That’s all I have time to write. Have to get to the dining hall or I’ll perish. He is a hot head. I wonder if that’s how he’ll ruin this for himself.
Same day, afternoon
On reading this over, Castor comes across like a soulless meanie. Therefore let me hasten to add that we slept locked in each other’s arms and kissed incessantly throughout the night and he gave me a gold ring with a small but blazing sapphire stone that he said had belonged to his late mother.
But I can’t let him think he owns me now. I have to keep him hungry for me.
I’m going to ask Thalia if she wants to go to Random Point with me for the weekend. It’ll get me out of Castor’s reach and allow her to finally meet Hugo.
December 5th, Random Point, Cliff House
Susan Ross invited us to stay at Anthony Newton’s house with her over the weekend. Thalia’s mind is blown to get her own room overlooking the coast. Susan picked us up at the station, drove us up to the house and put herself at our disposal for the rest of the day. I had explained to Thalia that Susan met her famous lover, the composer Anthony Newton, through Hugo, about five years before and in addition to securing one of the best financial set ups on the planet, she loved the guy. Thalia said she too could use a sugar daddy as soon as possible. Her college loans were already mounting.
I told Thalia that if we made a good impression around Random Point we might get to shoot there when we started our project. So Thalia changed in the car from a cotton button down shirt to a ribbed woolen sweater that dramatically hugged her high, well-rounded bosom. I noted the improvement.
I decided to introduce Thalia to Hugo as a girl who wanted to do some modeling for the magazine, not the horny little sophomore who wanted to fuck him, which she was. Thalia thinks about and has more sex than I do, but she studies much less and smokes a lot more weed. I do like her!
Susan was the soul of hospitality, giving us the beautiful rooms and taking us out to a most elegant lunch in the village at the Ball And Feather Inn. A light, flaky snow was beginning to fall when we arrived at Hugo’s shop in the late afternoon. Susan visited with her sister Laura in the front of shop where a fire was blazing in the hearth, while I brought Thalia into the back where Hugo’s offices were. He was expecting us and ushered us into the lounge graciously, smiling at me while regarding Thalia with interest. In addition to the sage green sweater she had on, she wore a brown tweed skirt and calf high brown boots, all wrapping pinup girl proportions. Hugo seemed genuinely pleased that I had brought him a beautiful new model and praised her physical charms without reserve, knowing how much models like this type of thing. Thalia, who doesn’t think she’s especially pretty, only seemed to listen vaguely, unable to help staring at him in a moony fashion. At the first opportunity I took him aside to whisper, “She has a crush on you.”
He looked harassed and replied, “Amanda, you’re not setting me up with your friends!”
“Isn’t that how the scene works?” I asked.
“In most cases,” he replied, patiently enough, “but as you very well know, I’m still pressing my suit with Laura. Where do you get off throwing bosomy nineteen year olds at me in front of her?” (I admit, I hadn’t thought of that. I must have gone very red in the face because he stared at me.) Then he said, “Yes, you may well blush for shame!” My heart raced as I tried to think of an excuse for objectifying my own biological parent.
“It was a reward for her consenting 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