to be in my video,” I lamely offered.
“You’ve got a lot of nerve. I should turn you over my knee right now,” he threatened.
“I don’t mind.”
“Oh, you’ll mind.”
“Don’t you like her for the magazine, though?”
“Yes, but what the hell is she expecting from me?”
“She will probably try to seduce you,” I admitted, thinking it was best to forewarn him.
Hugo shook his head in amazement. “Here’s what I don’t understand,” he said, “are you pimping your friends out to me or are you pimping me out to your friends?”
“I perceive I have been in error,” I said, bowing my head.
“I’ll ask Michael if we can shoot in his bar tomorrow morning. He can spank you friend and I’ll take the pictures.”
“Good idea!” I agreed happily. I love Michael Flagg!
It is disturbing how little I am missing Castor.
Hugo took us to the bookshop for coffee and gave most of his attention to me. This may have been to discourage Thalia. I noticed he never met her eyes. But he couldn’t avoid laughing at some of the outrageous things she said. Nor did she scruple to shake him down for weed before we left the village. He gave us some and sent us on our way, telling us to meet him at Michael’s tavern tomorrow morning at ten.
We went down to the tip of the village that is rimmed by a tiny strip of rocky shore. The snowflakes began to fall thicker and faster now and started to stick to the ground. We smoked the joint Hugo gave us and stared into the water. Then we walked over to the dress shop a friend of Hugo owns and bought a couple of fitted dresses with kick pleats to wear tomorrow. They were expensive but Hugo told me to have the bill sent to him as it was for his shoot and we could keep the dresses. The owner of the shop, Damaris, (who is married to Laura’s ex husband William, who knew my mother), made a great fuss over me as Hugo’s just-surfaced daughter. Then I found out that this dainty Damaris is also Michael Flagg’s ex wife! Is it the spanking scene that is so incestuous or just this Random Point clique?
“I wonder if Hugo’s fucked that hot little chili pepper,” Thalia said to me as we stood outside the shop under the awning waiting for Susan to pick us up. The sun was going down and it was turning too frosty for comfort in our thin woolen coats.
“I’ll ask Susan. She knows all the local dish,” I told my new friend. I got Susan to talk plenty last night. We made a big fire in the library hearth and sat around it for hours drinking wine and nibbling on toothsome snacks from the pantry. After becoming moderately baked, Thalia admitted it might be thought a bit perverse, her being hot for her friend’s dad, but she couldn’t help it, she had developed a tendre for Hugo after reading his stories and looking at his photos in the magazine.
Susan told her not to feel constrained. It wasn’t as though anyone here even knew about my existence until two months before. So even though he was technically my father, the whole thing seemed unreal. Except for our uncanny resemblance. “He belonged to the scene long before he belonged to Amanda. And he’s had every woman in it, why should you be an exception?” Susan encouraged Thalia. Then Thalia wanted to know if Hugo had had her and Susan told us some very interesting things about Random Point, which had been a scene magnet ever since Hugo had bought the shop and settled there twenty years before.
“The summer before I started college I stayed with my sister Laura and her then-husband William here in Random Point,” Susan explained. “William had answered Laura’s personal ad in Hugo’s magazine. He started courting her while Hugo was in Europe and by the time Hugo got back, they were already married. Hugo was somewhat resentful at having lost his opportunity with Laura and this made him irascible for some time. Laura brought me to see Hugo several times, since I was of age and just out in the scene. When he noticed that I found him fascinating, he used me without apology, to bring Laura to him. He was a lot more demanding in those days. One night when I was at his house with Laura, he took us down to his wine cellar and fucked me right in front of her, just to see if we both would put up with this, and we did.”
Thalia demanded details and Susan replied, “He bent me over a trestle table and just pulled up my skirt and took me.”
“Like in a porn?” Thalia pressed her.
“Exactly like.”
“And he’s fucked other women that you know?” she persisted.
“Almost every one,” Susan replied with conviction. I was proud!
“But it was years before Hugo got my sister as a girlfriend. She was very hard won. Now he seems interested in marrying her.”
“All the more reason to sew a few more wild oats first?” Thalia asked.
“Couldn’t hurt,” said Susan.
I felt compelled to relate the conversation I’d had with Hugo earlier, about how he wanted to stay focused on Laura and how peeved he had seemed at my throwing my nineteen-year-old friend in his path.
Thalia thought it cute that an inveterate slut like Hugo should suddenly become so romantic and go out of his way to avoid free teenaged pussy. Susan said it was proof he had evolved.
Thalia wanted to know if either Laura or I would be disturbed if she, Thalia made a successful play for him and got him to fuck her. Susan said that Laura would be in Boston all day and over night so she’d never know unless Hugo told her and he probably wouldn’t. I assured her that I regarded Hugo as more of a glamorous legend than a blood relation and that I had no emotions invested in his sex life. Personally, I don’t think she’ll get anywhere at this point, but maybe I’m not giving her enough credit.
December 5th, Evening
I’ve definitely not been giving Thalia enough credit. She managed to accomplish her goal within an hour of arriving at Michael’s bar. She had her outfit and makeup on perfectly when we arrived so she didn’t have to go in the back like I did and fuss with anything. When I came out, properly dressed as well, Hugo was setting up lights and Michael picking out a bottle of expensive champagne to use as a prop for the photoset. Thalia was sitting on the bar swinging her shapely legs, punctuated by high heeled ankle strap closed toe, shiny black patent leather shoes. I noticed her staring at Hugo and now and then, he’d look up at her because he was lighting that area first. Then, rather unbelievably, I saw Thalia make an ok sign with the thumb and forefinger of her left hand and repeatedly begin to insert the index finger of her right hand into the circle it made while continuing to fix an intense gaze on Hugo’s face. I looked at him and saw him blink in disbelief then shake his head at her with a grin. Thalia looked deadly serious as she tapped the dial of her watch, held up five fingers and then jerked her thumb towards the back of the bar, apparently confident that he’d understand what she wanted, when and where. He looked at her for a few seconds more, still shaking his head. Then he seemed to change his mind and shrugged quite casually before continuing to tinker with his c-stand for exactly five more minutes. At this point he straightened up and strolled towards the back rooms behind the bar. I looked up and saw Thalia was already gone.
I went to engage Michael in a conversation to distract him.
“How lucky for us you were available this morning,” I told him.
“For me,
