November 29, 2007
9:52 AM MT
So I can finally post "s.t.u.d." again...
“Oh, Mirage Springs isn’t in Las Vegas,” the recruiter in a shimmering business suit informed him with a lean across the job fair table. “Though it’s certainly nearby. Are you graduating this semester?”
“Yes, oh yes. Well, not officially until September at least, though I’m walking across the stage next week, and just a few classes I have to take through June, ‘cause I had to transfer Freshman year and I had to leave the last place, Adams College, all of a sudden--”
“Mirage Springs is eager to hire new teachers from the class of ninety-seven,” name-tagged Nancy replied, ignoring the explanatory soliloquy and stuffing a glossy folder in the prospect’s hands. “What’s your name, by the way?”
“Bacon. Henry Bacon.” Henry shook a lotion-smooth hand.
“Oh yes, Bacon. We’ve been waiting for you.”
Pause. “You have?”
“Oh yes.” Nancy smiled and handed him a second, different, folder as she pulled the first out of his hands. “We asked your school about exceptional seniors, and your name was near the top of the list.”
“My name?” Henry stared down at the glossy image of a fresh new high school set against the backdrop of a desert mountain range.
“Definitely. We’re interested in having only the most-qualified candidates teach in our school system. Construction of Mirage Springs High has just been completed, and we’re opening it in the fall. We’d be willing to cover your relocation expenses and certification tuition and pay you a stipend until you obtain your certificate.”
Henry opened the folder to a sheet of paper addressed to himself which listed all of the incentives. “This is pretty unusual recruiting for a schoolteacher--”
“Mirage Springs is growing by leaps and bounds, and we’ll need all the qualified teachers we can get,” Nancy concluded with unfazed perkiness. Then, to a classmate of Henry’s behind his back, “Hi! Are you interested in becoming a teacher?”
“Yeah, that’s what I said. But she says they need all the teachers they can get.” Henry picked up the folder once more and, once more, opened it to stare at his printed name.
Harry Roman reached down for one of the two suitcases that were the last of his possessions in the room. “What the hell: head down there and milk it for what it’s worth. Any of your interviews even call you back?” Henry shook his head. “Then just do it.”
Henry made his way to a pay phone and called the number he was told he could call any time.
“Mirage Springs Schools. This is Nancy.”
“Nancy, it’s Henry Bac--”
“Henry! It’s so good to hear from you! I take it you’re at the airport."
“Yeah, at the gate--”
“Yes, well, I’m so terribly sorry. I wish we could have told you before you got on the plane.”
“What’s that?”
“The position has been filled. I’m so sorry.”
“But it’s a new school--”
“I’m sorry, Henry, but all of the positions have been filled. It’s funny how one day you really need new hires, then the next they’ve all been hired. Again, I’m terribly sorry--”
“How do I get home?” Henry’s forehead was touching the cold metal of the phonebox.
“Home? Oh yes, New York. Well Henry, sorry again, but return airfare wasn’t part of the agreement.”
“What--”
“Sorry, Henry. I have someone here in my office right now. Gotta go!”
Henry slammed the phone back in its cradle, then just stood and stared. The cell phone of the adjacent waiting area’s lone occupant rang, and Henry looked aside to watch him fold his newspaper while keeping it held in front of his face. There was a gruff “yeah” followed by an “I know,” and then Henry was shouldering his rucksack once more and heading for the baggage-claim area.
“Hit me.”
“I suggest you hold, sir.”
“I’m playing for airfare. Hit me.”
The dealer sucked in his breath and turned over a queen of spades. Then, with a very subtle shake of his head, he pulled the cards and the chips away from the player who had already pushed himself off his stool.
Henry shuffled down a casino corridor, his rucksack hanging off one shoulder and his one suitcase rolling along behind. He had walked less than twenty yards when a heavy-set man in a gray suit and red tie approached him from the side. “Say, I’m sorry to see you lose like that.”
Henry looked at the stranger with a dazed look. “What?”
The stranger jabbed his thumb in the direction of the now-empty table. “Blackjack. I overheard you were playing for airfare.”
“Yeah.” Henry lost his daze. “What’s that got to do with you?”
The suit took a step back. “Not trying to be nosy. I just thought you’d like some help.”
Henry looked straight forward and started moving again. “Whatever it is you’ve got in mind, I’m sure I’m not interested.”
“Contempt prior to investigation.” The suit fell into step beside the graduate. “But you might be interested. Larry Cohn.”
Henry didn’t shake the outstretched hand. “Bacon. Henry Bacon.”
“It’s nothing nefarious. Just an Internet start-up.”
Henry didn’t slow as they neared the casino’s bay of revolving front doors. “So you’re recruiting for a dot-com at one on a Tuesday morning, in a Las Vegas casino.”
Cohn stepped in front of the door Henry was about to step through. “Let me buy you dinner, kid: I know you haven’t eaten in a while. Then you can tell me to get lost.”
Cohn waited to light his cigarette until the waitress had taken Henry’s order and departed from the table. “So, what’s your SAT?”
Henry took a large sip from the sixty-dollar bottle of wine he had ordered on Cohn’s credit card. “What does an SAT have to do with anything?”
“It’s a measure of aptitude, my young friend," Cohn replied from behind the smoke of his cigarette.
“First, what’s the job?”
“Show me you have the aptitude for the job, and I’ll tell you what the job is.”
“Fine. Fourteen-ninety.”
Cohn nodded. “Verbal?”
“Seven-thirty.”
“Math?”
“I just made it easy for you. You do the math.”
Cohn laughed and tapped an ash out in a tray. “Seven-sixty, I suppose it would be.”
“So, what’s the job?”
“I’m starting an online fertility clinic.” Cohn exhaled a cloud of smoke between himself and Henry.
“How can a fertility clinic be online?”
“Let us say, the presentation is online,” Cohn explained with a confident smile and a spread of his hands in the air before him.
Henry took another gulp of wine and felt the first buzz from the alcohol. “Fine. What’s the Web address?”
“Still to be decided. In fact many aspects of the business plan are still to be decided. Right now we just need intelligent, good-looking young people like yourself to help us get there.”
Henry had stopped eating and drinking and now leaned back in his upholstered seat. “How can you get ‘there’ if you don’t know where ‘there’ is?”
Cohen exhaled slowly into the atmosphere. “Knowing where you’re going is so Old Economy.” A tap of an ash. “Taking your opportunities as they come: that’s New Economy!”
“But--
“But that’s neither here nor there, Henry. Here’s the offer: free room, board, and a small salary. Plus ten thousand stock options.”
Henry finished his first glass of wine as a waiter approached with his salad. "What’s the salary?” He nodded at the presentation of the grinder for the Caesar. “And when do you plan to go public?”
Cohn stubbed out his cigarette and intertwined his fingers after resting his elbows on the table. “I hardly think a man who’s flat broke and stranded in Vegas should be asking questions like those.”
Henry finished his first nibble of greens, then fell back against the upholstery of his seat and sighed. “Fine. I’m in. Where we headed after this?”
Cohn reached for another cigarette. “The clinic. It’s a little out of the way, outside a town called Mirage Springs.”
Henry choked on the first sip of his second glass of wine.
The tailor, who had been sitting and waiting for Henry in the anteroom of Henry’s suite when he woke up in the middle of the afternoon, now looked up from the tape measure spread across the breadth of Henry’s right foot. “Mister Cohn instructed that I make several measurements of the symmetry of your physical features,” he replied with a French accent.
Henry looked down at the small notebook with two columns of figures that the tailor added to with a pencil. “What do the width of my feet have to do with a tuxedo?"
“Ask Mister Cohn, Mister Bacon. Mister Cohn is my customer, and the customer is king,” the tailor replied without looking up.
“Where is Cohn, anyway?”
“Back in his office, I imagine.” The tailor looked up and smiled. “You may do whatever you wish now. I’ll have your tuxedo ready before dinner.”
“Dinner? Who’s going to be at dinner?”
The tailor became stern once more. “I suggest you ask Mister Cohn.”
A standing Calvin reached out his hand to shake Henry’s. “Glad you could make it.”
“Thanks. Nice to meet you.” Henry looked back at Cohn. “What’s the deal with the body measurements? And what’s so important about tonight’s dinner?”
Cohn looked at Calvin, who looked back at him and not at Henry. “Add in what you and I went over.”
“Sure thing, Larry.” Calvin clapped Henry’s arm on his way out. “Pleasure.”
“Yeah, pleasure,” Henry replied. Then, to Cohn, “What’s the deal? Investors coming in tonight?”
“You could say that. Have a seat, Henry.”
Henry glanced at a second, larger window at the front of Cohn’s office that afforded a view of the semicircular driveway connecting the clinic with a remote country road. Then he turned around and took a seat opposite Cohn’s desk.
Cohn opened his mouth to say something to his seated guest, but a double knock on his distant door changed his utterance. “Come in.”
The tailor walked in and smoothly approached the desk with a small nod to Henry. “The measurements that you requested, Mister Cohn.” A single sheet of paper was placed in Cohn’s outstretched hand.
“Yes, thank you, Pierre. How’s the tux coming along?”
Pierre smiled down at Henry, then back at Cohn. “It will be finished within the hour.”
“Terrific! Just in time for our guest. That’ll be all, Pierre.”
“Certainly, Mister Cohn.” Then, to Henry, “Come by your room at six.”
“Sure.” Henry waited until the door shut behind Pierre to ask, “Only one guest?”
Cohn leaned back in his chair. “Yes, one.” He slowly opened a pair of gold-rimmed reading glasses, placed them on his face, and read the two columns of seven rows of figures on the college-ruled paper. Then he looked above the glasses and smiled below them.
“You have perfect symmetry, as I suspected.”
Henry sighed. “So what’s my prize?”
Cohn laughed slightly and placed both the glasses and the paper on his desk. “Many things, Henry. Many things.” He stood up from his chair and took a few short steps to an edge of the window to stare out at the sparkling fountain with his arms crossed on his chest. “I got the idea for this project when I first read about a Nineteen-ninety-five University of New Mexico study of eighty-six couples.”
Henry’s eyes didn’t move from the marble fountain. “What does a study have to do with me?”
Cohn looked from the fountainhead to Henry. “Do you believe in helping others, Henry?”
“Sure, if I can still pay my rent.”
Cohn smiled and walked back to seat himself in his chair. “I’m glad you and I think alike. You see, Henry, you and I are here today to be of service. Or rather, I’m here to put you in a position to be of service. If all goes as planned, you and I will start a revolution in fertility treatments, not to mention the evolutionary process itself!” Cohn’s hands had spread wider over the desk with each word. “And you and Calvin and any other pre-IPO employees will be fabulously wealthy!”
“Not to mention yourself, I’m sure. We have an investor coming in tonight and you haven’t even told me what I’m doing here. How is that going to look to a VC--”
“Henry.” Cohn had given him the Hand. “The guest tonight isn’t a venture capitalist. She’s a client.”
Henry was silent for a moment. “That leads me to another question: where’s the lab? I took a walk around this place and I thought a fertility clinic would have lots of fancy machinery, guys in white coats--”
“Henry.” Now both of Cohn’s hands were held in the air between them. He lowered them to the desk. “You are the fertility clinic.”
“I’m still not getting it.”
“Not to be rude, Henry, but I imagined that a guy with a fourteen-ninety SAT would have figured it out by now.” Cohn leaned forward and lowered his voice for his next sentence. “The New Mexico study found a correlation between the symmetry of a man’s physical attributes and his partner’s probability of orgasm. And a female’s orgasm, of course, increases her chances of becoming pregnant.”
Henry looked at the flowing fountain that was now painfully brilliant in the light of a sun hanging just above the roof of the “clinic.” “You want me to become a male prostitute?”
Cohn let out a chuckle as he reached for the pack of cigarettes sitting on a corner of his desk. “Hardly a prostitute, Henry. Think of yourself as a ‘fertility specialist.’”
Henry was out of his chair so quickly that he knocked it backward onto the glass coffee table behind. Both men stood, Cohn holding an unlit cigarette in his hand, and both stared at the glass cracked by the heavy wood of the chair.
“I don’t know what to say.”
“Say you’ll do this for the couples who are having trouble conceiving children. Many of them have lost all hope.” Cohn’s cigarette was waving in the air along with his hands. “Say you’ll be part of a new movement, an opportunity to not only bring joy into the lives of others, but also to pass on the aptitude that you carry in your genes!”
Henry looked from the cracked glass to the crotch of his Levi’s. He sucked in a gulp of air, then let it out with a long sigh. “Whatever.”
Calvin looked from the computer screen to the one other employee of s.t.u.d., inc. “Are you crazy, man? You’re the stud; you’re the main attraction!” As if to spite his co-worker, he retyped the HTML code which, upon a “save” command and a clicking of the browser’s “refresh” button, created an even larger reproduction of Henry’s headshot positioned in the center of the s.t.u.d.com home page.
Henry didn’t argue further; he just leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms. “I just worry what my mother would think.”
“Man, if we spent all our time worrying about what our madres would think, nothin’ would ever get done.” Calvin glanced at Henry once more. “Aren’t you supposed to be having dinner right now?”
Henry looked at the Rolex that had been given to him as part of his dinner attire. “You’re right.” He stood up in Calvin’s dim workroom and ran his hands over the jacket of his new tuxedo in a smoothing gesture. He headed for the door, then turned back and asked, “One other thing: have you talked to Larry about the URL? All those dots are a little awkward.”
Calvin shook his head slowly. “No can do, my friend. Stud-dot-com’s already taken.”
“Well, what does the s-t-u-d stand for then?”
“Nothing. Nothing at all. By the way, I left a mag behind the headboard. You know,” Calvin’s eyes made a rare departure from the screen, “in case you need a little lift.”
Henry burned in the darkness as his stomach knotted. “Thanks.”
Calvin’s eyes were back on the screen. “Don’t mention it. Just remember who your friends are. By the way, what alias did you come up with?”
A heretofore unheard baritone replied from the shadows of the doorway. “Widewood. Dick Widewood.”
The fortyish blonde smiled herself, shyly, as she stood up from the couch. “You must be Dick.”
Henry took the not-unattractive woman’s hand and kissed it gently. “I am. And you must be Valerie. Welcome to Mirage Springs.”
“Yes, thank you.” Valerie pulled the hand away. “I only stepped off the plane an hour ago.”
“Pleasant flight?”
“Very.” Valerie held her glass with both hands now. “My husband sent me over in the Leer.”
“Yes, I guess your own private jet would be nice.”
“Well, it’s actually the company jet, but let’s not talk about that,” Valerie replied in a quick string of words. “I didn’t fly all the way from Atlanta for small talk, did I?”
“No, I suppose you didn’t.” Henry shoved his clammy hands in his pockets. “I trust Larry laid everything out for you?” He blushed at his choice of words. “Sorry.”
“It’s okay.” Valerie looked past Henry’s shoulder at the candlelit table for two that had been set with two soups by a silent waiter. Then she looked down at the half-empty glass. “He told me I shouldn’t drink any alcohol the entire week. It’s not good for the process, but boy, could I use one right now.”
Henry gently placed a hand on each of her arms. “It’s okay. Eating something would help.”
Valerie managed another smile, a warm one. “Yes, I suppose it would.”
Henry rolled off his client and onto the comforter that covered the remainder of the enormous bed situated in the chamber just off the dining room. “What gave you that idea?” he asked with a tremor in his voice.
Valerie was sitting up in a slip with the strap nearest her partner dangling down onto her arm, and with her hands splayed out on the satin behind her. “It’s okay, Dick. Just please tell me if it’s your first time.”
Henry was staring at the two of them in the mirror on the ceiling. “That depends on your first definition of ‘first’.”
Valerie sighed in exasperation and stared at a wall. “Has your dick ever been in a woman’s vagina, Dick?”
“That’s not a very ladylike way to put it.”
Valerie was up and marching to the dress that had been thrown across the back of a chair. “You forced me to put it that way.” She lifted the dress off the chair. “I’m not going to sleep with a boy who’s going to play games with me, no matter how desperate I am to get pregnant.”
A tear was in one of the woman’s eyes, and then Henry’s hand was on one of her arms. “I’m sorry. I suppose the first definition of ‘first’ would apply here.”
Valerie turned around and wiped away her tear. “I’ll take that as a ‘yes’.”
“Yeah.” Henry was immediately out of his chair at the sound of Cohn’s voice, and walking across the disheveled bedroom he had slept in for the first time the night before. He opened the door. “I suppose it’s time.”
Cohn wasn’t smiling. “And then some. Get your tux on and get to dinner. I’m leaving for the day, but you can call me on the cell phone if there are any problems.” He turned to leave and started away.
Henry stuck his head and his bare torso into the empty courtyard to ask, “What’s she like?”
Cohn stopped to turn back and reply in a voice lower than Henry’s. “You’ll find out soon enough. Get dressed.” Then he turned and departed for his Mercedes parked out front.
Henry opened his eyes long enough to judge the seriousness of Judy Yates’s proposal, then shut them once more against the sight of a two hundred pound middle-aged woman he had been given the honor of impregnating. He stumbled to the light switch beside the door, drowned the bedchamber in darkness, and proceeded to take off his clothes.
“You don’t say much, do you, Dick?” the wife of a Montana oil tycoon asked as she took off her slip.
“Not when I’m working,” Henry replied as he approached the bed.
Judy lay on her back in her substantial glory, staring at the outlines of herself in the mirror above. “You know, Dick, part of your job is to make the lady feel comfortable. And ladies feel comfortable when they’ve talked.”
Henry set his bare butt on the comforter. “Fine. What do you want to talk about?”
Judy rolled over onto her side and let her flaccid breasts droop enough to force Henry to look away. “Tell me what it’s like to be you! Tell me what it’s like to have a fourteen-ninety SAT. I’ve always wanted a child who’ll go to Harvard!”
Henry stared at a dark, blank wall. “Fourteen-ninety. You don’t really notice it at first, when you’re a kid. But eventually you do: you see that you’re different from everyone else, at least everyone else you can see. You look the same, but you don’t see the same. You see things in this world that make you mad, angry and crazy, things that other people don’t talk about. And then, when you try to tell someone, anyone, you only know for certain that you’re all alone with the things you see.”
Henry’s client was quiet in the darkness, and then she spoke. “When I asked for a talk, this wasn’t what I had in mind.”
“You asked, and I delivered.” Henry nudged his partner onto her back and rolled over on top of her. He assumed the proper position with eyes screwed shut, and then rolled off of her.
“It’s okay.”
“It’s not okay. Be right back.” Henry circled the bed and retrieved the magazine from the headboard, where Calvin said it would be, before stepping into and locking himself in the bathroom.
Henry opened the page of the August Ninety-seven issue of Playboy marked by a post-it with “Hope this helps, Gringo” scrawled on it. The stud stared down at the Hot Springs, Arkansas glossy goddess with a twenty-four inch waist and a thirty-six inch bust for a long while, turned off the bathroom light, and advanced to the bedroom, where his client had crawled beneath the covers.
“Are you ready to try again?”
Henry ripped away the corner of coverings nearest the bathroom and slid beneath them. “Ready as I’ll ever be.” He screwed his eyes shut once more, this time maintaining a firm vision of Miss August.
“Ooohhh, Dick!” Judy Yates gushed from the darkness.
Cohn looked up at his visitor, over his clasped hands, and then he grinned. “I don’t think the next one’s going to be a problem, Henry.”
“Yeah, that’s what you said about Mrs. Markum! I mean, not every woman who wants to spit out a rocket scientist is old and fat!”
Cohn reached for his pack. “Revolutions take time, Henry.” He kept his eyes on his cigarette and his silver lighter. “The first women to sign up for our service are only going to be the most desperate cases.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“Nothing against you.” Cohn motioned with his fuming cigarette at the row of manila folders on a corner of his desk. “You’ve gotten nothing but rave reviews. Just the idea of a respectable woman paying good money to sleep with a stranger so she can have his baby is still revolutionary.”
“But I have a fourteen-ninety SAT!”
“Yes, you do, and that’s been critical to our success so far. Keep it up, no phallic allusions intended, and you’ll have your pick of young, beautiful wives sent here by their rich, elderly husbands. Like tonight’s guest. The specialists who are hired after you will have to pay their dues with the old and fat ones.”
Henry reached for the headshot Cohn had pulled from a folder and slid across the desk. The photo was of a beautiful blonde Henry’s age. “Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”
Cohn sighed and exhaled. “I tried to. Get ready for dinner: Mrs. Robinson’s limo will be arriving any minute.”
Henry tossed the print back on the desk. “Mrs. Robinson: that’s a good one. One more thing, Larry.”
“Try me.”
“How much did you pay Nancy Carter to leave me stranded in Vegas so that you could sink your claws into me?”
Cohn returned a cool stare. “Nothing. Let’s just say we worked together at an institution of higher learning a few years back, which also happens to be where I had access to certain test scores.”
Henry said nothing more, and just turned to walk out of the room.
Henry smiled down at the beauty who had risen from the couch upon his arrival in the room. “Yes, and you must be Elaine.”
Elaine gave a cool smile. “I must be. First, I have to say this is a little awkward. My husband talked me into this, like he’s done a lot of things, and I didn’t really want to come down here, I mean no offense--”
“Elaine?”
“Yes?”
“It’s okay. Everyone’s awkward their first time here. Will you have a glass of wine?”
“Larry--”
“Yeah, well, Larry’s back home for the night.” Henry walked to the edge of the couch and reached behind it to retrieve a bottle of white he had placed there in an ice bucket that afternoon. “Perfectly chilled.” He reached down a second time, for two glasses.
Elaine waited until he had pulled the cork to ask, “How long have you been doing this?”
“How many women have I slept with, you mean.” Henry handed her a filled glass. “Not many: this operation only got started two months ago.”
“And how long do you plan to keep doing this?” Elaine asked as he replaced the bottle in the bucket.
Henry looked away. “I haven’t really thought of that.” Then he looked into his client’s eyes and smiled. “This is just the night job. I write fiction during the day.”
“Really? What do you write?”
Henry maintained his smile. “Still working on that part. A toast: to success in this endeavor.”
“To success.”
The two glasses clinked in the candlelight.
“Dick, are you okay?”
Henry came to and felt the small form stretched out against his and separated from him by a thin layer of his perspiration. “Yeah, fine.” He nudged his partner away and pushed himself up to a seated position on the edge of the mattress.
“Must’ve been a terrible dream.”
“It was, but it’s over now.” Then, more gently and with a backward look, “Sorry to snap.”
Elaine was holding a sheet of satin close to her perfect bosom. “It’s okay. I was prying.”
“Let’s just get back under the covers.” The partners became prostrate once more beneath those covers, albeit now with a void between them.
The two heads sticking out from beneath the sheets looked first at their own reflections, then at each other’s. “Tell me about the women you’ve slept with, Dick. Were they beautiful?”
“It’s Henry. Call me Henry.”
“What about Dick?”
“Dick’s just a pseudonym.”
“I thought pseudonyms were for writers.”
“Yeah, for when you write too close to home.”
“What about the others?”
Henry stared into the reflection looking back. “They were beautiful,” he told her. He turned onto his side. “But not as beautiful as you.”
“Yeah, Larry.”
The door was pushed open to reveal Elaine Robinson. “If you want Larry instead, I can get him for you.”
Henry returned the smile sheepishly and closed the laptop as he rose from his chair. “No, I think I prefer you. You’re early.”
Elaine walked to the center of the room with her mink coat still wrapped tightly about her. “We caught the jet stream.” She looked down at the laptop. “I interrupted your writing.”
Henry glanced back at the closed computer. “No, I wasn’t writing. I thought you were coming from Chicago.”
Elaine looked around the room. “I had some things to do in L.A. You keep this room so tidy.” Her stare rested on the bed. “But then again, you probably don’t sleep much here, do you?”
“No, not much.” Henry headed for the door. “What do you say we go for a walk?”
“It’s freezing outside.”
“Then I’ll put on a coat.”
Henry shivered against a cold, bitter wind that blew from the northeast. “Not much to leave for: Mirage Springs isn’t much to talk about, and Cohn doesn’t give me enough time or money to get away.”
Elaine allowed the wind to blow the hair from her face as she held her coat tightly about herself. “If it’s not for the money, what are you doing here?”
“For the stock options.” Henry burrowed his hands deeper in the pockets of his jacket. “And the chance to take a breather.”
“And what do you plan to do after you’ve caught your breath?”
Henry turned to his client of the evening and managed a smile. “You know as much as I do.”
“What do you want me to tell you?” Elaine rolled over onto her back.
“Was this his idea?”
Elaine laughed in the darkness. “Oh yes. Roger always has crazy ideas. First he talked me into going out with him, then he talked me into marrying him, then he talked me into trying to have children.”
“But he couldn’t.”
“No, he couldn’t. Low sperm count. He found out from the doctors back in July, then he heard about you on the radio.”
Henry squirmed beneath the satin. “The radio?”
“Yes, the radio, then he read about you in the paper--” Elaine twisted her head towards her bedmate in the near-complete darkness. “Henry, you don’t--”
“No, I’d rather not know.”
“Where are you going?”
“The bathroom.” Henry shut the door behind himself and ran the faucet to cover the sound of his retching.
When he returned, Elaine was sitting up in the lamplight. “I hope I didn’t upset you.”
“No, not at all,” Henry told her. “Must’ve been that salmon we had for dinner.” He eased himself back under the covers and turned the light off, and then the two rested in the silence of the room for a full minute before he asked, “So what’s your husband like? Is he old?”
“Why do you ask that?” Pause. “Okay, he is old, but not too. Forty-five.”
“Old enough to be your father. No offense.”
“None taken, Henry,” Elaine replied in a sigh. “Yes, he’s old and overbearing and not too great in bed. At least not as great as some people.”
“Not to pry. Why’d you marry him?”
Elaine paused again, then held her enormous wedding ring over the covers. “Diamonds are a girl’s best friend, Henry.” Then, after staring at it for a long while, she slowly pulled the ring off and placed it on the nighttable.
“Hey.” Elaine didn’t smile at or kiss Henry as she entered the room and walked to its center, though she smiled when she glanced at the screen of his laptop. “You’ve finally come up with something!”
Henry closed the laptop on
“No, Henry, you may not.” Elaine seated herself on the end of his immaculate bed. “I’m not staying.”
“What do you mean?” Henry took a seat himself, in his writing chair.
“I’m leaving you, Henry. Just like I’m leaving Roger.”
“Why?”
“There are a lot of why’s. The biggest one is that I’m late.”
Henry looked at his watch. “Boy, tell me about it.”
“No, Henry.” Elaine hunched her shoulders in his direction and gave him a condescending smile. “My period is late.”
“You mean--”
“I mean nothing’s certain, but I might be.”
“Are you sh--”
“But I didn’t come here to talk about that. I came here to get you fired.” To his dumb look she explained, “This isn’t healthy for you, Henry, and I care about you.” She lowered her gaze to the carpet beneath her feet. “I spoke with Larry in his office before I came here. Then I told him I needed to use the bathroom.”
Her last words were spoken to an empty chair, as Henry had already bolted from the room and was running down a corridor in the direction of Cohn’s office, past a Calvin who vainly tried to get him to stop.
Henry found the door to his employer’s office wide open, and walked right in. “What did she say to you?”
Cohn looked up from his chair, then replaced his phone in its cradle. "Have a seat, Henry. Smoke?”
Henry waved the pack away as Cohn leaned forward to slide an unmarked envelope across his desk. “I’m gonna have to let you go, Henry. That’s a nice severance check, Henry, which I hope you’ll take as a demonstration of our gratitude for your nearly seven months of service. Calvin is packing your bags as we speak.”
“Listen, whatever she told you--”
“Whatever, Henry. It doesn’t matter what Mrs. Robinson said to me. I’ve been wanting to change our business model for some time now.”
Henry held the envelope firmly in one hand. “What change?”
Cohn leaned back in his creaking leather chair and stared at the ceiling with a sudden smile. “The URL, for starters. We’re changing it to studs-dot-com. It’s taking things a step further. The idea came to me when I was reading about ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia.” Cohn’s eyes were lit and his hands were making grand gestures in the air polluted with his smoke. “I was reading about the increased chance of pregnancy that’s the result of a woman having multiple sex partners in one session.”
“You mean a gang bang?”
Cohn’s smile and eyes didn’t waver. “Such an ugly term. I prefer the acronym MIT, for ‘Multiple Insertion Therapy’. I’ve already set something up in New Orleans for Mardi Gras. The woman will remain anonymous and masked, of course--this is beyond revolutionary--but I used my college connections again and found a group of bright young men, very physically fit, too, who would be very happy to provide their services. They play hockey at Adams College--didn’t you go there briefly, Bacon?”
A jarring slam of the office door was the answer to Cohn’s question, and Henry ran out the front entrance of the complex, past his suitcase and rucksack and a Calvin who tried to apologize for carrying out his employer’s instructions. Henry chased down the limousine which he had watched Elaine step into from Cohn’s front window, and the limousine pulled to a stop as he caught up with it at one end of the driveway.
“Why’d you stop?” Henry asked as he plopped his sweating form onto the seat opposite his last client.
“Driver, the airport.” Elaine didn’t look at Henry, but instead looked out the window as the limousine turned onto the road. “I thought you might like a ride to the airport.”
“But my bags are back at the clinic.”
Elaine shrugged. “Details, Henry. That’s only fitting: this is your chance to start over again. What’s in your hand?”
“Hush money.” Henry smoothed the envelope’s surface out somewhat and opened it to pull out a check. His eyes bulged. “Quite a bit of hush money.”
“There you have it.” Elaine pulled her coat more tightly about herself. “Now you can start over in style.”
Henry stuffed the check back in the envelope and stuffed the envelope in the tuxedo pocket over his heart. “Elaine.”
“Yes?”
“Come back to New York with me. Let’s have this baby together.”
Elaine burst into a laugh, then leaned out of her seat to cradle her temples with the tips of fingers topped by red nail polish. Her laugh became an anguished sigh. “I’ve been impregnated by a cybergigolo.” Then, after she sat up once more to stare out the window with streaked mascara, “Driver, stop and let Mister Bacon out.”
“I’m not leaving without you.”
Elaine reached back to close the partition between the two halves of the vehicle. Then both of her hands grasped the neckline of her dress. “How would you like the tag ‘attempted rapist’ added to your name? Believable storyline, isn’t it? Girl accuses gigolo of being a limpdick, and he tries to force her to see otherwise.”
Henry opened the door for himself. “You’re a ruthless bitch, Elaine.”
“You’ve made me one, Henry. And the name’s not Elaine; you’re not the only one who uses pseudonyms.”
Henry was poised over the threshold between limousine interior and roadside desert before one of his client’s Manolo Blahniks met his rear end and forced him out.
“Goodbye, Henry.” The door slammed shut behind him.
“Elaine!” Henry was on his feet with arms spread wide as the limousine tore away.
“Elaine!”
All he got for his efforts was shame in a mouthful of dust.
“Sugar, you look like you’ve been to Hell and back,” Rosie the waitress declared as she reached for a cup.
“I’m still in it.” Henry eased himself onto the stool before the counter, ignoring the crowd’s stares at his tuxedo torn and coated with dirt.
“Do you take checks?” Henry asked as the cup was placed before him.
“Sure don’t, Hon.” Rosie reached beneath the counter for a paper cup. “Tell you what: it’s on the house. Go on home and get yourself cleaned up.”
“Home.” Henry laughed at his repetition of the word and accepted the cup of coffee without an expression of gratitude.
As Henry headed for the front door of the diner, he overheard a newsanchor talking from an overhead television. “...breaking news: a twenty-four-year-old former White House intern is under investigation by independent counsel Kenneth Starr for allegedly lying in an affidavit in which she denied that she had had sexual relations with President Clinton. The FBI reportedly has tapes of the former intern describing both her affair with Clinton and efforts to cover it up--”
Henry let the glass front door of the diner slam shut on the newsanchor, and savored the crunch of hard gravel beneath his feet as he walked towards the sun setting over the unused gas pumps.
He was not alone.
November 29, 2007
8:34 AM MT
The Case of Colorado v. Hammons
So I was arrested last December for an extremely serious crime.
I had spoken to a police officer on a Thursday the previous August regarding an encounter I had that preceding Saturday night with a female acquaintance of mine. Unfortunately, when I received a forwarded email that the police were calling around looking for me, saying that they had received a "complaint" about me, I didn't call an attorney. Against my better judgement, I remained on the line with the police officer after he told me the nature of the complaint. The good officer seems to have forgotten he had spread the word that he had received a complaint about me, made note of the fact that I called twice within an hour, and proceeded to hear what he wanted to hear...
This female acquaintance called the police Monday morning and said that our Saturday evening encounter was non-consensual. Here's what happened: We met at a dinner party in a resort condo, and talked one-on-one at length. She invited me to go swimming in the resort's swimming pool, and I accepted. We agreed that I would pick her up from a nearby trailhead after she and her friends went geocaching while I picked up my swimsuit from the condo where I was staying. I picked her up, and we went swimming. We ended up in a hot tub together, I offered to massage her legs, and she accepted. I suggested we go back to my condo to watch the sunset from the deck, and she accepted. We went back to my place and onto the deck. I sat and suggested she sit on my lap. She said that her swimsuit was wet, and walked to the deck railing. I approached her, slowly, from behind and massaged her shoulders. She didn't object. I pressed myself against her as I massaged her hips and we watched the sunset. She didn't object to that either. I turned her around and attempted to kiss her, and she said she didn't want to get involved. I said "This isn't getting involved." She said it was. I pulled her ten feet along the railing so that a large party on the deck immediately above and to the right couldn't hear a private conversation. I attempted to kiss her on the neck, and she laughed and asked me if I was trying to change her mind. I then put my hands on the back of her thighs to attempt to lift her onto the low wall of the deck. She tensed and said, "Let's stop this."
We stopped it right then and there; I pulled away from her and sat back down in a chair while she remained standing against the deck wall. The next twenty minutes were spent in relative silence watching the sunset, with only intermittent conversation (e.g., "Nice sunset," "It is"). She then asked me to drive her back to her own condo, and I did. We made arrangements for me to pick her up later that evening and drive her back to the main resort complex, which I did. It was on the drive down to the complex that she apologized for leading me on. I told her to not worry about it, that she didn't lead me on.
When we reached the main complex, I allowed the crowd to part us, and I met up with friends of mine while she met up with hers. I saw my accuser once from across a hallway, as we both engaged in conversation with other parties, and saw her once more on a dance floor later that evening, when I approached her from behind and placed my hands on her shoulders to say something in her ear about a friend's lack of dancing ability, in an effort to let her know I wasn't blowing her off. She waited as if she was expecting me to say something more, then walked off the dance floor covering her face.
The next time I saw my accuser was at a March preliminary hearing, after
I had been charged with
3rd Degree Sexual Assault (possible sentence: 10 to Life as a Sex Offender). I should point out here that, unbeknownst to me, I had
originally been charged in August with a misdemeanor of unlawful sexual contact. I failed to answer the
two notices of the summons sent to my address because, as the photo indicates, the return address on
both certified mail notices was not indicated and I assumed both notices were related to an oil investment property which doesn't require
my action. For reasons never explained, because there was no new evidence to make the change, the case was then bumped up from a
misdemeanor to a felony (specifically,
Just before that preliminary hearing, the DA offered me 30 days to consider a misdemeanor assualt charge if I waived my right to that hearing and therefore prevented my accuser from taking the stand. I declined. Ten minutes later the offer was a misdemeanor assault charge with two years probation and no jail time, again if I would just not allow my accuser to take the stand. I rejected that offer as well.
At the hearing my accuser claimed that I spent 25 minutes attacking her on a condo patio on the night in question, and that she didn't know where she was. Herewith Photo 1, Photo 2, Photo 3 of the deck in question (lower right-hand corner, view obviously less obscured at the height of summer, and deck in full view of a well-traveled road leading directly to my accuser's own condo). And the day after that hearing, on March 6, 2007, my accuser walked into a Boulder police station to report "a restraining order violation." She did not wait for an officer, but when an Officer G. called her, she told him that a person against whom she had a restraining order regarding a sexual assault case "might" violate that order...
When my attorney later broached the subject of a plea bargain again, I decided I had had enough of being an alleged felon, and agreed to
allow him to approach the DA. I passed a polygraph administered by a former police officer and contractor with the Department of
Corrections, and the offer went from misdemeanor assault to misdemeanor trespass, and the remedy to probation of not more than one year
along with general therapy to discuss "issues." The crime to which I pled guilty? Second Degree Trespass, a lowest-level misdemeanor
which can be defined as "Knowingly and unlawfully entering or remaining in or upon the common areas of a hotel."
