A Bestiary of Unnatural Women (3 page)

“Rock, paper, scissors?” Timothy
suggested.

“Same as drawing lots,” Stan replied. “Pure
luck.”

“I don't want to play games,” Timothy said.
“Not gambling games. Maybe find a court somewhere and shoot hoops
for her.”

“No time for that, either,” Roy said.

“I know,” Timothy replied, sadly.

The men were silent for another couple of
minutes. It was clear that they would never agree on a game of
chance or skill because each of them would want a game in which
they had an advantage.

A clock on the mantle ticked loudly.

Finally, Stan said, “Okay. Tell you what.
I'll pay each of you three hundred dollars to get lost. Cash, right
now. You can call her back and set up another date some other time
and use the money to take her out for a first-rate dinner and a
concert or whatever she wants. We can all have her eventually.”

Timothy looked tempted. Roy glanced at the
woman to see how she felt about being bought like a side of beef
but she continued to look impassive. He looked at her more closely
and thought that he detected dry amusement under her poker face.
“I'd rather have the woman than the money,” he said. “I'll pay
you.”

“I don't need your money,” Stan replied,
contemptuously. “How about you, tiger?” He asked Timothy. “You want
a quick five hundred in cash, tax free, to walk out that door and
not come back?”

He licked his lips. Timothy would not be a
good poker player. But he wasn't a complete sucker, either. It
occurred to him that five hundred might not be Stan's final offer.
“Not for five hundred.”

Roy wondered if Stan would be willing to go
as high as a thousand to reduce his odds from one in three to one
in two. But Stan had a different idea. “I'll tell you what. It's
not about the money. The money is just for a show of good faith.
Let's just auction her off. Who ever bids highest gets her and the
other two can split the money and then just split. Free enterprise
is the American way.”

Timothy grinned. “That sounds good to
me.”

“If it's really not about the money, then we
shouldn't care who gets it. I say, if she's the one for sale, then
she ought to get the money,” Roy replied. “That's true free
enterprise.”

That proposal cooled Timothy's jets
considerably. “She's giving herself away for free. It's us who lose
out, so we ought to be the ones to profit from our loss.”

“How much cash do you have on you?” Roy
asked.

“I don't know, exactly. A hundred bucks,
maybe,” Timothy answered.

“How about you, Stan?”

“More than that,” Stan admitted.

“Are you going to take a personal check?” Roy
asked.

“I don't think so,” Stan replied. “Anyone can
write a check for a million bucks and let it bounce like a rubber
ball. The NSF fees would be worth it.”

“So this auction'll come down to whoever has
the most money in his pocket right now.”

“That's not fair!” Timothy cried.

“No, it sure isn't,” Roy answered.

The three men sat silently for another couple
of minutes. The clock ticked. Felicity shifted her weight
restlessly from one foot to the other. Standing for a long time
with her arms above her head in those high-heeled pumps couldn't be
all that comfortable.

Finally, Roy said, “Okay, this is like some
kind of reality game, let's do what they do on television. Let's
vote for the winner.”

“Yeah,” Timothy said, enthusiastically. “This
is a democracy. Let's vote.”

“You have paper and pens?” Roy asked.

“In the kitchen by the phone,” Felicity said
from the corner of the room.

Roy left the living room. “Hey,” he shouted
from the kitchen, “I've got to use the can. I'll be back in a few
minutes.” The other men waited impatiently, silently watching the
mantle clock tick off the time from six thirty-two to six
thirty-eight. There was about twenty minutes left when Roy finally
returned with three pens and a small notepad. He tore off a sheet
for each of the three men, handed them the pens and said, “Okay.
It's simple. No voting for yourself. Just write down the name of
one of the other two men who you think most deserves an evening of
mutual pleasure with the lady in the corner. Let's try to imagine
who she might want.”

After a minute, Roy collected the ballots,
unfolded them and spread them out on the coffee table. There was
one vote for Timothy and two votes for Stan.

“That's it, then,” Stan said, standing up.
“It's been interesting. You guys can let yourself out. Be sure to
lock the door behind you.”

“Damn,” Timothy said with a tragic look on
his face, standing up and starting to walk across the room.

Roy stood up as well, but made no move toward
the door. “Not so fast, Stan,” he said. “We have a problem,
here.”

Timothy stopped moving and turned to look at
Stan and Roy.

“No problem,” Stan replied. “We agreed to
abide by the vote. We voted. I won. You leave.”

“The rule was that we couldn't vote for
ourselves. Otherwise everyone would vote for himself and it would
have been a three-way split. I voted for Timothy. The only way that
you could have got two votes is if you got both Timothy's and your
own. You voted for yourself so the vote is invalid. It doesn't
count.”

“We all agreed to vote,” Stan argued, “But
not voting for yourself was just something that you said. I never
said that I agreed with it.”

“I agreed with it,” Timothy said, moving
toward Stan menacingly, “otherwise I would have voted for myself,
too. He's right. The vote doesn't count.”

“So there we are,” Stan said. “I guess we
have to vote again.”

The next vote was one for each of them. Roy
had voted for Timothy, Stan had voted for Roy, and Timothy had
voted for Stan. Roy was shocked He fully expected that, after Stan
had cheated the first time, Timothy wouldn't vote for him on
principle. And Roy had already said that he preferred Timothy. That
meant that Timothy and Roy should have exchanged votes and Stan
provided the majority for one or the other of them. Apparently
Timothy had figured that out and decided that Roy did not need his
vote, he preferred a standoff to losing if Stan voted for Roy,
which he had.

The men stared at the ballots for a long
time, as though they could change the outcome just by wishing it.
Felicity laughed softly from the corner of the room.

“We could vote again,” Timothy suggested.

“Are you going to change your vote?” Roy
asked.

“No.”

“Me neither. It'll be a tie vote every time,
now.”

Stan laughed loudly. “Looks like we're
snookered, guys.”

Timothy glanced at the clock on the mantle.
“Ten minutes to go.”

“Are we just going to wait it out?”

“I don't see what else we can do,” Stan
replied. “Short of fisticuffs, I don't see any way out.”

Roy nodded. He understood exactly what Stan
meant. They had arrived at the point where all three men would
rather see the prize go unclaimed than see one of the other two
win. “Look,” he said, “if we're still here when the clock strikes
seven then we're all going to feel like fools. Why don't we just
leave now and save ourselves the embarrassment of hearing the damn
clock ring?”

After another few moments of silence, Stan
said, “Yeah. That sounds like the best idea, all right. What about
you, Tim? You on board for getting out of here now?”

“Yeah. I'm good with that.”

The three men stood and began walking toward
the front door.

“Hey, guys, what about me?” Felicity asked
from her corner.

“What about you?” Stan asked.

“Are you going to let me down from here?”

“I don't think so,” Stan replied. “You're so
smart, you figure out how to get down. I'm sure that you have
another trick up your sleeve.”

“I don't have sleeves,” she said wriggling
her arms in their cuffs, her little dance making her naked breasts
shimmy most agreeably. “I meant it when I said that I wasn't giving
myself any way to keep from being claimed by the winner. I keep my
promises.”

Stan shrugged. “It's your game. So it’s your
fault that your rules didn't let one of us claim you. Good
night.”

Roy looked at her, shrugged, and followed
Stan to the front door.

Timothy didn't even look at her when he
followed the other two men.

She whimpered miserably at their backs but
they were unmoved.

Stan opened the front door and gestured to
Roy and Timothy. “After you, gentlemen.”

Roy stopped dead in his tracks, Timothy
almost bumping into his back. “After you, Stan.” He gestured to the
open door. “I insist.”

Timothy looked at the two men, suddenly
realizing what was happening. “You think that you can get us out of
the apartment and then slam the door on us, leaving you alone
inside?” he growled.

All three men heard Felicity laughing at them
in the living room. Then they heard her say, “This is the Hotel
California. You can check out but you can never leave.”

Stan took a step back toward the living room.
“I'm gonna pound that bitch.”

Roy put a hand on his shoulder. “I wouldn't
advise it. She's a planner. She knows who we are. If she did to you
what she did to me, then she got your phone number so that she
could call back and give you a final time and address?”

“Yeah,” Stan said. “So what?”

“So that means that she made sure that we
were who we said we were. I guarantee that she left a letter
somewhere with our names and phone numbers on it in case anything
happened to her.”

Felicity's voice rang out, “You're a smart
man, Roy. Nobody puts anything over on you, do they?”

He laughed and called back, “At least I'm not
hanging helpless and almost naked in my living room waiting for
someone to discover me.”

“Unlock me and we can all be friends. The
key's on the mantle. I can see it from here.”

“Yeah,” Timothy said. “Let's unlock her and
then she can do all of us.”

Roy shook his head. “She doesn't mean that
kind of friends. She means friends like when your girlfriend breaks
up with you and 'friends' is a code word that means that she
doesn't want to fuck you any more.”

Timothy looked wistfully at the doorway that
led to the living room, then said, “What the fuck. Let's just get
out of here.” He snatched Roy's wrist in his left hand and Stan's
in his right. He was quick as a cobra and powerful as a python.
Before either of the other men could react, he was pulling both of
them through the open front door.

Roy didn't resist. “Come on, Stan. Don't
fight it. The game's over.”

Stan pulled but couldn't get his hand back
from Timothy. “What the fuck,” he said with a note of resignation
and let Timothy lead him out into the hallway. As soon as Stan
released the spring-loaded door, it began to close. There was no
sense trying to stay inside when Timothy was determined to keep
your hand in the hallway. By the time it slammed shut, all three
men were outside.

“Is it locked?” Timothy asked.

“Yeah, it locks automatically when it closes.
A lot of doors in high rises do that for security,” Stan said.

Timothy tried the knob. It was locked
tight.

Roy shrugged. “That's it, then. She wins, we
all lose.”

“I hate to lose,” Stan said bitterly.

“Me, too,” Roy said, but added,
philosophically, “but at least you didn't have to lose to one of
us. It was a rigged game from the start.”

“You got that right.”

The three men rode the elevator down to the
lobby and then exited the building together, the outer door also
locking behind them.

“You parked on the street?” Roy asked the
other men.

“No,” Stan replied, “I parked in the first
spot that I found empty. It belongs to someone but I figured that
if they weren't using it, then I might as well take it.”

“I got a visitor space,” Timothy replied,
looking at Stan with disdain. “There were plenty of open
spots.”

Roy said, “Well, I'm parked on the street
around the corner. I hope that I don't see you guys around.”

“Me, too,” Stan replied.

Roy walked away from the other two men.

A few minutes later, Felicity heard her front
door open, heard someone walk in, then heard the door slam shut.
She watched Roy walk into the living room. He was alone. “You
didn't go to the bathroom, did you?” she said.

“No. I looked around a little and found your
purse by your vanity in your bedroom. I hope you don't mind that I
borrowed your keys. I came back to return them as soon as I
could.”

“I hoped that you'd win all along, you know.
I love a smart man.”

“That was why you chose me,” he said dryly.
“Timothy was the strong guy, Stan was the handsome, charming one
and I was the smart one.”

“You sounded like a genius in that meeting a
couple of weeks ago. That's why I gave you my number.” She rattled
the chain that held her in place. “Now, are you going to unlock me
so that we can start having some real fun? You've earned it.”

“I'll unlock you in,” he glanced at the clock
on the mantle, “another four minutes when the alarm goes off. I
won't have won officially until then and, when things are going so
well, I'd rather not disturb them.”

“That's smart. I guess I'll just hang around
here and wait on your pleasure,” she said with the cutest little
pout.

“You know, when I got your keys out of the
purse, I had a quick look in your wallet.”

“Naughty boy. Nobody likes a nosey
parker.”

“You don't mind if I call you Barbara, do
you?”

“That is my name, so you can call me Barbara
if you like, but I don't think it sounds nearly as much fun as
Felicity.”

“You're a student at Irvine.”

“A graduate student, actually. I'm just
starting my Ph.D. thesis.”