The Hinky Velvet Chair (32 page)

Kauz clutched at his chest.
“Mein Gott!”

Sovay pointed a finger. “You’ve had me in that machine all
evening! And look at me! Look what you’ve done to me!”
Plop! Plop! Plop! Plop!

The crowd gasped.

The cameraman bobbed like a chicken pecking at flying grain,
pointing at her face, then at the critters falling to the alley bricks. The
reporter, dammit, came out of the garden gate just then. She’d missed
everything!

Jewel took her little green wriggly friend out of her pocket
and tossed him with the old high-school accuracy.

Just as the reporter turned to Kauz, the tiny green snake
flew between them and landed on the reporter’s sleeve. The reporter looked at
it and screamed. The camera swerved to her.

Kauz brushed the snake off her sleeve. “No, no, it is not
true. This unfortunate woman, she is inebriated, unhinged.”

“Sir?” the reporter said, recovering and thrusting the
microphone at him.

He put his chin up. “I am Dr. Gustavus Katterfelto Kauz.”

“Doctor, do you contend that this woman never received a
treatment in the Venus Machine?”

“Of course not!” Kauz stated.

“Yes, she did!” someone yelled.

“She took my turn twice!” yelled someone else.

“You mean you have all been using this machine?” the
reporter said, and the camera swung wildly between the Venus Machine and the
crowd. Hands waved.

“I did.”

“Meee!”

“I tried it.”

“I did, too!”

“How about those people in there?” She pointed into Virgil’s
garden.

“I assure you, they did,” Randy said without a blink.

“I assure you.” Kauz wrung his hands. “She has never — she
was never my client!”

“Liar!” Sovay spat. “I was at your spa three days ago! You
ignored me for that cow, but I was there, and I got twelve hundred dollars’
worth of your so-called treatments!” Snakes and toads showered onto her shoes.

The crowd took one giant step back.

Jewel heard retching all around her.

This is perfect. Kauz
will never run for mayor now.

Jewel looked around for Beulah. Beulah waved, and Jewel
beckoned her forward.

Beulah stepped into the camera light. “Please,” she said,
pulling off her mask with a flourish. “Friends!”

The noise level dropped.
Spooky.
In the camera assistant’s harsh, wobbly light, Beulah looked magnificent,
fascinating, messy as hell, supremely confident, and totally nuts. In a likeable
way. “Please, everyone!”

Even the murmurers fell silent.

“Friends, calm yourselves.” She signalled and the Self Love
ladies unmasked. “We have benefitted from the doctor’s genius. He created the
Self Love Potion! One dose will silence that poisonous voice that says, ‘You
are ugly, you are old, you are undesirable.’” Beulah said thrillingly, “You are
not ugly! You are beautiful!” She opened her arms. “Desire yourself, and
everyone will desire you!”

The partyers didn’t look happy, but Jewel noticed they
didn’t run away. Toads hopped between their ankles, and snakes slithered past
their shoes, unnoticed.
Must be some
potion.

“Good people,” Kauz said. Sweat stood out on his bald
forehead. “Let us be reasonable and think like scientists!”

Oh, that’s going to
get their interest.

Past Kauz, Jewel saw Buzz, now wearing pants,
Thank you, Clay,
sneak behind the Venus
Machine.
Stealing something.
That boy
was the sharpest opportunist she’d ever met.

The reporter stuck the microphone in Beulah’s face. “Ma’am,
how long has it been since you visited a beautician?”

“Ten glorious weeks!” Beulah announced. She had tremendous
presence. She smiled, and Jewel felt the crowd around her relax.

“Are you sure you can attribute your change of heart to Dr.
Kauz’s potion?”

“I can. As proof, I offer the testimony of my friends here,
all of whom walked in the night of self-loathing before they received a dose.
One single dose. The man is a genius!”

One by one, the Self Love ladies stepped forward. Mrs. Noah
Butt from Water Tower Place was there, and Annette Perini, and Bunny from
Giorgio lo Gigolo’s. The camera light wobbled over them. The gleeful reporter
took sound bites from each one.

“Then that’s why my customers don’t come back,” Kauz
muttered, his brow furrowing.

Another masked woman stepped into the light. “You told me
that that potion was addictive,” she accused Kauz in Griffy’s voice. The camera
swerved toward her. “You said that after one taste I would keep wanting more
and more and more. You said I would never be free of you, and you would control
me and make me a fire goddess and rule the city with sex and magic and power.”

“Julia?” Kauz said, looking baffled.

“But it’s not addictive!” Beulah protested. “We have all
taken it,” she pointed to her friends, “just once! One dose, and we are free
forever of the beauty industry’s tyrrany.”

“Then the formula is wrong,” Kauz blurted.

The reporter pointed her microphone at him. “Dr. Kauz, have
you received permission from the FDA to sell this potion?”

“Yes! I mean, no!” Kauz tried to stand tall, which made him
about five foot four. “That is to say, there is no potion. I have never met any
of these ladies before—”

“Hey!” Sovay yelled.

“— Except this unfortunate madwoman here, tonight only.”

Jewel looked at Buzz, still lurking behind the Venus
Machine. She stuck her thumb in the air.

Buzz nodded. He called out, “Not so fast, Doc.” As the
camera light swung toward him, he put his palm up to hide his zitty young face.
“I seen you in your la-bore-atory lotsa times, and you had the potion, and you
told me all about it. You said the customers would want a new dose every week.
Only nobody ever ast for it again. I guess it worked permanent or somethin’.”

You did?
Jewel
thought.
Buzz, when are you going to quit
lying to me?

Kauz looked hunted. The reporter swung back to him.

“Dr. Kauz, is this potion addictive? What are the withdrawal
symptoms? Do you know of any side effects?”

He exploded. “There are no side effects. Besides, potion is
sold out, no more available.” He made an umpire’s ‘safe’ gesture with both
arms. “There is no potion! And if there were, I would take it myself with
complete confidence! Everything of my making is safe and wholesome!”

“Not sold out yet!” Buzz called. He lobbed something over
the Venus Machine. “Here ya go, Doc!”

Beulah leaped into the air like Michael Jordan and caught
it. “Buzz! You found more. How wonderful!”

The reporter swerved to her.

She showed her catch to the camera, then held it aloft.

Another teeny little bottle.

She turned her heart-warming smile on the camera. “Dr.
Kauz’s masterpiece is harmless. It works permanently to bring one to perfect
inner harmony and self-love.
We
are
not addicted—” she gestured to her scruffy, smelly friends, who waved at the
camera. “Except to loving ourselves!” She brandished the bottle. “This is the
key to true beauty!”

“How about that, Doc?” Buzz yelled.

“Drink it, Doc!” someone yelled from the crowd.

“Come, Doctor.” Beulah stalked toward Kauz with the bottle
raised in both hands, like a high priestess bringing the offering knife. “You
have given so much to so many unhappy lives. Will you not partake of your own
bounty?”

“Yeah, Doc,” Jewel called out, as Kauz edged away from the
light. “If it’s harmless, you won’t mind trying it yourself.”

The camera swung toward her, but she had her mask on, and
the camera returned to Kauz.

Kauz looked trapped. He blinked at the circle of watching
faces. His face smoothed out more with every blink.

“Very well.
Natürlich,
I will try it. You shall see.” He took the little bottle from Beulah and showed
it to the crowd. “Behold!”

He unscrewed the top. The cameraman swooped closer. Kauz put
the bottle to his lips and swallowed dramatically.

“Hey, Doc, you dropped your potion,” Jewel called out.

The reporter looked down. The camera and floodlight moved
with her. There in the puddle of light sat the potion bottle, still screwed
shut, lying on the driveway.

Everyone looked at Kauz.

“I am scientist,” he squeaked. “How can I observe if I am
part of der experiment?”

“Dr. Kauz,” the reporter began. “Did you give an
experimental drug to all these women—”

But Kauz picked up the potion bottle, opened it, and, with a
gray face, drank it down.

Jewel took a deep breath. It was now or never for her secret
weapon. “Yo, Gussie! Who are you?”

Kauz blinked. His little round face seemed to close. Jewel
realized that, behind the round glasses, his eyes were closed, too.
Gosh, I hope he doesn’t croak from it.
Then his eyes opened, and he smiled. He threw his arms wide.

“I,” he said in a new voice, “am Gussie Kauz. And
youse,”
he pointed with both forefingers
at the crowd, “are all
beautiful!”
His smile was splitting his face.

For once he seemed almost, well, likeable.

Uh-oh. The potion! Jewel glanced wild-eyed from the
Self-Love Ladies to Kauz.
I bet his green
tones are going over the top. I should have thought of that! Now what?

“That’s the man,” yelled a voice outside the circle of
light. “That’s the guy that made a slut out of my wife!”

Jack Allen, the condo developer with the bay-window gut,
shoved forward through the crowd, a police officer at his side.

Allen pointed at Kauz. “Arrest him!”

The reporter and the cameraman fell back to let Allen and
the cop through.

“Sir, is this your equipment?” the cop said to Kauz.

Kauz lifted his chin. “It soitenly is.”
Soitenly?
He sounded like Curly the Stooge. “You wanna make
somethin’ of it?”

“Dr. Kauz,” the reporter said, shoving forward. “You aren’t
German, are you?”

“On my mudder’s side. But!” He stood tall. “I am a
soyentist.” His finger pointed at the sky.
“And
the woild’s greatest magician!”

The cop explained to Kauz that he was under arrest for
disturbing the peace and read him his rights. Then he ordered the garage door
closed. Kauz nodded and smiled. The cop held him by the elbow, and Kauz marched
away with his head high. The media team followed them down the alley.

“Never fear, dear Doctor!” Beulah cried. “We will visit you
in jail!”

“My husband is an attorney!” called Mrs. Noah Butt.

Jewel walked into the Thompson garage. “Everybody out,
please,” she told the stragglers and closed the big door after them. That was
one mission wrapped, anyway.

Buzz popped up from behind the Venus Machine. “Aren’t you
forgetting something?” He pointed at his ankle.

Clay came into the garage through the garden door with the
key to the tracer anklet. “I thought that went well.”How do you unlock those things, and with what?

Jewel beckoned to Buzz. Clay unlocked the tracer from the
Buzz’s ankle and the kid rubbed himself, looking blissful.

“You were great, Buzz,” she said warmly. “You’ll stay out of
trouble now, right? Because you know how bad life can be if you don’t, right?”

“I’m gonna be fine,” Buzz said. “My new girlfriend will take
care of me.”

“Your new what?”

He puffed out his skinny chest. “I’m gonna be a gigolo!”

“Buzz?” Someone knocked on the garage’s garden door. “Oh,
there you are!” The woman with the tattoos came in, now wearing clothes, and
took Buzz’s arm. “Bad boy! You need
such
a bath. Come home with me. We have a jacuzzi in the master suite.”

“Uh,” Jewel said. “Buzz?”

“You’re not the boss of me,” Buzz reminded her.

She put a hand on his shoulder. “Don’t get yourself—”

Tattoo-woman shoved between them. “I beg your pardon, I’m
Mrs. Jack Allen. Jack Allen, the developer? He developed that condo building at
the end of the block. Tell our hostess for me, thank you for a lovely party.”
She ran a scornful glance up and down Jewel. “Come on, Buzz.” She scooped him
up and they left.

Jewel sighed. “If anything else happens tonight— !”

Randy stuck his head in the door. “Jewel? Sovay seems very
ill.”

“I hope she chokes,” she muttered, but she followed Randy
out into the alley behind the dumpster.

A bedraggled Sovay knelt on the bricks, limp and hiccupping,
sending baby reptiles out of her mouth with every ‘hic.’

Jewel sighed. “Oh, hell. Come on inside. I’ll get you a
drink.”

“I am wanted in the collection room,” Randy said to Jewel.

She waved him away. “I’ll deal with this.” He went.

“Four times,” Sovay gasped. “I sat in the Venus Machine four
times.” She seemed to have stopped retching, anyway.

Four! Holy crap! What did it do to her?