The Hinky Velvet Chair (9 page)

Jewel didn’t want to hide in an elevator yet. “Let’s get
coffee.” She sashayed to the lobby Starbucks, revelling in the feeling that she
could have any man she saw.

She hadn’t felt like this since college. In the order line,
three guys in window-washer coveralls turned around and stared at her, their
jaws dropping. A paunchy tourist festooned with cameras gawked in her
direction. His wife hustled their children away, looking miffed. The shoeshine
guy whistled at her.

“Boy, that Venus Machine sure works,” Griffy said.

“It must,” Jewel said. “Yesterday I felt frumpy. Today—!”

“Today you’re only half frumpy,” Sovay said. She bent and
rubbed a speck off the toe of her shoe, and her breasts almost fell out of her
dress.

Jewel noticed that nobody else was looking, and smiled to
herself.

“But how can it work?” Griffy said. “I don’t understand!”

“It must have been intimidating to grow up with an
intelligent brother,” Sovay said. “For a slow child.”

Jewel stepped between them. “It’s just the power of
suggestion,” she said to Griffy, wondering if that was true.

Through Starbucks’ window she caught the eye of two men in
suits, smoking outside the building. They were looking in at her. They sucked
on identical huge phallic cigars and their palms were flat against the window
and maybe she only imagined she saw a string of drool hanging off the side of
one guy’s jaw.

The lime-green-haired boy with big round spectacles taking
coffee orders began to ask her, “How can I help—” and the words died in his
throat.

“Double shot grande latte no foam cream to go,” she said
with a smile that made the barristo reel.

I could get used to
this.

At the spa, Alex, their Beauty Guide, a youth of ethereal
good looks and iffy sexual orientation, spoke of ayurvedic practices, turbinado
sugar scrubs, and hydrating shirodhara massage techniques. They could be
rubbed, scrubbed or packed with alarming products such as Amazon Basin bat oil,
Potowatomi mineral baths, and soothing fluid marine flora reductions.

Griffy and Sovay took it all in solemnly.

Jewel thought Alex looked familiar. Had she ever dated him?
Since she hadn’t made a practice of chasing gay guys, maybe not.

She also found a stack of pamphlets entitled
Magic is Afoot!
by Dr. G.K. Kauz,
illustrated with a cartoon of a wizard waving a wand. She pocketed one, her
blood running cold.

“I thought this was a psychic spa,” she said. “Don’t you
have anything for my soul?”

Alex spread his arms angelically.
“Mademoiselle,
of course we won’t neglect your soul. We have many
methods for spiritual cleansing and development, via active or passive energy
flow.”

She decided to push. “I need my aura tones checked. I’ve
been told they’re too green.”

Alex looked at her with new interest. “Some practitioners
rely on the naked eye, which is biased. Using our director’s patented
psychespectrometer, our colorimetricians measure every shade in your aura up to
five hundred twelve precise tones, each with unique significance and treatment
indications.”

Patented.
Jewel
made a mental note
. That’s a provable
claim of material fact.
She said, “Can you treat my aura, too?”

“But of course.”

“If it’s broken or stained or something?”

He raised his chin with such saintliness that his perfect
skin glowed. “Stains and breaks are mended every day,” he uttered. “We make the
process as pleasant as possible.”

And that was almost a
claim to practice medicine.

Sovay said, “I’ll have the Hot Stone Relaxing Regimen and,
to follow, the Lymph Drainage Facilitating Bastinado with Spring Salix
Matsudana Twigs.”

Jewel shot her a curious look. She’d once dated a guy who
was into whippings.

“I need to relax,” Griffy said, stating the obvious.

“Then may I suggest to
Madame
our Ultimate Triumph of Soul Mare Tranquilium, a two hundred minute experience
with facial, mineral bath, massage, and seven-layer sea vegetable wrap.
Madame
did say she would be using
Diner’s Club?”

“My treat,” Griffy said, waving at the other two, and glowed
under Alex’s look of startled respect.

“Perhaps you wish to make your nutrition selections now,
rather than waiting for the midday sustaining ritual? The spa tends to fill up
with office workers at lunch,” he translated.

Jewel decided on a Rhodochrosite Crystal Chakra Cleanse with
a massage and a marine flora reduction wrap, and after lunch an aura reading on
the Institute’s
patented
psychespectrometer. This would leave her, she calculated, forty minutes for
loose snooping, while Griffy finished her Ultimate Triumph.

They were led to a locker room, lovingly undressed by small
elderly women wearing kimonos, and laid out in a sauna. This was depressing.
Sovay looked even better naked than clothed.

“In fact,” Jewel remarked later to Griffy as they took their
massages, “if you play the who’s-what-bitch game, I look like an overweight
golden lab and she looks like an afghan hound.”

Griffy moaned under her masseuse’s hands. “Who’s what bitch?”

“Everyone’s a bitch. Except you. The question is, what kind.”
Jewel felt her back start to loosen up.

“Oh, you are not overweight.”

“See? You’re not a bitch.”

“Well, I think you look majestic. You’re so tall and
strong-looking. And your hair is beautiful. It just falls, like a blonde river.
And you have nicer eyes than she has. I think brown eyes are kind of sneaky.
Blue eyes are honest,” Griffy said, in the teeth of the evidence under her own
roof.

“Maybe you’re an Irish setter, but blonde,” Jewel said.

The door opened, and Jewel’s masseuse gasped. “Excuse me,
this room is private!”

At the door, the barristo from Starbucks peeked in. His lime
green hair seemed to stick straight up when he saw Jewel. “I brought you
another latte.”

Jewel stammered, “Uh — thuh — thanks.”

He set the latte cup on the massage table by her nose. “You
need anything, call downstairs.” He smiled a trembly smile.

Griffy’s masseuse flapped her hands at him. “Go, go!”

“Uh, here’s a discount card!” He shoved it through the crack
as the door shut on him.

Jewel looked at the latte cup. It had hearts drawn all
around the top in green magic marker. She laughed.

“What the heck was
that?”

“It’s the Venus machine,” Griffy said. “Venus was the
goddess of love, wasn’t she? She probably blessed the machine, and the machine
blessed you.”

“I don’t think it’s love on his mind,” Jewel said. She felt
pretty good. It didn’t suck being a love goddess. “Just the power of
suggestion.”

The door opened. Her masseuse made a noise like an offended
chicken. Jewel recognized the man peeping in as Griffy’s chauffeur. “I’m Mike,”
he said, taking off his cap and looking at her as if she had just invented ice
cream.

Jewel waited, but he didn’t say anything else. “And? Nice to
see you, Mike, but we’re busy in here.”

“Um, did you leave a scarf in the car?” He held up a tan
plaid wool muffler.

Wool? In July?
Jewel kept a straight face. “No, Mike, I didn’t, but thank you for asking.
Griffy, is that your scarf?”

He did a double-take at the next table and looked
embarrassed. “Oops.” He backed up.

“Mike!” Griffy said in a scandalized voice.

“Sorry!” He left. The masseuse banged the door shut.

Griffy said, “Well!”

Jewel laughed again, her belly shaking her whole body. “Don’t
even start with me. Did I leave a scarf in the car. What next!” The masseuse
squished her shoulders. She relaxed. “Still, I don’t see how the power of
suggestion made those guys follow me ninety floors upstairs.”

“You don’t think it’s kind of wonderful?” Griffy said. “Virgil
said that Venus is related to the navel chakra. Maybe the Venus Machine did
something to your navel. Does your navel feel funny?”

“No, but my head feels like it’s gonna come off at the
roots,” Jewel said, grunting under the masseuse’s powerful hands.

Her masseuse now began slapping her thighs.

“Ow!
Hey! Knock it
off!” Jewel twisted her neck to send a frown behind her. “If I want a spanking
I’ll go to a club.”

The masseuse bowed. Then she laid something piping hot on
the base of Jewel’s spine.

Jewel jerked upright. The hot thing rolled onto the floor.

“I think I’m full up on new things. No. Please, no.”

The masseuse protested in Ubangi or Ukrainian or something.

Jewel was firm. “I’m done. I want a shower. Shower? Water?”
She mimed a showerhead. “Shh-shhhh-flflflfl-shhh?”

The masseuse yanked a hose down off a ceiling-bungee.

Jewel tried to take it from her. “I’ll do it myself.”

Griffy said, “You have to go back to the locker room for a
shower. Haven’t you ever been to a spa?”

Clambering off the table, Jewel wrapped her terrycloth robe
around her. “I think this one time will do me.”

o0o

Jewel sneaked back to the locker room, showered off the oil,
and donned a fresh puffy white terry robe. High time she started acting like an
investigator. Her phone had eight messages, all from Ed. She went out into the
elevator lobby to call him back.

“’S’amatter with you,” he groused, “I been calling all day.”

“I’m undercover, boss, remember?” The lobby floor was cold
under her bare feet. She huddled into a corner and turned her terry-robed back
to avoid the eyes of disembarking elevator passengers.

“You done anything about that nutcase in the psychic salon?”

“I’m there now.”

“Hurry up. They’re holding election press conferences any
day. Get something on him, fraud, code violation, somethin’ looneytunes.
Feelin’ up the customers, I don’t give a damn.”

“Fifth floor leaning on you?” Jewel said sympathetically.

“Commissioner. Seems to think his job’s on the line.”

“So I guess if I screw up we get a new boss.”

“You wish. I’m Shakman exempt, they can’t fire me for
political reasons. But the whole friggin’ city could go to hell in a hanky. You
gotta think big picture.”

Someone male came out of the spa behind her. “Hi, Jewel!”

She stiffened.
Who
knows me here?

“Ed,” she said, hunching lower over the phone. “Check out a
patent for me. For a ‘psychespectrometer,’ whatever that is, and I have no clue
how you spell it.”

Ed grunted. “And you think I do?”

“The patent’s in the name of the spa guy.”

“Gustavus Ka-flim-flam-a-ram-a Kauz?”

“That’s him,” she said.

“Oh, you’re on the phone,” said the voice behind her.
Oh God, what if it’s someone I dated?

Ed said, “The Fifth Floor has a file on Kauz. You want it?”

“Dear God, yes.” She stuck her finger in her free ear. “Talk
to you tonight or tomorrow.”

“Speed it up,” Ed said, and rang off.

She stood holding the dead phone to her ear. “Uh-huh,” she
said to the dead phone. “Okay. Uh-huh.”

The guy behind her said, “Some other time I guess.”

In that moment she recognized the voice as Buzz’s and turned
to see him disappear behind closing elevator doors. She noticed two more
things: His backpack was bulging, and he looked furtive, as if he too had
decided not to be recognized.

It’s a potion. I’m,
like, beta testing it.

Beta testing for a spa, maybe?

Hot dog,
she
thought, tapping her phone in her palm.
I’ve
been undercover one day and I’ve already detected something.

Two suited guys holding huge, phallic cigars came out of the
second elevator and spotted her. “It’s her!”

“There she is! Hey, foxy lady!”

They stuck their cigars in their faces and reached for her
with both hands.

In the nick of time, someone opened the spa door.

Jewel swept past them into the spa, barefoot, with her nose
in the air.

The guy holding the spa door for her was Griffy’s chauffeur.

In the waiting room, latte-boy looked up and smiled.

Feeling hunted, Jewel pretended she didn’t see them.
Jeez. Now
I’m
starting to worry about my green tones.

“There you are!” Alex fluted. “Are we ready for our chakra
cleanse? By the way.” He leaned closer to her. “My partner still talks about
you. You look better than ever!”

“Thanks,” Jewel said pallidly. Not for the first time, she
wished she’d kept a little black book during her slut years. It could have
helped her place these guys. “Uh, tell him hi.”

Her chakra cleanse began alongside Griffy’s treatment. They
were bathed on adjoining massage tables with the bungee-showerheads, which
Jewel instantly coveted. Then they were laid on their backs, schmeared in
fragrant green muck, and wrapped like mummies in what seemed to be huge sheets
of sushi-wrap.