Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 138, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 821 & 822, September/October 2011

Hedge Hog by Hilary Davidson

A native Torontonian, Hilary Davidson has lived in New York City since 2001. She’s the author of 18 nonfiction kooks and many articles. In September of 2010, her first novel, Damage Done, appeared to strong reviews, including PW’s, which hailed the kook as “razor sharp.” She’s also making a mark as a short-story writer, making one of 2008’s best-of-the-year anthologies and winning the 2010 Spinetingler Award for Best Story.

Harris Bulger was no gentleman. I knew that long before I got into bed with him. Truth be told, there was actually very little time from when we first shook hands till we slipped between the sheets together. Afterwards, he slapped my bottom and told me that I was better than an escort. Instead of smacking him back, I smiled, and we started seeing each other once or twice a week, always at his Upper East Side apartment. What Harris lacked in charm, his home made up for with its towering ceilings, open-air terrace, and breathtaking view of New York.

Three months after our first rendezvous, Harris’s manners hadn’t improved. We were in bed again, but when Harris was done, he grunted and pushed me aside. I tumbled to the edge of the bed, sliding along the Egyptian cotton sheets while Harris sat up, lit a cigarette, and started to lay out another line of cocaine.

“You should get going before Meredith comes home,” he said.

Meredith was his wife, a tall, blond trophy who, I’d heard, liked to brag about how she used to work on Wall Street, almost ten years after she’d been making coffee for the traders at Lehman Brothers.

“I was planning to stay and play with you awhile longer, darling.” I ran my fingers through the thick, matted fur on his back, while he vacuumed up the coke. “I don’t get to see you often enough.”

Harris turned toward me, making the extra flesh that padded his body and pooled in his belly wobble. “Having you here is a lot more fun, Lacey.”

“I could arrange to be here full-time, you know.”

“That would be great,” he answered, but his tone was noncommittal. I’d heard all of his complaints about Meredith: her temper, her vanity, her bouts of bulimia, her appetite for drugs, her taunting Harris about his growing bulk, and her lack of interest in him. Why he didn’t kick her bony ass out to the street was beyond me. It wasn’t as if they had kids together. Undoubtedly, Harris’s success as a hedge-fund manager was as attractive to her as it was to me, but Meredith was born into a wealthy family, so she must have had other resources. In any case, I didn’t need to understand it. I only needed to work around it.

“Tell me what you want, darling,” I cooed. “What do you want most in the world right now?”

He took a long drag. “You know what I could really go for?”

“What?”

“A burger from that Frenchie guy’s place.” He flicked ash on the bed and I shuddered at the thought of beautiful sheets with cigarette holes. Harris wouldn’t care. He’d replace them with Frette linens from Gracious Home that cost about as much as a month’s rent at my drab little shoebox in Flatbush.

“Frenchie guy? You mean Daniel Boulud?” I asked. “You want the Burger Royale? The one with shaved black truffles?”

“Yeah.” Harris’s jowls relaxed into a smile and his small, piggy eyes got a faraway look. “Get them to deliver a couple, will you?”

“Oh, I’m not going to have one.”

“They’re for me.” Harris squinted and his lower lip quivered. “What, are you going to start taunting me about my weight like Meredith does? It’s genetic, you know.” He dropped his cigarette into a glass on the night table and looked at the face of the gold watch sitting beside it. With a lumbering effort, he propelled himself off the bed. “Gotta shower.” He didn’t turn around, so I was spared the full-frontal view. “See you, Lacey.”

“ ’Bye, darling,” I called, aiming for a wistful note, as if I were going to miss him. What I really wanted to do was to wash myself with Lysol. But once I heard the water in the shower go on, that sensation faded. I was alone in the most beautiful apartment I’d ever seen. Slipping out of bed, I put on my push-up bra and stockings and pulled my dress on. My shoes were by the front door, because Harris said my stiletto heels might damage the beautiful parquet floors. Meredith was very protective of the floors, apparently.

I stood for a moment, listening to the water. Then, before I lost my nerve, I grabbed the red thong that matched my bra and marched into Meredith’s dressing room. The space was gigantic, with mirrored walls, Art Deco furniture, and a leopard-print carpet. One wall was a shrine to shoes, with Manolo Blahnik, Jimmy Choo, and Christian Louboutin all sharing space on the shelves. The urge to try them on nagged at me, but Meredith’s huge size-eleven feet were three sizes bigger than mine. Focus, I told myself. Then I tucked the thong into the edge of the chaise longue, where the back met the seat. No way was Meredith going to miss that.

I turned to her dressing table. Meredith was a neat freak who kept her hairpins lined up in a row. She was smart enough to lock up her jewelry, but she left other treasures lying around. There was a jar of Clé de Peau’s precious La Crème moisturizer sitting there, with a delicate silver spatula balanced atop it. The implement actually came with the cream, but since that cost $475 an ounce, it was a relative pittance. I wondered if Meredith collected the little spatulas when she was done with each jar. It seemed like the kind of tiling she would do. On impulse, I swiped the cream and spatula and dropped it into my bag. Would she notice that? I’d swiped her bottle of Baccarat’s Les Larmes Sacrées de Thebes perfume on my last visit to the apartment. I didn’t even like the fragrance, but I craved the pyramid-shaped crystal bottle. That was before I discovered it cost $1,700 for a quarter-ounce. I wondered what she thought was happening to her stuff.

There was a little slip of paper under the jar. I squinted at it.

Tramp, it said. Perfect for Hedge Hog.

For some reason, my lips quivered. Was that bleached-blond bag of anorexic bones calling me a tramp? Hedge Hog was her nasty nickname for her husband. When Harris had first told me about it, I’d almost laughed. That would have been a bad move, because the name almost brought Harris to tears. Still, it was wittier than I’d have given Meredith credit for. But there was nothing funny about being called a tramp.

The note was creepy, as if Meredith were speaking directly to me, something she’d never done when I’d seen her in person. She’d visited Harris’s office a couple of times, sweeping in without even a hello as I sat there at the reception desk.

For a moment, I felt an urge to flee the apartment. I backed out of the dressing room and closed the double French doors with a soft click. The shower was still running. Harris had plenty of real estate to wash, after all. No one was chasing me out, but I felt out of place. That sensation lasted until I walked into the living room. Harris’s apartment was on the twelfth floor of a Fifth Avenue building overlooking Central Park and was barely a block away from the Guggenheim. Some decorator had mixed French antiques with Southeast Asian icons throughout, and the results were serenely beautiful. I wasn’t sure how I’d change it when I finally moved in, though I knew I’d have to. A woman had to mark her territory.

Boulud Bistro was on speed dial on the kitchen phone. Harris’s craving for a $150 burger was not a new thing. No matter how much money he raked in, he still had the tastes of an adolescent boy. After I phoned the order in, I pulled a crystal tumbler from a cabinet, marked it with a red lip print, and set it on the counter. There was no way that Meredith was going to miss the evidence of my latest visit to Harris’s apartment. If she wanted to keep any dignity at all, she’d have to leave.

As I strolled out the door, I stopped for one last, lingering gaze. In my head, I was already living there. It was going to be wonderful, even if it was with Harris.

Afterwards I walked down Fifth Avenue, along the edge of Central Park. My fantasy of living on the Upper East Side continued to play in my head. It was easy to picture myself jogging through the park in the morning, then having a massage or doing yoga. I’d have lunch at those fancy restaurants favored by the ladies of the neighborhood, places where they brought you a special footstool to hold your handbag. In the afternoon, I’d probably have a board meeting at an art museum. I wouldn’t be just another socialite taking up a seat at the table; I could help a museum, say, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, with its acquisitions. I’d been a fine-art major at Butler University, after all.

In fact, when I’d first come to New York, a starry-eyed grad, I’d worked in a series of quirky little galleries in Chelsea. Deep down, I’d always suspected that was where I’d meet my future husband. But the only men who walked in the door were either gay, taken, or bill collectors who were there to repossess the office furniture. After struggling for six years through that, I’d bailed and gone to work for an office-temp agency. That had improved the odds of meeting straight men... that, and the fact that my standards had sunk. I’d given up hope of finding a wealthy, handsome soul mate. I was thirty-two and not getting any younger, so I’d scratched every requirement off my list but one: money.

The fact that I was even seeing Harris showed how far my standards had dropped. Harris wasn’t any girl’s dream, of that much I was sure. He was of average height but above-average build. Most of the hair on his head had already waved bye-bye, at thirty-eight, though the carpet on his chest, back, arms, and legs grew thick and furry. He had sweaty palms, bad breath, and an overbite that should have been corrected years ago.

Still, he knew how to make money. So he had a certain charm. I had to give him that.

Harris ignored me when we were at work. I was on a contract, filling in for a receptionist who’d gotten knocked up by a married trader. That was one smart cookie, I thought. Still, the thought of carrying Harris’s spawn made bile surge up my throat. I waited for a couple of days, then shimmied into his office after the market closed for the day and closed the door behind me.

“I’ve missed you, darling,” I cooed.

“Busy,” Harris barked back, his eyes not leaving his computer screens. He had three monitors that told him what was going on in markets around the world. The room reeked of cigarette smoke. Of course, it was illegal to smoke in the office, but the higher-ups didn’t care what the hedge-fund managers did so long as they produced big returns. If you looked closely, there were traces of white powder on his desk.

“Do you want me to come over tonight?”

“No.”

If I’d cared about him, my feelings would have been hurt. You stupid jerk, I thought. I’d like to shove you out the window. I was tempted to call him Hedge Hog, but worried that would cross a line. “That’s too bad,” I said instead. “Want me to come over tomorrow?”

“No.”

It was frustrating that he wouldn’t even look at me. “Is your wife in town?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Does she have any trips planned soon?”

“She’s ditching me next week to watch polo in Barbados.” The hurt in his voice was clear. Poor Harris felt like he was being abandoned. This was my way in.

“How could she want to leave you?” I sat in Harris’s lap, not an easy thing to do given how much stomach surged over it. “She doesn’t appreciate what a good thing she’s got.”

We went at it for a little while. When we finished, he was sweaty and panting. I got up and made sure I looked decent. The last thing I wanted was for anyone else at the office to know about us. If there was a better prospect in these waters, I wanted to catch him and toss this one back.

“That was fun, Lacey,” Harris said, lighting a cigarette. “I’ll tell you when she’s gone so you can come over. We can have some more fun together.”

The fun was one-sided, but I kept that to myself. “That sounds wonderful, darling. I can’t wait.”

A smarter, less conceited man would have heard the sarcasm in my voice. But Harris just sat there, happy as the proverbial pig in mud.

“Hey, Lacey,” he said on my way out.

“What is it, darling?”

“Order me up some pizza, will you? Bacon, peppers, extra cheese, caviar.”

I smiled and closed the door.

The next time I went to Harris’s apartment, I was prepared. I brought perfume so that I could mark my territory, feminine hygiene products that were a different brand from what Meredith used, and a book of love poetry that I was going to leave under her bedside table. I had doubts about that last one. She’d been living with Harris long enough to know he wasn’t the love-poetry type. Still, the message would be loud and clear. You’re losing this battle, it proclaimed.

My ace was inside a pink box that came from a Lower East Side shop that most people wore sunglasses to go inside. It was an adult toy called the Flower Power, and it promised hours of solo pleasure. That was going inside Meredith’s bedside table. I was still mulling over writing a note to go with it. You must be lonely, I wanted to say, wondering if that was enough of a taunt.

And then I found her note. It was on a plain yellow Post-it note on her dresser, under a jar of Valmont skin cream that cost roughly the same as my monthly rent. Hands off Hedge Hog, it said. None of this belongs to you.

Was this woman nuts? Did she think that writing little notes to me was going to scare me away? There was something creepy about it, true, but it spoke volumes about her, the fact that she knew I was in her home, and that her only defense against me was through Post-its. She must be feeling threatened. She knew that I was there. She didn’t know my name, or any details about me, but she’d gotten the message. I was winning. Poor Meredith.

The only thing was, I wasn’t entirely sure I wanted the prize that was within my grasp. True, I loved trying on Meredith’s designer clothes, but I wanted my own. I stole her lotions and potions; Meredith’s dressing table was like a candy store for women who’d had to give up edible treats to stay thin.

“You’d better not be getting vain like her,” Harris huffed one morning when he caught me staring into the dressing table’s mirror. I’d been examining the fine lines that had etched themselves into the delicate skin under my eyes. If they’d been obvious enough for Harris to see, he’d replace me in the time it took to get more black-truffle burgers delivered.

That was the thing about Harris: His life was all about what he wanted. While I stayed with him that week, I discovered how brutish he really was. It wasn’t that he was cruel; he just didn’t think that anyone else had needs. He’d order food for himself and forget about me. In bed, he acted like I was his slave. But I pretended to enjoy every moment, and that made him very happy. One night, after he pushed me off him and rolled over to snort down another line of cocaine, I asked him if he’d ever had this much fun with Meredith.

“No,” he answered. “Never.”

“Really?” I was intrigued. “What’s she like in bed?”

“We don’t do much anymore. I have more fun with other girls.”

Other girls? Was there one besides me? Tension shot down my back, straightening my spine. “Oh, you have other girls?” I said, in a teasing voice. “Why don’t you ask them over so we can party together?”

“I’m not seeing anyone else right now. Just you, Lacey.” It was probably as close to a declaration of affection as I’d ever get from him.

“But there have been other girls, before me?”

“Sure.” Harris lit a cigarette and lay back.

“What happened to them?”

“Sometimes I get tired of them. Sometimes they meet someone else. And sometimes...” His eyes looked hazy, as if he were working on a puzzle. “Things just don’t work out.”

Who wouldn’t want to take your calls? I thought. “Have you ever thought about breaking up with Meredith?”

“Sure”

“But you haven’t done it.”

“I did once.”

“Really? What happened?”

“There was this other girl who I... well, I fell for her, and Meredith... well, Meredith was being Meredith.” He dragged on his cigarette. If only it could have made him more articulate. “But it didn’t work out. The other girl... changed.”

“Changed how?”

Harris stared at the ceiling. I repeated my question, but he wouldn’t look at me. “It just didn’t work out,” he said finally.

“So Meredith moved back in?”

“Yeah. She makes my life... well, not easy, but it’s... familiar, I guess. Even though I kind of hate living with her.” He took a long drag. “Sometimes I think she likes it that I sleep with other women, so I don’t bother her. My own wife doesn’t want me.” His eyes were watery.

“You mean she doesn’t work at pleasing you?” I leaned over and kissed him.

“She’s not like you, Lacey. You work really hard at making me happy.” He was staring at me intently. “If she moved out would you move in?”

“Are you asking me to?” In spite of everything, I was still eager. I wanted to live in that apartment.

“Yes.” His voice was quiet, almost shy. “I don’t like to be alone. If she moves out, you’d have to move in immediately.”

“I think that could be arranged.”

“It would be fun, having you here all the time.” He crushed his cigarette. “You wouldn’t travel all the time and leave me here, would you?”

“Never,” I promised, tempted to cross my fingers.

“I bet we’d have a lot of fun together,” he said.

“Oh, we would.”

“I’ll think about it,” he said.

I wanted to slap him. The way he sounded made it seem entirely his decision, not mine. His job at the hedge fund and his money had made him incredibly arrogant. Still, that money was what I wanted.

“I’ll make you happier than she ever has,” I said, going on to argue my point without words.

When I left Harris’s apartment after that extended visit, I was pleased with myself. But as I stepped outside, into the sunshine, it hit me that he hadn’t so much as given me cab fare back to Flatbush.

It hit me then what a sweet deal Meredith had.

There I was, standing on the street with my overnight bag, crammed full of little luxuries I’d pilfered from Meredith’s dressing table. Perfume, skin-perfecting serums and creams, luxe makeup, and a pair of silver earrings that she must have deemed not important enough to lock up. I’d picked up her leavings and kept her husband occupied while she was off in a tropical paradise.

She didn’t want Harris, but she wasn’t going to divorce him, either. The fact that he was sleeping with me actually enabled him to stay with her.

That realization hurt. I wandered, dazed, to the subway entrance on Lexington, but I couldn’t make myself walk down the stairs. It wasn’t that I was afraid of the subway, but I dreaded the moment when I would have to return to my crappy apartment in Flatbush. The thought of turning all three locks and stepping inside a room that stank of mold and mu shu pork was more than I could bear just then. Instead I wandered south, found myself in front of a church, and was drawn inside.

It had been years since I’d stepped into a church, much less a confessional. I wasn’t ready to go that far now, but I reflexively dipped my hand into the font, then slipped into a pew. There were a few other people sitting in the church, and they stared ahead, almost as if the priest were performing Mass. I opened my bag and extracted the Post-it note: Hands off Hedge Hog. None of this belongs to you.

How many times had Meredith written notes like that to the different women Harris had cheated with? I was just the latest in a long line, and suddenly, it didn’t seem worth it. It wasn’t as if I loved Harris. I adored his apartment and craved his lifestyle. But I didn’t even like him, and I shuddered to think of the life ahead of me, with Harris pawing at me and then shoving me aside. I was doing wrong, and it wasn’t even getting me anywhere.

Stop now, I told myself. Move on. There are plenty of other rich guys out there. I decided then and there that I wasn’t crawling after Harris anymore. And I was going to run the other way if he came after me. There had to be someone better.

My resolution lasted almost three months. That was long enough for me to have the satisfaction of blowing Harris off the next several times he tried to get me to sleep with him.

“But why not?” he asked me, once he realized I was serious. “We have a good time together, Lacey. I thought you cared about me.”

“You’re married, and I’m not interested in a married man.”

The wounded expression on his jowly face was priceless. Better yet, I met Nigel, another hedge-fund manager, but one who was a handsome triathlete with a sexy South African accent. For a month, I thought I’d died and gone to heaven, until I actually almost died. Nigel had flown me — on a private plane — to Bermuda for a weekend.

“What I love about you, Lacey, is that you don’t have any inhibitions. You don’t, do you?” he asked.

“None at all,” I’d answered. His hands caressed my neck, and then he started to throttle me. I tried to scream, but no sound came out of my mouth but a choked gurgle. His green eyes were wide with excitement, and the more I panicked, the more they gleamed. Then I blacked out. When I woke up, Nigel was sipping champagne and smoking a Cuban cigar. I was on the floor.

“That was lovely, Lacey,” he said. “You do bruise up terribly, though.”

There were marks on my throat where he’d gripped me, a necklace of black and blue. After that, Harris started looking pretty good again. Especially since he was pursuing me. There were flowers and plaintive phone calls. He bought me a bracelet from Tiffany & Co., and when that didn’t work, a necklace from Harry Winston. He couldn’t understand what had happened, but he’d do anything to get me back, he said.

“Then get rid of Meredith,” I told him.

He did, and I moved into his apartment the next day. It was even more gorgeous than I remembered. Meredith hadn’t smashed any glass or done any damage. Instead, she’d packed up her jewelry and some clothing and personal items and left. Harris didn’t know where she’d gone. Her clothing was still on hangers and most of her shoes were there, but the luxurious toiletries and makeup were gone.

But there was a note on her dressing table: Hedge Hog is all yours. Enjoy it while it lasts.

It amazed me that she hadn’t put up more of a fight. She’d vanished with barely a whimper. Was that note her attempt to mock me, or make me feel insecure or guilty? It was a failure. I crumpled it up and threw it out.

It was true that living with Harris wasn’t going to be any picnic. While I was in the apartment, I still didn’t have any money, and Harris wouldn’t give me any.

“If you need something, tell me and I’ll buy it for you,” he said.

I’d already made a list of things I wanted to get. The top of my list was an appointment with a Park Avenue dermatologist known for her amazing ability to suspend her patients’ aging process.

“Are you kidding me?” Harris asked. “Meredith wasted so much of my money on crap like that. No way.”

The only thing he seemed to think of as a reasonable purchase was lingerie. He ordered a selection of it for me. On the same day that my French maid’s costume arrived, so did a box for Meredith. It was from a department store, and it was filled with her monthly supply of beauty products. It seemed heaven-sent. There was a collection of small bottles from Sisley-Paris, filled with their famous elixir, and RéVive’s precious serum — $600 an ounce! — that promised to turn over dead skin cells at a rate eight times faster than normal skin. My heart skipped a beat. I ran with it to the bathroom, washed my face, and put on some serum. It immediately stung my skin, which seemed a sure sign that it was working. I gently tapped on some eye cream, and it made my fingers sizzle as well as my face. That’s some powerful stuff, I thought. But it was only when I misted my face with what was supposed to be a skin-softening balm that I felt scorching pain. It was as if someone had seared off the top layer of my skin. I screamed and splashed water on my face, but when I looked in the mirror, my skin was completely red, and my eyes were puffed up like a bullfrog’s.

“Acid bums don’t heal normally,” the doctor told me in the hospital. That was much later, after they’d sedated and restrained me because of the pain. They put me on an IV that gave me the means to push the pain away, but it lurked by me, trying to get closer. What I wanted was a mirror, but they wouldn’t let me near one.

“Plastic surgery will help,” the doctor added. “But it will take several operations. Insurance won’t cover most of it. Do you have anyone who can help you financially?”

“My boyfriend,” I said. The words came out garbled, because the thin skin of my lips had been burned away.

“All right. We’ll talk with him when he comes in,” the doctor said.

Harris came in once, while I was sleeping, I was told by a nurse. I waited for him to come back, then asked a nurse to call him, then tried calling him myself. The bandages on my hands made it hard to do. Or maybe that was the pain medication. Either way, I couldn’t reach him.

Then the note arrived.

Dear Lacey, I’m so sorry that things didn’t work out between us. I wish you all the best.

It wasn’t signed, but it didn’t need to be. I recognized Meredith’s handwriting.