The Hinky Bearskin Rug (38 page)

Jewel herself called in to “Ask Your Shrink” fairly often,
although she never used her real name. It was the closest to therapy she could
ever get. She knew too much that could never be told.

o0o

The derby practice track occupied a big-box retail building
that had once anchored a mall on Cicero’s northern edge. Inside the cavernous
room, women in tights jogged slowly around on an oval track taped on the
concrete. A set of cheap metal bleachers sat on one side. Jewel and Randy
climbed to seats on the top row.

More women trickled out onto the floor and started warming
up. Jewel saw that they wore uniform jerseys with their names printed on their
backs: Irrita Belle, Stun Bunny, Rapture Snatch, Bichon Frizzy. They jogged.
They pranced. They kicked their own butts with their heels. They leapfrogged.

Which one would be Lena? Only a few girls had
fashion-perfect bodies. They seemed to be all sizes, from tall down to shrimpy,
from scrawny to fridge-shaped to spherical.

She stole a glance at Randy. Was he interested?

Of course he was. His black eyes were bright. He leaned
forward, elbows on his knees, watching. His very name was a dirty joke, and one
he had fully embraced in his two-hundred-years’ servitude as an incubus
haunting a brass bed.

Of
course
the
derby girls turned him on.

Jewel stifled a sigh.

After they jogged, the derby girls stretched. Then they did
push-ups for an appalling length of time. Jewel got tired just watching. After
the push-ups — man-style, she noted — came sit-ups and leg lifts. On and on and
on. Good grief. Jewel considered herself to be in adequate shape for someone
with half a desk job. That looked like it hurt.

“What are we waiting for?” Randy said.

“Pink stuff,” she said out of the side of her mouth. “But we
can’t identify ourselves as Department of Consumer Services.”

He nodded intelligently. “Undercover.” Randy loved going
undercover.

Finally the team put on skates and about fifty-seven pads,
helmets, and scary-looking tooth-guard things that made them look like boxers.

Then they skated.

Jewel’s breath caught.

At first they just rolled around in a mob, about thirty of
them. Some seemed to be pushing for speed. Some skated on one foot, then the
other. Some skated backwards. The one labeled Donna Draper did goofy stunts
like putting one ankle behind her head and skating on the other foot. Somebody
went down with a whoop, who? Fist Kist, a big girl with a high, hard stomach.
That had to hurt. But the others calmly skated around the fallen girl, and she
got right up and skated on.

They were fast and strong, sexy in their tank tops and kneepads,
totally focused, whizzing past one another with inches to spare, fearless.
Jewel felt a stab of envy.

In that moment, she thought,
I want that.

An hour into the practice they took a long break. Randy got
up and stalked off to the men’s room. Jewel sat, stunned and charmed and
fascinated, her butt going flat on the hard bench. She tingled all over.
I’m not strong enough to do that,
she
thought.
But I could be.

“Let me guess,” somebody said in her ear. “Sometime in the
past hour you said to yourself, ‘I want that.’”

Jewel turned her head. Lena Sacker, AKA Velvita Fromage the
porn star of Hot Pink Studios, not exactly recognizable in a sport bra, bike
shorts, knee pads, elbow pads, wrist pads, and big, clunky skates with wheels
on all four corners, sat down beside her on the bench. The tooth guard, shiny
with spit, was stuck into a hole in her helmet. Jewel thought Lena looked
infinitely sexier this way than when she was on camera, naked except for
fuck-me heels, energetically boinking some porn star with a nine-inch
schweinstücke.

Thank goodness Randy was in the restroom.

“How did you know?”

“Because it happened to me.” Lena looked Jewel over the way
she always did, like a madam inspecting a wannabe ho. “You ever do any team
sports?”

“Basketball in high school.”

“Do anything now?”

Stung, Jewel said, “Not much. I swim in Lake Michigan five
months of the year.”

“My goodness. You’re tough enough, I guess.”

“Thanks so much,” Jewel snapped. “Now, why are we here?”

“Besides so I can derby hit on you? Wait ’til after the
break. Then you’ll see scrimmage.”

Lena turned her head to look out at the floor, where girls
were lying on their backs, twisting themselves into pretzels, or touching their
skate toes. Her voice lowered.

“It happens during scrimmage. You’ve got a good view up here
— just keep your eye out while we’re rolling. That’s when things happen. I can’t
talk about it here — okay, gotta go.” She stood.

“When can we talk?” Jewel said.

Lena picked up her helmet and slapped it on her head. “After
practice. Come down onto the track then. I’ll introduce you to coach. Get you
started.”

“I didn’t say I wanted to do this.” Jewel’s heart hammered
in her chest.
But you know I do. Hell,
you knew I would.

Lena smiled. “And then we can go have a drink. And talk
about pink on the rink.”

As Lena clumped carefully down the bleachers to the track
level, Jewel glanced in the other direction and noticed that Randy had returned
from the toilet. She’d actually forgotten that he was here with her. It had to
be the first time in months that she hadn’t felt him hovering like a phantom
orgasm, never more than a few feet away from her.

Randy was staring at Jewel, not at Lena.

She flushed guiltily, which was totally backwards. She
looked away, down at the track.

The back of Lena’s black tank top read,
Sacker Tart.

In a confusion of adrenaline, envy, and longing, Jewel’s one
coherent thought was,
I gotta get me a
derby name.

Scrimmage scared the crap out of her.

The group divided in half. Half sat down. The other half
sorted itself into teams. Girls donned tank tops and tees until some were
wearing black tops, some white.

Lena’s black-topped group scrimmaged against white.
Apparently this meant that a whistle blew, and ten girls started to rumble in a
big, tight mosh. Their skates bumped into each other and slammed on the floor.
Jewel couldn’t follow the action. Everyone seemed to be milling around,
shoving, slipping ahead, getting slammed into the wall, sliding sideways, yet
somehow always moving forward. She settled for keeping her eyes glued to Lena,
AKA Sacker Tart.

“What the hell are the rules, anyway?” she muttered.

Randy pointed. “The jammers — Sacker Tart and Bichon Frizzy —
work their way through the pack. The first to achieve this becomes lead jammer.
Thereafter, each time they pass a member of the opposing team, they score a
point. The lead jammer has the privilege of bringing the jam to a premature
conclusion, should she so choose, to prevent her opponent from scoring points.”

She sent him a funny look. “How do you know all this?”

“Television. Roller derby was popular in the sixties.”

Right. Trapped in bed for two hundred years, he’d watched a
lot of TV. “You know the weirdest things.”

Sacker Tart, Jewel realized, was working her way through the
crowd toward the front. So was the other girl with a star on her helmet, Bichon
Frizzy. They broke free of the pack together and raced neck-and-neck, each
struggling to pass the other.

Sacker Tart leaped forward in front of Bichon Frizzy and
went down, curling into a ball even as Bichon Frizzy fell over on top of her,
kicking her in the helmet as she rolled. The pack roared along, thirty feet
behind them and closing.

Fuck!
Jewel
thought, terrified for Sacker Tart.

But before the whole pack could catch up and roll over them,
Sacker Tart was up again, racing ahead.

And, one half-second later, Bichon Frizzy was on her skates
again.

Jewel blinked.
I was
watching the whole time.
Bichon Frizzy hadn’t scrambled up. She just
flickered, like a bit of film skipping over a break. And then she was skating
again.

A faint trail of pink glitter seemed to follow her, like a
boat wake.

Jewel elbowed Randy and pointed to the pink stuff. They
exchanged glances, and then she looked back at the skaters.

Unbelievably soon, Sacker Tart had skated all the way around
the track. She was coming up behind Bichon Frizzy. Jewel watched with
incredulity as Sacker crouched lower on her skates, angled her body, and
clipped the other woman’s thigh with her butt, knocking her into another
skater. Bichon Frizzy went down again. Sacker Tart skated on.

“Jeebus holy freakin’ — did you see that?” Jewel exclaimed.
She felt herself grinning madly.

Randy said in a repressive tone, “They lack decorum.”

“Excuse me?” Jewel took her eyes off the action long enough
to catch him frowning at her, one of his lordly frowns that telegraphed his
disappointment in her for yet another plebian lapse from social grace. She
snapped, “Oh, get over it. You’re sporting the boner of the century. And you
have the nerve to criticize them?”

“I don’t criticize them. My response is appropriate,” he
said primly. “Yours is not.”

“My what is what?”

He half stood over her on the bleacher bench, as if he hoped
to draw her attention away from the scrimmage. “I sense all your desires.”

This was true. It was really annoying of him.

She widened her eyes. “Number one, I never said I wanted to
do this. And number two, if you disapprove, this would be the first desire I’ve
had where you haven’t been hairy-all-over to help.”

He stiffened. “We should leave.”

Jewel’s mouth fell open. “No.”

“You cannot participate in this — this exhibition.”

“Watch me.” Shit, between him and Lena Velvita Fromage
Sacker Tart, they were talking her into it. She probably couldn’t handle it
anyway, damn him. But only because she’d let herself fall out of shape.

With training though....

Weak as her flesh felt, her spirit was willing. Hoo baby.

“Sit down,” she snapped. “We’re working, remember?”

She turned away from him and scooted a foot down the
bleachers so she could see better.

Half an hour passed. Jewel forgot all about watching for
pink stuff. She began to figure out how the game worked.

The teams changed over. The two teams who’d just been trying
to kill each other threw off their black and white tops, divested their gear,
lay down on the floor at the far end of the arena, and did yoga stretches. Out
on the track, a new set of girls kitted out in black and white.

Lena Sacker Tart took off her skates and returned to the
bleachers. “How’s it going? You following the play yet?”

“I think so. Uh, Lena, you remember Randy.” She ought to. In
three days at Hot Pink Studios, they had made three dirty movies together.

“Yeah, hi, bro,” Lena said briefly, and sat on Jewel’s far
side, ignoring Randy and his snooty bow. She leaned closer and said in Jewel’s
ear, “Did you see the pink fog?”

“Yeah. It was after the first time you sacked Bichon Frizzy.
She was on the floor on her ass — and then she wasn’t. And I saw pink stuff.
Just a trace.”

“A trace,” Sacker Tart nodded. “Yup.” She pointed down at
the track. “Okay, watch what’s happening. There goes Rapture Snatch, jamming
against Stun Bunny. Stun is the fastest girl in the league, but she lacks
strength. Rap isn’t bad. Rap is also bigger. If she can push past Stun, or if
her blockers can keep Stun boxed in, she’ll make lead jammer and score before
Stun gets clear of the pack.”

Jewel caught a glimpse of Randy looking offended, and
stifled a laugh. He probably would never have imagined that Velvita Fromage
would ignore his aristocratic hotness to talk to her.

If Lena could ignore Randy, Jewel could, too.

Rapture Snatch did indeed break free first. Bad things were
happening to Stun Bunny back in the pack. Jewel missed Lena telling her the
name of the block that Steamy Roller used, but she saw Stun Bunny go down on
hands and knees. Irrita Belle fell over her, rolled onto her back, and spun
like a starfish, her legs extended and her skates lethally close to passing
blockers’ knees.

“Now that,” Sacker Tart said dispassionately, “is a
dangerous move. See what comes of it?”

Even as she pointed, somebody must have got hit or tripped,
because a massive pileup ensued, two, three, four skaters caroming into one
another, stumbling, going down.

Stun Bunny and Irrita Belle should have been on the bottom
of the pileup.

Instead, Stun was five feet away. Completely in the clear.

Stun got to her skates and rolled backwards away from the
mayhem. Then she seemed to set her sights on Rapture Snatch and stroked
determinedly around the curve, as fast going backward as she was skating
forward. Jewel’s jaw dropped.