by Julia Kent
“Now give it to him slowly, Syria,” Mia said. “Come around with antici—pation.”
Syria crossed her arms over her chest and took mincing little steps to come back around.
“Oh! She’s shy, Tyson!” Mia crowed. “You’re not getting a peek of this!”
Tyson faced her on the screen, away from Mia. His arms were crossed over his chest. “How about if I show you this?” He picked up his phone, angling it down to reveal his naked belly and the turgid cock.
Syria lifted her hands over her head, letting her breasts bounce.
“You got it!” Mia shouted. She turned the phone back around to her, but Tyson had the camera back on his face. “I don’t have to ask what you showed her!”
“Give her a little something, Mia, if she wants it,” Tyson said. Syria felt the blood rush between her legs. She’d always hoped they’d do something like this once they started video chatting. She’d had sex with Mia many times, with Tyson’s encouragement, but never for him.
“You don’t have to ask me twice.” Mia set the phone on the side table, angling it at the center of the bed. “On your back, wench!” she said, affecting her pirate speak that matched the act that she and her husband performed on weekends, both the public comedy skits, and the private sex shows.
Syria tried to lay back with poise, but Mia pushed her down, no more getting her flat before she spread Syria’s knees. “You looking for something like this?” Mia dipped her face to Syria’s mound, flicking her tongue in the folds.
Syria bucked upward, so hot at the contact while Tyson watched that she thought she would burst into orgasm instantly.
Tyson said, “Oh, yes,” but Syria couldn’t sit up to see what he was doing, as sparks were shooting up her body.
Mia was rough this time, exaggerating for the camera, and Syria sank into the new sensations of getting her nipple pinched while Mia sucked hard at her clit, drawing the flesh deep into her mouth. Mia’s free hand kept Syria’s leg up and out of the way, presumably to ensure Tyson could see every scintillating detail. She began to feel the juices dripping down from Mia’s mouth, the wetness slipping into her ass. The tension built, and her hips moved rhythmically with Mia’s thrusting hands and mouth.
Mia pulled away. “Can you make her come this fast, Tyson?”
Syria wondered only briefly what she meant, since she wasn’t anywhere near at the moment, then suddenly Mia had her fingers everywhere, in her pussy, in her ass, and her mouth was pulsing against her clit.
She felt jerked up by a string, the orgasm pulling at her belly, then it flashed out across her body like a shock wave. She might have screamed, as her ears started ringing as she came down, her pelvis lowering back to the bed. She hadn’t realized it had gone airborne.
“That was spectacular,” Tyson said.
Syria covered her face with her arm, feeling uncertain about everything that had just happened. She’d always had Tyson more or less to herself, although they had never pledged any sort of monogamy.
“You going to spooge that screen?” Mia asked? “I haven’t seen that cock of yours in ages.”
Syria tried to let go of any sort of jealousy, but still, it rose up all the same that Mia could claim what she loved so well. She stayed on the bed, trying to work out how to arrange these complex relationships in her mind, Mia, Tyson, herself, the men who’d seen her have sex on stage, even the boy back home she’d stripped for at Tyson’s urging. Maybe she was more traditional that she was trying to be.
The silence lingered, and Syria suspected they were both looking at her.
“I’m going to go find something to wet my whistle,” Mia said. “Show Syria how much you miss her.” Mia patted Syria’s leg affectionately and withdrew, moving swiftly through the house.
“You okay?” Tyson asked.
Syria still didn’t move her arm. This was sort of impossible, wasn’t it? Fun, but how could it go on? She was an Oklahoma girl who hadn’t even had sex until she was twenty. She knew nothing about polyamory or alternative lifestyles or how to undo a quarter century of Bible belt upbringing. Or if she should.
“Syria. Hey. Look at me.”
She let her arm fall on the bed and turned her head to the video. Suddenly this seemed ridiculous. Tyson was in Seattle. She was having sex with some girl just to titillate him. She jerked at the bedspread and brought it around her body.
Tyson was holding the camera close now, framing his face. The stubble across his angled jaw was longer than usual and his gray eyes were on the blue side today, probably picking up something in the room. She’d never seen his room. Probably never would. She couldn’t afford to fly up there and he made no mention of bringing her. Maybe he even lived with someone, several someones. She didn’t know anything and was too scared to ask.
“Damn it, I wish I could hold you in my arms right now. What got to you?” He looked stricken. “I shouldn’t have encouraged Mia. She likes to show off.”
Syria couldn’t find any words. She just shrugged.
“Hey. You were amazing. You’re like my dream girl.”
Syria hugged the bedspread closer to her.
“I am surrounded every day by all these overeager women, using me to make them feel something they know is missing. And here YOU are, exactly the thing we’re all looking for.”
Syria shook her head. “I’m not anything.”
“Yes, you are! You’re wide open to the things around you, willing to try anything. Open to love and friendship and sex and fun. It’s an amazing thing to see. You’re living life on full throttle. Do you know how hard that is to do? And how many wish they could do it?”
“You’re so far away,” Syria managed to get out. “I am only this way because of you.”
“No, you’re this way because of who you are.”
“Right, shy like my mother, promiscuous like my father.”
“No. Deep like your mother, willing to fall like your father.”
Syria brushed her hair out of her face. “I want to find him. I want to see what he is like.”
“We’ll let’s do that. After Christmas. We’ll look.”
“I can’t go to India.”
“It’s your quiet season, right?”
“Sure.”
“It’s mine too. But we don’t actually have to go there. Not unless we find him. We live in the information age. We’ll track him down.”
Syria sat up. “Maybe.”
“We’ll start at the ashram where they met. See if they have records. Search outward.”
Syria nodded. Suddenly she felt terribly tired. “We can talk about it when you come down for Christmas,” she said. They had planned on spending several days together before Syria flew out to see her mother.
His face darkened. “I had to rearrange my schedule to come up and see you last weekend,” he said. “One of my clients changed her party just for me. I have to accommodate her.”
Syria’s heart fell to her stomach. “Okay.”
“It was my only gap. It gets sort of crazy busy at Christmas in my line of work.”
“Right. Santa strippers are a necessary part of every holiday.”
“Syria, please, don’t.”
She couldn’t take it one more minute. This was just too impossible, too hard. He never even said what he was doing for the holiday, if he would be with family, if he even had family. She didn’t know enough about him to even speculate.
“It’s fine, Tyson. Let me go see to Mia.”
He set his phone down and leaned forward on his bed. She could see all of him again, the tight muscles of his abs, the bulging thighs. The need for him pierced her, but she pushed it down. Everyone else saw all these things every day. It was his job. They could touch him and laugh and call him up to come over. She couldn’t ask for anything.
“Can I call you later, when she’s gone?” he asked.
She shrugged. “Sure.”
He nodded. “Okay.” His playful expression was gone as he rubbed his hands o
ver his rough cheeks. He looked tired, actually. “We’ll work this out, Syria. I want to work this out.”
She reached over for the phone. “Bye, Tyson,” she said.
“Goodbye, Syria.”
Mia leaned against the doorframe to the room. “You crazy kids will figure it out,” she said, lifting a bottle of water to her lips and taking a long drink.
Syria fell back on the bed, wrapped in the comforter. Maybe. It seemed the two of them ran hot and cold all the time, and now it was dead winter, the coldest time of the year.
6: The Search
After Mia left, Syria pulled herself together and dressed in some sweats, planning to eat ice cream and Photoshop belly bulges all day, a combination that never failed to fill her with irony.
But when she sat at her computer with her pint of Blue Bell, instead of opening images, she clicked on Google search and for the hundredth time since her mother had given her the sheaf of letters from her father at Thanksgiving, typed in his name.
The same set of links came up as always. This time she clicked on the image search, studying the faces for any resemblance to herself. Most were young men, many babies. Tons of images of a handsome Indian actor came up, although she wasn’t sure why, since his name was completely different.
Her breath stopped short at the sight of a gray-haired man shown in profile. Arnav Sharma would be over fifty years old by now, and probably not on many social networks, if any. She clicked on the image, but it linked to the page of a young man again, apparently sharing an image of his grandfather, who had a different name.
Syria closed the link. She had no idea how wired India was, if the older generations there were any more or less active on the internet than here. Her own mother did not own so much as a laptop, and if you mentioned Facebook or Twitter, she stared at you blank-eyed. As an emergency dispatcher, she sat on the phone all day. Syria could guess that the old paper manuals they flipped through to read procedures to panicked people had been replaced with an electronic version, but undoubtedly, she had zero access to any sort of internet connection. 911 dispatchers couldn’t exactly play Angry Birds between calls. Her father might be no different.
Most of the twenty-year-old letters had no return addresses. Arnav had not wanted any responses, except for the one — an exuberant note that his wife was leaving him, a last hurrah before the final door slammed shut. Shortly after her threat to leave, the wife had changed her mind, telling him that if he claimed his bastard daughter, he would never see his other children again.
So Syria’s father cut off all contact with her and her mother, unwilling to trade the unknown daughter for his sons.
But the happy letter was the one that had the most information. A phone number and an address. Syria had checked both. The phone number was now assigned to a pizzeria. And the address had been bulldozed in 2003. But still. It was a way to narrow down her Arnav Sharma from all the others. When he’d written that letter, Syria was eight, some seventeen years ago, and electronic databases had existed. Surely someone somewhere had a record and could get her another piece of the puzzle, a forwarding address, a government connection to some identifier. She couldn’t afford a private investigator, but she had time. In January, she’d have even more.
*
Syria was even more bleary-eyed when her studio line rang a few hours later. She should have slept some. She answered with false pep, bracing herself for an anxious client who wanted her Christmas gift ready now. “This is Syria.”
“Syria McMillan. The photographer.” The low voice wasn’t asking a question, but rumbled through the receiver as a statement of fact.
“Yes, this is she.” Syria’s heart sped up a little. She knew this voice.
“We met recently. At an exhibition.”
Syria swallowed. “Is this Erik?” Her voice wavered a bit.
“You have an excellent memory. I hope this means I made an impression.” His voice flowed like silk, and the way he talked made her picture the syllables against her skin.
As if knowing the direction her thoughts had gone, her cell phone lit up on her desk, but only the first few notes of “Santa Baby” played before she silenced it. Tyson picked the darnedest times to call.
“Can I help you?”
“I would like to book a session with you.”
“I’m actually done with sessions until after the holidays. It gets a little crazy this time of year.”
“It’s not for a gift, so I would not rush your work.”
Syria hesitated. This man had seen her having sex with another woman on stage. He might have the wrong idea about her. “Can it wait for January then?” Maybe he would hire someone else.
“I have an associate about to leave my company. I would like a photograph before the contract is over.”
“So, a business head shot then?” She relaxed. She could probably work in something as simple as that.
“Not quite. I sensed that you might be willing to do some nontraditional work.”
He probably wanted to have sex with his “associate” on camera. She got calls like this all the time, as if boudoir somehow mean porn.
“You know, I don’t think I’m your girl,” Syria said. “I’m sure I appeared to be pretty open to things on stage, but actually I keep my business and my pleasure pretty separate.” Except for Mia, she thought, remembering her contortionist shoot. And Tyson, of course, the shoot that started it all. Erik didn’t need to know about that. “I could maybe give you a referral.”
“I’m willing to pay you well for this.”
“It’s not really about price.”
“Ten thousand dollars.”
Syria gripped the phone. “Wh—what?”
“Is that sufficient for the shoot? I am willing to pay much more for the images.”
Syria hesitated. That much money meant a plane ticket to Seattle to see Tyson. And maybe even one to India, if she got the chance.
“So I have your attention. How about I send you ten thousand now, and another five thousand on the day of the shoot, as a deposit for the prints?” His voice was still smooth, with not trace of smugness or anything but a business transaction taking place.
“When were you thinking of coming in?”
“My associate will be with me two more weeks.”
“So nights, weekend? Week day?”
“I think we can accommodate most times.”
Syria grabbed her schedule from beneath a pile of print outs. “So, next Thursday, maybe?”
“Certainly. Midafternoon?”
“Three o’clock. That works. Should I send you directions?”
“I know where you are, Syria.”
Her belly quivered. Who was this man? “Should we do a consultation? What sort of clothing? Style? Backgrounds?”
“I leave it all in your very capable hands. The girls will bring a sufficient wardrobe for contingencies, plus a stylist. We will make it come together.”
“All right,” Syria said. “I’ll set up something classic.”
“Perfect. See you in a few days. A courier will arrive in a few hours with the fee.”
The line went dead.
Syria stared at the phone. She knew the men at that exhibition had to be powerful and wealthy. She was about to find out exactly how much.
7: The Shoot
Tyson had been impressed when she told him about the shoot. Syria sent him a snapshot of the cashier’s check for ten thousand dollars. She didn’t mention that she’d met the man before, just that he’d been referred. This small deceit settled like a black space beneath her heart. Somehow, she knew there was more to this than just photography.
She fretted over every detail the day of the shoot, straightening her shelves, shoving the boxes of prints and proofs into another room. With the extra money, she’d splurged on a rush job for a hand-painted backdrop that suggested a French bordello, just enough sexy to set your mind the right direction if the subjects where posed for it, but also very classic if the sh
oot was more traditional. She’d wanted a drop like this for a long time, but couldn’t justify the expense.
When the doorbell chimed, Syria nearly jumped out of her skin. Her belly fluttered with nerves. In addition to the drop, she’d bought the most amazing pair of distressed leather ballerina slippers that felt like she was wearing nothing at all, so that she wouldn’t feel the urge to shoot barefoot as she normally did. It seemed too informal for a session like this.
She opened the door and suppressed sucking in a breath at Erik, dressed as perfectly as he had been at the exhibition, a three-piece suit immaculately tailored and fitted to his broad shoulders and tall frame.
Syria swallowed. “Hello, Mr. Andrada.” Behind him were several women, all stunningly beautiful, one blonde and two with dark, exotic features.
He took her hand. “Erik, please. It is such a pleasure to see you again.” He lifted the back of her hand to his lips, closing his eyes as he kissed it as if meeting her was the most treasured moment of his life.
Syria’s heart beat faster. Everything about this man was geared toward trusting him, falling under his spell.
She stepped aside to let the group in. A young man came up the sidewalk, pushing a rolling wardrobe box. The blond woman paused to make sure he made it up the stairs. “We brought plenty of options,” she said, extending her hand. “I’m Elise, the stylist. I prepared their hair and makeup in advance, but we wanted to see your vision before choosing outfits.”
“Okay.” Syria didn’t know what else to say. She felt like she should have assistants, a team maybe, for a shoot like this. Lots of photographers charged fees like the one Erik had offered, but they usually had some staff. At least this group had brought some of their people along. She didn’t know who was the associate she was photographing. The two dark-haired women had the same slightly aloof demeanor, the way she imagined models to be.
Syria moved along the hallway. “This way.” Erik followed her, and she now saw her rented house through his eyes, banged-up wallpaper, scratched wood floors, inexpensive strip lighting for the images. He must wonder why he’d made such a leap of faith.