Tit for Tat

"Take a look at this."

Peter knew, on some level, that everyone looked at smut, only nobody talked about it. He knew that his friend James, who was leering at him in the lamplight, had leered this way at probably every other man in town while Peter was working up the courage to make a transaction. But nothing could banish the fear that, as soon as Peter exchanged his penny for a lewd photograph, the sheriff would burst in on him for illegal possession of pornography.

James held out a photograph. He had the only camera in town, officially as property of the newspaper, though he did plenty of work on the side. Peter himself had assisted James in taking family portraits for the mayor, and he did not like thinking about the sophisticated black box being used for that purpose as well as this, much seedier one. Finally, though, he couldn't put off looking any longer, and Peter gazed down at the once-innocent, well-developed square.

There was a leg. A slim, elegant leg, hairless and white, curving into a high-heeled shoe at one end, and disappearing in the frenzied layers of a raised skirt at the other. If Peter stared hard enough, he imagined, he could peer into those veiled shadows, and finally discover what was there, in that place where the long leg ended. "What do you think?" James grinned.

Peter sensed he was blushing, but chose to shrug. "It's a very pretty leg."

"It's mine."

Peter jumped back from the photograph as if it were a rattlesnake, and James laughed at him, an ugly, scornful laugh. Hating himself, and feeling a bit sick, Peter stole another glance at the seductive curve. "You're lying!"

"Don't be that way!" James snickered, wiping a tear from his face. "Models are expensive, especially if they know what they're posing for. I have some genuine girls for you, and you'll know them when you see them, but for me, it's a much better turn-around turning out fakes."

"You--!" Peter was definitely blushing now, his knuckles white on his tight-squeezed fists. "You know what people use these for!"

James laughed again. "I do; I find it hilarious. In a kind of dirty way." He smirked smugly and pointed a finger at Peter. "Admit it to me: you were making up a story about this girl. What her name was, how you two would meet. The naked ladies, they do alright, but men like to pay for what they haven't seen yet. Most of the women who take their clothes off on camera have taken their clothes off other places, too, and it's a small town. We've all seen it."

"Not all of us," Peter muttered. "So, you don't tell people this is you."

"Lord, no," James assured him. "I make up a name, or I say it's some anonymous traveling girl. Those fetch the best price anyway, with a sob story to boot."

"Jesus." Peter bit down on his fist, trying to suppress a question that kept bubbling to the surface, a question he did not want the answer to. Finally, in a very quiet voice, he asked, "What exactly do you wear?"

James scoffed. "Don't be gross, Pete, I'm not debuting at a dance hall. That skirt is a tablecloth, and sometimes I use a curtain or a sheet. All I wear are the shoes." He quickly added, "I don't mean that's all I wear."

"Oh, God, stop talking!" Unlike the mysteries of female anatomy, Peter had no trouble at all picturing James, and did not want to make the image a permanent fixture behind his eyelids. "Why are you telling me this?"

For the first time, James stopped smiling, and even managed to look a little unsure. "It's the shoes," said James, fidgeting with the hem of his jacket. "I can't...I can't be seen buying this kind of shoe. I make a lot of money off the photographs, enough that I want to keep selling them, but I can't discretely travel to the next town to buy a new pair of women's shoes. I thought maybe you could help me with that."

Peter was apprenticed to a milliner, and learning how to craft ladies' hats and accessories. The milliner was, in fact, expanding his trade to include fashionable shoes, but Peter balked at the idea of aiding in the production of pornography. "I can't sell them to you! What kind of reputation--we'd be run out of town!"

"Nobody has to know about it," said James. "I don't expect to fill my closet. I'd just take a few pictures and give them right back, spic and span, not worn worth a step. You'd be renting them to me and then selling them full price."

Dropping his voice to a whisper, Peter demanded, "What if someone recognizes them?"

James started smiling again. "Better for both our businesses."

"It's sick!" The images flashed through Peter's mind. A distressed wife, littered with children, getting turned out over her husband's obsession with a man in ladies' heels. A man buying one of James's fake photographs and then seeing the same pair of shoes on his neighbor, or niece. Soon, Peter's brain was trampled by men's legs and women's shoes. "I can't get mixed up in this!"

"Peter. Peter," said James. "What do you think 'this' is?" I've managed to fill a very basic, very human need, one for which you yourself required satisfaction, and I have managed to do it without invading anybody's privacy, or compromising anybody's soul. If I can ask this small favor of you, you can make a similarly sensitive request of me."

Crossing his arms over his chest, Peter didn't answer for a long time. James let him have the silence, knowing there wasn't really anyone else he could ask, and noting that Peter's eyes would sometimes flick back to the photograph. "If I bring you the shoes," Peter said at last. "I want to see it. I want to see how you take the fakes."

James tried so hard not to smile. "Alright. You could model yourself, if you want to."

"Don't ever say that," said Peter. Which, it turned out, was not a 'no'.