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She swallowed a scream and looked away.

I didn’t need the flashlight to see what Franny’s god had wrought. Froger’s poor, beautiful model had been immortalized in stinking plaster, and all the king’s horses and all the king’s men would never put Helga together again.

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.