"What does that mean?" Judy asked.
Nick paused a moment, seeming to think his answer over carefully. "The Mystic Springs Oasis is a health club, of sorts, and the mammal who runs it is, well, a bit of an odd bird."
Judy thought that there was a lot implied by "of sorts" but she focused on the more pressing part of Nick's answer. "Odd how?" Judy asked.
"He does all his business in the sauna, so—"
Judy cut him off. "Is that all?" she asked, feeling relieved, "You thought I wouldn't be comfortable in a sauna? One of the other farms had a sauna and they'd invite us over all the time in the winter."
The Jänisinen family had moved from the old country, as they called it, generations ago, but they hadn't forgotten their love of saunas even though Bunnyburrows never got cold enough for the arctic hares to feel it. Judy had always enjoyed it when the Jänisinens had invited them over—sitting in the heat and humidity of the sauna wrapped in a scratchy towel had always felt cleansing in a way that normal baths never did.
Nick looked at her closely. "Family and neighbors is one thing," he said, "Being in there with a bunch of strangers won't bother you?"
"They can't be any worse than a fifteen year old buck," she said.
Nick shrugged. "Alright, then," he said, "But what happened to that buck? For your sake, I hope he was a neighbor and not family."
As she recalled, Old Jan Jänisinen had boxed his grandson John's ears when he caught the young buck staring at where the does' towels ended and their fur began, and then forced him to apologize and banned him from the sauna for the rest of the winter. The memory made her uncomfortably aware of how revealing those towels had been, only covering from just under the armpits to a few inches short of the knees. Perhaps some of the mammals would leer like John, but she could deal with that if she had to. Judy rolled her eyes. "Just because I'm from the country doesn't mean I'm some kind of… of inbred hick," she said, "He was a neighbor."
"Can he still see?" Nick asked as he went about the business of getting the Buchatti started again.
Judy wasn't sure if Nick was suggesting that she might have put out John's eyes as revenge or that John had been struck blind by seeing a few inches of her thighs, but she didn't dignify his question with a response. "So where is this place?" she asked, yelling to be heard above the roar of the car's engine.
Nick called out directions as she drove, and she wasn't sure where in the city they were until the wall dividing Sahara Square from the rest of the city loomed in front of them. Sirocco Street wasn't one of the main entrances into the artificial desert, and rather than the bold decorations that those had, somewhere between floral patterns and geometric designs, the archway was simply a smooth break in the otherwise unembellished stainless steel surface of the wall. Compared to the featureless exterior of the wall, the interior of the wall was a dizzying array of coils running behind massive grates, broken here and there by enormous banks of transformers. The wall was barely running, the heating elements a dull red rather than the white-orange they would turn at full power, but it was still enough to bring the temperature up from a pleasant summer day to almost oppressively hot as they passed through the narrow archway through the massive wall. Nick said something, but Judy couldn't hear him over the combined noise of the Buchatti and the massive dehumidifiers that lined the archway. She pulled at one ear to show she hadn't heard and he repeated himself once they were through, tapping one claw against a gage on the dashboard. The needle was positioned about halfway through its range of motion, and the face of the gage was labeled "Huile," which meant nothing to her. "We have to watch this," he said, "If it overheats, we're walking."
Judy nodded, but she barely paid half her attention to the gage as she kept driving. She had only ever passed through Sahara Square once, and that had been not even a week ago on her first field assignment. When she had gone to the Thief of the Night, though, she had been too focused on her assignment to pay much attention to the parts of the city she passed through, and it had been nighttime anyway. In the light of day, though, Sahara Square was something else.
There was far more open space than the other parts of the city; the buildings were widely spaced apart from each other, as though the district had been built too large and didn't have enough residents to fill it. There wasn't much in the way of vegetation; there were a few shrubs, but what at first glance appeared to be palm trees were actually streetlamps disguised as trees. The artificial wind generated by the blowers that circulated the hot air throughout the district brought with them the bitter alkali scent of the dust and sand that took the place of the grasses and weeds that claimed the few patches of open dirt in the rest of the city. The gritty wind made her wish that she had a pair of goggles; from the way that Nick had narrowed his eyes besides her, she thought he might be thinking the same thing.
Although the day was still overcast, the glare from lamps intended to simulate the sun made the buildings seem to float like mirages on the sands in the heat haze that rose from the ground. Compared to the part of the city that Judy lived in, most of the buildings seemed a more natural part of the environment; the squat and somewhat irregularly shaped buildings made of adobe looked more like little hills than anything mammals had made. There were a few taller buildings, but they were far more graceful than the tenements of the more heavily urbanized parts of the city, with elegant spires of white granite and narrow windows like elongated keyholes. As Nick continued to call off turns, Judy couldn't help but notice that there were very few mammals out and about, and she wondered if there simply weren't many mammals living in the district or if those who did tended towards being nocturnal. At last, though, Nick had her pull to a stop in front of a building that didn't look too much different from the others around it. "This is it?" she asked, taking it in as they got out of the car.
"No, the Mystic Springs Oasis is about three blocks that way," Nick said, pointing even as he began walking in the direction he had indicated.
"You're still limping," Judy said, "Why park so far away?"
Nick scratched at the back of his neck. "We're a fox and a bunny in a bright blue Buchatti. We stick out a little."
Judy realized what he meant. "Have you seen anyone following us?"
Nick looked at her somewhat apologetically. "Well, I haven't. Isn't that what they train you prohis to notice?"
Judy sighed. "Isn't that what bootleggers are supposed to notice?"
As they kept walking, Nick held up two fingers and counted off his points. "One, I was never a bootlegger, thank you very much. I just made the deals and I was only running the books, not the merchandise. Two, there's no better way of making mammals suspicious than acting like someone's looking for you."
Judy realized he had been pointedly remarking on how she was glancing about, her ears swiveling in all directions as she tried to notice anyone paying attention to them, and she tried to act more naturally. Unfortunately, acting natural was the sort of thing that got harder the more she tried to concentrate on it, and she eventually gave up. If mammals saw a bunny and a fox walking together, they'd probably remember it no matter what they were doing. When they did at last come to the Mystic Springs Oasis, Judy thought that she wouldn't be able to mistake it for anything else. Over the top of a wall of polished granite bricks she saw a building that was a study in contrasts between sharp right angles and curving domes. The main gate through the wall was a latticework of finely wrought iron that formed elaborate knots and stretched at least twelve feet high and six feet wide. The space between the wall and the main building really was an oasis; there were palm trees, real ones unlike those in the parts of the district they had passed through, arranged around shimmering pools swimming with fish. The grounds were a riot of color, delicate flowers arranged around meandering stone paths that circled a massive fountain that seemed to have been carved out of a single solid piece of marble and filled the space with the soothing sound of flowing water.
Inside, the architecture continued to impress. The ceiling in the lobby was the inside of a dome, and the stone had been divided into trapezoids and diamonds with slight bulging curves to their lines, the insides of the segments all elaborately carved. The floor was an incredible mosaic of tiny stones, each no bigger than the nail of Judy's smallest finger, in colors that ran from beiges and browns to blues and greens, forming an abstract pattern something like a circle of flowers around a series of interlocking pentagons. The grandeur of the place made its emptiness all the more noticeable; there was no one behind the smooth sweep of a marble reception desk, and the low benches spaced around the perimeter of the room were likewise empty. Judy looked at Nick uncertainly. "Are you sure it's open?" she asked, instinctively lowering her voice to a low whisper.
"The gate and door were open," Nick said cheerfully; at regular volume his voice echoed throughout the room.
"I'll meet you in the baths," he said, and then made a beeline for a doorway that had been labeled "Male - Predators."
Judy split off towards the other side of the lobby, and went through the doorway labeled "Female - Prey." Inside, the locker room was surprisingly mundane considering the lobby. The walls were simple blocks of stone, with wooden benches and metal lockers. It actually reminded Judy rather strongly of the jail she had spent a night in; the lockers were similarly arranged so that they got smaller and smaller as they moved down the wall, with the very smallest serviced by a tiny little elevator no bigger than a soup can. Opposite the lockers was a list of rules, which Judy quickly scanned. They didn't seem like they'd be out of place in a far shabbier location, covering topics like not leaving dirty towels around and requiring all mammals to shower before entering the baths. There was a bank of showers further inside the locker room, none of them in use, and Judy debated internally about what to do. At last, she decided to obey the sign; there was no one to see her and there were stacks and stacks of luxuriously soft looking towels near the shower area. Before locking the locker and claiming the key, she grabbed her badge from her purse, choosing to ignore both the revolver and the rejection letter still nestled in it.
The shower was even better than the one in Nick's home, and Judy only reluctantly turned it off and dried herself with a towel that was longer than she was tall but was even softer than it had looked. She grabbed a more appropriately sized towel to wrap around herself for the sauna, and was pleased that it was even less revealing than the ones she had used in the Jänisinen's sauna; it actually covered her knees, making the overall effect something like a strange sleeveless dress. She brought the edges of the towel over each other near her armpit and used her Prohibition Agent badge like a brooch to keep it together, placing the badge itself against her fur so it wouldn't be visible.
Satisfied that her towel wasn't going anywhere and she still had access to her badge, Judy made her way to the exit of the locker room, which had signs on either side helpfully indicating where the facilities where. Ignoring the sign on the left, which pointed out, among a staggering array of other areas, the dust baths, the smoking lounge, and the central courtyard, she followed the sign on the right that listed the sauna.
"There you are," Nick said as Judy left the locker room, "I was starting to think you got lost."
When Judy turned to look at him, she immediately froze. Like Judy, the only scrap of fabric that Nick had was his towel. Unlike her, however, he was holding it in one paw and not wearing it. His entire body was completely bare, and she could see that the patch of cream colored fur on the underside of his muzzle ran all the way down to his—"Why are you naked?" she shrieked.
Judy grabbed her ears, which felt like they were burning under her fur, and pulled them over her eyes as she turned away. "See, this is the reaction I was expecting when I said we had to meet him in a sauna," Nick said, sounding puzzled, "No one wears anything into a sauna."
Judy still had her eyes firmly shut, but she felt as though the image had been burned into them. Freshly showered and without any clothes on Nick was thinner than she would have guessed a predator would be, but he still had a fair amount of muscle on his lean frame. He wasn't built anything like a bunny; his torso seemed disproportionately long and he was full of sharp angles where a bunny, even a buck, would be softer and curved. His arms and legs were thicker and seemed more powerful, and his paws were enormous. Judy had never seen a buck naked to be able to make the comparison, but even Nick's—she forced the thought out of her mind and tried to focus on regaining her composure. "Are you alright?" Nick asked.
She was still facing the wall with her eyes shut, but she could practically imagine how he must look, his eyes showing a touch of concern. Judy forced out a long breath she hadn't realized she had been holding. "You didn't mention anything about needing to be naked," she said, feeling her heart starting to slow down.
"I don't know how they do it in Hicksville, but in the city you don't wear anything into a sauna."
Judy forced a laugh. "You spent two years in Podunk," she said, "Shouldn't you know how Hicksville works?"
"Lots of mud baths out in Podunk," Nick said dryly, "Not so many saunas. Look, do you need to leave? I'm a big fox; I'm sure I can handle this."
Judy responded almost instantly. "No, I'm fine," Judy said, "But... Could you wrap your towel around your waist?"
"It'll be a major faux pas," Nick said, with a weary resigned air that sounded very much affected, "But if it'll get you to turn around, fine."
She could hear the rustling of Nick adjusting his towel before he said she could look. When she turned around and opened her eyes, Nick looked more amused than anything else, but he had covered the lower half of his body entirely. "I thought you knew what you were in for," he said, and while he seemed to be attempting to stifle a laugh he sounded sincere.
"I should have let you finish," she said, "That's what you were going to save before we drove over here, wasn't it?"
Nick nodded. "When you were talking about a sauna and that buck, I figured you meant he was peeping at you in a place like this. Well, like this but smaller and down-homier. You know," he said, gesturing vaguely to take in the building, "I can't do anything about the other mammals in here."
Judy wasn't sure she could articulate why, but it seemed as though it'd be easier to deal with the nudity of other mammals than with that of Nick. Maybe it was because she was starting to get to know him, and it was simply embarrassing in the way that seeing her father naked would be. She wasn't sure what else it could be, but she didn't think she was ready to see him unclothed again. "I'll manage," she said firmly, and looked around the room that the locker room had led to for the first time.
The architecture was largely the same as the lobby, although the wide open space had a number of stone lattices that subdivided it but didn't go up to the ceiling, which was vaulted but not nearly as grand. Like the rest of the building so far, though, she couldn't see any other mammals, which was a small favor; she didn't want to know what someone else would have thought if they had overheard her screaming. "This place is awful empty," Judy said as she followed Nick.
"It is a weekday," Nick said, "Some mammals have to work, you know."
He paused once they were in front of a sturdy wooden door. "Not these mammals, though," he said, and Judy could hear muffled voices coming from inside the room, and could feel the heat radiating outwards.
Nick paused with his paw on the handle. "Just remember that I told you Yax is a bit odd."
Author's Notes:
I'm going to be out of town traveling on Sunday, so I'm posting this chapter early. I won't be able to respond to any messages or comments until at least the middle of next week, so I hope you have a safe and happy Labor Day!
The title of this chapter, "I Know That You Know," comes from a 1927 Nat Shilkret song, although the Nat "King" Cole cover is probably much better known. I chose it because in this chapter both Nick and Judy are guilty of a mistake that I think everyone runs into—assuming that your own experiences are representative although they may not be. Finnish saunas are normally done in the nude and Turkish baths are typically done wearing a peştemal, a traditional type of towel, and the genders don't mix, each having their own section. Thus, neither of their experiences is typical, and they each mistakenly assume that the other knows what they're talking about.
A sirocco is a hot, dusty wind that blows from northern Africa across the Mediterranean, which seemed like an appropriate name for a street that divides a desert from the rest of the city. The description of the main gates, which Nick and Judy don't use, are intended to invoke the Art Deco aesthetic, which was all the rage in the 1920s. I imagine that Tundra Town is comparatively small compared to Sahara Square, and while all of Tundra Town shares a border with Sahara Square the opposite is not true. "Huile" is French for "Oil" and is how the oil pressure gage in a Bugatti Type 35 is labeled. Type 35s were somewhat prone to overheating, and driving in a desert, real or not, certainly would not help.
"Jänis" is the Finnish word for hare, and a lot of common Finnish last names end with "nen," hence the Jänisinen family name. Saunas are indeed quite popular in Finland, and in parts of the US with significant Finnish heritage, they're pretty common. Although in Finland it is in fact common to go into the sauna nude, it can be assumed that the Jänisinens have started to follow American social norms in much the same way that they've apparently started adopting American names.
In contrast, the architecture of the Mystic Springs Oasis, as described here, is based on Turkish baths, which were quite popular in the Western world at the beginning of the 20th century. The RMS Titanic, as befitting what was supposed to be the most luxurious passenger vessel ever built, actually had a set of elaborate Turkish baths aboard, although their use was restricted to first class passengers only.
Some mammals, such as chinchillas, do indeed take dust baths, which is why the facilities include such an area. Mud baths are also a real thing, formed when hot springs contain volcanic ash or they are artificially created to have a similar composition. That's quite a bit different from plain mud, which is what pigs and some other animals wallow in. As previously mentioned, Podunk in this story is mostly pigs, explaining Nick's comment. In the case of real life pigs, it's because pigs aren't very good at regulating their body temperature, as they can't sweat and can't really cool themselves by panting.
This was a fun chapter to write, although I may have been pushing that T rating a little. Hopefully you found it entertaining, but as always I'd love to know what you thought!