The Hinky Bearskin Rug

by Jennifer Stevenson

  The naked woman smiled at Randy. “Can I have a cappuccino?”

  “They’re not assistants, they’re just rubbernecking,” Onika said.

  “I once knew a beauty,” Randy remarked, “who claimed that coffee was ruinous to the complexion.

  “Baby,” Flash Titty said, “they’re not looking at my complexion.”

  Jewel wanted to pull her hair.

  “I’ll get your cappuccino,” Onika’s assistant said. She lifted her eyebrows at Jewel as if she’d heard Jewel’s thought.

  God, I am such a bitch! Jewel felt like one solid blush.

  She paid attention to the contortionists so she didn’t have to hear what Randy said next. Those women sure were limber. Skinny, exquisite, shameless — it embarrassed Jewel to discover that the shamelessness she prided herself on was small town stuff. On the red velvet dais, the panting Tokyo Twins offered the camera proof of their high level of satisfaction. The photographer leapt and snapped and yammered. Sancho pulled out his, holy crap, his ten inch thing and experienced his moment of triumph, which seemed like an anticlimax, all things considered.

  Jewel reluctantly turned back to see what her sex demon might be getting up to with a porn star. She found Clay watching her.

  “Bored?” she blurted.

  He shook his head, smiling at her.

  “I can’t believe you’re not looking at this.”

  “Seen it. My Dad’s collection is legendary.”

  “Oh.” There didn’t seem to be much to say to that. She leaned closer to him, and he put his arm around her. That felt nice. She might be the fattest woman in the room, but somebody wanted to cuddle her.

  “Okay, we’re done!” somebody yelled.

  Sancho and the Tokyo Twins got up and calmly wiped themselves down with pop-up moist towlettes.

  “They seem to like their work,” Jewel said lamely.

  The assistant checked her watch. “Onika, I’m due upstairs.”

  “Go, go.” Onika shooed her off.

  Flash Titty moved languidly to the dais. A man in a bear suit already stood waiting for her. The suit had a very realistic bear head and claws, but a human body part poked through a hole in the bear’s fly. Another man was getting into a weird outfit that looked like a porn version of a Disney version of a Brahma bull. The bull guy had not, Jewel noted, been circumcised.

  “They love their work. Hard to believe, I know,” Onika said, eyeing Jewel with irony. “Nice girls should have more shame.”

  Jewel laughed uneasily. She felt like her blush system had blown a circuit breaker.

  To her profound relief, Onika led them out of the studio. “Come upstairs. You must have some questions by now.”

  In the elevator, Jewel said what had to be said. “You know, I always thought I was this balls-to-the-wall horny city girl. I mean, I’ve been around. But I sure feel small town here.”

  “It’s the concentration,” Onika said. “There’s just so much of it in one place. I was a bad girl myself, back when I was young and fuckable.” She elbowed Jewel and dropped her growly voice another notch. “But half the fun of being a bad girl is being the only one in the room, yah?”

  Jewel burst out laughing. Clay smiled a discreet smile. Girl talk doesn’t embarrass Clay, she remembered.

  Randy was brick red. He stared rigidly at the elevator doors, his lips pressed together.

  In Onika’s office, Jewel accepted a gin and tonic from their hostess. Clay took a beer. Randy refused refreshment.

  Jewel sighed. “Okay, I admit I had other expectations. I mean, frankly, that stuff is kind of tacky and it didn’t turn me on,” she lied. “It was so, I don’t know, mechanical? But it wasn’t horrible.”

  Onika jabbed the air triumphantly with her cigarette holder. “That’s because that stuff is for men. Our print stuff is still done for the male readership.” She put a cigarette in the holder and drew flame onto it. “But upstairs.” She sat back and blew a smoke ring amd grinned, sipped her Scotch, blew another ring, and started coughing. “Hell.” She hit a button on her phone. “Honey, get me a press goodies bag for Hot Pink Studios.”

  “Ma’am, please, no.” Here it came. What did you expect? You go in on a fishing trip, you have to dodge bribes from the fish. “We can’t accept—”

  But Onika gestured and the assistant handed the bag to Jewel.

  “Ma’am,” Jewel began again, holding up a palm.

  “Miss,” Onika corrected. “I want to give you these so you can see what I’m trying to do with this company. It’s not a brand new idea, but it’s new to Artistic. You know the old joke? What’s the difference between porn and erotica? Porn is what turns you on, erotica is what turns me on. Well,” Onika leaned forward, “the real difference between porn and erotica is, porn pays ten times better.”

  Jewel thought. “Because more men than women buy porn?”

  “Nope.”

  “Because men have more money?”

  “Nope. It’s because for a long time nobody figured out that women have more money, and they will buy porn — if it isn’t tacky and mechanical. Those were your words, weren’t they?”

  “I’m not trying to insult—” Jewel began.

  “Go home and watch it. We’re making erotic film for women. It’s respectful, it’s enjoyable, it’s made with the kind of sex women like. Not the calisthenics you saw downstairs.”

  Jewel felt a smile coming on. “Sex women like?”

  The twinkle was back in Onika’s eye. She said, “Men like quantity. Women like quality. Men like it fast and talk-free. Women like it slow, with lots of foreplay and conversation. Men like to break the rules. Women do, too, but they also like to break down a man’s emotional resistance.” She blew smoke. “Some of ’em. I’ve heard tell there are some girls so modern, they like sex any old way.”

  Jewel’s pulse sounded in her ears. “I get you.”

  “I’m not asking you for any favors. I just want you to look at what we’re doing and decide for yourself if it deserves a chance. You saw what we do downstairs. Now let’s go upstairs.”

  Chapter Eleven

  On the fifth floor, they went into a room full of sound mixing consoles—“Sound is almost the most expensive part, which is why the sound for a lot of porn sucks”—with a long, low window looking out and down onto a scene of intimacy.

  Down there, inside a circle of artificial light, was a fake living room in a fake ski lodge. A fake fireplace flickered. Squat oil lamps sat on old-timey tables around a big white fake bearskin rug—“I have a thing for bears”—and on the rug lay a fully-clothed couple in ski duds, including boots and snowsuits.

  They were kissing very slowly, touching faces, looking into one another’s eyes.

  Jewel frowned. She felt like she’d walked into a spy-hole on somebody’s private bedroom.

  “I wrote the first couple scripts, but my contract gal wrote the rest. She’s good. She has to live with ’em, so it’s only fair.”

  Jewel watched the man slowly unzip the side of the woman’s snowsuit to reveal perfect skin, tawny in the fake firelight, all the way down to her ankle. He looked in her eyes the whole time. The woman said something, and Jewel realized she could hear her murmuring coming from a speaker in the ceiling of the sound booth. She took the man’s hands in hers and pressed them against her cheeks. He smiled, shaking his head, and drew her face very slowly to his for a kiss.

  “That’s freaky,” Jewel said.

  “Beeecause?” Clay said.

  “It must take forever to get down to business.” That wasn’t why it felt freaky, but she couldn’t think straight.

  “That’s what makes it good,” Onika whispered. “Going slow.”

  That’s what’s making me antsy as hell, Jewel thought. She’d been horny all through this visit, but in a casual, volleyball-on-the-beach kind of way. Now she squirmed.

  Onika went over to the man at the sound console and whispered to him.

  “You should not be here,” Randy
murmured in Jewel’s ear.

  She turned on him. “What is your problem?”

  “You are vulnerable to certain kinds of magical influence,” he whispered. “In one summer alone, you have met with a genie and a magical beauty machine — and with me.”

  “So what’s the friggin’ magic here? It’s just sex. Not even sex sex. For pete’s sake, look at them, they’re touching each other’s hands now.”

  “I don’t know where the magic is. I feel it. There is something hinky in this building,” Randy said, lifting his head and letting his eyes roam over the ceiling. He looked at her. “I feel your state.”

  She set her teeth. What state? she would have said, but she knew. Randy was attuned to her level of arousal all the time, like, all the time. It was like owning a dog who could hear you think the word ‘suppertime.’ From across town.

  “This is not an appropriate moment for you to be tuning in to my state, buddyboy.” She didn’t want to think about sex with Randy here.

  “Can we have it quiet?” said a guy plastered up against the window with headphones on his head.

  “Sorry,” she whispered. She moved away from Randy.

  Clay sidled up to her other side. “Uh, think I’ll run downstairs to the printing plant, give it a quick sweep.”

  She squinted. “Why? You don’t have hinky radar.”

  Clay pecked her lips lightly with his. And out he went.

  She felt abandoned. I’m on my last nerve here and my team is playing hooky.

  o0o

  Clay felt that things were moving along nicely. Randy thought he was so smart, flaunting his ability to read her mind, talking about it right there in front of strangers. He didn’t know Jewel, even if he could see into her deepest sexual desires.

  Clay knew Jewel. This was a woman who liked skaggy old men’s porn better than the touchy-feely stuff going on at Hot Pink Studios. Sex for Jewel was an athletic event.

  And relationship was her four-letter word.

  It might take Clay longer to get where he was going, but he would stay there longer than Randy ever could. Because Clay knew how and when to back off.

  Randy would never get that. He’d spent too many years wading around hip-deep in the sexual swamps of women’s minds. He was bad at consent. And the thing Jewel hated most was being crowded.

  Clay had set Randy up to push too hard. If he’d done it right, Randy would even now be digging his grave.

  And Clay wouldn’t even be there. She couldn’t know he had made it happen.

  Sweet.

  As he descended the basement stairs he heard the presses thundering. He went through a set of scarred plexi doors and the noise increased tenfold. A friendly young man with snaggly front teeth asked him if he needed help.

  Clay thanked him. “Just checking the noise level!” he shouted, holding up the back of his cell phone and peering at it. “You ought to be wearing ear protection!”

  The kid pshawed visibly and wandered off. Second quickest way to get someone to ignore you — fuss over them.

  Clay wandered, holding his phone in his palm by his waist.

  Yep, this was still a porn company. Photos of bare flesh flashed through the old-fashioned presses every half-second. The press room’s lower walls had centerfolds taped against them, and the upper walls bore porn posters from bygone decades. These posters were raunchier than the stuff in Girls, Giggles, and Garters, but there were plenty of Wilmas on the walls, too.

  It was fascinating, how much effort had gone into varying Wilma’s pose and costume, and yet how carefully the artists of succeeding decades had preserved her wholesomeness. She could have been Miss Idaho Potato of 1900 or the Daisy Queen of 2000. From every wall Wilma beckoned, promising everything he’d ever wanted.

  Everywhere, printers with happy grins greeted him. They seemed to love their work.

  Clay checked out the men’s room. The smell hit him first, so bad that he tripped over the cracked black-and-white tile floor. More pin-ups covered the walls, one over each urinal. And — he stepped into a wooden stall — yep, the stall had its own fleshy wanton taped against the inside of the door, with a suspicious and unsavory stickiness coating the lower half of the poster. For some reason he didn’t feel like sitting down.

  Jewel’s lucky she didn’t draw this duty.

  He wandered out into the press room and kept moving, following the walls to stay out of the way of men clambering around the greasy presses, loading huge paper rolls, or grabbing handfuls of naked pictures off huge stacks and snapping them in the air, for all the world as if they were making a bed with sheets of porn.

  “Why do you do that?” he shouted, fascinated.

  “So they won’t stick together!” shouted the lucky paper-wavers.

  Clay didn’t really expect to find anything hinky. So, when he saw the ancient men’s room door with the brand new board nailed across it, he almost walked by. The doorway was vaulted, as if this hadn’t always been a men’s room. It was hung with neatly printed signs. keep out. out of order. health department warning. do not enter.

  Huh. That’s a lot of signage for one busted sewer pipe.

  He tugged at the board. It came loose easily. The nail at the top end had been yanked loose before, and then slipped back into its old hole. Many times, by the look of it. Hm.

  With a swift glance around, he yanked the board free, let it swing down, whisked inside, and shut the door behind him.

  o0o

  “I want children someday,” said the brunette beauty on the bearskin rug. “Does that seem crazy to you?”

  “Yes,” Jewel muttered. She wanted out.

  Onika appeared at her elbow. “That’s Velvita Fromage, our contract girl. Isn’t she gorgeous?”

  “Gorgeous,” Jewel said hollowly.

  Onika looked at her watch. “Conference call time. I’ll be in my office,” she whispered.

  Jewel forced a smile.

  Okay, okay, she was getting the picture. These were movies about nice, good-hearted porn queens who got slow, affectionate licking from their studs before they took all ten inches in some orifice. He had to say “I love you” before he got to stick it in. BFD. Get me out of here.

  She wondered where Clay was. Randy stood in a corner, glowering. Jazus, was he mad at her for being turned on? That was another first. She fidgeted silently until she couldn’t take it any more. Then she went out of the sound booth in search of a place where she could scream.

  Across the hall she found another sound booth, this one looking out on an empty stage and one bare lightbulb on a stick.

  She hugged herself, grateful for the dark.

  But here came her sex demon, looking as he so often did like a hanging judge. He flicked on the light as he entered.

  “Jewel, I beg you listen—”

  I am so not up for a fight. “No, you listen. I’ve had enough. I thought I could take this. I thought I was so smart and sophisticated and big city. Well, I’m not. There, are you happy? You broke me down. I’m just a small town girl with small town morals, and I think it’s — it’s disgusting.” And disturbing. And it makes me feel weird about myself. “I want to go home!”

  “Then go!” Randy exploded. “I met with less hypocrisy from a nun than I have seen in you!”

  “Oh, really!” she said, stung, her voice rising. “Where did you meet her? In bed, of course?”

  He jerked his head back as if he’d been slapped. “Of course. That’s what I am. I’m good in bed.”

  Oh, great, now he was insulted. She tried to soothe him, but frankly she didn’t want to. She wanted to slap him.

  “Yes, you are, you’re terrific in bed. Can’t you see, it’s the difference between what I do with you and that — that fake sex that bothers me?”

  “It’s not fake sex.”

  Whoa. If Randy said it was real, it was real.

  Double ick.

  “That’s even worse. They’re having fun out there and people are watching, they’re taping it, t
hey’re listening in. And then a million creepy old farts like O’Connor are gonna mess up the upholstery on their couches, watching—”

  “Or perhaps a million respectable women and their husbands,” he said with mystifying sarcasm.

  “What’s the difference?” she yelled.

  “I don’t know,” he said, tight-lipped. “What is the difference? How does all this differ from your own behavior with me?”

  “Those people are being paid to have sex!” she screamed. “I never did that!”

  She’d never seen him so bleak. “But I do it every day.”

  She gasped. Now that was an insult. “I do not pay you for sex!”

  “But you do. You house me, feed me, clothe me—”

  Frantic at his expression, she put out both hands. “Randy, you were in trouble. I couldn’t turn you away. You’re still in trouble. I’m not making you.” She stopped, remembering their argument the other night.

  Let’s just have sex and go to sleep, okay?

  Sensitive she wasn’t.

  He said in a brittle voice, “Yet it’s fortunate, is it not, that I have one skill that permits me to be of service to you.”

  She sucked a long breath through her nose. “Tell me.” She pointed at the closed door and that bearskin rug across the hall. “Tell me that what you and I do and what they’re doing are the same.” She pause, then said through her teeth, “And I will kill you.”

  A look of sadness and shame crossed his face. He closed his eyes. He bowed his head. And then he faded away.

  His clothes sank, empty, to the floor.

  Jewel stared in horror.

  This had happened before. She knew exactly where he must have gone.

  And what it would take to set him free.

  And what he would be doing in the meantime.

  She put her hands over her mouth to hold in a scream.

  Chapter Twelve

  Clay shut the door covered with keep-out signs behind him, groping for a light switch. He didn’t find it, but he found a book of matches. He lit one.