The Hinky Bearskin Rug

by Jennifer Stevenson

Lena raised elegant eyebrows. “Don’t let Steven know. He can smell blood in the water a mile away.”

  First my boyfriend, then my buddy. Steam hissed out of Jewel’s ears.

  “One curly cheese fry, one fried onion blossom,” said the waitress, serving, and saving them from a blast of Jewel’s rage. “Another pitcher, ladies?”

  “No,” Jewel said.

  “Yes,” Lena said.

  “Sure,” Britney said.

  Jewel defended her honor. “Look, I figure I’m not supposed to feel ashamed.” She flushed. “I’m supposed to be a free spirit. All liberated and stuff. I guess,” she said, her blush burning hotter on her cheeks and ears, “I guess I feel like I’d be betraying my — my macho if I blink.”

  Britney patted her hand. “Well, I feel ashamed sometimes, but hey.”

  Lena said, “Every woman in my industry feels ashamed. We live with it. Even when we aren’t ashamed, we feel bad because we aren’t ashamed. And then some jerk makes a rude remark to you, and you hate yourself, and you hate him. It’s part of being a porn star.”

  “It’s part of being a woman,” Britney said. “I don’t think there’s any protection for anybody from that stuff.”

  “Wait, I understand.” Lena pointed at Jewel. “You think you should feel like a guy.”

  “Hey!” Jewel said. “Enough already with the margarita-grade psychoanalysis.”

  “Guess what, guy porn stars feel ashamed, too,” Lena said.

  Jewel changed the subject. “There’s something odd about the way Steven threw those pictures in my face.”

  “Who took ’em?” Lena said.

  “Some guy I met in a bar. I got royally snockered, and we had dinner, and then we went back to his place. I didn’t know anything about it until Roller Skates Jason mentioned the pictures to me. I guess he did them while I was passed out at his apartment.”

  “Jason is this dickhead at our office,” Britney said.

  “Who did them?” Lena pursued.

  “I said I don’t remember.” Jewel felt exposed. Her blush was now all over her entire body. “I used to, uh, get around.”

  The whole margarita thing began to seem like a dumb idea. She felt like everybody in the bar was flapping their ears and pretending not to listen. A huge, balloon-shaped, middle-aged guy in a raincoat came into the bar. He looked straight at Jewel and turned as white as his raincoat.

  God, I’ve got slut written on me so big, they spot it when they walk in the door.

  Raincoat Guy stared at her. Then he blundered through the bar and into a private dining room in the back.

  “So what site are these pictures on?” Lena said, pulling out her phone.

  “Oh, no,” Jewel said. “Please. No. Let it alone.”

  “I can report it for you right now.”

  Jewel knew the URL. Even if she’d forgotten, Steven had reminded her. She rattled it off.

  “Those degenerates,” Lena said. “They’re notorious for posting involuntaries. Many times I don’t complain, but these guys are such sleazebags that I always rat them out. Hm.” She looked closer at the teeny screen on her phone. “Have you looked at these pictures?”

  “Not lately.”

  Lena squinted. “Because I think you should.”

  Reluctantly Jewel took the phone from her and squinted.

  “Use the arrow at the bottom to zoom in.”

  Jewel used the arrow. “Oh. Holy shit.”

  The guy who took the pictures had carefully kept himself out of range of the camera, but he’d apparently failed to consider the mirror behind the bed. As Jewel zoomed in, he came into focus, his digital camera held out at chest height, giving her a clear view of his face.

  He was, hello, Steven Tannyhill.

  The phone clattered to the table. Lena scooped it up.

  Jewel put her hands on either side of her splitting head. “I don’t get it.” But she could feel the pieces coming together.

  “Who is it?” Britney said.

  Jewel felt a rush of damp air and looked up in time to see Lena point at the front door.

  “Him. That’s who took the pictures,” Lena said, pointing her phone like a camera at the doorway.

  Steven walked in, looking like Satan in a good suit. Just like the fat guy in the raincoat, he stopped dead when he saw Jewel, and turned color.

  Then he, too, swung off through the bar and into the private dining room.

  “Why on earth would he do a thing like this?” Lena said, going back to studying Jewel’s public shame on her phone. “Steven likes to have power over women, but he’s very pragmatic. Every woman he’s screwed at BB, it was for a reason, and he got leverage with it.”

  Britney had her cop voice on. “When did this happen? Try to remember.” Jewel felt doubly humiliated. She was a pathetic victim and her ditziest friend had to play cop with her.

  She shut her eyes. “It was at least a year ago, maybe two. The Cubbies were losing spectacularly, I remember. People in the bar were, like, in tears. That’s what we started talking about.”

  “Against the Cardinals,” Britney said positively. “I lost a hundred dollars on that game. That was two years ago.”

  “Were you on a case at the time?” Lena said.

  “No. No, I was on vacation.” Was she supposed to tell just anybody that? God, these margaritas were a liability. “And I was wearing this red top! That’s how he recognized me.” He must have recognized me sooner than that, she realized. Because he’d gone straight home and looked up those pictures. “Only what-the-lady-mother is Steven so afraid of that he feels like he has to blackmail me?”

  The others leaned closer over their curly fries.

  “It must be something that happened when you were dating,” Britney hissed.

  “I would imagine,” Lena said.

  “Yeah,” Jewel said cautiously. The margaritas were fuzzing out her edges.

  There was a mystery here. She felt that if she could just sit quietly somewhere with a cold wet towel wrapped around her forehead, she could work it out.

  A woman walked by with a stupid-looking white furry purse that caught Jewel’s gaze.

  Randy.

  Bearskin rug.

  Her chest filled up with tight, cold worry.

  “Britney, can you find my dipshit partner outside and tell him I left already? I, uh, need to spend some more time with this source.” Her head tipped toward Lena.

  Plus, I have to get Randy out of that rug. She didn’t want Clay or Britney along for that ride.

  “Oh, are you going to the porn place? I’d love to see it,” Britney said, ignoring Jewel.

  “Do you mind if—” Jewel began.

  “Of course,” Lena said, damn her beautiful eyes.

  “You guys done yet?” said a brusque male voice behind them.

  Jewel looked around.

  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.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Jewel and Lena took a pit stop to give Britney time to engage Clay in conversation. T
hen 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.”

&nbs
p; 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?

  Chapter Nineteen

  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.