Louis was a big guy, obese, and whenever he’d kneel on the bed for another shot, it crunched and sank. He had on a tent-sized black T-shirt and gray Nike sweatpants. He always kept his clothes on. Well, both times so far. “That’s enough pictures, Daddy.” DaBlonde shook a foot at him, making short flicking motions with her toes.
She was at least fifteen years younger than Tacko, who was forty-eight. She might have been still in her late twenties — slight, almost skinny, a pretty face that looked dairy-maid wholesome when she took off her glasses. Just now, though, she’d kept them on through everything, fellatio included.
Louis was nearer Tacko’s age. A friendly, blunt-talking fat cuckold. Tacko didn’t use the word in mockery, merely as description. So the guy enjoyed watching his wife do strangers — so what? Other guys enjoyed tramping out in the dark and bitter cold to shoot at deer. And as far as Tacko could tell, DaBlonde loved the variety. She loved it, Louis loved it, therefore no problem. Weird shit, though. Tacko was in the presence of people the likes of whom he’d never come upon before. They were like TV Martians, human-looking but deeply different underneath. Being with them was exhilarating.
Till now Tacko had been a pretty standard guy, suburban youth in the ’70s, ever-rising, ultimately tiresome career straight out of college. He went to church. Episcopal, till he was thirty-five. All told, he’d had nine sex partners (including DaBlonde), considerably less than the national average for men, which he’d read was thirteen. With his first wife, but certainly not his second, he’d watched porn, but always the tame and corny stuff. Deep Throat. Devil in Miss Jones. He’d never been to an orgy, a strip club, a live sex show, or known any swingers or fetishists, that he was aware of. So yes, hooking up with the Amboys and balling her while the husband filmed it — that was extreme sport for Tacko.
“Really and truly, Daddy, no more pictures. Do you know if there’s still coffee to reheat?”
“Should I look?” Louis tapped the camera’s on/off button and the snouty lens retracted with a tootling whir. It amazed Tacko how agreeable the guy was, like a new boyfriend or a seasoned butler. “Mr. Tacko?” he said. “If there’s coffee, do you want a cup?” Louis only called him Mister. DaBlonde, come to think of it, never called him anything. “Or do you want another glass of wine?”
“Coffee sounds great.”
After Louis went out, Tacko turned on his back, pulled the sheet over him to mid-chest, and folded his hands behind his neck. He could hear it raining, a sleety, hard-ticking persistent March rain. He could also hear muffled sax, drums, and bass surging up from the art gallery below. Some kind of fund-raiser there tonight. Noticing a photograph in a pewter frame on the dresser, Tacko did a stomach crunch to have a better look. When he lay back down, DaBlonde loomed over his face. “What?”
“Just checking out the picture.”
“That’s our wedding.”
“Really?” He looked at it again, Louis in a dark-blue suit, DaBlonde in an Easter-pink cocktail dress. Outdoors on bright green grass, a flowering tree behind them. “How long ago?”
“Last spring.” Tacko watched her remembering, her mouth shifting into a private smile. “We’re still newlyweds. Year in May.”
A year in May, and practically from day one, they’d told Tacko, DaBlonde had been fucking strangers with Daddy’s blessing. Hot Wife/Husband Watches But Doesn’t Join In. That was their lifestyle niche. They’d started playing strictly for thrills, because they wanted to and could, but then Louis and DaBlonde wondered if they might earn some income from it as well. They recorded so many videos and took so many pictures, what were they supposed to do with it all? And frankly, they could use the extra money, what with their two divorces, which they hadn’t gone into in any detail about with Tacko. A website seemed worth a shot.
Louis, who was living on permanent disability (apparently he had twenty things wrong with him), was a seasoned entrepreneur. Before he’d hooked up with DaBlonde (they’d met online, each in a miserable marriage), he’d owned a small chain of video stores in the Petersburg area, and during the dot-com boom a website where he marketed things like patio misters and mosquito lures. He’d run that business out of the family garage in Chesterfield County while holding down a good job assessing and purchasing liability coverage for a residential building contractor. It wasn’t hard for Louis to do the research, stake out their domain, take care of all that technical stuff.
The site went hot six months ago. The original version was amateurish and skimpy, offering only a few dozen nude-slash-action pictures of DaBlonde and a handful of short clips. Over time it got better, easier to navigate, and grew to include thousands of photographs and more than eighty videos. About two thousand subscribers signed up, guys like Tacko paying $23.95 per month with automatic credit card renewal. Subscribers from all over the country, she’d proudly told him. Europe, Japan, Australia, Brazil, even the Middle East. “Arabs and blond women,” Louis said once, meaningfully clenching his jaw, and let it go at that.
Tacko had never intended to contact DaBlonde, even though as a member of her site he was encouraged to. But ten days ago — the same day that Dave Sandlin of the Eury Agency telephoned out of the blue and asked Tacko to fax over his resume — he’d impulsively written her an e-mail. Saying how much he enjoyed her newest video, adding that he’d been in the same bar dozens of times, the bar where she’d picked up that stringy Jamaican guy with the white teeth. It was the Tobacco Company, wasn’t it?
She’d e-mailed him back, using emoticons and u for you, which Tacko loathed. Would he like to meet? Tacko didn’t reply. Fantasy was okay, but actually doing something? Very damn unlikely. DaBlonde persisted. She wrote Tacko again, and included two cell numbers. When he didn’t call, she wrote a third time: they would be at Siné Irish Pub in Shockoe Slip on Wednesday evening at 8:30. It would be so great if he joined them.
By ten past 8 last Wednesday, Tacko still hadn’t made up his mind.
He’d been so nervous when they met that his lips kept sticking to his front teeth. He just nodded and smiled, sipped his beer, and let DaBlonde and Louis do most of the talking. This was their dog-and-pony show. Not that either of them had dressed to impress. Louis, in need of a beard trim and a haircut (his full beard was salt-and-pepper; the hair on his large head gray, thin, and wind-blown), had come to the pub wearing khaki pants and a plum-colored knit shirt stretched over his big stomach like a drumhead. He hadn’t worn a coat. Twenty degrees out and no coat. Louis was about five-eight, but his bulk made his presence overpowering; he took up so much room! They’d stood, all three of them, talking at the bar for more than an hour. Tacko wondered if they stayed there because the tables and booths were too confining for the guy.
DaBlonde introduced herself as “Ann-dray-ah but spelt like Andrea,” and Tacko thought she looked dowdy, a little drippy, in person. At any rate, in clothes. Charcoal slacks and a pale gray blouse, black vest hand-decorated with colored glass beads. A dobby four-button jacket. She’d dressed like a third-grade teacher out for a drink — a non-alcoholic margarita — on a Friday afternoon, even though it was a weeknight, and she drank a White Russian, then a second. This is what they liked to do, she said. She looked Tacko straight in the eye. He smiled back. There was their marriage, she said, and then there was this. She gave a happy shrug. This was just a hobby they shared.
But it was a business too, said Louis. Tacko would have to sign a consent form. They would try not to show his face in videos. Louis was careful about that. However, if Tacko were recognized, they could not be held accountable.