The Hinky Bearskin Rug

by Jennifer Stevenson

  “But—” Sharisse stood beside Lena with big eyes.

  Mom whirled. “Yes?”

  Sharisse was looking at Hugh, who was looking at his own shoes. “How can you fire Hugh?”

  “He and John Baysdorter made me senior partner, on paper, four years ago, so they could establish BB as a woman-owned business and take city contracts, and John left me his share. And he never told me,” Mom hissed. Her voice ripped holes in the air. “Hugh owes me my share of the profits. More that that, he owes me two years of waiting on him like a servant — looking the other way when he screws my girls — being condescended to in meetings. That’s how I can fire him.” She looked Sharisse up and down. “Can you do his job?”

  Hugh’s head came up at that. “Maida. You wouldn’t.”

  “I control the firm,” Mom said, deadly quiet. “Sharisse?”

  Sharisse blinked. “I suppose so.”

  “Sharisse, honey,” Hugh bleated.

  Sharisse stood tall in her high-heeled shoes. Her chin was up. “Nobody likes having to do it, Hugh. Not under threat.”

  “I never threatened you,” Hugh said.

  She leaned over and patted him on his bald spot. “You didn’t have to.” To Lena’s mother she said, “Yes, I can do his job. What about Steven?”

  Mom turned to Lena. “I thought you might take over there,” she said, as if she were doing Lena a favor.

  Lena frowned. “Let’s talk in private.”

  “No, but what about Steven?” Sharisse said again.

  On the carpet, Steven rolled over onto his back and sighed. His eyes opened. Only the whites showed.

  “Better call an ambulance,” Mom said coolly, stepping over him.

  Following her mother, Lena whispered to Sharisse, “What did you do with that other naked guy?”

  “He’s in Steven’s office, putting on Steven’s spare suit. Is it true? Do you think Maida will keep me on? Because Hugh has been paying for my son’s daycare.”

  “I’ll see to it,” Lena promised, wondering how she could.

  o0o

  In her office, with the door shut, Lena looked Mom in the eye, and she had a rare view of her mother as a person: a faded blonde with hard, sharp blue eyes and the kind of figure that costs thirty hours a week at the gym. And a whole lot of grit.

  Mom also looked worried. She wasn’t pleading or apologizing, but at least she was explaining. She put one palm on her desk.

  “Listen to me. I was very young when John got me pregnant. I didn’t have college, like you. I thought it was my only path to advancement. You went into an office and you found the right man and he married you. That was how it worked. Only John was already married, and he wouldn’t leave her for me. I got pregnant right away. He was thrilled to have a baby, and he adored you, but he wouldn’t leave his wife, and then his wife found out about you and forbade him to see you. He really cared about you, Lena.”

  “Yeah,” Lena said flatly. “He paid for everything.”

  “He took me into his confidence at work, made me his right hand.”

  “Mom, I don’t care. That was at work. I wasn’t there. I was here, at home, wanting my mother—”

  “And I wanted you, sweetheart.” Mom reached out and stroked the back of Lena’s head before she could pull away. “You were my life.”

  “No,” Lena said in a hard voice. “The office was your life. I was a bid for power that didn’t pan out.”

  “I was born to be a businesswoman,” Mom said simply.

  Lena shut her gaping mouth. Well, that’s blunt.

  “I had no education, no training, I didn’t even have the clothes at first. John made me his assistant for your sake. But when he found out what I could do, he gave me opportunities nobody else would give me.”

  “Mom—” Lena swallowed. “This was what, the late eighties? You could have gone to college.”

  “Not with a baby. Girls who do that have families to help.”

  “Your parents—” Lena was aware she was on thin ice. Mom had never spoken of her parents. But, at this point, Lena had nothing left to lose.

  “You never knew my father,” Mom said with finality.

  I guess her father was a bad parent. Lena pressed her lips together. Or at least a good excuse.

  “You’re pretty critical for someone who’s had life handed to her,” Mom said, as if she had spoken aloud.

  “Well, jeez, Mom.” The word stuck in Lena’s throat. “You decided your only ticket to a business career was the casting couch. Fine. That worked for you. The thing is, those girls out there didn’t sign up to become office sluts. You’ve helped the men abuse them.”

  “It’s the workplace reality.”

  Lena put her fists up. “Steven molested me right there in his office! And you wouldn’t do anything!”

  “I hated it. Believe me, I did,” Mom assured her. “I’ve been doing what I could to put him on notice. If he wouldn’t shape up, perhaps I could get him to overstep, and he’d be forced out.”

  You, too, Mom? Who doesn’t have their knife into Steven?

  “I suppose times have changed.” Mom looked at her desk, then at an award plaque on her wall, blinking. “You hate reality and you learn to live with it and then one day it changes, and girls are leaping ahead in business the way I never could.” She raised her eyes. “Give me credit. I’m promoting Sharisse.”

  She looked at Lena and her face changed. With revulsion, she said, “You have no excuse for what you have done with your life.”

  Lena took a deep breath. Here we go. “I could try to blame you, but why bother? My life is good. Unlike you, I enjoy sex. I feel good about myself. I’m spending my good-looking years getting paid for them. Onika wants to leave me her shares of the company, and she’s only sixty-five. By the time she retires, I may know enough that I can handle it.”

  Mom said eagerly, “But, darling, if you want to go into business, you could work with me! I own the controlling share of Baysdorter Boncil.”

  Lena made a face. “Thanks, but I have Onika’s power of attorney while she’s out sick. I’m needed at Artistic. Besides, I don’t like the culture here.”

  “But I need you!” Mom clutched the bosom of her pastel blue power suit.

  Now you say it. Lena appreciated the gesture, but it wasn’t enough.

  Mom must have seen rejection in her expression. “You’ll keep making smut. Just throwing my sacrifice in my face.”

  “Sacrifice.”

  “You’re young. You don’t know how important appearances are. Appearances are everything, young lady, and they cost a lot.”

  “I’m beginning to understand,” Lena said, feeling sick. “Thanks for explaining it.”

  “You’re entirely welcome,” Mom said crisply.

  Chapter Forty

  Jewel checked her phone. Clay had hung up.

  Heart in her mouth, looking up and down the dark gangway, she let herself into Velvita’s apartment.

  The kitchen was a single counter with a single cabinet, sink and microwave — really just a corridor leading to the bathroom and to a single living and sleeping room.

  Holy crap. The kid lived like a nun.

  Jewel had expected porn posters on the walls, but instead she found texts on accounting and business models, a computer on a card table, a folding chair, and a twin mattress tilted against the wall. Two milk crates. A crappy old TV.

  She went back to the kitchen. There were two closets, one small, containing a broom, and one big, containing clothes, two pairs of shoes, and some underwear in cardboard boxes.

  And, in a separate box, Randy’s things, neatly folded.

  It wasn’t an apartment. It was a safe house. A runaway’s bolt-hole.

  Jewel’s pulse hammered in her ears. She locked the door to the gangway. She double-locked the door to the outer basement. Then she went back to the single room, stacked the milk crates against the wall, laid the mattress on the floor, and, with misgiving, got out of her clothes.

/>   This was it. Either he’d come back or he wouldn’t. No, he would come all right, eventually. But would he come back to her?

  She’d finally faced a few things. Like: it was, too, a real relationship, and she wanted to keep him, and she wanted to treat him better, and she wanted, God help her, she wanted him to want her. That was a lot of things to want that she might not get.

  She’d got by for a long time by carefully never wanting anything that she had to count on someone else for. Mudslides, a swim in the lake, a good pulse-thumping orgasm, she could give herself. This stuff, not so much. Oh, Britney or Nina would come if she yelled for help. They would always choose to come for her. But it would be a choice, weighing her urgency against their own.

  She didn’t choose to come for Randy. She just did it.

  “I guess that’s why I’m here,” she said aloud.

  She lay down on the mattress.

  On second thought, she got up and turned on the window air conditioner, feeling guilty. The kid probably couldn’t afford to run it. But the unit was noisy, which could be useful right now.

  She lay down again.

  Her eyes drifted shut.

  o0o

  There was a thunderhead under her feet, and more storm clouds above and before her. Warm, damp air buffeted her. She stood solidly on her cloud. This was one of his favorite places.

  She called out, Honey, I’m home! The clouds echoed back to her like mountains.

  No answer.

  With a sigh, she sat down on a cloud and dangled her legs.

  He’d written her the letter. But he probably hadn’t sent it. She was almost sure he hadn’t included the key. That would have been impolite to Velvita. Her sex demon had a mannerly streak.

  Soooo. He wanted to tell her stuff.

  She had to stop thinking a moment and just feel, remembering stuff he’d told her, the clouds in his letter like the clouds around her now, and the sunshine and the freedom and the innocence he’d written for her. After a hot sigh, she resumed her train of thought.

  So he wrote the letter. Then she’d called him.

  Then he’d zapped into bed.

  Frustration welled in Jewel. He was always doing this. Trying to jump off a roof, zap into a junkyard somewhere, get out of her life so she could have it back.

  Out of the cloudy darkness his voice said, Yes.

  Randy, I have my life. How can I not have it? I’m in it. Her throat felt hot with messages for him. Stop worrying about me. I’m too selfish to sacrifice myself for someone else. Her throat clogged up.

  No.

  Had she said that? Thought it? She rolled over on the cloud, which puffed up around her like a cloudy armchair, and looked over the edge. Randy?

  You are not selfish. You don’t know what you have to give.

  She heaved a steamy sigh. He must be near.

  When you are older you will know more about who you are. Then you will notice, whenever you open your heart. As you do so often.

  The sky below her was full of nothing but thunderheads.

  Don’t you mean, whenever I open my legs?

  Something touched her between her breasts, not on the skin but inside her. The touch made a little ting! sound, and left a pearl of heat that simmered comfortingly through her chest.

  I mean your heart, bright Jewel.

  She lay back in the armchair cloud. He was back! She’d always worried that somehow, sometime, he would vanish into this desolate space and never return. Her cloudy footrest tilted up to cushion her lower legs, and the headrest cloud cradled her neck and head, and she stared up into the blue-gray boil of storm clouds with tears of relief trickling into her ears.

  You don’t know what you have to give either.

  Silence.

  You always say you’re two men, the lord and the incubus. The lord doesn’t bend, but the sex demon gives until he bleeds. You’ve let me walk all over you. I thought that was why you went to porn school. She stopped, surprised at the insight. To get some pride in your gifts.

  A fat, warm raindrop landed on her shoulder.

  Maybe there’s some things that can’t be given unless someone knows you are giving them, she guessed.

  Another drop splashed on her right breast, then one on her belly.

  Maybe we both kind of suck at accepting what’s being given. She swallowed a lump. Warm rain spattered all over her. I’m more of a hit-and-run giver. Saves having to wait to get nothing back. She thought of the gallery full of old boyfriends, some arrogant, some crying, and all of them begging for more.

  Suddenly she thought she knew what Randy wanted.

  Will you come back to me? she said. She had thought it might kill her to ask, but the words came out easily.

  The sky cracked across. The clouds opened. Rain flooded down on her, drenching her bare skin, slipping between her lips.

  It tasted salty.

  She reached into the sky.

  He formed over her so gently that she hardly noticed. The rain beat down, and he grew solid in her embrace, a being of thundercloud-gray warm water, his surface pocked and rippling with every drop that bulleted through him.

  Still shy. She touched his shimmering, translucent face. Show me your beautiful eyes.

  He smiled, and her tight chest eased, and his big solemn black eyes appeared in his cloudman face.

  Okay, that’s a little weird. She laughed, and tried to tickle him, and warm salty water splashed wherever she poked, and very suddenly he was quite solid indeed, heavy with muscle and bone and a nice, hard, solid kiss.

  In her head, as they kissed, she heard his voice. Honey, I’m home.

  As they found one another and Randy slid between her thighs with a sigh, the clouds parted. The two of them shot into a blazing, brilliant world of silver and gold light.

  She refused to look down. The sun drew her.

  He entered her, rattling her bones with each stroke, and she wrapped her legs around his waist and threw her head back, cackling with delight at the sunshine on her face.

  Kiss me, he said. They kissed. His cock did that thing again, swelling and shrinking inside her, stretching her, turning her inside out, making her crosseyed.

  They flew higher, arrowing toward the sun.

  Her skin shrank and swelled. Her pulse sent her nerve endings out until she filled the sky. He filled her mouth with his tongue, asking with kisses for everything, and she gave it. She opened herself to him, making more room, and he grew bigger, and the sun drew nearer, until sunlight filled her from the inside out.

  Oh no, I’m coming already! she thought, sorry to return to reality just when their flight might carry them into the heart of the sun. Then she came like a freight train barrelling into a hole in a mountain, with huge rhythmic pulses of joy.

  But demonspace did not dissolve around them. They didn’t fall, sweaty, to bounce on a mattress.

  They kept flying upward, faster and faster. The sun drew near, not unbearably hot but unendurably bright. Randy drove in and out of her. She felt every millimeter of friction between them, his cock in her sheath, her muscles closing around him, his silky-hard length rubbing her swollen, sensitive tissues, his thumb twitching on her trigger, until she came, came again, came with each heartbeat, over and over and over.

  Higher and higher they flew. At last they seemed to plunge into the sun itself. It was like sinking into a sweet custard of light, like a scream, like dying. So much light! With each pulse, every cell in her body seemed to burst at once, unable to contain such light. Yet his climax came like waves of rain, a moment of relief like a blink of utter darkness that she could sense as clearly as she felt her own climax. She knew how he died with each throb. She felt each squeeze of her muscle around his cock, and she felt him rise again, born inside her, a heartbeat later. First the unendurable light, then the total darkness, each an answer, an echo, a gift from one to the other.

  Thank you, she managed to say, even while they kissed.

  How long this continued, she didn�
��t know. The universe disappeared in a thunderclap, and burst into existence with a heartbeat, over and over and over and over and over.

  o0o

  She must have passed out, because it seemed forever before she woke from the deepest, blackest, safest sleep she’d had in years. “Hey, sleepyhead,” she said to the demon lump beside her.

  Groaning, Randy sat up, then clambered to his feet.

  “Clay’s gonna be really unhappy,” she guessed, as she put her clothes back on.

  Randy dressed. “Possibly.”

  That reminded her. “Hey, do you think I’m contagious? I guess what I mean is, do you think you’re contagious?”

  “Contagious?”

  “You know. Can I catch hinky sex from you?”

  A smile transformed Randy’s face. “No. Why?”

  “Uh, because I wondered. If you must know, I kissed Clay and it — it was hinky. I got scared. I mean, what if I can’t be normal in bed any more?”

  “I have no idea,” Randy said, poker-faced. “Is that what Clay suggested?”

  She frowned. “Kinda, yeah. Like, we’d done it so much that when I ate a cow plop it affected me worse than most people.”

  Randy shrugged, as if to express mistrust in Clay’s opinion. “Perhaps it was the cow plops then.”

  “Huh.” That was the comforting explanation. “He told me where he’d hidden your letter.”

  That made Randy look up. “Did he?”

  “Yup.” She gave her hair a lick with a hairbrush, tied it back, and called it good. “Something not right with our con artist partner. He’s usually so focused on the main chance.”

  “Your good influence, no doubt.” Randy’s stiff tone told her it was time to stop talking about Clay.

  Am I the only one who dreamed of sex in the sun? Maybe he would be a tender, vulnerable lover only in bed, always a lord out of it. He looked grim. I can’t handle another fight with him right now.

  At that moment her phone rang.

  “Jewel? Clay. I brought that stuff you got from Velvita to the debriefing with Ed and the Chief Attorney.”

  Oh fuck! The debriefing! “How dare you do that meeting without me?”