Full Frame
32
Dog Days
“I LOVE ALL these photos,” Rebecca Drayfus said Monday afternoon. “Why can’t we use them all?”
“As much fun as that would be, we have a specific number of pages to fill. And if you go shrinking them down too much, you might as well not use them at all,” Miss Sullivan told the yearbook editor. I sympathized with Rebecca, not so much because I wanted to use all my photos, but she’d just graduated over the weekend and still had to spend time at school with the yearbook staff doing the final edits this week. Technically, the only things left to choose were graduation photos.
“I know. We’ve been over this before. But it’s such a shame to have all these photos from the year that are the coolest yearbook photos ever, and not be able to display them someplace. You did a great job, Nate.”
“Thank you, Rebecca. It’s been a fun year.”
“These are the best of the lot,” Anna said. “I know there aren’t as many as we’d like, but we’ve only got two pages for graduation.”
“Your eye is almost as good as Nate’s,” Rebecca said. “Everybody! Final photo approvals for commencement.”
The rest of the yearbook staff who were busy proofreading and cross-checking to make sure the right photos were matched with the right captions, came over and scanned the photos, all nodding their agreement. I think no one really wanted to be there for the last steps in getting the yearbook ready. I had a stack of proof sheets that I was matching negatives with. During the course of the year, photo selection had been an on-going process and I’d printed the requisite 5x7s. Nothing in the yearbook could really be any bigger than that. But I had a couple dozen that had been selected in the past two weeks to fill things out.
“I’ll tell you this,” Monica Rice said. “I wish I’d sprung for a senior portrait replacement like so many others did. The senior photos that Nate took make all the others look bad.”
I’d retaken nearly half of the senior photos and posed each one with an accompanying Attic Allure shot. It had been a profitable endeavor. But I didn’t want all the other students to feel bad about it.
“Can we just decide right now that Nate will be the official yearbook photographer next year?” Donna Reichert asked. She was the assistant editor this year and designated as the yearbook editor for next year. “I move that all senior yearbook photos be taken by Nate.”
Whoa! I was hoping they’d like things well enough for me to continue as yearbook photographer. That was fun. But I thought the school had something like a contract with the photography people for school pictures. I’d charged $40 per sitting for the retakes I did. Of course, they all included my Attic Allure portrait, too.
“That’s an interesting idea,” Miss Sullivan said. “We can discuss it further when we’re talking about next year instead of this year. Now, Nate, I believe you have twenty-one more pictures to print. How soon can we have them?”
“Thursday, if that’s okay. It’s just a lot of enlarging and developing time,” I said.
“I’m not going to get out of here before Friday, anyway,” Rebecca sighed. “I’ll expect them on Thursday at ten in the morning.”
“You should get a proposal prepared for when you meet with Miss Sullivan about being the portrait photographer for the seniors next year,” Anna said as we left the school. “You aren’t getting half what they should be paying you per picture for the yearbook.”
“I was just happy to get the gig,” I laughed. “It was really an amazing year considering what I’ve managed to do.”
“I think I’m ready to see your new studio,” she said. “I had to make sure I wouldn’t like blow up about it. I realize you are a photographer and you aren’t required to live by my rules. And I’m not your girlfriend, so I really don’t have any right to say what you should or shouldn’t do. I know there are pictures that might make me a little… um…. jealous, but I think I can handle it now if the invitation is still open.”
“I’m very proud of my studio and the work I’ve been doing,” I said. “I have a stack of prints I need to make, so I expect I’ll be spending a lot of my time there the next few days. I’d love for you to visit and if you have critiques on the quality of my work, rather than the subject matter, I’d be happy to listen and learn.”
“You’re such a proper gentleman when you’re in business mode. Let’s go. I want to see both the business and what my friend has been up to.”
We headed for the studio.
“Oh, wow! This is a lot different than that little attic room I saw!” Anna said when I turned on the lights in the new studio.
“My uncle and patron advised me to get a locking fireproof cabinet for my negatives and contracts,” I said. “When we got it here and started hauling it up the stairs, Mr. Barkley suggested that I park it on this floor instead of making it up the last flight. Then he said the room was empty, so I might as well clean it up and use the space for my studio. I still have the darkroom upstairs and most of the props are stored up there, but I got a shipment from a patron in Chicago of some new backdrops and a bunch of props he rescued from a defunct theatre group.”
“These backdrops were just given to you?”
“Not all of them. The standard photo drops that I use, I paid for. The theatre backdrops, though, were rescues. Like that one of the black with the blue abstract pattern on it. I used that for a backdrop with my first Chicago model on Sunday,” I said.
“Someone drove out here from Chicago for you to take her picture?”
“Yeah. She’s preparing a move to California and wants a full portfolio. I have a release that says I can use any of her pictures myself, but mostly I’ll make money from the prints she buys. I’d guess somewhere between one and two hundred.”
“Prints?”
“No,” I laughed. “Dollars. Between twenty and forty prints, I’m guessing. Her proofs are on the table. I’m just getting ready to go over them and make selections.”
“I want to look at them, since they are the most recent and represent a paying client from the big city. But first I want to take time to look at your gallery,” Anna said.
I waved her over to it and just stood aside. She spent a long time looking at the pictures, stopping to really focus on each one and not glancing over them. When she got to the picture of Avery under the streetlamp, which was on my desk and not on my wall, she sat and just stared at it. When she turned to me, she had tears in her eyes. I’d never seen Anna cry.
“I’m so sorry, Nate. I can’t believe I tried to make you give this up. It’s all so beautiful I can’t help but cry.”
“It’s okay, Anna. There was a lot of emotion built up for both of us that day. I guess I sort of understood later. Ronda helped explain it to me. You wouldn’t believe how protective she is of all the girls in our class,” I said.
“I’m just so glad you chose your photography instead of giving in to my school girl tantrum. We’d have ended up breaking up anyway and then we’d have hated each other. I wish…” She broke off and I was afraid she was going to say she wished she hadn’t broken up with me. But I was surprised at what I heard next. “I wish I had the courage to pose like that. I would so like to see me through your eyes. Would I be as beautiful as any of these models? When I said I was jealous, it wasn’t because you spent time with these girls while they did sexy poses for you. I was jealous that they had the courage to do those things and the trust in you that made it okay.”
“There’s really no need to be jealous of anyone,” I said. “I still have a hard and fast rule about not messing around with anyone in the studio.”
Anna went over to the table where Sarah’s proof sheets were. She looked them over and held out her hand for my loupe. After scanning them again, she started pointing them out.
“This one. Definitely the one stretched out with the hourglass. How did you think of having her hold her finger to her lip in this one? It’s brilliant!”
“That was actually Chris’s idea. She helps me set scenes and sometimes directs the model. She helps with makeup and hair, too. With the big drops, it’s really more than a one person job,” I said.
“How are you handling your accounting?” she asked.
“Oh. Um… I pretty much just take money and put it in the bank. Then I go to the bank and get a money order when I need to buy something or take out cash.”
“My gosh, Nate! You have to get organized! You said you made over $2,000 in senior retakes, right? You’re going to owe taxes. If you don’t correctly account for your expenses, you could owe 20-30% of what you take in.”
“I what?”
Well, shit! It never even occurred to me that I’d owe tax on what I was earning. It’s not like I had a job. Which I guess was the problem. No employer was withholding income tax from what I took in. And here I thought I was being so organized.
“I have no idea where to even begin!”
“Um… If you’d like, I could help you a little. I mean, I understand if you want me to keep out of your private life, but this could be serious, Nate.”
“Anna, I don’t know how to even ask you for help. I mean what kind of help to ask you for,” I stumbled.
“Well, general accounting would be the place to start. It’s only the end of May. If you can show me any records that you have, I could put together a revenue statement and we can work on compiling a profit and loss. I’ll get my dad to give me advice on what kind of business expenses are deductible. We didn’t get that far in business accounting this year.”
“Your dad?”
“He’s a tax accountant. Basically, he just prepares people’s income taxes for them.”
“I’ll need to pay you,” I said firmly. “Tell me what it will cost to have you work on my accounting. I pay Chris for helping me with photoshoots. I suppose that’s something else I have to deal with.”
“More and more complicated. Nate, the sooner we get started on this the easier it will be to get it done. You have a fantastic business here, but you need to manage the business aspect as well as the artistic aspect.”
When I got home, there was a white Galaxie 500 sitting in the driveway with the Falcon. I wondered who was visiting. It was always possible Mom had a church member or two she was meeting with, but it was almost dinner time, so I went on into the house. The family was gathering for the meal.
“Whose car is in the drive?” I asked.
“Your mother’s,” Dad said. “It was time she had a car that looked decent when she drives to the hospital and to visit parishioners.”
“You got a new car?”
“Well, technically, it’s not new. It’s a 1966 and was the dealer demo model. It has almost 20,000 miles on it. But as a result, we got a very good deal. It still has a new car warranty, and the bank was happy to make the loan.”
“Wow! That’s great, Mom,” I said. Then I thought about the Falcon still also being in the driveway. “Um… Does that mean I can have the Falcon?”
“Hardly,” Mom said. “You’ll have to share, just like always. Your dad will be using the Falcon for work.”
“Work? At Henry’s?” I asked.
“No. With all the high school kids out of school, Henry has more employees than he really needs. But I got the job at the housing development south of Huntertown. Put in a partial day today, just getting a tour and signing my W2. I’ll be installing HVAC systems in the new construction. It’s a great opportunity to use some of what I learned in Manpower Retraining.”
“That’s great, Dad! Congratulations!”
“It gets me back in the swing of things as a breadwinner. Maybe not the only one in the family, but you kids might have to pick up some of the cooking.”
“I’ll cook Saturday night,” Kat said. “Dad taught me how to make spaghetti sauce.”
“Just remember our agreement on not using too much garlic on Saturday nights,” Mom reminded her.
“I met with the yearbook staff today to get the final order of pictures. I really got surprised by Donna, who will be next year’s editor. She wants the school to contract me to do all the senior portraits next year.”
“That’s excellent,” Mom said. “Just don’t bite off more than you can chew. You still need to keep your grades up or your chances of getting into the college of your choice will start slipping.”
“Yes, Mom. Um… May I ask a business question?”
“Of course,” Dad said.
“Anna visited the studio this afternoon while we were talking about the yearbook photos. She said I needed to put together a solid proposal for the senior portraits and make sure I was being paid enough for them. She also asked me how I was handling my accounting. She said I’m likely to owe taxes this year,” I said.
“Oh, dear! Yes, I suppose you will. It shouldn’t be too much, though. You’re only seventeen,” Mom said.
“I’ll be eighteen in September,” I reminded her. “Anna said that with what I was earning, I might have to pay between twenty and thirty percent of everything I make, especially if I’m not accounting for business expenses. It kind of freaked me out.”
“She might be right. It’s a sobering thought. As Ben Franklin said, ‘In this world, nothing is certain except death and taxes.’ Thirty percent, though? You’d need to be making more than $4,000 a year for that bracket,” Dad said.
He looked at me and I just stared at him with my mouth open. He shook his head.
“You’d better talk to a tax professional.”
“Um… Anna volunteered to put together my bookkeeping and get my revenue and P&L set up. That’s profit and loss. I didn’t have any idea what she was talking about at first. Her father is a tax accountant and she was going to ask him what deductible expenses were.”
“Are you dating Anna again?” Mom asked.
“Oh! No. We’re just friends. She’s been a whiz at helping me with the yearbook photos. I’ll pay her for the work on my accounting. If we can agree on a wage.”
“Federal minimum wage went up to $1.40 in February,” Dad said. “For the first time, it applies to the construction industry. Highland Homes is offering 20% above for professionals like HVAC, and a five percent increase after six months if there’s work. Don’t know if you have to pay a teenager minimum wage. I don’t think Henry does. Seems awfully high.”
After dinner, I sat at my desk with a pencil and paper to do some figuring. No wonder Dad’s eyebrows went up at the thought that I might pay 30% in taxes. I’d have to be making more than $4,000 a year. If Dad earned 20% above minimum wage, that would put him at earning a little over $3,300 a year. If he got paid vacation, $3,500 a year. But that assumed he was working year-round. Mom made a comment about teachers being covered by minimum wage now, but preachers weren’t. I didn’t know for sure how much a new Ford cost, but it was something more than $2,000. Maybe since Mom’s car was a demo model, it was less. Still, it could be nearly a year’s income.
I needed to keep my mouth shut in school about how much I made taking pictures! I bragged that I made $2,000 taking pictures and selling prints. To most kids, that meant being able to buy a car that they didn’t need to fix. To me, it meant a year of college at any of the top tier colleges I was interested in.
The weather suddenly decided it was summer. Temperatures all week were in the 80s. The heat in the attic was stifling. But I had photos to get enlarged. I started in first thing in the morning with a big box fan running to at least keep the air moving. I even had the door open. A little after noon, three girls knocked on my door. I came out of the darkroom dripping sweat. Anna, Chris, and Ronda were all standing there.
“Hey, lover. Look what we found prowling around on the steps outside,” Chris said.
“I wasn’t prowling. I came to do some work,” Anna said.
All three girls looked incredible. I’d never seen so much of Anna. She was in a pair of shorts and a sleeveless top. Chris and Ronda were in shorts, too, with sleeveless tops that did not reach the waist of their shorts.
“Don’t tell me you’re going to pose for Nate!” Ronda exclaimed.
“No! I wouldn’t do that kind of thing.”
“Anna volunteered to help with my accounting and bookkeeping,” I jumped in. “It seems I kind of have a mess and she’s going to try to straighten it out.”
“That’s cool,” Chris said. “I should have thought of that. Though I don’t know when I’d have fit it in. It takes so much time to date Nate. I don’t have time for anything else.” She was a being a little melodramatic and I hoped she wasn’t taking a dig at Anna.
“Besides, we need to do spring cleaning,” Ronda said.
“You’re what?” I asked.
“We all decided that we could be cooler here by wearing less clothes, so we’d do a spring clean in the studio and tidy the attic a bit. I’ll bet we find all kinds of cool stuff up here,” Ronda continued.
“Um… I don’t have time to help you two today. I’ve got so many things to print…”
“We have help,” Chris said. “Anna can work on your books while the rest of us do spring cleaning.”
“The rest…?”
“Hi! Are we late?” Judy said, poking her nose in the door. I could see Janice, Pris, and Debbie behind her.
“I’m here!” Patricia called as she ran up the stairs.
“You’re all here to clean?”
“It’s the least we can do. We get wonderful photos, a good time posing, and freedom to be as um…” Janice spotted Anna and cut herself off. “Um… carefree as we want.”
The girls all slipped out of their sandals or tennis shoes and crowded into the clear space in the attic. Eight girls! I’d never had so many people in my studio space at once.
“I… um… we… uh… should go down stairs where it’s five degrees cooler,” I suggested. “Oh, crap! I need to rinse a photo!” I ran into the darkroom and grabbed the photo I’d put in the fixative tray.
“Don’t worry, Nate. We know what to do,” Chris said. “And we know how to keep cool. We’ll see you later.”
When I finished rinsing the photo in the bathroom and returned to the attic, only Ronda was still there. I could hear voices and giggles from downstairs, though.
“Hi, lover,” she said when my hands were free. She stepped up to me and melted into my arms as we kissed. “Someone needed to greet you properly instead of just overwhelming you with numbers.”
“You can overwhelm me all by yourself,” I said. “What inspired this invasion?”
“Heat. I think two or three of those girls are in it. No. I mean the temperature outside. We were talking yesterday and thought it would be fun to all invade here and basically take anything off that made us too hot while we worked on cleaning and tidying. You’d be okay with having us all running around in nothing but our panties, wouldn’t you, baby?”
“Um… You know I love that, but… You can’t mean to tell me Anna agreed to that!”
“We kind of didn’t know she’d be here,” Ronda confessed. “But don’t worry. We won’t make her uncomfortable. She doesn’t have to join in if she doesn’t want to, but I don’t think she’ll mind us having fun as long as we aren’t having an orgy or something.”
“Please try not to chase her away. She’s really being very generous to do my bookkeeping for me. I’m paying her, but it was still kind.”
“Don’t worry, honey. But you might learn some things about Anna that you never knew. Kiss me again like you mean it and you can go back to printing photos. Chris and Judy and Janice and I know where all the supplies are. We’ll probably send a team up here, but they won’t disturb you.”
“Right.” I kissed my lover and we were both pretty aroused by the time the kiss broke. I had my hands under Ronda’s shirt and she was stroking my cock through my jeans.
“I am so looking forward to our date Friday. Believe me, I’m going to take really good care of this.” She gave my cock a squeeze and ran down to join the others. I returned to the darkroom.
The next time I came out of the darkroom, I saw Judy, Janice, and Patricia working in the attic. They had their shirts tied under their breasts and were obviously braless. I figured these three were probably the wildest among the girls, so it was good to send them up here. They were organizing the space, using the former studio area to move things into while they cleaned different parts of the room. It wasn’t like cleaning the studio below. When we did that, it was a lot of space, but it was all empty. The girls had the Shop-Vac and were vacuuming and scrubbing everything they came to.
I didn’t think they’d finish today.
I emerged from the darkroom again half an hour later to wipe the sweat from my eyes. All three girls were topless. They turned and grinned at me. Judy came walking right up to me.
“I bet you never thought I’d just come into your room and strip and waggle my tits at you without even having the excuse of posing,” she said, matching the action of her tits to her words.
“No. I have to say I never imagined that. What happened?”
“The first time Pete got his lips on my nipples, my world outlook changed. I liked it. A lot. Now I play with them all the time. And if we’re making love, I have to have him start by playing with my nipples.” Then Judy surprised me more by grabbing my hands and putting them on her chest. “Squeeze them a little for me, Nate. Then I’ll go back to work.”
This was certainly different. Judy had asked me to pinch her nipples once before so they’d be clearly visible in the photo with Pete. At least that’s why she said she wanted me to pinch them. The studio was downstairs. She wasn’t modeling. I didn’t think we’d actually have sex. I squeezed her breasts and pinched at her nipples until they were hard and rubbery. Then I lightly rubbed them with my thumbs.
“Oh, yeah. I might need a refresher later on. Thanks.” She pulled away from me and turned to join the other two. On the way, she pulled her shorts down and tossed them aside where I saw the stack of shirts. Then she went back to work in just her panties.
I needed a break. When I left the darkroom about three-thirty, Judy, Patricia, and Janice had been joined by Pris and Christine, and all five were wearing nothing but panties. It was quite a sight to behold and when Chris saw me, she walked up to me and kissed me, pressing her body up against mine.
“We’re almost finished in the studio, so Pris and I came up to help here. This job is going to take us more than one afternoon.”
I nodded as I tried to be subtle about caressing her breast. It looked like they’d hardly made a dent in the massive amount of stuff in the attic.
“I just need a short break and thought I’d go down and look at the studio, and see if Anna needed any other papers.”
“You do that. You’ll be impressed.”
I went downstairs and was definitely impressed. The room hadn’t sparkled so since the day we opened it two months ago. Ronda was in bikini bottoms and nothing else. She immediately ran up to me and gave me a hug and kiss while I took advantage of her unclothed state.
“Friday, lover. Friday there will be nothing in your way. You’ll have all of me.”
“You are so luscious. I can hardly wait.”
“Look at all we got accomplished!”
I looked around the room. The curtains had been pulled aside and I was sure the windows had been washed. Debbie came out of one of the bathrooms with her hair tied up in a bandana. She must have taken my comment about her granny panties the last time she modeled as a sign that I wanted a better view of her ripe round bottom. She was wearing just a pair of bikini panties that covered very little.
Then I looked over toward my desk where Anna was diligently writing down numbers on a columnar pad. My mouth gaped open. She was just in her bra and panties. I moved quickly to her.
“Anna, you don’t have to join in these wild girls’ antics,” I said. She squeaked a little as she looked up at me.
“It was… uh… hot. In the room, I mean. I just… Don’t think this means anything.” She was panting slightly and I didn’t think it was all from the heat in the room.
“I just want you to know that this is not a requirement to come to the studio and you don’t need to copy the other girls for my sake. I think with the end of school they just wanted to bust loose a little.”
“Yeah. Don’t worry about that. Ronda was really nice about explaining everything to me. She even said she’d never taken her top off with anyone but you and Chris, but she felt really free to do whatever she wanted here. She said I should feel free, too, but not to feel pressured and to let her know if I thought anything was going too far.”
“Okay. Well, I just came down to see if you had everything you need. I mean papers and stuff.” I couldn’t help myself from looking at Anna while she sat there. There was nothing fancy about her bra, just a standard bit of white armor. But I could see all the way down between her breasts and the gentle slope from the top of her boobs into her bra. Even in my wildest dreams while we were dating, I hadn’t imagined her this uncovered.
“I had to get into the files to get the model releases. There are some interesting pictures you don’t have on display in the gallery.”
“For good reason,” I said, a little panicked. “They either don’t have public releases or…”
“…Or they’re under eighteen. I get it. I mean, I don’t think any of the girls here in the studio or upstairs running around in just their panties or less are eighteen yet.”
She took a minute and looked up at me and then stood to face me.
“I doubt you’ll ever see more of me than what you can see right now,” she said, refreshing her blush. “So, you might as well look and file it away in your fireproof safe with other things you don’t let anyone else see.”
She stood straight and I could see the pressure points of her nipples against the bra. I could see the texture change under her panties where her pubic hair began. Her panties were briefs, but nowhere near the bikini cut of Debbie’s. She turned around and I appreciated the ripple of muscles in her back and the shape of her round bottom. The heat in the room suddenly seemed like too much. When she faced me again, I could see there was a little moisture in her eyes.
“That was a moment I will treasure for the rest of my life, Anna. Thank you for sharing something so precious with me. Let me know if you need anything else for the paperwork.”
“I have a stack of things you’ll need to go over with me and describe,” she said. “Maybe it will be… um… cooler tomorrow.”
I smiled at her and turned to go back to my printing. I heard her whisper as I walked away, “Or maybe not.”
I really didn’t get much more done. Within half an hour, we were all ready to quit for the afternoon. I was sure it was eighty-five out. Everyone got dressed and Chris called the girls together. Then she turned to me.
“We all want a soft drink. You could spring for that for all of us, couldn’t you?” she asked.
“Heck, yeah. Shall we go downstairs and I’ll buy a couple six-packs?”
“They wouldn’t be cold,” Ronda complained. “Let’s go into Huntertown.”
“All nine of us? I’ll have to see if I can borrow Mom’s car and someone else will still have to drive.”
“I’ve got the Belvedere,” Chris said. “We can put the back seat up and all fit in the wagon. I’ll drive.”
It was quickly agreed. With the third seat up in the wagon, we could manage to fit all nine of us with three in front, four in the back seat, and two in the rear-facing seat all the way in the back. I was shoved into the middle of the front seat with Christine driving and Ronda on the passenger side. We drove in to Dairy Queen and I got all the girls whatever they wanted. Seemed like sodas were forgotten as ice cream treats were ordered.
Wednesday and Thursday proceeded in much the same way, though the work in the studio was pretty much finished. Chris checked my schedule and saw Pam set for a shoot on Sunday afternoon. She roped Patricia into helping her decide which drop to use and what props to set up for the shoot. That way, Anna wasn’t alone on the third floor while the other girls ran around cleaning and organizing the attic.
They didn’t start stripping until they’d talked to Mr. Barkley about moving some of the shelving units that were still on the second floor up to the attic. He came up to see what they were doing and was impressed with how well the girls were cleaning and organizing. After he gave his approval, he relocked the gate to the first floor and opened the one to the second floor. As the girls moved things and cleaned, they gradually began to lose their clothes again.
I went to check on Anna and answer some questions about the value of the space and my equipment. She was again shocked to find I wasn’t paying Mr. Barkley any rent for the space.
I was shocked to find her once again in her bra and panties. This time, the bra was a little lacier and not as heavily structured. I tried not to stare at Anna’s chest. There were plenty of other bare chests around that I could stare at to my heart’s content.
Thursday, Lori showed up at the studio and wanted to ‘help’. With Lori, that meant that she walked into the attic and stripped off all her clothes. She picked up a rag and started washing the windows at the front of the attic. I thought that was pretty daring, but figured it was unlikely that anyone would be at an angle where they could see into the fourth floor window. Even if they were, it was so bright outside that they would be unlikely to see through the windows for the reflection.
I came out of the darkroom with my camera and ended up taking two rolls of film of all the girls I had model releases for except Chris. The other seven girls were all too happy to stop in the middle of a task and pose for me.
Friday, all the girls took a break and I settled in to select photos for various projects. I’d delivered the yearbook photos Thursday afternoon, so that task was done. I was late, but not by much, and while I hated to miss Rebecca’s deadline of 10:00, the extreme heat this week had made working difficult! That and the extreme nudity all over the studio. I still had the pictures of Sarah to sort through and nearly a hundred full frame photos I hadn’t had time to sit and analyze yet.
It was a short-lived endeavor. The studio seemed really empty with none of the girls buzzing around it. The attic had been cleaned and straightened with similar things in similar locations and the room swept and scrubbed. I couldn’t believe how much work had been done. And they seemed to have fun discovering things.
“This can of sardines must be at least thirty years old!” Pris had exclaimed.
“At least we know whatever is in the tin would smell as bad today as when it was canned,” Janice snarked.
In all, they had a good time.
But it was ninety degrees by noon on Friday and looked like the temperature would continue to rise. I went home to get my swim suit.
“Mom? Can I use your car to go to the river?” I asked.
“No, dear. I’m about to leave for the hospital in Huntertown. Mr. McGregor had a stroke.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. Tell him I hope he’s better soon.” Mr. McGregor must be seventy-five or eighty years old. He always sat in the front row at church so he could hear better. Heart of gold, though. He often helped others by offering to mow a yard or provide a ride. I wasn’t sure I wanted to ride with him, but it was nice to have him offer.
“Your father is at work and won’t be home until after five. I’ll pick up chicken in Huntertown for dinner. It’s too hot to turn on the stove,” Mom said.
“Take me to the river,” Kat demanded of me.
“That’s a good idea. It isn’t that far. You can walk,” Mom said.
“Let’s bike,” Kat offered. She grabbed my hand and led me out to the garage, from which I’d been banned the past few weeks. We went in and she proudly waved a hand at my bicycle. It was beautiful. Every trace of purple had been removed and the paint had been touched up where necessary. In addition to the gold piping down the frame, neat script declared ‘Nate’s Shadow.’ It was beautiful.
“Kat, this is unbelievable! You did such a beautiful job. I don’t know how to thank you.”
“Take me to the river so we can cool off!”
I quickly agreed. We got changed, grabbed our towels, and pedaled out of town.
A lot of kids and several adults had the same idea, including my girlfriends and the other girls who had worked at the studio. There were even some moms there with their children and kids of all ages. I noticed that the studio girls had camped out on the opposite shore. I told Kat I planned to join them and she shooed me away while she ran to join her friends.
“You’ve got your bicycle back!” Patricia called.
“Yeah. You should see it up close. Kat worked really hard on it to get the purple off and restore the finish. It’s beautiful.”
“I’m going for a ride,” she said as she headed into the water and across the river to grab my bicycle and take off. It was quite a sight to see her bikini clad bottom up in the air as she pumped at the pedals. Several people noticed.
“Boy, she sure was excited about your bicycle,” Anna said. She was also wearing a two-piece swimsuit, but it was considerably more conservative. It was almost like a pair of shorts and a top. It actually covered a lot more than I’d seen her in earlier this week. It was nice, though, that her navel just peeked above the waistband. It drew my eye.
“Yeah. I think the only reason she became my model was so she could ride my bike.”
I kissed Chris and Ronda in a blatant public display of affection. We weren’t in school and there was no PDA rule at the river. We didn’t go any further than that kiss, though. There were a lot of children around. I noticed some of our classmates, though, were watching and had never seen us really together like that.
Judy and Janice were both in two-piece suits this summer. A little tighter and higher cut than last year’s. Pris had a suit with shorts and a very brief top while Debbie had the opposite with a full cut top and briefs that were cut to expose her very shapely butt cheeks.
“Hey, where are all the guys?” I asked, looking around the beach area. There were mostly girls with only scattered teen boys.
“At work, silly,” Pris said. “Boys all work during the summer so they can take us on dates in the winter.”
She said it so matter-of-factly that it sounded like an accepted social convention. Boys went to work so they could take girls out for dates. I guess I did that a little. I mean, that wasn’t why I worked, exclusively. I had goals. New equipment, college, and maybe a car. And dates. I had to admit that I liked having a little extra to spend on dates above the five dollars a week my parents gave me. I needed to rethink taking an allowance this year.
“Don’t girls work?” I asked.
“What do you think we did all this week?” Chris laughed. “Do you think just because we were naked, we weren’t working?”
“No! I mean. I really appreciate the job you girls did on the studio and the attic. Really! Was I supposed to pay you? I didn’t come prepared. I mean, uh… you know…”
“You took us out for ice cream,” Anna said.
“That doesn’t seem like a very fair wage,” I said. And, of course, I was paying Anna. I paid Chris ten dollars when she helped on a photoshoot. I paid Janice twenty dollars for posing for Henry’s calendar. But all the work everyone did on cleaning and organizing didn’t seem to be adequately compensated for.
“We didn’t expect anything for helping in the studio,” Judy said. “In a way, we were just there to bust loose and be free in ways we could never do anyplace else. You don’t think I run around wagging my tits in the air asking boys to suck them all the time, do you?”
“Did you suck her tits?” Ronda demanded.
“No! I sort of… um… pinched her nipples a little,” I finished, lamely.
“No fair,” Ronda said. “I want to pinch your nipples, Judy.”
“Huh?” Judy gasped. “Um… um… you’re not a boy. Um… I suppose I should stick to Pete playing with my nipples. But I did kind of want Nate to suck them. It wasn’t like we were modeling or anything. Except during that little time when he took pictures yesterday. But that wasn’t like a real modeling session.”
“Hmm. Well, if Nate wants to suck your nipples, I suppose it would be okay,” Chris giggled. “But really, you should share them with all of us.”
“Back to the subject,” Anna said. She was blushing scarlet at the very thought that I’d pinched Judy’s nipples and that Ronda and Chris wanted to. “I personally wouldn’t mind another ice cream treat if you feel guilty about working all the girls so hard. Not like it’s a date or anything, but you could take us all to Sweet Treats tonight. I saw Mr. Lewis making ice cream this morning. That always means he’ll be open around six.”
“Wait!” Chris said. “Nate already has two girlfriends and he treats us like queens. I don’t think it’s fair to ask him to take us all out for hot fudge sundaes at one time. Can we take turns or something?”
“Tonight’s my night to date Nate,” Ronda declared firmly. “I will hereby forgo any activity that costs money for our date tonight and will even chip in five dollars toward taking care of all the other girls.”
“It’s okay, everybody. When we leave here, I’ll take you all to Sweet Treats, since Ronda so kindly offered to keep all our activities tonight cost-free. It’s your date, baby. Is that what you want to do? Take all these other girls out for ice cream?” I asked.
Ronda answered by getting my mouth in touch with hers and falling back so I was lying half on top of her while we kissed.
“All the other part of the date was just to fill time until we got to this part,” she whispered to me. “You’ll make love to me tonight, won’t you?”
“You’d better believe it,” I whispered. “I love you.”
We pulled ourselves together and saw all the other girls fanning themselves. I thought maybe I should take a swim and settle other parts of my body down. While I was in the water, Patricia returned with my bike and was immediately confronted by Kat. I rushed out of the river to rescue her.
“It’s okay, Kat,” I said as I rushed up. “I gave her permission to ride my bike.”
“I know,” Kat said. “This is motorcycle girl. I’ve been looking at her picture in the garage for the past month while I worked on your bike.”
“She was just asking me if I’d do another garage pose for you on your bicycle so she could have a copy. I said sure,” Patricia said. “The weather forecast is supposed to be cooler tomorrow. How about if I come over around three. Tony usually works on the farm until five. We don’t have a whole lot of time together this summer since he’s working with his father on construction during the week and the farm on Saturdays.”
“Three o’clock tomorrow in the garage will be great. That was a good idea, Kat.”
“I want a really nice photo like you took on the motorcycle,” Kat said. She turned to whisper to me. “Nothing against Chris and Ronda, but Patricia is really pretty. I almost took the picture from the garage to my room.”
“Oh!” I said. Well, Kat was eleven years old—almost twelve. There was nothing wrong with her having a little infatuation with an older teen girl. “Do you want to direct the shoot tomorrow, so you’ll be sure to get what you want?” I asked.
“No. I want to be surprised. Besides, I asked Mom about watching you photograph a model and she said that might in… um… inhabit her.”
“Inhibit. Yeah. Mom’s pretty smart about that stuff. We’ll make sure you get a really good photo.”
Patricia and I waded back across the river and I caught her up on the plans for the evening. She said Tony might join us, but I didn’t need to buy him a sundae.
Please feel free to send comments to the author at devon@devonlayne.com.
