The Lonely Polygamist by Brady Udall

discomfort, it was clear, was improving her mood immensely.
    “So are you going to tell me what you want or should we stand here all day?”
    “My name is Golden Richards.” He pointed vaguely toward the door. “I’m the contractor on the new building. Mr. Ted Leo told me in his absence I should speak to you.”
    “You might have mentioned that in the first place, Mr. Richards, before I gave you the business. Every day of the week I have to deal with such a lineup of knuckleheads you wouldn’t believe, so you’ll forgive me for presuming the worst, which is the only way to manage things around here. Follow me to the office, where we can have some privacy.” The office, a tiny room stacked with papers, files, and ledger books, was just off the main parlor. “Please,” Miss Alberta said, gesturing to the only chair in the room, upon which there appeared to be a stack of at least a dozen rubber penises encased in shrink-wrap plastic.
    “I generally like to stand,” Golden said, stepping to the side. Anyone caught hanging around in a whorehouse, he thought, deserved exactly this.
    “Oh, the darn dildos !” Miss Alberta cried, as if she’d forgotten to put away her knitting. She scooped them up and dumped them on the counter next to a wall-mounted corkboard filled with thumbtacked notes, receipts and reminders. Pictures of several chubby children—her grandkids, by the beady-eyed look of them—were taped all over the walls. She put on a pair of bifocals and jotted something in one of the ledger books. “We just got a new order and haven’t had time to put things away. Can I get you something? Coffee?”
    He shook his head, but not in response to Miss Alberta’s question; he was trying to shake loose the word dildo , which had lodged in his brain and blocked his flow of thought. Dildo . He mouthed the word and looked up with a start to see if Miss Alberta had seen him. He’d heard the word used once or twice around the work site, but it never really meant anything to him. He’d always figured a dildo was some kind of bird.
    “I hope Ted Leo is being civil with you, he can be difficult to work for, that man.”
    Golden shook his head again until a few words found their way out of his mouth: “No. Ted Leo’s been good, real good.”
    “And how’s the building going?”
    “Fine.” Golden nodded. “Going fine.” The truth was they were weeks behind schedule, he’d lost one of his electrical contractors, and he was having trouble with his in-house crew, which was why he had ventured into the PussyCat Manor in the first place.
    “I was wondering if one of my men, his name is Charles Odlum, has been in here. Most people call him Leonard.”
    “Can I ask why you’d like to know?”
    “I hired all my men on the condition they wouldn’t, you know, frequent the establishment. They’ve been compliant, but I’ve gotten a report about Leonard—”
    “You object to the idea of a brothel, Mr. Richards?” she said, her voice whittled down to a fine point. “Maybe you’ve forgotten you’re building one.”
    “No, ma’am. I just don’t want it to be a…distraction for my men. They can do what they want in their spare time, but the fact is we’re working on a site with a…an operational brothel on it. You can see the difficulty, I hope. It’s up to me to draw the line on something like this.”
    In fact, the brothel had become a bigger distraction than he could have imagined. Though the actual building, just over a shallow rise, could not be seen from the job site, the lighted sign, with its depiction of a busty cartoon cat stroking her fluffed-up tail, was visible at all hours of the day. The brothel, and what went on inside it, was by far the most popular topic of conversation among the men. They referred to it as the Poontang Palace and Ye Olde Nunnery, and speculated endlessly on the girls’ names, their various specialties and physical characteristics, and what might be the highest-priced items