The Lady And The Tiger 4

Inside, the sex shop reminded Jason oddly of a Borders—maybe a Blockbuster. Would-be corporate sanitization, but no matter how many QR codes they sprinkled around, a fine layer of sleaze remained on everything.

The black spray-paint over the windows reduced the light to a yellow feed from the fluorescents. The smell, for all its strong hints of air freshener, was still thick with harsh cleaning fluid and the bitter tang of cigarette smoke. And none of the people there seemed like they were just stopping by before having dinner at a Chili’s.

Jason strolled through the DVD racks. Harleen followed behind him, more out of fear of being left unattended than wanting his company.

“I don’t think of myself as a real kinky guy,” he said. “I’m not asking for a Brazilian wax. Hell, I won’t even push for anal. But do you think we should do anal beads or a buttplug?”

“You’re kidding me,” Harleen said flatly. “I don’t even know what those things are. I told you, I’m not a hooker!”

“They’re pretty self-explanatory.” Jason came to the anal stimulation shelf space. He picked up a buttplug with a tail attached, showing Harleen the picture on the back of the box. “This is nice. It’s bigger than a bead, obviously, but once it’s in, you’re not going to forget it’s there. Hey, you think they have lingerie here? At least edible panties…”

“I’m a scientist, a scientist!” Harleen sounded like she was in danger of repeating herself—a lot. “I know I made some certain overtures, but that was when people were going to kill me!”

“People are still going to kill you. Why is that?” Jason asked curiously, now picking up a set of anal beads. He rattled them around in their glass jar. “You seem nice enough to me…”

“It’s not my fault! Obviously! I’m an entrepreneur, an innovator.”

“Sounds like you’re used to trying new things.” Jason handed her the anal beads.

Harleen hurriedly put them back on the shelf. “I was going to disrupt the entire eyecare industry. My start-up was creating disposable contact lenses. Ecologically friendly. More affordable. And you don’t have to take them out!”

“You don’t have to take them out?”

“They dissolve with the body’s naturally occurring tears. It would’ve revolutionized everything. And we weren’t stopping there! We were going to do eyeglasses next. You’ve heard of no-stick pans? Imagine a set of glasses that can’t have dirt stick to them, that don’t smudge, and have AR technology built into the lenses. You could be riding on the bus and log into the Metaverse just by pushing a button.”

“The Metaverse. Wow. Do you have any preference when it comes to nipple clamps?”

“Nipple clamps…?”

“I’m not fucking you without nipple clamps.”

Harleen raised her voice. “You’re not reading me here! I was on Forbes’ 40 Under 40!”

“Gosh. You’re under forty?”

Harleen thumped him on the sternum. “This isn’t a joke, you… whoever you are! There are hundreds of millions of dollars tied up in this!”

“Sounds neat. Can I see one of these contacts?”

Harleen’s face fell. It was almost comical. Like seeing a Macy’s Day float spring a leak on fast-forward. “Product testing is an essential, a vital part of bringing a product to market… setbacks, setbacks are always part of the process…”

“We need lube.” Jason jokingly struck his own forehead. “Duh, right?”

Harleen didn’t need to run to keep up with his long strides, but she just about did anyway, like a Chihuahua yapping at his heels. “The product works! It is good! The kinks just need to be worked out. And those animal testing people… do they want science to grind to a stop? Would they drive in a car that hadn’t been tested? Fly in a plane with a pilot who hadn’t practiced?”

Jason snatched a set of fuzzy handcuffs from a spinner rack. “These look good to you?” He waved them in Harley’s face. “I’m more function over form myself, but I’m not against a little romance. The pink negligee, the Italian song on the radio… Where do the thugs come in? Mark Cuban sending those guys now?”

Harleen spread out flattened hands. “I borrowed money. From some… morally gray lenders. Everyone cuts corners some time. I was assured that the product testing phase would be complete in more than enough time to bring our first wave to the market. We already had the preorders, thousands of them. We had the factory, the warehouse—I had dinner with the postmaster. Everything was set, we just hit a few snags. But…” She scratched at the back of her neck. “Some people can be very unreasonable with their money. Very… all loans are something of a gamble, really.”

“You took money from the Mob and you can’t pay it back.”

“I can pay it back, I can, obviously, I didn’t get in hock to the Mob without a Plan B…”

“Which was?”

Harleen huffed and crossed her arms. “Why am I discussing this in a sex shop? I’m not sure someone of your intellect can even understand the complexities of the business world.”

“You planned to shuffle around your legitimate investments with your loan shark money so you could pay off the mobster and declare bankruptcy right in the face of all the venture capitalists you fucked with. That about right?” Jason found the Astro-Glide. He dropped it in his shopping bag. “So what went wrong?”

“Who are you, anyway? You a cop? No, you can’t be a cop. Even cops can’t… can they? Maybe you’re bad at being a cop…”

“I’m sure I’d be bad at a lot of things I’m smart enough not to try. You wanna check out the peepshow? Get into the mood?” He nodded to a black curtain against the wall—the adult section of a video store that was all adult to begin with.

“Peepshow?” Harleen repeated incredulously.

“Peepshow it is.” And he pulled her by the arm past the curtain.