The Hinky Bearskin Rug (16 page)

Digby, in a
sopping raincoat. She was saved.

Britney
dimpled at Lena. “This is
my
partner.”

“Want a drink,
Digby?” Jewel said, knowing he would refuse.

“No. Are you
ready?” he said to Britney.

“In a minute,
he-man,” Britney said cheerfully. “Why don’t you scram so we can finish up
here?”

His face
darkened. “I’ll hit the men’s. Then we go.” He strode off to the men’s like Mel
Gibson with a full bladder.

Britney tossed
her curls. “He’s so possessive.”

“It must be
you, Brit. He’s been a doormat for years. Who’d of thunk getting laid would
turn him into an alpha male?”

“I had one of
those once,” Lena said. “Talk about high maintenance.”

“Jazus, yes,”
Jewel said, thinking of Randy. Her tummy felt hot and confused. She checked her
watch. “Clay should be waiting out in my car by now, wondering where the heck I
am. Head him off, Brit?”

“It’ll be my
pleasure,” Britney said.

Jewel and Lena
took a pit stop to give Britney time to engage Clay in conversation. Then they
sneaked out the side door of the bar. It had stopped raining.

“I really
appreciate your doing this,” Jewel said, feeling hateful and despising herself
for it. Lena-slash-Velvita, seen on the ground, was nearly as tall as Jewel,
and all legs. Her black anorak concealed her perky, natural breasts, but Jewel
could vividly call them to mind. After all, they’d been on display for a good
part of the fifty-minute movie she’d watched last night with Clay. Plus the
ski-lodge scene on the fake bearskin rug. She knew for a fact that Randy didn’t
care if a woman was a limber bombshell or if she was ninety and crippled with
arthritis, because once he got her into demonspace she was as young and as hot
as she felt. But the principle was... the principle was that, goddammit, she
was jealous.

I hate myself when I’m jealous.

To prove to
herself she could behave better than this, she added, “Randy really hates being
stuck in a bed, or rug, or whatever. You’re a real saint to help me let him
out. Lots of women wouldn’t.”

Lena flagged
them a cab. “He’s something, isn’t he? How long has he been out of that brass
bed?”

“It’s hard to
remember. Three crazy months, I think.”

Lena smiled.
She had a nice-girl smile. “He a good roommate?”

“The worst. He
was a lord, back in England. I don’t think he even shaved himself.” Jewel
scowled, then realized she was scowling and tried to smooth her expression. “I
pay for everything. Sooner or later I’m gonna send him out to Mickey D’s for a
paper hat if he doesn’t get a j.o.b.”

“He feels
badly about that,” Lena said.

Don’t tell me how Randy feels! I know
all about how he feels!
Then Jewel thought,
Great, he’s
complaining about his bitch of a roommate to this porn star. While they’re in
bed.
Remorse struck her. She ought to feel sorry for him. Randy was a long
way from home. He could never go back to being shaved by someone else. He did
his best. He didn’t deserve this.

She remembered
his diary on her computer at home.
Serve
out more shameful centuries,
he had written.

“So do the
guys you work with really feel embarrassed about their jobs?

“Oh, yes. It
takes special skills, but you’ll never get the average guy in a sports bar to
believe that.”

“I’m a moron,
remember? What special skills?”

Lena looked at
her sidelong. “They have to know what a woman wants. And we have a phrase in
the business. ‘Waiting on wood.’ Not every guy can perform on command, keep it
up in front of a dozen production crewmembers until it’s time for the money
shot.”

A smile walked
onto Jewel’s face. “I’ve had boyfriends like that. Not many.”

“They’re rare.”

“But why would
they feel bad? I would think the sports bar types would be high-fiving ’em,
like,
go brah.”

“More likely
sneer at them out of jealousy,” Lena said evenly. “Most men have contempt for
whores, you know. If that’s your mindset, it’s easy to feel like a whore. And
we were all brought up with that mindset, weren’t we?”

Jewel was
silenced.

She must be right.
Randy had written about the whores in
that 1811 brothel with such wack ambivalence. Half the time he was dissing them
as dirty skanks. And then the change of heart, as he found out he couldn’t
satisfy them, which humbled him, proving his mistress right. Then, worse, the
two-hundred-year uphill climb to his current pinnacle of skill.

And what skill it is!
Already she missed his magic mojo and
his beautiful black eyes.

They pulled up
at the Artistic Publishing Company. Jewel insisted on paying for the cab. “Have
they all gone home?”

“Shooting is
over for now, so, yes.” Lena let them in the front door with a key. “Print
production works late. They’re graphic designers. No time management skills.
Printing and shipping are in the basement, they won’t even know we’re here.”
She signed the security guard’s register. “Anybody still here?”

“Just the
printers,” Harry said.

“Really?” Lena
squinted.

“Yeah.
They’re, uh, fixing the plumbing in the old men’s room down there.”

“Ah. Right.”
Lena exchanged significant glances with Harry, which made Jewel wonder what was
with the old men’s room. But Lena was hustling her forward. “Good night, Harry.
We’ll probably be here until after you leave.”

The guard
touched his hat. “Right, Miss Lena.”

The floor
under their feet boomed, like the speakers in a car full of rap.

Jewel said, “You
know a lot about the company’s operations.”

“Onika is
grooming me to take over someday.”

“Wow.” Jewel
thought about that. “Does Maida know?”

“I haven’t talked
to her in almost two years.”

“Two years.”
Jewel was hearing that phrase a lot lately. She was beginning to wish she had a
frickin’ wayback machine to just go back and look. “What happened two years
ago?”

“At BB?” Lena
shrugged. “Just Steven being Steven. When I wouldn’t put out, he told me I was
John Baysdorter’s bastard. He named all the girls he’d had, what he’d done with
them, who else they were doing. He got physical.” Lena’s cool slipped. She
swallowed. “I confronted my mother. She denied nothing.”

Jewel thought
of Maida, trapped like a cornered mink in that tiny office, watching bullshit
go down with girls she employed year after year, and feeling helpless to do
anything about it because her own daughter’s child support depended on the
boss.

Maybe she’d
been a little hard on Maida.

And on Randy,
too.

“You’re quiet,”
Lena said, with challenge in her voice.

Jewel entered
the elevator and turned to face her. “I’m thinking that I’ve been more than a
moron. I’ve been an jerk.”

A smile
twitched on Lena’s lips. “It’s curable.” Jewel laughed, and Lena smiled for
real. “Now I’ll tell you what you really want to know. How I ended up here.”

“Jeez, am I
totally transparent?”

“It’s
everyone’s question. But you get the real answer. I started because of Steven.”

She let them
into the Hot Pink studio and flipped on lights. From here, the thump of the
printing presses was softer.

“He’s Onika’s
nephew and the great-grandson of the founder of Artistic Publishing. John
Baysdorter did more than get his secretary pregnant. He created a macho,
rule-breaking corporate culture. I think Steven is genuinely crazy. But it’s
the kind of craziness the business world rewards, you know? Aggression,
arrogance, the risk-junkie thing. The functioning sociopath.” She slapped the
door with her open hand. “And I’m going to take him down,” she said harshly.

“You go, girl,”
Jewel said.

“When I walked
out of BB, I was so mad that I would do anything to get him. I’d worked for
Steven long enough to know that he had financial ties to Artistic, that he was
dying to make partner, that he hated Onika, and that he was up to his neck in
some covert deal about this building.”

“Really.”
Jewel’s ears pricked up. “The Artistic Company, or the whole building, bakery
and all?”

“The building.
If it goes condo, it’s a hundred million.”

Jewel blinked.
“But would Onika sell? Seems like she’s having fun with the porn.”

“That’s just
it. She won’t sell.”

Jewel needed
to talk this over with Clay. “We’ll get to the bottom of it,” she vowed. “And
you’ll save your mom.”

Lena turned
red. “I don’t want to save her!”

Oops.
Jewel changed the subject. “So you came
to Onika?”

“She was
great. She took me in and made me her assistant, and I got interested in
performing, so I tried it.” A smile lit Lena’s face. “I love it. I mean, it’s
amazing. It’s liberating. It’s
fun.
I
love being on camera. I’m such a showoff. And I get
paid
to get off. The guys are all good in bed, plus the wood thing,
which believe me a girl comes to appreciate.”

“Amen,” Jewel
said. “But it’s killing Maida.”

Lena said
nothing.

“Listen,”
Jewel said. “I can see we’ll have to do another three-pitcher night, but right
now I’ve got an urgency.”

“Right. Randy.”
Lena went to a big metal closet and pulled out the bearskin rug. “Help me get
this into the sound booth. You’ll feel more private there.”

They dumped
the rug on the sound booth floor. Jewel stared down at the snarling fake
bear-head.
Well, buddy, this is a new
one.

She wondered
if she could just roll the rug up and sneak it out of here.

Maybe she
could leave him in the storage locker in the basement of her apartment
building.

That’s
an awful thought.

Yet she’d
thought it. She felt so mixed up. Half of her wanted to set him free like some
wild stallion in a meadow or something, and the other half was pure cave woman.

Mine.

Ugh.

As if reading
her thoughts, Lena said, “Having this guy around must be fifty-seven kinds of
evil temptation.”

Jewel couldn’t
look her in the eye. “You have no idea.”

Lena showed
her the light switches and left. “I’ll be at my desk downstairs.” She went out
and shut the door.

o0o

Jewel turned
out the lights. Slowly, the blackness of the sound booth faded up. Through the
window, she saw a single bulb on a stick illuminating the studio. Then she
became aware of green LED lights on the consoles in front of her. Her heart was
hammering.

Oh, big deal,
so he was in there, like he was in all the other beds she’d saved him from.
What’s so different about this?

Duh, it was a
porn
factory. Her skin was on fire with
the fact.

Her heart
wouldn’t quiet. Suddenly she couldn’t wait to see him, see him and say,
It’s all right, I know everything, you’re
not as stuck up as I thought.

The rug was a
thick pale patch at her feet.

She took off her shoes and stepped onto the rug in her knee-high nylons.
Randy?

The fake
bearskin was slippery-soft. She hesitated, then took off her pantsuit and
blouse, folded them, and lay them on the post-production mixing console beside
her. That made her think about her surroundings.

She felt a
thrill, being here. In this room they listened to porn stars sighing, moaning,
crying out. Here they made those rhythmic, silly, squishy noises go away, and
snipped out the occasional cough of cameraman or boom operator. She wondered
what that was like, when sex, which she had always regarded as strictly
recreational, became one’s daily job.

She supposed
that a person stopped getting horny and focused on minutiae. We’re getting
glare off the spit on her breast. Is the camera angle going to catch that
ten-incher? Bend backward, honey, show me some pink. Suddenly she was reluctant
to take off her panties, her knee-highs, and her industrial-grade bra.