Like Warm Sun on Nekkid Bottoms (15 page)

Sitting shirtless on a footstool in the study with Grandfather as he continued pacing and repeating himself for the ten thousandth time, or more, I stared at the carpet and wondered who was the first person to think, ‘Hey. If I take this stuff that grows on the backs of a sheep and twist it for hours on end, I’ll bet I can make a neat floor covering.’

No one ever accused me of having too much depth.

I suppose most of you would expect I’d be thinking about my horrible showing with Ms. Nuckeby, and that did flit through the old cranium from time to time. But the mind wanders, and who
did
first look at a sheep and think—
‘Clothes!’

“…exposed the company…failed at your job description…horse’s ass…” were a few of the repeated phrases that leaked through my woolen thinking now and again.

Mercifully, Aunt Helena walked in and cut him off.

“Oh, for God’s sake, leave the poor boy
alone
, Cecil! He’s a young man, and young men do stupid things. Would you like me to run a litany of the stupid things
you’ve
done in
your
lifetime?”

Grandfather gruffed, mumbling something about ‘dredging up the past’ but wound up cutting short the lecture anyway.

Helena smiled at me. “Sooo…your Ms. Nuckeby was planning to visit her parents this weekend?”

I looked at her blankly. Apparently she thought I should know this. But she could tell instantly, just by my expression, that it was news to me Ms. Nuckeby even
had
parents and quickly plunged on to help me avoid further embarrassment.

“Well, now—because your grandfather is so damn longwinded—the trains have stopped running, and she’s been stranded. But you needn’t worry about her. I’ve asked Biddleby to take her home, the poor thing.” Biddleby was her driver.

“Poor thing. HA!
Exactly!”
Grandfather laughed.

“What does that mean?” I asked.

“It’s always the
poor
who try this kind of stunt. Fortunately, she won’t have an inkling how much it’s worth. We’ll give her a
small
settlement of some kind, and that’ll be the end of it.”

“Maybe she won’t want a settlement. She seemed to genuinely like me.”

“They
all
seem to genuinely like you. Then the subpoenas arrive.”

I sneered at him. He could see I was unconvinced.

“She’s a
model!
They’re teenagers! The only thing more selfabsorbed than a teenager, or a model, is an actress! Each is as incapable as the other of loving anyone but themselves.”

Helena chuckled. “Don’t project your lack of appeal for women onto Corky. I’m certain any woman who’s ever had sex with
you
would naturally feel afterward that she was owed something more. But Corky’s different. She wasn’t exactly leaving here
happily
, you know.”

“She wasn’t?” I asked, with an odd mixture of pleasure and guilt.

“Because her little mission had
failed
, that’s why!” Grandfather snorted. “Give her a few days to mull it over—suss out how ‘psychologically damaged’ she was by this experience, and mark my words… ”

“Oh, let it go, you old poop,” Helena snapped. “It’s not
all
about money you know.”

“Says the poorer side of the family.
Everything
is
always
about money.”

Helena, Grandfather’s sister, had married Pjuter Struts, one of our tailors, and ‘poorer’ is clearly a relative term. She still owned just under half the company, plus the added value Pjuter had brought to it by expanding the line to include lingerie, outerwear, and edible jockstraps.

“You don’t know she’s a gold-digger,” I said. “You’re judging her on no evidence…”

“More evidence than you have that she’s
NOT
a gold-digger!”
Grandfather snapped.

“I talked to her at least. On a more non-threatening level than you apparently did…”

“You’re in no position to comment rationally,” Grandfather interrupted. “You had already surrendered to the reptilian brain. A hot dick looking for a hotter hole. Mark my words, that woman is in it for the
money
.”

“You don’t know her…”

“
And you do?
I saw your expression. You didn’t even know she
had
parents, did you?”

I lowered my head sadly.

“How long have you been acquainted with this woman?”

“Well, technically we met a couple of weeks ago, but…”

Grandfather glared, and I hesitated. When I finally spoke again, my voice was so shallow I was surprised he could hear me at all.

“Since this morning.”

“Since this morning, you said? This
afternoon
, more like. And not more than a few hours later, she’s naked—in a closet—with you. Proper women don’t behave that way.”

Aunt Helena sniffed. “Proper women have always behaved that way. ‘Proper’ society just pretends they don’t. Especially the proper men who stick their hot dicks into their even hotter holes.”

“You, of all people, have no business commenting on this.”

I wasn’t sure what that meant, but Aunt Helena lost her smile and stopped talking immediately. Clearly, I was going to have to start paying more attention to family gossip.

“This woman is an opportunist,” Grandfather continued, apparently getting back to Ms. Nuckeby. “She saw a chance, and she took it.” He turned to me. “Whether to snag you into a sham marriage, or—more likely—simply to find an opportunity to sue for whatever she could get. It’s well known we Wopplesdowns are an easy mark.”

“And whose fault is that, Mister Hot Dick calling the kettle black?” Helena slid in. I was glad to see Grandfather hadn’t silenced her completely.

“We can’t help it if, genetically—with the exception of Corky, here—Wopplesdowns are oversexed.”

“Harassment has nothing to do with sex,” Helena snarled. “It’s about power.”

“Pshaw!” Grandfather said. It was something my grandfather said a lot. I was never able to find the word in any dictionary. “Women have all the power, my dear sister. And you know that better than anyone.”

Again, Helena was momentarily silenced. But with the opening she had created I tried to regain the upper hand—which I never had to begin with, but you know what I mean.

“How can you possibly know…?”

“Did you talk,” he interrupted, taking away even the
illusion
of an upper hand, finger, or nail, “you and this Nuckeby girl?”

I said nothing.

“Did you discuss
family?
”

The wind blew.

“Moral values?”

The house creaked.

“Current events?”

Someone far away coughed.

“Child rearing, religion, the environment?”

Who
did
first look at sheep, and…

“Does she enjoy watching people do strange things to animals with electricity?”

I wasn’t sure how
anyone
could possibly answer that one.

“Did you say, or do,
anything
that might give her
any
idea that you would be someone with whom she was,
in any way,
mutually compatible in a long-term relationship?”

I returned my attention to the carpet.

“No. You got naked in a closet. Hormones and intent. You had hormones, and she had intent. Take it from someone who knows all too well.”

Studiously fighting off the horrifyingly uncomfortable visuals of Grandfather bare-assed in a closet with
anyone
, I began to find myself wondering about Ms. Nuckeby. I really
did
know nothing about her, and—other than the fact that the tiniest breeze seemed to arouse a sudden stiffness in my loins—she knew nothing about me. Why
was
she attracted to me? Why would
anyone
be?

The downside of an argument like Grandfather’s was: it didn’t rely on logic or facts, and worked terrifically well on someone with profoundly low self-esteem. And my self-esteem hovered at, or near, a grasshopper’s gonads.

Consequently, for good or ill, I began to see Grandfather’s point, and it grated on me. My instincts in the closet were, somehow, correct. Cleary, someone as forward as Ms. Nuckeby
had
to be in it for something else.

“I think you’ve done all the damage you can do here, Cecil,” Aunt Helena said. “Why don’t you go and annoy someone else?”

Grandfather wanted to be angry with her, but he was obviously too pleased with his decisive victory over me.

“I should go see how Mindie Butterwycke is doing, anyway,” he said, and after a last parting smirk in my general direction, he moved to—and out of—the study door.

Mindie Butterwycke? See how she’s doing what?

Aunt Helena sat beside me, put a hand across my shoulders and pulled me, tightly, to her. She and I had always been very close, ever since my mother died all those years ago in that horrible chair-lift accident with her ski-instructor. We never did find their pants.

“Don’t listen to him. He’s just old and bitter.”

“No,” I said, sadly. “I’m afraid he might be right.”

I explained the situation in the closet, leaving out certain personally embarrassing details. The omissions shortened the story considerably. I described how Ms. Nuckeby had nearly left, then returned and become rather unexpectedly randy.

“But you said you two had made a connection in those previous few minutes. Made a date. Why shouldn’t she then feel more comfortable with you?”

“I don’t know. Something just felt strange about it.”

“Like she got greedy and was trying to score quickly?”

“Mmm.”

“I don’t think so. She didn’t seem the type to me. You don’t get in the face of the owner of the company if you’re just looking for a piece of his personal pie.”

She considered me a moment.

“I think you’re just being a man,” she said finally. “Men always want the horny slut until they either make some kind of personal connection or ejaculate. Then you want her to go home, or make you breakfast and go home, or have sex with you again, make you breakfast and go home. And once she’s gone, you decide you can’t have a ‘
relationship’
with a horny slut so you run right out and find someone demure, boring, and utterly sexless because you need to impress your mother. Often not realizing that your own mother could set the standard for horny sluts.”

What an odd thing to say. Was she implying there might be more to that chair-lift accident?

“You’re the closest thing to a mother I’ve ever had,” I said.

“And look at what a horny slut I am,” she laughed.

I didn’t. She was old enough to be—well—Grandfather’s sister. And although she was eight or so years younger than he, worked out regularly and kept in shape, the image of her riding Pjuter roughshod, and enjoying it…

I suddenly flashed on Mr. And Mrs. Abrososa and shuddered violently.

“Oh,” Helena said. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to gross you out. But someday I’ll tell you the story of how I met Pjuter. That will
really
make you shudder.”

I said nothing, and she pulled me more tightly to her. “Oooooh, Corky. You’ve always been so sweet, and,” she paused, searching for the right word, “non-threatening. I’ve always felt a deep connection with you too. But you’re a tad too naïve sometimes to see the world as it really is—particularly in things amour. Don’t give up on the naked girl as yet.”

“Seems Ms. Nuckeby’s impressed you.”

“She certainly has. That doesn’t mean I don’t need more time to properly evaluate—maybe see how she looks in clothes. It is the family business after all. But I admired her courage in facing down your grandfather, and I have no problem with the fact that she found you instantly beddable.”

“So, it didn’t concern you then that in your first experience with her she was naked?”

“And proudly so, I noticed. With good reason too. Hell, if I looked as good as her, I’d
never
wear clothes—or make-up. I’d even love to see the world follow my example—in spite of what it might do to the family coffers. I’m more progressive than you think. Fashion is such an elitist, arbitrary business anyway. I mean, it’s really funny when you think about it, isn’t it? Do you feel strange when you meet someone on the beach and they’re wearing a scanty little bathing suit? No. But meet them in a shopping mall dressed exactly the same way and it’s somehow disquieting and ‘inappropriate’. Can you imagine dining at Sizzlers and everyone’s wearing a thong? Not a pleasant thought perhaps. But on a beach in Cancun, or Rio, or on the French Riviera . . . We see people naked in gym showers all the time. C’est la vie. But if we met them that way on a street corner—scandal!

“You remember my young friend, Wilhamina Morgenfraugen? She and I met in the office showers. We were
both
naked. She asked to borrow a tampon. And yet we’ve been friends ever since. In spite of the fact that her boobs are
much
nicer than mine. It’s all about context, Corky. Context and how much elasticity you’ve left in your skin.”

“But elasticity, tampons, and impressive breasts aside,” I said, “that’s far more socially acceptable than Ms. Nuckeby’s willingness to undress in a closet with a complete stranger. Two complete strangers if you count Woodruff.”

“Woodruff is two complete strangers all on his own,” she said, shuddering herself. “You never know, Corky. Maybe nudity and being open about her sexuality doesn’t mean to her what it does to you. After all, she does bare all in her profession on a regular basis, and clearly she’s more comfortable with it than
you
are.”

She waited—noticed I wasn’t quite buying it—then leaned in and kissed my cheek.

“Well,” she said. “It’s your life. But honestly, I’m convinced that unreleased semen interferes chemically with brain activity in males. So don’t make any rash decisions you’ll regret later until after you’ve masturbated and given it some additional thought.”

I laughed. She laughed. Then she got up to leave. I missed her comforting arm the instant she removed it.