“Such a gorgeous day for pictures,” Newman adds as they cross Decatur Street and move up the steps to the top of the concrete seawall. Over his shoulder, James notices a young man checking out Helen’s rear as they climb the steps.
He’s probably getting a good view, James thinks and feels a rush again. They cross the streetcar tracks to the wooden moonwalk atop a smaller levee next to the river. A warm breeze, smelling of coffee from one of the nearby wharves, tousles Helen’s hair and lifts her skirt momentarily. Moving to an open bench, Helen sits. Even with her knees together, James can see her underwear. He and Newman snap a photo and Helen goes into model mode, moving her feet up to the bench, showing off more of her panties.
James feels his heart pounding in his chest as several men move closer to watch. Helen drops one leg off the bench to show her crotch to the peering eyes. Smiling broadly, she playfully toys with the buttons on her blouse, unfastening the first two to reveal most of her cleavage. James and Newman both take pictures.
Suddenly, Helen stands and buttons her blouse. James turns to see a cop slowly approaching. Thankfully, he’s looking at a passing ship on the river. James takes his wife’s hand and leads her back up the moonwalk.
“James, Helen,” Newman calls out as he follows, “would y’all like to go up to my place for some wine? I live in the Pontalba House.”
“The Pontalba House, huh?” Helen smiles again. “Never been in there.” For an instant she remembers watching the workers build the old apartment house, laying the red bricks, hoisting the pieces of the lacework balcony.
“It’s the oldest apartment house in North America,” Newman adds.
“What kind of wine?” Helen’s flirting now. James squeezes her hand and she squeezes back, smiling even wider.
“I have a wine room.”
Once a small closet, Newman’s wine room is at the end of the long hall just inside his second-story apartment. He pulls out a bottle of French cabernet and motions them into the wide living room with its french doors opening to the balcony overlooking Jackson Square.
Pulling out the bottle’s cork, he lets it breathe while he shows off the living room, neatly decorated with a mix of antique love seats, a modern sofa, an oriental screen, mahogany tables, oil paintings on two walls, the third with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves of leather-bound books. James catches a scent of lemon polish in the immaculately clean room.
“Delicious,” Helen says, sipping the wine.
“The light in here is nearly golden,” James says. Helen takes the hint and sits on the sofa, posing for the men. She kicks off her sandals and pulls her feet up on the sofa. Lying back, she spreads her feet apart for the photographers.
James feels a growing hard-on and is forced to adjust it. He sees Helen catch him, winking as she does. Newman lets out a long breath as Helen pulls her skirt up to show her dark mat of hair plainly visible now through her sheer underpants.
“You are truly beautiful,” Newman gushes as he moves in for a closer picture.
Finishing her wine, Helen poses in different positions, always showing her panties, her face getting more flushed as James and Newman hover around her, snapping pictures.
Refilling her wineglass, Newman asks, “Why don’t you finish unbuttoning your blouse?”
Helen takes the glass from him and sips it, her eyes lingering on his as she shakes her head. Stepping to one of the mahogany tables, Helen poses next to it, lifting the back of her skirt to show her ass. Away from the golden light of the french doors, James turns on his strobe unit as Helen continues moving around, posing for the men.
Returning to the sofa, she glances at her watch, then looks expectantly at James.
“Well,” James says, “guess we’re running out of poses.” He tugs up his jeans, feeling the reassuring weight of his Beretta.
Newman quickly refills Helen’s glass and hands it to her with a gleam in his eye. “Y’all want to see something truly exquisite?”
“Sure.” Helen takes another drink of wine.
Newman leads them back into the hall to the far end where a pinkish red daybed sits beneath a large mirror.
“Nice.” Helen shrugs, her heart suddenly pounding. She masks it with a calm question, “What’s exquisite about this?”
“I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.” A smirk crosses Newman’s face as he reaches to the side of the mirror and pushes something. Hidden lights illuminate the mirror and James hears a whirring sound. Slowly the mirror moves downward behind the daybed to reveal a painting in a gold frame. James keeps his face from reacting to the color of the painting as shades of magenta are revealed by the slowly descending mirror. He sees Helen’s face is also expressionless.
The face in the portrait comes into view. James feels the hairs stand on the back of his neck as he stares at the long-missing Degas, the Nude in Magenta. It has been so long since he’s seen the portrait and that familiar face and even more familiar body captured by the master. The critics who call Degas’ work icy objectivity are certainly wrong with this painting.
In tones of pinkish magenta, the nude woman reclines on a magenta daybed, much like the daybed lying beneath the picture here in Newman’s hallway. She lies on her back, her legs extended, and looks longingly to her right as if her lover stands there, just off the painting. Typical Degas, James thinks, as if he’s peeking at this woman, instead of her posing for him.
“It’s . . . magnificent,” Helen says, stepping closer to the portrait. Her face softens as she relives the pleasant memory of when she had lain on the daybed and the intense look on Degas’ face as he painted her during that long, steamy summer of 1872 when he lived in that wonderful mansion on Esplanade Avenue with his mother’s family.
Degas was a shy man but a keen observer of people. Helen remembers him taking her home, not by cab, but by streetcar. “I love to ride the streetcar,” he told her. “I can look at people. We were created to look at each other, weren’t we?”
This is the Degas she remembers, the great insecure man whose paintings were sometimes painted as if the subject did not know he was there, as if they were not posing, as if he were looking through a keyhole.
James stares at the portrait. The hairstyle is different but Helen’s face hasn’t changed. Her lipstick is darker today.
“Truly magnificent,” James says.
“She’s not so bad herself,” Newman answers as he leers at Helen’s backside. James smiles.
As if mesmerized by the texture of its strokes, Helen unbuttons her blouse and tosses it aside. She unzips her skirt and drops it behind her, then climbs out of her panties to stand with her back to the men. James takes a picture of Newman taking a picture of his wife’s naked rear.
Newman moves frantically, snapping pictures, as Helen whispers to herself, “Oh, Degas. You always liked me best when I was naked.” A vision of the great artist peeking at her from behind his canvas. Such a determined little man, he showed much more imagination in his art than in bed.
Running her fingers through her hair, Helen turns and faces them, her face nearly glowing with the big turn-on, being naked like this again. Both cameras bathe her with white strobe light as the men focus and photograph her.
Reclining on the daybed, Helen assumes the same position as the magenta nude. Her breasts more full than the woman in the portrait and her skin more tanned now. Back then a woman’s body was rarely exposed to the sun. Helen looks to her right, directly at James as he carefully focuses and takes a picture. Her nipples are erect, her pink areolas so inviting.
Both men hurriedly reload their cameras and take another picture of Helen posed as the woman in the portrait before she starts moving around on the daybed. Opening her arms and legs, she lies spreadeagled for them, then curls on her side, then rolls on her belly. Kneeling on the daybed, Helen poses, then climbs off to pose on the carpet.
James hears his own heavy breathing as he moves behind Newman to take a quick picture of the Nude in Magenta without Helen in the frame. He takes anot
her to be sure he has it, then returns to photographing his nude wife.
Helen crawls away from the daybed, then rolls on her back as Newman stands between her legs. He snaps a picture and James snaps one as Helen inserts a finger into her pussy. Her hips rise to her fingering as the men photograph her.
Helen rolls on her belly, rises on all fours, and continues crawling away.
James turns around, carefully focusing on the Degas, and squeezes off another picture. Suddenly, Helen scoops up her clothes, stands, and begins dressing.
Newman looks at James, then back at Helen as she zips up her skirt and puts on her blouse.
“How about some more wine?”
“We have to go.” Helen’s voice is deeper, filled with passion.
“Whatever for?”
Helen reaches for James and pulls him close for a long French kiss.
“We have to go!” Helen is nearly breathless as she steps into the living room for her sandals. Passing Newman on their way out, she adds, “We have to go home and take care of this. This turn-on.”
“Y’all can do it here.” Newman waves to his sofa, camera still in hand.
Helen turns back to Newman and brushes her lips across his.
“See ya around,” she says as she leads her husband out.
Bounding down the ancient stairs, James tells her, “That was so damn hot!”
“You’re telling me?” Helen fans her blouse and exhales loudly.
Driving straight home, James rubs Helen’s breasts and fingers the wet lips of her hot pussy. Helen sighs and grinds her hips to his fingering. He keeps her high and hot until they get home.
They fuck on their sofa. Frantically at first, then in long, penetrating, loving strokes. Helen comes quickly, as usual, bucking against James, pulling the orgasm from him. He gushes in her and lies atop her for long moments.
Then slowly, they start a second round, the way Helen likes her seconds, very softly. He moves his mouth down to her breasts to nibble each pointy nipple, to run his teeth across them, to suck them. He kisses his way down to her navel, rolling his tongue into it, then kisses his way down to her bush and round to the softness of her upper thighs. He can smell the scents of their sex, her pussy juices mixed with his semen. He flicks his tongue across her clit and she shivers and starts grinding her hips again.
“You like that, little girl?” He rubs her clit with his thumb, slipping his middle finger deep inside. She shudders and pumps her hips to his fingering.
“He took pictures of you fingering yourself,” he reminds her, and she gasps. He reminds her how yet another man has seen her naked, how she caused yet another stranger’s erection to throb in his pants. Then he reminds her of the other spectators and how they gaped at her.
Helen pulls him up and inside and they go for long seconds, her face enraptured in pleasure, James working hard, and it’s magnificent.
As always, once she’s properly stimulated.
They fuck again, later that evening, after returning from their favorite one-hour developing center. The young man behind the counter grins mischievously as the pictures come out of his developing machine, starting Helen’s juices flowing again, causing James’s dick to stir and harden.
The following Saturday morning, Helen presses the buzzer below Judge Frederick Newman’s apartment.
“Yes?” Newman’s voice echoes through the intercom.
“It’s Helen.”
“Oh! Come on up.”
The door buzzes and James pulls it open for his wife, two uniformed New Orleans police officers, a crime scene investigator, and Detective Nelson Dante, a huge man with mahogany skin, a shade darker than the fine tables in the apartment upstairs.
As the column of people moves up the narrow stairs, James watches Helen lead the way in her extra-short, denim mini-dress, so short the full rear of her pink panties is exposed to the men behind her.
Detective Dante, pulling legal papers from his coat pocket, moves next to Helen as she taps on Newman’s door. James can’t see Newman’s face when he opens it, but watches Dante hold up the legal papers.
“Police! We have a search warrant for this residence.” Dante moves straight into the apartment, followed by one of the uniformed officers and the crime scene man. James and Helen go in after them, leaving the second uniformed officer to guard the door.
Dante moves down the hall to the mirror. Newman, standing in a T-shirt and shorts in the doorway of his living room, stares owl-eyed at James as the couple passes. He couldn’t look more innocent.
“The button or whatever is on the left side of the mirror,” Helen explains as she and James arrive behind Dante. It takes the big detective less than a minute to find the switch and James hears the motor hum as the mirror descends.
Dante lets out a long whistle as the Degas is revealed.
Footsteps behind James turn him around to see a bespectacled man carrying a small silver case approaching. The man’s gaze is locked on the portrait. He nods and says, in a thickly Italian accent, “I think so.”
Dante waves everyone out of the new arrival’s way.
“This man’s the curator of the museum in Florence, Italy,” Dante tells Newman. “This painting was stolen from there thirty years ago.”
Newman doesn’t react.
As the curator pulls an electronic magnifying glass from his case, Dante asks James and Helen to accompany him into the living room.
“I’d like to see that warrant,” Newman says through gritted teeth.
Dante hands him the legal papers.
“What judge signed this?” Newman flips through the papers.
“You’re instructed to remain in the living room,” Dante tells Newman. “Officer Jones will stay with you.” Stepping back into the hall, Dante adds, “We got an ad-hoc judge to sign the warrant. Barely knew who you were.”
Jones, in his crisp N.O.P.D. uniform, grins at Newman and points to the sofa. “Make yourself at home, Your Honor.”
Newman’s shoulders sink and he steps back and plops on his sofa.
Helen sits in the love seat facing the sofa and crosses her legs. A small triangle of her panties can still be seen and James sees Jones looking. James sits next to his wife.
When Newman turns their way, Helen crosses her legs like a man, knees spread to give the judge an open view.
“What kind of cops are you?” Newman snarls.
“Cops? We’re not cops.” James shoots the judge a cold smile.
“We’re private investigators,” Helen adds quickly as she pulls the sides of her miniskirt up to show even more. Jones smiles in appreciation.
James points toward the hall. “The museum hired us. They didn’t want to go through N.O.P.D. with you being a supreme court justice and all.”
“Good idea,” Jones agrees, folding his large arms as he stares between Helen’s legs.
“The museum sent in a plumber and an electrician earlier,” James explains, “but they couldn’t find anything.”
Newman closes his eyes and leans back.
“It took us a while to find your weakness,” Helen says.
Newman’s eyes open.
“Everyone has a weakness.” Helen shrugs.
“What weakness?”
James cuts in. “That’s where your ex-wife came in. You should never have hidden so many assets from her in your divorce.”
Newman is suddenly pale.
Helen uncrosses her legs. “Your wife told us you’re a voyeur.”
James points to the hall again. “They’ll be searching for the Mozart original score you picked up on the black market in Vienna. Your wife was more than helpful.”
Newman’s face reddens and he growls at Helen, “I still have those pictures of you, little lady.”
“Good.” Helen raises her right knee and plays with the side of her panties, revealing most of her pubic hair to Newman and the smiling Officer Jones.
“Don’t feel so bad,” Helen purrs. “We’re your perfect foils. I’m an
exhibitionist and my husband’s a voyeur.”
James looks at her with admiration.
They’ve come a long way since stumbling across each other in Hyde Park on that bright spring morning, the first day of April, 1700, both spotting that fancy-pants pickpocket at the same moment. Catching him red-handed and returning Lord Bristol’s gold watch was a thrill, but not as thrilling as looking into Helen’s eyes for the first time. She was a governess back then, he a common copper, a constable on patrol.
Over the years, they’ve had so many adventures, have been able to right so many wrongs graduating from pickpocketed gold watches to tracking down the burglars who lifted Queen Victoria’s emerald necklace to recovering the legendary crown of Alexander the Great. And now a long-lost Degas to go along with the van Gogh recovered in Vienna and the Renoir they pilfered from that old lecherous general in Buenos Aires two months ago.
He took in a deep breath. Doing what they do, for as long as they have, hasn’t been hard at all. The hard part was finding each other.
Well, James thinks, it’s time we got back to Kashmir to pick up the trail of the lost jewels of Amthor. It’ll be so nice seeing them around Helen’s neck again.
Doing the Dishes
Rachel Kramer Bussel
The first time I did it, I did it for love.
The second time I did it, I did it to seduce.
The third time, I was ordered to do it.
And I loved every minute of it.
No, it’s not something filthy at all. In fact, it’s the opposite of filthy. I’m talking about doing dishes. I know, you’re thinking, how crazy is that? but please understand. I get off on doing dishes. I cannot pass by a sink filled to the brim, or anything but empty, and just keep going. I’m lured to it by some force that draws my hands under the water, into the depths of the suds and spoons and discards. Sometimes I even do it with my eyes closed.
But, just as with people, all dishes and sinks are not created equal. While I’m a pretty equal opportunity dishwasher, only certain people’s dishes can affect me in that special way.
It all started with Alan. Before him, I was never much of a housekeeper and the farthest thing from a housewife as you could get. I reveled in my slovenly ways, thinking I was exerting some backward feminist statement by being just as messy as the guys.
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