for the use of the movie camera.'
But, overhearing their conversation, Frank came bounding through the doorway, 'Hey, Stephan. Just want to tell ya that we're gonna have a little fun here later tonight. Tell Gillian that if she'd care to come along, she's more than welcome. Taffy should be here and one of the actresses, too.' He shrugged his shoulders, 'You know, a little drink and a few instant cameras. Nothing special, just a little fun.'
'Thanks a lot, Frank, but Gillian and I were planning to…'
'Aw, come on. Maybe I can give you a few pointers.'
'We'll see.' Stephan was halfway to the door when he suddenly remembered the camera. 'I've got the camera in the car, you know the one you lent me yesterday and I forgot to bring it in.'
'That's okay, brother. Save it. I have a feeling it's gonna come in handy for you and Gillian in the near future.'
When he unlocked his car door, Stephan knew that there was no use kidding himself any longer; he was going to take Basil's suggestion about leaving the film in a place where Gillian would be sure to find it, he would have to leave the viewer out in plain sight. Feeling a strange coupling of guilt and mounting excitement at what he was about to do, Stephan drove to a small neighborhood park three blocks away from his home and turned off the motor.
Christ! he thought, am I really going to have the balls to show these to my wife? With trembling fingers, he opened the white envelope and glanced at the obscene black cassettes again. His prick seemed to jerk spasmodically in his pants as he remembered the lewd, tremendously stimulating acts being performed in the full color splendor of the cassettes. The ones that had really turned him on the most were those that had depicted oral fucking: soft feminine mouths closed eagerly, hungrily, over the lust-hardened cocks of their husbands; masculine lips and tongues paying devoted homage to the warm secret cuntlips of their wives. These he would put on top, so that they would be the first ones Gillian would see when she placed them on the viewer; maybe they would convince her of the beauty, of the rightness, of sucking cock and pussy.
He started to put them back into the envelope when a sudden frown creased his forehead and he stopped. Some of the other cassettes, besides those depicting oral fucking, were pretty animal and raw for the innocent eyes of his wife; instead of being turned on, being interested and excited by the films as he intended, she would probably become angry from viewing such blatantly carnal acts as ass-fucking and three-ways and four-ways. He couldn't include those films, not now, not for a while yet-just the milder ones, the ones showing a man and his wife screwing in all the possible ways.
Quickly, he sorted out the cassettes, putting those he deemed too daring for Gillian's mild taste in a separate pile; the rest he shuffled back into the white envelope. Then he got out of the car and with a wide grin on his face, threw the rejects in the garbage can.
With a smile of perversity, he jumped back in the car and headed home.
Gillian was in the back yard weeding the flower bed when he got home that afternoon.
'Hi, honey!' he called from the living room where the plate glass door was slid open, emitting the warmth of the July Sunday afternoon.
The kind of afternoon where everything seemed in slow motion, lazy and blissful.
'What have you been doing, Stephan?' Gillian tried to sound calm and relaxed to disguise the anger in her voice. Sundays had always been a day to be spent together and shared, but this morning Stephan had left the house, not even bothering to awaken her, and left a note. 'Be back soon.' No explanation, no phone number where he could be reached. He had to be up to something surreptitious.
'Oh, just went over to Frank's studio…' He took a long swallow of his cold beer, and that seemed to oil his throat muscles somewhat.
'Why don't you come out here so I can hear you?' Gillian pulled at an obdurate vine that would not loosen its hold around a bush. 'Just a second.' He waved his arm and then slipped off to his study where he put the envelope on top of the bookshelf. Obviously this was not the time to confront his wife with such matters. He could tell by her metallic voice that she was disturbed by his abrupt departure that morning.
'Any phone calls for me?' he asked boldly, offering her a cold beer which she gratefully accepted with a gloved hand.
'Just one from your partner, says you stood him up for golf. Sounded a little angry.' She went back to trimming the rose vine, her beer can precariously perched on a fence post.
Stephan tilted his head back and took a healthy swallow of icy beer.
Christ! How am I going to tell her I'm leaving again tonight? I really would like to go back over there to the studio and catch a little of the action. I won't get involved, just sit there and watch. Gillian should be able to understand that I need to be around people in other fields than business. Christ, it gets to be a bore sometimes, listening to all that shop talk. It's time I start broadening my interests before I'm too old to enjoy such things as film-making.
'Gillian.'
She lifted her head, her large-brimmed straw hat framing her angelic face, so innocent and trusting. With just a bit of flush in her cheeks she looked like the young eighteen-year-old in the photos, now safely tucked away in his office. For Gillian had the same rare, wide-eyed look.
'Gillian, I've decided to take some film-making classes,' he began.
'I'm getting tired of reading nothing but Fortune and U.S. News and World Report, you know? Like you've got your garden,' he said expansively, stretching his arms to encompass the small back yard scarcely larger than the living room-except for the swimming pool.
'But all I see all day is fat, paunchy businessmen. Frank has agreed to give me a few pointers and get me started.' He looked down at his wife, waiting for her negative response, the same predictable response whenever Frank's name was mentioned.
But it didn't come.
'I'm going over there tonight to start. I met this guy who's got a film laboratory, you know, processing and editing animation, and he says he'll give me a real deal on any work I give him. Film-making is expensive, you know.'
She stood up, took another swallow of her beer, and bent down to resume her weed pulling, her motions interrupted only once when she pulled off her right-hand glove to yank back a strand of blonde hair that had escaped her hair clip.
'Well…' he said expectantly.
'Well what? I think it's great, Stephan. It'll take your mind off dirty cheap pictures for a change.'
She sat on her haunches, picking through the ground cover. Gillian felt a small sense of foreboding, as if there was something Stephan was not telling her, as if there was some other motive behind his sudden interest in movie films. She thought back to the previous evening, and to the films Stephan had taken of her-with her dress hiked up and her panties showing; thought back to how excited he had been, how obviously aroused by the sight of her posing so provocatively before the eye of the movie camera and in its sixty-second lasting capture of it. A small involuntary tremor coursed through her soft young body. She must never let Stephan do that again, take movie pictures of her naked like that; it was wrong and wicked and it had no place in a happy, fully consummated marriage such as theirs.
'Honey,' he began, caution in his voice. 'Let's go out to eat and then I'll bring you home before I go over to Frank's studio. There's a movie you can watch on T.V. tonight, supposed to be a real thriller.' he added with a note of encouragement.
And judging from her response, it was a perfect idea.
They enjoyed a leisurely dinner at a well-known French restaurant not far from their suburban home, and Stephan managed to steer the conversation to many things of little consequence, so that Gillian would forget about last night, this morning, and what he was about to do that night. Her anger subsided with a full stomach and several glasses of excellent French wine. By the time they left the restaurant and went out to the car she was relaxed. The Mercedes swerved into the driveway and he kissed her, promising he would not be late. She whispered in return, 'Come home early and fuck me tonight, Stephan darling.' He promised he would, kissed her again, and said goodbye, feeling once more that odd mixture of guilt and mounting excitement as he backed the car out of the driveway.
All the way to his brother's studio and all during the time he was with his wife Stephan kept telling himself he
