I hit the remote for the stereo, and “Short Change Hero” flows from the speakers. The music fills the emptiness, offering the illusion that I have an actual life and I haven’t just been going through the motions since my discharge. I thought I was doing fine, making progress, but all it took was one taste of her to drive home what’s missing.
Leo is standing in the corner that faces the south windows, which I’ve staged as a photo set. The walls are adorned with more of my professional shots, and he’s inspecting each one with keen interest. I get a vague thrill that he’s here, which manages to dull the edge of frustration Celeste left me with—not just sexual, but emotional too.
“You didn’t tell me you had a fucking porn studio, dude.” Leo points at one of the photos, which is an action shot of a woman on all fours, mouth open, in the throes of an orgasm. She’s in sharp focus while the man nailing her from behind is in shadows and slightly out of focus. He has a fistful of her hair and is riding her like there’s no tomorrow. Leo glances between the photo and the antique, brocade-upholstered sofa that sits under the window in a patch of sunlight. It’s the same piece of furniture that the couple is fucking on in the photo, and I can see the pieces fall together in his mind.
“Is that you?” He points to the man in the background of the photo, whose face isn’t visible.
“I don’t fuck the models, man. Nah, they’re just friends who run an erotic blog and hire me to take photos of them fucking. I don’t do videos unless they ask.”
He scrutinizes me for a second, then browses the art again. Finally, he shakes his head. “I guess you’re right. He doesn’t have any ink. Are these for sale?”
“You can buy prints on their website. These are just part of my portfolio. Are you ready to get started?”
He looks at me with a level of respect that wasn’t there last week. “You’ve been holding out on me. No wonder you get all those pendejos to pose for you if you show them these.”
“I have photos just as good downstairs, and it’s the porn that you pay attention to?” I shake my head and chuckle, then head to the storage cabinet and pull out my gear.
I’m still wired from seeing Celeste, my mind in overdrive while I set up my tripod with my digital camera on top. My neck prickles and I glance up to see Leo staring at me with a frown.
“You okay? Or are you just that serious about shooting my tattoo?” He wanders toward me, hands on his hips.
I huff out a breath, cursing myself for getting so lost in thought but pleased he cares enough to ask. “I’m fine. I need you to sign that form first, then we can get started.” I jab my finger at the waiver laid out on my coffee table. Leo heads over and settles on my sofa, leaning over to read. After a few minutes he says, “No shit. This says I get paid. You didn’t say anything about that. How much? The number’s blank.”
“That’s up to you. If we just do the tattoo itself, then I use it to promote the shop and that’s it. I’ll pay you fifty bucks. If you’re game for a full-length photo shoot with body oil and costumes and props, I’ll pay you based on how much time you’re in front of the camera. Fifty an hour. It’s all in the contract. We’ll just fill in the numbers when we’re done, or we can set a timer. And if you hate all the shots, we rip that up and I delete the files. But you’ll love them, so we don’t need to worry about that.”
His eyes widen. “Fifty an hour for a few snapshots? Do those prints downstairs sell that well?”
“When they’re digital, yeah. Half-naked, tattooed bangers are a hot commodity in digital stock. You can never have too many. Just fair warning, if you don’t want your face on a romance novel cover, I can frame the shots so you can’t see it.”
His wheels are turning as he sets the pen down and stands up, pulling off his shirt. He gives me a wide grin. “Hell yeah. Where’s that oil?”
Leo’s in rare form now that I’ve put the idea in his head that he could wind up on the cover of some best-selling smut. The truth is that I get paid far more for the erotic art shots hanging on my wall than the stock images. The couple in those images, James and Sequoia, are internet porn celebrities, their website bringing in mid-five figures a month, so they pay me well when they come in for shoots once a month to keep their rabid fans happy.
On a few occasions, they’ve thrown me a bone and invited me as their third, which I only said yes to after figuring out James was bi and I’d be the meat in their horny little sandwich. They even have a few unidentifiable photos of me on their site, tangled up with the pair of them while my camera was set on a burst timer. I made a point to wear a long-sleeved shirt in all the shots
