The Hinky Bearskin Rug

by Jennifer Stevenson

  Clay glanced up suddenly from tossing through an overflowing wastebasket.

  Jewel bit her lip.

  “I,” Randy said, without looking away from the poppet, “can make the impossible completely real. Not only do these illiterates have no imagination, but I suspect they don’t even like sex.” He reached out a finger and the poppet leaned forward to rub her round little breasts against it.

  “You’re pretty critical for a guy who would rather read porn stories than look at the pictures,” Clay said unpleasantly. “You couldn’t do any better.”

  “On the contrary,” Randy began haughtily.

  “I’m not staying here to listen to your antlers clashing.” Jewel went into the kitchen.

  Clay followed her. “You indulge him. He’s getting unmanageable.”

  “Not like you. Good grief, look at this mess.” The kitchen was worse than the living room. “Didn’t the old guy eat anything besides danish?”

  Clay closed the fridge. “Don’t look in there.”

  “Why?” Her blood ran cold. “Is there another pocket zone?”

  “No, but it’s really gross. Randy’s a good guy and all but I get the impression he misinterprets our role. I mean, he’s not even a city employee.”

  “And you behave like such a good citizen,” she snapped. “Don’t forget, you’re getting him some fake ID papers.”

  “Now, is that what a good citizen does?” Clay said.

  “The way you’ve taught him to drive, he could get arrested or deported, or worse!”

  “Okay, okay,” Clay said, soothing. “Consider it done.”

  The landlady came up the back stairs. “This is horrible. Ve wanted to move up here so ve could renovate first floor. Now ve can’t use second floor!” She peered through the kitchen door into the living room. “It is still there?”

  Jewel took a deep breath of stale danish and re-entered the living room.

  Randy was walking from pile to pile of the magazines, tapping them. Poppets sprang up wherever he tapped. “Interesting. My touch seems to summon the apparition.”

  Clay said, “Could that be because you’re, uh—” He glanced over his shoulder at the landlady. “English? Jewel, you try.”

  “No thanks.”

  The landlady said tremulously, “Have you look in bedroom?”

  Euw. Jewel got the icks just trying to imagine the bedroom. “Clay, how about you look?”

  “I’ll save you, little lady,” Clay said in a deep voice. He threw his shoulders back and opened the bedroom door.

  “They persist as long as one engages with them,” Randy said thoughtfully.

  “What do you mean, engage?” Jewel said.

  At the bedroom door, Clay gasped.

  “What?” She came to stand behind him.

  “It’s — it’s full of—” Clay turned away, pushing her back.

  Randy straightened.

  “What?” Jewel demanded.

  Clay pinched his nose. “Sweat socks.”

  She shoved past. The bedroom violated the Clean Air Act, but Clay was right. It was G-rated. Dirty laundry lay ankle-deep, but she saw no girlie posters, porn, or poppets.

  She came out and stood looking around at the stacks of porn and their dancing, twirling, teasing, laughing poppets. She turned to the landlady. “Do you have a dumpster? Or just those little garbage cans?”

  “Deli on the corner hass dumpster,” the landlady said.

  “When do they swap out for a new one?”

  “I ask my Aubrey!” The landlady went downstairs.

  Jewel called a huddle. “Randy, what do you mean they persist if you engage with them?”

  “I believe your term is ‘interactive.’ They are autonomous but responsive only. That signifies a message of some sort.”

  “So?” Jewel said.

  “So if one doesn’t ask them to appear, they will not appear. Probably. If one ignores them, they subside — vanish. O’Connor must have known what would happen, for he never threw away the old magazines.”

  Jewel bit her lip. “So did he, like, make them appear? I mean, did he make this happen?”

  Randy looked around the room. “I don’t know.”

  “I know something else you don’t know,” Clay said.

  Jewel looked at him impatiently. “Yes, Mr. Comic Relief? You have a contribution?”

  “These bakery bags.” Clay took a white ball of paper out of the overflowing wastebasket and uncrumpled it. “Have you looked at the address?”

  “Hoby’s,” Jewel said. “My favorite.”

  Clay yanked the rolled-up magazine out of Randy’s back pocket. “They’re from the same place as this lame porn.” He flipped through the magazine and pointed at fine print. “Nine sixty west Washington Boulevard.”

  “I’ve seen that address recently.” Jewel frowned. “Huh. Obviously we’re gonna have to pay this porn company a visit.” She licked her lips. “And buy some pastry while we’re at it.”

  While Jewel phoned in their discovery to Ed, Randy gathered up armloads of magazines and hauled them to the dumpster behind the corner deli, and Clay got the landlady and her husband to show him around O’Connor’s apartment and describe how they were going to redecorate. As the magazines went away, the landlady cheered up.

  “Ve never haff cockroaches, you know.” She dug Clay in the ribs. “That’s something, in neighborhood vit deli. Plus Mr. O’Connor vas no neatnik.”

  Her husband came up beside her and put his arm around her waist. “That certainly was something,” he said sadly, watching the magazines go out the door in Randy’s arms.

  “Oh, you.” His wife slapped him gently on the hand.

  Jewel pushed the moment while they weren’t fighting. “Tell me, have you been approached by anyone else from the city about — about all this?”

  The landlord pinched his wife on the behind and she squealed. “Nope. You’re it. I’m thinkin’,” he said to his wife, “we put the bed in this room, eh, honey? It’s bigger and it gets more light.” He bumped his shoulder against his wife’s and she giggled.

  They got personal. Jewel looked out the window.

  Clay came upstairs with his phone in his hand. “Ed says we can go over there tomorrow.”

  “What about my other job?” Jewel said, air-typing.

  Clay shrugged, stuffed his phone in his pocket, then did a double take at the landlord and his wife, locked in a clinch. “Whoa.”

  “Let’s give ’em their privacy. Randy’s done here.” She led Clay downstairs. “That was interesting. Randy isn’t scared of this stuff at all.”

  “Randy’s hinky to the bone himself,” Clay said. “Why should it scare him? Come to think of it, that could be a decent job for him.”

  “Removing hinky stuff to disassemble pocket zones?” Jewel nibbled her lip. “I’d feel better if I had the slightest clue how they worked or what makes ’em.” She glanced up the stairs in the direction of the now-porn-free apartment. “Do you suppose it’s safe for them to move in there?”

  “I’m sure it won’t hurt them,” Clay said.

  Jewel wasn’t sure at all, but she didn’t know how to find out. And she didn’t know how to protect them without taking their home away from them.

  Chapter Eight

  That night, she broached the idea of hinky-stuff removal to Randy. “You’d get on the city payroll. The benefits are great.”

  He lay under the sheet, his schlong making a tent. He scowled. “You would make a dustman of me.”

  “What’s that?”

  “One who takes away filth. This is not a career.”

  She slid under the sheet beside him. “Nnno. But it pays. It’s safer for you to do than for anyone else I know. Ed would sign you onto the payroll without a murmur. No close scrutiny of your paperwork.”

  “By this you mean proof of my citizenship.”

  “Right.”

  “I think not,” he said casually, turning out the light.

  She sat up in be
d. “Look, it’s hazardous waste removal. That’s not garbage detail. It’s high tech. You could charge whatever you wanted.”

  “No, thank you.”

  She punched his shoulder. “Hey! I’m trying to get you an income here!”

  “Clay is teaching me better skills.”

  “Great.” She wanted to ask what had happened to the money Clay said they’d got when he and Randy raided the bank accounts of a serial black widow. But that whole thing made her honest soul so crazy that she couldn’t even bring it up. Since Randy hadn’t mentioned that money, and he was still hitting her up for cash for clothes, she assumed it was one of Clay’s jokes. “Does he ever bother to tell you he’s teaching you something illegal?”

  “We have been most careful.” Not the answer she’d hoped for. Randy rolled over, propping his head on his elbow. “Currently I am earning micropayments from a pay-to-read company. I worked out the algorithm for the click-bot,” he added proudly.

  Internet wasn’t her expertise, but it sounded crooked. “And this pays what?”

  “So far it earns in the realm of twelve dollars a day.”

  She threw up her hands. “That’s not an income!”

  “But I don’t have to sit and click all day,” he pointed out. “I arm my click-bot and set it running. In the meantime I can learn other skills, or take other positions.”

  “Okay, this totally sounds like a scam. I’ll have Clay shut it down tomorrow.”

  Randy’s voice rose. “But I’m earning money!”

  After the stink she’d made about him living off of her, she supposed she should be more sensitive.

  “Okay, I’m sorry, okay. I’ll talk to Clay and find out what the deal is.” She yawned and slid down under the sheet again. “Let’s just have sex and go to sleep, okay?” she said, laying one hand on his muscular thigh.

  He said stiffly, “If my efforts to achieve solvency inconvenience you, I humbly beg pardon.”

  “Yeah, yeah. You’re such a drama queen.” She stroked his thigh. “Sex? Sleep?”

  He lay rigid under her hand.

  Oh, jeepers. What now? “Randy?”

  “You have no use for me but one.” He sounded mortified.

  “And what a fabulous use it is,” she said, trying for lightness. He said nothing. “Don’t be mad.”

  “I cannot batten on you forever, trading favors for bread.”

  “Why do you care? You’re a sex demon. You can’t help yourself.”

  “I am trying to break a habit of centuries.”

  She rolled her eyes. “You say yes to every woman who gets you alone! You make me say yes in my sleep. You love it.”

  “I was not always a sex demon. In bed, yes, I am. But since you freed me from sexual slavery,” he said with an ironic note that pissed her off, “I am reverting to the man I was.”

  “A lord. A snotty, bossy, privileged—”

  “Just so,” he said quietly.

  Suddenly she realized that she was being dismissive and impatient, while he was exercising restraint.

  Even his restraint criticized her.

  She took her hand off his thigh. “Oh, all right.”

  Her bad-girl brain said, I don’t have to put up with this.

  Grumpily she turned over and put her back to him. She still wanted sex.

  But his message was coming through. He felt exploited and taken for granted. Every night for three solid months. He was fabulous, magical, powerful, totally swoony and explosive, and she rather thought she was getting addicted to him. And now, naturally, he expected something more of her.

  In her heart, she knew he was right. It was time for her to bite the bullet and make an effort to get used to this... relationship.

  Ugh, that word.

  She wondered how much relationship talk they’d have to do tonight before she could get laid and roll over.

  Okay, now you’re being insensitive, Heiss. Go to sleep.

  o0o

  Jewel wanted to spend Wednesday investigating the link between the tame porn and the poppets in the pocket zones, but when she called in to Baysdorter Boncil to claim a sick day, the receptionist transferred her to Sharisse, not Maida.

  “Maida’s out today. When are you coming in?”

  Jewel began, “Uh, I was thinking maybe not—”

  “Steven will be here. You want to get him on harassment for the EEOC, right?” What makes you think I’m with EEOC? Jewel wanted to say. Maida was right. Her navy polyester had done its evil work.

  If she was to accomplish anything, she’d better do it soon. “We still on for lunch?”

  “You bet.”

  “Okay.” Jewel drew a deep breath. “I’ll be there in an hour.” She hung up and told Randy, “I have to go to BB. Stay out of trouble. Call Clay over to work on your identity.”

  “I’m sure he would prefer to hear that from you.”

  Jewel faced her sex demon squarely. “Look. You two can lock horns on your own time. I can’t be bothered trying to handle you delicately. Got me?”

  He aimed huge black eyes at her. “When is my own time, Jewel?”

  She did a double take. “What?”

  “Clay works eight-thirty to five with you, except when he is undercover. What is my workday?”

  She opened her mouth to say that, while she was at work, he could visit the zoo or take up tai chi, she didn’t give a rat’s patoot, but she stopped. They both knew he might zap into a bed at any time. He’d already zapped into a bed in a department store and the back seat of a junked Camry, to name two. He couldn’t afford to stray far from her side, and she couldn’t afford to let him go places where retrieving him could be embarrassing.

  So he stayed with her, or he stayed home, or sometimes Clay babysat him.

  And Randy hated it, which was reasonable.

  “We’ll get you a real job soon. I promise.”

  She threw on the navy polyester pants but compromised on the top: a white lace-edged cami layered under one of those drapey scoop-necked tops that look so demure in Lane Bryant until you get them on a woman with major boobs. Also, the scoop top was red. She felt like all she needed was a scarf with stars on it and she could be a walking tribute to the American flag.

  He called after her. “I thought you wanted to see my pay-to-read click-bot.” He looked like a hound dog watching Mom get ready for work, knowing he would be left alone all day.

  With her hand on the doorknob, she said guiltily, “I’m sorry. I just don’t have time right now.”

  She shut the door before he could make her melt.

  The Baysdorter Boncil office was humming. Girls whispered over the mahogany rails of their corrals. Girls whispered over the coffeepot and the copy machine.

  Jewel found her way to her corral.

  Sharisse met her there and handed her a bulging folder. “Steven will be back after lunch. He left this stuff to go into the lease package spreadsheet. Remember how I showed you?”

  “Yeah, yeah. What makes you think I’m, uh—”

  Sharisse rolled her eyes. “Oh, please,” she said, lowering her voice. “We all know you’re from the EEOC, investigating what happens to Steven’s girls. Believe me, we’re rooting for you.”

  What happens to Steven’s girls? That was a whole new wrinkle. Jewel frowned. “I’m not—”

  “Shh, here comes my boss. I’m being Maida today. Let’s talk at lunch.”

  “Sure.”

  Jewel’s morning passed frustratingly slowly. She typed stuff into spreadsheets. She answered Steven’s phone. Girls walked by and smiled at her, or looked curiously at her, but nobody stopped to talk. Dammit to hell, I’ve been made. Nobody wants to be seen with me. She was ready to give up the whole undercover thing as a waste of time and go back to the pocket zone crisis, when Sharisse collected her and took her downstairs to the noisy grillroom for lunch. They were joined by two other BB office girls.

  The Bennigan’s was jammed. Daringly, Jewel ordered a pitcher of sangria. The girls gigg
led, but they filled their glasses.

  Geri, a striking brunette with a street-smart air, reported all the current rumors about Jewel. “One, they think you’re a cop, cracking down on harassment on the job. Two, you came in after the orgy as an excuse to catch Steven in the act.”

  “Three,” Tonia said, brushing her straight black hair away from her face with long, elaborately-painted fingernails, “you came in because of what happened to Maida’s daughter.”

  “What?” Interesting that Maida hadn’t mentioned that.

  “You didn’t know?” Geri leaned forward. “It happened almost two years ago. Maida’s daughter worked for Steven for maybe a month, and they did not get along.”

  “She didn’t understand the deal,” Sharisse said.

  “Who didn’t understand what deal?” Jewel said. She slurped some sangria and the other girls drank, too. Tongue loosener did not seem all that necessary. They were dying to dish.

  Sharisse said, “Lena, Maida’s daughter? Apparently she didn’t know that old John Baysdorter was sleeping with Maida.”

  Jewel’s jaw dropped. “Our Maida? See-no-evil, hear-no-evil, speak-no-evil Maida?”

  “Yeah,” Tonia said. “For, like, twenty-plus years. Maida could have been a partner herself if she’d of had cojones. But she didn’t have the education, so she’s stuck at office manager level.”

  Geri said drily, “Worked fine until he ups and dies on her. She thought she had til he retired, but he died at sixty-three.”

  “What,” Jewel demanded, “happened to Lena Sacker?”

  “Well.” Sharisse leaned forward. “We kind of hoped you knew. It was Steven, for sure. Lena hated Steven. They had a screaming fight the day she left, and then she had one with Maida, and then she walked out at one-thirty in the afternoon and never came back. As far as we know, she still isn’t speaking to Maida, or Maida to her. Steven must have pulled something.”

  “I think she found out about old John Baysdorter and her mother, and blew her stack,” Geri said.

  “Lena was no prude,” Tonia countered scornfully.

  “No lie.” Geri snorted, and Jewel thought she was about to say more, but Sharisse interrupted.

  “I think Lena knew about old John being her dad.”