The Hinky Bearskin Rug (4 page)

“Sexually
harassed?” Randy said.

“So is that
where the orgy came from?” Clay said.

“I have no
friggin’ idea. The slick willy I work for is part of it. What do these
motherfuckers
think?
This is their
own personal private stag movie? Sunday driver!” She slapped the horn and
leaned on it. “Jesus Christ on a bicycle!”

Clay leaned
forward from the back seat and slid his hand over her mouth.

She shut up.

“It must be
bad,” he said. “You’re channelling Ed.” He pulled his hand back, peeked — her
lips worked—then he slid his hand back over her mouth.

Randy said
critically, “Ed’s diction during a seizure is more elaborate.”

“Funkier,”
Clay agreed. “More creative.”

“Sometimes he
fails to blaspheme,” Randy said.

“And when he’s
really upset Ed doesn’t use the F-word. I think he actually forgets it,” Clay
said.

“Difficult to
believe,” Randy said.

Behind Clay’s
hand, he felt Jewel smile. He took his hand away and relaxed into the back
seat. “So, the orgy. What do you know?”

She drove
silently for a minute. “I don’t know. There’s a woman I can talk to at lunch
Wednesday. Maybe more, once I’ve been around the place. I made a lot of friends
by telling Steven to call his own cab today. Of course that’s why I may not be
working there by Wednesday.” She looked at her watch. “Plus I’m meeting the
complainant at six at the Billy Goat.”

“What is
sexual harassment?” Randy said.

This should be good,
Clay thought.

“It’s
something you could use to learn more about, roomie,” she said to Randy. “When
someone puts unwanted moves on a coworker or subordinate.” She stopped the
Tercel at the light. “Any kind of unwanted advances, a look, a verbal approach.
Touching, exhibitionism, showing her feelthy pictures.”

“You see me as
one who tampers with chambermaids?” Randy said, going lord on her.

Jewel said
calmly, “I think that a guy who has been a stealth fuck to more than a hundred
women over the past two centuries might not realize how important consent is to
a woman.”

In the back
seat, Clay’s ears flapped.

“I always
obtain consent,” Randy grated.

“Oh, bull. You
can’t take ‘no’ for an answer. Prying into her dreams — and disguising yourself
as whatever she wants — is not the same thing as asking, in English, under
circumstances that allow her to refuse freely—”

“I take ‘no’
from you!”

“—Allow her to
refuse
without consequences,”
Jewel
said, raising her voice. “I’m not going to argue this with you.”

Randy shut up.

Darn.
Just when Clay was getting a nice clear
view into something he’d been dying to know about for months.

Clay glanced
at her in the rearview mirror. In her navy polyester, with her chin sticking
out and her eyes ablaze, she looked all cop. Very hot.

o0o

After a
million years they got to the bottom of Michigan Avenue and Jewel surrendered
the car to Randy, not without misgiving. She took the ferry stairs down to
Lower Mich and made her way through bowels of the Wrigley Building to the Billy
Goat, a newspapermen’s hangout that was everything Dick’s Last Resort wanted to
be: rude, grubby, greasy, smoky, and short on elegance. Way at the end of the
bar, Maida Sacker perched on a stool, knees together, in front of a double
highball.

Jewel ordered
a beer and then lunged for an emptying booth. Maida joined her.

“Okay, tell me
about the orgy. Who was behind it?”

Maida leaned
forward. The highball was full, but her breath was 180 proof. Her second, then.
“I have an educated guess. Since Mr. Baysdorter passed away, the corporate
culture has become a little, um, destabilized.”

“You mean
Baysdorter kept the boys in line?”

“He must have,”
Maida blurted. “Steven — Mr. Tannyhill has always expressed himself very
freely.”
Translation, he propositioned
all the girls.

“So it was
Superstud Steven?”

“The pressures
on him are much higher, now that he’s in line to be second partner.” Maida
frowned. “And recently he inherited part of Artistic Publishing Company — a
family business.” Her mouth soured. “He always comes back from there in a poor
humor. Mr. Boncil has remarked on it.”

Jewel thought
of single-mother Sharisse. “That reminds me. Mr. Boncil is doing his girl, too.
Don’t make a face, she didn’t say anything. I just saw it. It was in his smile.
The way he didn’t touch her. Who else, besides those two?”

Maida covered
her mouth with both hands.

“You’re
positive it’s Steven, then?”

Her eyes
pleaded with Jewel.

“But you don’t
know how he did it, or why it was hinky.”

No answer.
I’m screwing this up.

“Listen, you
really might want the EEOC. I’m here because you said there was something hinky
about the orgy. That’s my division,” Jewel said bitterly. “If it was just
Viagra in the coffee, you could get a harassment expert, but since it was
magic, you get me.”

“No! No one
else! I can’t risk it.” Maida took a deep breath, then a slug of her highball,
then another deep breath. “He — it was under control for a long time. I don’t
know what’s got into hi — them.”

Jewel caught
the slip, but she didn’t pounce. She said as gently as she could, “You can’t
just hire me to throw a scare into the white guys, Maida. You’ve called in the
city over hinky phenomena. That doesn’t go away. Regardless of the stink, I’m
here until I find out what happened, and decide that I can be reasonably sure
it won’t happen again.”

Maida sipped. “Understood.”

“And you can’t
blame yourself for the way bosses behave. Though I admit I’m a little sickened
by the dress code. Those girls dress like victims.”

Maida glanced
at Jewel’s navy polyester pantsuit with a shudder. “Perhaps you’re right.”

“Okay, I get
the message.” Jewel rolled her eyes. “I’ll find something girly to wear tomorrow.”

An almost
human smile twisted on Maida’s lips. “Don’t bother. Even in appropriate attire
I expect you’d, uh, stand out. Telling a senior to call his own cab!” She
tittered. “‘Is your finger broken?’” She seemed thrilled and horrified.

“That’s made
me, huh?” Reluctantly Jewel grinned.

“Maybe you’re
helping more than you think.”

“Even if I
dress and talk like a cop?”

With a sigh,
Maida said, “You might put heart into the girls,” as if that was the one thing
she hoped Jewel could accomplish. She slugged back her highball and got up. “I
can’t be seen with you.” She put a twenty on the table and whisked away to the
ladies room in back.

Interview
over.

She may not have meant me to interpret
that last remark as blanket permission to interrogate the employees. But I’m
gonna assume she did.

“You once told
me,” Randy said that night, as they put clean sheets on the bed in Jewel’s
apartment, “that you had a family attorney in Homonowoc who became your lover.”

“I don’t
remember telling you that,” Jewel said guardedly.

“You said he
was a septuagenarian. Now you say that this young woman has accepted the
patronage of her employer, who is ‘forty years too old for her.’ That troubles
you?”

“So?”

Randy looked
at her across the half-made bed. “In what way,” he said patiently, “is her
situation different from yours?” He twitched the sheet out of her hand and
shook it out.

Jewel smiled.
Old Liddy Lidheimer.
There was a
forgotten name. Her belly softened at the thought of him.

Randy flicked
the blanket over the bed. When the pillows were covered and piled up, he
stepped out of his clothes and slid his big, wedge-shaped body between the
sheets, looking at her expectantly. “Come, you are not so irreflective as you
pretend.”

Jewel got
naked, slid down under the covers, and let her head sink into the pillow.

“I was
seventeen. Grampa was already dead. Then my grandmother died. Liddy, the
lawyer, Mr. Lidheimer, had been coming around for a while, setting me up with a
power of attorney for Gram. That was so I could keep the farm running while she
was sick. I don’t really know how it happened.”

She turned out
the bedside lamp and stared at the lines of streetlight striping the ceiling
through the venetian blinds, remembering. She smiled.

“Liddy was
there for me. He joshed me along when I was desperate. He liked me strong, you
know.” She turned her head on the pillow. “That’s different from this poor girl
at this office. She’s so, so
flat.
So
docile.”

Randy didn’t
say anything.

“After Gram
died I guess I did flatten out,” she admitted. “Liddy cured me. He saw me
through grief and panic and feeling abandoned. And he kept the farm title tied
up in court while I sold the last crops and reduced the herd to a manageable
size. And he nursed me—”

Her throat
closed suddenly. She paused.

“Nursed me
through selling the farm.” She took a deep breath. “Liddy made me see that I
had to let it go. He helped me realize that I didn’t want to be a dairy farmer.
I was just holding onto it so I wouldn’t feel so lost. He got the best price, a
crazy big price, and he kept the law off me until I was legally of age to sign
things. And he made me go to college.” She looked at Randy, begging him to
understand. “He
made
me go. He wanted
the best for me.”

“For a price.
He was seventy. He despoiled a schoolgirl,” Randy said in a critical tone.

“You’re over
two hundred and you’ve slept with more than a hundred women,” she said,
relaxing. “You’ve never said if any of them were jail bait.”

“May I ask
something?” She nodded, and he said, “How long were you faithful to him?”

“How do you
know I was faithful to him?” She frowned, remembering. “He died while I was in
college. It was in my first year, in spring. He hadn’t even told me he was
sick.” She said in a harder voice, “Everybody who loves me dies.”

“That’s my
line,” Randy said, and she did a double take. His big black eyes glittered. “So
Liddy died, and you drowned your sorrows in a rakish career.”

“Who the hell
are you, my shrink?”

“What is a
shrink?”

“A
head-shrinker. A psychiatrist. I have no idea if they had shrinks in 1811, so I
don’t know what you would call it.”

“A confessor.”
He laughed, and bowed his head. “I will not tease you to confess to me.”

She smiled
weakly. “Besides, you have other skills I need you for.”

Now he looked
serious. “Yes.” He reached for her.

No sooner was
she in his arms than Jewel began twitching. It was a mental twitch, invisible
to Randy, she was sure, but horribly perceptible to herself. Then the twitch
moved into her legs, then in her arms, then her back. He pulled her close. The
hairs on his thighs tickled hers, and then the twitch swooped into her crotch,
where it stayed and drove her nuts.

I thought I was getting used to him!

She groaned
aloud, a deep, sad groan with a lilt of panic at the end, because she knew what
this restless feeling was about.

I
can’t be tired of him. That is simply not an option here.

If things were
normal, if
he
was normal, he would be
gone in the morning and she’d be free, free, free to have her life back. If
things were the way they used to be, she could kick him out tonight, no
comment, no questions asked or answered. He might call her for a few days, but
she could choke him off, no problem. If he was a normal guy.

He’s
two hundred years old. He can see right through me.

Very tenderly,
he touched her face with one hand.

He’s
trying to get closer and I’m terrified.

“I want it
hinky tonight,” she blurted.

His hand
stilled. In the dim bedroom, she thought his eyes got bigger and blacker.

Oh,
right. He’s a lord, too.

She tugged at
his shoulders. “Come o-o-on. Take me to demonspace. You know I love it.” When
he didn’t move, she added, “Pretty please?”

Now I’m catering to his ego. What’s
next? Playing dumb while he talks about da Bears?

But Randy
relaxed. He drew his hand over the crown of her head, down over her face, his
fingertips brushing her eyelids. “Sleep, Jewel.”

And bang, she
was asleep.

o0o

Snow,
she thought, trudging up the front steps of the Field
Museum over dirty old crusts of snow.
I’m
sick of snow.
It was bone cold. A breeze off the lake carried icy razors in
it, blowing six hundred miles down the lake from Canada.

Hope the museum’s open.
She was freezing out here. She got to
the enormous brass doors and peered through the glass. The museum was dark.