Merriment in the Museum - Book One in the Rock My Socks Off Trilogy (6 page)

Chapter Nine

June turned to July.Harlan returned from Europe, let Jacob cook dinner for him his first night back, and in the morning began hinting broadly that he’d like the place to himself.

Normandie opined that Jacob ‘might as well’ move into her place.

‘Are you sure that’s all right?’ asked Jacob.

‘No, I’m sure it’s perfect,’ Normandie replied. ‘Just don’t describe it as a “date”.’

The first out-and-about day that Jacob returned to Normandie’s apartment as ‘home’ happened to be the day he found the July issue of
Hip Hip Horizon
on the coffee table, staring Normandie in the face.

‘Well?’ he said proudly.

‘Oh my God, Jacob.’ She burst into tears.

He folded her in his arms. He had never seen her so moved. ‘Aw. Pretty good publicity, eh?’

She looked up at him. ‘Oh, darling. Do you realise what you’ve done?’

It was dawning on Jacob that her intonation was not entirely complimentary. ‘I – I thought it … Oh, shit. No. You’d better tell me. What have I done?’ He sat down.

She began to pace. ‘You meant well. I realise that. It’s adorable, but … for crying out loud – the
cover
, Jacob!’

‘I think it’s an excellent likeness.’ He stood up again, as if to lend weight to the assertion.

‘Yes, all too excellent. There’s no chance I can pretend it’s someone else.’

‘I don’t understand. Why would you want to –’

‘Jacob. Listen.’ She sat him back down on the love seat and perched beside him. ‘I am not front-page news. My work is not of earthshaking significance. I assumed you were going to do – what do you call it, a sideburn?’

‘Sidebar. Those are just used in conjunction with longer, related articles. Though sometimes what an editor will do is…’

‘Never mind. The point is, I thought I’d have a couple of paragraphs, buried in the back of the mag, with a flattering one-inch headshot of me looking all scientific and sexy.’

‘I wanted to do something big.’

‘You did something big, all right. “Big” as in a monumental embarrassment. “Big” as in a gargantuan gaffe.’

‘Why is it a giraffe?’

‘
Gaffe!
’ she repeated.

She stood up and began to pace again, shuddering as her journey took her past the magazine on the coffee table. ‘No offence to you or those who contract with you … but what idiotic editor let you get away with this ridiculous puff piece? And don’t you dare ask me what I mean by “puff paste”.’

‘When I told them that what you were doing was immensely important, and that no other major magazine had covered it, they were grateful for the scoop. They, uh, also thought you were better looking than the rocking horse we shot for the other story.’

‘Ugh!’ On this trip past the magazine, she lingered long enough to turn it upside down, thereby replacing her own smiling face with a vodka ad – which, unfortunately, also featured a sexy woman in a lab coat. She shuddered again before resuming her frenzied walk around the room. ‘And the photo spread inside … making me look like I’m the century’s most glamorous and brilliant thinker, as if I had a bouquet of Nobel Prize medals dangling into my cleavage. And the little series of timeline illustrations that maps the history of astronomy from the Aztecs to Copernicus to
me
. Couldn’t you at least have put Carl Sagan in there somewhere? Maybe then I wouldn’t feel so out of place.’

‘I’m sorry.’ Now that he understood, he was sincerely sorry. ‘I thought I was helping your career.’

‘Sweetheart. I’m proud of what I’m doing. It
is
important. But it’s stodgy-little-journal-article important. It’s tell-other-astronomers-about-it-at-conferences-and-deduct-the-travel-expenses important. It’s
not
hype-it-all-over-the-mass-media-in-a-manner-that-makes-it-look-like-my-mother-has-purchased-the-entire-news-industry important.’

‘Gotcha.’ They were quiet for a moment. ‘So what do we do?’ Jacob finally asked.

‘Short of driving around the country buying up all the copies and destroying them – for which I doubt there’s a grant available – I don’t think there’s much we
can
do. I’ll just have to hope people forget about it before too much damage is done – to my career, to my reputation among my colleagues, to the integrity of science …’

She was interrupted by a ringing phone.

‘Hello?’ She listened briefly, then she held the receiver courteously away from her face and shrieked a crisp expletive.

‘It’s someone from
Insomnia With Rhone Preston
,’ she hissed to Jacob, alluding to a ratings-drunk late-night television programme that people promoting themselves in Northern California would do almost anything to appear on.

‘Jacob, you remember Professor Passky, don’t you?’

‘Please, Normandie, it’s all right to call me Kate in front of the children. And of course I remember Jacob,’ Kate added – though that hadn’t been the question. The distinguished professor gave him a glance that Jacob could only have described as raunchy. Fortunately, he saw no reason he was likely to be called upon to describe it.

‘Maybe I should wait outside,’ he said, hovering as close to the door as he could – which, however, still put him practically on top of Kate’s desk.

‘Why does he keep saying that?’ Kate demanded of Normandie.

‘I think we’d both like you to stay, Jacob,’ said Normandie.

Jacob noticed the infamous magazine on Kate’s desk. He winced.

‘I assume you’ve come to see me regarding
this
,’ said Kate, tapping the mag with a noncommittal forefinger.

‘Yes,’ said Normandie. ‘It was really just a mistake. You see –’

The department chair waved dismissively. ‘Who cares if it was a mistake. No one has to know that. All that matters is that this “mistake” has put our department on the map.’

Jacob’s jaw dropped when he realised that Kate was beaming.

‘Cupcake, do you begin to comprehend the prestige … the grants … the faculty this will help us attract? The mind reels.’

Jacob’s mind reeled at hearing the department chair call Normandie ‘cupcake’.

Normandie swallowed. ‘It sounds pretty cool when you put it that way … but I can’t help feeling like a fraud. The article makes it sound like I’m second only to Einstein in my importance to modern science. These findings of mine – well, you know as well as I do, they’re significant but modest, in the grand scheme of things.’

Again, Kate waved her concerns aside. ‘So what! What has the grand scheme of things ever done for us? Can the grand scheme of things write a cheque to fund the tenured position I’m dying to give you?’ She tapped the magazine again. ‘No one’s actually going to read the article, anyway.’

Normandie looked genuinely confused – a rare state of affairs. ‘What?’ She looked at Jacob.

‘What matters,’ continued Kate, ‘is that it was printed, that it looks like a big deal, that it’s on the cover. Right, cowboy?’ Jacob had to infer that she was addressing him, despite his notably rodeo-free background. ‘Nobody really reads those articles all the way through, do they?’ Kate continued.

Jacob made as if to finger his collar nervously, then thought better of it and settled for a shrug of resignation. ‘Uh – no, not really. In the business we think people, ahem, kind of flip through these magazines, for the most part.’

Normandie was shocked. ‘Why on earth do you bother writing the stuff?’

‘I like writing, and I get paid whether or not anyone reads it. Why do you stay up till the wee hours making calculations about bodies of matter that are inconceivably distant from your desk?’

‘Touché,’ said Normandie graciously, but she was shaking her head semi-despondently.

Kate, by contrast, was beaming more brightly than ever. ‘You’ve done a great thing for us, Jacob,’ she said. ‘I’d like to do something nice for you in return. Something very nice.’ She was licking her lips.

‘I think Dr Passky wants to fuck me,’ said Jacob that evening.

‘That’s ridiculous,’ said Normandie, handing him a glass of chilled Sauvignon Blanc.

‘No, I really think so.’

‘Oh, I’m sorry, babe. I didn’t mean that the idea that she wanted to fuck you was ridiculous. I meant saying “Dr Passky wants to fuck me”’ – here she imitated Jacob’s understated baritone delivery – ‘was ridiculous. It would sound so much better if you’d drop the formality and just say, “
Kate
wants to fuck me.”’

‘Right,’ Jacob assented, taking a delicate sip. ‘So you agree that she may be lusting after me?’

‘Oh, I’m positive she is.’

‘How do you know? Are there no limits to your brilliance?’

‘There may, in fact, be no limits to my brilliance. But I know that Kate wants to fuck you because she told me so, while you were in the men’s room. I suppose you feel funny about it, because she’s past fifty and you’re still a young sex god.’

He put his wine down. ‘No. I feel funny about it because I think she’s decidedly hot, I don’t care how old she is, and I’d love to hear more about this, at your earliest convenience.’

The warmth in Normandie’s eyes deepened. ‘That’s the spirit.’

‘It’s very nice of you to pat me on the back,’ he said. Normandie responded by swatting him pleasantly on the ass. ‘Or in the general vicinity of the back. Do you really not mind the idea of my screwing one of your colleagues?’

She laughed. ‘In the case of this particular colleague, I think it’s fairly wonderful. I’m a big fan of hers, you know.’

‘Wouldn’t you feel left out?’

She laughed again. ‘Why would I? I’ll be there the entire time, of course.’

She picked up the phone and began to dial. ‘She
is
hot, isn’t she?’ Normandie was actually flushed. Jacob had, to his credit, seen her equally aroused on many an occasion … but now she looked aroused like an eighteen-year-old virgin. She was giggling as her fingers spelled Kate’s number.

‘Are you calling to arrange a date for us to hop in the sack with her?’ He was not displeased, but this was all happening so fast. ‘I thought you couldn’t stand dates.’

She stuck her tongue out, prettily. ‘It’s not a date, it’s an appointment. An appointment with my department chair. For cocktails. Here at our place. What happens after cocktails can be spontaneously improvised.’

‘Don’t forget to circulate a memo to the faculty,’ said Jacob.

Chapter Ten

From an olfactory perspective, Kate was all breath mints from the neck up. But the rest of her had an earthy scent that Jacob responded to with animal interest. There was no one or nothing that could make him forget that Normandie was in the room; but Kate was, like Normandie herself, a personality and a sexuality to be reckoned with. Her hair, handsomely cut and naturally frosty, seemed to frame her as a woman who could be anything she wanted to be. She could be a boss. She could be a colleague. Or, if she chose, she could be a flowering garden of ripe sensuality and erogenous flesh.

Her face glowed with exceptional intelligence and unabashed lasciviousness. She wanted to make you laugh and make you cream. And it was obvious to Jacob that she had always been this way.

‘Relax, Jacob,’ Normandie was saying.

The three of them had finished their round of cocktails. The late afternoon sun was splashing hedonistically onto the wooden floor of Normandie’s bookshelf-and-artwork-heavy apartment. Kate was leaning comfortably into the crook of the sofa, her silver hair kissing her shoulders. She looked magical in a turquoise-trimmed black ensemble of jersey and slacks, with bare feet giving her the perfect bohemian touch. Her nose was proud and her eyes liquid with charm, and Jacob couldn’t imagine that the woman had ever looked lovelier – at forty, thirty, or twenty.

He sat tentatively at the opposite end of the generous couch. Normandie stood behind him, her fingertips pulsing excitement onto the back of his neck, making the little hairs tingle.

‘So, young man,’ Kate said slowly. ‘Are you going to handle me, or do I need to let you put me on a goddamn magazine cover first?’ And, without waiting for an answer, she leaned forward and began, expertly, to handle him, stroking with calm determination through the stiff fabric of his trouser fly and sending electricity through him. After studying his reaction for a moment and seeming satisfied with it, she leaned in and kissed him on the lips.

She kisses like a teenager,
thought Jacob. It was a revelation that, just by sitting here, he was making a university chair drool and moisten her panties like the first girl he’d fucked freshman year of college. And this revelation was a serious turn-on for him. He looked over his shoulder to establish eye contact with Normandie, hoping she would see the wildness in his eyes, knowing she would approve.

But Normandie’s eyes were closed, and the hand that wasn’t on his neck was inside the waistband of her slacks. She was saying something, almost too softly for Jacob to hear. ‘Go on …’ She said it repeatedly in a staccato whisper, a breath that rode the gallop of her arousal.

He pulled down Kate’s clingy midnight-black slacks, and he noticed how powerful her thighs were. He remembered Normandie telling him that Kate was a jogger, and generally in great shape. He wanted to make those strong thighs pump in spasms of uncontainable joy, and, toward that goal, he put a tentative hand on her black lace panties. Her tight, muscular tummy peeked out between the panties and the top, and he kissed her there while continuing to stroke her.

Suddenly, Kate flopped herself face down on the couch, pulling Jacob’s hand tightly against her crotch. She kicked her feet up onto the armrest and folded her arms beneath her head. She wiggled her ass for Jacob and squeezed the innermost meat of her thighs against his hand.

Out of the corner of his eye, Jacob saw Normandie lean forward from behind him. She began to pet Kate’s hair and breathe into her ear, and he felt Normandie’s erotic power combining with his own to pleasure this strong, self-actualised, prestigious woman. The rush that he felt watching her wriggle beneath their harmonised touches was incredible.

With every writhe he elicited from Kate, Jacob was conscious that this was a woman who had been writhing for men and women, and making them writhe in return, since more or less before he was born. He wanted to fuck Kate not only for her potent, in-this-moment desirability, but also for her glorious history. It ennobled and excited him to be part of a long parade of her lovers and her orgasms.

He wanted someone to hold his cock. ‘Please – unzip me,’ he said to Normandie, quietly, as if Kate’s ecstasy were a dream he was intent on preserving. Normandie, still stroking Kate’s strands of hair with her left hand, moved forward and unzipped Jacob with the right, retrieving him from his jeans, handling his dancing flesh as only she could.

With the phallic aspect of the situation safely in hand, Jacob assessed the needs of two luscious pussies, one of which currently housed his forefinger, and the other of which was patiently clothed within Normandie’s pinstriped slacks.

‘I can just reach you if you moon me,’ he told Normandie.

She temporarily reassigned the hand that had been petting Kate’s hair to the duty of undoing her own jeans, followed by the task of pushing pants and panties to the floor. In one graceful movement, she positioned her ass so that it faced Jacob, bent to receive her pleasure, and resumed stroking Kate. All the while, she continued clutching Jacob’s cock.

Jacob began to pat and tickle Normandie all over her glorious bottom, integrating these attentions into the rhythm he was using to titillate Kate’s pussy. When his left hand migrated to Normandie’s snatch, he removed his right hand from Kate’s. Holding Kate by the knee, he moved his face in and tasted her essence.

The department chair banged her face into the sofa cushions, her cries of ‘Yes!’ almost muffled beyond recognition. Normandie was gasping as Jacob’s fingers nurtured her secret spots, and her dexterous interplay with Jacob’s prick took on a syncopated quality that made Jacob squirm with delight.

Kate tasted complex. It was a challenge for Jacob to process the sophisticated flavour as she twisted for him and his cock danced for Normandie and Normandie oozed over his fingers. The chain reaction set off by Kate’s orgasm left everyone trembling, and the walls echoed with shrieks.

Eventually, the three of them had some supper, and it was over dessert that the tax-deductible portion of the conversation occurred.

‘You’ve accepted that invitation from Rhone Preston, I assume,’ said Kate. It was not a question, and it required no answer. ‘One little detail I should tell you about. Hube Renkins has been complaining that –’

‘Oh, for fuck’s sake!’ said Normandie. ‘Why is he out to get me?’

Kate took another mouthful of coconut cake. ‘Be reasonable, Normandie. Renkins has nothing against you personally. He just resents any colleague who gets attention, acclaim, or funding that would, to his way of thinking, be better directed toward his own work.’

It didn’t take much mental activity for Jacob to calculate that this Renkins individual must have been the backbiting colleague implicit in Normandie’s abstract discussion of backbiting colleagues. ‘What, exactly, is his complaint?’ he asked Kate.

‘He’s written to the provost, claiming that Dr Stephens’ work has been given exaggerated media attention that detracts from the overall dignity and well-being of the department.’

‘I bet he wouldn’t be saying that if
he
were on the cover of
Hip Hip Horizon
,’ said Normandie.

‘Exactly,’ said Kate. ‘But you have nothing to worry about. I’m doing everything I can to emphasise the importance of your research. Not merely because you and your boyfriend just collaborated to give me the best lick-out I’ve had since the Andromeda galaxy was formed, but because I really do believe in your value to the university. So what if your current research isn’t quite as earth-shattering as the stupid magazine – no offence, Jacob – says it is. We’ll build on it, given the right resources … and, who knows, maybe someday it will be earth-shattering. In other words, I’m behind you one hundred per cent.’

‘Thank you,’ said Normandie.

‘Luckily, Renkins doesn’t seem to know who author Jacob Hastings is, so at least he’s not going to town with the Jacob-Normandie angle. If he had more friends, he’d probably know all about it. But his aloofness keeps him out of the loop most of the time. Still, if he finds out, I’ll handle it. I’ll use my position of influence and authority to defuse his sordid, if truthful, accusations.’

‘Let me get this straight,’ said Jacob agreeably. ‘The fact that I unintentionally inflated the reputation of the woman I’m fucking will be rendered totally excusable once the department chair, whose pussy we’re licking, says it’s all right.’

‘I don’t know,’ said Kate thoughtfully. ‘It worked for me.’

‘Don’t you think it could look bad?’ asked Normandie.

‘What – were you planning on taking pictures of me sitting on your face, with my finger up Jacob’s ass, and running them as a follow-up in next week’s magazine?’

‘Hey, we didn’t even do that yet,’ Jacob protested.

‘Finish your dessert first,’ said Kate, gesturing with her fork. ‘No, Normandie … personally, I was inclined to keep this aspect of things relatively private. Though, come to think of it,
I’d
like a few of those pictures.’

‘I know a photographer,’ said Jacob, who was now quite hastily finishing his dessert. ‘She’ll do anything – even rocking horses. But what does the provost think of all this?’

‘Tommy is on our side, the sweetie – for now,’ said Kate. ‘That’s why we have to make sure my vividly depicted predictions of wonderful, federally funded ramifications to all this come true. That’s why girlfriend here is going on Rhone Preston.’

‘On the
programme,
you mean,’ corrected Jacob.

Normandie slithered warm fingers across the back of his hand. ‘Let’s not rule anything out.’

‘You know, when I was a little girl I often fantasised about being on television. Even after I decided I wanted to be an astronomer – I was ten and three-quarters at the time – I imagined going on talk shows, maybe even variety shows, as a glamorous celebrity astronomer. Of course, I came down off my cloud when I noticed that astronomers didn’t usually go on variety shows. And that they had stopped making variety shows, anyway. But now it turns out I was right the first time, and I’m going to be a famous television-land astronomer. Whee!’

‘Whee?’

‘Well, not “Whee” entirely, I guess. Under the circumstances, there’s also an element of “Holy fucking crap”.’

‘Yes, I thought so.’

‘You’d think that would be my overriding feeling, in fact. But my overriding feeling has been overridden by the overriding feeling of the person who wants to give me a permanent faculty position. So it’s really out of my hands, and I’m trying to get into the spirit of my ten-year-old self. My ten-year-old self would never have forgiven me if I’d turned this down.’