Through the Lens

She met me just outside the door and I laughed as I waved at the guys doing security. I knew the owner of the security company and probably could have gotten in without a pass. I quickly ducked behind a corner as I saw Serena get out of her limo and head inside.

Serena, for some reason, had taken a liking to me and I didn't want to encourage her. She's a really pretty girl and a nice one to boot, but I'm married. Besides that, Serena had already gotten me into enough trouble today as it was.

As soon as I got inside, I ducked into the room that we'd set up for storing our equipment. I greeted all of my people and got an update on what they were doing. I told them that Ed had been thorough as usual in his planning and they should keep doing what they were doing.

I had a different thought though. Most of the shots they were going to get were going to be posed and prepped shots just like the ones every other photographer from every other source would get. I wanted to go out and hide and capture some shots that were raw. I wanted to take photos of the stars in unguarded moments. A lot of them would probably be crap but perhaps a few would be gold.

After about twenty minutes of working the room, I saw that asshole Jason Hamsker with some short woman in a black dress. Her legs were thick but shapely. There was something familiar about them. I didn't think about it at the time because I've taken photos of so many different women that they all tended to blend together after a while.

I moved around the room to get a better angle and almost dropped my camera. Jason was talking to my wife, Connie. I don't know what she was doing here or even how she got in but I was determined to find out. I started to get up and go over to them and ask her exactly what the fuck she was doing but then thought better of it. I was sure that she just wanted to meet Jason, her idol.

I'd put off introducing her to him because I wanted her to have her little fantasy about him. So often when we idolize people, it's a big let-down to find out that they're just not the people we thought they were. I decided to keep taking pictures of them so at least she'd have a few memories of meeting the asshole.

Then he moved her out of the room and into one of the interview rooms. My heart clutched in my chest. I ran out of the building and around to the side. I went back into the building once I found out that the ballroom wasn't exactly level with the ground. I got on the second floor balcony and trained a telephoto lens on the rooms on that side of the building. Several of the rooms were empty. Then I found them.

I started snapping pictures. Jason had his hand on Connie's left tit and I got pissed. Jason had eased his hand under Connie's skirt and she was letting him. He got off of the couch they were on and got between her legs and she just sat there motionless. If her eyes hadn't been open, I'd have thought that she'd been drugged.

I don't know how I managed to do it. But somehow, I put the camera on auto. It continued to click away at one second intervals, snapping picture after picture as my heart broke. Despite what I said earlier about how life looks better to me through the lens of a camera, what I watched then wasn't improved by the best lens I own.

There was no mistaking what I watched. I stood there on that balcony and watched the end of my marriage. The thing that really pissed me off was all of that bullshit Connie had given me that morning over a hug from Serena. When Serena hugged me, she'd draped herself over me because I hadn't returned it. But now, here was my loving wife, letting that fake, white chocolate, droopy pants, loser, fuck her.

I knew that outside the door to the room, Marco and Will, Jason's huge bodyguards would be stationed. There was no way I'd get past those two former football players. I also didn't need to create a scene at the party. That would be the fastest way to career suicide. Most promoters and even the stars themselves, liked to avoid drama and scenes whenever possible; unless they needed the publicity. Having a person who was supposed to be invisible; whose job was to simply take pictures, creating a scene would be unpalatable.

The best possible answer would be to just walk away and think of a way to get my revenge on them both without creating a scene. I shot a few last pictures where I zoomed in on Connie's face and then turned to leave. Back inside of the main hall, I went and spoke to my people. I told them all that they were doing a great job and that we'd get together at 2 a.m. at the office to go over the shots they'd gotten. By four, we'd have gone through every shot we took at both parties and emailed them off to the magazine that paid us for them. We'd also take some of the other shots and sell them to various newspapers who either didn't have their own staffers there or who didn't get the shots we did.

That gave me four hours to do what I needed to do. I left the building and got into my Mustang. The roar of the engine comforted me. I drove home and took enough clothes to last me a few days and got back into the car.

I drove downtown to the building that I rented office space in. I rented the entire third floor. We had offices, several photography studios, a couple of conference rooms, storage space and a couple of editing suites and we needed every square foot of it. I knew already that in a few years we'd need our own building. One of the cool things about it was that in my carefree bachelor days, I often lived out of the small ready room behind my office. There was a very comfortable couch and a complete bathroom with a shower and even a small kitchenette in the space behind my personal office. Until I got a new apartment or condo, that would have to do.

Connie and I had only been married for two years. When we'd gotten married, my business lawyer had told me that it might be smart to get an agreement signed that in the event of a divorce prevented Connie from being able to get any part of my business. It wasn't quite a pre-nup. But it would do. There was also the fact that since we'd only been together for two years Connie wouldn't get very much in the form of support or alimony and we have no kids. The divorce would probably be very simple. I saw it more along the lines of, "Okay this didn't work. You take your stuff I'll take mine. One of us can take over the payments on the condo if they want to live there. It was nice knowing you. See ya, Bye."

The guard in front of the building waved at me as I pulled my Mustang into my assigned parking spot. My spot was near the front of the building near where the owners parked whenever they were in town. I had a great spot because by renting the entire third floor, I was one of their largest tenants.

The guard, Greg, was used to our unusual hours. We came and went almost twenty four seven because the media worked around the clock. The internet meant that we could sell photos all day long because it was always day time somewhere in the world.

As I stepped off of the elevator, my few night staffers looked up. Elsa, my office manager, who looked like she'd just awakened, came over to me with a cup of hot coffee.

"I wasn't expecting you before two," she said.

"I wasn't expecting to be here," I said. "I'll be in my office for a while. I don't want to be disturbed. I need to edit and print some photos I never expected to take." She looked at me and could tell I was upset.

"Do you need anything?" she asked.

"Maybe some more of this coffee every so often," I said. "Oh! Elsa...what's the largest hi quality photo paper we have in stock that we can print on?"

"I think we have some 18 by 24 card stock glossy paper left," she said.

"Great, bring me some of that," I said.

"How many sheets?" she asked.

"As many as you can find," I said. "I need at least ten but twenty would be better. If we don't have that many then bring me all of those that we have and then drop down to the next biggest size."

I worked alone in my office. I downloaded the pictures of Connie's infidelity to my computer and then picked out the most damning pictures. I started with a few innocent pictures of Connie standing in front of Jason looking star struck. Then I worked on a couple of pictures of the two of them going into the room. Then I used a series of them talking and finally I started on the pictures of the actual act. There was a picture of Jason with his hand on Connie's breast and her allowing it. I superimposed a blow-up of the hand on the breast at the bottom.

The next picture showed his hand under her skirt and Connie wide eyed but not stopping it. The next picture showed him pulling her legs apart. And the last picture I used showed them in the act. I took a last sip of my coffee and sent all of the pictures to the main printer. The printer in my office wasn't large enough to print on sheets that big.

I walked out to the printer in the main room of the office and waited for the pictures to print. I printed them in reverse order so if we ran out of the bigger paper, the most damning pictures would be of the larger size. When all of the pictures had printed, I took them and left the building. It had taken me almost two hours to process, select, edit and print the pictures. I told Elsa that I'd be back to help go through the evening's shots.

I drove back to the condo and I have to admit that I was still numb. Maybe it was because the shock just hadn't worn off yet, but I didn't feel a sense of overwhelming pain. I was icily calm. I think the prospect of buying a new car would have felt more stressful than the idea of ending my marriage.

I expected to find Connie in our bedroom and I hoped that she'd be asleep. One out of two wasn't terrible. Actually, it was closer to none out of two. Connie wasn't in our bedroom and although she wasn't conscious she wasn't actually asleep. It was more likely that she was simply passed out drunk from the nearly empty bottle of vodka that was still clutched in her hand.

That caused all types of questions to go through my mind. Had she been drunk when she went into the room with Jason or was she drinking to ease her guilt? I guess to me it didn't matter either way. I left her where she was and went into the bedroom to begin my plan. I pulled out a roll of duct tape and started placing squares of duct tape on the walls of our bedroom and down the hall to the bathroom. After all of the tape had been placed, I pulled out a jar of safety pins out and added a safety pin to each piece of duct tape.

After that, I went back and strung pieces of fishing line to the safety pins. It looked like a very sparse yet intricate network of clear plastic lines. It was almost like a spider's web throughout the condo.

I went back to the living room and got Connie. I picked her up and carried her into our bedroom and covered her up. Then I took all of the pictures I'd printed and clipped each picture to one of the fishing lines in order. Directly over the bed there was the picture of her meeting her hero, Jason Hamsker. The picture was hung at eye level so it would be the first thing she saw when she woke up. She'd be able to walk her way through the house and into the bathroom where she'd find the last picture. I'd used a very thick white paint marker on the last picture to write her a message. It was very clear and only one word. So she'd understand it even in her hungover state the next morning.

I turned off the lights as I went back through the condo looking for anything else that I might want to take with me. First thing in the morning I'd call my lawyer and start the divorce.

* * * * * *

Connie

I was completely disoriented when I woke the next afternoon. The sun should have been shining in on me through my window but it wasn't. As I opened my eyes, I noticed that the sunlight was beaming down onto the bed right beside me, but somehow it wasn't shining directly on me. I also noticed that I was in bed. I shouldn't be in bed. The last thing I remembered was sitting on the floor in front of the couch drinking. How had I gotten into bed? Rob must've put me to bed when he came home this morning.

Then I noticed that Rob wasn't there. That made no sense. Rob's job, like most others had patterns. Rob's pattern was that after working a night event, he'd be up editing and selling the pictures for most of the night and then we'd sleep in the next day. Not only was Rob not in bed with me, his side of the bed looked like it hadn't been slept in. The poor baby had probably come home and seen me on the floor and put me into bed and then gone back to work. I smiled even though my head was fuzzy and splitting open. That asshole Jason would never have done something like that. I don't know what it was that had attracted me to Jason Hamsker. He was nothing like his music or his videos. It was like Rob had said. He just wasn't a real person.

As I opened my eyes fully to get out of bed, I stared straight at the picture hung above the bed. Even as I processed the content of the picture, I wondered how the hell it had gotten there and who'd placed it. The picture clearly showed me in my now ruined black dress, standing in front of Jason the previous evening. I'd never seen myself in that dress before. If I'd known that it was that tight and that slutty looking, I probably never would have worn it.

I snatched the picture down and then saw directly behind it and off to the side, another picture. In this one, Jason had his hand on my shoulder and was moving off to the side. As I stood up, I realized that I still didn't really have my balance and that the hangover was far worse than I thought. I almost hit my head on the wall as I fell.

I looked up and there was another picture after the second one and another after that one. I struggled and made it to my feet and went around the room glancing at each picture and finding them each worse than the next. As I followed the series of pictures down the hall, I noticed that the perspective and angle changed. Since the photographer couldn't have taken pictures through the locked door; either a second photographer or the same one had continued to photograph us from outside of the room.

In the middle of the hallway, I saw several pictures of Jason and me sitting on that beautiful couch in the interview room. My heart lurched and I knew what I was looking at. The only question in my mind was how far the photos went and how angry Robin was at me. It was obvious to me by then that Rob had taken the pictures himself somehow, even though he wasn't supposed to be at that party.

By the time I'd followed the photos into the bathroom, I realized how well he knew me. As I looked at photos of Jason doing things to me that no married woman should have ever allowed any man other than her husband to do, I felt sick. The next to the last photo was near the toilet and it showed Jason pulling my legs apart. Just as I vomited into the toilet, I saw the last photo. It had been placed at eye level if a person had their head near the toilet. It showed Jason fucking me and Rob, with one of those white markers that he used to point out or highlight features on photos had written, "Goodbye!"

The shock of that message made me vomit again. What the hell did he mean goodbye? I splashed water on my face. My head was still splitting open so I took a couple of aspirin and brushed my teeth to get the taste of both the liquor and the vomit out of my mouth.

I called Rob's cell phone. It rang and rang. After the tenth ring I got a message that told me the number had been changed and no further information was available about that number. I knew then that Rob was serious. He didn't give very many people his personal number. The few times that I'd looked at his phone list I'd laughed because I had more than three times as many people on my contact list than Rob had.

Rob had hundreds of clients, but most of them only had his office number. There were fewer than ten people on Rob's personal phone list. He preferred to have clients and people he worked with contact him through his office. They called the office and were then routed to his personal phone.

That list included me, our home number, Rob's mom, his dad, his sister, the office, and a couple of Rob's best friends. Ron had probably called the phone company and gotten the number changed and then called his few contacts and given them the new number. It had probably taken him only a few moments to accomplish it.

I called the office and got the receptionist. I asked for Rob and was asked the nature of my call. Either one of Rob's office managers would have recognized my voice so I'd gotten lucky. I told the woman it was personal. She asked for my name and number and told me that someone would call me back.

Before she hung up, I asked to speak to Elsa. I was told that Elsa had worked last night but that I could speak to Susan. Sue had always treated me warmly so I told the woman that would be fine and was transferred. When Susan came on the phone, I told her who I was and there was a long pause before she asked what she could do for me.

I told her that I wanted to speak to Rob and that I'd be on my way down there soon anyway.

"Look, Connie," she said. "I know that you and Rob are having some kind of a thing right now. I'm a married woman too and I know that from time to time there are issues that come up in every relationship. I don't know what's going on between the two of you and I'm not taking anyone's side except my own. I get paid to do what Rob wants. I have been told not to put you through to him under any circumstance. He does not want to speak to you. He has gone as far as having security not allow you access to the third floor of the building. He has posted two of our security guards at the elevator. You will not be allowed to leave the elevator on the third floor. He can't bar you from the entire building yet, because he doesn't own it, but he is on really good terms with the owners."

"Even if you could get into the building, Rob isn't here right now. They were all up late working on the pictures from the parties last night. He grabbed a couple of hours of sleep and left just as I was coming in this morning. I know he had a meeting about the pictures he took yesterday for Serena and the other models. I believe he had a couple of meetings with someone else as well. Don't get upset but I believe Jeff was one of them. Take care Connie and I hope this all works out well for the two of you."

I knew then that this was very serious. Jeff Goldblum was Rob's lawyer. He was the one who'd come up with the pre-nup I'd signed. It wasn't a pre-nup in the legal sense of the word. It didn't spell out what each of us would receive in the event of a divorce, but it did make it clear that Rob had owned and established his business long before we'd met and that in the event of a divorce, I couldn't touch or claim any part of Rob's business. I could still get a part of Rob's salary or his personal accounts but the business was off limits.

Jeff was a business lawyer, not a divorce lawyer, so Rob meeting with him could have meant anything. I felt as if I was going to start crying at any minute so I called Jessica. She was at my door within ten minutes. As soon as I opened the door for her, she started asking me stupid questions about that asinine Jason Hamsker.

"Did you get to meet him? What was he like? Did you get his autograph? Did you get any pictures of him?" she asked, all in a flurry without taking a breath.

"Oh shit, you look like hell," she said. "So what went wrong? Since you're not happy you obviously didn't get to meet him. What happened?"

"Can you pause long enough for me to fucking say something?" I snapped. She just nodded her head.

"I did go to the party," I said. "And that bitch Serena Vascova was there. She introduced me to..."