Beginner Model

The suite was Mandy’s doing — she had toured four hotels in person, and the confirmation had come with a note: From both of us. Happy birthday, old man. Mandy’s husband Dennis got there first, cased the light, and was checking the tree the hotel had placed per her instructions when Jess knocked, twenty minutes later — garment bag over her shoulder, snow melting in her brilliant curly red hair, wearing a sundress and Crocs. In December. In the snow. She was all curves and fearless smile, the kind of woman who made a sundress look like a decision.

The sundress hit the hallway floor before the door finished closing. “Happy birthday,” Jess said. “Your wife gives good presents.” Then she was on him, naked — full embrace, her breasts pressed hard against his shirt, a kiss with everything behind it, her tongue finding his like she’d been thinking about it all the way over. Catching him completely off guard. That was Jess: turn up the heat when she knew she would get a rise out of somebody. She always knew.

“Jess — “ he managed. “The hallway—“

“Empty,” she said, stepping out of the Crocs. “And if the hotel camera caught it, so what.” Not a flicker of embarrassment. The woman had a bumper sticker on her Jeep: why aren’t we naked yet? She didn’t just enter rooms — that was how Jess entered life.

“Billy says Merry Christmas,” she said, “and don’t bring me home tired.”

“I’m making no promises to Billy,” Dennis said, and took the bag, and hugged her again like she was family. Which she was, in every way that counted except the paperwork. Jess was Billy’s wife and Mandy’s best friend. Mandy was his — a state away in Charlotte on bank business, SVP of Loan Operations, arranging her husband’s December birthday from a hotel room with better lighting.

The suite was exactly what Mandy had promised without describing: big windows gone dark with December, a jetted tub you could have held a meeting in, and in the corner the six-foot Christmas tree, lit — big enough to pose with, the whole corner reading like somebody’s living room instead of a hotel. Jess stood in front of it with her hands on her hips.

“She’s good,” Jess said.

“She’s the best,” Dennis said. “Don’t tell your husband I said so.”

“He knows.”

Dennis set up the way he always set up — cameras first, before anything else had a chance to become self-conscious. Two of them, small, unobtrusive: one set wide for a review tape, one closer in for mood. He had learned years ago that the video kept him honest. The stills were the work; the video was the memory of the work, and sometimes, late at night, the memory was the point. Jess didn’t watch him do it. She had stopped noticing the cameras years ago, the way you stop noticing a wedding ring — which, he noted with the part of his brain that never clocked out, she was wearing, and would keep wearing. Some things you didn’t take off. The ring in the frame said this woman is loved, and that was half the photograph.

“You want the tour?” he asked, when the red lights blinked.

“I want to see what Santa brought,” she said, and unzipped the garment bag like a woman unveiling a plan.

“Wardrobe,” she announced. “Courtesy of your wife’s shopping trip.”

Out it came, piece by piece: a French maid outfit, all black and white and attitude. A Miss Santa — red and white and not particularly interested in being clothing. Christmas lingerie in green and gold. And at the bottom, folded with something like apology, a pair of Grinch pajamas.

Dennis held them up. “How do we make these sexy?”

Jess tilted her head, considering them the way you’d consider a math problem. “We don’t know yet. That’s the project. We’ll figure it out when we get there.”

The only thing she did in the bathroom was hair and makeup — door open, still naked from the doorway. Dennis leaned against the frame chatting while she worked, and shot stills the whole time, especially when her arms went up. There was a constant theme with that. Dennis was a boobs man, and arms above the head did things with gravity that no lighting rig could.

Then the Miss Santa lingerie went on. When she stepped into the set, the tree lights were doing things to her skin that no softbox he had ever owned could do, and Dennis forgot, for one unprofessional second, to pick up the camera. He just took her in.

They worked the way they always worked — which was to say it barely felt like work. Jess knew his rhythms and he knew hers; she knew when he wanted stillness and when he wanted motion, knew the difference between his hold it and his don’t you dare hold it. The Christmas set built itself: Jess against the tree, Jess in the window with December behind her, Jess laughing mid-frame because he had said something stupid, which he kept, because the laugh was the truest thing in the room. The ring caught the lights in half the frames. Good. Let it.

Then he directed her, the way he did when the set needed heat and not just beauty. The Miss Santa poses were the real thing first — the over-the-shoulder look, the hat tipped low, every naughty-list cliché in the book, executed with total commitment — and then slow, because slow was always hotter. The red-and-white came off a piece at a time, and Jess took her time with it, looking straight down the lens like she knew exactly what the man behind it was thinking. Which she did — she could see it in his face, in the way his hands tightened on the camera. “Slower,” he said, his voice rough, and she went slower, and the camera loved her for it.

By now she was mostly undressed: white thigh-highs and black lace-up boots, like she might need the boots to go walking. Dennis found the whole thing amusing, the utter lack of usefulness of it, and sexy as hell. Which was, he suspected, exactly the point.

The candy cane was totally Jess’s idea — she had brought it as a treat for Dennis — oversized, striped, ridiculous, the kind of prop that either made the shot or ruined it. It was exactly the right size, Jess observed — right up until it wasn’t. She took the candy cane in her mouth and stroked it slowly, staring directly into the camera, and Dennis got the shot, and it was a shot.

Then she hooked her thumbs in her panties, slid them off, and shot them at him rubber-band style — thwap, right in the chest, the way she always did. Looking straight at him — with intent to embarrass, and it worked — she carried the candy cane to the bed with plans. It was working its way into being a dildo, as intended, right up to the moment it would have gone in — peppermint about to be felt instead of tasted, both of them wondering what it would feel like in her pussy. That’s when it broke into pieces. The candy cane itself refused to be a sex toy any longer.

Everybody stopped for one genuine second. Then Jess stared at the wreckage, and then at Dennis, and the laugh that came out of her was the filthiest, most joyful sound in the room, and he shot through all of it, because that was the photograph.

The boots came off without ceremony — nobody lingered over boots. But the thigh-highs were a production: Jess rolled them down slow, and Dennis shot every inch of it. Stocking removal was a sexy event all its own — installation, too — and they both knew it. Then the maid outfit went on — right there, as part of the shoot. No disappearing into the restroom to change; everything happened in front of the lens. The French maid — the outfit doing exactly what it was built to do. Jess played it theatrical: the curtsy that wasn’t quite a curtsy, the over-the-shoulder glance, the whole the master will see you now routine, executed with total commitment and zero shame.

And then the feather duster came out. First the maid made the bed — bent over it, looking back at the camera, all sexy, playing it straight. Then she started undressing, and the duster went to work with her: teasing strokes between her legs as the maid outfit came off piece by piece, the solemn professionalism of a woman dusting a high shelf never wavering. The duster shed feathers all over the set like it was snowing indoors. “This is why we can’t have nice props,” Dennis said, shooting through the laughter.

“Keep going,” Jess said.

Naked Jess in bed — except not naked: black stockings, black pumps, and the maid’s little white panties. Pumps on a naked woman in bed — ridiculous, and sexy. Then the panties came off and faithfully found their intended target. Jess settled back into the pillows and opened for him — slow, deliberate, the feather duster tracing lazy lines down her stomach, between her thighs, everywhere but where it mattered. Eyes on the lens the whole time. This wasn’t the shoot anymore, not really — this was foreplay, and she was letting him watch her think about later. About him, later. The duster circled lower, teasing, promising, never arriving. No insertion, thankfully — Dennis had been a little worried about the wood, more than he had been about the razor-sharp candy cane, and the thought flickered through the part of his brain that was still working, which was getting smaller by the second.

Dennis lowered the camera.

He hadn’t decided to. The shoot had rules, and the rules had held all afternoon, and then Jess looked at him — really looked, past the lens — and the rules filed their protest and lost. He crossed the set and held out a hand, and she took it, and he helped her up out of the bed, and then she was against him, naked, her skin hot from the lights, arms around his neck, and the kiss had everything in it the doorway kiss had promised and then some — deep, hungry, her hips pressing into his.

His hands found their way home. On her breasts — full, warm, the nipples hard against his palms. Between her legs — she was wet, she was so wet, and she made a sound against his mouth, low and wrecked, that nearly ended the shoot right there — and then, through the haze, he remembered: the Grinch.

“The Grinch,” he said.

Jess started laughing. “You’re thinking about the Grinch now?”

“It’s the next wardrobe change,” he said, still half in the dream state. “Somebody has to.”

She kissed him once more, quick, and stepped back, and the haze thinned, and they were a photographer and his model again. Mostly.

Between setups she padded around the suite barefoot and naked, drank his water, and perched on the rim of the tub, swinging her legs.

It was the ease of it that got him, every time — this was Billy’s wife, this was family, and the camera had never once made it strange. That was the miracle Mandy had arranged without ever calling it that: she had taken the strangest thing in the world and made it the most natural.

The Grinch pajamas came last — they had saved the problem for the end of the shoot. Full staging: Jess on the coffee table in front of the big mirror, thoughtful angles, total commitment — and the two of them discovering it together, in the same moment: it was just not sexy. Some costumes fought the camera and some fought the woman, and the Grinch pajamas fought everybody. She caught her own eye in the mirror, saw the look on her own face, and Dennis shot three frames of the failure and kept all of them, because the outtakes were the story.

“Private ones now?” Jess asked, when the set was done.

“Private ones now,” Dennis agreed.

Jess went to the window, December dark behind her, the tree lights catching in her hair. She didn’t pose — she just stood there, naked, looking out at the snow, and Dennis shot her the way he’d shoot a woman he loved. Which he did. One frame. Then she turned, and the look on her face — soft, unguarded, entirely without performance — was the most intimate thing he had shot all day.

“That one’s ours,” he said quietly.

“Ours,” she agreed.

The private ones were just for the four of them — him, Jess, Mandy, and Billy. Mandy would see them on the drive and smile the particular smile she smiled when her arrangements came off. No forum, no portfolio, no audience. Just the record of a weekend that had happened, kept by the people it had happened to.

It was midnight, and Dennis had the water running. The Grinch pajamas never made it that far — they had been abandoned on the coffee table where the shoot had given up on them, ignored like the bad idea they were. Jess was nude in the bathroom, touching up her face. No robe. Getting Jess to stay covered between sets was a battle Dennis had lost back at the Sterling, and he hadn’t bothered fighting it since.

The tub shoot started the way shoots start: Jess alone in the water, Dennis working handheld — the D800 in his hands, just him and the viewfinder.

The plan had included keeping Jess’s red hair dry. The plan was failing — every setup ended with her hair wetter than the last, through no fault of the posing, which was professional.

Then she invited him in. That was how she rolled — no big announcement, just a look and a hand held out, and the solo shoot was over.

Dennis set up the tripod — he couldn’t hold the camera once he was in the water with her — sealed the remote trigger in the baggie, and shucked his clothes onto the bathroom floor. The D800 was on the tripod in the corner, wide shot, waiting. Every so often Dennis thumbed the trigger remote through the Ziploc baggie and the shutter clacked: stills of the two of them in the tub, candles, wine, tree lights. That was the method: the stills were the work, the little video cameras were the memory. Dennis held the baggie up out of the water like a man carrying a sacrament, and Jess was laughing at him.

“It’s an off-brand remote, Dennis.”

“It’s my off-brand remote.”

“You’re going to drop it in the tub.”

“I’m not going to drop it in the tub.” He repositioned the baggie. “Probably.”

Now it was couples poses, the two of them together in the water. That’s when the interruptions started. After an evening of performing, Jess was done performing, and she got frisky — a constant interruption Dennis didn’t mind. Not even a little. The posing kept dissolving. Every time he framed them she moved, the water moved, her hair got wetter, and eventually he gave in: the little video cameras were the documentation, their red lights blinking because by then everybody wanted them to, and the tub stills were private anyway. Mandy would see the tape. That was the point. That had always been the point.

He tossed the remote trigger aside and found Jess with both hands. She was wet in the tub, and his fingers slid easily into home.

It had been their agreement since the Sterling. Dennis had brought Jess in months ago — as a model, through the forum world, the way these things started — and Mandy had just happened to join in at the Sterling. That was the weekend everything changed shape: Mandy invited herself into the middle of it so she could enjoy it, and moved the whole relationship along to where it was now. Her scouting hotels in person. Her arranging the weekend. Their rule was simple, and it wasn’t about the cameras: nobody kept anything from anybody. That was the whole difference between this and cheating. The recordings were the fun part — everybody got to watch, everybody got to enjoy what the night had been. Mandy had understood it before Dennis did: cheaters hid the tape. They sent a copy to all four.

They loved each other, all four of them. That was the part nobody outside the arrangement ever quite understood.

Billy got his copy same as everyone else. Billy Schmitt — ex-Army, horse farm, trauma nurse’s husband, the kind of man who had looked Dennis over once, months back, measured him the way soldiers measure men, and nodded. Don’t bring her home tired, he’d said tonight. He always said it laughing. Underneath it, every time: I trust you with the most important thing I have. There were men Dennis had deployed with that he trusted less.

Jess — Billy’s wife, family in every way that mattered — had never once treated any of this as complicated. That was her gift. The camera, the tape, the whole strange arrangement: to Jess it was just what people who loved each other did.

The water had cooled a degree while he remembered — the candles burned lower, the wine stood forgotten on the tile, and Jess had not stopped. She had kept moving through all of it, hands sure under the water, unbothered by history the way she was unbothered by everything.

Dennis didn’t have a prayer slowing her down, and didn’t try.

What followed was the part of the evening that never made the portfolio and never would.

Candles on the rim — Mandy had arranged them, like everything else — and the wine breathing on the tile, and the jets sounding like a small weather system. Jess sank in with a noise that was half laugh, half surrender. She stretched out along the far side, water beading on her shoulders, her hair piled up and coming loose in the steam. Dennis watched her over the rim of his wine glass — not through the lens, not working, just looking. She caught him at it and smiled, slow, and slid one foot along his calf under the water.

“Careful,” he said.

“Of what?”

“You know what.”

She laughed, low, and did it again, and the jets churned. The tree lights did their quiet work in the corner. The shoot was ending. The night was beginning.

She had ambitions involving the water and anatomy that physics declined to co-sponsor. The underwater attempt at giving Dennis a blow job failed the way the candy cane had failed — with everybody laughing too hard to be embarrassed, Jess coming up for air and sputtering, grinning, utterly undeterred. “Physics,” Dennis said. “Physics,” Jess agreed darkly.

His phone buzzed on the tile, right on cue. Are you having fun.

He showed Jess the screen. She grinned.

Back in your room? he typed. Alone?

Just got in, she wrote. Why.

Want a quick video call?

The answer came fast: Yes.

He propped the phone on the folded towel, angled it right, and Mandy’s face filled the little screen — Charlotte hotel room behind her, hair down, wearing the smile she wore when her arrangements came off.

“Well,” she said. “There they are. The results of all my hard work.”

“Best birthday present ever, Mandy,” Jess said, leaning into the frame, water beading on her shoulders.

It wasn’t all hi-and-waving. They performed a little — for her. Dennis took a nipple fully into his mouth and sucked, hard, and Jess responded with a gasp she didn’t have to fake, arching where Mandy could see, her hand fisting in his hair. Verification, delivered on camera: you did well. Very well.

“Show me,” Mandy said, her voice lower. “Let me see what I made.”

Jess shifted in the water, turning so the phone caught her — the wet shoulders, the beads running down between her breasts. Dennis’s hand spread flat on her stomach, sliding lower, and Jess’s breath hitched where Mandy could hear it.

“That’s my girl,” Mandy murmured. “Both of you. That’s exactly right.”

Mandy’s eyes went soft and dark at once. “Love him,” she told Jess. “Wear him out for me. Me and my battery-powered friend will be thinking about you two tonight.”

“We’ll be thinking about you too,” Jess said.

“You did good work,” Dennis told her quietly.

“I know,” she said. “Don’t stay up too late.”

They dried off and left wet footprints down the hall like a trail of evidence.

The bedroom was where the night got unhurried. The tree lights threw color on the ceiling through the open door. The little cameras kept their red lights blinking — by then everybody wanted them to, and that was its own kind of heat: everything they did, Mandy would see. Not as surveillance. As invitation. Look what you built, the tape would say. Look what your arrangement made.

They laughed as much as anything else, at first. That had always been the thing about Jess — the laughter wasn’t the break from the sex, it was the engine of it. At some point the laughter stopped being the point, too, and what was left was slower and quieter and entirely theirs: her hair stuck to her cheek, his hand finding the small of her back like it had its own memory, the two of them moving together with the ease of people who had stopped needing to impress each other a long time ago.

When Dennis finally ran out — out of stamina, out of jokes, out of everything — they showered together, half asleep on their feet. Clear glass shower. Dennis made one half-hearted attempt at sharing the night — fresh memory card, a video camera pointed at the glass — knowing Billy liked his skills in the wet room, and switched it off after. Then they fell into the bed like dropped luggage. Jess was snoring softly before he found the light.