Chapter 4: One Last Thing
They sat through every last credit, the theater empty and silent except for the orchestral score, until the house lights finally buzzed on. They gathered their half-empty popcorn tub and soda cups and drifted into hallway outside the theater. Jason’s pulse, which had been a frantic drum against his ribs since the earlier chaos, finally began to slow as he looked at her; the thin shirt was now properly settled on her shoulders, clinging in a way that was undeniably sexy but didn’t scream indecent exposure.
He let out a breath he had been holding for hours.
"You really are something," he said. "I just about died when..."
He never got to finish that sentence. His words died as they turned down the hall and saw two security guards sauntering in their direction. One man was short and portly, wearing a black beanie with a security logo on it. The other stood taller, with a vest and utility belt lending to a militant affectation. They slowed to a stop as they approached.
"Excuse us," the taller one said. "Please come with us. We would like you to help us complete our incident report about the disturbance in the theater tonight, if you would."
"Do we have to?" Cathy asked. "It's getting late and we would rather not be involved."
"We would rather not refer the matter to the police immediately," the portly one interjected. "But there are some questions. Please come with us. I think it's in your best interest."
Cathy nodded and Jason followed suit. They walked behind the two security guards, turning away from the main lobby and down a back hallway that snaked behind the concession area, through a double doorway marked PRIVATE which Jason had hardly noticed before. It was long and narrow, and they passed several doors before they stopped and entered a small office marked off for interviews. Jason had the sinking feeling that they were involved in something official. He wondered if they needed a lawyer.
A third man, obviously the boss--older, mustached, and with a beer gut--sat at a desk in front of a row of monitors. He smoked a cigar in front of a sign that said, quite boldly, NO SMOKING--which is how Jason knew he was probably the boss. He looked up from a stack of forms when the four of them came in and then back down at his papers.
"Thanks guys. I'll take it from here."
"Sure, boss."
He gestured for them to sit. They sat, but didn't speak for several moments that became minutes, which was a classic power move Jason had read about. Making people sit in silence. An interrogation technique. He looked at Cathy. She could make erratic decisions when she got nervous, or blurt things she shouldn't. That was the point of the silent treatment, after all. Silent pressure.
Jason waited.
"Your friends let us glance briefly at their phones," he said finally, "although they would not share the content with us legally. I mean we would have to obtain a warrant, you understand? So we know what they filmed, but we don't have access to it for a police report."
Jason blinked. "Filmed? Our friends? Those guys were not our friends."
The security guy shrugged, looking back and forth between the two of them. "You all seemed kind of friendly," he said. "Intimate acquaintances, I would think, at the very least."
Cathy shrugged. "Honestly, I don't know what you're talking about," she said. "I've never seen any of those guys before in my life. I was just--we were just trying to enjoy a night at the movies and they crashed in. Did they even have tickets? They seemed drunk, didn't they?"
Security Guy didn't answer, at first. He took a drag on his little cigar, which filled the room with smoke. But then he nodded. "You are right on both counts," he admitted. "None of them had tickets to see the film, and they were all obviously intoxicated. They've been warned before, and now they've been banned."
Cathy nodded, her grin smug. "See?"
The guard leaned back. "Let me show you something," he said.
He swiveled his chair towards the bank of monitors. The screen flickered, then resolved into a clear, colorful image. It was a tight shot, angled down from the corner of their darkened theater, capturing the two of them in their seats with an intimate, close-up clarity.
Cathy was topless, her black shirt clearly around her waist, casually eating popcorn with her breasts out while the people in front of them turned occasionally to gawk. The video seemed to be playing at double time. Beside her, in the video, Jason was nearly frozen in profile, his glasses reflecting the distant screen’s light, his entire being focused on her.
“Oh, fuck,” Cathy whispered, the sound sucked from the room by the hum of the servers.
The security boss let the footage run. Cathy’s preening and Jason’s rapt stare played out in a loop. Jason’s face burned with humiliation and a dark, unwelcome thrill. His stomach clenched.
Cathy finally found her voice, sharp and defensive. “It was dark. Nobody was supposed to see.”
“The camera saw.” He leaned forward and stood, coming around to their side of the table. He leaned his weight back against the table top and looked back and forth between them, staring down at both of them in turn. The cigar smoke curled up between them. “Management has a zero-tolerance policy for lewd conduct. I could call the cops right now, have you both cited for public indecency. That’s a real thing. You two are in real trouble”
Jason’s mouth was dry. “What do you want?”
The man looked at Jason, then back at Cathy, a slow, assessing gaze. “The incident report needs to be accurate. I want your official statements, detailing everything those drunk idiots did. And everything you did, too. Make it a compelling read for the insurance folks.”
He tapped the monitor. “You sign your name to it, and I'll lose the video file, how about that?”
Cathy crossed her arms over her chest, a belated modesty. “And if we don’t?”
He smiled, a thin, unpleasant line. “Then I submit the report with a digital appendix. Your choice.”
Cathy was silent for a long minute. Jason said nothing, his mind racing over the security footage of her in the flickering dark, the electric thrill he’d felt then now cold and guilty in his gut. He knew he hadn’t really done anything, but that Cathy could be in real trouble if she wrote down what she did and signed her name to it, a permanent record, even if the security guy promised to delete the video now. A signed confession, turned over to the police, might be the start of something irreversible.
“Clock’s ticking,” the guard said, his voice flat, and slid a blank incident form and a cheap ballpoint pen across the scratched table.
Cathy’s hand trembled slightly as she reached for the pen. But she seemed to sense the danger.
Instead of reaching out for the pen, her hand hovered, and then landed instead on the security boss's leg.
"Please," she said. "Does there have to be an incident report? Maybe the couple in that video just got away?"
"What do you mean?" the fat man asked, crossing his arms. "You're right here, ain't che?"
"I mean," Cathy frowned, tilting her head. Jason knew what she was doing. He just couldn't really believe she was doing it. "I mean, can I change your mind about needing our names for the report. Maybe we gave you fake names, or the paperwork got lost, or something?"
Cathy moved her hand up a little further, up his leg. Jason heard himself hiss, and started to say something, to tell her to stop--but then he fell silent. He realized that the security guy himself wasn't stopping her, wasn't saying anything. He was just watching Cathy with heavy eyes and heavy jowls. Jason's eyes drifted to the wedding ring on the man's hand.
"Maybe something," he said. "Maybe something happened and I got the wrong name. We'll see," he said. He looked over at Jason. "But you, son--you had better lock the door, I think."
Jason dutifully locked the door, numb.
They had talked about things like this in the past. Fantasies. Watching each other. Partner sharing. But they had never done anything like that before. Jason knew she still had a crush on Evan, for example, and he thought about them together sometimes, and she knew it, and she didn't judge him for getting turned on by the idea. But this was different. This was emergency sexual negotiation.
The metallic rasp of the zipper was deafening in the stale, silent office.
Cathy’s fingers worked with a terrifying, practiced ease, like she had done this before.
Jason stood frozen by the door, the knob still in his hand, his breath trapped somewhere between his lungs and his throat. He watched the man’s thick waist, the dull glint of the belt buckle, the cheap gray fabric of his trousers.
“There,” Cathy whispered, her voice a thin, strained thing. Her hand lingered, a pale contrast against the dark fabric. The boss looked down, then back up at Jason, a slow, contemptuous smile spreading beneath his mustache. He didn’t move to stop her. He didn’t need to.
Jason’s glasses felt suddenly heavy, smudged. He should look away. This was wrong, a grotesque parody of all their whispered fantasies. But his feet were rooted to the scuffed linoleum, his heart hammering a frantic, traitorous rhythm.
“See something you like, kid?” the man said.
He couldn’t speak. He gave a slight, almost imperceptible nod, the motion feeling alien.
The boss’s smudged out his cigar in an ash track and tangled his hand roughly in Cathy’s hair, not pulling, just possessing. “Go on, then,” he breathed, the stench of smoke wafting across the small space. “Convince me to lose the paperwork.”
Cathy leaned forward, her expression hollow. She gathered a thick wad of saliva in her mouth before spitting directly onto his flaccid cock. The spit landed with a soft, wet sound, and she used her hand to smear it roughly along his length, her fingers tightening into a coarse, rhythmical pump.
“That the best you got?” the boss grunted, his hips pushing slightly into her fist as he watched Jason over her shoulder. A low, involuntary moan escaped Jason’s lips, his own arousal a sickening twist in his gut as he watched her work the man to a full, veined hardness. The only sound was the slick, filthy rhythm of her hand and the boss’s ragged breathing.
Jason observed the boss's intimidating length, a thick, ruddy column of flesh, and the heavy, taut shape of his balls as they began to slap against Cathy’s pumping hand with a dull, wet sound. “Fucking look at it then,” the boss grunted, his gaze locked on Jason’s horrified face. Each obscene slap of his sack against her skin sent a jolt of shameful heat straight to Jason’s groin, his own jeans becoming painfully tight. Cathy’s expression was vacant, a mask of concentration, as she leaned in and ran her tongue roughly up the underside of his shaft. The boss’s head tipped back, a low groan escaping his throat as her mouth engulfed him.
"That's better," he said. "That's right. You know my wife, she won't even blow me any more."
Cathy leaned back to say something, but she never said what.
The security boss’s hips gave a sudden, violent jerk.
He came with a shocked, guttural roar, his body seizing as the first jet was followed by a second and a third, painting her tongue and teeth before splashing across her cheeks and nose.
The unexpected force of it made her choke, a wet gagging sound escaping as more ropes splattered across her eyelashes and into her hair, pearly streaks against the dark strands.
She recoiled, sputtering, the salty-bitter taste flooding her senses as some of it dripped from her chin onto the front of her shirt.
“Fuck yeah,” the boss grunted, his body shuddering through the last pulses onto her forehead. "Couldn't have planned it any better than that."
He held her there by the hair for a moment, watching his mess drip down her face.
Cathy’s eyes, wide and watering, found Jason’s.
He was staring, his hand unconsciously pressed against the front of his jeans, his mouth slightly agape behind his glasses.
The boss let go of her hair with a dismissive shove.
“Christ,” he panted, tucking himself back into his trousers, the wet stain on his fly already spreading. "You better get out of here before anyone learns your names."
He walked back to his desk, picked up the blank incident form, and slowly tore it in half. The sound was absurdly loud.
“Get the fuck out of my theater.”
Jason moved first, fumbling for Cathy’s arm. He pulled her to her feet, ignoring the throb of pleasure in his own pants. Every twitch was a pleasure that threatened to spill out of him, which he dared not tell her. She looked so good with cum all over her. Like a filthy porn star.
She wiped her face with the back of her hand, smearing it, her breath still hitching.
They stumbled into the silent back hallway, the door clicking shut behind them, locking them out.
The only sound was the distant hum of a projector and Cathy’s shaky, trying-not-to-cry inhale. Jason’s mind was a white noise of revulsion and a hard, undeniable ache in his groin.
"Come on," Jason told her. "I bet we can clean you up in the bathroom before we sneak out of here."