The Hinky Bearskin Rug (27 page)

He followed. “I
have to let her go. She will tire of Clay. Or she won’t.”

Lena threw off
her bathrobe. “You’re wasting my time.”

“I can’t send
it. If I’d thought she would read it, I could never have written it.” He gave a
pathetic smile. “It was reward enough to watch your face as you read it.”

She looked up
then. “Tell me straight. Did you write the letter to her, pretending you would
send it, or did you write it so I would read it? Because I’m not getting in
between you two.”

“For Jewel.”

“And you won’t
send it.” She opened fresh pantyhose.

He hesitated. “No.”

“So should I
burn it?”

“No!”

Lena sighed
wistfully and went back to pulling on pantyhose. She put on a suit and her
German Army shoes and put her hair back in a french twist, avoiding his eye.

“Would you
keep it for me?” he said finally.

She couldn’t
resist those big dark eyes. “For how long? Because if I make enough money to
move, it might get lost.”

“Should
something happen to me, would you send it to her?”

Yellow-bellied coward!
“Oooh, all right. Put it in an envelope
and address it and leave it by the toaster. It won’t get thrown away there.”

Nina took a
call from Jewel on Sunday at noon. “Where the hell are you? It's Sunday. I got tiramisu
thawing on the counter.”

Jewel’s heart
sank. She was dying for comfort, but she couldn’t face the nosiness and
needling that would come with it. “I have to work. Paperwork.”

“Oh, bullshit.
Clay didn’t turn me down over paperwork.”

Jewel pushed
open the sliding door to her balcony and went outside, where she could blame
the water coming from her eyes on the wind. “You asked Clay before you called
me?”

“He’s been
coming over for three months, what, you expected different? What’s the matter?
Did you fight with Clay?” Nina said, getting right to the jugular as usual.

“Something
like that.”

“Be careful.
He’s too sneaky to put up with the cold shoulder.”

“Yeah,” Jewel
said tiredly, since this was no news to her. And a big part of the reason why
she wasn’t talking to Clay right now.

Nina picked at
her for a few minutes before she gave up. Jewel stared down at a pair of geese
arrowing along above the river and felt a hundred years old.

What was the
matter with her? Was she doomed to be alone? Was that what she’d been hiding
from, hopping from man to man since college?
Everybody who loves me dies,
she’d said bitterly to Randy, and he’d
told her,
That’s my line.

Randy was a
big throbbing sore inside her, so big and tempting and painful that she
couldn’t bear to think of him. Yet she couldn’t help herself.

I don’t want him. I don’t.

That lie
lasted until the next goose flew by.

Okay, she
wanted him.

But what’s the point? He’s done with
me. The curse is lifted. Oh, and by the way, he’s ruined me for normal sex.

At least Clay
took it well. Clay might not mind having sex with a woman with a hinky social
disease. But what if she ruined him, as Randy had ruined her? She couldn’t do
that to Clay.

An unbidden
image rose in her mind, of Clay inside one of those glass cases at the Field
Museum, naked, looking out at her, with his curly-headed golden retriever by
his side.

“So this is
it,” she said to the wind whipping around the Corncob, shoving the gallery
dream out of her mind. “No more sex. No Randy,” she added, as if somehow losing
him was worse than losing sex.

The loss was
so big, she could only feel it one heartbeat at a time. Then numbness, cold,
emptiness. Then she’d think of Randy again, and the hot pain came flooding
back.

The rest of
Sunday was agony. She did her laundry. She took out the recylables. She
vacuumed, that was how low she’d come. A boat honked on the river and she
remembered her balcony and went to stand there again, staring out at the city
and the river and the vast empty lake beyond. An hour later she was still
standing there, her hand ice cold on the balcony railing.

The hell with
it. She left the vac in the middle of the floor and went to Olive Park Beach
for a swim.

In the cold,
cold water, she could let her hot pain out. “What is the matter with me?” she
said, over and over, as she backstroked out to the far buoy.
I don’t want to feel like this,
she
chanted mentally as she crawled back toward the beach. When rage and panic and
the desperate feeling inside grew too hot, she butterflied with great white
splashes, working her body until the squirrel cage slowed in her head.

As she walked
back to the Corncob Building, she saw a pigeon wobbling on the edge of a city
trash can with a lighted cigarette in its beak.

“Be careful
with that!” she yelled, waving her arms. Of course the rat-with-wings launched
into the air and dropped its butt into the trash can. The contents of the trash
can burst instantly into flames. “Oh, hell.”

She phoned
nine-one-one for the Fire Department and sat down on a nearby bench to watch.
Not that she could do much, except keep passing tourists from sticking their
hands into the fire. Then she hit speed dial on her cell.

“Ask Your
Shrink.” The connection sounded different.

“Are we on the
air?”

“Sorry, no,”
said the silvery voice of the radio call-in show host. “Did you want to be? I
can record this call.”

“No, that’s
fine! I’m just surprised you answered.”

“I’m always
here for you,” Your Shrink said warmly.

“Great.”
Suddenly everything stuck in Jewel’s throat.

The fire truck
pulled up. Guys in yellow rubber got out and hauled their hose toward the
burning trash can.

“What’s the
problem? Coral, isn’t it?”

“Emerald.”
Jewel swallowed. “I think I just broke up with this guy, only it never really
was a relationship. And now I’m miserable. And I think I hate myself. He hates
me. He doesn’t need me any more. I was sick of it when he needed me and now I
hate this, too. I’m not a hater, I’m really not. My life is good,” she said,
choking on a sob.

Water gushed
from the fire hose over the trash can, making stinky smoke.

“Tell me
straight, doc. Am I crazy?”

“You have a
broken heart.”

Jewel took the
phone from her ear and made a skeptical face at it. “I can’t have. I don’t do
relationships!” One of the firemen looked up as she raised her voice.

“Very well,
then, you’re crazy.”

“I think I
liked broken heart better,” Jewel said.

“Jewel? It’s
me, Dave,” the fireman said, coming up to her bench with a big smile. “Remember
me?” He clearly intended to remind her of their deathless night together. Jewel
sighed.

“I gotta go,”
she told Your Shrink and hung up. “Dave, you’re as cute as ever. Don’t call me.”

She turned her
back on his puzzled smile and headed home.

o0o

Next morning
Jewel signed in with Harry at the desk at Artistic Publishing Company. Her
personal life was in shambles. But she had a clue and a contact and she was
by-god going to follow up.

The sound of
the presses pounded through the floor. “Guess Onika found some more printers,”
she remarked to Harry.

“Oh, we got ’em
back next day. It was just stupidness. Onika’s in the still studio on one.”

Thank heaven.
Randy would be upstairs on five, in Hot Pink.
Don’t think about what he’s doing.

She found
Onika having an argument with a photographer.

“I know it’s
traditional, but it’s not sexy.” Onika jabbed in the photographer’s direction
with her diamond-crusted cigarette holder. “It looks uncomfortable.”

“We can see
both her tits and her ass,” the photographer explained patiently.

“You could see
Mr. Gumby’s tits and ass, too, if you tied him up in a pretzel,” Onika said.

“Really, it’s
okay,” said the nude beauty, twisted on hands and knees under the lights. “I’m
used to it.”

“I pay your
chiropractor bills,” Onika said to her, “so don’t try to bullshit a
bullshitter.”

Jewel spoke
up. “Miss Tannyhill? Have you got a minute?”

Onika turned. “Oh,
it’s you.” She sent a glower at the photographer. “Traditional. Hmph.”

The
photographer and his subject resumed work.

“Can we talk
about Steven Tannyhill?” Jewel said.

“Let’s go
upstairs for that.”

In Onika’s
office Jewel turned down a drink. Her hostess poured a tall Scotch. “What about
Steven?”

“Someone told
me he inherited a piece of the business. Someone else told me he has, and I
quote, ‘a hard-on for the building.’ I want to know,” Jewel said slowly, “what
Steven has to do with this company and with this building.”

Onika puffed,
choked, coughed, sucked Scotch, puffed again, and coughed. “Lemme tell you a
story. I’ve been knocking around this place since I was ten. My mother had shit
fits, but they were divorced by then, and my father had the money, and she
liked to ski in Switzerland, so.”

She swivelled
back and forth like a kid in her daddy’s big leather desk chair.

“My father
wanted me to have everything, and I got everything. Switzerland, Rio, climbing
the fucking pyramids, boys, cars, diamonds, champagne, the works. And when I’d
used all that up, he let me come home and mess around at the company. He always
said I would take over someday, but he didn’t trust me enough to leave me full
power.” Slowly and carefully, she drew in smoke and let it out. “He saddled me
with a board full of dead white guys, including my nephew Steven. Do you know
that Artistic didn’t
have
an Internet
division until I started one?”

“Really?”
Jewel said. “I’m surprised.”

“My father was
old fashioned. Didn’t take the Internet seriously. He drove us into the ground.
He died and I took over. Then that shit-heel Steven convinced the board we
should sell, and I had the dickens of a time convincing them to give me two
years — two measly years! — to get my Internet division and my women’s film
division up and profitable.”

Two years!
Jewel added another one to her list.

“We’re almost
profitable, but we’re also almost out of time.”

“Sounds like
an ambitious schedule,” Jewel said.

“I didn’t have
a choice. Steven found this scummy Asian porn company to buy our mailing list.”
Her eyes narrowed. “What he really wants is our building. It’s worth a fortune.
This neighborhood’s going condo as fast as it can go potty.”

“How close are
you to profitability?”

“Very close. A
week, if the launch of Velvita’s new movie goes well. Her past four launches
bumped sales ten percent each time. The new picture is terrific. It could bump
us right over the line.”

“Phone, Onika,”
Lena’s voice came from the intercom. “Steven Tannyhill on one.”

Onika
chuckled. “How does he sound?”

“I’d say the
cob is embedded between four and four-and-a-half inches up his butt,” Lena’s
voice said dispassionately.

Onika grunted,
then coughed. “Put him on speaker and come in here.” Her voice was rough and
hoarse. “Too many cigarettes,” she said to Jewel. She hit the intercom. “Steven,
how’s tricks! I’m thinking of renaming the company, did I tell you?”

“What for?”
Steven said with suspicion in his voice. “What are you up to, Onika?”

Lena came in
and sat at the end of Onika’s desk.
What
does he want?
she mouthed.

Jewel made as
if to go, though she didn’t want to.

Onika held up
a forefinger.
Stay,
she mouthed. “It’s
called rebranding. Artistic is a hundred years of fuddy-duddy porn for men.
Tannyhill Porn — now that’s a woman’s porn house.”

Onika yukked
silently. Lena high-fived her.

“You’ll lose
old customers,” Steven said.

“Who wants ’em?
You keep telling me the old fashioned stuff doesn’t sell.”

“They won’t be
able to find you online.”

“Ever hear of auto-redirect, Steven? Ninety-four percent
of our customers will find us just fine. That’s how much our revenue stream has
shifted in the twenty-three months since the board magnanimously gave me
permission to start an Internet division.”

Silence from
Steven.

“Tannyhill
Porn,” she mused. “Maybe I’ll take it public when I finally get full control.
Could be bigger than Baysdorter Boncil Tannyill.” She clicked her tongue. “Oh,
but you won’t get your partnership until you’ve got your paws on my building.
And you never will, Steven.”

“You’re not
profitable yet,” he snarled.

“Did you call
about something special, or were you just hoping to gloat about our lousy
numbers? How disappointing for you.” Onika laughed again.

“You old
witch!” he said, and swore.