The Hinky Velvet Chair

by Jennifer Stevenson

  “That’s normal,” Griffy said. “Some men want a relationship, and they think they know about sex, and they think that should be enough for us. Really they’re desperate, ’cause they don’t have us figured out, and they don’t understand themselves, and sex is easier than love. They’re praying that sex is enough. And it never is.”

  And you just described how screwed up I am, Jewel thought. For a dumb blonde, Griffy had a grip on important things.

  Griffy’s mummy-wrapping rustled. “The whole secret is—”

  The masseuse came in. “Ready for our exfoliation?” She wheeled Griffy out, leaving Jewel still in the dark about the whole secret.

  Chapter Ten

  Jewel drowsed, wondering how come people who seemed dumber than she was always had longer-lasting relationships.

  There was a muffled shriek. The door opened again.

  “—Put them in lost and found,” said a woman at the door.

  “But his wallet and everything,” someone said in the hall.

  “Trust me, he’ll notice if his wallet is missing. And his shoes. Hello,” the woman said, closing the door and advancing on Jewel, carrying a lighted candle and a wicker basket. “Have you ever had your chakras cleansed before?”

  “Uh, no. Don’t I get out of this stuff first?” Jewel said. The seaweed mummy-wrap was making her sweat.

  “Your chakras lie parallel to your endocrine glands.” The woman lightly touched Jewel’s wrappings in a line from her pubic bone up to the crown of her head, dip-dip-dip, little touches that felt odd. “This is energy work.”

  Jewel felt like she was about to have a mammogram. Her nipples tightened.

  “Should I be memorizing any of this?”

  “No need.” The chakra-cleanser lit more candles around the massage table. “Relax and allow it to happen.”

  Jewel lay still. She felt antsy. She thought about wriggling. She wanted to rip off the mummy-wrap. The green gunk they’d schmeared her with made her skin tingle. The candlelight dazzled her eyes. She thought about shifting her hand under the wrappings into her crotch and jerking off, a thought which shocked her.

  I wish she hadn’t said “energy.” Now I have some.

  “Om mane padme hummmm,” said her chakra cleanser.

  Jewel realized she was horny. Good thing she was a girl. If she was a guy she’d have a hellacious boner.

  “Ommmmm. Ommmmm.”

  “So what is my chakra?” Jewel said. Her chin itched.

  “You have seven chakras.” The attendant did that tapping thing again and Jewel spasmed like a hooked fish. “Relax. Close your eyes and go into the music.”

  There was music, Jewel realized, a mealy-mouthed tinkly sound. It made her think of ice in a glass of Long Island iced tea. She closed her eyes. Maybe a mint julep. She pictured making a julep, picking the mint, grinding it in a pestle with a swivel-hipped motion, her nostrils filling with peppermint scent. Now the woman was touching her brow with minty stuff. Nice.

  Jewel’s julep-making fantasy popped away. “The thing is, I’m not very relaxed,” she blurted, squirming.

  “Listen to the music. Wait for the low tones.”

  And then do what? I can’t move a freakin’ muscle. Just breathing, she could feel the seaweed wrap chafe her nipples.

  Jewel closed her eyes again. She thought of walking ankle-deep in the creek on a hot summer day, and the smell of mint plants in the marsh out behind the back forty. The music hit some deeper tones. Huh. She thought about lying on her back in the sun, crushing peppermint plants under her. Bobby Wiflheimer was with her, and he slid a finger into her panties.

  Her eyes popped open. Her breathing was shallow and fiery. “How long does this take?”

  She thought about an alien bursting out of her chest — no, not an alien, more of a big old donkey schlong — tearing out of this goddam mummy-wrap and—

  She must have drifted off. Her eyes opened again. “How long?”

  “Shhh, you’re doing beautifully. Now we’ll open your second chakra.” The attendant held something over Jewel’s tummy, not touching her. The restless feeling in her ying-yang jumped into high. “Do you hear the low tones?”

  A deep-voiced flute began playing. “Yeah.” Jewel’s eyes closed. She lay under the stars by the creek, alone thank goodness. Her nerves sang with damped-down lust, lust that slept because she lay still. Nothing moved. The gleaming creek didn’t make a sound.

  And yet, now she felt she was not alone.

  Finally, she thought. I can’t seem to do this on my own.

  Do what? she wondered, and then she felt a sly presence like an invisible smile. It seemed far away, and yet also touching her, putting its finger on a nerve running up the middle of her body, a nerve that zinged and jumped.

  She felt two powerful impulses. She wanted to jump up, run around, scream, find the intruder and beat the smile off his facelessness with her fists. She also wanted to lie still and let the intruder make her desire swell like an ocean wave.

  Far away, the attendant Ommed again. Her fingertips touched the mummy-wrap here and there.

  Jewel didn’t feel a thing. Her whole mind focused on locating that invisible smirk, that mischievous poking, teasing presence. Just when she thought she’d found it under her tailbone, it melted away, then returned, tracing a circle around her nipples, counting hairs on the inside of her thigh, tickling the roof of her mouth til her eyes rolled up in her head. The longer she lay still, the less she felt she could move. And yet she felt an urge to thrash and squirm.

  Slowly, so as not to attract the notice of the chakra cleanser, she tightened every muscle in her buns, and felt a momentary rush. Oh, yeah.

  Then someone began to moan. Is that me? No, it was the new-age Muzak. It moaned the way she wanted to moan. Only she mustn’t. She mustn’t move or speak. That woman would know.

  With that thought, Jewel felt a great stillness fall on her, like a heavy hand clamping the back of her neck, like a heavy blanket of winter coats piled on the bed, like an ocean wave rolling over her so heavily, no grain of sand shifted under her.

  And the invisible smiler swooped in, shadowing her thoughts, filling her lower body with bliss.

  The invisible finger touched a nerve in the hollow of her right buttock, sending a shiver up to her right ear. She could hear the nerve twang like an electric guitar note fuzzing out, a sound so alive that it bashed around inside her belly, trying to get out. The guitar-note got louder. It crawled sizzling up her side, up her shoulder, to the base of her throat.

  If I don’t come soon, she thought, I’ll scream.

  She drew in a long breath.

  The invisible smiler put a firm thumb on the trigger between her legs.

  Jewel arched her back and screamed. Sexual release flew out of her in all directions. At last she could move. She thrashed back and forth and half-rolled off the massage table, her flying legs knocking over candles and chakra-cleansing equipment, until strong arms grabbed her around the waist from behind and she lay still again, quivering like a scared horse, her eyes rolling.

  The overhead light flashed on.

  The attendant stood by the door, gasping, her hand splayed on her heaving chest.

  On the ceiling, bits of seaweed wrap stuck to ceiling tile and light fixtures. The walls were spattered with the green gunk they’d schmeared on her.

  And, of course, underneath her, on the table, a very familiar woody prodded her in the back.

  “Don’t move,” Randy said in her ear, “or you will roll off.”

  o0o

  Well, it was a huge scene. You’d have thought this was some low-class joint where nobody ever did anybody on a massage table before. Masseuses and manicures came to the door to peek. Hairdressers and holistic healers gabbled in the hallway. The chakra cleanser had hysterics. Jewel lay still while bits of her mummy-wrap dripped off the ceiling onto her, and Randy clung tight to keep her from falling off the table, and voices in the open doorway said words like, “fat
, exhibitionist, deviant, sexual perverts.”

  Then her two stogie-smoking fans shoved to the door.

  “It’s her! Wow!” said stogie fan number one.

  “Move, I want to see!” said stogie fan number two.

  “That lady is a lady, you jerks!” said the green-haired kid from the latte shop.

  “Miss Hess, are you all right?” said Griffy’s chauffeur. Thanks for telling them my name. At least it’s not my real name.

  “If you get a picture, I want one.” That was the shoeshine boy from the main lobby.

  A flash went off, and Jewel recognized the paunchy tourist from downstairs, grinning at her behind a formidable camera.

  At that she struggled out of Randy’s grasp and rolled gracelessly off the table, away from view.

  Now the gawkers were saying, “hunk.”

  “I most humbly beg your pardon,” her naked sex demon said at his lordliest to her chakra cleanser. “It was unforgivable in me to distress you, madam.” His high-bred voice seemed to calm the chakra lady.

  “Oh,” she whimpered, “well — it’s not — you — I—”

  Jewel stuck her head up in time to see Randy bow and kiss the chakra cleanser’s hand. “So sorry to have troubled you.”

  Her whimpers turned to simpers. “Oh, sir.”

  The camera flash went off. Jewel ducked behind the table again.

  “Hey!” cried the chivalrous barristo. “You can’t take her picture without her consent!”

  Scuffling broke out in the hall. Something crunched. The tourist yelled. When the fighting seemed about to become general, Randy shouted, “Silence!”

  And lo, they all shut up. Under the massage table she saw Randy’s bare feet and ankles move into the hall.

  Jewel crouched behind the table, silently swearing.

  Eventually her worshippers were shooed out of the hallway and, she hoped, out of the spa. Then Randy said at the doorway, “Perhaps one of you might bring her a hot cup of tea? Too good of you. And if someone could find my clothes?”

  The sound of the chakra cleanser’s hiccups receded.

  Jewel heard the door shut. She stood up. “Well!”

  Randy was looking at the walls and ceiling. “Interesting. I suppose you couldn’t tear it away in time.” A flap of seaweed fell on his upturned face and he picked it off, studying it. “The pressures involved must be sufficient to—”

  She socked him on the arm. “You followed me!” she hissed.

  “You are not safe here. With tones so green, you need protection from lewd men,” he said with a straight face.

  “I was doing fine until you showed up!” she lied.

  He took her robe off its hook on the wall and hung it around her shoulders as someone opened the door.

  “Excuse me please? Hello?”

  Jewel yanked on her robe, hiding behind Randy’s altogetherness and blushing.

  A tubby little guy wearing rimless spectacles and a white lab coat over a gray suit and tie appeared at the door. “I am the Institute’s director, Dr. Kauz.” He handed some folded clothes and a pair of shoes to Randy. “Yours, I believe?”

  So that was Randy in the waiting room! Jewel put it all together at last. Uh-oh. He was listening to me dish on him to Griffy. That’s why he zapped into the massage table.

  Jewel yanked her fluffy belt tight and stepped out from behind her sex demon. “I’m sorry. He follows me everywhere. Get,” she hissed to Randy. “Dressed.”

  Dr. Kauz was looking at the walls and ceiling, his little mouth hanging open.

  “You should not be alone with him,” Randy murmured.

  She pointed at the door. “Wait for me in the waiting room.”

  Randy shrugged into his trousers and shirt, then turned smoldering black eyes on her. “I shall be near, if you need me.”

  “Or even if I don’t. Now scram.”

  With a dark look at Dr. Kauz, Randy scrammed.

  “Most remarkable,” Dr. Kauz said to Randy’s back. Then his watery blue eyes bugged out at Jewel. “Himmel! You must be the lady with the too-green aura!”

  She looked at her green-schmeared arms. “There was a lot of seaweed,” she began. Then she remembered Virgil tut-tutting over her Kirlian photographs, a hundred years ago this morning. “Uh, that’s what they say.”

  He looked her up and down with awe. “You wish to shower. Then if you would step into the next room, my psychespectrometer will soon pinpoint the trouble.”

  “Can’t be too soon for me,” she muttered.

  Chapter Eleven

  Jewel congratulated herself on getting the spa director’s attention. First part of her mission, accomplished. After her shower, Kauz led her in triumph through the spa, his spectacles flashing, his round face flushed.

  As they passed through the dining area, she saw Randy drinking coffee with Sovay, Griffy eating salad alone, and three window cleaners in coveralls plastered to the outside windows, their hands cupped against the glass, looking in. She avoided meeting their eyes. Everyone was staring at her.

  “Julia, are you okay?” Griffy said.

  “I’m fine, I’m fine,” she kept saying.

  Randy, Griffy, and Sovay got up and followed her.

  In the psychespectrometer room, Dr. Kauz explained the principles of colorimetry. It had something to do with refracting and sublimating implied light given off by the human body, in effect, the aura, blah, blah, blah. The machine itself looked like a big-ass, white-panel-faced flourescent light fixture, hanging perpendicular to the floor, with wires connecting it to several monitors and a printer. Behind the panel was a chunk of humming hardware that Dr. Kauz called “the transformer.”

  He made her stand in front of the psychespectrometer while he fiddled with the controls.

  Griffy said, “This is Julia Hess. She’s suffering from—”

  “Stumm!” Kauz touched his lips. “I see very well how she is suffering.” He picked up Jewel’s hand very gently. The round spectacles flashed. “Fräulein, kindly stand there.” He switched on the spectrometer and squinted into an eyepiece. “Mein Gott,” he blurted. “Look at this.” He switched on an overhead monitor, and Jewel craned her neck to look. She caught her breath.

  The monitor showed a moving form in blazing acid green.

  “Yow.” Griffy stared. “What is it, Doctor?”

  Jewel scratched her cheek, and the image on the monitor scratched with her.

  Kauz seemed transfixed. “Vot happened to her?”

  “Is she supposed to be that color?” Griffy said.

  “She is not!”

  Sovay slumped against the door. Randy loomed beside her, eyeing the equipment with suspicion.

  Jewel stared at her green self. She swallowed.

  “How should she look?” Griffy said.

  “I demonstrate. If you would exchange places?” Kauz waved to Griffy and she sat. Her rainbow-colored image appeared. Kauz tapped the screen. “Miss Julia’s chromatic distribution should be more diverse, so wie. Exchange again, please?”

  Jewel returned to the psychespectrometer. Again the scintillating acid green image filled the monitor.

  Kauz seemed fascinated. Maybe I can lure him over to Virgil’s house. She felt very Clay-like, very undercover.

  “How does such a woman survive in this world?” Kauz mused.

  “That Venus Machine did it!” Griffy said. “They put her in it last night and she’s been different ever since.”

  “Machine?” he said murmured, peering into the eyepiece again and twiddling a knob. “Charged. Like cloudful of lightning.” He shook his head. “Incredible.”

  “My — my brother is appraising a machine for this lady,” Griffy said, nodding toward Sovay. “It’s a Cattywompusomething.”

  “Kat-ter-fel-to,” Sovay pronounced with scorn.

  Kauz jerked his head up. “Katterfelto?” The round spectacles filled up with his boogling blue eyes. “Can it be — is it possible that you mean Katterfelto’s Miracle Venereal Attr
action Accelerator Apparatus?” He spread his hand over his chest. “Has it reappeared?”

  “I guess it works,” Griffy said. “Ms. Sacheverell owns it.”

  His voice dropped. “This man is my idol all my life. I have taken his name in his honor. Manchmal,” he said gutturally, “sometimes I think I am his Reinkarnation, you would say, his soul repeated.”

  Jewel couldn’t look away from the monitor. “Green. Is that bad?”

  He said, “Your symptoms. I must know everything. Let me guess! At first euphoria, satisfaction at being the object of attention. Then, perhaps, a little alarm, yes? Shyness? It is not so pleasant to be under so much close observation.”

  She shuddered. “It sucks.”

  “I have studied original letter source material,” Kauz said, nodding. “A delicately nurtured mädchen is unprepared for so much scrutiny. Perhaps she shrinks from the spotlight. One must have, I think, the soul of a circus performer to enjoy it. Let me print this reading—” he pressed a button and the image on the monitor froze. Then he pleaded to Jewel, “Fraülein Hess, if I could work with you. Your test is so remarkable. Your symptoms — if I could help in any way — I am familiar with Katterfelto’s theories—”

  “We ought to show him the Venus Machine, don’t you think?” Griffy said to Sovay. “Do you mind? It’s your machine.”

  Sovay rolled her eyes.

  Kauz placed his hands together as if in prayer and bowed to Sovay. “If I can examine the machine, perhaps I can find a way to cure this unfortunate woman’s unbalanced aura. Madame, I beg you, be merciful.”

  Sovay jerked her shoulder. “Oh, why not? And bring that thing with you. I’m sure Virgil would love to see it,” she said, sending an unpleasant look at Griffy.

  “Of course,” Kauz said.

  “I’m going out for some air.” Sovay slouched out of the room, and Randy followed.