Jolee Blon'. photo by Marco Patino.
The model had disappeared into the bathroom with her bags of panties and pushup bras and five-inch heels. He liked his models with a little meat on them, but it took careful arranging to make things smooth. He could see why the fashion ran towards rail thin. With a skeleton, you never had to worry about a sexy swell of flesh bulging against a garter, messing up the clean lines of a shot. But he enjoyed the challenge.
He’d worked an Army formal the night before. All of those handsome Mexican and black kids, a smattering of white guys, sloppy drunk by the time they posed before the cheap backdrop with their dates. The girls had shellacked hair and too much makeup and because the photos he took of them would never be art, Miguel actually saw them as people and they made him sad. They deserved better than what they were getting. Boys who didn’t know how to draw out a woman’s beauty, but only how to suck it up. Boys who would go off to a war with no spoils. And kill and be blown to pieces but not die. And come home barely patched up and that much angrier than before.
By the time the bathroom door opened the game had ended, replaced by freestyle motocross, the announcer’s voice rattling like a keychain. “90 seconds seems like a long time, but when you’re out on the course it goes by really fast. You got to get as many tricks in as you can.”
The model emerged with the confidence of a woman who knows her aesthetic. She didn’t ask for his advice on her outfit, either. She didn’t need it.
She wasn’t like the underweight women on the catwalk, ovaries surely shutdown from lack of body fat, pussies prematurely dry for want of estrogen. This was a real woman, juicy and firm, with a full bottom and D-cup breasts. Black lace panties, fence-net hose, knee-high boots with heels, black bra, a silver horseshoe necklace settled in the hollow of her throat for luck. Smoky eyes, pink lips. A tramp stamp covered her lower back—a phoenix rising from the flame of her crack–but the bright colors looked good. None of it was anything he hadn’t seen a hundred times before. But she made it different.
He shot her against the wall, facing him, legs spread. A whip slung around her shoulders. When she bent forward with her fists pulling down on the whip, it dug into the ample flesh of her breasts.
Miguel pulled the chair near her, stepping way back before she perched on its edge.
“Let’s go with your knees apart. A little further apart. That’s good. Yeah, that looks better.” He’d read an interview with a famous Hollywood actor once. And the actor was saying sex wasn’t his thing so much. All his energy, all his drive, he put into his acting. He wasn’t queer, either. But maybe—every once and again—that actor worked with an actress so good that she pulled his attention away from the camera.
Next Miguel had the model straddle the chair. For a minute—with the sight of the chairback rising between her legs–not a single word came to him. Not the vision of a shot. Nothing. There was only this woman, in her silly outfit, in this cheap hotel room. And he wanted something more for her. And he wanted something from her.
He made himself do his job.
“Kind of take the same pose, but angle yourself that way. Now reach down for this foot. There you go right there. Excellent. Perfect. There we go.”
Nothing but the camera clicking.
He couldn’t help himself. “Mr. Natz sent you.”
It wasn’t a question. She didn’t answer.
“You one of his girls?
“He’s paying you, right?”
Miguel dipped his chin slightly. Fair enough.
A long moment later.
“It’s been two years.” She looked straight into his eyes as she said it. He didn’t quite understand the challenge there. “How many of Natz’s girls you photographed?
He considered. “Maybe twenty. Maybe more.”
“You ever think how we get to be his girls?” He hadn’t. A beat. She continued. “That an experience you can picture?” He couldn’t.
Perhaps he should have.
Some people believe that because they aren’t guilty, they are innocent. Roxy could see Miguel was of that class.
She did not agree.
“I was a kid,” Roxy said, “everyone in the neighborhood knew this big bully Fernando robbed the owner of the Paki Mart on the regular. Didn’t just take his money. Pistol whipped him, too.
“We saw Fernando walking down the street towards the Paki Mart, we’d scatter, even if we’d been headed that way. None of us ever called the cops. Assistant DA could’ve dragged us into court himself and we would’ve turned deaf and dumb. None of us wanted Fernando after us.
“But it got to where any customer opened the door to the Paki Mart, the guy behind the counter would start quivering a little. After awhile, we could see he wasn’t every gonna really be right again.” She paused. “See No Evil, Hear No Evil. Ever think that’s its own brand of evil?”
She smiled on the last sentence. Fluttered her long lashes at him.
He couldn’t really follow it–all that talking–not with her right there in front of him.
When she disappeared into the bathroom for a costume change, Miguel moved the chair, then pulled out one of the beds, laid it down. She came out. Now a black bra, white trim, white garters. Black thong, black stockings, patent leather pumps. He shot her lying on her back, propped on her elbows, heels digging into the mattress, chest arched, head dropped back. Then he photographed her on all fours.
Talina. photo by Flat Black Photography.
It conjured doggy-style, but there was nothing canine about her.
He showed her the digital image.
“I like the shadow,” she said.
“Now change outfits.”
She didn’t look over her shoulder before entering the bathroom.
But she didn’t close the door behind her, either.
“It’ll all come down to the next semi-final bracket,” the announcer said.
Miguel set down his camera and grabbed for the remote. He’d never cared for motocross.
In the cramped bathroom, Roxy tugged on thigh highs, the kind with elastic at the top to hold them in place. She would’ve needed help to hook her other pair of garters, and she wasn’t into asking for help. Her panties were hot pink and see-through. Bra pink. Black pleather skirt on top. A different pair of five-inch heels, these with a peep toe. The nails of her toes a ruthless blood red.
Gorgeous and Thompson rolled up into the Motel 6 parking lot.
“That’s his little rice burner.”
“You sure?”
Gorgeous gave Thompson a look, already pulling on medical gloves.
Stay tuned for Part 3, the last installment of “No Innocent Man.”
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Tom
Really? Tom DeShazo……I love when Piker's show up on here. BJack