The Hinky Bearskin Rug (34 page)

Kneeling naked
and alone on the carpet, Steven raised his fists, and a long scream broke from
his lips.
“
aaaaaaaaugh!
”
Then he collapsed.

Clay realized
he was naked, standing over Steven’s body.

Snot and tears
dripped off Steven’s chin. There was no visible sign of Wilma. She must have
stayed behind.

“What
is going on here?” demanded a woman’s voice, and all the
office girls turned and gasped at the same time.

Clay didn’t
waste another moment. He turned, shoved through the crowd of rubberneckers, and
ran for it.

In his birthday suit, of course. Nothing’s ever perfect.

The big thing
was, he was free.

He made it all
the way to the elevator, blundering past office workers, the receptionist, a
pizza delivery boy, and the UPS guy, tripping on the carpet in bare feet,
panting and sweating, before he heard a familiar voice, felt a familiar cloud
of ecstasy burst inside him, felt Wilma’s poppet
boing
into his back like a hinky rubber band on a sign saying Kick
Me, and he tottered, faint with pleasure, against the closed elevator doors.

I’m sorry. He simply wasn’t going to
work out,
Wilma said
in Clay’s head.

Clay groaned.

You’re
much nicer.

“I’m so glad,”
Clay said dully.

People were
coming into the elevator lobby. Snatching a frond off a potted fern, he
figleafed himself and edged past the pizza deliverer, the UPS guy, and the
gaping receptionist, back into the office he’d fled.

Office girls
gabbled everywhere. They paused as he passed, checking out his bare behind, and
made remarks.

Clay tried to
shuffle past them with his back to the walls and his fern clamped over his
family jewels.

Where are we going?

“Somewhere in
here, there’s got to be clothes,” he muttered.

Steven wasn’t wearing his when I
departed.

“You mean you
left that poor schmuck naked, too?” Clay didn’t bother to say it in his head.
As Flash Titty would have said, they weren’t watching his lips move.

A gorgeous blonde
with a kind face came up to him. “I’m Sharisse.” She led him into a private
office. “Lena said you might want something to wear.”

“Sharisse,
you’re a woman in a million.”

“What
is going on here?”

Lena froze at
the sound of her mother’s voice raised in anger. Considering what she’d just
been through, it surprised her that the scariest part was Mom showing up mad.

Steven lay
folded up on the shreds of his own clothing, passed out, naked, and drooling.

A movement beside Lena made her turn. Precious was
holding her cell phone out at arm’s length, pointed at Steven. So were Geri and
Tonia. The sound of virtual camera shutters snapping filled the air.

Lena’s mother
snapped, “Don’t you have work to do?”

The girls
scattered in all directions.

“Hugh! Get
over here this instant!”

Hugh Boncil
was at the telephone. He, too, jumped at her voice.

She brandished
a fistful of papers. “You have some explaining to do,” she said in her most
sinister voice.

The senior
surviving partner peered at the top sheet in her hand. “Oh. Yes. I was meaning
to tell you, your share of the profits is being deposited in the trust fund
John set up for you. It’s all there,” he twittered. “We’ve been doing very
well.”

“The trust
should have been revealed to me at John’s death.”

“I meant well,
Maida,” Hugh said in his nice-old-guy voice.

“You meant to
hold onto all the power. Illegally.”

Lena cringed
at her mother’s tone. “Uh, Mom?”

“Come into my
office,” she said to Lena. To Hugh she said, “And
you
bring the trust fund statements to me in half an hour, if you
want to keep your job.”

“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.

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.