Operation Dimwit

by Inman Majors

  She snapped to. She was no longer being rousted from a historical landmark by the elbow but standing on a white marble floor, looking at a winding staircase, a smiling older gentleman in an apron that said Purrfectly Charming, and the largest portrait of a woman she’d ever seen. Classical music filled the air from invisible speakers. She wouldn’t admit it publicly, but violins kind of hurt her ears. She felt a long way from Cheap Trick.

  She looked again at the painting, which was at least ten feet high and dominated the parlor. The woman was emerging from water and pushing her hair off her shoulder. She was tall and sinewy and wore a bemused smile, as if the swim had been both refreshing and ironic. She was also quite nude and less particular about trends in personal grooming than was generally expected from a modern woman. That area of the painting fairly jumped out at the viewer. Maybe it was just all that purple against her pale grey body. The formula for figuring the area of a triangle was somewhere in the back of Penelope’s mind from tenth grade algebra, but she couldn’t presently call it up. Whatever. It was quite the woolly equilateral. Like two feet worth. Maybe more.

  “Ah, yes,” Fitzwilliam said, with a modest sweep of his hand. “You’ve met Roxanne.”

  “It’s a beautiful painting,” Penelope said. She’d seen a few nudes in museums before but never in a private home, and though no expert on art, she liked the painting very much. “Who’s the artist?”

  “A poor thing perhaps, but my own, if I may borrow a phrase from the Bard. Just one of my eccentric habits. A man must have distractions, of course. The difficulty, of course, is finding models. Ones with sangfroid! With joie de vivre! Eve with the apple in hand, if I may be so bold. Oh ha ha ha ha ha!”

  Penelope wasn’t quite sure what to do with all these jollities, especially as Fitzwilliam literally said Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, instead of just laughing like most people did, so she was glad when he offered her a drink and led her toward the kitchen. En route, Algernon Moncrieff reentered from parts unknown and sniffed disdainfully at her ankles as she walked. Maybe she should have brought a dessert or bottle of wine after all, despite Fitzwilliam’s protestations. Algernon was unimpressed.

  The kitchen was massive and dominated by windows, which allowed the sun to dance on the marble countertops and the gleaming copper pots and pans hanging above the island. It was a lovely room and aromatic too. Fitzwilliam commenced a vigorous stirring of a simmering pan.

  “I hope you like piccata,” Fitzwilliam said, smiling over his shoulder as his nose fifed a lively tune as often heard in Colonial Williamsburg. “And our first course shall be escargot. But in the meantime, a delectable to tide you over?”

  He nodded to a silver tray on the kitchen table. “Next to the vase.”

  Penelope noted that he pronounced the receptacle as if it rhymed with cause and not case. She’d heard this pronunciation on television before and thus assumed it was correct. Still, she couldn’t bring herself to say it that way. A start down fancy pronunciation road would have her saying aunt like it rhymed with gaunt. It was just too complicated.

  Glass of Viognier in hand, from some region in France that Fitzwilliam had once biked across so many years agone, Penelope headed for the treat tray.

  “The chocolates are Swiss, of course. Anything else is sacrilege. And the fromage is all of an international variety—French and Italian, primarily. Try them all, my dearest Lemon Sorbet. It will be a spell yet before we dine.”

  “They all look so good,” Penelope said, beginning to speculate about Fitzwilliam and the nature of this date. He was sweet and sophisticated, but did his art indicate a still-strong sexual desire? Like, for her? Or was that unsophisticated to think? Frankly, in that apron and cardigan, he looked about as sexual as one of the copper pots hanging above him.

  “Now Algernon, you stop pestering our guest or I shall have to scold you most roundly,” Fitzwilliam said, removing his apron and scooping up the fur ball that had spent the last several moments scratching the chair leg nearest Penelope’s foot. Algernon looked at Fitzwilliam, whiskers wafting insolently, then sprang from Fitzwilliam’s apron onto her exposed calf, hissing and spitting all the way.

  “Algernon! You treacherous, jealous fellow! Out you go. Yes, out out out you go.”

  Fitzwilliam scooped up the cat and marched him to the sliding glass door that led to the sunroom. Out he went. While Penelope chomped on the chocolate—nougat, unfortunately—and ran a hand over the scratches on her leg, Algernon Moncrieff looked at her, sneeringly, with his nose pressed against the glass, hissing still. If there was any doubt before, that doubt was vanquished. Algernon cared not for the middle class.

  “Yes, Algernon, you may grump all you want to,” said Fitzwilliam, crouching till he was nearly face-to-face with the cat. “And at dinnertime, too? Well, tut-tut. You’ll not get your din-din till a satisfactory time-out is served. Life isn’t all beer and skittles, you know.”

  Fitzwilliam rose nimbly—as if he did yoga—and came toward her, offering a silk pocket handkerchief as he did. “My dear Penelope, I do hope Algernon has not seriously injured you. Honestly, that fellow is incorrigible.”

  “I’m fine,” Penelope said, taking the handkerchief and running it lightly down her legs. She was actually bleeding a little and wondered if this was karmic payback for her obsession with Theo’s leg scabs and impetigo. “He just barely nicked me. I’m fine. I always had cats growing up and don’t mind a little scratch or two. Algernon is just frisky.”

  “Algernon is a very bad boy,” Fitzwilliam said, turning toward the sunroom and wagging a finger.

  To Penelope’s eye, Algernon looked less than chagrined. This was confirmed when he turned his backside to them and commenced a leisurely bath.

  “If you’ll excuse me for a moment, my dear Penelope, I need to powder my face. I absolutely reek of garlic and butter. Delightful aromas both, but not as a cologne, I’m afraid. Ha. Ha. Ha. So while I’m in the back, feel free to have a look around the house. The nearest loo is just down that hall if you need to have a closer look at those love marks from Algernon. I’m back in a jiff.”

  12

  Penelope walked down a hall with twelve-foot ceilings toward the loo, feeling for the second time that day like a heroine from an erotic novel. She entered what was the nicest lavatory she’d ever seen. Classical music played in here too. Where were those invisible speakers? And why did classical music always remind her of scary movies when she was alone? The Omen, that’s why. Even though that was more of a Gregorian chant thing than classical. Whatever. That movie was scary as hell.

  She knew she was trying to freak herself out just for the fun of it. Bludgeoned by a nose-whistling cardigan? She thought not. Confirming this notion was a nude woman in pink who gave Penelope a comforting, if slightly seductive, look from above the toilet. It was another of Fitzwilliam’s paintings. The pink woman was reclined on a chaise longue before a window with billowing curtains. Below her, on the piazza, the bustling and fully clothed could be seen going about their humdrum lives, oblivious to the languorous intrigue in the flat above. Her smile all but said, Poor things. Penelope could see why. Something was going on, or soon would be, or just had, there on that chaise longue, and Penelope felt sure that whatever it was would be A-OK with her.

  True, the only chaise longue she’d ever been on was at her grandmother’s house, and it had been called a lounge. She’d found it pretty uncomfortable to sit on and too short to fully recline in. Then again, she’d never tried it naked above a piazza. Honestly, she didn’t if know that was a piazza in the painting or not. Miranda and the other characters in her naughty books were always popping in and out of piazzas and mezzanines and bistros. And getting popped in a few of them as well. Would Penelope know the difference between a piazza and a public square, for instance? It was food for thought.

  A more pertinent issue: Fitzwilliam sure seemed to like naked women, or at least painting them. Next to the chaise longue woman was another glamorous nude. This one—like
Roxanne of the exploding bush—was emerging from water. Penelope recalled her drive up to Pemberley and the pond with the gazebo beside. The orange woman was posed in front of just such a tableau, complete with rolling hills, neat orchards, and split rail fence in the background.

  This backdrop gave Penelope pause. She assumed the artwork had come from an earlier Fitzwilliam, perhaps when he lived abroad and didn’t wear aprons and cardigans. Hillsboro had been his home for only a couple of years. Which meant—if her theory was correct—that naked women had been on Pemberley grounds fairly recently. And that these same naked women had posed willingly for Fitzwilliam’s canvas.

  Was this a result of animal magnetism that Penelope had not yet picked up on? Or just cold hard cash? No matter which, Penelope had never seen women that looked anything like these in Hillsboro.

  Penelope was pondering the maxim about covers and books when she noticed what lay beneath Fitzwilliam’s painting of the woman by the pond. It sat side by side with the toilet and was of a similar porcelain construction. Penelope inferred they were to be used for similar purposes, or as a kind of one-two punch. She approached the devices and walked around the unfamiliar one, encouraged by the orange smiling eyes, which seemed to speak to her in a sisterhood of curiosity.

  Penelope Lemon, lifelong Hillsborian, was looking at an honest-to-God bidet.

  She knew it was weird to feel sophisticated in front of a lavatory, regardless how fancy or unfamiliar, but sophisticated was how she felt. She looked from the smoldering pink woman to the smiling orange one and felt a sense of community. She, Penelope Lemon, was not out of place in a bidet world. In fact, the confident, comforting nude women in the paintings seemed to say that—but for fate—she was truly to the manor born.

  Give it a whirl, they seemed to say. Bidets are just the start of it.

  She was about to try a dry run when her phone buzzed with a text. She checked, in case it was Camp Sycamore with news of the first scorpion bite in camp history. It was not Camp Sycamore but her erstwhile partner in the skunk-catching trade. Against her better judgment, she opened the message.

  Have you figured out what your tell is yet? I read you like a book.

  She banished the message as fast as she could, put the phone back in her purse, and resumed her communion with the bidet and Fitzwilliam’s mystery women. Feeling bold, like Miranda before the brass door, she decided against a dry run. Her first bidet would be a real bidet. She slid down her panties, lifted her sundress, and assumed position. The only question was the frontward/backwards one, but logic held that front was front, as with the boring and oh-so-American toilet beside her. It was escargot versus Big Macs at this point as far as Penelope was concerned. It occurred to her that she hadn’t used the bathroom, and really didn’t need to, and that some less adventurous souls might consider it strange to bidet just for the heck of it.

  But who cared? Who would know anyway, other than her free-spirited soul sisters in the paintings? She realized she was overthinking, and also that her legs were starting to shake from holding the squat for as long as she had. That inner thigh machine had taken more out of her than she realized. She reached behind her and turned on the leftmost and rightmost of the three faucets. She assumed that the bidet worked like a shower, only with the water firing in the opposite direction. If that theory held, then she’d just turned on the warm and cold water.

  Sure enough, water gently bubbled beneath her. It would be easier to reach the faucets if facing the opposite direction so she dethroned. It was truly escargot now—squatting and facing the nude women in the paintings—and this seemed right. The only issue was how badly her nice panties were being stretched, hunkered thus, so she yanked them off and let them fall to the floor. Now it was go time. Cautiously, she turned the middle faucet to activate the nozzle, feeling as international as she ever had.

  There came a roar of efficient power. Then the realization that either she’d crouched too low or that Fitzwilliam’s bidet had been built for people—like the women in the paintings—with longer legs than her own. The first indication was the wet hem of her sundress. The second was the massive puddle on the floor. The third, the drenched panties now floating atop that pool.

  She remained hunched where she was, panicked and drip-drying. The water had been cold. She’d rather expected a warm/gentle/

  comforting swish of not much. What she’d gotten instead was a frigid blast of tap water, not unlike what the HHR had applied to many a vinyl siding with his power washer. The question now was what to tell Fitzwilliam. There seemed no explanation that wouldn’t make her look like a ridiculous rube. She was a ridiculous rube—that went without saying—but still. No need to advertise the fact twenty minutes into a dinner date.

  Having dripped off as well as she could, she abdicated her ignominious throne. She snatched the panties from their watery grave and squeegeed them out as best she could in the sink. Her unmentionables were truly unmentionable now, and they’d been so pretty before. They were lilac, with tiny garlands of magenta flowers on them. Zinnias possibly. Her mother would have approved of the flowers in any Hills­borian garden. They were a standby for her—zinnias—and as close to horticultural chaos as she would allow among her formal tulips and roses.

  Unfortunately, the zinnia panties were also cotton and absorbent and had taken all of what the geysering bidet had to offer. What she needed was a powerful hair dryer. She looked in the cabinet under the sink and also in the bathroom closet, opening and closing drawers and doors as quietly as she could so as not to arouse suspicion, but had no luck. And now came a steady meowing from outside the bathroom window. She went to the window and peeked around the curtain, feeling a cool breeze on her bare undercarriage as she did.

  It was Algernon up on the ledge, peering in at her. His yellow eyes indicated he knew something was afoot. He offered one bored hiss then turned his gaze to the nude women above the bidet. The sight of the chaise longue woman and the one by the gazebo induced a prolonged purr that grated on Penelope more than it probably should have. She closed the curtain with a fierce flip. Standing there before the bulky outline of Algernon, she realized that the breeze she felt was coming from an air vent below her. This seemed heaven-sent and she lifted her sundress up and down in a fanning motion. With her panties squished into a twisted useless knot in the sink, she felt exposed but liberated. Also air-dried. Maybe this was why the HHR went commando all the time.

  Back to the matter at hand. She strode to the sink and eyed her twisted delicate. She’d brought her tiniest, cutest purse so stuffing wet panties in there was a no go. And putting them back on was also a nonstarter. She wouldn’t even put on a wet bathing suit at the lake. Which left only one option: ditching them in a spot where they’d never be discovered.

  She opened the closet door. Inside were towels, washcloths, and general bathroom bric-a-brac. On the top shelf was an assortment of candelabras, an antiquated heating pad, and a small basin meant for washing feet, none of which looked to have been recently used. It was the perfect spot. Before she and James split up, she’d not ventured to the top shelf of their guest bathroom in years. James could have hidden a dead body up there for all she’d have known. Or those bikini briefs he liked to slink around in on occasion before she’d banished them from her sight. If ever there was a place for contraband panties, this was it.

  With a casual motion, she shot—free throw style—her scanties into the abandoned washbasin as a phantom crowd roared in her ears. The shot had been nothing but net. Then she took one hand towel from the superfluous stock and mopped up the floor with it. This too she swished into the basin. She really should have stuck with basketball in high school.

  She looked around the bathroom for incriminating evidence, but none was to be found. The hem of her sundress was practically dry as well. The women in the paintings seemed to share in the surreptitious moment and to think she’d battled the bidet to an honorable draw. She winked at the women, grabbed her purse, and exited the bat
hroom to the thump thump thump of Algernon’s tail on the window.

  13

  She was wondering what insect Theo was currently swatting when Fitzwilliam entered the kitchen wearing a strawberry-colored evening jacket, white pants, Italian loafers without socks, and a mint-green ascot. The ascot stopped her in her tracks. As did the matching pocket square, now that she noticed. Moments before, she’d been chomping away on a third Swiss confection, feeling positively right with the world, free and pantyless in a world of chocolate-covered chocolate. Now she was face-to-face with her first ascot.

  “Well well, my dear Penelope. How is your Viognier holding up? Shall you require a small topper?”

  “Sure,” said Penelope, offering her half-full glass to the ascot in front of her.

  Penelope watched Fitzwilliam go to the wine bucket on the counter and replenish her glass with a subtle, slow twist of the wrist as perfected by the butlers on Downton Abbey. When Penelope poured wine, she generally just plopped it all in in one quick go. Speed was generally what she was after, not craftsmanship. Then again, she’d never poured wine while wearing an ascot. With that adornment, it probably wouldn’t feel right just sloshing it in.

  “Oh, look at the light,” said Fitzwilliam, turning to the large plate window above the sink, which afforded a view of the declining sun against the mountains. “A painter’s light if ever I saw one. Shall we take a stroll about? I’ve left the piccata on simmer. It can’t be rushed, you know. Mr. Butter, Ms. Lemon, and the little ones, the capers, need time to become a family. Ha! And sunsets spent strolling with friends is one of life’s precious treasures.”