Just up from Little Italy, trendy Broome Street was now home to fancy stores selling scarves, “cronuts” (a croissant-donut hybrid that was beating both tortoni and spumoni combined), and edgy artwork.

Pagano was lucky to still have his Renaissance art gallery. His landlords, Brickford & Hastert, were threatening to raise the rent, and the number of tourists bothering with the shrinking and less-colorful Little Italy meant even fewer people were interested in a souvenir Mona Lisa portrait hand-painted by Pagano.

“Mona,” he moaned to Ilona, who modeled for his various nude images, “you might as well take the rest of the evening off. My mind won’t be on my work tonight.”

Ilona, naked from her earrings to her toenail polish, took this as an insult. It didn’t help that what her boss said was more than accurate. Who wanted nude paintings of a girl who resembled the Mona Lisa when there was streaming internet porn and interactive webcam shows out there? A model could have two dozen guys watching her and paying for her to pose this way and that.

She put on thong panties, a short skirt, a cropped top, a pair of flip-flops, and she was out the door. Pagano watched her cross the street. She lingered in front of the “Erotic Photography” boutique. “Idiota meschino! Volgarone osceno!” He turned away in disgust with her and with his rival, Jackson. Jackson’s trendy new way of making art was to splatter his come-loads onto a woman’s face and photograph it. The bastard probably had new photos in the window — and they were a lot more eye-catching than his classic oil paintings of a nude Mona Lisa. Or the sign: “Custom paintings: Mona Lisa with your face. Classic pose or nude.”

Jackson’s lights were on. Pagano knew it meant the “artist” was ending his day with a “special sitting.”

Indeed, Arthur “Five Shots” Jackson

was feverishly working on his tool, jerking his cock in his slippery fist, his meaty dickhead just inches from the smooth face of a Japanese art connoisseur in from Roppongi, a trendy art district in Tokyo. “Come, come, come on me now,” she cried out, wriggling, strapped onto a table in a back room of the studio. She was naked from the waist up, a towel underneath her. She held her small, round tits with their stiff brown nipples and squeezed and pushed them together to create more cleavage. Jackson didn’t notice. He was staring at her face, the canvas he was about to coat with his “paint.” She squeezed her tits in excitement, watching the intensity of the artist in the throes of creation.

“And here… we… go!” Jackson grunted. The first hot blob hit between her eyes and slid like a tear down her cheek. A second shot splattered like a white worm clinging to her eyebrow. A third was a starburst of bubbly splooge high up on her forehead, followed by a fourth, which created an erotic foam over her lips. “Don’t move. Do not lick your lips,” Jackson ordered. He clenched his cock shaft, grunted as he moved within an inch of the girl’s nose, and squeezed. A gluey button of clotted sperm oozed from the tip of his cock onto her nose, where it curled down toward her left nostril.

Once he was finished, there was an eruption of light that was almost as intense as lightning. It was a series of strobe lights going off in the space of only a few seconds from various directions. Jackson now had a dozen digital images to choose from for the print, each slightly different in atmosphere, intensity and focus. Whatever the customer liked best would become a large albumen print for the bedroom, or an even larger art poster.

“That was just wonderful! That was magnificent,” Jackson said. “A good model brings out the best in an artist.”

The model demurely nodded, lowered her head, and took the open package of baby wipes Jackson offered her so she could clean off her come-covered skin.

“Five Shots” Jackson had once been a cage cleaner for a veteranarian by night — and a struggling artist during the day — until he moved down to the trendy Broome Street area just above Little Italy and forged his identity as an erotic photographer. A few free sessions with writers for a local paper, all male, had established him as a genius, and he had been able to tilt his clientele base to mostly rich females. He was getting wealth, getting respect, and, as he shuttered the shop for the night, he was getting the usual insult from the hack across the street.

“You know, photography is a monkey art form,” Pagano souted. “Anyone can click a camera!”

“Murderer!” Jackson shot back at him. “You hack the canvas! Soon you’ll be selling caricatures in Chinatown for five dollars each!”

“You’re the type,” Pagano hissed, “who would stick a crucifix into a bowl of urine.” His eyes glared.

“Only if the crucifix was still around your neck! Then it would be art, and a favor to the art world!”

“That’s blasphemy! Lei non potrebbe neanche fare lo spazzino! Trendy bastard. In another month or two people will tire of you! It’ll be on to something new. The true artist is always appreciated! Yes! You should see what goes on in my studio!”

“As dull as watching paint dry.”

Jackson didn’t actually know that sometimes Pagano’s studio was even raunchier than his own. Tourists walking through Little Italy not only bought a nude painting of Ilona as Mona Lisa, but indeed wanted their own faces as Mona Lisa. Pagano had five or 10 canvases prepared each day, blank in the middle, for tourist faces to be colored into. Some wanted one of the nude images. Some even paid to pose nude. Pagano felt like telling Jackson what had happened just a few days earlier, when a nude portrait session had turned into something much more, thanks to the tourist’s lack of inhibitions — and the knowledge that the artist was based in New York and would never be able to gossip about it to anyone she knew.

“You true artists,” she said, “believe a little extra flesh is good on a woman. You study Degas, maestro? Courbet?”

“More the Italian masters,” Pagano grunted, but he had to admit — to use a term from another ethnic strain — this woman was zaftig. Nice big tits. Big ass. So, okay, she was a little fleshy in the belly as well. Painting her was still a pleasure. The more dirty talk from the tourist, the more pleasure.

“Go ahead,” she finally said to him, eyes glinting, “take it out. Show me how hard it is!”

Pagano dropped his brush back down onto the palette and whipped out his meat from behind his quickly undone zipper. He couldn’t help himself. These tourist tramps… It happened far too often. Their fantasy of being nude models, their desire on fire knowing they’d be leaving soon and nobody they knew would ever find out about their dalliances.

“Put it inside me!” she called out. He was lon top of her soon enough, her wet pussy a nice and easy fit. He began to pump his cock inside her, overcome with the fucking beauty of fucking this beauty. She brought out the artist in him, all right. He hoped she was appreciating the way he varied his strokes and loving the nuance of his kiss against her sweaty neck. He licked her salty flesh.

“Tutti odiano un turista,” he whispered truthfully, “ma come sei bella.” His lips brushed against her cheek.

“You’re so excitable,” she said. “Not like that guy across the street I visited the other day!”

Pagano practically coughed out his tongue. The idea of his mouth near flesh sullied by Jackson’s sperm? He coughed again. He drove his cock deep into her cunt, trying to keep her quiet. It worked. Her eyes rolled back, she moaned, and she surrendered herself wordlessly to his continued thrusts.

He pushed her legs upward and began to fuck her as fast as he could. He would make her remember him, make her loins ache on the plane back home. Surely, a good old-fashioned fuck was really what she needed! Jackson and his come-shot photography wasn’t enough.

She began to quiver, her whole body moving with his. They were one, rolling and tumbling in tandem. Her body slid up to meet his, and the wet sex noises they were making grew louder. She started to gasp, moan, call out in her native language, one that Pagano could not quite place. As she sighed and seemed to go limp, he pinned her down and finished her off.

Pagano’s spasms caused him to cry out. Aware of his competition from “Five Loads,” he faked three more cries of climax, then pulled out his dick, careful to keep the condom on. He had chosen bright green, which was an interesting contrast to his skin, reddened from so much exertion.

“That was a wonderful fuck,” the woman said. “I wish I could have that condom bronzed. It would remind me of New York, where they really fuck you right. A half-dozen bronzed condoms, like a Calder mobile!”

“You ask the impossible,” Pagano said. “I’d need too many partners.”

All he had, actually, was Ilona. She wasn’t even full-time anymore, as he’d already painted her nude seated, standing, on a bed, in every classic way. So it shouldn’t have been much of a surprise when he once again caught her standing outside of Jackson’s gallery. Only this time, she knocked on the door. And it opened.

Pagano shuttered and locked his gallery. He crept across the street. He tried the door, but it was locked. He found a driveway that led toward the back alleys and carefully made his way toward the rear entrance. He found the back door was locked, but a screened window was open. Pagano cut the screen and climbed through.

Ilona’s skimpy wardrobe was heaped up on a shelf, along with her purse and cellphone. She herself was heaped up on the artist’s infamous bed-table, naked from the waist down and getting face-fucked.

The photographer was taking his time with her. He stood parallel to her on the table, his massive hand on the back of her head, guiding her face into his crotch. His thick cock was halfway down her throat. His surly smile of triumph grew broader each time she gurgled, each time she sucked with frantic energy and gasped to take a breath, each time she looked up in disbelief at how long he was lasting and wiped a sheen of saliva from her chin.

“Maybe I’ll fuck you for a while,” Jackson said. “Would you like that?”

Suddenly an angry male voice called out, “I wouldn’t!”

“Pagano!” Jackson shouted. “You! You get the fuck out of here!”

“No, I’m going to get the fuck in here!” the angry painter answered. “I don’t believe this treachery, Ilona! With Jackson, of all people!”

“Fuck you, Pagano,” said Jackson,

“No, fuck you, immorale,” Pagano said to Ilona. “Signorinella in puta di forchetta… ”

The photographer found himself pushed out of the way. The artist then hauled the nude girl around so her legs were hanging off the side of the table. In a moment he was pushing his meat into her wet slit. Ilona, surprisingly passive, simply raised her legs, giving him a better angle.

“Now this is how it’s done,” Pagano said breathlessly. “Take it from a true artist! The shadings, the nuance, the varied tempo. Like a symphony!” He slid his educated fingers in and around her clit as he fucked her. He slowed down a bit, then sped up again. He was a master, no question about it.

Ilona moaned and then spread her legs wider. He worked her masterfully, driving her crazy by almost making her come and then slowing down again. Finally, he held Ilona’s legs in his strong hands, his hips working tirelessly. “Feel how hard, and harder still, like a bone. It fills you up, does it not?”

“Yes, yes it does,” Ilona said. “Fill me up. Make me really feel it!”

Pagano pulled at her long legs, got her butt up off the edge of the table, pushed forward, and slammed his hips into her, shoveling his cock all the way in and back, then keeping it in as he began to pump his loads.

“I’m seeing stars! Flashes of light! A rainbow of colors!” Ilona whispered.

“It’s the artist in you,” said Pagano. Then he glanced over at Jackson. “No! You’ll spoil everything! Put that away! Gocciolante… pene… ”

Jackson’s dripping penis was inches from Ilona’s face. Quick to come when he was this excited, “Five Loads” shot once, twice, again, again, again, until Ilona sighed and began to rub his come into her skin.

“Hey, you’re not supposed to do that!” Jackson shouted.

Pagano eased his cock out of her and said, with some degree of sadness, “I don’t want you back. You will never fuck in this town again.”

But Ilona just smiled. “Ah, Pagano is right. In just a few months, your trendy shop won’t be trendy, Jackson. The art world will be on to something else. And Pagano, you are a fossil. You have no future. Brickford & Hastert are raising your rent. Renaissance will close, and you’ll find some smaller, dingier place and end up doing face-painting at street fairs. But me?” She took her clothes off the shelf, dressed in a minute, and then grabbed the smart phone that had recorded the entire encounter. “The footage of you two fucking me? That’s worth $10 a minute as streaming video on the internet! That’s where I model for dozens of guys at the same time via camcorder. I’m paid to fulfill my fantasies… like fucking and sucking you two! You’ve made more for me in a half-hour than you guys make all week!”

“Puta!” cried Pagano.

“Whore!” shouted Jackson.

“Call it what you will,” Ilona said, walking out the door. “I call it… art!”