Skunk Hunt (37 page)

Carl was puckering and unpuckering his lips
in flabby contemplation. "Hey, Babyschmucks, you look like you need
to take a weight off your feet."

"You got that right."

"Why don't you take a seat..." His finger
drifted from under his chin and delicately fixed its point in my
direction.

Dog's eyes rolled, but he stayed in place
like a good obedience school graduate when Carl waggled the fingers
of his other hand. It was a peculiar gesture, a cross between
dissing and signing in Esperanto, a dead living language.

"Oh
really
..." Dog's weren't the only eyes rolling.
"I don't want to be a part of something I'll be sorry
for."

"Like you've never lap danced before," Carl
smirked evilly.

"Not for some guy you plan to..." She gave
her boss a hard look. "What exactly do you have planned for
him?"

Yeah, I'd been wondering about that myself. I
forced my ogling eyes from the girl to the man behind the desk in
anticipation of the answer.

"We're just having a little tit-a-tit
here."

"You don't look too chummy to me." I was
comforted by the fact that she kept her head averted from Dog. She
wasn't the only one who could not bear to look at the deadly pooch.
Monique and I were birds of a feather: birds in a cage.

"We've been chums for almost half a year,
now," Carl said, covering me with the gooey smile of a
hale-fellow-well-met.

My puzzled expression was lost on him, which
only puzzled me more. Why lie in front of his employees? It was an
exaggeration times twelve. Up to a few days ago, all I knew about
him was what I saw on the tube, a dubious character of questionable
taste. Then my eyes went back to Monique and I amended the
editorial: a dubious character of impeccable taste.

No doubt some of you think gawping at a
girl and her naked jollies pretty crass, and calling her beautiful
an awful lapse in character on my part. You may or may not have any
intellectual truck with the prurient mind, and there is a hard core
out there who believe people like me should be arrested just for
thinking. But you have to regard the whole package to understand
the lowly male. Barf me a wet cat, you say, but you'd be ignoring a
billion years of evolution (I'm including the whole universe here).
Monique was, in her current state, the ultimate art for art's sake.
I'm sure she drew stares just walking down the street, fully
clothed. Removing those clothes was...well, art. Art that made men
drool. And isn't that what art is all about? What's the point of
reading a book that makes you numb? Or seeing a movie that puts you
into perfect REM? Or seeing a painting of Marie Antoinette decked
out in a
robe a la
polonaise
—unless you also think, "I wonder what she
looked like with those clothes
off
?" I mean, before she lost her head—the bit
that would appeal to a character like Dog, who no doubt frequents
an art house on the Rue de Sick Pig.

I had a very high opinion of Monique.
She was the Shakespeare of nudity. The Bard could write Hamlet all
the livelong day and never get the kind of reaction this girl could
get just by
being
. I couldn't
write Hamlet the livelong day, or any other day, but there was a
remote possibility that this girl, under the right circumstances,
could be mine. Wouldn't that be dandy? She was a living fairy tale,
incredibly real, which made her accessible. The degree was in the
difficulty. She wasn't Oregon Hill—she was Everest. But
people
do
climb Mount Everest.
I could become a work of art by possessing a work of art. No, I'm
not confused. Rembrandt would have been a dud if he hadn't painted.
Having Monique, or a girl like her, would be the making of me. And,
in case you haven't noticed, I haven't been made, yet. Not
quite.

You must think this is a peculiar place to
ramble, with me facing an imminent creaming at the hands of Time's
Goon of the Year. But it's very pertinent, when you consider what
happened next. Because, rather than ignore or disobey Carl's
injunction, Monique sauntered over and sat on my lap.

I imagined on stage she was a delectably airy
confection wrapped around a ceiling-high cinnamon stick. But my
knee-scale told me she was something of a pound cake, solid and
weighty. She was seated sideways, allowing me to stare into her
eyes, once my eyes decided to look up. And as soon as I got over my
amazed wonder, I did indeed look up, to find her smirking down at
me with more than a trace of scorn. It was then that I realized she
was no innocent pawn. She knew exactly what she was doing, even if
she didn't know the why. She was no longer an entertainer, but a
weapon. OK. Shoot me.

Carl and Dog hovered in ripe
inconsequentiality as I studied up close the raised nipples under
her pasties. My brain pain was dribbling out of my mouth, but I had
enough cognitive power left to wonder where she put her tips. I
inhaled deeply.

"Nice perfume," I said.

"It's the sugar waxing," she said,
brightening a little. This was a topic that interested her. Me,
too, I suspected. So I followed up with the inevitable question.
She began her answer with a sweet shrug of her shoulders that did
wonders for both our postures. "Epilation."

"You mean hair removal?" I said, thinking
'depilation'.

"Mix an eighth of a cup of water with an
eighth of a cup of fresh-squeezed orange juice and a cup of
sugar."

"Fresh squeezed," I said throatily.

"Heat until the color is golden, then let it
cool before application."

"Application," I said, with that damn frog
still in my throat.

"For proper epilation. Wanna taste?"

"You mean...?"

"It's very healthy," she continued. "Full of
vitamin C. Another full dose, like last time."

And protein, I thought piggishly as I
too-casually dismissed 'last time.'

"Hey Monique," Carl snapped, "I told you not
to use that word around here."

"What? Dose?"

I wondered if her offer of a free meal was
slightly bogus. I neglected to mention that, in addition to the
law-daring pasties, Monique was wearing the standard three-mile
high tip-me-over pumps, the stiletto of one of which was pressing
into my foot. It stabbed a little harder when I eyed her skin
hungrily. The skank was teasing me. Well...that was her job.

Some hairs from her razor-shag tickled my
nose and I sneezed.

"Ugh!" she cried out, jumping up.

"It's just germs," said Carl with a languid
sneer. "You know...a dose. Sit back down."

To my astonishment, Monique pulled out a
tissue and handed it to me. Now where had she gotten that? From the
same place where she kept her tips?

I blew my nose. When I looked for somewhere
to dispose of the tissue, a gnarly hand came down before my face. I
turned and found myself looking at Dog. With mock courtesy, he took
the tissue. Instead of depositing it in the nearest receptacle, he
held it to his nose and inhaled. Man, this guy was fearless. He was
beating up on my viruses, in anticipation of doing the same with
the rest of me. I bet he wasn't much in the safe-sex
department.

Monique looked ready to whip out her
Fantastic, if only she could find the right compartment in her
invisible utility belt. But she gamely reseated herself on my lap,
with the polite admonishment that if I sprayed her with boogers
again, she would propel my nose into my cerebral cortex. In which
case, there would be no harm done.

Carl had lifted himself from behind the desk
and was fiddling at a stereo mounted to the wall. A moment later
the melodic gush of the love theme from Spartacus filled the room.
Producers of porn movies have an inordinate love of the great
composers. A classy soundtrack makes a customer feel like he's
getting an education while he's whacking off. Bob G used this
particular music in his historical film 'Caligula', a truly
accurate portrayal of the Roman Empire under the Caesars. If I went
to college, I could do a thesis. The women were all lesbians and
the men psychopathic killers. I think the evolution of humanity
stopped at that point.

There are too many people around who know
things that we don't. I really hate the idea that somebody
thoroughly repulsive knows what makes me tick. Carl, for example,
knew that this classical goo could enhance erotic moments,
counterintuitive as that might seem. Where I grew up, people didn't
know the Moonlight Sonata from the Minute Waltz, and in that
respect they were typical Americans. But add a sound byte from The
Top Classical Moments to a pair or trio or quartet or quintet of
naked bodies grinding away and the old bio-pneumatics take off. The
deaf don't know half of it. I flatter myself as being of a slightly
higher class. I can't hear Bruckner without getting a hard-on.

Right now, Khachaturian was getting short
shrift. I had a hot babe on my lap, and if I refused her
enticements the cold guy at the desk might plug me. The music
allowed me to imagine I was somewhere else, or add spice to the
properly epilated skin sinking into my groin, but it was most
definitely in the background.

Monique circled her arms around my neck,
crunching her top deck against my nose. I was in a perfect position
to take the edge of one of her pasties between my teeth and pull it
off. In fact, that seemed to be her idea. But another low growl
from Dog put me off.

"If you can't control yourself, Dog, I'll
have to ask you to leave the room," said Carl. This seemed to give
him an idea. "Why don't we both leave the room? There's only one
door, and we'll be just outside it. I don't think Babyschmucks will
hurt this young man too much. Give her fifteen minutes, and the boy
will confess to everything."

"Aw Carl," the girl complained, "I have a set
coming up."

"You have a set right here."

A confession? That's what they wanted? This
didn't look like any church I knew of. But a church is where the
heart is, even if that heart isn't in the right place.

"Look at him," Monique continued. "He'll
confess to anything."

"Got that right," Dog chimed in. "You're
barking up the wrong tree."

Well, if anyone knew about barking.... I was
too preoccupied to bring it up. Monique's warmth was seeping
through my cargo pants into my loins. I didn't think I could get an
erection, with all that weight on top, but I was wrong. She could
tell, I was sure. Or she took it for granted. She took a shiny
fingernail that looked as if it had been buffed by the airport
shoeshine man and worked it through my shirt. She could have been
prying a clam out of its shell.

"Why don't you tell the bad old man what he
wants to know." Monique leaned her head against mine. She smelled
so fruity I wondered if she epilated her face. "Then we can forget
all this and have a good time."

"They haven't told me," I whimpered.

"What haven't they told you?"

"What to tell them."

"
Old
?" Carl complained. He had returned to his
chair and was booting up his desktop. "When we come back, I want to
show you some pictures."

Monique probably knew every gray twig on his
scrotum, but she didn't answer him because her lips were pressed
against my cheek. I would have reeled if she hadn't anchored me
down. It's a good thing God loves fools. Even if I had known what
Carl wanted, I wouldn't have told him until the seduction had
reached its climax. This was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
Something I could brag about to acquaintances, and which would be
universally disbelieved.

Pictures? Carl said he wanted to show me
pictures? Is that what he had said? I was too busy working up
courage enough to put my arms around this delectable creature to
bother with 2D. An unsuspected critic lurking in my higher
functions declared Monique was on the plump side, with a slight
pooch rounding her waist. A little puff that was scarcely visible
when she stood, and completely invisible (I assumed) when she
stretched herself upwards on the pole.

"Before we leave, I want you to keep a few
things in mind," said Carl as he browsed his computer for the files
he wanted. "First, when a partner deviates from an agreed
objective, I want to know why."

There he went with that partnership business
again. Maybe he had mistaken a nod for a legal agreement. But I had
only met him once before, and I didn't remember nodding about
anything.

"You deny the partnership? Do you deny
Babyschmucks, too?"

I wouldn't deny her anything. But what was he
saying?

Monique twisted in my lap, to my
indescribable pleasure, and gave me a closer look. Not wanting to
appear gauche, I lifted my eyes from the supple gyrations of her
flesh and met her gaze. She really did have wonderful eyes,
although she looked a bit like the Lone Ranger behind all that
mascara.

"Yeah..." she said finally in a bemused
tone. "But I wonder if
he
remembers." She pinched my cheek and did a doubletake.
"Something funny..."

"What, Babyschmucks?"

"He's acting different than before," she
said. "He's not so gung-ho."

I thought if she twisted around one more time
she would see how gung-ho I was.

"That's how men behave when they betray their
partners," Carl explained. "He's told us nothing, and nothing comes
from nothing."

Nothing, nothingness and nada had been
subjects I had contemplated deeply over the years. It would have
been a good moment to pick up the gauntlet. As in, if nothing comes
from nothing, why were we here? But there was a warm something on
my knees that drained me of debate. Damn. You don't need to be a
heavyweight to toss philosophy out the window. In fact, being a
lightweight helps. Alot.