Never in his entire life had the young cameraman heard such language spoken by a well-brought up young married woman, and his erection wilted a little from the sheer shock of hearing his own sweet wife's voice use these obscene words. But the gyrations of her nakedly panting body were too fierce to be resisted, and he quickly regained his rigidness and treed to oblige, sliding in and out of her a little more rapidly and kissing her under the ear, something he had heard that women found hopelessly erotic. But even this bold move seemed to be inadequate.
"Be rough with me," she had pleaded, her eyes glazed and unseeing. "Hurt me if you want to!"
"But I don't want to," he had replied, perplexed at this strange behavior, not having the remotest idea of how to go about hurting a woman, even had he wanted to.
Then, unexpectedly, her body had gone slack and she had burst into a torrent of tears. Matt had continued to glide gently in and out of her, but they both saw that it was useless. Feeling as if he had somehow failed, the young husband took his timid orgasm and carefully withdrew from her lust-ridden form, deciding that he would probably never really understand women.
Later, she had thrown an old robe around her shoulders without bothering even to put on her underwear, and flung herself unhappily in front of the fire, chain-smoking despite the fact that she knew perfectly well it upset him to see her smoke. Matt had taken his usual place in the easy chair in front of the fire and told her about the high points of the pro game he had video-taped in Saint Louis, but even this had failed to arouse any apparent interest in her. Imagine not being interested in a pro game!
They ate a quiet dinner without much conversation, and then she bathed and dressed to go to her charity meeting. While she was putting on her dress, Matt noticed a series of scratches on her back and legs, and considered asking her if she had fallen down the stairs, but given her strange mood, he decided it would probably be better to say nothing. She left without saying goodby.
It came to her in a blinding flash of brilliance as she signaled for a taxi to take her to the studio. Agard was blackmailing her into doing these sordid roles in his even-more sordid films, and she had falsely assumed all along that there was nothing she could do about it. But there was! She suddenly realized what had been obvious all along, that she could blackmail him right back, in fact, blackmail her way right out from under his iron domination. These films were certainly illegal, in fact, criminal offenses and an anonymous telephone call to the local chief of police would land Mr. and Mrs. Agard in trouble up to their ears. She would do this one last film, only if he promised that there would be no more in the future. After this, he had to leave her alone, because it was obvious that she could not go on fooling her husband forever. And Phil Agard was getting careless, scheduling a film at a time when Matt was in town, and forcing her to invent that ridiculous pathetic story about knitting mittens for the refugees.
Now, she had Phil where she wanted him, she was convinced! They would have a little talk tonight before the shooting began and get matters straightened out before the first scene. When tonight's work was over, she would be a free woman, and she could go home and start picking up the pieces of her shattered life.
That was a bad scene with Matt, she thought unhappily, recalling their unfortunate attempt at love-making. I'm going to have to educate him a little in the fine acts of keeping a woman satisfied. Maybe there are some books down at the bookstore that I could leave lying around the house.
"This is it, lady," announced the cabby, pulling up in front of WRT-TV and turning on the lights. "Pardon me for asking, but you ain't an actress, are you?"
"Why no," Lynn responded hurriedly. "Whatever made you think that?"
"I can't remember where, right now," confessed the cabdriver, "but it seems to me I've seen you in a movie."
"Must have been someone who looks like me," snapped Lynn in irritation handing the man his fare. "I've never been in a movie in my life!"
"I wonder where it was," the cabby persisted. "I could swear it was…"
But Lynn had slammed the door and was walking quickly towards the front doors of WRT-TV, wanting to get well away from the man before he remembered precisely where he had seen her: a pornographic video-tape. This was another good reason to get away from Phil as soon as possible. A couple more of these skin-flicks and everybody in town would be recognizing her and all sorts of unpleasant complications could arise.
"Is everything ready?" Agard wanted to know.
"Will be by shooting time," confirmed Lenny. "The boys are working on the set now and they'll be finished in a couple of minutes. I figure we can start taping right after the midnight newscast. That okay with you?"
"Sounds fine," answered the TV producer, leaning forward to light his wife's cigarette. "You got your lines memorized lovely?"
"You know I do, baby," purred the tough brunette. "But I don't think anybody's going to be looking at poor little me in this flick. Our little friend Lynn should be the center of attraction."
"Speaking of Lynn, where is she?" Lenny wanted to know. "That dumb blonde ought to be here by now."
"She'll be here," predicted Agard confidently. "She knows she's in too deep to back out now. And besides that, we've done as neat a job of corrupting that chick as I've ever seen. She's still trying to salvage her conscience, poor little bitch, but she's gotten to the point where she gets turned on only by the rough stuff. And with nobody but that flatfooted husband of hers to turn to for satisfaction, I expect she's all set and ready to go for our little experiment tonight."
"How much are you going to tell her about the scene we're gonna shoot?" Lenny inquired, lighting a fresh cigar.
"Same as last time," instructed the producer. "Nothing, or at least nothing true. I don't suppose we can use the story about everything being simulated again, so Kelly here can just explain that there'll be a simple fuck scene with Rick. I don't think that will upset her too much."
"Wait till she sees who her partner is going to be!" laughed Kelly in cruel anticipation.
"Oh yeah, how is the big ape, anyway," Agard wanted to know.
"Freddy's fine," responded Kelly. "He's downstairs now looking at things and walking around drooling as usual. Good thing he doesn't have to remember any lines. I've never seen anyone so stupid in my life. I don't think he really understands what's going on, but when we told him he could fuck a beautiful girl, he made happy noises, so I guess everything is going to be all right."
"Everything's got to be all right," said Agard sternly. "We've got a lot of money riding on this flick."
Gene was a happy hippie. He had long dirty hair and sandals, and all the marijuana he could smoke, and to top it all off, a job where he could sit and listen to records all night and still get paid for it. Gene, among other things, was the night watchman for WRT-TV, and his sole responsibility was sitting in the control booth until the announcer had finished giving the midnight news, and then flip the switches which would close down the transmission system for the night. Once an hour thereafter, Gene was supposed to walk around the studio and check to make sure everything was quiet, and the rest of the time, he could play rock and roll records on the studio's turn-table and smoke marijuana, the two things he loved best in the world.
Recently, Mr. Agard had been working late in the shooting studio, and Gene had been told to stay out, which further reduced his responsibilities and gave him more time to indulge in his two favorite pastimes. But Gene had a certain sense of duty, and he bravely refrained from getting high on marijuana until after the news, fearful that if he got too stoned, he might forget to flick the switch and let the television studio transmit dead air all night long, a tremendous waste of money.