The Hinky Bearskin Rug

by Jennifer Stevenson

  “Sexually harassed?” Randy said.

  “So is that where the orgy came from?” Clay said.

  “I have no friggin’ idea. The slick willy I work for is part of it. What do these motherfuckers think? This is their own personal private stag movie? Sunday driver!” She slapped the horn and leaned on it. “Jesus Christ on a bicycle!”

  Clay leaned forward from the back seat and slid his hand over her mouth.

  She shut up.

  “It must be bad,” he said. “You’re channelling Ed.” He pulled his hand back, peeked — her lips worked—then he slid his hand back over her mouth.

  Randy said critically, “Ed’s diction during a seizure is more elaborate.”

  “Funkier,” Clay agreed. “More creative.”

  “Sometimes he fails to blaspheme,” Randy said.

  “And when he’s really upset Ed doesn’t use the F-word. I think he actually forgets it,” Clay said.

  “Difficult to believe,” Randy said.

  Behind Clay’s hand, he felt Jewel smile. He took his hand away and relaxed into the back seat. “So, the orgy. What do you know?”

  She drove silently for a minute. “I don’t know. There’s a woman I can talk to at lunch Wednesday. Maybe more, once I’ve been around the place. I made a lot of friends by telling Steven to call his own cab today. Of course that’s why I may not be working there by Wednesday.” She looked at her watch. “Plus I’m meeting the complainant at six at the Billy Goat.”

  “What is sexual harassment?” Randy said.

  This should be good, Clay thought.

  “It’s something you could use to learn more about, roomie,” she said to Randy. “When someone puts unwanted moves on a coworker or subordinate.” She stopped the Tercel at the light. “Any kind of unwanted advances, a look, a verbal approach. Touching, exhibitionism, showing her feelthy pictures.”

  “You see me as one who tampers with chambermaids?” Randy said, going lord on her.

  Jewel said calmly, “I think that a guy who has been a stealth fuck to more than a hundred women over the past two centuries might not realize how important consent is to a woman.”

  In the back seat, Clay’s ears flapped.

  “I always obtain consent,” Randy grated.

  “Oh, bull. You can’t take ‘no’ for an answer. Prying into her dreams — and disguising yourself as whatever she wants — is not the same thing as asking, in English, under circumstances that allow her to refuse freely—”

  “I take ‘no’ from you!”

  “—Allow her to refuse without consequences,” Jewel said, raising her voice. “I’m not going to argue this with you.”

  Randy shut up.

  Darn. Just when Clay was getting a nice clear view into something he’d been dying to know about for months.

  Clay glanced at her in the rearview mirror. In her navy polyester, with her chin sticking out and her eyes ablaze, she looked all cop. Very hot.

  o0o

  After a million years they got to the bottom of Michigan Avenue and Jewel surrendered the car to Randy, not without misgiving. She took the ferry stairs down to Lower Mich and made her way through bowels of the Wrigley Building to the Billy Goat, a newspapermen’s hangout that was everything Dick’s Last Resort wanted to be: rude, grubby, greasy, smoky, and short on elegance. Way at the end of the bar, Maida Sacker perched on a stool, knees together, in front of a double highball.

  Jewel ordered a beer and then lunged for an emptying booth. Maida joined her.

  “Okay, tell me about the orgy. Who was behind it?”

  Maida leaned forward. The highball was full, but her breath was 180 proof. Her second, then. “I have an educated guess. Since Mr. Baysdorter passed away, the corporate culture has become a little, um, destabilized.”

  “You mean Baysdorter kept the boys in line?”

  “He must have,” Maida blurted. “Steven — Mr. Tannyhill has always expressed himself very freely.” Translation, he propositioned all the girls.

  “So it was Superstud Steven?”

  “The pressures on him are much higher, now that he’s in line to be second partner.” Maida frowned. “And recently he inherited part of Artistic Publishing Company — a family business.” Her mouth soured. “He always comes back from there in a poor humor. Mr. Boncil has remarked on it.”

  Jewel thought of single-mother Sharisse. “That reminds me. Mr. Boncil is doing his girl, too. Don’t make a face, she didn’t say anything. I just saw it. It was in his smile. The way he didn’t touch her. Who else, besides those two?”

  Maida covered her mouth with both hands.

  “You’re positive it’s Steven, then?”

  Her eyes pleaded with Jewel.

  “But you don’t know how he did it, or why it was hinky.”

  No answer. I’m screwing this up.

  “Listen, you really might want the EEOC. I’m here because you said there was something hinky about the orgy. That’s my division,” Jewel said bitterly. “If it was just Viagra in the coffee, you could get a harassment expert, but since it was magic, you get me.”

  “No! No one else! I can’t risk it.” Maida took a deep breath, then a slug of her highball, then another deep breath. “He — it was under control for a long time. I don’t know what’s got into hi — them.”

  Jewel caught the slip, but she didn’t pounce. She said as gently as she could, “You can’t just hire me to throw a scare into the white guys, Maida. You’ve called in the city over hinky phenomena. That doesn’t go away. Regardless of the stink, I’m here until I find out what happened, and decide that I can be reasonably sure it won’t happen again.”

  Maida sipped. “Understood.”

  “And you can’t blame yourself for the way bosses behave. Though I admit I’m a little sickened by the dress code. Those girls dress like victims.”

  Maida glanced at Jewel’s navy polyester pantsuit with a shudder. “Perhaps you’re right.”

  “Okay, I get the message.” Jewel rolled her eyes. “I’ll find something girly to wear tomorrow.”

  An almost human smile twisted on Maida’s lips. “Don’t bother. Even in appropriate attire I expect you’d, uh, stand out. Telling a senior to call his own cab!” She tittered. “‘Is your finger broken?’” She seemed thrilled and horrified.

  “That’s made me, huh?” Reluctantly Jewel grinned.

  “Maybe you’re helping more than you think.”

  “Even if I dress and talk like a cop?”

  With a sigh, Maida said, “You might put heart into the girls,” as if that was the one thing she hoped Jewel could accomplish. She slugged back her highball and got up. “I can’t be seen with you.” She put a twenty on the table and whisked away to the ladies room in back.

  Interview over.

  She may not have meant me to interpret that last remark as blanket permission to interrogate the employees. But I’m gonna assume she did.

  Chapter Five

  “You once told me,” Randy said that night, as they put clean sheets on the bed in Jewel’s apartment, “that you had a family attorney in Homonowoc who became your lover.”

  “I don’t remember telling you that,” Jewel said guardedly.

  “You said he was a septuagenarian. Now you say that this young woman has accepted the patronage of her employer, who is ‘forty years too old for her.’ That troubles you?”

  “So?”

  Randy looked at her across the half-made bed. “In what way,” he said patiently, “is her situation different from yours?” He twitched the sheet out of her hand and shook it out.

  Jewel smiled. Old Liddy Lidheimer. There was a forgotten name. Her belly softened at the thought of him.

  Randy flicked the blanket over the bed. When the pillows were covered and piled up, he stepped out of his clothes and slid his big, wedge-shaped body between the sheets, looking at her expectantly. “Come, you are not so irreflective as you pretend.”

  Jewel got naked, slid down under the c
overs, and let her head sink into the pillow.

  “I was seventeen. Grampa was already dead. Then my grandmother died. Liddy, the lawyer, Mr. Lidheimer, had been coming around for a while, setting me up with a power of attorney for Gram. That was so I could keep the farm running while she was sick. I don’t really know how it happened.”

  She turned out the bedside lamp and stared at the lines of streetlight striping the ceiling through the venetian blinds, remembering. She smiled.

  “Liddy was there for me. He joshed me along when I was desperate. He liked me strong, you know.” She turned her head on the pillow. “That’s different from this poor girl at this office. She’s so, so flat. So docile.”

  Randy didn’t say anything.

  “After Gram died I guess I did flatten out,” she admitted. “Liddy cured me. He saw me through grief and panic and feeling abandoned. And he kept the farm title tied up in court while I sold the last crops and reduced the herd to a manageable size. And he nursed me—”

  Her throat closed suddenly. She paused.

  “Nursed me through selling the farm.” She took a deep breath. “Liddy made me see that I had to let it go. He helped me realize that I didn’t want to be a dairy farmer. I was just holding onto it so I wouldn’t feel so lost. He got the best price, a crazy big price, and he kept the law off me until I was legally of age to sign things. And he made me go to college.” She looked at Randy, begging him to understand. “He made me go. He wanted the best for me.”

  “For a price. He was seventy. He despoiled a schoolgirl,” Randy said in a critical tone.

  “You’re over two hundred and you’ve slept with more than a hundred women,” she said, relaxing. “You’ve never said if any of them were jail bait.”

  “May I ask something?” She nodded, and he said, “How long were you faithful to him?”

  “How do you know I was faithful to him?” She frowned, remembering. “He died while I was in college. It was in my first year, in spring. He hadn’t even told me he was sick.” She said in a harder voice, “Everybody who loves me dies.”

  “That’s my line,” Randy said, and she did a double take. His big black eyes glittered. “So Liddy died, and you drowned your sorrows in a rakish career.”

  “Who the hell are you, my shrink?”

  “What is a shrink?”

  “A head-shrinker. A psychiatrist. I have no idea if they had shrinks in 1811, so I don’t know what you would call it.”

  “A confessor.” He laughed, and bowed his head. “I will not tease you to confess to me.”

  She smiled weakly. “Besides, you have other skills I need you for.”

  Now he looked serious. “Yes.” He reached for her.

  No sooner was she in his arms than Jewel began twitching. It was a mental twitch, invisible to Randy, she was sure, but horribly perceptible to herself. Then the twitch moved into her legs, then in her arms, then her back. He pulled her close. The hairs on his thighs tickled hers, and then the twitch swooped into her crotch, where it stayed and drove her nuts.

  I thought I was getting used to him!

  She groaned aloud, a deep, sad groan with a lilt of panic at the end, because she knew what this restless feeling was about.

  I can’t be tired of him. That is simply not an option here.

  If things were normal, if he was normal, he would be gone in the morning and she’d be free, free, free to have her life back. If things were the way they used to be, she could kick him out tonight, no comment, no questions asked or answered. He might call her for a few days, but she could choke him off, no problem. If he was a normal guy.

  He’s two hundred years old. He can see right through me.

  Very tenderly, he touched her face with one hand.

  He’s trying to get closer and I’m terrified.

  “I want it hinky tonight,” she blurted.

  His hand stilled. In the dim bedroom, she thought his eyes got bigger and blacker.

  Oh, right. He’s a lord, too.

  She tugged at his shoulders. “Come o-o-on. Take me to demonspace. You know I love it.” When he didn’t move, she added, “Pretty please?”

  Now I’m catering to his ego. What’s next? Playing dumb while he talks about da Bears?

  But Randy relaxed. He drew his hand over the crown of her head, down over her face, his fingertips brushing her eyelids. “Sleep, Jewel.”

  And bang, she was asleep.

  o0o

  Snow, she thought, trudging up the front steps of the Field Museum over dirty old crusts of snow. I’m sick of snow. It was bone cold. A breeze off the lake carried icy razors in it, blowing six hundred miles down the lake from Canada.

  Hope the museum’s open. She was freezing out here. She got to the enormous brass doors and peered through the glass. The museum was dark.

  Turning, she saw the long front steps were empty, the exit for Roosevelt Road empty, Lake Shore Drive empty and bleached white by road salt. The breeze picked up and blew cold salt into her eyes until they watered.

  The door opened behind her. Gratefully, she went in.

  Somehow she was on the second floor mezzanine, looking at the Malvina Hoffman bronzes of primitive man, as they called him back in the thirties, from around the world. The bronzes were her favorites, all rich red-brown and naked, every one seeming at peace in a world that made sense to them.

  She reached out and rubbed the shiny bronze nose of a Podaung Burmese woman, proud in her rings and rings of necklaces, her eyes downcast as if saying, See how much it’ll cost you to marry me?

  One gallery was lit.

  She wanted to keep walking around the second floor, visiting her old friends the Hoffman bronzes, but the light pulled her.

  She walked under a marble arch and was instantly in warmth and light, in a long gallery she’d visited before, with glass cases in a rick-rack pattern that made nooks.

  In the first nook, behind glass, Liddy stood, his old tweed jacket slung over his wrinkly birthday suit. His lawyer-briefcase hung from his hand, one shoulder lifted higher than the other like always, and he smiled that old sweet smile that said, Wanna make trouble?

  Her heart caught. Her belly went cold. Her eyes met his. She saw that he was twinkling at her.

  He was alive in there.

  Her chest tightened. She backed away. For a flashing instant she dreamed she was running down the cavernous dark halls, screaming for a guard. Didn’t you know he’s still alive?

  But she didn’t run.

  Feeling horrible but unable to face Liddy any longer, she moved to another nook. Here was a guy she’d dated in college. Smart-mouthed grad student from her dorm who’d thought that women got turned on if you insulted them. He stood naked in his glass case, prouder of his erection than he should have been.

  She walked past.

  The next case held another naked guy from college, a face only faintly familiar. His lips shaped her name.

  Alive in there.

  In the next, the pledging class from the Phi Kap house posed like so many statues of horny bare-assed Greek athletes. They grinned at her. Behind them stood cheerleaders all in a row, naked except for their pom-poms, giggling and shoving.

  Oh, yeah, the cheerleaders. Lot of punch at that party.

  The itch between her legs was turning hot and hard.

  She walked faster.

  Every case held somebody she’d dated.

  There were dozens of them.

  They were all alive.

  This gallery had to end sometime. She knew it did. For one thing, she’d quit dating last year and spent six months in celibate hell. So this had to end somewhere.

  She broke into a trot.

  There, an opening at the end of this row. She ran toward it and found herself at the bottom of another long gallery just like the other one, full of glass cases full of naked men. They were all alive. They all looked at her. Beckoned to her. Showed her their rampant dicks. Some were crying. Some threw themselves against the glass and slobbe
red on it, beating it with their fists, yelling her name.

  She picked up her feet and sprinted.

  She burst out of the exhibit onto the mezzanine and bolted for the stairs. There was a uniformed guard at the corner of the stairs, well, finally, and he turned reproachful eyes on her.

  Not a guard. A Chicago cop. One of maybe forty she’d dated.

  As he reached for her she jinked past his outstretched arms, skidded, and leaped down the stairs two at a time, past marble statues that came to life as she passed.

  Sobbing for air, she vaulted the turnstyle and escaped into the freezing evening air on the front steps. The lake spread out before her, frozen, flat, and still. A full moon rose, splashing orange light over the ice. Untouched snow lay on the steps. Orange moonlight seemed to skip over the snow.

  Someone stood on the verandah with her, half in the moonshadow of a big pillar, naked and shivering. His back was to her. He was watching the moonrise.

  She breathed more slowly. Panic left her.

  Okay, okay, I get it. They never go away.

  He didn’t move. He said, Have you ever wondered what my gallery might look like?

  No. Aren’t you cold? she said.

  He didn’t answer.

  Her body steamed. She took a step forward on the verandah. Snow melted under her foot.

  He didn’t turn when she slid her arms around him, but his shivering stopped.

  She touched the front of her burning body to his back. His flesh felt chilled through. Pulling him back against her, she tried to pour her heat into him. She stroked his face and down over his cold, bare body. When her hands reached his groin, she found all his heat.

  He knelt, and she knelt with him, never letting go. Side by side they lay on the cold stone, the snow going to puddles under them, and she stroked him and pulled him warm. When she thought he would climax, he turned in her arms. Finally. She was aching for penetration. But he rolled over her until she was spooned, her back to his hot chest, looking out on the frozen lake, and he worked her with his hands while his schlong branded her back like a hot poker and the moon rose higher. His fingers dipped into her, penetrating, teasing, withdrawing, and extra hands tickled her nipples, and his teeth nibbled both her earlobes at once and his tongues licked into the hollow of her collarbone. She squirmed, no, please, please fuck me, and he flicked her clit with his thumb in a slow rhythm that made her arch like a fish. The moon seemed to swoop down out of the starry sky.