Like Warm Sun on Nekkid Bottoms - Charles Austen [37]
She took her hand back and folded her arms across her stomach, lowering her head to hide her embarrassment. The silence that suddenly filled the room was deafening.
“I’m sorry, Grandfather,” I said, completing the defeat.
He stared at me intently, then glanced briefly at Ms. Nuckeby, who kept her eyes on her painted toenails—and had, to his personal amusement—lost her edge.
My dear Aunt Helena stepped forward with Ms. Nuckeby’s clothes and kindly handed them to her.
“Here you go, dear,” my aunt said, putting a gentle arm around Wisper’s shoulders.
Ms. Nuckeby took the clothes wordlessly and held them to her chest. Aunt Helena handed me a pair of trousers, then guided the silent Ms. Nuckeby away, head still down and silent as a tomb, into an adjoining room and away from prying eyes.
I didn’t even turn to watch her go.
Sitting shirtless on a footstool in the study with Grandfather as he continued pacing and repeating himself for the ten thousandth time, or more, I stared at the carpet and wondered who was the first person to think, ‘Hey. If I take this stuff that grows on the backs of a sheep and twist it for hours on end, I’ll bet I can make a neat floor covering.’
No one ever accused me of having too much depth.
I suppose most of you would expect I’d be thinking about my horrible showing with Ms. Nuckeby, and that did flit through the old cranium from time to time. But the mind wanders, and who did first look at a sheep and think—‘Clothes!’
“…exposed the company…failed at your job description…horse’s ass…” were a few of the repeated phrases that leaked through my woolen thinking now and again.
Mercifully, Aunt Helena walked in and cut him off.
“Oh, for God’s sake, leave the poor boy alone, Cecil! He’s a young man, and young men do stupid things. Would you like me to run a litany of the stupid things you’ve done in your lifetime?”
Grandfather gruffed, mumbling something about ‘dredging up the past’ but wound up cutting short the lecture anyway.
Helena smiled at me. “Sooo…your Ms. Nuckeby was planning to visit her parents this weekend?”
I looked at her blankly. Apparently she thought I should know this. But she could tell instantly, just by my expression, that it was news to me Ms. Nuckeby even had parents and quickly plunged on to help me avoid further embarrassment.
“Well, now—because your grandfather is so damn longwinded—the trains have stopped running, and she’s been stranded. But you needn’t worry about her. I’ve asked Biddleby to take her home, the poor thing.” Biddleby was her driver.
“Poor thing. HA! Exactly!” Grandfather laughed.
“What does that mean?” I asked.
“It’s always the poor who try this kind of stunt. Fortunately, she won’t have an inkling how much it’s worth. We’ll give her a small settlement of some kind, and that’ll be the end of it.”
“Maybe she won’t want a settlement. She seemed to genuinely like me.”
“They all seem to genuinely like you. Then the subpoenas arrive.”
I sneered at him. He could see I was unconvinced.
“She’s a model! They’re teenagers! The only thing more selfabsorbed than a teenager, or a model, is an actress! Each is as incapable as the other of loving anyone but themselves.”
Helena chuckled. “Don’t project your lack of appeal for women onto Corky. I’m certain any woman who’s ever had sex with you would naturally feel afterward that she was owed something more. But Corky’s different. She wasn’t exactly leaving here happily, you know.”
“She wasn’t?” I asked, with an odd mixture of pleasure and guilt.
“Because her little mission had failed, that’s why!” Grandfather snorted. “Give her a few days to mull it over—suss out how ‘psychologically damaged’ she was by this experience, and mark my words… ”
“Oh, let it go, you old poop,” Helena snapped. “It’s not all about money you know.”
“Says the poorer side of the family. Everything is always about money.”
Helena,