the table from her and lifted my glass. “To tomorrow,” I said as I leaned forward and touched my glass to hers.

“This is the first job interview I’ve ever gone to where I got to drink wine with the boss the same day I got hired,” she said. “Come to think of it, it’s also the first time I’ve ever let the boss see me masturbate before being hired. Kind of a novelty, don’t you think?” She smiled and gave a little giggle.

“Drink up. Maybe you’ll be able to say it’s the first time you got drunk before you got hired.”

“Won’t happen,” she said as she raised her glass to her mouth and took huge drink of her wine. “We’ve got too much to talk about and I want us both to be level headed. After we get all the ground rules set then I’d be happy to get drunk with you, but not until then, OK?”

“Ground rules? What kind of ground rules are you talking about?”

“I’ll get to those in a few minutes,” she said, “but first would you mind going back to the car and bring in the magazines? I’d like to go through them with you and get a clearer picture of the kind of things you want me to do.”

I refilled her glass and she carried it with her as she followed me to the door. Her sweater and sweat pants were lying on the couch and as I walked out of the house I saw her make a move toward them. I was little disappointed since she definitely looked better in the clothes she was wearing than what she had been wearing when I first saw her. Rather than satiating my desires, this day of almost constant nudity and semi-nudity had only made me hungry for more, and if she was going to change clothes I at least wanted to watch.

When I returned with the magazines I was relieved to see that Angel was still standing where I had left her. Her sweat pants and the lumpy sweater remained on the couch and she was laughing. “Look what I found,” she said as she held up a dildo. “It was inside Karen’s bag along with another magazine.”

“Keep them if you want,” I offered. “It was my money she spent, so theoretically they’re mine, not hers.”

“Thanks, but no thanks to the dildo. I haven’t found one yet that can give me the same pleasure I get by using my own fingers. All that crap I said in the store was only for effect. I really didn’t want it. We should, however, keep the magazine. Who knows what nasty things it might inspire us to do?” She laughed and tossed the dildo down on the couch with disdain then she picked up the magazine and her clothes.

Once we were back in the Dining Room she set her clothes on the table and took off the shirt and the shorts she was wearing. Standing naked in front of me once more she reached into the pocket of the torn Levi’s and handed me the fifty dollars I had given her for the purchase of the magazines.

“No, go ahead and keep it,” I said feasting my eyes on her nudity, “You earned it.”

“I like to keep everything straight. Since I never spent it it’s yours. Here, take it.”

“The money’s irrelevant. I gave it to you to get merchandise from the store and you did. You fulfilled your obligation and as far as I’m concerned the money you saved was your own.”

“I want to keep everything honest and aboveboard. I’d feel guilty if I kept it”

“Keep it for now,” I said. “Give it back to me next week if you feel guilt”

“That sounds like a good compromise. I WILL give it back to you, you know.”

“If you do, you do. If you don’t, you don’t. I certainly won’t remind you.”

She waited while I pulled out my chair and sat down before saying “You still owe $100 for completing the exercise, you know. You might as well pay me now so we don’t have to bring it up again. I wouldn’t want you to conveniently ‘forget’ about it later on.” She looked serious but I suspected she was simply playing with me. At any moment I expected her to grin, but she didn’t. I never detected so much as a mischievous twinkle in her eyes as I stood up again.

I reached into my wallet and handed her five twenties. “You can get dressed now if you like,” I said as she stuffed the $150 dollars into the pocket of her sweatpants.

“I know, but why? It’s not cold in here and I’m comfortable the way I am.”

“Well that’s certainly OK with me. You can probably tell that I have no objections to that at all.” I purposely let my eyes wander over her body as I poured more wine. She loved being looked at and I loved looking. We were both winners.

“OK, now for some things we need to discuss,” she said. “To begin with do you have a release for me to sign?”

“A what?”

“A model release form. You do have one, don’t you?”

“Of course I do” I said with a straight face, “but I didn’t think we’d need one.”

“You need it if you want to protect yourself. If you don’t have me sign one then I could sue you if you sold any of the tapes or put them on the Internet.”

“Do we really need that? I’m not a professional as you can probably tell. I’m doing this for fun, not profit. I promise no one will ever see the tapes except me.”

“You’re not a professional photographer?” She seemed genuinely surprised. At least one of the cats that I had sedated was now awake and needed to be dealt with. Hopefully the others wouldn’t awake until I wanted them to.

“Not really. I never even used a video camera before the day of the first interview.”

She started laughing and then took another drink. “No wonder you don’t work in a studio. I thought it was rather strange that a professional photographer would be advertising in a local newspaper, but I’m glad I overlooked the obvious. I suppose I should be pissed off at you, but it’s kind of hard to do since I wasn’t exactly honest either. I’m no more a model than you are a photographer. I’ve never done any professional modeling in my life”

“There was no photo shoot for Hustler?”

“Sorry, there was no photo shoot. I lied about my experience just like you did.”

“So you’ve never had any professional modeling experience. Did you have any NON-professional modeling experiences?”

She was silent for a moment before saying “I refuse to answer on the grounds that it might incriminate me.” She smiled enigmatically and took another sip of wine.

That answer was certainly not what I expected. When Karen had arrived at my door she had been dressed in a tight fitting mini-skirt and her blouse was half open whereas Angel had arrived in a pair of old sweat pants and that stupid looking sweater. Karen had been reluctant to strip naked with the drapes in the front room open and Angel hadn’t seemed to mind at all. Where Karen had acted ‘skittish’ when her boobs had popped out at the bookstore, Angel had helped them escape. Karen had answered my question about her ‘non-professional’ modeling with reluctance and shame, almost as if it were a crime, so I had expected Angel to do the exact opposite and brag about her experience, treating it as a virtue instead of something to be ashamed of.

“Was it kind of a girlfriend-boyfriend thing?”

“Kind of,” she answered.

“So tell me,” I said with a lecherous smile on my face, “Did he take the pictures of you by yourself or did he mount the camera on a chair and set the timer?”

“You’re a dirty minded old fart, aren’t you? Without going into specifics let’s just say that there were no ‘chairs’ involved but there was definitely something mounted. I’d like to leave it like that if it’s OK with you. That way I won’t have to lie.”

She was still smiling (perhaps even more than before) and I knew that she wasn’t angered by my attempt at prying into her life. “Fair enough” I said. “I think I can fill in the blanks. Now, as far as the release forms are concerned I’ll leave that up to you. Since we’re both amateurs at this I don’t think they’re needed, but if you want us to sign one I’m agreeable.”

She thought for a minute and then said, “I guess it’s OK to go without them, but if you decide later that you DO want to sell anything I would appreciate you getting my consent.” She drained her glass and handed it to me. I graciously refilled both of our glasses.

“I promise not to sell them and I promise not to share them with anybody, and if I decide I want to break either one of those promises, I promise to ask your permission. Satisfied?

“OK, then on to the next issue. You mentioned that you would be paying all expenses. What expenses are you going to be covering?”

“I suppose…well, I suppose just about everything that comes up. Food during the day, gas for the car, admission to places we may go, clothes, you name it. When I planned this whole thing I tried to make a budget but there was no way to know specifically how much for what until it came up. Instead, I set aside a certain amount that should be more than enough to cover most everything. I’m not as rich as Bill Gates or Ted Turner, but I’m not exactly poor either. If there’s any expense money left after the shoot is over I’ll be happy, but if have to spend a little more it’s not going hurt me any. Why?”

I was looking directly into her beautiful baby blues eyes as I answered the question and she was looking directly into mine, but when I came to that final word and then paused, she suddenly looked away. “I just want to know in advance whether that does or not cover possible legal fees. I’m still not sure exactly what you want, but from what we did at the bookstore I have a suspicion that somewhere along the line there’s going to be the risk of being arrested. I don’t mind doing whatever it is you want me to do, but I don’t think it would be fair to expect me to pay a fine or to hire a lawyer out of my own pocket. I’m not worried too much about indecent exposure, that’s a simple misdemeanor and if you’re guilty you pay the fine and its over, but an arrest for lewd and lascivious conduct is serious. That can get pretty expensive.”

After careful consideration I said, “Yeah, I’ll cover whatever happens. I really hadn’t taken that into consideration, but you’re right in thinking it’s not fair. Just out of curiosity, but have you ever been arrested before?”

“Arrested once and cited once, but I was never found guilty and I never had to pay a fine or go to jail. I decided to fight the indecent exposure charge since I really didn’t think I was guilty. I guess I was right because the judge dropped the charge saying that I should never have been cited since arresting officer was the only one that was a witness to my nudity. Theoretically the officer was there to protect the public and since there was no ‘public’ around there was no crime. As the judge put it ‘If a tree falls in the forest and there’s no one around to hear it does it make a sound?’ The second case was for being ‘lewd and lascivious’ and it was more serious, but the judge, the prosecutor and my public defender all agreed to a ‘nolle prosequi notice’, whatever the hell that is, and the charge was dropped before the trial started.” I thought of asking her for the specifics, horny man that I was, but I quickly decided not to do so. I did, however, make a mental note to bring the subject up again after we had gotten to know each other better.

“Any close calls?”

She smiled. “You mean like today?”

“No…I mean…never mind I’ll just drop the subject.”

“Well, there was this one time when I….no, I’d better not tell you that one. You might get the right impression of me. Beside, you wanted to drop the subject, so….”

I tried to hide a knowing smile. I had suddenly discovered something about her. She wanted me to beg for the story – which of course I really wanted to hear – but I wasn’t going to fall into the trap. Instead I called her bluff. If she wanted to tell me she would, and if she didn’t, I could always bring up the subject another time.

“I’m empty. How about you? Are you ready for another glass?”

“Sure, why not?” After filling both glasses we each lit cigarettes and sat facing each other across the table waiting for the other to speak first.

“When I was in college I was a member of Delta Alpha Epsilon Sorority,” she began, finally breaking the silence, “and in my sophomore year I began sharing the rent of an off campus apartment with Toni, one of my sorority sisters. We still had all the advantages that sorority life gave us but now we had privacy too. Anyway, there was a party being given by Lambda Zeta Chi the night this incident happened and since my roommate and I were each dating Lambda Zeta brothers at the time we were both invited. There were probably a hundred and fifty people at the party, give or take, and between the two of us, Toni and me, we probably knew a hundred of them. There was a lot of alcohol being poured and as the evening progressed more and more people got shit-faced. Both my boyfriend and Toni’s boyfriend drank a lot and were early casualties. I think they had gone to their rooms and passed out, but who knows? All we knew was that they weren’t around anymore.

“Anyway, it was after midnight and about half the people had either gone home or were passed out when a few of us went upstairs to play a friendly game of ‘Truth or Dare’” I’d played this game before and I knew pretty much what to expect. It was college and we were young and full of hormones so there was a lot of showing of skin and a little groping and confessions of dirty deeds, you know the kind of stuff that goes on, don’t you? At first it was fairly tame. It wasn’t anything we hadn’t done before so it seemed OK at the time, but after we had being playing for about half an hour or so my second turn came up and I had to choose between telling the truth or taking a dare. Like I usually did I chose the dare. I didn’t really know the guy that offered it to me but he must have been aware of my reputation because he immediately dared me to take off all my clothes and run around the block naked.

“At first I was shocked that he would ask for such a thing. This was definitely a quantum leap in terms of the level of the games we’d played before. I was about to tell him no, but the more I thought about it the more I wanted to do it. I’d always seemed to be one step ahead of the other girls and it wouldn’t be all THAT much out of character. Besides, it could only help my reputation. It’s hard for me to say ‘no’ to a dare so I gave in and agreed to do it.

“I don’t think anyone thought I’d actually go through with it, so when I started taking off my clothes Toni got nervous. She tried warning me that it was too dangerous but I was too drunk to give a shit about the consequence of my actions so I didn’t listen. It was in my nature to do silly things like that and what better time to do another? If worst came to worst I could always blame the alcohol, couldn’t I? Besides, I thought that deep down Toni really wanted to see me do it and was only pretending to talk me out of it.

“I figure it was somewhere around one o’clock in the morning when I walked down the stairs and into the living room in my birthday suit. I was a little disappointed that so many of the people had already left the party, but I still received what I thought was just the right mix of stunned silence and boisterous whoops and hollers and whistles from those who were left. I acknowledged their reactions with a simple smile and then opened the front door and walked outside. Most of them followed me onto the porch in order to witness the beginning of my streak, but none of them followed me.

“The Lambda Zeta Chi Fraternity House wasn’t on Fraternity Row like most of the others. Instead it faced a main thoroughfare and the Row was one street over. The entire block that I was to run around was a long rectangle two lots deep and twelve to fifteen lots wide, and these were older homes built in the early twenties for the well to do, which meant that the lots were not small by any means. I ran at a fairly quick clip to the first corner and as luck would have it no cars had driven by, but by that time I was out of breath and I began to realize the enormity of my challenge. I knew I would have to slow down and conserve energy if I was going to make it the rest of the way without stopping since it was the most dangerous part.

“Once I’d cleared the corner I was faced with the first of the two short legs of my journey. This was a dark street illuminated only by the lights coming from the houses on the four corners. Since it was completely deserted I decided to stop and catch my breath. There was a large tree near the mid point of the block and I hid behind it while I rested. I suddenly wished I had brought my cigarettes, but I’d left them with my clothes. Nudity does have some drawbacks, you know.

“Anyway, while I rested I thought about what I was doing and I planned it all out. First I had to contend with the Row itself. It was after one in the morning, but it was a Friday night and…well, it was a typical Friday night, if you know what I mean. I knew that there would be more than just a few parties going on and I was bound to be noticed. After the row came the busiest of all the streets. Even at this time of night –actually this time of the morning - there were sure to be cars passing by, and to make matters worse there was a 24 hour Denny’s across the street from where I’d be running. If I could make it past that part I would probably be safe since I’d already done the first half of the block with no problems. Half a block and I’d be back at the Frat House.

I made the decision to conserve most of my energy for the last two legs of the run by simply jogging along the row. I mean, why waste perfectly good energy there? There were always crazy things happening on the row and I would be just one more, wouldn’t I? Besides, if no one saw me then how would it help my reputation? I squatted down behind the tree and took a quick piss, then stepped out of the darkness and walked toward Fraternity row. Unless I saw someone, I thought, why even jog?

“By the time I reached the corner my heart started beating fast and my hands became sweaty. This was the first time I’d ever done anything quite this daring and I don’t think I realized just how scary it would be. I could see there were a LOT of parties going on, far more than I had expected, and I had to run by them all. I sucked in my stomach as I started jogging.

I got a lot of whistles and cheers as I ran by the party, which made me a little more comfortable, and I made a point of either waving to them or giving them a big grin. To my great relief no one tried to follow me or grab at me so by the time I came to the next party I was simply walking fast. I was starting to get more comfortable with what I was doing and since I didn’t really mind them seeing me I decided to let them enjoy it as much as I was.

“If I remember right there were five parties along the street and I managed to get past all of them without out any problems, but right before I reached the end of the street I suddenly froze. There was a cop car parked at the corner and it was pointed my way. I turned and tried to run back the way I’d come but it was too late. I heard a short blast of the siren and then saw the spotlight shining on me as I ran. What could I do except stop?