The Hinky Bearskin Rug (9 page)

“These,” she
said, handing them out, “are fresh cinnamon cow plops, the finest non-chocolate
pastry money can buy.” She bit into the edge of hers. It was so hot, the
crunchy crust sizzled against her tongue. “Ohmigod, it’s fabulous.”

“Cow plop.”
Randy looked dubiously at his. “I suppose there is a facetious resemblance.” He
nibbled. “Good.”

“I wouldn’t
eat anything made in this building,” Clay said.

“You eat ’em
at work every day,” Jewel said thickly. “Be done in a minute.” She looked at
her half-eaten cow plop. “No, I won’t. If I finish this one I’ll want another.
Here.” She handed the rest of her cow plop to Randy, who put it all back in the
white bag. “Business before pleasure.”

“Must I stay
in the car?” Randy said.

“I’ll watch
him,” Clay said.

Jewel shook
her head. “I just realized, we need his hinky radar.” She scanned the building.
“They’ve been here for ages. Wide open in a dozen ways. Their only hope is to
make nice.”

“We’re nice,”
Clay said.

“Exceptionally
so,” Randy said.

Jewel put on
her cop face. “Let’s go.”

There was a
security guard inside the entrance. You could either turn left and buy porn at
wholesale, or you could sign in and go right to a set of blank gray double
doors or to the elevators, or straight up a grand staircase. Jewel gave the
guard their names and titles. He phoned upstairs.

“Go on up to
four. Miss Tannyhill will see you.”

Jewel elbowed
Clay. “Tannyhill! Holy shit, do you suppose there’s a connection?”

Clay muttered,
“Don’t curse. It puts off the marks.”

On the fourth
floor they were met by Miss “call me Onika” Tannyhill. Onika was a
sixty-something old bat with hard miles but an excellent repaint job. She wore
her dyed orange hair in a smooth Hilary, tons of striking makeup, white mink on
the collar of her deep blue suit, and diamonds on her long cigarette holder.
Her eyes were as blue and snappy as her suit. She ushered them into a vast,
hypermasculine office full of dark wood and leather wing chairs.

They sat in
the leather wing chairs. Onika said, “What can I do for the City of Chicago
today?”

Jewel
explained about Adult Use registration. Then she said, “We were surprised to
find that Chicago had another adult publishing company.”

Onika fitted a
cigarette into the jeweled holder and lit up. “Don’t mistake me for Christie
Hefner. I don’t have her brains or her money. She went to Brandeis for
summa cum laude,
I went to the Bahamas
for a tan. I’m just a bad girl who got handed a great big fun toy.” She grinned
around the cigarette holder.

“So Artistic
is a family business?”

“Yep. My
grandfather founded this company almost a hundred years ago.” Onika sucked in
smoke, coughed, sucked deeper, and coughed again. “My father took over in
seventy-six. I got it—” she paused and coughed horribly for a minute, then
croaked, “Oh, hell,” and stubbed out her cigarette. After a sip from a glass
she said, “I’ve only been in charge two years. You’ll forgive me if I don’t
know what the kumshaw runs to these days.”

Jewel said, “We
don’t do shakedown in my department, ma’am.”

“Guess that’ll
have to wait, then,” Onika said, unruffled. “Did you want a tour?”

“That would be
great,” Jewel said, keeping her temper. Everyone stood. Something caught her
eye.
Bingo!
“Who’s the blonde beauty
in the painting?”

There she was,
the minx they’d seen in poppet form both in the locker at the Kraft and in
O’Connor’s apartment. The oil painting made her look classier. Jewel was
reminded of the nude who reclines full-length over the bar in a cowboy movie.
It was a nice painting. The blonde’s blue eyes sparkled, and she seemed to say
Peel me a grape
from clear across the
room.

“Sweet, huh?”
Onika said in her gravelly voice. “The original model was named Teüschnelda
Wilmerding, but everybody here calls her Wilma. She’s our mascot. You’ll be
seeing a lot of her.” She put down her glass, which contained Scotch by the
smell of it, and shepherded them all out of her office.

Onika showed
them layout and editorial. She showed them photo production. She showed them
accounting, MIS, and website management. In the elevator, they felt a deep,
rhythmic thump. “The presses are old and slow, so they run twenty-four-seven
when we’re on deadline.”

Wilma was
everywhere. Framed paintings of Wilma from the Year One, wearing a lacy corset
and high button shoes. Tattered posters under glass of Wilma in abbreviated
pink gingham undies, pinning a rose on a WWI doughboy. Wilma cooing over a
puppy held between her perky naked breasts. Wilma roller skating naked. Naked
Wilma laughing while she roped a snorting, bucking Brahma bull from the back of
a bucking horse.

Yeah, it was
total fantasy, but it had energy and wholesome appeal. Wilma was out-of-control
sexual, yet adorably innocent.

Jewel felt
herself blushing, which embarrassed her and made her blush hotter.
Darnit, I’m too sophisticated to let lame
porn bother me.
The pages of the current issue tacked to the corkboard in
editorial were considerably raunchier than Wilma. She swallowed.

A young woman
with horn-rimmed glasses and a her dark hair in a bun came up to them.

“This
morning’s online orders, Onika.” Her dark suit was so severe, it was a parody
of Jewel’s navy polyester. She was the picture of everything Jewel couldn’t
measure up to at Baysdorter Boncil: trim, sleek, and pseudo-virginal, as if she
wore her virtue like a carnival mask.

“Honey, this
is Jewel Heiss and her team from Consumer Services downtown. This little gal’s
my right hand.”

The brunette
nodded at Clay and dimpled demurely at Randy. Jewel felt her hackles go up.

“Of course
that’s not what you’ve come to see. Honey, tag along.”

The assistant
handed off her folder and fell in beside Randy. Clay took Jewel’s elbow, and
they went down a big marble staircase. More Wilmas hung in the stairwell.

Onika gestured
grandly. “A hundred years of smutty pictures. My inheritance.” On the ground
floor, she pushed open the gray double doors. “And this is the money shot: the
old studio, where we take feelthy pictures — stills only, of course. Who’s the
talent today, honey?”

“Flash Titty,
and Sancho and the Tokyo Twins.”

“They won’t
mind company.” Onika paused at the door to the studio. She grinned wickedly at
her guests. “You wanted to see it all. This is what everybody wants to see.”

Randy bowed.
Clay smiled. Jewel squeaked, “Sure.”

“Cigarette,”
the assistant murmured. Onika swore and put out her cigarette in the ashtray by
the door.

“Who writes
your salacious stories?” Randy said as Onika ushered them in.

“Bunch of
dirty-minded newspapermen,” Onika said. “We need new blood. Care to try?”

“As a matter
of fact,” Randy began.

Jewel said, “Oh,
hush.”

All four of
them stopped in the shadows outside a brightly-lit tableau.

Under bright
lights, three people were moving around on a huge, red-plush, heart-shaped
divan, or bed, or something.

The women wore
peasant blouses and bright ruffled red skirts bunched around their waists,
kneeling side by side on the red velvet thingy.

Sancho wore
only chaps, big fancy ones, all over fringe and shiny silver medallions, and
silver-tipped cowboy boots. He was kneeling behind both women, hard at work
with flesh and with plastic.

In spite of
Jewel’s sophistication, her temperature rose.

The twins
howled and barked and bayed. Sancho preserved a thoughtful, almost abstracted
expression.

The camera
flashed. The photographer yammered in a breathless monotone, “Dumi, twist
right. Duyu, twist left. Sweet. Good action, Sancho. Duyu, grab your right
cheek and look back. Dumi, how about a frig. Atta girl. More elbow. Love it.”
Somehow that was even sexier than the sex.

Speechless,
Jewel found herself looking at the women more than at the man. They were
impossibly skinny. It was fascinating, and somehow appalling, and she realized
half of her discomfort was because the women were also beautiful.
I would look like potato salad doing that.
Potato salad with cellulite.

Onika said to
someone standing nearby, “Flash Titty, this is Jewel and Clay and Randy.”

Jewel shook
hands with a totally naked, totally gorgeous woman who believed in truth in
advertising. Clay was warm and friendly and didn’t look at her below the neck,
which Jewel thought was carrying chivalry too far. Randy shook hands, too. In
some way Randy acted more polite than Clay and yet something, his taut posture
or the sparkle in his eye, told Jewel he was fully aware of Flash Titty’s
qualifications.

The naked
woman smiled at Randy. “Can I have a cappuccino?”

“They’re not assistants,
they’re just rubbernecking,” Onika said.

“I once knew a
beauty,” Randy remarked, “who claimed that coffee was ruinous to the
complexion.

“Baby,” Flash
Titty said, “they’re not looking at my complexion.”

Jewel wanted
to pull her hair.

“I’ll get your
cappuccino,” Onika’s assistant said. She lifted her eyebrows at Jewel as if
she’d heard Jewel’s thought.

God, I am such a bitch!
Jewel felt like one solid blush.

She paid
attention to the contortionists so she didn’t have to hear what Randy said
next. Those women sure were limber. Skinny, exquisite, shameless — it
embarrassed Jewel to discover that the shamelessness she prided herself on was
small town stuff. On the red velvet dais, the panting Tokyo Twins offered the
camera proof of their high level of satisfaction. The photographer leapt and
snapped and yammered. Sancho pulled out his, holy crap, his ten inch thing and
experienced his moment of triumph, which seemed like an anticlimax, all things
considered.

Jewel
reluctantly turned back to see what her sex demon might be getting up to with a
porn star. She found Clay watching her.

“Bored?” she
blurted.

He shook his
head, smiling at her.

“I can’t
believe you’re not looking at this.”

“Seen it. My
Dad’s collection is legendary.”

“Oh.” There
didn’t seem to be much to say to that. She leaned closer to him, and he put his
arm around her. That felt nice. She might be the fattest woman in the room, but
somebody wanted to cuddle her.

“Okay, we’re
done!” somebody yelled.

Sancho and the
Tokyo Twins got up and calmly wiped themselves down with pop-up moist
towlettes.

“They seem to
like their work,” Jewel said lamely.

The assistant
checked her watch. “Onika, I’m due upstairs.”

“Go, go.”
Onika shooed her off.

Flash Titty
moved languidly to the dais. A man in a bear suit already stood waiting for
her. The suit had a very realistic bear head and claws, but a human body part
poked through a hole in the bear’s fly. Another man was getting into a weird
outfit that looked like a porn version of a Disney version of a Brahma bull.
The bull guy had not, Jewel noted, been circumcised.

“They love
their work. Hard to believe, I know,” Onika said, eyeing Jewel with irony. “Nice
girls should have more shame.”

Jewel laughed
uneasily. She felt like her blush system had blown a circuit breaker.

To her
profound relief, Onika led them out of the studio. “Come upstairs. You must
have some questions by now.”

In the
elevator, Jewel said what had to be said. “You know, I always thought I was
this balls-to-the-wall horny city girl. I mean, I’ve been around. But I sure
feel small town here.”

“It’s the
concentration,” Onika said. “There’s just so much of it in one place. I was a
bad girl myself, back when I was young and fuckable.” She elbowed Jewel and
dropped her growly voice another notch. “But half the fun of being a bad girl
is being the only one in the room, yah?”

Jewel burst
out laughing. Clay smiled a discreet smile.
Girl
talk doesn’t embarrass Clay,
she remembered.

Randy was
brick red. He stared rigidly at the elevator doors, his lips pressed together.

In Onika’s
office, Jewel accepted a gin and tonic from their hostess. Clay took a beer.
Randy refused refreshment.

Jewel sighed. “Okay,
I admit I had other expectations. I mean, frankly, that stuff is kind of tacky
and it didn’t turn me on,” she lied. “It was so, I don’t know, mechanical? But
it wasn’t horrible.”

Onika jabbed
the air triumphantly with her cigarette holder. “That’s because that stuff is
for men. Our print stuff is still done for the male readership.” She put a
cigarette in the holder and drew flame onto it. “But upstairs.” She sat back
and blew a smoke ring amd grinned, sipped her Scotch, blew another ring, and
started coughing. “Hell.” She hit a button on her phone. “Honey, get me a press
goodies bag for Hot Pink Studios.”