This nude for hire

IS LUSCIOUS LLONA STILL TO BE “THE GIRL WHO NEVER…?”

Well, not if an office full of randy co-workers at Nymph magazine can help it!

To make ends meet, Llona takes a job as receptionist in the offices of Nymph, the super-sexy girlie publication — not realizing the demands about to be made on her (such as working in the buff!).

One look at Llona and every man on the staff, as well as the only other woman, have each put fifty bucks into a kitty: the first one to make it with Llona gets the pot.

One hilarious scene follows another as Llona, naked but never entirely defenseless, resists, counter-attacks, or retires behind the breastworks, as a series of slyly conceived and hair-raising assaults are made on her matchless, uh, record.

THIS NUDE FOR HIRE

Ted Mark

1969

CHAPTER ONE

The night of her wedding, she crawled into bed.

Her cheeks were so rosy, her lips were so red,

The Pill in her tumtum, and ready to thrill,

Until her groom shouted, “The Hell with The Pill!

“The Hell with The Pill! The Hell with The Pill!”

His fury surprised her. “The Hell with The Pill!”

Llona stared at her bridegroom in amazement. He was jumping around their honeymoon hotel suite in a rage. His fury was so wild that his crisp new pajama pants kept falling down with the violence of his movements. Every so often he’d have to pause long enough to pull them up again. But even when he paused, there was no surcease from the angry tirade spewing forth from his lips.

“The Pill! The Pill! You never told me you took The Pill!” He dived for the falling pajama pants. “You never mentioned you did anything like that! You hid it from me! . . . Goddam pants, I told the salesman the size was too big! . . . That’s a helluva thing for a man to find out on his wedding night! Pretty damn shrewd! Waiting ’til after we’re married to tell me a thing like that! . . . The hell with them!” He ripped off the pants and flung them aside. “Oh, boy! I've been taken! I’ve really been taken! Me, of all people! That my wife should take The Pill!”

“Please, Archer! Please! Calm down! Why are you so excited? I don’t under—“

But it was no use trying to reason with him. He was beyond hearing her. Llona Hornsby, née Mayper—very recently Mayper, since they’d only been married a few hours, a few unconsummated hours, she sighed—could only stare at him and brood. Here she was an eager bride on her wedding night and he just kept on ranting about The Pill and ignoring her.

Llona, in her bridal nightie, was not the kind of a girl it would be easy for most men to ignore. Stretched out on top of the bedspread, she was about as ignorable as a detonated H-bomb. Even the aura of honeymoon night perfume hovering over her was radioactive in its impact.

Visually, Llona’s appeal was truly nuclear. Her breasts were large, ruby-tipped nose-cones in the heat of anticipated—but, alas! frustrated--blast-off, pushing full-power against the atmosphere-thin material of the yellow gauze nightgown. Her full hips were revved up and rotating in time with the hungry movements of the plump cushion which was her streamlined derriére. Her long, sleek legs zoomed out from under the shortie nightgown like twin curved missiles straining to be unleashed. The entire five-foot-nine length of her lushly designed body mushroomed against the senses like an atomic explosion.

But not against Archer Hornsby’s senses. His rage was a coating of lead rendering him impervious to Llona’s roentgen-loaded charms. There was no click from his Geiger counter to answer the smoldering radioactivity of her gold-flecked brown eyes. The golden brown hair spread over the bedspread, the moist lips, the sexy high cheekbones, the pert nose and firm chin, the expression of atomic lust—all left Archer cold. His anger had removed her warhead; it had reduced his nuclear bride to the status of a marital dud!

But Llona deactivated was still potentially explosive. She may have been rendered dormant, but that innate atomic sex energy was still there. And if she could be deactivated by him, she was capable of reactivating herself!

This she now did. “Archer!” She broke into his tirade loudly and firmly. “Archer, this is our wedding night! Are you going to make love to me, or aren’t you?”

“How can you ask me a question like that? You—you—-you Pill-taker, you!” Archer was bitter and still half-hysterical. “The Pill! The goddam Pill! And my wife! My bride! Of all the ironically horrible-—!”

“ARCHER! SHUT UP!”

“Huh?”

“Shut up! I don’t know why you’re carrying on like this about The Pill, and I don’t care. This is our wedding night! Now are you going to behave like a bridegroom should behave on his wedding night, or aren’t you?”

Archer paused in mid-sentence and looked at his luscious bride stretched out on the bed. He didn’t answer. He didn’t have to answer. Stripped of his pajama pants, his answer was obvious. His anger was blanked out. Biology had taken over and reversed the Law of Gravity; what had gone down (in rage), now came up. “Umm,” he said thoughtfully, “I am going to behave like a bridegroom should behave on his wedding night.”

Satisfied with the answer, Llona held out her arms to him. The gauzy nightie stretched protestingly over the lush breasts. The large aureoles darkened the material and the long nipples sprang into prominence with the gesture. The imposing mounds rose and fell rapidly and Archer focused on them hungrily. . .

“Then stop all that silly yelling and come here,” Llona said huskily.

Archer obeyed. When he reached the bed he fell on Llona with the mindless response of a felled tree. His limbs tangled with the softness of her flesh and his root was grasped firmly and hungrily. Yet there was gentleness in Llona’s grasp. She didn’t want to rush things. She wanted to savor and prolong the moments of her bridal night.

Archer, however, was too entranced to deliberately tarry. The ripe breasts burned under clutching hands. His bride’s lips were marshmallow soft to his kiss, sweet-tasting and moistly warm, and pliably parting just enough to admit his tongue and capture it so that the sharp little teeth could nip just a little as it dueled with her own tantalizingly elusive tongue. And she trembled so deliciously under the hot-breath kisses he bestowed on her ears, her throat, her neck with its erotic pulse beating just where it met the rotundness of her shoulder.

His lips traveled downwards, pushing insistently into the deep cleft between her breasts until face was buried between them and one long, hot nipple tickled his ear. He caught the nipple lightly between his teeth and flicked it teasingly with his tongue. Llona moaned and her other hand joined the first between his thighs, the first still a slow-moving fist, the second all teasing fingers trailing over his haunches and his thighs, dallying at the quick of him, teasing the storehouse of his masculinity.

Now it was Areher’s turn to gasp. He pushed the hand away roughly, afraid of being premature. He slid down the length of her exotic body, his lips dallying at the slight roundness of her stomach, tongue playfully invading the navel and driving her wild, hands reaching underneath now to knead the delicious plumpness of her burning nether-cheeks.

Suddenly Archer pulled back. On his knees, he hovered over her an instant, drinking in the sight of the gauze-covered body appreciatively. Then he grasped the nightie at the top with both hands and deliberately ripped it down the middle. He tore it all the way to the hem, then pulled it from her body and flung it aside. He ogled her palpitating nudity for another long instant.

Llona was transfixed by the tearing off of the nightgown. Like most girls she’d had her fantasies of being raped. Arclier’s act fit in deliciously with the fantasy. It was wonderful to have a husband with just the right touch of aggressiveness to his passion. Now, as his head bent, she stretched and purred.

Archer stroked the golden triangle of her womanhood. The tendrils were very soft to the touch, and lighter in hue than the curls fanning out over the pillow. They didn’t hide the mons veneris, but rather delineated it. The highly set, plump mound, with its narrow cleft fluttered under the touch of Archer’s fingers. The fingertips gently strummed the slippery, maroon clitoris, and Llona thrashed out, digging her nails into Archer's forearm.

Her hands closed over his neck, the nails still digging as his face replaced his hands at the fount of her womanhood. The muscles of her golden thighs clenched fiercely over his ears, shutting out the rhythmic moans erupting from her lips. Finally the intensity became too much for her. She pushed Archer away.

“Now!” she panted. “Take me now! I want it now! Now! Now! Now!”

Archer stumbled in his eagerness to leap from the bed. But he recovered and kept going until he reached the closet on the other side of the room. Here he fumbled at his jacket which was hanging there until he’d found what he was seeking in one of the inside pockets. He took out the small packet and peeled off the wrapping until he’d freed the contents. Then he blew into the object in his hand and finally held it out so that Llona could see it as he hastened to return to her. *

“A balloon?” She was startled. “Archer, this is no time for practical jokes.”

“It’s not a practical joke. And it’s not a balloon!” Even in his passion, he sounded angry.

“Then what is it?” Her tone was placating and genuinely curious.

He explained what it was.

“Oh! Oh, yes.” Llona dimly remembered an experience in the past, an experience she was not about to share with her husband if only for the sake of tact. “But these days it’s an anachronism,” she protested timidly. “I mean, there’s no nee —”

“An anachronism!” He exploded. “You don't know what you’re saying! That’s the only explanation! That goddam Pill’s gone to your head!”

“But since I’ve already taken The Pill, then why bother with-'2”

“NOW YOU HEAR THIS!” he roared. “ There’s only one of us gonna wear the pants in this family, and that one’s me! And that means particularly when I’m not wearing the pants during sex! We’re gonna do things my way! You got that?”

“I’ve got it.” Far from being angry in return, Llona was thrilled by his masterfulness. She very much wanted her man to be a man in bed. Even though she thought Archer was being ridiculous in his insistence, she responded to his firmness. “And I want it!” She writhed invitingly on the bed. “Now!” she added.

Both mollified and filled with desire, Archer stopped talking and resumed making love. Llona was not disappointed. He played upon her Stradivarius of a body like a Heifetz. And during the course of the night he played three encores, improvising variations and reaching crescendos of passion that rendered artist and instrument glorious in their oneness.

The only offkey note as far as Llona was concerned was that damned—device. Archer was amply supplied. Nor was he given to conserving them. Each time a fresh one was produced. Each time it represented to Llona the one small, only slightly buzzing fly in her erotic ointment. But the ointment was so delicious that she didn’t complain again.

It wasn’t until the next day, when they were both too weary to embark on another concerto, that Llona delicately brought up the subject again. before, Archer started out by reacting violently and cursing The Pill. But Llona finally managed to calm him down enough to elicit an explanation.

She didn’t like the explanation. However, she accepted it. Since she was Archer’s wife, considering the circumstances he detailed, she had no choice. With a sigh, she threw away her bottle of Pills and really did enjoy the rest of their honeymoon, fly-in-the-ointment not withstanding.

By the time the honeymoon was over, Llona hardly thought about it at all. It seemed a small enough price to pay for the pleasure Archer’s expert lovemaking gave her. Besides, she’d accepted the fact that it had to do with Archer’s ambition and that she was probably lucky to have a husband who was such an ambitious man . . .

It was Archer’s ambition that lay behind Llona’s eager acceptance of their first social invitation as a married couple. The invitation was extended via the telephone by Mrs. Neva Holdkumb, wife of E. Z. Holdkumb, Archer’s boss. The booming pitch of Mrs. Holdkumb’s voice, the emphasis of its tone, the choice of phrases and the words chosen to be stressed—all added up to a vocally painted picture of her.

“When E. Z. told me the lovebirds were back—” Too old to enjoy more than once-a-week sex, but never too old to snicker! “—I said to myself, I said—-” When Mrs. Holdkumb talked, Mrs. Holdkumb listened, and you’d better do the same, sweetie, ‘cause her hubby’s your hubby’s boss! “—well, the honeymoon’s over, and they’re probably feeling let down—” Sex (even once-a-week sex) disappointed Mrs. Holdkumb and that meant disappointment was universal, and God help the trollop who said otherwise! “—-so why not ask them over for an evening of bridge?” Trump her ace and Archer’s career is doomed! “That way we can all get to know each other.” To know Mrs. Holdkumb is to love Mrs. Holdkumb; to be known by Mrs. Holdkumb is to stand up on the firing line and hope Fate hasn’t sprung you as the target for today. “If you’ll forgive an older woman’s giving advice, my dear—” Wisdom from On High designed to show how High is High! “—the social side of business is every bit as important as the business side of business--” Stentorian, denoting a size forty-four bust encased in sales reports. “-—particularly when it comes to the career of a young man, if you see what I mean.” Youth is a dirty crime! Never trust anybody under thirty! Or under forty! Or under anywhere your husband is at if there’s even the slightest chance he’s groping for that rung on the ladder where hubby’s foot is planted! “But I don’t mean that to make you feel nervous'—-” Eyes like icepicks flicking frozen slivers down Llona’s spine! “—’cause I just want it to be a cozy evening—” Snuggle up to Mama Hippo and suckle a little humblepie-juice! “--and I don’t want you to feel as if you’re being judged or anything like that.” Llona was guilty! She had a wart on the left cheek of her behind.

“We’d love to come, Mrs. Holdkumb,” she managed to interject.

But Mrs. Holdkumb kept on talking, filling in the picture, as it were. By the time she hung up, Llona saw her as clearly as the proboscis on your visage and ten times life size. The picture loomed up threateningly and wouldn’t go away.

Llona envisioned a woman in her forties—late forties—with very large teeth in a state of lupine decay, the kind of teeth developed by a hyena who regularly eats stale carrion purchased at a third-rate butcher shop. Over the teeth Llona saw a boarlike snout rising up to separate rheumy eyes splotched red with malice. The head was set firmly on a short, squat, powerful body—yes, that hippo body with its breasts made of muscle and grizzle. The body would be encased in a high-style hostess gown with a slit up the side to display one garishly veiny calf. Only one thing remained to complete the picture. Llona puzzled over it, then snapped her fingers. Of course! A Pekingese! Mrs. Holdkumb had to have a Pekingese!

But Llona was wrong. When she arrived at the Holdkumbs that fatal night, it was one of the first things she realized. Mrs. Holdkumb! didn’t have a Pekingese. She had a Mexican Chihuahua!

Well, you can’t win ’em all! Llona thought to herself as she took in her hostess’ appearance. Mrs. Holdkumb was a woman in her late forties with large, decaying choppers, a hog-snoot for a nose, watery, mean, bloodshot eyes, and a body like a rhinoceros. She was wearing a Hawaiian print which was slashed up one side. The calf displayed was varicose and lumpy. No, you can’t win ’em all! A Chihuhua! Who’da thunk it!

E. Z. Holdkumb was a fit mate for her. ‘Nuf said! He was a predator in the world of commerce. Each night he dragged home fresh-killed meat for their larder. Tonight he’d brought home Archer in the flesh.

Llona met Archer there. That’s how they’d arranged it. It seemed the easiest way, even though they hadn’t been asked for dinner, only to play bridge. So, when Llona arrived, Archer was seated on the couch between Mr. and Mrs. Hyena—oops!—-Holdkumb, with his face the color of diaper rash and the expression on it even more uncomfortable.

“We’ve just been teasing Arch here ’bout your honeymoon,” E. Z. confided to Llona with a leer and a wink. He followed up the wink with an elbow-nudge to her ribs which managed to test the resiliency of her left breast.

Neva Holdkumb, who missed nothing, frowned. But she covered her displeasure quickly. “Look at him blush!” She bated her bicuspids at Archer in what was meant to pass for a smile. “Don’t you know it’s the bride’s supposed to be embarrassed, Archer?” She turned to Llona. “Isn’t that so?” she asked.

“I’m not embarrassed,” Llona. told her truthfully. “Sex doesn’t embarrass me.”

“Girls today!” Mrs. Holdkumb shook her head. Strike Two! . . . Strike One! had been Llona’s allure. “They’re so outspoken.”

“I like it,” E. Z. said. “And besides, now we can get the real lowdown on that honeymoon.” He snickered.

“What do you want to know?” Llona asked.

“What’s the first thing you did when you were alone in the hotel room?” E. Z. blurted it out.

“E. Z.!” Mrs. Holdkumb pretended to be scandalized, but when she said nothing else, it became obvious that she too was waiting for Llona to answer.

“Well,” Llona replied truthfully, “I realized it was four o’clock in the afternoon, and that meant it was time for me to take The Pill.”

“The Pill?” E. Z.’s voice was filled with suspicion.

“The Pill?” Neva Holdkumb’s echo had already confirmed the suspicion and was eyeing the jugular.

“Llona!” Archer tried to stop her before it was too late.

“I didn’t want to get pregnant,” Llona explained honestly.

Archer came close to groaning audibly. Now it was too late. The damage had been done.

“You mean The Birth Control Pill?” Mrs. Holdkumb’s voice drove the nails through Llona’s

Llona could only nod dumbly. Now she remembered! Now!—when it was too late. In the long silence following her nod she took Strike Three! She heard once again the explanation Archer had given her the day after the wedding night, the explanation about his aversion to The Pill.

“Do you know what my job is?” Archer had asked Llona that day.

“You’re a promotion man for a pharmaceutical company.”

“That’s right. But do you know what I do specifically?”

“No. Not specifically. Tell me.”

He had told her. He had explained that he was the Assistant Promotion Manager and that his boss, Z. Holdkumb, was in charge of the promotion campaign to sell the firm’s male contraceptive devices to var1ous drugstore outlets. Archer had been an up-and-coming man in his company until the encroachments of The Pill had resulted in a decline of sales of prophylactics. For the past two years Archer—and Archer’s boss—had been waging an all-out promotion battle against The Pill.

“But what does that have to do with our private lives?” Llona has asked at this point. “I mean, just because you have to fight The Pill in business, I don’t see why—”

“I’m a promotion man!” Archer told her fervently. “I believe! I couldn’t do my job if I didn’t! And besides, my boss insists on it. He demands absolute loyalty!”

Now, sitting in the Holdkumb’s living room, Llona knew she’d cast doubts on Archer’s loyalty. She’d really put him on the spot. “Of course, I don’t use The Pill anymore,” she murmured into the ominously deepening silence.

“Archer, can I see you in my study alone a minute?” E. Z. Holdkumb forced a smile at Llona. “A matter of business. If the ladies. will excuse us—-”

“Of course.” Llona managed an answering smile.

“Treachery!” Llona heard E. Z. hiss the words just before the door closed behind him and her husband.

“Will you excuse me a minute, dear?” Mrs. Holdkumb made the “dear” sound like a command to the executioner for the beheading to begin. “I have to go in the kitchen and mix a soufflé for Hubert.”

It took Llona a moment to remember that “Hubert” was the Mexican Chihuahua. When Mrs. Holdkumb was gone Llona got up and strolled about the room, cursing her own damnfool honesty under her breath. Finally she flung herself into an overstuffed armchair, landing particularly hard in her agitation.

That was her second blunder. It would be awhile before she realized just how horrendous a blunder it was . . .

CHAPTER TWO

Once to every man and nation comes a moment of irreversible catastrophe. It is that moment-—unrecognized as it occurs--when the most insignificant of happenstances sets the first pebble on its course toward an avalanche of doom. It is that moment when Fate slips Hope a Mickey Finn!

During just such an instant was the equation E=MC² evolved and the chasm of nuclear holocaust opened to the world. It is the moment when one plunges into a discourse on the works of Henry Miller to the lady who later turns out to be the head of the local Antipornography League and one’s boss’s sister to boot. It is that moment, perfect in its wrong timing, when Marie Antoinette quips “Let ’em eat cake!” to the starving peasantry. It is the joke about faith-healing told before one finds out that one’s prospective mother-in-law is a Christian Scientist. It is General Custer surveying the prebattle situation and opting to “Mop up those heathen redskins!” It is the vote against the appropriation to build the dam looked back on from the vantage point of the roof of one’s house as it floats along on the tide of the flood.

Such moments can be painfully embarrassing-—if not immediately, then surely eventually. Once to every man and nation . . . Once to every woman, too . . . And now such a moment came to Llona!

She was still sprawled in the overstuffed armchair into which she’d flung herself when E. Z. Holdkumb and Archer came back into the living room. Archer was obviously chagrined. He looked like a Boy Scout whose best friend just tripped up a little old lady crossing the street in full view of the Scoutmaster. It wasn’t his fault, but the Code had to be satisfied and quoted at someone. Archer had caught it and Llona knew he was just waiting until they were alone so he could pass it along to her.

She wondered how E. Z. had presented it. Various possibilities of phraseology tumbled through her mind: “This above all, to thine own self be true and thou canst not then be false to the company . . . Loyalty begins between one’s own sheets . . . If our competitors ever found out, we’d be a laughingstock . . . Your wife is a company wife now, and she must be made to realize . . . The Pill in the boudoir is a blot on the sales chart . . . Do you think the President of U.S. Rubber would equip his car with plastic tires? . . . Hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese anti-Communists have died to ensure the supply of rubber and you, who of all people should know better, have betrayed them with The Pill . . . How can you expect to sell our product if you can’t even convince yourself to the extent of forbidding your wife The Pill? . . .”

Yes, Llona sighed to herself, when it came to public relations, or advertising, both branches of The Art of Manipulation, the cardinal rule was that the first one to be manipulated must be oneself! It all passed through her mind very quickly and didn’t interfere with her picking up on E. Z.’s unctuous efforts to smooth over the situation. His tone said he knew damn well she’d burned a hole in the rug, but he was much too much of a gentleman to call attention to it.

“Are you comfortable, my dear?” he inquired.

“Very. Thank you.”

“Can I get you a drink or anything?”

A little foot powder for my mouth, Llona thought to herself. “Nothing, thanks. I’m fine,” she said aloud.

“Neva!” he called. “We’re all in here. What are you doing?”

“Just making Hubert his muffle,” Mrs. Holdkumb called back. “It’s ready now. But where’s Hubert?”

“She’s as fond of that pup as if he were our very own child,” E. Z. explained to Archer and Llona. “You see, we’ve never been blessed with children.” He sighed, and to Llona it definitely seemed a sigh of relief. “Of course, I’m terribly fond of Hubert myself. It may seem foolish in a grown man, but there isn’t anything I wouldn’t do for that little pup.”

“I can understand that,” Archer scored the point hastily. “People can get very attached to pets. When I was a boy I had this hamster and-—”

“Hubert!” Mrs. Holdkumb called. “Here, Hubert! Here, Baby! Your dindin’s ready. Come and get it while it’s hot. Here, Hubie!”

“I had this hamster and I kept it in a cage and-—”

“A hamster isn’t anything like a dog!” E. Z.’s verdict was final.

“Here, Hubie!’ Here, Hubie! Oh, dear, where is he?”

“Oh, of course not,” Archer agreed quickly. “I only meant—”

“Is Hubert in there?” Mrs. Holdkumb called from the kitchen.

“I don’t see him anywhere,” E. Z. replied.

“Well, he isn’t in here,” Mrs. Holdkumb informed them.

“I’d watch him running on this treadmill with his little pink eyes sparkling and—”

“I’ll look in the bedroom,” E. Z. called to Mrs. Holdkumb. “Here, Hubert. Here, Hubie baby . . .” Snapping his fingers, he vanished toward the back of the apartment.

“. . . his little paws moving so fast and the fur on his neck bristling . . .”

“forget it, Archer,” Llona told him. “Nobody’s listening.”

“I was only trying to ingratiate myself with them,” he hissed at her. “After that booboo you pulled--”

“Well, you’re not going to do it by talking about your hamster. You equate that rat with their Chihuahua, and they’ll end up taking it as an insult.”

“I suppose you’re right.” Archer subsided as Mrs. Holdkumb entered the room.

“Here, Hubert-Hubert-Hubert. Where are you, you naughty dog? Here, Hubie. Your dindin is ready. Here, Hubert. A nice dogfood soufflé, just the way you like it. Here, Hubie.”

“Here, Hubert.” E. Z. was back in the living room now, peermg under the furniture in search of the Chihuahua. “Here, Hubert. Come on, boy. He’s hiding from us,” he decided. “He’s so cute sometimes. He likes to play games with us. Here, Hubie.”

“Here, Hubert. Here, Hubert.” Archer was down on his hands and knees now, helping in the search. “Here, Hubert.” He looked accusingly at Llona, who hadn’t budged from the armchair.

“I’d help you look,” she alibied, “but I’m afraid I’d frighten him. I’m not very good with dogs,” she confessed.

Mr. and Mrs. Holdkumb mutually glared at her.

“Oh, it’s not that I don’t like dogs,” Llona explained hurriedly. “It’s just that sometimes they don’t respond to me the way—” Seeing that she was being ignored, she let her voice trail off.

“Hubert-Hubert-Hubert,” Mrs. Holdkumb singsonged.

“Here, Hubie. Here, Hubie. Ready-or-not-here-I-come!” E. Z. Holdkumb brayed cajolingly.

“Come on, pooch! Come on, poo—-” Archer caught a raised eyebrow from Neva Holdkumb and immediately altered his chant. “Here, doggie.” He whistled. “Here, doggie.”

Llona watched the three of them scrambling about on the rug, groping beneath the furniture, feeling around in the corners. All the activity made her restless. She started to rise from the overstuffed armchair, automatically reaching beneath her to smooth her skirt as she got up. Abruptly, she sat back down again, her face a study of horrified confusion. It was The Moment of Truth!

It was the Moment of Truth and both ears and the tail belonged to Hubert! Or, rather, to what was left of Hubert. For the first time, Llona realized the ghastly truth of what had happened to the missing Chihuahua. She had sat on him! Gingerly, she reached underneath her and felt for the tiny dog, hoping to find signs of life. There were none. The body was still warm, but it was definitely dead. It was almost indistinguishable from the other lumps caused by the stuffing of the armchair. If Llona hadn’t felt the dog’s hair, she never would have realized that he was under her.

What now? Llona watched appalled as the Holdkumbs and her husband continued crawling and scampering about in search of the Chihuahua. “Here, Hubert! Here; doggie! Come on, Hubie! Here, Hubert!” Their voices were a chorus of hope and only Llona knew that hope was dead. What now?

Like a movie projector, Llona’s mind played out the possible scenes that could take place.

LIGHTS! CAMERA! ACTION! — TAKE ONE:

LLONA: I’ve found him.

MRS. HOLDKUMB: Have you? Wonderful!

ARCHER: That’s my girl!

E. Z. HOLDKUMB: Where is he?

LLONA: Eh . . . I’m sitting on him.

MRS. HOLDKUMB: On Hubert? (Voice rising) You’re sitting on Hubert?

ARCHER: Llona, Chihuahuas are very delicate animals. You really have to be very care—-

E. Z. (interrupting): Well, don’t just sit there for God‘s sake! Stand up and--

MRS. HOLDKUMB: You could squash him!

LLONA: I have.

MRS. HOLDKUMB: I beg your pardon?

LLONA: I have squashed him.

MRS. HOLDKUMB (mounting horror in her voice): You mean—?

LLONA: I’m afraid so.

E. Z. (anguished): He’s dead! Hubert is dead!

MRS. HOLDKUMB: Squashed! And I just had that chair reupholstered!

LLONA: What are you complaining about. This is a new dress, and now it’s ruined.

ARCHER: Don’t talk like that, Llona. Can’t you see that Mr. and Mrs. Holdkumb are in mourning? You could have a little more sensitivity.

LLONA: I didn’t do it on purpose, Archer. How was I to know the damn pipsqueak of a dog was there?

ARCHER: You might have looked.

E. Z. (numb1y): Funeral arrangements. I’ll have to call and start making funeral arrangements.

MRS. HOLDKUMB: We have a plot, you know. Three graves. One for me, one for E. Z., and one for poor Hubert. (She dissolves in tears.)

E. Z. (comforting her): There, there. There, there.

MRS. HOLDKUMB: I don’t know how l’ll ever go through it.

E. Z.: Just so you don’t try to throw yourself in the grave with him.

LLONA: Why would she do a thing like that?

ARCHER (hushed): She was very attached to Hubert.

E. Z.: It’s not just that. Neva always tries to throw herself in the grave at funerals. She did it at my mother’s funeral and she hated my mother.

LLONA (understa.nding1y): I guess it’s sort of like sympathy pains.

ARCHER: Well . . . heh-heh . . . I guess that puts the kibosh on the bridge game. So we’ll just be going and leave you folks to your grief.

LLONA (brushing what’s left of Hubert from the back of her skirt as she rises): Please accept our deepest sympathy.

EXIT. FADE-OUT.

Somehow Llona didn’t believe it would be that simple. Her movie camera mind scrapped the scene and went on to—

TAKE TWO:

LLONA: Excuse me. There’s something I’d like to tell all of you.

ARCHER: Can’t it wait until after we find the poo—dog, dear?

LLONA: It’s about the dog.

MRS. HOLDKUMB: Have you seen him? Have you seen Hubert?

LLONA (coyly): Not exactly.

E. Z.: Here, Hubie. Here, Hubie.

LLONA: The truth is, I’m sitting on him. I’m afraid I’ve squashed him to death.

MRS. HOLDKUMB: Murderess!

E. Z.: Dog killer!

ARCHER (trying to assuage their anger): You just can’t take her anyplace.

MRS. HOLDKUMB: Why did you kill him? What did poor little Hubert ever do to you? ‘

LLONA: Well, I’ve never been a dog-lover, but -

E. Z.: Vivisectionistl

MRS. HOLDKUMB: Call the police, dear.

LLONA (getting up and gingerly handing what is left of Hubert to E. Z.): I didn’t do it on purpose, and if you think I ’m going to stand around here waiting to be arrested because of an unfortunate accident-—

MRS. HOLDKUMB: Stop her!

E. Z.: Don’t let her get away!

ARCHER (pulling out a gun and shooting Llona as she starts out the door): Perhaps I made the mistake of marrying a gauche girl, but basically I remain loyal to the company!

LLONA: Archer, I’m dying.

MRS. HOLDKUMB: Now she’s getting blood all over my new carpet.

ARCHER: I told you, you just can’t take her anyplace.

LLONA: Archer, your wife is dying.

E. Z.: And our Chihuahua is dead. But even in our mutual grief, Archer, we must remember that there’s a job to be done. (He pours two glasses of well-aged brandy and hands one to Archer.) To the company!

ARCHER (stepping over Llona’s body, clinking glasses with E. Z., and then holding his glass high to repeat the toast) To the company. (They drink.)

QUICK DISSOLVE.

No, Llona decided, Archer wouldn’t really go so far as to shoot her. Both possibilities were really much too dramatic. What probably would happen in reality was—

TAKE THREE:

LLONA: Oh! This is awful! I don’t know how to tell you! I’ve found Hubert! I’m afraid I sat on him. He’s quite dead.

E. Z. (after a long pause): Well, I guess there’s no sense staying down here on my knees looking for him then.

LLONA: I’m awfully sorry.

E. Z.: Don’t distress yourself, my dear. He was getting old anyway.

MRS. HOLDKUMB (blurting it out): He was only five.

E. Z.: But each year of a dog’s life is the equivalent of seven years of a human life. That would make him thirty-five. And most dogs don’t live past ten or twelve.

MRS. HOLDKUMB (making an effort to remember her manners): You’re so logical, sweetheart. Actually, he was getting to be a pest. Shedding hair all over the furniture. Really, Llona dear, you’ve done us a favor.

LLONA: l’m afraid I squished him; right into the upholstery.

MRS. HOLDKUMB: Oh, the cleaner won’t have any trouble taking that out.

ARCHER (trying to be helpful): Maybe a little cold :water before it gets a chance to set—? (He starts for the kitchen, but E. Z. stops him.)

E. Z.: Don’t trouble yourself, my boy. This old furniture isn't worth worrying about.

MRS. HOLDKUMB: Old! Why, I just bought those chairs last mo-—- But of course, you’re right, dearest. (Turning to Llona and patting her hand) Now don’t you give it another thought. Accidents will happen.

ARCHER: Especially to Llona. She’s quite accident prone.

LLONA: And sitting too.

ARCHER: Huh?

LLONA: Not just prone. I have accidents sitting too.

E. Z.: Well, just let's forget the whole thing.

MRS. HOLDKUMB: Yes, let’s. Get the cards, dear. We’ll all sit down and have a rubber of bridge and we just won’t give poor dead squished icky Hubert another thought.

E. Z.: That's a good idea.

MRS. HOLDKUMB: The only real problem is, what am I going to do with that dogfood souffle?

DISSOLVE.

Even after the DISSOLVE, the picture of that bridge game lingered in Llona’s mind. No matter how polite the Holdkumbs tried to be, no matter how overly civilized, Hubert would have to cast a pall over the rubber. No, Llona decided, she just couldn’t face it. She’d never be able to carry it off. She just didn’t have the sangfroid. But what was she going to do?

Archer and the Holdkumbs were still crawling around, snapping their fingers and crooning for the dog to come out of hiding. Their backs were to Llona. She acted on the spur of the moment. She reached underneath her, found the squashed Chihuahua and shoved the telltale carcass under the cushion of the armchair. By the time the other three turned around, she was sitting the way she had been right along. There was nothing to indicate that she’d moved, no clue to her concealment of the evidence. They looked at her and she smiled back hopefully, as if to say she was sure the dog would turn up.

But of course it didn’t. The Holdkumbs were persistent though, and by the time they gave up the search, it was too late to play bridge. Llona and Archer commiserated with them all the way to the door as they made their good nights. It was the first time Llona had budged from the chair all evening.

As soon as they were out the door and alone, Archer began berating Llona for her slip early in the evening about The Pill. Llona didn’t argue with him. She was too busy trying to find a way to tell him about what had happened to Hubert. She just nodded miserably to everything he said, not really hearing the company slogans that popped up throughout his angry tirade.

“Blah-blah-blah . . . thinking man’s filter . . . blah-blah- blah . . . don’t wrap it, bag it! . . . blah-blah-blah! . . . be prepared! . . . blah-blah-blah . . . safety first! . . . blah-blah-blah!”

It seemed to go on forever. Llona kept looking for a pause, but even when one came she found she was too frightened to confess to Archer what had happened. Her courage remained at low ebb even after they got home. She drifted off to sleep still listening to Archer’s lecture, still wondering where she would ever get the nerve to make her confession.

As it turned out, she didn’t have to tell him. Archer found out for himself the next day.

He left for work before she got out of bed. He returned from work just as Llona was sitting down to her morning coffee. She looked up at his unexpected return questioningly, dreading what she would see in his face.

She saw it!

“They found Hubert,” he told her grimly.

“Oh,” she said weakly. It was all she could bring herself to say.

“He was under the cushion of that armchair you were sitting in.”

“Was he?”

“Yes. He was. Llona, you knew he was there, didn’t you?”

She nodded.

“You sat on him and you knew it all along.”

She nodded again.

“And you let us go right on crawling around and looking for him!”

“I -- I didn’t—didn’t know what else to do.”

“You could have said something! That’s what E. Z. said his wife and he couldn’t forgive. The fact that you just sat there and didn’t say anything!”

“What happened?” Llona forced herself to ask the question.

“He fired me. First he gave me a long lecture about the importance of the social side of business and the part a man’s wife plays in it. Then he got soggy about how much Hubert meant to him and his wife. Then he fired me.”

“He fired you,” Llona repeated dumbly.

“That’s light. You catch on real fast this morning, don’t you? He fired me. I am out of a job. I have been fired.”

“You can get another job.” Llona tried to console him.

He stared at her for a long, uncomfortable time.

“You can get another job,” Llona reiterated.

It was the wrong thing to say!

CHAPTER THREE

That was the opening round. After it, things went from bad to worse. The battle lines were drawn and escalation commenced. The action of the marital battlefield became a way of life for Archer and Llona. The pattern of discussions turning into arguments, arguments into fights, and fights into battles where any point might serve as ammunition and the most devastating whiz-bangs might derive from the furthest removed irrelevancies—this pattern was formed and rigidified.

A typical example of how the pattern expressed itself took place one evening a few days after the incident of the mashed Chihuahua. Archer had been touring employment agencies in quest of a job all day. He had writer’s cramp from filling out applications, but he hadn’t been sent out on even one interview, hadn’t even had so much as a nibble. In the P.R. field, firms tended to look for professionals with specific experience in their own field, or at the least with an allied product. There just wasn’t much demand for a P.R. man with experience in promoting male contraceptives. So Archer was tired and edgy when he got home.

Llona’s greeting didn’t help matters. “You forgot!” She stared accusingly at his empty hands.

“Forgot what?”

“Our anniversary!” she wailed.

“Anniversary?” He looked blank.

“We’ve been married exactly one month today. It’s our first anniversary and you forgot it! I cooked a special dinner and bought a bottle of wine and —”

“We can’t afford a bottle of wine,” he observed morosely. “We have to watch every penny until I find a job!”

“I suppose it’s my fault that you can’t find a job!” Llona flung at him.

“Now that you mention it, is. If you’d looked where you were sitting instead of squashing that damned pooch—”

“And you’re going to throw that up in my face for the next twenty years, aren’t you? One little accident, and every time you do something that justifies it!”

“I didn’t do anything,” Archer protested.

“You forgot our anniversary!”

“For God’s sake, Llona, the word ‘anniver—‘ ”

“One month today we’ve been married. But it doesn’t mean a thing to you. And neither do I!”

Grimly, Archer stuck to his point. “The word ‘anniversary’ stems from the root ‘annum,’ meaning yearly. It specifically refers to the once-a-year celebration of an event. Like Labor Day, or Mother’s Day, or Teddy Roosevelt Day.”

“And I don’t mean any more to you than Teddy Roosevelt, do I? And you’re just like him, too!”

“Teddy Roosevelt was one of the greatest presidents this coun—”

“He was an imperialist and a warmonger!”

Archer defended Teddy Roosevelt hotly. “Do you know he was known as The Trustbuster because he—”

“The Truss Buster?” Llona was momentarily startled out of her anger.

“ ‘Trust,’ not ‘truss.’ You’re the ‘Truss Buster’ the way you try to run me down. Yeah, that’s what you are, Llona. You’re a castrating female!”

“I don’t have to castrate you. Your mother did that little job a long time before I even met you!”

“Leave my mother out of this!”

“If you can drag in Teddy Roosevelt, then I can bring up your mother. Her influence is certainly more pertinent to our marriage than--”

“I didn’t bring up Roosevelt. You did!”

“I did not! You were the one who mentioned Teddy Roosevelt Day.”

“Just as an example!” Archer shouted. “Like Mother’s Day and—”

“There! Now you’re the one who’s bringing up mothers.”

“I’m not bringing up mothers!” he screamed with frustration. “I’m just mentioning the day! The day! As an example of things that are celebrated annually with gifts and —”

“Aha! With gifts! Then you admit it! And today is our first anniversary and you didn’t even bring me a present.”

“A month! A month! A MONTH!” he screamed. “That doesn’t count. It’s the first year that-— ‘Anniversary’ means— The root ‘annum’--”

“Semantics! Semantics! SEMANTICS!” Llona yelled triumphantly. “SEMANTICS! . . .”

So, for the next three hours they fought over semantics. It ended with Llona slamming into the bedroom and Archer sleeping on the couch. If the first round had been Archer’s by virtue of Llona’s faux pas with Hubert, the second round was a draw.

However, Llona being female and women being women, it was the basis for Round Three. Even while Round Two was going on, she was plotting the revenge she would take in the next round. The gong sounded a few evenings later when, once again, Archer came home from his employment-seeking pursuits jobless.

“Hello, dear.” Llona greeted him sweetly at the door. Her sweetness was the opening salvo in the campaign strategy she had plotted.

Archer didn’t know this. With masculine naiveté, he thought the battle was a thing of the past. “Hi,” he said wearily. “Boy, am I bushed,” he added, sinking, into a chair.

Llona surveyed his hands and arms with grim satisfaction; concealed, but grim. She had gauged events correctly, and now she was ready to launch the attack. There had been only one chance that it might be aborted, but Archer’s empty-handedness told her he hadn’t grasped that chance. “Aren’t you going to say it to me?” she asked in a syrupy voice.

If Archer had been more alert, the ultragooeyness of her tone would have alerted him. But he was tired. “Say what to you?” he asked, yawning.

“Happy birthday.”

“Happy bir-?” A look of consternation crossed Archer’s face. “Today’s your birthday,” he said slowly. Consternation was replaced by chagrin and guilt. “Happy birthday,” he added automatically.

Llona missed not the slightest nuance of his consternation, his chagrin, his guilt. They confirmed what she’d suspected. Archer had indeed forgotten her birthday, just as he had their “first anniversary.” Llona had gambled that he would. The gamble was predicated on her recognition that she had indeed married a man with no sensitivity to occasions, a man who lacked the generosity to celebrate those occasions in ways designed to show his wife he loved her. To Llona this was a serious failing. Her plan was to correct it, to nip it in the bud of their marriage—and, not so incidentally, to make Archer suffer in the process. Now she swung into her campaign just as she planned it. “And thank you so much for the gift, darling. It’s lovely! You really have wonderful taste for a man.”

Archer stared at her in confusion. He’d been sitting there trying to find the words to apologize for not having bought her a birthday present. He’d been gathering up the strength to surrender abjectly in the face of the attack she’d be sure to launch. He’d anticipated an hour of admitting his guilt at the very least. But now his contemplated carpet of penitence had been yanked from under his feet. So he merely stared at Llona numbly and made the appropriate sounds. ‘Tm glad you liked it,” he told her. What present?

“It’s beautiful. So delicate. And it fits me perfectly.”

“I’m glad.” What fit her perfectly?

“However did you know the size? I didn’t think you noticed such things.”

“I notice more than you think I do. Heh-heh.” Archer’s cackle was unexpected and strained. What size?

“And it was wrapped so beautifully. Did you pick the wrapping and ribbon yourself too?”

“Oh, sure.” What wrapping? What ribbon? What size? What present? What was it? Who sent it? What was it all about?

“I know you didn’t wrap it yourself. You pick wonderful birthday presents, but you’re really not very good about wrapping. I’m not criticizing, you understand. It’s a wonderful birthday gift and you’re a wonderful husband. But who did wrap it?”

“My mother.” The words sprang automatically to Archer’s lips. Before he was married, his mother had indeed wrapped gifts for him. As he spoke them now, the words sparked a sudden suspicion. Could his mother have remembered it was Llona’s birthday and sent a present to her in his name?

But, evidently, the present hadn’t been sent in Archer’s name. Llona’s next comment indicated that. “And you’re such a romanticist,” she giggled convincingly. “That card was just too much!”

“Pretty clever, hey?” Card? What card?

“I’ll say. It made me feel like I was single and being courted all over again. So mysterious. ‘From a Secret Admirer,’ ” she quoted. “ ‘In memory of passionate nights.’ It’s so important to keep that kind of feeling alive in a woman, in a marriage, Archer. I’m so lucky you recognize that. I’m so glad I married you!”

“I’m glad I married you too,” Archer responded by rote. “From a Secret Admirer; In memory of passionate nights"? That sure didn’t sound like his mother! Still, who else could it be? “Uhh, listen, Llona, I’m out of cigarettes. I’m just going to run down to the corner and get some.” Archer simply had to get out of the house to call his mother and check this thing out.

“All right. And while you’re gone, I’ll put it on. I want you to see how divine it looks on me.”

“Sure. Sure. You do that.” Archer headed out the door. “I’ll be right back.”

His mother’s. voice over the telephone summoned up one of Archer’s recurring—and possibly Oedipal—fantasies. “Hello, is that you Archer?” she said, and the tone immediately painted the picture on his brain of a surrealist faucet, one giant Mama-breast the handle with one giant Mama-hand poised to turn it, and two large Mama-eyes the twin spiggots moistening with the Mama-grief soon to be poured forth. “Is it Christmas that you remembered to call me after all this time?” The breast-handle took the first turn; the spiggot-eyes spurted a few preliminary drops.

For an instant Archer was caught up in the old Oedipal-sadist fantasy. He saw himself with a penislike wrench yanking the breast-faucet-handle from the Mama-plumbing; he heard the scream of metal flesh torn from metal flesh. But he thrust the image from his mind and got right down to his reason for calling. “No it’s not Christmas,” he told his mother. “It’s July, so it’s not Christmas. What it is, it’s Llona’s birthday.”

“Llona who?” his mother asked with studied innocence.

Archer recognized the ploy, fought back his annoyance and refused to let his tone of voice respond to it. “Llona, my wife,” he told her. “Remember? The thing is,” he continued quickly before she could interject the expected sarcastic answer, “I was wondering if perhaps you sent her a present.”

“Why should I send her a present? It was your cousin Mortimer’s birthday last week, and did your wife What’s-her-name-—Looney; Llona; I can never remember—did she send Mortimer a present even if he is your first cousin? She did not! So why should I send her one?”

“She hardly knows Mortimer. And anyway, that’s not the poi --”

“I hardly know her. As a daughter-in-law, she never even picks up the phone to ask after my arthritis if I’m alive or crippled with pain or dead maybe. So why should I remember her birthday?”

Archer ignored the question. It was hot in the phone booth and he was sweating. He was sweating for two reasons. First of all, he always sweated when he talked to his mother on the telephone—sweated and silently cursed Alexander Graham Bell and the nameless inventor of Mother’s Day as well. Secondly, this business with Llona’s mysterious present was making him sweat. “I thought you might have figured I’d forget her birthday and sent her a present for me-—you know, as if it came from me.”

“You forgot her birthday?” There was untypical pleasure in Mrs. Hornsby’s voice. “Well, there’s some justice in the world it’s not only mothers are forgotten they’re alive all the time.”

“Then you didn’t send her anything from me with a card reading ‘From a Secret Admirer’?”

“Since when am I an admirer of your wife what’s-her-name who never even calls to find out if her husband’s mother is alive or dead? ‘From a Secret Admirer’!” Archer’s mother turned the faucet on full force with a reverse twist. “You’re married only a month and already that I-don’t-use-such-language is taking up with other men! My poor Archer! If you’d listened to me . . .”

Archer took about five minutes of that, and then he cut the conversation short. The worst thing about it was that he was slowly coming to the same conclusion his mother had so eagerly leaped at. His suspicion deepened and grew more gloomy when he arrived back at the apartment.

Llona was posed on the couch, waiting for him. She was wearing one of the sexiest black silk nightgowns Archer had ever seen. It followed the curves of her body like paint flowing over an automobile chassis. Whoever bought that nightgown must have known that body intimately! “Do you like it as well on me as when you saw it in the store?” Llona asked Archer as he entered.

“It looks great.” Archer spoke the truth, but his mind wasn’t on it. His mind was stuck in the rut of one question which superseded all the others. Who knew his wife well enough to send her such an intimate birthday gift? He blurted it out. “Who’s this secret admirer who sends you sexy nightgowns?” Archer demanded to know.

“Why, whatever do you mean, dear?” Llona asked innocently. “You sent it. Didn’t you?”

Archer took a deep breath and admitted his calumny. “No, I didn’t,” he confessed. “I forgot it was your birthday.”

“Oh, Archer, you’re so cute. You just want to be coy and play another one of your fun games. But I really can’t get into the spirit of it. I mean, I know you sent it. Who else would buy me such a sexy nightgown?”

“Your ‘Secret Admirer,’ that’s who!” Archer said through clenched teeth.

“Don’t be silly. There is no ‘Secret Admirer.’ Of course you sent it, darling.”

“I did not send it!” Archer shouted.

“You mean you forgot my birthday?”

“Yes. I’m sorry. But I did. That’s not important now, though. What’s important is who—”

“You forgot my birthday!” Llona’s voice went up the scale and ended in a sob. “We’re married five weeks and you didn’t even remember my birthday? How could you? Don’t you love me?”

“Of course I love you!” Archer found himself back on the defensive. “I said I was sorry. It’ll never happen again. But I want to know-—”

“It will! It will happen again! Because you don’t care! You don’t care enough to even know I exist!”

“Now just a minute! Just a minute!” Archer forced himself to calmness. “Let’s just forget all that for a minute. What I want to know is, if I didn’t send you that nightgown, who did?”

“I’m sure I don’t know.” Llona went from hysteria to frost.

“What do you mean you don’t know? That’s obviously a pretty expensive garment. Probably thirty or forty bucks. Now who would send my wife a thing like that? You must know!”

“Well, I don’t.” Llona feigned puzzlement, then dissipated it. “Unless-—”

“Unless?” Archer waited for her to go on. When she didn’t, his calm slipped away from him again. “Unless what? Unless who? Who? Who? WHO?”

“Well, I thought of— But it couldn’t be. No, that’s ridiculous.”

“Are you going to tell me!” Archer shouted.

“Tell you what? Be specific. And do try to get hold of yourself, dear. Your face is turning purple.”

Archer made the effort. “Who do you think it might have been?” He phrased the question carefully, spacing the words out as he asked it.

“Well, it just flitted through my mind that it might have been Pierre Strongfellow.”

“Pierre who?”

“Strongfellow. It suits him too. Such muscles!” Llona sighed as if remembering, admiring, and batted her eyes at Archer.

“What the hell kind of a name is ‘Pierre’?”

“He’s half-French. By birth, I mean. By personality, he’s all French.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Archer demanded.

“Well, you know. He’s very continental, very suave. And those muscles . . .”

“Let’s just forget those muscles!” Archer’s tone was dangerously low. “I want to know who this guy is. Where do you know him from?”

“Well, I used to go out with him, dear. Before I knew you.”

“Just how serious was it?” Archer’s tone was still carefully low.

“Oh, not really serious. It was a fun thing, you know.”

“No! I don’t know! What the hell do you mean ‘a fun guy’? ”

“Why, Archer, if I didn’t know you better, I’d say you were jealous.”

“I am jealous!”

“Oh, I can’t believe that. Why, any man who isn’t interested enough in his wife to buy her a birthday present certainly couldn’t be jealous over some old flame from before she was married.”

“Never mind that! When was the last time you saw this—this--this Pierre?”

“Funny you should ask that. I ran into him on the street when I was downtown shopping just the day before yesterday. As a matter of fact, he bought me a drink.”

“What do you mean ‘he bought you a drink’? Where do you come off sopping up whiskey with old beaus when you’re married to me?”

“Gin.”

“Huh?”

“It wasn’t whiskey, it was a martini,” Llona told him. “Two, to be precise—and then we had some lunch.”

“Oh, so you had lunch with him too! What did you do, spend the whole day with him?”

“Well, the afternoon did go by rather quickly.”

“I’ll bet it did! I’ll bet the hours just sped by if he was impressed enough to send you a nightgown. Did you go to his apartment?”

“Well, it was right around the corner from where we were, and we’d gotten on the subject of Chagall, and he mentioned he’d just bought some prints signed in the stone, and so naturally--”

“You did! You did go to his apartment!” Archer was beside himself now.

“Well, it was all perfectly innocent, dear. I mean, he made a pass, but you know how men are. They think it’s a reflection on their manhood if they don’t.”

“A pass? A pass! What kind of a pass? What exactly did he do?”

“Well, he tried to kiss me.”

“Tried? Or kissed? Which is it?”

“Archer, I can’t say I care very much for all this cross-examination. First you forget my birthday, and now you’re trying to pick a fight with me over a perfectly innocent —”

“Never mind that! Did. . .you. . .kiss. . .him?””

“Well, not really. He kissed me. But I didn’t really respond. It was just a friendly kiss.”

“ ‘Friendly kiss.’ I see. And then what happened?”

“Nothing. Nothing at all. I just put on my clothes and left.”

“Well,” Archer said in a more mollified tone, “you shouldn’t have let him ki— Put on your clothes and left! Put on your clothes! Your clothes! What the hell? What do you mean? Why were your clothes off?”

“The rain. I told you.”

“What rain? You didn’t tell me anything about any rain!” Archer was trembling.

“Yes, I did. You’ve forgotten. At least I think I did. Didn’t I mention it before? About us getting caught in this rainstorm — the skies just opened up—right after we left the cocktail lounge?”

“No, you didn’t say anything about any rainstorm? And I don’t see why you had to take off your --”

“Well, I was soaked to the skin. Pierre lent me a robe and we dried them out. Now, Archer, don’t be foolish about this. There was nothing else I could do.”

“You could have come straight home!”

“I would have caught pneumonia. And it was all perfectly innocent. Even the kiss.”

“Oh, sure. Perfectly innocent. Sitting around a strange man’s apartment in the buff and necking. Perfectly innocent!”

“I wasn’t in the buff. Pierre lent me a robe. Oh!” Llona snapped her fingers. “That explains it! That’s when I mentioned it about the robe being okay because I didn’t even own a decent nightgown . . . Why do you keep grabbing at yourself that way, Archer?”

“I’m not grabbing at myself!”

“Yes you are. It looks positively obscene, playing with your —“

“I’m not! I’m just looking for a cigarette down in the bottom of my pockets.”

“A cigarette? I thought you went out to buy cigarettes?”

“I did.”

“Then where are they?” Llona asked reasonably.

“I forgot them!” Archer gritted his teeth so hard the fillings rubbed together with the sound of chalk screeching a blackboard. “And never mind that anyway! You’re just trying to distract me. I want to know exactly what happened with you and this Pierre Strongfellow!”

“Who?”

“Pierre Strongfellow! Don’t play inno—”

“I don’t know anybody named Pierre Strongfellow,” Llona informed him blithely.

“What the hell do you mean?” Archer’s rage gave way to a new wave of confusion.

“What kind of man would have a name like that anyway?” Llona’s smile was dazzling.

“A muscular Frenchman, continental, suave . . . Wait a minute! Wait a minute!” Archer took a deep breath. “Didn’t you tell me Pierre Strongfellow sent you that nightgown?”

“I never told you any such thing.” Llona was indignant.

“I said right along that I doubted it.”

“What about your going to his apartment and taking off his clothes and kissing you?”

“I made all that up,” Llona said blithely. “I made it up Just to get you angry because you forgot my birthday.”

“I don’t believe you!” Archer said. “If you made it up, who’s the secret admirer?”

“There is none. I made him up too. I wrote that card myself.”

“Then who sent you that nightgown?”

“I sent it to myself,” Llona told him truthfully. “I did it to teach you a lesson, so you’d never forget my birthday again. And I made up Pierre Strongfellow for the same reason.”

“You’re lying!”

“I am not. It’s all true.”

“Then you were lying before?” Confusion made the question plaintive.

“That’s right.”

“But how do I know you’re not lying now?” Archer demanded.

“You don’t.”

“How do I know you weren’t telling the truth before and now you’re lying just to get off the hook?”

“Think what you want.” Llona yawned. “I’m going to bed.”

“You did go to his apartment and kiss him and take off your clothes!” Archer made it a statement. “Didn’t you?” The question was timid and tentative by contrast.

“You figure it out. I’m going to sleep.”

That’s where it was left. Llona slept the sleep of one satisfied at having inflicted just and deserved punishment. Archer tossed and turned all night, wondering if his wife was faithful to him or not. And he continued to brood during the days that followed, his suspicion deepening and solidifying.

The suspicion ate away at the back of his mind when he and Llona had more surface arguments, which they did continually. Two topics took precedence verbally in these brouhahas. The first was Archer’s mother and Llona’s resentment of her. The second was the problem of Archer’s joblessness. One night a few weeks later, the two merged and the war between them achieved the highest point of escalation yet.

It started innocently enough, even lovingly, you might say. They were in bed and Archer was tentatively stroking Llona’s left breast. The firm flesh tingled under his fingertips and the long nipple quivered responsively.

“I love your breasts,” Archer murmured.

“I love the way it feels when you touch them,” Llona sighed.

“Like this?” Archer traced the large pink aureole and then strummed the nipple.

“Umm . . . It’s so masculine. Typical too,” Llona recalled without really thinking about it. “I was just reading where we’ve really become a breast culture because babies of our generation were weaned too early. All American men are hung up on breasts these days because they feel they were denied enough mother-love.” She tickled Archer’s ear.

“I wasn’t denied mother-love.” Archer lazily dipped into the cleavage between the large, plump breasts. “My mother loved me very much.”

“Oh, Archer, don’t be silly.” Llona bit his neck. “Your mother doesn’t even know the meaning of love.”

It was the wrong thing to say. “That was the wrong thing to say,” Archer told her, feeling the heat of her breast under his lips. “And besides, I wasn’t weaned too early.”

“Well, she doesn’t.” Llona raked his back with her nails and insinuated one warm leg between his “And if you weren’t, then why are you doing that?”

“I like it.” Archer caught the nipple between his lips and gently assaulted it with teeth and tongue. “It has nothing to do with weaning. Besides, I don’t see why you always have to drag my mother into it.”

“Not so hard,” Llona gasped, her breasts swelling with the deep breathing of sensual arousal. “And I didn’t drag her into it. You said—”

“I didn’t say anything about her.” Archer reached around to fondle the globes of her buttocks as they ground against him. “You did. You said my mother didn’t know the meaning of love.”

“But that’s true,” Llona panted. “It’s one of the reasons you’re so screwed up.”

“How am I screwed up?” One of Archer’s fingers probed and her wriggling grew more frantic.

“Well, the way you doubt yourself when it comes to getting a job, for instance.” Llona kissed him deeply and pushed back against his finger. “It’s because you doubt your masculinity. And that’s your mother’s fault.”

“Does this feel like I doubt my masculinity?” Archer pulled her close against him again so she could feel his arousal against her stomach. “And it’s not my mother’s fault I’m out of a job,” he added, moving rhythmically. “It’s your fault.”

“That’s right! Bring that up again!” Llona wriggled to get higher until she was satisfied that the pressure was against just the right spot. “But that doesn’t make it true. You’re having employment troubles because you lack confidence in yourself. And you lack confidence in yourself because subconsciously you realize your mother didn’t give you enough love!” Llona flung herself over him. “There! That’s right! That’s the spot!”

Archer reached up and feverishly squeezed the luscious breasts dangling over his face. “I don’t lack confidence in myself!” he panted. “I’m just having a rough time finding a job. Probably because there are other things on my mind.” His hips shot from the bed as he slammed upwards with all his might. “Other things are bugging me!” he reiterated in cadence.

“Of course!” Llona bounced ecstatically. “Other things like your hang-up with your mother.”

“I don’t have any hang-up with my mother!” Archer smacked her bottom ferociously. “What’s bugging me is you and that Pierre character.”

“Oo! Oo! Oo! Whee-ee!” Llona writhed frantically atop him. “What ‘Pierre character’?”

“That Pierre Strongfellow!” Archer assaulted the core of her.

“I made him up.” Llona fell forward and slowed down to an undulating rotary motion that gripped and guided “I told you. There is no such person.”

“I don’t believe you.” Archer followed her motions, his body arched like a longbow.

“Now! Now! Now!” Llona grabbed him wildly, biting, clawing, holding the fulcrums of their bodies taut and motionless as her lust exploded. “Now!”

“Yes! Yes! Ye --” Archer echoed as his own passion mounted to match hers. Then— “What are you doing? Where are you going?”

“I’m satisfied. I’m going to sleep.” Llona clambered off him and lay down with her back to him.

“What do you mean?” Archer was agitated. “I haven’t— You had yours-— But I was only just about-—”

“That’s your lookout,” Llona told him coldly.

“You mean you’re going to leave me all hung up this way?” Archer couldn’t believe it.

“Since you persist in arguing and badgering me, that’s exactly what I’m going to do. I can’t feel erotic and bicker at the same time. Particularly when I’ve already been satisfied.”

“How can you be such a bitch?” Archer asked the question with genuine wonder.

“If you were a woman, you’d understand,” Llona told him smugly.

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Archer was beginning to boil.

“It means that for a woman it isn’t just physical. She has to be able to feel too. And when you’re picking on me, I can’t feel.”

“It didn’t stop you before,” Archer pointed out through clenched teeth.

“That was before!” Llona said with the finality of feminine logic.

“The hell you say!” Archer exploded. He rolled over on top of her and forced her thighs apart.

“Go on! Rape me! I always knew that was the kind of man you were. No sensitivity! Just sheer animal lust! I won’t respond, but that won’t bother you, will it? That’s it! Rape me!”

“That’s exactly what I intend to do!” Archer forced her to admit him and began to move again with a brutal, angry, pounding motion.

“I don’t feel a thing!” Llona insisted, striving to remain absolutely still.

Archer ignored her. Actually, he was beyond hearing her, beyond giving a damn about her feelings. Lust and anger had combined to focus on the one objective of erotic release. After a few minutes he obtained that objective and then rolled away from Llona, tired, left only with his anger.

“I hope you’re satisfied!” Llona said nastily.

“That about sums it up. Satisfied. A hollow apple would have served as well.”

“Thank goodness Pierre doesn’t have to resort to hollow apples!” Spite made Llona blurt it out; it was more vindictive than she really meant to be.

“What? What was that?!”

“You heard me!”

“I heard you all right!” Archer’s fury broke. “That did it! I’m damned if I’m going to stay here and be a cuckold!” Archer scrambled from the bed. “No tramp is going to make a fool out of me!” He pulled on his clothes and rummaged through the closet until he found a suit- case.

“What are you doing? Where are you going?”

“That’s none of your goddam business!” Archer pulled drawers from the bureau and flung socks and underwear into the suitcase.

“Archer, I was angry. I didn’t really mean—”

“You go straight to hell!” The door slammed behind him and then it was very quiet.

It stayed very quiet for what seemed like a long time. Then Llona broke the silence. She broke it with sobs, with a weeping that was half anger and half regret. Once started, it was as if a Niagara had been unleashed. Hour merged into hour and still she continued to cry. She might have gone on forever if the telephone hadn’t rung.

Archer! That was the first thing Llona thought as she dived for the phone. Archer! That was the second thing Llona thought, and it kept her from picking it up on the first ring. Don’t make it too easy for him! her mind cautioned. Archer! The hell with that! Archer! She grabbed it on the third ring.

“Hello?” Despite herself, Llona’s yoice was breathless.

“Hello, Mrs. Hornsby?” The man’s voice was unfamiliar.

“Yes?” Llona glanced at the clock. It was after four a.m. Llona felt the start of panic in the bottom of her stomach. “Yes? What is it?”

“Mrs. Hornsby, you don’t know me. I’m sorry to disturb you so late, but this is an emergency. There’s been an --”

“Who is this?” Llona interrupted him, trying to get hold of herself.

“My name is Pierre Strongfellow . . . Hello? . . . Are you there? . . . Did you hear me? . . .I said my name is Pierre Strongfellow and --”

“I heard you,” Llona said, dazed. “Pierre Strongfellow!”

CHAPTER FOUR

“There’s been a slight accident and I think you’d better—”

“An accident?” Llona felt dizzy.

“That’s right. I’m down here at—”

“Pierre Strongfellow? Is that really your name?”

“Of course it is.”

“But it can’t be.” Llona was firm.

“Why not?”

“Because I made it up.”

“You made what up?” Now the man on the other end of the phone sounded confused.

“The name. Pierre Strongfellow. I made it up.”

“Well, I don’t like to argue with a lady, particularly under these circumstances, but it’s been my name for almost thirty years.”

“That’s ridiculous!” Llona insisted.

“I admit it’s an unusual name, but I don’t see anything ridiculous about it.” He sounded offended.

“I’m sorry.” Llona apologized. “But what do you want? It’s four o’c1ock in the morning.”

“I’ve been trying to tell you. There’s been an accident. I’m afraid your husband’s been hurt.”

“Archer?” Llona was panicky. “What happened? Is he all right?”

“Well, he will be. It’s not that serious. It’s just that he has a broken—”

“Is he alive? Tell me the truth! Oh, God--!”

“Now calm yourself, Mrs. Hornsby. He’s alive. And he’s going to be all right, too. The doctors say it’s only a minor break.”

“What? What did he break? How did it hap-?”

“His leg. It’s his left leg that’s broken. But he’s going to be all right.”

“But how? What happened?”

“It’s an awfully long story, Mrs. Hornsby. It’s pretty involved and I’m not sure I understand it myself. As a matter of fact, I know I don’t. I think it would be best if you came down here to the hospital and I’ll explain what I can. Besides, when he comes to, I expect he’ll be anxious to see you.”

“Comes to? You mean he’s unconscious? Oh! Poor Archer!”

“Now it’s just a minor concussion. The doctors are sure of that, Mrs. Hornsby. So why don’t you just come down here and see for yourself. You’ll feel better when you see it’s not too bad.”

“Yes. Of course.” Llona got hold of herself. “What hospital? Where is it?”

Pierre Strongfellow gave her the information. “I’ll be waiting here for you,” he assured her, and then hung up.

Llona dressed quickly, frantically. She was fortunate in spotting a cruising cab a few minutes after she started up the street. Twenty minutes later she got out at the hospital, paid the driver and ran up the steps of the hospital entrance. The receptionist directed her to the emergency ward.

The man who greeted her in the anteroom was wearing evening dress. He was a bit over six feet tall with a leathery, outdoorsy face that was craggily handsome. He looked like he had the muscles to back up the face, but his manner was smooth and polite.

“Mrs. Hornsby?” he asked tentatively.

“Yes. I’m Mrs. Hornsby,” Llona replied.

“I’m Pierre Strongfellow.” He took her hand and bent to kiss it.

“How do you do?”

“Very well, thank you. I imagine you’re concerned about your husband. He’s in there.” Strongfellow pointed. “But I don’t believe he’s regained consciousness yet. Nothing to worry about though. The doctors assure me he’ll be all right. You can see him if you want.”

“I want,” Llona decided.

She went "through the doorway Strongfellow had indicated and found Archer lying in a hospital bed. His leg was raised and held in position by some sort of pulley contraption. There were bruises on his face and a very large welt on one side of his jaw. He was unconscious.

A nurse sat beside the bed. Llona turned to her. “How is he?” she asked.

“He’s all right. They’ll be moving him just as soon as they get a room ready. Can’t keep him in emergency, you know. It’s just a leg fracture and he’s still out from the sock in the jaw.”

“Sock in the jaw? Who—?”

“I think that good-looking man outside laid it on And he probably fractured the leg when he fell.”

“But why—?”

“You’ll have to ask him that.” The nurse jerked her thumb toward the anteroom.

“I will,” Llona said grimly. “I certainly will!”

“Yeah. You do that.” The nurse was disinterested.

“Do you think he’ll regain consciousness soon?”

“Search me. He’s also pretty loaded, you know. Best thing is for him to sleep it off. You don’t have to worry though. The doctors x-rayed him and there’s no damage to his noggin. Just a minor concussion.”

“Thank you.” Llona went back into the anteroom and straight up to the waiting Strongfellow. “Why did you beat up my husband?” she demanded.

“I didn’t beat him up. I just --”

“The hell you didn’t!” It had been a long, hard night, and Llona was distraught.

“Now look, Mrs. Hornsby, I feel just awful about this. But it really wasn’t my fault. If you’ll give me a chance, I’ll try to explain.”

“All right. Explain.”

“Okay. It was about two-thirty this morning. I’d had kind of a rough night making the big name clubs. It’s my job, you see. Anyway, by this time I’d done my duty and I just wanted to relax. So I’d dropped into this dive-—well, maybe not exactly a dive, but off the beaten track, you know?—with the four girls. We created quite a stir, I guess, what with the girls in these sexy evening gowns, and being so well stacked and all. Anyway, I’d just ordered drinks when --”

“Four girls?” Llona interrupted. “What were you doing with four girls?”

“It was a publicity bit making the hottest spots in town with them. You see, they’re the finalists in the ‘Nymph Centerspread, Contest.’ ”

“Oh. You mean for that magazine. I’ve heard about that. But what do you have to do --?”

“I’m the promotion man for Nymph,” Pierre Strongfellow explained. “This contest is my baby and getting maximum exposure for the girls is my job.”

“From what I’ve seen of the magazine. they couldn't expose themselves much more maximally,” Llona remembered. “But what has all this got to do with Archer?”

“Well, he was standing at the bar and already pretty loaded when we came in. He looked like a guy who had something eating at him. Was he disturbed about something, Mrs. Hornsby?”

“I suppose so. He’s been having—umm-—job troubles.” Llona saw no reason to reveal anything more of their private life.

“I see. Well, he began muttering to himself about some guys hoarding all the women while others didn’t have any. After seeing you, Mrs. Hornsby, I hope you’ll allow me to say that he didn’t have any cause for complaint -- none whatsoever.” Pierre Strongfellow let his gaze travel up and down the terrain of Llona’s body.

“Thank you.” She blushed. “Please go on.”

“Well, I sort of ignored him. I mean, he wasn’t really bothering us at first. He kept his comments pretty much to himself. But then he actually started homing in on the conversation. So I began to get annoyed.”

“That was no reason to beat him up!” Llona was indignant.

“Of course it wasn’t. And I didn’t beat him up. I only hit him once. And that came later. Let me tell you how it evolved.”

“Okay.” Llona subsided.

“You see, one of the girls was teasing me about my French heritage. I’m half French on my mother’s side.”

“I’ll be damned!” Llona murmured.

“What?”

“Nothing. Go on.”

“Anyway, that was when your husband butted in with some nasty remark about ‘oversexed frogs.’ I let it pass. I really wasn’t looking for trouble. Some more time passed with him just sort of still muttering to himself. Then one of the girls mentioned my first name and he picked up on that.”

“What do you mean? Picked up how?”

“Well, she said something unimportant like, you know, ‘Pass the peanuts, Pierre,’ or something like that. And he jumped in with both feet. ‘Pierre?’ he said. ‘Pierre? Is that really your name?’ I admitted it was and asked him why he was hooting the way he was. At this point, I was starting to get annoyed. He said something about how it figured my name would be Pierre and I’d have four women while he didn’t have any. I just sort of laughed it off and turned away from him. I thought if I ignored him he’d lose interest and let us alone. But I was wrong.”

“What happened then?”

“He came right out with it. He said, ‘Is your last name Strongfellow?’ I was surprised he knew it, but I admitted it was. The next thing I knew, he was shouting something about his wife-I’m sorry, but he did—and he started swinging at me. I tried to back away, but he was pretty persistent. He was throwing pretty wild punches, but finally he landed one in the midriff, and that got me mad. I slugged him—-a lot harder than I mean to, I’m afraid. He went over sort of sideways and his leg went out from under him. Right away you could see it was broken. And he was out like a light.”

“He still is,” Llona said. “You must have hit him awfully hard.”

“I suppose I did. Still, part of it is that he must have had quite a lot to drink. I’m not trying to minimize my responsibility, understand. I used to be an amateur boxer at college, and my responses are automatic—quick and hard, I’m afraid. I still keep in shape working out at the gym, and I guess I still pack a wallop. Believe me, I’m sorry. But he asked for it.”

“I’m not blaming you,” Llona sighed.

“Why did my name make him so mad?”

“It’s a long story.”

“You had a pretty funny reaction to my name when I called too,” Pierre remembered.

“Yes. Well . . .”

“What did you mean when you said you made it up?”

“Look, some other time, do you mind? I mean, I’ve got more important things on my mind right now. My husband is lying in there unconscious with a broken leg . . .”

“Of course. I’m sorry.” Pierre Strongfellow smiled sympathetically. “Well, if there’s nothing else I can do, I guess I’ll be going now.” He took Llona’s hand and kissed it again. “Feel free to call on me if I can help or anything.” He handed her a card. “And again, I’m sorry to have been responsible for your misfortune.” He left.

Alone, Llona settled down in the waiting room until she was notified that Archer was conscious. It was midmorning before that happened. In the interim, she dozed. “Mrs. Hornsby?”

Llona awoke with a start to find a doctor in a white hospital coat standing over her. “Yes?”

“Your husband is awake. You can see him now. Just take the elevator over there. Room five-oh-three.”

Llona followed the directions and a few moments later she entered Archer’s room. His leg was in traction suspended from the ceiling and he was propped up against two pillows at the headboard of the bed. A tray was balanced on his lap. Two dishes and two glasses stood on it. One dish contained something brown and gooey like baby food. It took Llona a moment to realize it was mashed prunes. The second dish was filled with a white lumpy paste that resembled something a sick puppy might upchuck: hospital oatmeal. One glass contained either separating pineapple juice, or a specimen-—it was hard to distinguish~—and the other was filled with something liquid, hot and thick and chalky. Later Llona learned it was tea with milk.

Archer was surveying the tray like a man who fears that his hangover has driven him to hallucinate. He looked up at Llona as if silently pleading with her to confirm that this mess was real. “Where am I?” he groaned without too much originality.

“In the hospital,” she told him.

“What am I doing here?”

“You’ve got a broken leg.”

“How did I break my leg?”

“You picked a fight with, the wrong man.”

“You mean I tried to kick him and broke my leg?”

“Not exactly.” Llona went on to tell Archer the details of the fight as Pierre Strongfellow had told them to her.

“Now I remember!” Archer snapped his fingers weakly. “I bumped into your lover!”

“He wasn’t my lover. I never set eyes on him before last night,” Llona told him truthfully.

“Don’t lie! I caught his name! I know who he is.”

“Now-now-now-now!” A fat nurse waddled over. “We mustn’t upset the patient,” she chided Llona. “Not while he’s eating. You’ll upset his tumtum!”

“My tumtum is already upset.” Archer pointed at the tray and made gagging sounds. “Take it away,” he begged. “I’m not ready for this kind of reality.”

“All right.” The nurse was soothing. She removed the tray. “Now just let me slide this under you.” She fished a bedpan out from under the bed and groped under the sheets.

“Yikes!” Archer’s stomach popped up, “That’s cold!”

“There we are.” The nurse beamed. “Now we have to move our bowels, don’t we?”

“No, we don’t!” Archer was firm. “We don’t have to do any such thing.”

“Of course we do. It’s time. We have to stay on schedule. Hospitals run that way; we know that, don’t we? If everybody doesn’t go on time, we can’t stay on schedule, and then we’ll have chaos.”

“I don’t care! I can’t and I won’t.”

“Are we this difficult at home?” the nurse asked Llona.

“We’re impossible at home,” Llona told her. “We’re a very picky eater.”

“That’s not all we’re picky about.” The nurse giggled.

“Look,” Archer exploded. “I’ve got enough troubles without being plural. Do you mind?”

“All right, we’ll take it away.” The nurse was disapproving. “But I’m warning you, we won’t bring it back until this afternoon.” She reached under the sheets again.

“I’ll survive.” Archer bounced again. “Just take the bedpan, will you? I’m attached to the other!”

“Archer, we’ve got to think about what we’re going to do,” Llona said when the nurse had left.

“What do you mean?”

“From what I gather, you’re going to be in the hospital about six weeks. We can’t afford that. I’ll have to get a job.”

I won’t have my wife working!”

“We don’t have any choice.”

“I don’t care! I won’t!”

The argument continued until the nurse came back to inform Llona that visiting hours were over. It wasn’t resolved, but there was no doubt in Llona’s mind that she’d have to go to work no matter how Archer persisted in his attitude. As she left, she decided she wouldn’t bicker with him about it any more. She’d just go out and find a job.

From the hospital, she headed downtown, meaning to do just that. She got off the bus in the business district and was walking up the street toward one of the larger office buildings, intending to file applications with some of the employment agencies, when she bumped into Pierre Strongfellow. He came up the block toward her, beaming.

“Well, hello,” he greeted her. “Fancy meeting you here.”

“Hello.” Llona found herself smiling back.

“What brings you to this neck of the woods?”

“I’rn looking for work. With Archer laid up --”

“I see. Look, perhaps I can be helpful. I mean, I do feel responsible. Look, let’s get out of this hot sun and talk it over.” He guided her toward the entrance to a cocktail lounge.

Before Llona could protest, she found herself sipping a martini and seated across from him in a cool, dimly lit bistro. He certainly is a charmer! she reflected. For the first time since the previous evening, Llona found herself really relaxing.

She didn’t even notice that Pierre didn’t mention the matter of a job for her again. She became engrossed in his sophisticated chatter and his obvious interest in her. She accepted a second martini and then lunch without question.

Over coffee they got into a discussion of art. Llona was delighted. She’d always been interested in painting and Archer couldn’t have cared less. Pierre obviously had a deep knowledge of the subject and she found his comments fascinating. It was when he was paying the check that he mentioned he’d just acquired some Chagall prints signed in the stone.

Somehow, it seemed very natural to agree to go up to his apartment to see the prints. After all, as he pointed out, it was just around the corner. Surely they couldn’t have figured on getting caught in a sudden rainstorm walking such a short distance.

But they did! By the time they entered Pierre’s flat, Llona was soaked to the skin. It was the most natural thing in the world to accept his offer of a robe and to take off her clothes and hang them in the bathroom to dry.

When she came out of the bathroom, wearing Pierre’s robe, Llona found that he too had changed his clothes. He had donned a T-shirt and slacks. Llona couldn’t help being impressed by the athletic build showed off by the garb.

He put on some soft music, mixed them a drink, and then showed Llona the prints. She was impressed with them, as she had been by the tasteful furnishings of his apartment. She really felt wonderfully relaxed here, and she didn’t bother to hide it.

Pierre sensed this, which is why he felt free to kiss her. Llona didn’t make any fuss about it. She accepted the kiss, but she was careful not to encourage him by responding to it. He gauged her reaction correctly, counseled himself to patience, and didn’t persist in romancing her after it was over. Instead, he swung back into easy conversation.

“I’m sorry about the robe,” he told her. “I wish I had something more glamorous for you to put on.”

“It’s fine,” Llona answered. “I wouldn’t even know what to do with anything glamorous. Up until yesterday, I didn’t even own a decent nightgown.”

They chatted some more until her clothes had dried. Then Llona got dressed and he took her home. Weary from lack of sleep the night before, she went to bed early. She didn’t wake up until the doorbell sounded the next morning.

It was a delivery boy with a large package. Llona opened it and found a very filmy, very expensive nightgown nestled in the tissue paper. There was a note with it. “To Llona, From a Secret Admirer”!

Of course Pierre must have sent it. Llona giggled to herself. Life imitates artfulness! She giggled again and went in to take a shower.

She was getting dressed when the phone rang. It was Pierre. “I forgot all about helping you get a job,” he began. “Until just now when I ran into something you’d be perfect for.”

“What kind of job is it?” Llona wanted to know.

“Receptionist for Nymph magazine. All you have to do is sit in the outer office and look beautiful. Just be yourself.”

“How much does it pay?”

“One-fifty a week.”

“You’re kidding! Isn’t that an awful lot for a receptionist?”

“Nymph doesn’t skimp when it comes to beauty. Look, I’ve spoken to the publisher, Raunch Rammer, about you. The thing is, he needs somebody right away. The last girl left sort of suddenly. So do you think you could maybe get down here and start right away?”

“Well, I suppose so.” Llona was confused with the suddenness of it. “What’s the address?”

Pierre gave it to her. “Just ask for Rammer,” he told her. “I’m afraid I won’t be here. I have an early appointment and won’t be in ’til later in the morning. But mention my name. He’ll be expecting you.”

“I don’t know how to thank you,” Llona said. “And for the present too.”

“I’ll think of a way.” Pierre chuckled. “But for now just get down here as fast as you can.”

Llona did what he suggested. She was at the Nymph offices within the hour. Raunch Rammer interviewed her himself. “I think you’ll do just fine,” the publisher told her. “Can you start right away? Now?”

“Yes sir.”

“Fine. The desk you passed on the way in is yours. Just take off your clothes, sit there, and smile.”

“Just what?”

“Take off your clothes. Our receptionists always work in the nude. I thought you knew that.”

“Of course.” Llona gulped. “I’ll just take off all my clothes . . .”

CHAPTER FIVE

Fig leaves protect the guilty. Against themselves. The innocent look lustlessly. At first, anyway. Later, of course, they are taught to be amused, are taught that innocence is the one sin the non innocent will not forgive, are taught to shuck their innocence in the name of civilization. They have to be taught. But it’s true that they learn all too eagerly. Thus honest, basic, natural sexual response is transformed into sophisticated, complicated, competitive lust.

It can happen very quickly. Such was the case with Cal Lowe. When he walked into the reception room of Nymph magazine late that morning, Cal was a Billy Budd in the bud. Inside of an hour he was leching like a Studs-ish Lonigan.

Cal was the latest in a succession of office boys employed by Nymph magazine. Just under eighteen years old, he’d been hired for the summer, a period which, for Cal, lay between high school graduation and the alternatives of college acceptance, Vietnam, or self-imposed Canadian exile. He was a tall lad, all elbows and knees and ribs, with straw-blond hair worn not quite long enough to earn the respect of his hippie contemporaries, yet just too long to reassure his parents.

That morning, when Llona had installed herself in the buff at the reception desk, Cal had been out on an errand. His first glimpse of her took place upon his return. It evoked mixed reactions.

Cal’s attitude towards Llona’s predecessor had been disinterested. His surprise at her nudity had worn off after his first day on the job. He’d accepted it as part of the “image” Nymph magazine strained to project. Selective in his innocence, Cal had rejected the girl herself on aesthetic grounds.

Others admired the size forty-plus bosom; Cal noted the late-twenties sag and turned off. Older men phantasized over the plump derriére; Cal focused on a few wrinkles and dismissed it. The saucy red curls tossing over all that nakedness consistently distracted the other males in the office, but Cal’s sharp eye picked up a trail of dandruff and the revelation of dark brown roots and held to his youthful ideal of truth being beauty, vice versa, et cetera. His eye, in its innocence, still sought perfection; horniness had not yet rendered it amenable to compromise.

His first look at Llona, while it called forth confused responses, in no-way altered this. Young and blond and voluptuous, Llona lived up to his ideal with no compromises necessary. Cal prolonged the look and found no flaws-—not one. The pure aesthete in him was fulfilled by the sight of her, but there was more than aesthetics in the feelings it engendered.

Cal felt a tug, more than a tug, the first powerful surge of too-long stopped-up manhood. He felt a desire which had nothing to do with aesthetic appreciation. Still, the feeling was pure, innocent, not yet brainwashed into the twistings of lust circa 1969. That would come later -- but not much later.

Now the feeling merely confused him and the confusion immobilized him for a few long moments. During this time, he simply stood and stared. Finally, Llona became aware of being gazed at and looked up from the copy of Nymph she’d been perusing at her desk.

“Good morning.” She greeted Cal politely. “Can I help you?”

Slow to find his tongue, Cal didn’t answer.

“Whom did you wish to see?” Llona persisted.

“Nobody, I-—-I —I—I’m Cal Lowe. I w-work here.”

“Well, hello. My name is Llona Mayper.” One of the terms of employment insisted on by Raunch Rammer was that Llona use her maiden name and keep her married status secret; the publisher had stressed this as being more in keeping with the Nymph image. “I work here too,” Llona continued. “I just started this morning.”

“H-How do.” Cal took her hand and forgot to let go. “I g-guess we’ll be seeing l-l-lots of each other,” he added, feeling inane.

“Well, you couldn’t see much more of me than you are right now.” Llona dimpled. She was finding Cal’s youth and obvious embarrassment quite likable.

“Oh! Gee! Golly! I di-didn’t mean-—”

“It’s all right.” Llona retrieved her hand. “I’ll see you later,” she added pointedly to break the spell holding Cal rooted to the spot.

“Yeah. Sure.” Cal found his long legs carrying him quickly across the floor to the entrance to the inner offices. “See y-you l-later.” He vanished from her sight.

“Hey, boy, where you been?” A turtle-necked toothpaste commercial with a button-down manicure, white-collar eyes and a Brooks Brothers suntan descended on Cal and took away the package he was carrying. This was I. M. Zihnzeehr—Irving to his business familiars; he had no friends since he was constitutionally opposed to doing anybody a favor—Advertising Manager of Nymph magazine. “You were gone so long I figured you joined the Dodge Rebellion. The Draft Dodge Rebellion, that is. Don’t you know I’ve been waiting for these proofs? One silly milliminute longer, and I’d have had you packaged for canning. On this magazine, my boy, time is bigger than life!”

“Gosh, I’m sorry, Mr. Zihnzeehr. It won’t happen again. I p-promise.” Cal was still new enough to the working world so that the threat of being fired hit him like a testes-twister.

“Do your job one hundred percent, boy. Don’t be half-safe!” Irving’s suntan crinkled into an unfatherly mouthful of teeth grinning warning. The molars and the suntan were thirtyish; the blue eyes were stricfly Dead See. The powdery slogans puffed out from under Irving’s moustache were the dry dust poofs of a True Believer, a fanatic Mad. Ave. Merriwell, Frank as Frank can be, and his attitude toward Cal reflected the first commandment of the Huckster: “The neck you step on going up will never trip you going down!”

“I’ll watch it, Mr. Zihnzeehr.” Cal didn’t know what else to say.

“Why don’t you get off the kid’s back, Irving?” The voice, husky, feminine, domineering, floated over the plywood walls of one of the cubicles. “He probably stopped for a look-see at the new whipped cream strip queen recepting for us. Human, all too human, meaning maybe an anthropological step removed from you, Irving. Is that what it was, Cal? It’s all right.”

“Yes, Miss Von Dyker,” Cal admitted it, blushing.

“What’s she like?” Beulah Von Dyker called, mildly curious.

“She’s b—beautiful,” Cal stammered. “She’s l-lovely. Sort of p-pure, and-—w-well, you know, like a statue of a Greek g-goddess.”

“How about that, Irving? How does that grab you?”

“Every market is a virgin market to start out,” Irving proselytized. “But every market can be educated to its appetite. Cal’s taken the first step. He admired the design of the product in the showroom. Next he has to realize he doesn’t just want to look; he wants to drive it.”

“And what do you think of this year’s model?” Beulah asked from behind the partition. “I haven’t seen it yet. Wait a minute.” Irving stepped over to the entrance to the reception room and took a long look at the naked blond at the desk.

“Well?” Beulah wanted to know as the silence lengthened.

“Built for speed,” Irving pronounced. “Too fast for the inexperienced driver. Cal could never handle it. A hot-rod creampuff from the looks of her. All slicked up and ready to be road-tested." He licked his lips.

“Never mind the Detroit monologue. Get to the specifics.” '

“So round, so firm, so fully packed,” Irving described. “And looks to be pretty free and easy on the floor.”

“Uncomfortable,” Beulah Von Dyker decided. “How about on a mattress?”

“Give me a one-week concentrated campaign and she’ll be the springiest Springrnaid in Huckster-dom.”

“She’s n-not like that!” Cal objected. “Y-You can see she’s a n-nice girl, Mr. Zihnzeehr.”

“If I laid all the nice girls like her end to end, I wouldn’t have time left over to Rinso-white my teeth,”’

Irving told him. “Ask the man who’s used one, kid. I tell you she’s a pushover. And yummy too,” he added.

“This I’ve got to see for myself.” Beulah Von Dyker came out of her office. She was a tall brunette, big-boned and hippy with small, high, and extremely pointed breasts. Her hair was cropped very short, like a boy’s; it was even just a bit shorter than Cal’s. She wore a severely tailored blouse, tweed skirt and extra-large, round, tortoise-shell glasses which lent her chiseled features an owl-like lookf She walked over to where Irving was standing and looked over his shoulder at Llona. “Ah, she is a sexy bit of fluff, isn’t she?”

“What is happening here?” A young, pleasant-looking black man emerged from another of the cubicles.

Beulah ignored the question. “I hate to agree with the cynics of commerce, lad,” she said to Cal. “But I’m afraid Irving has her pegged right. There’s more venality than virtue in that luscious rump.”

“I d-don't think she’s a—a—pushover like you’re implying!” Cal was stubborn.

“What do you think, Reb?” Beulah asked the black man.

“Production for use.” H. Reb Klein nodded agreement. “Nothing built like that is meant for mere visual appreciation. I’d like to shoot her. I’d judge she’s quite photogenic. But I’d rather integrate her.”

“Pleasure before business,” Irving concurred hypocritically, managing to ignore quite blithely the startled look Cal shot him. “But remember, Reb, I saw her first.”

“I saw her first,” Cal reminded him. “Sir,” he added.

“You should have planted a flag,” Beulah told him.

“What for? He’d only pronounce her virgin territory.” Reb smiled in the face of Cal’s blush -- not unkindly.

“I’ll give you all a full report on the results of the campaign,” Irving told them smugly.

“Now hold on! Who appointed you Head Lecher?” Beulah wanted to know.

“That’s right. I demand equal opportunity!” Reb chimed in.

“For women too,” Beulah added.

“Are you opting for femininity this week; dear?” Irving asked too sweetly. “Isn’t that a little out of character for you?”

“It’s right in character,” Beulah said coldly. “I am what I am and I don’t disguise the nature of the product like some I might mention.”

“Manipulation is an art.” Irving was huffy. “That’s ‘man-ipulation,’ ” he pointed out.

“Well, that should let you out,” Beulah snapped.

“Half a day today?” Irving’s retort was cut off by the entrance of Comstock Bowdler, editor of Nymph magazine. “Somebody should have told me.”

“Just time out for inspiration,” Reb answered him.

“From you I could use less inspiration and more photos for the book,” Bowdler shot back.

“You can’t rush art.” The photographer was not intimidated. “It has to proceed at its own pace.”

“Prima donna!” The editor didn’t push it any further than that. “The way you’re all ogling the new cheese,” he continued to the group at large, “you’d think you didn’t spend your working days under a sea of pulchritude.”

“The trouble with you, Hugh Esquire, Esquire, is that you can’t see the goods for the seas,” Beulah punned.

Comstock Bowdler winced at her mangling of his pseudonym. He should have been used to it. He was always kidded about the name he used on the masthead of the magazine. It was useless to protest that he hadn’t picked it out himself. “Hugh Esquire” had been the selection of the publisher, Raunch Rarnmer. “Given the essence of Nymph,” Rammer had pointed out, “we could hardly hold up our heads with an editor named Comstock Bowdler. It would be as ridiculous as somebody named Adolph Hitler heading up the Anti-Defamation League.” Thus “Hugh Esquire” was coned—-half minted from the bunniest boy publisher of them all, the other half stolen outright from Nymph’s other chief competitor. Nymph wasn’t yet in either league, but the editorial alias was a start. On salary, juicy salary, Comstock had acquiesced. But he didn’t like it. The trouble was, it came too close to the truth of what might be termed his double life -- the other half of which no one at Nymph, not even Raunch Rammer himself, suspected.

Now Comstock changed the subject. “Let’s see what all the eroticism’s about,” he said, elbowing his way through the others to where he could get a look at Llona. “Succulent.” He concurred in the majority opinion. “And I’d say most decidedly available.”

“Out of your league,” Irving told him. “All of you.” He included the others.

“The arrogance of the adman!” Reb shook his head. “I see I shall have to teach you a lesson.”

“Fifty bucks says I make her first.” Irving challenged him.

“I accept the wager,” Reb snapped back.

“Wait a minute! What about us?” Beulah Von Dyker demanded. “Let’s make it a pool instead of a bet.”

“An office pool’s not a bad idea,” Comstock mused. “But where do you come in, Beulah? I’d say you were ruled out on anatomical grounds.”

“The hell I am. There’s more than one way to skin that sex kitten. I demand in!”

“All right. Then we’ll put up fifty bucks apiece,” Comstock decided.

“What do you mean? You can’t get in on this. You’re a married man.” Irving was indignant.

“So what?”

“It’s people like you that killed Father Knows Best!”

“If Beulah’s eligible, so am I!” Comstock insisted.

“Fifty dollars apiece it is then.” Reb took out his wallet.

“Careful, Reb,” Irving told him snidely. “You may be at a disadvantage. Maybe Little Eva out there has prejudices.”

“You think she’s anti-Semitic?” Reb asked with a studied air of innocence.

“That should shut you up, Irving,” Beulah giggled.

It was common knowledge around the office that Reb was Jewish, but nobody around the office quite fathomed the ancestral logistics of a Jewish black man. Least of all, Irving, who was also Jewish, albeit Reformed to Reb’s heritage of Orthodoxy.

“How are we going to insure there’s no cheating?” Comstock Bowdler wondered. “I mean, any of us could simply lie and say we had when we hadn’t.”

“Hadn’t what?” Raunch Rammer and Pierre Strongfellow had emerged from Raunch’s office and come up behind the others unseen. It was Raunch who had spoken. “What’s the name of the game?” he continued good-naturedly. “And why can’t publishers play?” Raunch liked to run his magazine on a free-and-easy basis that allowed him to be one of the boys.

Comstock explained the situation and the idea of the pool to him.

“Well, I certainly think Pierre and I should be let in on this,” Raunch said when Comstock had finished. “Don’t you think so, Pierre?” He winked at Strongfellow.

Pierre immediately dug the import of the wink. It said that he and the publisher had an edge the others didn’t know about. They were the only ones who were aware that Llona was married. But then Pierre had an edge Raunch didn’t know about. He’d already lured Llona up to his apartment once. That should offset any advantage Rammer might think he had by virtue of being Llona’s boss.

“I don’t see why not,” Pierre replied.

“More moola to feed the kitty.” Irving spoke for the others.

“But what about this question of honesty raised by our eminent editor, Esquire, Esquire?” Reb reminded them.

“A valid point,” Raunch agreed. “We’ve got to systematize the proceedings. In the first place, we’ll draw lots for the wooing sequence so we won’t be tripping over one another. That will determine who gets first crack at the siren, second, third, and so on. Is that agreeable to everybody?”

They all nodded assent.

“Okay. Now, as to the authenticity of the seduction. First of all, the first one to take her to bed takes the pot. Okay?”

“But doesn’t that give the one who gets first crack at her an unfair edge?” Comstock asked.

“Perhaps. But that’s unavoidable. Still, we can narrow the edge by limiting each attempt to one date. She may not be the pushover you think she is. One date, and then to the end of the line. That way everybody else gets a chance before the first guy gets a second try. After all, it’s conceivable that the first one may merely weaken her resistance for the second, or the second for the third.”

“All right . . . That’s true . . . Okay . . .” They agreed to Raunch’s logic.

“Now, as to proof,” Raunch continued. “I think I have an idea. If you’ll step into my office.” He led the way and they trooped after him.

“Close the door,” Pierre told Cal, who had trailed hesitantly along behind the others.

“Look at these.” Raunch produced a large box from his desk as Cal shut the door. He opened the box and displayed half a dozen pairs of black lace bikini panties. He held one pair up so the others could see. He turned them around so that the embossed letters spelling out “NYMPH” were visible down the left side of the rear of the panties. “Now here’s what I propose,” Raunch told them. “I’ll have the young lady’s name—Llona—- embroidered on the other half of these panties and I’ll present her with seven pairs of them—one for each day in the week. Now, I shall call the young lady in here, present her with the panties and insist that she wear them off the job. She’ll think it’s peculiar, but I’ll insist on it as an idiosyncrasy of mine having to do with the Nymph image. I’m sure I can convince her, since there won’t be any reason for her to object. Okay, now the rest is simple. Whoever can produce a pair of these panties will have proven they’ve had intimate relations with her. The panties will be the proof.”

“What’s to prevent someone from just having a pair of panties made up like these and bringing them in as proof?” Beulah asked suspiciously.

“I’ll put a code number in them—-sewn into the elastic. I won’t even know what it is myself. I’ll ask the manufacturer to do it and keep the number in his safe.”

“You could pressure the manufacturer to tell you the number,” Irving pointed out.

“I suppose so,” Raunch granted. “But you’ll just have to trust me in that respect. I mean, I think you’ll all grant that of all of us I’m the only one to whom the money is meaningless. I’m in it for the sport. I wouldn’t cheat. It wouldn’t be any fun for me that way.”

“Raunch is right,” Pierre said. “I’ll buy it.” He laid a fifty-dollar bill on the desk.

The others followed suit. Last of all Cal Lowe approached the desk and laid down a white slip of paper. Raunch picked it up. It was an IOU for fifty dollars.

“I don’t think you belong in this, Cal,” he told the office boy.

“Yeah,” Irving chimed in. “No virgins allowed. We have to maintain some standards.”

“We couldn’t allow it, Cal. You’re the office virgin. Do you want to ruin your status?” Reb kidded him.

“And just a little while ago you were insisting on her chastity,” Beulah remembered. “Can we have destroyed your illusions so quickly?”

They could and they had. But Cal was forced to bow to their opinion. He withdrew from the contest and from the publisher’s office. Under his breath he was muttering to himself that he’d show them. Innocence had departed; the spirit of competition was new and strong. Stopping to peek at Llona as she sat naked at the reception desk, Cal saw her now with different eyes. No longer was she a work of art and nature to be admired but never touched; now she was a Mona Lisa daring him to desecration, a wondrous Everest challenging him to the climb. He’d show them all!

Back in the pub1isher’s office, slips of papers had been numbered, folded, tossed into a hat and stirred around. Each of them reached into the hat and withdrew one of the slips. They unfolded them and looked at the numbers.

“I’m first!” a voice exulted. “I’m Number One!”

Outside, Llona sat naked at her desk, unprotected, unknowing, unaware that she was the prize in the office lottery . . .

CHAPTER SIX

One hand behind her back, the fat nurse waddled toward Archer, a glint in her eye.

“What now, you predatory Nightingale?” Archer asked in a voice heavy with suspicion.

“My, we’re testy this evening, aren’t we?” she cooed.

“That we are. We suffer from lack of sleep, we do.”

“We’re insomniac,” she clucked. “We’ll have to ask Doctor for some sandman pills.”

“Oh no we won’t!”

“We’re stubborn! We’re very stub-bor-en!”

“We’re learning, is what we are,” Archer told her. “We were sleeping like a jam of logs last night until we were waked up to take our sleeping pill. Three times we made the Land of Nod, and thrice we were exiled by our night nursey to take our sleepy-bye pill. And then we were awakened for good at five in the ayem for our wash and prune juice and poached eggs. Have you ever opened your eyes and found a pair of underpoached chicken embryos staring back at you? We were not delighted; our appetite was not aroused.”

“Hospitals have to be—”

“—run on schedule. We know. But wouldn’t we think that some day a hospital might be run on a schedule conducive to the well-being of the patients, instead of for the convenience of the staff? We know this is probably an anarchistic, communistic idea, but— what the hell do we think we’re doing?”

“Turn over. We have to take our temperature.”

“We have flipped our white cap is what we have done!” Archer fended her off with both hands. “In case we’ve forgotten, we have a busted leg which if we’ll have a look-see, we’ll find is in traction, which makes it impossible to turn over.”

“We have a point there,” the nurse granted.

“Stop that! Stop groping!”

“I’m only trying to find—Ahh! There we are!”

“Whoo-ee! Get your finger out of my——-”

“Now just hold still. We had to find it first. If we’ll stop thrashing around, we’ll be able to put the thermometer—!”

“Isn’t it time for visiting hours?” Archer was plaintive. “Why do we have to take our temperature now? Why can’t we do it after they’re over?”

“Because then we have to have our enema,” the nurse informed him joyfully.

“Hello-hello.” Llona called from the doorway as the nurse extracted the thermometer. “How do you feel today?”

“We’re cranky,” the nurse told her.

“Let’s leave us alone with our wife now,” Archer said through clenched teeth.

“She seems a jolly sort,” Llona observed after the nurse had left.

“If you like anal sadists,” Archer grumbled. He was thinking about the coming enema, determined to fight Nursey’s obsession.

“She’s only doing her job, I’m sure.” Llona tried to placate him. “Which reminds me,” she continued. “I’ve found one. A job.”

“I told you, I forbid it!” Archer became very agitated. “I’m not going to have my wife supporting me!”

“I’m supporting me.” Llona tried to reason with him. ‘“That’s something you’re unable to do right now. Be sensible, Archer. I have to pay the rent. I have to eat.”

“I don’t care!” Archer was adamant. “We can give up the apartment. You can move in with my mother until I’m back on my feet again.”

“With your mother!” Llona reared up like a bucking bronco. “So you want me to go out of my mind altogether?”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean? What’s the matter with my mother?”

“First of all, we don’t get along. Us living together would be like an Arab and an Israeli trying to share the same waterhole in the middle of the desert.”

“If you live together, you’ll learn to get along.”

“Second of all, she’s paranoid. She’s obsessed with the idea that I hate her.”

“Well, don’t you?” Archer asked.

“Of course I do. Who wouldn’t. When somebody is that suspicious of you, naturally you’re going to hate them.”

“That sounds more like State Department policy than logic,” Archer protested. “Haven’t you ever heard of coexistence?”

“With the Russians, "yes. Maybe even someday with the Chinese. But with your mother, never! Never!”

“Then go back and live with your own parents. I don’t care how you work it out. I just don’t want my wife working.”

“With my own parents? Don’t be funny, Archer. You very well know I’d rather live with your mother even than with my father!” '

“If you ask me, you’re just all hung up on the generation gap.”

“Me and everybody else.” Llona sought support in the numbers of the generality.

“It’s a fallacy.” Archer followed her off on the tangent. “You know what the truth about the generation gap is? I’ll tell you. The truth is that the generations are closer than they’ve ever been. That’s right, the gap is narrower than ever before. And that’s the reason there’s all this friction. The generations are drawing so close together that they’re becoming abrasive to each other. It’s simply a case of familiarity breeding contretemps.”

“That’s very profound.” Llona tried flattery as a means of softening his attitude.

It didn’t work. “I ain’t gonna digress no moah, no moah,” Archer decided. “I forbid you to take a job.”

“I told you. I’ve already been hired. I’ve already started work.”

“Well, I want you to quit.” Archer pounded the pillow with his fist.

“Well, I can’t”

“You can!”

“No, I can’t.”

“You mean you won’t.”

“All right then, I won’t!”

It went on like that for the rest of the visiting hour. The more insistent Archer was that Llona quit her job, the more stubborn Llona became about retaining it. When the nurse returned to tell them that she must leave now, the argument was at a stalemate.

“We have to have our enema,” the nurse confided to Llona as the sullen Archer turned a cold cheek to his wife’s farewell kiss.

“Why?” Llona heard her husband demanding as she went out the door. “Why do we have to have our enema? I’m here for a broken leg, for God’s sake. I don’t see where that calls for a purge!”

“Sanitation,” the fat nurse explained. “Hygiene. Hospitals must have cleanliness. Inside and out. Every patient is washed three times daily and his insides are cleansed every evening. It’s routine.”

“It’s sadism!” Archer trying in vain to fend off the approach of the device. “And it’s nonproductive. Since no human being could eat the food here anyway, what’s the point in it? Now you just get away from me with . . .”

His voice faded out behind Llona as she turned the hospital corridor. She was feeling just angry enough at Archer to be glad in the knowledge that he’d lose his batfish Maybe it would purge some of the stubbornness from him!

Her slow burn continued throughout most of the next day. Sitting at the reception desk, naked, used by now to the reactions of those who called to do with Nymph magazine; Llona got mad all over again every time she thought of how unreasonable Archer’s attitude was. And the more she brooded, the greater her resentment grew.

Her attitude wasn’t diminished by the fact of a sudden heat spell during which the company’s air-conditioning system had temporarily conked out. Despite the fact that she was dressed—or undressed, to be accurate about it—more coolly than anyone else on the premises, Llona felt sticky and flushed by the end of the working day. Perhaps this was why she accepted Comstock Bowdler’s invitation without resistance.

“I’m Number One!” Bowdler had rejoiced that day in Raunch Rammer’s office. “I get first crack at her!”

The others had grumbled, more or less in proportion to the numbers they themselves had drawn. But none of them had really been too seriously concerned with Bowdler being first. He wasn’t particularly noted around the office for any Lothario-like qualities.

Not that Bowdler was unattractive. He had a friendly, roundish puppy-dog sort of face with soft brown eyes that looked out on the world with an appealingly open quality. His body was stocky, solid in clothes, a hint of pudginess around the edges when he stepped out of his morning shower. His nature was to be pleasing, which rendered him vulnerable to influences which were sometimes opposing, and so left him tossing leaflike and acquiescent in winds of opinion not really his own. But this same inclination to please was not without its attraction to certain women.

For instance, it served to lull any apprehension Llona might have had about accepting Bowdler’s invitation to have a “tall, wet, cold cocktail” with him after work. If she was going to see Archer (still angry at him, Llona was thinking of skipping a night just to teach him a lesson; but she hadn’t really decided yet), then she’d have time to kill before visiting hours began. Hot and frazzled, a drink in an air-conditioned cocktail lounge sounded heavenly to her. And Comstock Bowdler, seemingly a bit shy and hesitant about asking her, courteous and gentlemanly, seemed harmless enough.

The first iced vodka tonic led to a second, and then a third. It was while sipping the third that Llona sighed to Comstock that she didn’t know how she’d ever be able to bring herself to leave this oasis and face the steamy heat beyond its portals.

“I guess I’m lucky,” Comstock replied carefully. “All I have to do is get in my convertible, put the top down, drive thirty-five minutes, and then hop into the pool for a swim.”

“That’s right. You live out in the suburbs. Do you belong to a pool out there? It sounds divine.”

“No, we don’t belong to a pool. We have one in our back yard. A fifty-foot Gunite pool that it cost me nine grand to put in,” Comstock told her proudly. “On a night like this, I really know it was worth it. And my wife and kids get a lot of enjoyment out of it too,” he added, carefully guileless.

“Oh, you’re married.” Llona hadn’t been sure before. “Sure.” Comstock laughed. “Isn’t everybody?”

Llona didn’t answer. It was safer to let it pass. She wasn’t sure if the secrecy surrounding her own married state included the editor or not.

“Say, I’ve got an idea,” Comstock said as if it had just occurred to him, as if it wasn’t part of a plan he’d been evolving all day. “Why don’t you come on home with me and have a swim?”

“Oh, no. I couldn’t do that.”

“Why not?” Comstock urged.

Llona couldn’t tell him she should go to the hospital and visit her husband. Of course, she could call Archer and tell him she wasn’t coming. After all, it would serve him right. And it was such a hot night, and a swim sounded so tempting. Still—- “Well, your wife probably wouldn’t like the idea if you brought a total stranger home to go swimming,” Llona temporized.

“Nonsense! Why should she mind?” Comstock didn’t mention the fact that his wife was away in the country with the kids for two weeks. Time enough to explain that later-—after he’d lured Llona out there.

“Well, I don’t even have a bathing suit with me.”

“You can wear one of hers, my wife’s.” That would be the day! Mrs. Comstock Bowdler was twice Llona’s size. But Comstock figured that once they were out there a little skinny-dipping might be a solution -- and a goad to further intimacies. “Come on,” he persisted. “What do you say?”

“Well . . . All right,” Llona decided. “Only I’ll have to make a phone call first.”

“Booth’s right in the back.” Comstock produced as handful of change and pointed it out to her. He signaled the waiter for the check as Llona started for it.

“Hello? Who is it?” Archer’s voice sounded cranky.

“It’s me, Archer. Llona. I just wanted to tell you I won’t be there tonight.”

“Why not?” Even crankier.

“I’m hot and I’m tired and I’ve been invited to go for a swim,” Llona told him truthfully.

“What do you mean? Who invited you?” Archer sputtered. “Where are you going?”

“One of the men I work with. He has a pool in his back yard.”

“Oh, great! I knew it! I knew it! I knew it!”

“You knew what?” Llona wondered.

“I knew that when a married woman goes to work, the next thing is she starts kanoodling with the men in the office. I knew it!”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Archer. This is a perfectly respectable man with a wife and children. He’s simply invited me over to have a swim with his family.”

“Only when you get there, the wife and children aren’t home!” Archer guessed with remarkable intuition. “That’s the oldest ploy there is!”

“Archer, why are you so suspicious? Why don’t you trust me?”

“That’s pretty funny, coming from you, after you confessed to me about you and that Strongfellow making out in his—” Archer broke off abruptly and when he resumed speaking, his tone had changed from indignation to pleading. “No. Please. Not again. Believe me, there’s nothing left. Get away from me with that contraption. You won’t even get liver bile. Just the liver itself. Yes, that’s what you’re after! All my vital organs. First the liver, then the gallbladder, then the kidneys, and the intestines, and . . .”

“Archer? Archer?” When there was no answer, Llona jiggled the receiver. “What’s the matter, Archer?”

“That nurse is back with her damned enema bag!” His voice was very faint. “I can’t fight you both at once,” he moaned. “It’s too much for me.”

“Then good-bye, Archer. I’ll come to see you tomorrow for sure. Meanwhile, why don’t you just cooperate with the nurse. She’s only trying to help you get better.”

“She’s an anatomical butcher,” Archer whispered hoarsely. “She’s extracting all my vital organs. She’s a mad scientist out to prove a human being can be deorganed anally.”

“You’re being silly, Archer. Good-bye.” Llona hung up and left the booth.

Comstock Bowdler was waiting for her. He led her from the cocktail lounge and down the block to the garage where he kept his car. Ten minutes later they were on the highway cruising toward his house in the suburbs with the convertible top down.

Another twenty minutes and Bowdler steered the convertible off the highway. As they zig-zagged through a maze of local streets, he turned to Llona with some embarrassment. “Miss Mayper,” he said, reverting to a formality which had been dropped earlier in the evening, “I wonder if I could ask you to do me a favor.”

“Well . . . Sure . . . What is it?”

“Umm . . . Would you mind lying down on the floor of the car?” Comstock blurted it out.

“Would I mind what?”

“Lying down on the floor of the car. Please.”

“Why?”

“Well, this is a pretty small, tight-knit, conservative sort of community where everybody knows everybody else,” Comstock explained. “If somebody saw me driving home with a pretty girl like you, there’d be talk.” He didn’t bother to add that his neighbors knew his family was away, a fact that would turn their indictment from speculative to damning.

“All right.” Llona shrugged and crouched down on the floor of the car, feeling ridiculous.

There was another reason why Comstock Bowdler was so extra-careful. It started to emerge right after they entered the front door of his home. As they came in, the phone was ringing and he hurried to answer it.

Llona didn’t mean to eavesdrop, but she was sort of left hanging there in the entrance hallway, not knowing where to go to avoid hearing. At first, occupied with her own thoughts, she didn’t listen. She was thinking that the house had been suspiciously dark as they alit from the convertible. Nor could she see any signs of life now. Oh, well. She shrugged it off. Bowdler’s family must be in the pool, which was probably in the back of the house since Llona hadn’t seen it from the street.

“No-no-no! I don’t think we should mount a campaign aimed at Nymph!” Bowdler was protesting on the phone. The way his voice had shot up attracted Llona’s attention. “Yes, yes, scandalous! Of course! But a flea. A flea, I tell you. One does not mobilize one’s heavy artillery for an assault on a flea . . . An alternative target? Well, yes, as a matter of fact I do have one in mind. The Sunday New York Times magazine section! . . . Yes, I thought that would surprise you. But let me explain. It averages twenty to thirty pages of Lascivious pictures an issue. That’s more than Nymph! . . . Why, I’m talking about the ads, of course. All those stocking ads and girdle ads and bra Yes, and the deodorant ads and the travel ads with the bikinis and the mouthwash ads with people kissing too. Page for page it’s one of the most offensive publication around . . . I agree. It’s even worse than Good Housekeeping . . . No, I don’t think it’s too big for PRUDE to tackle.“ But I do insist that Nymph isn’t important enough to justify our efforts . . . All right, let’s both sleep on it and we’ll discuss it at the next PRUDE meeting. Good night.” Bowdler hung up the phone.

“What’s PRUDE?”

Bowdler whirled around at the sound of Llona’s voice. “I did1n’t realize you were—-“ he started to say.

“I’m sorry. But I couldn’t help hearing. Of course it’s none of my business . . .”

“No, no, my dear. Your curiosity is only natural.” Bowdler’s mind was racing; if he saw dangers, he also perceived certain advantages in taking Llona into his confidence. “Now, you understand that what I’m about to tell you is highly confidential . . .”

“Well, maybe you shouldn’t --”

“No, I insist. I trust your discretion.”

“All right then. What’s PRUDE?” Llona asked again.

“It is the Parental Responsibility Union Denouncing Eroticism. And I am the president of the local chapter.”

“Oh. You mean some sort of censorship group?”

“Our function is to guard against the evils of pornography, to alert the public to the ever-increasing dangers.”

“But--but, you’re the editor of Nymph!” Llona was confused. “Isn’t that a little—uh—inconsistent?”

“So who says consistency is such a virtue?”

“Well, perhaps. But still --”

“Accommodation is the secret of life. I have accommodated, that’s all.”

“I don’t think I understand.”

“It’s checks and balances that allow the world to go ‘round. Don’t you see that, my dear? We sell the Russians wheat and stockpile missiles. Our leaders talk of peace and drop millions of tons of bombs. We lecture the underprivileged on self-reliance while tax money subsidizes million-dollar corporations. Such facts set the tone for the nation. And the individual follows suit. That’s all I do. I accommodate.”

“That’s hypocrisy!” Llona blurted out.

“It’s the American way . . . Hypocrisy? Perhaps.”

“No perhaps about it! Hypocrisy! To edit Nymph on the one hand and head up some morality group on the other—”

“Recently there was a hassle between the New York City Police Force and the city administration over the ticket illegally parked cars. Immediately, great numbers of motorists parked their cars in defiance of the law. It was observed that many of these lawbreakers’ vehicles had bumper stickers reading ‘LAW AND ORDER.’ It’s the American way!”

“That’s really reaching for an analogy!” Llona decided.

“Coexistence begins inside oneself. ‘I myself am Heaven and Hell,’ said the poet. I myself am libertine and moralist is what I say. Every man balances between lust and morals. It’s just that in my case the two are more clearly defined than most.”

“But how do you do it?” Llona wondered. “Suppose your neighbors find out what you do for a living? Suppose Raunch Rammer learns you’re a secret censor?”

“There’s no way for my home community to learn about my business. There’s no earthly reason why they should connect me with Hugh Esquire, editor of Nymph. As for Rammer, while I’d just as soon keep my secret, even if he did find out, I could prove to him that I’ve always kept Nymph’s interests in mind. Why, take that conversation I just had. Do you realize that I aborted an attempt to keep Nymph off the local newsstands?”

“Well, it really is none of my business.” Llona shrugged. “I can’t wait to meet your wife and children,” she added pointedly.

“Ahh, yes. Now I wonder where they are.”

“I was wondering the same thing myself.”

“Well, why don’t I make you a nice, tall drink, and then have a look around for them.”

“A cool drink would be nice,” Llona granted.

Bowdler led her into the living room where a bar folded out of one wood-paneled wall. Llona perched on the couch while he mixed the drinks. “Here.” He handed her, a folio along with the drink. “This will give you some idea of the sort of thing with which PRUDE contends. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll go see if I can find the rest of the family.”

Alone, Llona thumbed idly through the large scrapbook and sipped at her drink. But when her eyes focused on the material her jaw dropped and the next her lips touched the glass it was to draw in a large gulp of liquor. Fascinated, Llona perused the material closely.

It was all pictorial. The only writing was neat handwritten captions identifying each photo as to source and date! The pictures were all highly erotic, many of them arranged in progressively sexy sequences.

Llona found herself enthralled by one such sequence. It showed a naked young man spreadeagled on a bed and held by chains. A voluptuous and equally naked girl hovered over him with a vacuum cleaner hose. The young man was overendowed, and as the sequence progressed, the suction from the vacuum cleaner hose caused his equipment to swell to amazing proportions. In the last four photos the girl had laid the vacuum cleaner aside and was investigating the results herself. First her lips, then her buttocks, and finally her channel of love measured the young man’s instrument. In the very last photo, although straddling him, she was unable to encompass all of the fantastic length.

“Fascinating, isn’t it?”

Llona jumped guiltily at the sound of Bowdler’s voice. “Uhh, very interesting.” Her own voice was shaky. “Did you locate your wife and children?” she asked quickly to cover her embarrassment.

“I found a note,” Bowdler lied. “It seems they went to visit my wife’s sister for the evening. They’ll be staying overnight,” he added carefully.

“Well, I think I’d better be going then. I mean, it wouldn’t look right—”

“Nonsense! It’s perfectly secluded here. And I insist that you have your swim.”

“Well, a swim would be nice --”

“Of course. In just a little while. But first I’d like to have a drink. And you’re about due for a refill.”

“I really shouldn’t .”

“Please. I hate to drink alone.”

“Well, all right. But just a short one.”

Bowdler ignored that and poured them each a large whiskey over rocks. He sat down beside Llona on the couch as he handed her the drink. He patted the folio spread open on her lap. “You were intrigued by this, weren’t you?” he asked conversationally. “Now be honest.”

“I suppose . . .”

“It’s only natural. You mustn’t be embarrassed.” He snapped his fingers. “I know something that would really interest you.”

“I don’t think--”

But Bowdler was already moving. He’d pushed a button and a screen came down on the wall opposite them. Another button and there was the whir of a movie camera as the room was plunged into darkness. He sat back down next to Llona, very close. “Believe it or not, we confiscated this from a Boy Scout troop,” he whispered in her ear.

The movie unfolded on the screen. It opened with two couples playing strip poker at a bridge table. An under-the-table shot traced the early sexual activity as the game progressed. One of the girls, a bosomy blond, had pulled down the zipper of one of the men’s pants and slipped her hand inside. The man was pushing up the skirt of the other girl, a brunette, and stroking her thighs which parted to allow the caress. The brunette, meanwhile, was clutching the exposed manhood of the second man. He was, in turn, playing with the blond’s derriere.

The game progressed rapidly until all were in their underwear. The blond’s bra came off next, and one of the men played with her breasts, stroking long, quivering nipples as the game continued. Now the other man lost the next pot and discarded his shorts. The brunette squealed at the sight of his aroused manhood and the camera followed her beneath the table again. On her knees, her mouth engulfed the loser as she straddled the first man’s foot which proved as agile as a hand in arousing her.

Shortly thereafter, the game broke up completely. All four were nude now, and they moved to a couch. Here the two men watched for a little while as the girls embraced each other. When the blond moved over the brunette’s still hungry mouth, one of the men stood in front of her and presented himself to her own lips.

There was another shift and now all four were involved. The brunette crouched on all fours, the large aureoles of her full breasts grazing the rug. One of her hands weighed the first man’s sack of love while her tongue teased The other man was attacking her in a frenzy from behind. The blond was crouched behind him, one hand tickling him to even greater efforts while her other hand strummed her own swollen clitoris. Finally the four of them collapsed into a writhing mass of mouths and hands and sex organs.

Despite herself, Llona was bouncing on the couch. She was stirred beyond caring about the implication of Bowdler’s hand on her breast. It wasn’t until she felt his other hand invading the dampness between her thighs that she reacted. “No!” she said, pulling away. “You’re a married man.”

“Oh, come on now. Don’t pretend you’re not aroused.”

“Well, sure I am—-” Llona couldn’t keep her eyes off the screen. The blond was on all fours now. One of the men had her by the hips and was pounding her derriere with an expert rotary motion. She had the other man's member between her lips and was sucking it greedily while he played with the brunette’s nipples and pronounced clitoris. “No, please—-” Llona pushed Bowdler away again. She stood up. “I really think I need that swim now,” she said firmly.

“All right.” Bowdler wasn’t about to push things. He figured they’d evolve one way or another. He led the way to the back of the house and across the patio to the cabana on the far side of the swimming pool.

“I— think these suits might be a trifle too large for me,” Llona said delicately when Bowdler produced his wife’s swimwear for her use. It was an understatement. The suits were big enough to encompass two of Llona and perhaps a close friend as well.

“Well, you don’t really need a suit,” Bowdler suggested smoothly. “Why don’t I just kill the lights and we’ll go skinny-dipping?”

“I don’t know you that well,” Llona protested.

“Now, isn’t that silly? I mean, I see you at work every day without any clothes on. It’s just plain ridiculous to forego a nice, cooling swim out of some kind of modesty you don’t even really feel.”

“I suppose you’re right . . .” Llona still had doubts.

“Of course I’m right.” Bowdler rode over them. “Now I’ll just go turn out the patio lights and you can slip out of your duds. I’ll meet you in the pool.”

“Well . . . All right,” Llona decided on impulse.

He left her in the cabana and she undressed. When she emerged, the pool area was quite dark. She groped her way to the pool, sat down at the edge and slipped into the water. It was a delightful contrast to the hot mugginess of the overcast night.

A few moments later there was a splash and a body brushed against Llona’s legs under the water and then surfaced a couple of feet away from her. “Mr. Bowdler?” she called.

“Uh, no,” a deep, masculine voice answered.

“Who is it?” Llona was suddenly very aware of her nakedness and alarmed at the presence of a male stranger.

“Just call me the Buff Diver,’ ” the voice answered. “Don’t be afraid.”

“The ‘Buff Diver’?”

“Yes. You see, I’m diving across the county in the buff. Diving from pool to pool, that is.”

“Why?” Llona asked.

“Huh?”

“I asked you why you’re doing it.”

“Because it’s there.”

“Because what’s there?”

“The pools. The diving boards. All of it. It’s all there. You know. Like that’s why the mountain climber climbs the mountain. Because it’s there.”

“I never did understand that logic either,” Llona confessed.

“Well, let’s just say it’s my means of travel to get home. I’m making my way home by ‘buff diving.’ ”

“You can’t go home again,” Llona pointed out.

“Gee, that’s very profound. It would make a great title for a book, or something.”

“Anyway, if you want to go home, why don’t you just take a train or a bus?”

“When it comes to public transportation, they get sticky about people riding in the buff.”

“Well, you could go by car, drive yourself.”

“I don’t have a car. I lost it along with everything else.”

“How? I mean, how did you lose everything?”

“Lechery was my downfall. I leched my way out of home, marriage, children, friends, business, everything.”

“The wages of sin—” Llona left it hanging.

“-- is an appetite for more sin.” He finished it. “And that brings us to the other facet of my journey.”

“What do you mean?”

“Lechery got me into this condition and lechery will get me out. Not only must I take the plunge in every pool along my route, I must also score with at least one mermaid at every stop.” He vanished quite suddenly beneath the water and the next thing Llona knew her legs were entwined from below and a hand was sliding up her water-slick thigh.

“Now wait a minute!” She pulled free and swam hastily away. “I don’t see what one thing has to do with the other. I mean, if you want to dunk your way home, well fine. But I don’t buy your reason for kanoodling in the drink.”

“Be reasonable. Turn it around and look at it,” he told her. “Without sex, this whole pool pilgrimage would be nothing but a way of getting waterlogged. I mean, take away the erotic aspects, and what have you got left? Just a broken down man doing a solitary breast-stroke—sad! sad!—and getting older but no wiser as he wends his weary, watery way home. What would be the point?”

“Damned if I know,” Llona admitted.

“Then you’ll cooperate?” He swam toward her.

“Who’s that in the pool with you, Llona?” Bowdler called.

“It’s me.” The man’s voice was defiant.

“You!” Evidently Bowdler recognized the voice. “You’re trespassing! Get off my property!”

“Parvenu!” the diver retorted.

“Snob!” Bowdler responded. “You blackballed me from your country club and now you expect me to let you swim in my pool? Get out of there!”

“I think you’d better go,” Llona whispered, anxious to avoid trouble.

“You know why I blackballed him?” the man whispered back.

“No. Why?”

“He wears argyle socks. Well, I mean! We had to maintain some standards.”

“Get out of my pool, you snooty lecher!” Bowdler shouted angrily.

“People with nudes in their pools shouldn’t throw stones at other people’s glass houses!” the diver retorted.

“Get out!”

“I’m going!” The diver swam the length of the pool to the other side and pulled himself up to the patio. As he vanished into the darkness, his voice trailed back with one final insult. “It is better to have lusted and lost,” he taunted, “than to betray oneself as a multicolored heel."

“Where are you going?” Bowdler ignored the parting shot to confront Llona as she climbed out of the pool and started for the cabana.

“It’s too risky to swim this way,” she replied. “I’m going to get dressed.”

“He won’t come back,” Bowdler protested. “And nobody else will both us.”

“I’m not going to take the chance.” Llona was firm.

“But I was looking forward to our having a swim together.”

“Not this way! If I had something to wear-—”

“Wait! I think I have something.” He followed her into the cabana and rummaged in a bureau there. “Here we are.” He came up with two rubber skindiving suits.

“I’ve never done this before,” Llona said. “I don’t know anything about how to—”

“It’s simple. I’1l show you.”

About fifteen minutes later they emerged from the cabana, the rubber suits clinging to their skins, an oxygen tank strapped to each of their backs. Bowdler slipped into the pool and Llona followed. He showed her how to fit the mouthpiece of the hose over her gums and to clasp the mask over her cheeks and nose so that no water could get into it. Then he took her by the hand and they submerged.

Llona’s fear passed as she realized it was relatively easy to breathe. Bowdler had turned on the underwater pool fights and as she looked around her, she became fascinated with the experience. It was—-well—sensual was the only word to describe it. And there was a sense of unreality about it that seemed to establish a rapport between the two of them-—the only living organisms in this eerie underwater world.

Bowdler sensed it too; and then he acted on it. Through the clinging rubber. Llona felt his hand grasp one of her buttocks firmly. At first she thought he was simply trying to guide her. But as his fingers insinuated themselves more intimately, she recognized his real motive,

Now, Llona had had quite a lot to drink, much more than she was accustomed to having. Also, she’d been quite stimulated by the French movie. To these factors should be added the prospect of several sexless weeks while Archer’s leg mended, plus her anger at Archer over the way their marriage was working out, plus the fact that Llona had always had a healthy sex appetite. The unreal underwater setting helped as well. And the result of the combination was that Llona did not pull away from the increasingly ardent explorations of Bowdler’s hand.

Encouraged, he swam around in front of her and embraced her. The one hand stayed on her derriere, holding her tightly against him. His other hand squeezed one of her large breasts, searching out the swelling nipple straining against the rubber. Then it rose to her neck, found the zipper and pulled it down. Both hands widened the opening now and grasped her free-bobbling breasts eagerly.

The oxygen was making Llona lightheaded. The caresses were making her body tingle. It all seemed so harmless here, under the water. She let herself be carried along on the mounting sensations.

Each of the suits had two zippers. Now Bowdler reached for the lower one on his own suit. His manhood sprang out as if from a speargun and lodged between Llona’s thighs.

It was too much for her. She let his weight push her down to the floor of the pool. There, at the deep end, he struggled with the second zipper of her suit. The water rippled over her breasts with their excited, quivering nipples. Her hips writhed with the sensations washing over her. She wasn’t thinking now, only reacting to the macabre, sensual situation. When she felt his bare hand touch the area the zipper had laid open, her breasts swelled mightily with the gasp of oxygen she sucked into her lungs. The touch of the water . . . The touch of his fingers . . . The tickle of the down covering her womanhood . . . Like some undersea anemone, she opened wide to the sensations.

Frantically, she grabbed his spear of love with both hands. She tugged urgently, trying to pull him over her. But Bowdler was too slow to suit her. It’s not so easy to shift from one delicate position to another underwater with a thirty-pound tank of oxygen on your back. Moaning her need, Llona tried to hug him as he floated over her, tried to pull him closer, to establish the yearned-for contact. Her arms reached around his back, around the oxygen tank, and then-—

Inadvertently Llona disconnected Bowdler’s airhose!

Panic replaced lust in the eyes behind the face-mask. Then the face vanished altogether in a rush of water. Bowdler’s hands flew to his throat as he thrashed about, strangling. Right before Llona’s eyes, her lover of a moment ago was drowning!

Fortunately, Llona reacted quickly. She managed to get behind him and get a grip around his neck. Striving mightily, she hauled him to the surface. Somehow she managed to push him over the edge of the pool and onto the surface of the patio beside it. She clambered up alongside him, ripped off his mask and hers, and started giving him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.

After what seemed like a frighteningly long time to Llona, he responded. He sputtered and coughed and his eyes opened. Then they closed again and she redoubled her mouth-to-mouth efiorts.

Canny Bowdler! His lips returned the pressure and very quickly the lifesaving effort was transformed into a necking session. The transformation came about so easily that Llona didn’t even think to protest. She just went along with it.

One of his hands rose weakly and latched onto the fullness of the breast suspended over him. His other hand, more strength in it now, peeled the skindiving suit away from Llona’s upper body. Their tongues were live flames, teasing and darting, and then he pulled the ruby breast-tip to his mouth and Llona sprawled over him, trying to force still more of the firm flesh between his teasing lips. His hands slid over the full hips and down the length of the burning thighs, carrying the rest of the rubber suit away from the flesh.

Now Llona was completely stripped, lying naked on the hard cement of the pool patio, her body arched, the long legs widespread and reaching for the stars as she waited impatiently for the culmination of their lovemaking: Bowdler stood up and hastily peeled off his own rubber suit. As he knelt down beside her again, Llona reached for him . . . intimately. Her groping hand found its target with it, it found—

Disappointment.

“I know things are magnified underwater,” she observed, “but not this much!”

“Well, 1 can’t help it.” Bowdler was hurt. “The water sort of makes things shrivel up . . .”

“And die,” Llona sighed.

“If you’ll just be patient—”

“No.” Llona sighed again. “It’s a sign. It’s fate. This just isn’t meant to be. You’1'e a married man, and it isn’t right.” Llona didn’t add that what she really felt was that she was a married woman and now that circumstances had saved her from indulging her own lust, she wasn’t going to hang around and risk being overcome by it again. Bowdler’s water-shrunk softness did indeed strike her as a symbol capable of upholding no more than fidelity. She patted him on the cheek and went into the cabana to get dressed.

But if Bowdler couldn’t have the game, he figured his efforts at least entitled him to a try at getting the name. He followed Llona into the cabana and stood just outside the dressing room peeking through the curtain. When she turned her back to the curtain, he reached in quickly and grabbed her panties. This was the proof demanded by the office lottery. The way Bowdler looked at it, the panties—and the winnings they’d claim for him-—were the least he deserved by way of a consolation prize.

Llona turned around just a bit too quickly for him to get away with it. She was just in time to see the panties vanish behind the curtain. “What’s the big idea?” She stuck her head out and glared at Bowdler accusingly.

“Uh, just a memento. A souvenir to remember you by.”

“Really, Mr. Bowdler! Don’t you think you’re too old for panty raids?” She snatched them back from him.

“You’re only as old as you feel.”

“Really?” Llona stared pointedly at a spot beneath his naked, slightly pudgy belly. “Then you must be ancient!”

Bowdler sighed and didn’t answer. He went into the other dressing room and put on his clothes. His defeat was complete. He’d come so close; but he’d failed. The starch——emotionally as well as physically—had gone out of him.

And Llona, unknowingly, had cleared the first hurdle in the Nymph sweepstakes .

CHAPTER SEVEN

“We think she must be a bull dyke on the make! That’s what we think!”

“Oh, Archer, how can you be so ridiculous?” Llona hissed into the phone. She was sitting naked at the Nymph reception desk and she didn’t want her annoyance to be overheard.

“Why else should this dame want to get so chummy with you? Dinner in her apartment for just the two of you. It sounds pretty damn suspicious in our judgment.”

“Will you please stop talking in the plural! You sound like you’ve got two heads!”

“Don’t change the subject,” Archer growled.

“But you’re being impossible. A girl I work with asks me to dinner and I call you up to tell you I won’t be seeing you tonight, and you come up with these paranoid suspicions—-in duplicate, no less.”

“Why? Just answer us that. Why?”

“She’s probably lonely. And frankly, so am I. What’s wrong with a little companionship between two women?”

“When one of them’s got a name like Beulah Von Dyker, a lot could be wrong. That’s a Lesbian monicker if ever we heard one.”

“You can’t tell a book by its cover.”

“The hell you can’t! Nobody we know ever mixed up a dictionary with Tropic of Cancer!”

“Why are you so unreasonable?” Llona gritted her teeth.

“Don’t grit your teeth like that into the phone. It hurts our ears.”

“Are you feeling better?” Llona decided to simply change the subject.

“Our leg itches like crazy,” Archer whined. “The damn cast — Here we go again,” he interrupted himself. “Here we come with our enema bag again.”

“I’m sorry,” Llona sympathized.

“Sorry? Why?”

“I mean I’m sorry you have to keep getting these purges. I know how you must hate them.”

“Hate them? No. Not any more. They sort of break up the monotony. And we’ve grown to appreciate them. There’s something sort of erotic about them, you know? And since we’re pretty limited in that area, we settle for what we can get and enjoy what there is to enjoy.”

“That’s revolting!”

“Nonsense. We’ve come to terms with the hospital environment. That’s all. Well, we’ve got to hang up now so we can get on with it.”

“All right. Enjoy yourself.” Llona’s voice was sarcastic. “I’ll see you tomorrow night,” she added more warmly.

“Then you’re going through with it regardless of what we say!” Archer’s voice was ominous.

“Why not? If you can revel in your enema, then even if you’re right about Beulah, why shouldn’t I go to her place? To each his own, Archer!”

“I’m not going to forget you said that! Good-bye!” Archer slammed down the phone.

With a sigh of alienation, Llona also hung up. Looking up, she saw Beulah Von Dyker walking toward her. Llona had to admit to herself that the Nymph art director did convey a sort of mannish style.

“I’m ready to leave anytime you are, sweetie,” Beulah announced.

Llona glanced at the clock. It was one minute past quitting time. “I’ll be with you as soon as I get some clothes on.” She slid out from behind the desk and headed for the ladies’ room.

Beulah watched her go, staring from behind her tortoiseshell glasses. Yes, she thought to herself, Llona was really something all right! Look at those naked hips! On the plump side to be sure, but all the more provocative as they swayed because of the hint of heaviness. And that high, round derriere rotating so deliciously! Beulah observed her walking across the reception room with the appreciation of a gourmet.

A part of her admiration stemmed from the differences between herself and Llona. True, both girls were equally tall—about five-nine—but where Llona’s height conveyed an aura of accentuated sensuality, Beulah’s came across as domineering, but not necessarily sexy. Both gave the appearance of being slender, but Beulah’s slimness was that of large bones and sparse flesh while Llona’s stemmed from long legs and a torso that was narrow-waisted, but quite amply padded in all the right places. Llona had a long mane of golden brown tresses while Beulah’s hair was jet black and worn very short. Llona’s breasts were large globes; Beulah’s were small, high and sharp.

When Llona emerged from the ladies’ room, dressed, the differences between them were even more noticeable. Llona wore a simple, sheer white summer blouse through which her bra was clearly discernible, and a miniskirt that showed off her long, well-shaped legs. It was in contrast to Beulah’s severely tailored shantung suit with the skirt reaching demurely to her knees. The business day was over, but Beulah still looked businesslike while Llona had the aura of a flower of leisure—-a flower ripe to be plucked.

Beulah insisted that they take a cab to her apartment, and she paid for it. It was a luxurious building and the modern lobby with its clean-line sculpture impressed Llona as Beulah led her through it to the elevators. She was even more impressed when she saw Beulah’s apartment.

It was meant to be impressive. The decor was bold, all done in black and white with sudden splashes of color ren-dered most effective with their sparse placement and deliberate brilliance. The ceiling of the living room was black. Three of the walls were dead white and the fourth was covered with a broad, slanted, black-and-white striped wallpaper. The floor was black marble relieved by white sheepskin rugs spotted strategically over its surface. There was a fireplace with a facade and mantle also done in black marble. The furniture was low and modern with white sailcloth covering the armchairs and black fur over the couch. Cushions in electric colors were strewn about the chairs and sofa, and a large abstract painting done entirely in purple and maroon hung over the fireplace.

“Oh, it—-it just takes your breath away!” Llona told Beulah sincerely.

“I’m so glad you like it. It’s small, just this room and the bedroom and the kitchen-dinette, but it’s all mine.”

“This living room is immense!”

“It’s not really as large as it looks. The trick is to widen the eye of the viewer. Hell, being an art director taught me something about that. Come see the rest of it.” She led Llona into the kitchen and then into the bedroom. The black-and-white motif was constant throughout.

The ceiling of the bedroom was a wall-to-wall mirror. Llona gasped and stared at it. “What a novel idea!” she exclaimed. “It would be great if you were married—I’m sorry! I didn’t 1nean—”

“Why, you’re blushing!” Beulah gave her a hug that seemed no more than natural and impulsive. “Don’t be silly. I'm not sensitive about not being married. I don’t mind it at all. And I am glad you grasp the idea behind the ceiling mirror. I quite frankly meant it to be sensual.”

“Well, you certainly succeeded,” Llona murmured as she followed Beulah into the living room. “And that bed is so unusual. I believe that’s the first time I’ve ever seen a round bed.”

“I had it custom-made especially to my design and specifications.” Beulah led her over to the couch. “Well now, you just get comfy here and I’ll make us a drink and put some music on and get dinner started.”

“Can I help?”

“That’s strictly verboten! All you’re to do is relax.” Beulah vanished into the kitchen. Soft stereo music — something classical with a lot of violins, pleasant, restful, and unrecognizable by Llona — provided an unobtrusive background to the dimly lit living room. Beulah returned after a few moments with a tray, a cut-glass pitcher and two long-stemmed, very fragile glasses. “The hors d’oeuvres are hot and they’ll take a couple of moments,” she told Llona. “Meanwhile, try this.”

Llona sipped. “Mmm! Delicious,” she decided. “What is it?”

“It’s called a Lysistrata.”

“What’s in it?”

“It’s a mixture of four different Greek and Turkish liqueurs with a vodka base.”

“It has a fascinating sort of undertaste. Not from the liqueurs. What’s that?” Llona asked.

“Oh, different herbs and things. I mix it in advance and slip a pinch into the shaker. But you’re really not supposed to notice it. I must have used too much.”

“Not at all. It’s really very pleasant. Where did you get the recipe?”

“A girl I used to room with. She and I shared an apartment a long time ago when I was very young.”

“You’re still very young.”

“I suppose so. In years anyway.” Beulah smiled as if remembering. “Some of the herbs are supposed to have aphrodisiac qualities,” she told Llona casually. “But I suppose that’s just folklore. This girl was very--umm—-romantic.”

“Well then, you really shouldn’t waste it on me.” Llona giggled and drained off the glass. “You should save it for the right men.”

“Oh, men!” Beulah dismissed the subject. “I’d much rather share the good things in life with a dear friend than with a man. That’s what I hope you and I shall become—-dear friends.” She refilled Llona’s glass. “I’m going to slip into something a little more hostessy,” she excused herself. “And then I’ll bring the hors d’oeuvres.”

Llona sipped the second Lysistrata slowly. It was delicious! She finished it just as Beulah returned.

The tall brunette had removed her spectacles and changed to black silk lounging pajamas. Gold brocade trimming made them vaguely Chinesey. They fit very tightly and it was obvious she wasn’t wearing anything underneath. “My at-home outfit,” she told Llona. “I picked it to match the decor.” She undulated into the kitchen and came back with a tray of hot hors d’oeuvres.

They were light and tasty with exotic Levantine fillings. A short while later they were followed by dinner. The meal was by candlelight, served in the dinette and washed down with a hot, mulled wine that smelled as spicy as it tasted. The two girls returned to the living room for espresso and an exotic liqueur with a honey base. This also had been garnished by Beulah with a mixture of ground spices.

“You know, I have a secret vice,” she confided to Llona as she lit a pair of after-dinner cigarettes, and handed her one.

“Only one?” The dinner, the apartment, the atmosphere—-all had combined to make Llona want to appear worldly and blasé, to make her want to fit into Beulah’s sophisticated scene.

“No. More than one.” Beulah chuckled. “But we’ll get to that later. What I meant just now is that I play the electric guitar. Would you like to hear?”

“I’d love it.”

“I don’t want to bore you . . .”

“I won’t be bored. I mean it. I’d love to hear you play.”

“All right then. But we’1l have to go in the bedroom. The guitar is plugged in and set up there and I don’t like to move it.”

“All right.”

Beulah led the way into the bedroom and indicated that Llona should lie down on the round bed. “We don’t want that shining in your eyes.” She turned off the overhead light and turned on a low lamp that left the room in shadow. “That’s it. Take off your shoes and get comfortable,” she told Llona.

“It’s so funny.”

“What?”

“Seeing myself in the mirror like this. Lying down, I mean.” Llona was staring at her reflection on the ceiling. “These miniskirts are really scandalous, aren’t they? I mean, lying down like this, you can practically see everything.”

“They’re perfect for you. You’ve got beautiful legs. Why hide them? Are you comfy?” Beulah was solicitous.

“I would be if this damn bra wasn’t so tight.”

“Take it off.”

“Do you really think I should?”

“Why not? There’s only the two of us here. Just us girls.”

“That’s right. But even so, it feels sort of wicked. I mean this bed, and seeing myself in the mirror and all.”

“Don’t be silly. Take the bra off. Here, I’ll help you.”

Llona sat up and Beulah knelt behind her. She reached under the sheer blouse and unsnapped the bra. Llona slipped it off without removing the blouse and stretched out on the bed again. “Ah, that feels good!”

Beulah stood over her and looked down for a long moment. The tight, transparent material stretched over Llona’s breasts, accentuating the size and redness of the nipples. Her thighs gleamed with a silklike sheen in the lamplight. Her face, in repose, was languorous. It was framed by the golden-brown sheen of her long hair.

Llona’s eyes had been closed. Now she opened them. “Aren’t you going to play for me?” she asked lazily.

“Of course.” Beulah moved over to the electric guitar and picked it up. There was a long cord attached to it, and she was able to sit on the round bed alongside Llona as she played. Shoulders thrown back so that her small breasts were clearly outlined against the black silk of the lounging pajamas, she sang softly as she strummed the guitar.

The song had a strong beat and she played it very slowly. The words were Greek, and every so often Beulah paused to translate for Llona. The translation was frankly ribald, right off the bathroom wall.

“You’re making it up,” Llona objected, laughing. “That’s not really what you’re singing.”

“Yes it is. That’s really what the words mean.”

“But they sound so romantic.”

“They are. And in Greek—well, it’s different.” Beulah stood the guitar beside the bed and started to unbutton the pajama blouse.

“What are you doing?”

“It’s very warm in here. I’m perspiring. You don’t mind, do you?”

“Mind? No. Why should I? After all, like you said, it’s just us girls.”

“That’s right.” Beulah peeled off the blouse, picked up the electric guitar and strummed it softly again.

“Gee, you have beautiful breasts,” Llona remarked.

“They’re too small.”

“But they’re such a nice shape. Like twin pears.”

“Thank you.” Beulah licked her lips and let her eyes wander over Llona’s body. The way Llona was lying, she might juast as well not have been wearing the miniskirt. Beulah had a clear view of the monogrammed black panties. ‘

“I think maybe your girlfriend was right,” Llona said.

“What do you mean?”

“Maybe there is something aphrodisiac about those drinks.” Llona giggled. “I mean I feel sort of -- you know."

“I know.” Beulah’s voice was very soft.

“I don’t mean sexy exactly. Just relaxed and free.”

“Doesn’t that elastic bother you?” Beulah nodded toward the panties and kept strumming the guitar.

“It is sort of cutting into my flesh. I guess I’ll just slip them off.”

“Yes. Do that.” Beulah’s fingers flew over the guitar strings as Llona suited the action to the words. “Here. I’ll take them.” She set the guitar down and relieved Llona of the panties. She put them carefully in a top bureau drawer. Later she’d convince Llona to let her keep them.

“Lots of freedom now.” Llona wriggled her legs.

“Yes.” Beulah caught her breath at the sight of the golden triangle of curls shimmering in the mirror.

“Oh, my, that looks obscene.” Llona was looking at the same spot in the overhead mirror.

“Nonsense. It’s beautiful.” Beulah crossed back to her and patted the area as if the gesture was the most natural thing in the world for one friend to do to another. “You’re very tense.” Her hand remained passively on Llona’s soft underbelly. “Wait!” She moved away again. “I have just the thing to relax you.”

“I thought I was relaxed.”

Beulah ignored the comment. She walked over to the bureau and returned carrying an electric vibrator. She plugged it into the wall socket beside the cord leading to the electric guitar. “Now this will really be relaxing,” she assured Llona as she knelt over her on the bed.

Llona closed her eyes as Beulah applied the hand vibrator to the delicate spot where her shoulder and neck formed a hollow. Her flesh tingled at the vibration. Beulah slipped the vibrator under the sheer blouse and warmth flooded Llona’s bosom as it invaded the cleft between her breasts. For a moment Beulah concentrated on one pink roseate and its large nipple. Llona heaved a sigh and wriggled with the thrill of the expanding nipple. Beulah bent lower over her.

Llona opened her mouth to reply. But she couldn’t. Without quite knowing how it had happened, she found that Beulah’s breast was in her mouth, its sharp, hot tip pressed against her tongue. Her lips responded automatically, widening to encompass still more of the pear-shaped breast.

Now it was Beulah’s turn to gasp. Still holding the vibrator to one of Llona’s breasts, she slid her free hand down the length of the girl’s body until the fingers were buried in the downy triangle. Then she pulled her breast free of Llona’s lips and turned around to apply the vibrator to the sensitive inner surface of the flexing thighs.

Llona’s reaction was an unthinking frenzy. Her hands flailed wildy for a moment, and then clawed for support at the black silk over Beulah’s derriere. Her nails dug into the brunette’s plump flesh. The pajama pants slid down and she buried her hands in the burning flesh. Beulah’s knees seemed to give way and Llona’s face was lost in the lush black nether curls. The perfume she found there was heavy and irresistible. As the vibrator pressed against her own clitoris, her tongue sought and found Beulah’s.

Now Beulah lost control. She sprawled over Llona, her mouth pursed eagerly to return the favor. They lay locked that way for a moment, avid, gasping. Then Beulah reached to pry the fluttering nether-lips even further apart, realized she still had the vibrator in one hand, and flung it uncaringly away from her.

Simultaneously, Llona’s whole body rose—the luscious derriere clearing the bed altogether—in mounting anticipation of the approaching explosion. Beulah’s mouth fastened on its target again. But it was another sort of explosion from the anticipated one which shook them!

In her haste, Beulah had yanked the vibrator free of the electric cord which was attached to it. And the motion had also resulted in wrapping the live wire around the electric guitar. There was a crackle, and suddenly live electricity was all around them.

Beulah was on top and she caught the brunt of it. Her body tensed and was thrown clear across the room. Llona was also propelled from the bed and up against the wall. Fortunately, one outstretched arm hooked the cord leading to the guitar and pulled it from the socket.

Dazed, Llona finally struggled to her feet. She crossed over to where Beulah was lying, the black silk pajama pants still tangled around her ankles. The brunette’s skin was cold to touch. Llona couldn’t tell if she was alive or dead!

She panicked! She grabbed up her bra from the top of the bureau, found the Nymph panties in the top drawer, struggled into the undergarments and fled. She was terrified of what might happen if she was found there with Beulah like this. She wasn’t thinking clearly, but she knew she was guilty! Guilty! Guilty!

And suppose Beulah was dead! Oh! She should have listened to Archer in the first place! What if Beulah was dead!

CHAPTER EIGHT

“Shocking! Absolutely shocking!” Comstock Bowdler clucked.

“Why so surprised, Esquire, Esquire?” H. Reb Klein raised an eyebrow at Bowdler. “After all, we’ve always known that Beulah was a live wire.”

“Black humor!” Irving Zihnzeehr sniffed disapprovingly.

“Bigotry!” Reb shook his head with mock sadness. “Irving, there are times when I’m ashamed to call you a landsman.”

“Never mind that.” Raunch Rammer put a stop to the bickering. “We’re short one art director. Now, do we hire a substitute, or what?”

“I should think that would be up to you, Hugh,” Pierre Strongfellow said to Bowdler. “I’ve checked with the doctor and Beulah will be all right in a week or so. It’s just that she’s in a state of -- pardon the expression -- shock.”

“Can we get by for a week,?” Raunch asked Bowdler.

“I think so. Beulah left us ahead by a few days. We’ll manage.”

“All right. Then let’s get back to work.” Raunch signified that the meeting was over.

“Uh, just a minute, Raunch.” Pierre stopped the exodus from the publisher’s office. “About our little office lottery …”

“What about it?”

“Well, I was just wondering. Do we assume that Beulah had her turn and just go on with the sequence the way it was set up?”

“Of course. Obviously she failed.” Bowdler was adamant.

“Why? Just because you did?” Reb gave him a dig.

“We’re not really sure,” Pierre pointed out. “And we want to be fair.”

“When a battery’s out of juice, you can’t start the car,” Irving pointed out. “All you can do is try a new battery.”

“Or wait until the old one is recharged,” Pierre countered.

“Not if it’s been shorted out!”

“Or fizzled out,” Raunch added thoughtfully. “The question is, was it ever tried at all, or were the wires crossed before Beulah even had a chance. Now, it seems to me-— Yes? What is it?” The publisher interrupted himself in response to a knock on the door followed by the entrance of Cal Lowe.

“You said I should bring these papers in as soon as I got back,” the office boy told him. “I’m sorry if I interrupt --”

“No. It’s all right.” Raunch indicated that Cal should put the papers on his desk and picked up on his previous train of thought. “If Beulah never even got a chance to try with our Llona, then-—”

“Excuse me, sir.”

“Yes? What now?” Raunch looked at the office boy with annoyance.

“I couldn’t help overbearing. It’s none of my business, but if you’re wondering about Miss Von Dyker and our new receptionist, they went to Miss Von Dyker’s apartment for dinner the other night before Miss Von Dyker had her accident. I know because I heard them making the arrangements and I saw them leaving work together.”

“Thank you, Cal.” Rammer waited until the boy had left and then turned to the others. “Well, that would seem to settle it,” he told them. “Beulah might cry foul later on, but for now it’s up to the next fellow.”

“And that’s you,” Pierre observed as he left the office.

“And that’s me,” Rammer agreed with a touch of smugness.

He waited until lunchtime, when the rest of the staff was out of the office and Llona was covering the switchboard, to make his pitch. Then he picked up his telephone and asked her to step into his office for a moment. His eyes reviewed the charms of Llona’s naked body, but his tone was carefully businesslike.

“Something’s come up,” Raunch told her. “I have to work late tonight and I’ll need someone here to run the switchboard so I can make some calls. I know it’s an imposition, but if you can manage it . . .”

“I’d like to help you out, sir, but—” Llona hedged.

“It’s really very important. What’s the difficulty?”

“It’s my husband, sir. He’s in the hospital, you know. And the visiting hours today are from six to eight, which gives me just enough time to get there after work.”

“Your husband. Ah, yes, I’d forgotten you were married. It’s still our little secret, I trust?”

“I haven’t mentioned it to anybody.”

“Good. Good. We have to guard the Nymph image after all. Well, look, I’ll tell you what. I probably won’t need you until eight-thirty or so, Do you think you could come back here after you see your husband?”

“Yes sir.”

“Good. Good. I’ll be expecting you then. And don’t bother with dinner, my clear. I’ll have a snack sent up for both of us.”

“Thank you.” Llona left.

After she was gone, Raunch picked up his telephone and dialed a number. “Hello, Ramon? This is Mr. Rammer . . . Fine, and you? . . . Now, I’m having a little tête-a-tête in my office for two this evening . . . Champagne, yes . . . Caviar, of course . . . Cold lobster salad; just the thing! . . .”

Llona debated with herself whether she should mention to Archer that she’d be returning to the office to work late. She decided but the decision was in vain. It was taken out of her hands by Archer’s mother who had chosen that same evening to visit her son.

“As long as you’re here to visit my poor boy, before he got married he was never in the hospital a day in his life,” Archer’s mother zinged, “we might as well share a cab home together, why should we both pay?”

“I’m afraid not,” Llona told her. “I’m not going home.”

“We’d like to know why you’re not going straight home,” Archer said suspiciously. The fat nurse standing beside his bed bobbed her head in agreement.

“Yes. Why?” And Mama made three.

“I have to go back to the office to do some work”’

“Your father—how is it this woman you married should take after him?—used to say he was working late, I knew better,” Archer’s mother told him.

“We know better too,” Archer said as the fat nurse silently moved her lips. “We weren’t born yesterday.”

“Now what’s that supposed to mean?” Llona was exasperated.

“Don’t talk to Archer he’s a sick boy like that!” The tigress stuck up for her cub. “He means a woman alone belongs home so her poor, sick husband shouldn’t worry, not running around all over town with who-knows-who doing who-knows-what after dark.”

“That’s what we mean!” Archer said, he and the fat nurse both scowling disapproval.

“I’m not running around. I’m going back to the office to work!”

“We shouldn’t be upset.” The fat nurse spoke for the first time. “Our tumtum has been very shaky lately.”

“With all those enemas, I’m not surprised,” Llona muttered.

“Starting tomorrow, I’ll bring some homemade broth every day, so many enemas won’t be necessary, it’ll serve the same purpose.”

“We couldn’t possibly allow that!” The nurse stared Archer’s mother down. “The hospital regulates our diet very strictly, you know. Interference from outside simply will not be tolerated.”

“Three enemas a day!” Archer’s mother held her ground. “You call that feeding him? I call it your hospital’s got things topsy-turvy, you ask me. How can it go on without a little solid broth on his stomach?”

“We’re coming along just fine,” the nurse insisted.

“Yeah, Mom. We really are. You shouldn’t interfere,” Archer added.

“Interfere! My son, you’ve got a short memory, you don’t remember the last time you told me not to interfere. If I followed the heart of a mother and interfered then, you wouldn’t have been in such a rush to marry this what’s-her-name so you should end up hanging by a broken leg from a hospital ceiling.”

“Now just a minute!” Llona was indignant.

“Don’t yell at our mother! Have some respect!” Archer told Llona.

“Why should I? She doesn’t have any respect for me. Insinuating that I’m responsible for your accident! Of all the —“

“Well, aren’t you?” Archer’s face was turning red.

“We mustn’t excite ourselves.” The fat nurse soothed him and then turned to glare at the two women.

“Oh! This is too much!” Llona grabbed up her pocket-book and stormed out of the hospital room.

“We don’t know why you two can’t make an effort to get along,” Archer was pleading with his mother as Llona exited .

“For your sake, I always make the effort, but you can see how she always picks up on every word I say it’s turned into a fight.”

“We’re not well and we really shouldn’t become involved in family arguments . . .” The fat nurse’s voice trailed off as Llona turned the corridor and hurried for the elevator.

Llona was still boiling as she hailed a cabin front of the hospital. Nor did she cool off during the ride. On the contrary, as she brooded on the combination of Archer’s mother and Archer’s attitude, she became more and more furious. What really made her mad when she thought about it in this context was the guilt she’d been wallowing in because of the incidents with Bowdler and Beulah.

The guilt stemmed from her status as wife and the obligation of fidelity and the knowledge that only circumstances had saved her from being unfaithful to Archer. Well, so what! she steamed. Hadn’t Archer walked out on her? Hadn’t he accused her of betraying him when she’d been as loyal and true as could be? Well then, why not have the game as well as the name? Llona fumed.

Nor was this business with his mother entirely irrelevant. They were gauging up on her. And even though she hadn’t really done anything yet, Archer’s suspicions became more insulting every day. Hell! she wasn’t a stick of wood, Llona told herself. She was a woman with normal appetites that her husband—through his own fault— wouldn’t be able to satisfy for some weeks to come. Very well, then! She was through being a damn fool. The next time opportunity presented itself, it would find her unhampered by guilt and more than willing!

Opportunity was waiting at the offices of Nymph when Llona arrived. It was wearing a red velvet smoking jacket and pouring champagne. It was Raunch Rammer, smooth and commanding, all set up for an executive treat in his executive suite.

“Later you’ll have to handle some calls for me,” he told Llona. “But there’s nothing to do at the moment, so we might as well have a leisurely dinner. Make yourself comfortable, my dear.” He waved her to the leather couch in front of which an impressive spread of food and drink had been arranged on a low table.

“How nice!” Llona’s response was genuine.

“I hope you’re hungry.”

“I am.” She accepted a cracker topped with caviar from him and sipped at the glass of champagne he handed her. “Mmm, this is good.”

Raunch Rammer smiled down at her and didn’t reply. Gazing back at him, for the first time since she’d come to work at Nymph, Llona considered him as a man, rather than as her boss. She found him not unattractive.

Rammer was one of those men whose age is inderterminate, but who somehow fall in the category of “older men.” He was of medium height with the artificially outdoorsy complexion of a busy executive who can always spare twenty minutes a day for the sunlamp. His build was slight, narrow-shouldered, but he always held himself very erect which made him seen imposing as well as trim and dapper.

It was above those too-thin shoulders that women usually found him most attractive. His face was square-cut and conventionally handsome with clean, well-defined lines. It combined both youthfulness and experience. The eyes were deep-set, dark brown, capable of conveying understanding and of sparkle. They went with the sensitive mouth framed by a trim, dark moustache. But it was Rammer’s hair that had most intrigued many of his feminine conquests. It was thick and curly and jet-black and always carefully disarranged so that a lock tumbled boyishly over his forehead.

Now Llona found herself admiring its sheen. “Mr. Rammer,” she said, made a trifle bold by the champagne, “it’s downright criminal to waste curly hair like that on a man when we women have to struggle so to get a wave.”

“Call me Ratmch.” He read encouragement into the comment and sat down beside her on the couch. “After all, there’s nobody here but the two of us.”

“I noticed that,” Llona murmured.

“You don’t mind?”

“No. Why should I?”

“You shouldn’t.” Raunch took her glass and picked up the champagne bottle. “More?” He poured without waiting for her answer.

“Shouldn’t we be getting to work?” Llona accepted the champagne and took a sip of it.

“There’s no hurry. And besides, you’re not dressed for work.” The way Raunch looked at her, there was no mistaking his meaning.

“You mean you want me to --” Llona flushed.

“Why not? You work that way every day, don’t you? Why be modest now?”

For a moment Llona considered refusing. She was reasonably sure he wouldn’t do anything about it if she did. Rammer wasn’t the type to fire her, or even to be petulant about it. He was too sophisticated for that.

But why should she refuse? He was an attractive man. Of course getting her to take off her clothes was only a ploy to precede further action. But so what? That was exactly what she’d decided she wanted—-further action--wasn’t it?

Llona got to her feet and walked across the office, very much aware of Rammer’s eyes following her. “Is it all right if I hang my things in here?” She opened a closet door.

Rammer nodded, still staring.

She took off her shoes and placed them side-by-side on the floor inside the closet. Then she slid off her stockings, her thigh flesh flashing as she held out first one leg and then the other straight in front of her. Raunch drank deeply of his glass of champagne, his gaze admiring the contour of the long legs as they were brazenly displayed.

Llona slipped out of her blouse and hung it neatly on a hanger in the closet. Her skirt followed it and now she stood before Rammer in nothing but a black bra and her Nymph panties. Deliberately, she took her time about discarding the undergarments. She stretched with studied unconcern. Rammer’s eyes followed the tendril of gold-brown hair trailing over the fleshy half-moons rising from the black brassiere. He wet his lips with appreciation at the deep cleft bisecting the full bosom. The naked hips arching out from the small waist to a fullness lost in the panties caught his attention next. He watched the hips move enticingly as Llona stretched first to one side and then to the other. Rammer was used to seeing Llona naked; strangely enough, the buildup to nudity was even more enticing.

Or was it? As she slowly, languidly took off the bra, he found himself growing impatient. Bare now, the breasts were superb and there was an irresistible invitation in the way they swayed as Llona hung up the bra and turned to face him. She made no secret of the fact that she was teasing him as she slowly wriggled out of the panties, coyly turning away at the last minute so that he saw only her glorious derriere as she disposed of them. Then she turned back to face him, shifting her weight from foot to foot so that the soft hair covering her mons veneris rippled revealingly.

“I guess I’m ready to go to work now,” she said in a husky voice.

It was too much for Rammer. He forgot he was a cool, urbane man of the world. He strode across the floor and embraced her without any further pretense of their being there for business reasons. Her mouth opened to his and they continued clutching at each other wildly as they made their way back to the couch. He buried his head between, her breasts as they sank down on it together.

Llona squirmed under his weight, abandoning herself to their mutual lust. His hands were under her, the nails digging into her nether-cheeks, pressing the fluttering lips below her mound of passion against his manhood. Her fingers ran wild through his hair, urging his mouth to sample the tautness of her breast-tips.

She was never sure whether it was his lips or his hands that sent the sudden—almost painful thrill through her body. All she was sure of was the result. Her body jerked spasmodically and her hands clenched to tear at the curly hair and scalp beneath them.

When the spasm passed, Llona opened her eyes to find that Rammer’s hairline had receded a full three inches. She raised her arm and discovered she was clutching a hirsute handful whilst the skull beneath was as shiny as a billiard ball!

Probably feeling the breeze, Raunch suddenly became aware of what had happened. He turned brick red. His unshakable aplomb was not only shaken; it was shattered.

For a moment Llona just looked. Then she lost the battle to control herself and burst into laughter. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” she gasped. “But I didn’t realize -- I mean, you’d told me— Well, you have to admit, it is funny!"

“I fail to see the humor.” Raunch groped for dignity. “Now, if you don’t mind returning my hair-piece--”

“I thought they called them toupees.” Llona began to giggle uncontrollably.

“Regardless of what they call them, I’d like mine back.”

“Oh, I’m sorry.” Llona handed it back to him.

“Now,” said Raunch, putting it in place. “Where were we?”

“We were about to—- Oh, but I couldn’t!” Llona’s giggles were replaced by hiccoughs. “I mean, I just can’t stop laughing. I know that's awfully nasty, but I can’t help how l feel, can I?”

“I suppose not.” Raunch was icy. “Immature reactions are uncontrollable, I guess. You might as well leave then.”