Like Warm Sun on Nekkid Bottoms - Charles Austen [10]
“Oh. He?” she said, sounding—what—I don’t know—relieved? “Of course. I understand. Then maybe we can schedule another time?”
“Ooooh, I don’t know, I…it’s probably best if you talk to my lawyer.”
“Your lawyer?”
“He’s much more equipped for this sort of thing than I am. He’s intelligent.”
“Well, you see, this is what I was afraid of, Mister Wopplesdown…” She paused a moment as if carefully considering her financial demands and my greater malleability over lunch as opposed to facing actual legal counsel with functioning brains that didn’t have to struggle with competing thoughts of her mostly naked. “See, that was just a really strange and awkward situation down in the storage closet, just now…”
“Garment Viewing Room.”
“What?”
“It’s called the Garment Viewing Room. It’s not a storage closet.”
“Really? It seemed more like some kind of storage…”
“I would never force you into a storage closet, then make you stay there naked. I mean, while you were naked. I wasn’t naked. I had pants on then. And now, too, if you must know. You were naked, true, mostly, but I was just…”
“See, that’s what I want to talk to you about. I think you have the wrong impression of me. If you would just see me for a moment…”
“Honestly, Ms. Nuckeby,” I said, throbbing at the memory of already having seen most of her. “I saw all of you I need to see. I MEAN…”
“Oh!”
“That came out wrong!”
“No, I’m sure it didn’t. I’m truly sorry to have bothered you Mister Wopplesdown.”
Click.
“Ms. Nuckeby? MS. NUCKEBY!”
Why I yelled louder, as if somehow the sound might actually explode out the other end of a disconnected line, I don’t know, but I’m a man, and as I’ve said, when an attractive woman is involved, the brain farts. I just desperately needed to reconnect with Ms. Nuckeby and tell her I was sorry, please don’t sue me and take away all my money, and, oh, by the way, let’s make lots of babies together. So I refused to be deterred by the fact that her extension was already resting in a cradle somewhere deep inside the building.
Wait.
Somewhere deep inside the building.
I looked at the reader phone and read the extension.
4912.
I ran around the desk, grabbed my address book and looked through the various numbers.
4912. Henri Manschingloss. We still hadn’t changed the directory to reflect his insistence that he was now a single-named celebrity.
I dialled.
“Manschingloss,” he said with clear irritation.
“Henri, is…”
“Manschingloss.”
“Sorry,” I said. “Manschingloss. Is Ms. Nuckeby there?”
“Why? Did you want to be rude to her some more?”
“I wasn’t rude to her.”
“Then why was she crying?”
“She was crying?”
“Actual tears. She stained my crinoline.”
“Can I speak to her, please?”
“You could. But she’s gone.”
“Gone where?”
“Shopping. The movies. Nude horseback riding, perhaps?” He paused. Waiting for a laugh I suppose. It didn’t come. Not from my end. “Home, I would imagine,” he continued. “She’s a good model you know. Dedicated and professional. Not like some of the prima donna flakes we usually get around here. You could have forgiven her.”
“Forgiven her what?”
“The topless thing! It wasn’t her fault she walked in wearing only half an outfit. I was fixing a stay. She didn’t even know there was a top. Sometimes there isn’t you know.”
“I do know. Of course I know. Our designs are sometimes barely even clothes.”
“My designs are more than clothes.”
The mounting tension in his voice thickened the air around me and ate at my life force like some evil Star Trek vampire alien. A really ugly, cheap-looking one from the original series.
“Of course they are, Hen…Manschingloss,” I said. “They’re beyond all, verbal description. But back to Ms. Nuckeby. She was upset because…” I found it hard to believe. “…because she was topless?”
“Why else?”
“I don’t know,” I lied. “Lots of reasons, I suppose. None of them litigious. Perhaps she didn’t like the room, or Mrs. Abrososa, or…”
“…your preference for fucking plastic?”
Okay, that hurt.
“Really, Corky. Water bottles? Ugly men with no fashion sense? God knows what else.