The Hinky Velvet Chair (13 page)

“What th—”

Virgil moved her head. “Try to envision a complete cure.
We’re not convinced this isn’t placebo effect, which is also fascinating. Here—”
He lowered a big metal cap over her head.

She rolled her eyes up at the cap. “Did we do all this last
night? Because I don’t remember any straps.”

“You were in a pretty good mood last night,” Clay murmured.

Virgil strapped her wrists down. Then he took her pulse.
Then he peeled back her right eyelid. “Hm. Still green.”

By now she was rigid.
Bunch
of clowns.

Randy stepped forward and laid his hand on one of her
fettered wrists. “Are you certain this is what you wish?”

“Yes,
I’m certain.
Cripes, you were there today.”

He glanced from Virgil to Clay to Kauz. “You cannot know
what is in their minds.”

She let her eyes glitter up at him. He was so transparent.
Flirts with Sovay and then tells me what to
do.
“Maybe I can.”

Randy heaved a sigh and walked over to Sovay. “I can’t watch
this,” she heard him say.

Dr. Kauz struck a pose at the big knifeswitch. “Stand back,
everyone, please! Now, Ms. Hess, you must relax. Think of something beautiful.
Are you ready? Oops! No, wait.” Jewel groaned. He twiddled with her straps. “Okay,
now we are ready. Relaaaaaxinnnnng—” Out of the corner of her eye she saw him
throw the switch.

Nothing happened.

“Wonderful!” Dr. Kauz seemed delighted.

Jewel felt a cautious glow of satisfaction.

A little tingle started up in her scalp. It was sort of like
the tingle she’d got when she found Randy in the bed.

Uh-oh.

She looked around for Randy and saw him leaning over Sovay.

“Okay, let’s see the aura,” Virgil said. “Both ways.”

“Uh, wait a minute, guys,” Jewel began, “I think something’s
happening,” and the tingle turned into a buzz and the buzz spread over her body
and then the buzz became a roar that rattled her teeth and shook her
fingerprints loose.
“YeeeeeOW!”

Dr. Kauz hurried to pull the cap off and unstrap her.

“You all right?” Clay said.

She shook her head, trying to clear it. “I think so.”

“I don’t think it worked,” Griffy said with a worried frown.

“She still has a certain glow,” Virgil said.

“I never saw a difference before,” Sovay said, patting a
yawn, “but now she looks much worse. It could be her hair.”

“Is there any pain?” Dr. Kauz said. “Odd sensation in the
extremities? Nausea? Dizziness? Double vision? Bowels move?”

“That’s enough!” Jewel struggled out of the machine. “For
Pete’s sake, leave me alone!”

“Natürlich.
As
soon as we perform colorimetry.” Dr. Kauz grabbed her elbow.

She thrust him away. “Just because I made a mistake and let
you do that Venus Machine thing to me, it doesn’t mean I buy into your bogus
ideas.”

Shaken, she elbowed a path to the cart and poured herself a
drink with trembling hands.

Kauz and Virgil watched her suck down Scotch for a moment
and then turned to the Venus Machine. “Maybe there’s an accidental ground
somewhere,” Virgil said.

She stopped listening.

Clay put his arm around her. “You don’t look so good.”

“That’s right, rub it in.” She drank Scotch, feeling its
fire spread, and leaned into him. “Do me a favor and don’t let me get drunk
here again. This all started last night when I let Virgil make me drink and
play poker.”

“Uh, shouldn’t that be coffee, then?”

“Oh.” She handed him her glass. “Yeah.” No one was looking. “Would
it,” she whispered, “be out of character for you to take me to my room?”

He pursed his lips at her. “A little nap before dinner?”

She peered into his eyes.

And saw a split-level Colonial style house with a white
picket fence and a golden retriever frolicking on the lawn.
What the heck?
She blinked.

“A nap alone, of course,” he murmured. The picture faded.

I must be drunk again.
Already.

Virgil had called the men over to his workbench. Sovay was
at his elbow, handing him wrenches and voltmeters, touching his back, smiling
at everything he said. Randy smiled at Sovay, looking suave and dangerous.

Griffy was looking at the Venus Machine, biting her lower
lip, like a kibble-fed hound drooling at the Thanksgiving turkey.
She wants
it.

Jewel joined her by the Venus Machine. “Listen, I don’t know
if I would recommend that you try this. They’ve done something to it. I don’t
remember much of last night, but I’m positive it didn’t zap me that way before.”

“I can’t afford not to.” Griffy gulped. “I told you,
he
won’t change.
I’ll
have to change.”

Jewel bit her tongue. “Then you’d better slip in and get
your dose now, if you want to go through with it.”

“I want to.”

Jewel towed her to the green velvet chair, strapped her in,
and set the cap on her head.
The poor
sweet dumb-ass.
Nicest person in the world, but she was looking for the
wrong thing if she hoped to get that old turtle to stop smirking at Sovay.

The last buckle clicked. Jewel stuck her thumb in the air.

Griffy smiled tremulously and jerked up her thumb.

Oh well. I don’t guess
it can’t hurt her.

“Griffy, you idiot,” Virgil called from the workbench. “That’s
not for you!”

Griffy scowled at him. “Do it,” she told Jewel.

Jewel threw the switch with a clunk.

For a long moment Griffy sat there. “Am I supposed to feel
anything?” There was a new sparkle in her eye.

Jewel shrugged.

Clay appeared at Jewel’s elbow. “Girlfriend,” he said with
extra warmth in his voice. Jewel turned toward him. He was holding out his hand
and looking past her at Griffy.

Griffy took the metal cap off her head. “Did it muss my
hair?” She let Clay hand her out of the Venus Machine.

Wow.

Jewel was reminded of Lady Diana exiting a limo. Clay lifted
Griffy’s hand into the air, wolf-whistling, and she pirouetted for him.

The butler, clearing away dirty coffeecups, looked up at his
mistress and let a spoon slide, tinkling, to the floor.

“Your hair’s fine,” Jewel said.

In fact Griffy looked dynamite. In her going-to-spa clothes
and all her jewels, she looked like a movie star. She seemed younger. All her
movements slowed down somehow, so you could notice how everything about her was
perfect.

Dr. Kauz came away from the workbench like a sleepwalker.

Virgil followed, looking thunderous.

Sovay took one look, seized Randy by the arm, and swanned
out of the collection room with her nose in a sling.

Griffy turned under Clay’s hand like a ballerina on a music
box, and Jewel realized that under all that niceness and self-effacement was a
beautiful woman. She smiled on everyone as she turned, and the air smelled
sweeter.

One must have, I
think, the soul of a circus performer to enjoy it,
old Kauz had said.

Clay bowed to Griffy. She curtseyed to him. In silence, they
started waltzing.

It didn’t look silly at all.

Kauz, the butler, and even Virgil stared as if dumbstruck.

Jewel swallowed a lump. Watching Griffy, she realized how
very dangerous people like Clay and Dr. Kauz were. They knew what suggestion
could do. And Randy, hell, he must be better at it than any of them. Two
hundred years with nothing but a demonic ability to read thoughts, and the
impossible goal of learning what women really want.

This,
Jewel
thought, watching Griffy.
We want this.
To be loved, to feel lovable.

At dinnertime, Jewel had to ask the butler where her room
was.
Man, I was drunk last night.
She
sorted through the clothes Nina had brought. Randy’s things were there, oh
yeah, Lord Possessive had asked for one bedroom. His dark suit hung on the
door, clashing with the Michigan B&B Cute decor.

Where the hell was Randy? Horndogging after Sovay, to punish
her for spending last night in Clay’s room?

Fine. Let him teach her a lesson. It’d keep him occupied.
She could play with Clay.

She didn’t want either of them all that much. What
she wanted — what had Griffy said?
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.

I always assumed sex was enough, too.
She felt
stupid. Plus, she was boxed in by these two horny guys, and they weren’t going
away. Was that what she wanted?

Weirdly, she felt more uneasy about Clay’s motives than
she did about Randy sleeping with the enemy or reading her mind.

Her partner was a con man. Who could she trust?

Clay was ruthless. Sovay was a golddigger and an utter
snake. Kauz could manipulate people’s feelings, yet he believed his own
bullshit, which was scary right there. And Virgil, causing Griffy so much grief—

—Was Clay’s father. Too late, Jewel remembered something
Clay’d once said to her.
My father’s in
the same business, only he’s ten times better.

Virgil was a con artist too.

This mansion, the money, the diamonds all over Griffy, the
collection room full of expensive toys — all were the fruit of his ill-gotten
gains.

Jewel felt cold.

His doddering new ager act had sucked her in.

I bet he fiddled the
card game last night, too.
Got her drunk and high on his charm, let her win
at poker to make her stupid, so she would submit to that horrible Venus
Machine. What the hell did
he
want?

Virgil might be just as interested in taking Kauz for his
campaign money as Clay was. He was up to something with Sovay. She bit her lip.

I am totally out of my
league.

And still fatally attractive.

Standing in her bra and panties, Jewel looked in the mirror.
Her fair hair, freshly washed and free of green goo, hung past her shoulders.
She was six inches taller than Griffy, thirty pounds heavier than Sovay, and
her white cotton underwear said Hometown Girl, even after college and five
years in the big city and countless men, most of whom hadn’t noticed her
underwear since she’d been in such a hurry to take it off.

I need to figure
myself out.

She looked into her own eyes.
What do you want?

The mirror vanished for a moment, and all she could see was
Griffy waltzing with Clay.
To be loved,
to feel lovable.

She blinked and took a step back from the mirror.
Who am I to want such a thing?

The big blonde dairy-farmer’s daughter in the mirror stared
back at her, uncompromising in her white cotton, with a solidness that made the
frou-frou room shrink around her.

o0o

Wearing her little black cocktail dress, Jewel joined the
dinner party in the card room in time to hear Sovay say, “—That pink fog on the
highway looks alarming.”

“Merely a product of road rage,” Clay said. “Control your
temper behind the wheel and you won’t even notice it.”

Good boy. That’s how
you administer Policy
.

“And the pigeons have the filthy habit,” Randy said. Jewel
sighed. Now she had to teach
him
to
administer Policy.

“I haven’t heard smoking called ‘the filthy habit’ for fifty
years,” Virgil said, eyeing Randy.

“We’re a bad example to animals, aren’t we?” Griffy said.

“Maybe they’ll smoke some hemp and get too high to poop on
my car,” Virgil suggested. “Get it? Pigeons getting too
high?”
He cackled senilely. Jewel thought he laid on the
brainless-old-fart thing too thick. Now that she knew he was Clay’s father and
mentor-con, she felt less vulnerable to his manipulations.

Sovay gave Virgil a full-frontal of her cleavage. “This wine
is wonderful.”

Virgil peered down her dress through his wineglass. “It does
great things for you.” He turned the wineglass toward Jewel and his eye
appeared, magnified hideously through the wine. “I see we failed to reverse the
Venus Machine,” he chortled.

Sovay scowled.

Jewel grinned at him. “I’m holding back.”

He toasted her. You couldn’t help liking the old turtle. If
he was playing her off against Sovay and Griffy, at least he was trying to make
her feel good, too.

She noticed Mellish, the butler, standing behind Virgil,
looking down on his employer’s bald head with a puzzled expression. When he
caught her eye, his face smoothed out. In that moment an image flashed across
her mind of the butler doing her doggy-style on top of the tablecloth amid the
crystal.

Jewel spilled her wine.

The butler lifted his chin and shifted his gaze over her
head, his thick neck and ears turning pink.

Did he just think
that, or did I?
she wondered.
Look at
him blush!