"The panty lovers" - читать интересную книгу автора (Johnson Colin)

CHAPTER FOUR

It took half a bottle of aspirins and nearly a quart of orange juice to do it, but by ten o'clock, Ann's hangover was down within reasonable limits and the pretty young model felt strong enough to call the hospital where Frank was working and invent a fairly plausible excuse for not having returned home on the previous night. She explained that a promotional sales conference had gone on until the early hours of the morning and that she had been afraid to ride the subway alone at that hour and had gone home instead with Jenifer who had a flat downtown.

She had expected her husband to be angry and mistrustful and she was a little upset when he took the news calmly.

"Oh, by the way," he added, when she had finished explaining her absence. "I hope your first check comes through soon. I ordered a whole set of new medical books I've been needing for a long time and there'll be a healthy bill to pay."

A cold anger settled over her as she listened to her husband announce a few more plans for spending her money. Was that all he could really think about? Hadn't it ever occurred to him that she might have spent the night with another man? Or was his conceit too strong for such an idea ever to enter his head?? How he'd change his tune if he knew that a crazy old religious fanatic had accomplished – even against her will – a couple of things Doctor Frank Larkin had not been able to accomplish for a long, long time!

No, it would never enter his precise scientific mind. He was too selfish and egocentric for that and for half a minute, Ann was almost glad it had happened. Old Judson had lectured her and battered her and humiliated her and raped her, but in the end he had also satisfied her and every woman needed that once in awhile, no matter how moral she thought she was.

Besides, she reminded herself bitterly, the free lunch was destined to be terminated before either one of them could get the first bite. When Benson left town today without placing an order with Wonder-Wear, she was going to get the sack, and not the kind you could wear either.

Well, she decided, there was no point in delaying any longer. It was time to go up to the vice president's office and face the music. Maybe if she explained what had happened, Mr. Birindelli would at least give her back her old job modeling. On the other hand, it would be embarrassing to confess how she had mismanaged things so badly and wound up in bed with Mr. Benson, leaving him unhappy and guilt-ridden for having seduced her. Either way, she was not looking forward to this meeting, but it had to be done so she straightened her shoulders, thinking how foolish her party dress looked at ten-thirty in the morning, and marched into Birindelli's office.

"The boss said you're to go right in," announced his secretary severely. "Mr. Benson's already come and gone."

Oh, that's the end, she thought grimly and considered the idea of simply going quietly away. But it was too late. Mr. Birindelli had opened the door to his office and was motioning her to enter.

"I told you that people who work for me make money if they produce," he announced in a serious tone of voice, "and that they get fired if they don't produce. Well, here it is!"

The piece of paper he was holding out to her seemed far too small to be a notice of dismissal and she took it, her hands trembling with apprehension.

It was Birindelli's personal check for a thousand dollars!

"Fantastic work!" he proclaimed, smiling at last, and shaking her hand energetically. "I've been trying to sell old Jud Benson for ten years now and he never so much as bought a sanitary napkin from us until you came along. Something gave him the idea I was evil a long time ago and he's opposed to evil, as you probably discovered. But you understood his psychology dead on!" The combined effects of the hangover and the surprise did their work on Ann's knees and she sank down weakly into the nearest chair.

"You mean… he placed an order with us?" she quavered, scarcely able to believe her ears.

"Of course he placed an order," responded Birindelli. "A massive order! I had it all figured and the only thing which could have gone wrong was you. If I'd assigned one of my other girls to the old idiot, he'd have suspected me of trying to get him laid and gotten on the first plane for Salt Lake City. But you, with that sweet innocence you've got, he never figured you, not even for a minute, and apparently not even after you got him into bed. Or he got you into bed, which is the way it apparently went. Ha! You should have seen him when he staggered in here this morning, wondering how he could ever make it up to you and crying great big alligator tears all over my mahogany desk. What a screwball! Well, I told him how he could make it up to you. A one hundred thousand dollar purchase order, that's how!"

Jenifer said that yogurt was the only thing for a hangover and Ann had three helpings of it as the two young models sat in Wonder-Wear's cafeteria and talked about their experiences. Normally Ann would never have dreamed of relating such a personal, intimate incident to anyone else, but she knew from what she had seen through the keyhole that day that her tall blonde friend was not precisely a candidate for sainthood herself. Besides, she was so troubled in her mind that she simply had to unburden herself to someone.

"It sounds like you had all the fun," complained Jenifer jokingly when Ann had recounted her adventures with Judson Ty Benson. "And collected a cool grand for it too. My assignment was a regular stick-in-the-mud. He spotted me as a company girl right off the bat and hustled me back to his hotel two minutes after you split with the holy Mr. Judson Ty Benson. After that it was slam-bam-thank-you-Ma'am! He didn't even give me taxi fare home, the cheap bastard."

"You mean… you mean, you knew ahead of time?" stammered the young doctor's wife. "I thought the business with Mr. Benson just sort of happened, an accident…"

"Honey, in this business, nothing just happens," confided Jenifer sympathetically. "These buyers come to town, leaving their wives, or whoever they happen to be screwing at home, and they see a bunch of girls like you and me running around half-naked modeling underwear or nighties and they get all hot and bothered. Wonder-Wear wants them to be completely happy for a couple of days so they can concentrate on buying our products and that's where we come in. After they've had some fun with us, they feel sort of guilty and old Birindelli gets their name on a contract."

"But… that's almost like prostitution," cried Ann in shock, realizing for the first time what it was she had gotten herself into.

"Honey, prostitution is when you stand on a street corner and sell your ass to drunken sailors on rainy nights. When you get a big fat paycheck every payday and an office with a rug on the floor, you're a lady executive, no matter what you do to earn it. Also, a prostitute has to hustle her customers. In this business you have to let them hustle you, because otherwise they don't get the illusion that they're making some big romantic conquest on a wild weekend in the big city. A prostitute is just what you ain't, honey, believe me!"

"I don't know, Jenifer, I just don't see it that way," wailed the anguished young woman, her illusions quickly being shattered one by one.

"Look at it this way," the sophisticated blonde woman persisted. "When a politician smiles at you through the television tube, do you think for a minute he's really sincere? Hell no! He's been rehearsing that smile for weeks in front of the mirror. He's using what he's got – in this case a big stupid smile – to sell his product, which is himself. Is he a prostitute? You're using what you've got, a beautiful body, to sell underwear. Are you a prostitute? About the same as the politician, I'd say. No more and no less!"

"Jenifer, I absolutely cannot do it," Ann said again, but the resolve in her voice had obviously been weakened by her friend's arguments.

"The way I see it, honey," replied Jenifer seriously, "you haven't really got much choice. Birindelli thinks you're number one and he isn't going to let you go that easily. It might be a little tough to get another job if you quit this one because he's got a lot of friends in this town, if you know what I mean. And secondly, you need the money, and thirdly, I get the idea you aren't getting all the loving from hubby you could use, and some of these businessmen can really handle themselves in the sack. All in all, I'd say you were hooked."

All in all, Ann thought bitterly, I'd say you were right. Hook, line and sinker.

"Oh, Jenifer, I don't know what to say. What happens now?"

"Now, we dawdle over our coffee until it's time to meet Mr. Birindelli down in the parking lot. He told me this morning that you and I are going to be working together as a team from now on and he wants to show us something. He didn't say what it was."

The vice-president for sales and promotion was waiting in the parking lot when the two models emerged from the Wonder-Wear building. He was leaning casually against the front fender of the longest, lowest, snazziest sports car Ann had ever laid eyes on.

"Like it girls?" Birindelli greeted them with a smile.

"Oh, it's beautiful!" breathed Ann sincerely. "How great it would be to come to work in something like this instead of wasting an hour on that smelly old subway. What is it?"

"This is a Ferrari, the four point even liter model," Birindelli responded proudly. "Goes a little over a hundred and fifty and costs about twenty thousand dollars. Most people think it's the finest sports car in the world."

"When I become vice-president of something," announced Jenifer wistfully, "I'm going to buy myself one just like it."

"Maybe you won't have to wait quite that long," Birindelli purred. "I have another Ferrari just like this one parked in the company garage. We have a customer coming in from Europe next week who can sign his name to a million dollar order if he wants to. Get me that signature and neither one of you will ever have to take the subway again."

He paused to let his words take their desired effect.

"You… you mean this isn't your car?" stammered Ann.

"Mine? Heavens, no, I'm a man of simple tastes and my little old Rolls suits me just fine. But we might as well take this one with us today. Hop in. I've got something to show you."

It was a short trip across town from the business area where the Wonder-Wear headquarters were located to a high-class residential district populated mostly by millionaires. Handling the sleek powerful Ferrari with typical aggressive skill, Birindelli sliced through the busy mid-afternoon traffic and pulled up in front of a massive luxury apartment complex.

"Here we are, girls," the executive announced cheerfully. "This is going to be home base for you for a long time."

The uniformed doorman snapped to attention like a soldier on parade as Birindelli approached. The vice-president stopped and introduced Jenifer and Ann as Wonder-Wear executives, giving instructions that they were to be allowed access to Apartment Number Eleven any time of day or night and rendered any other service which they might require.

Ann noticed the doorman raise his eyebrows slightly when Birindelli described them as "executives" and she got the distinct impression that he had seen this sort of thing before and knew exactly what they were.

The door to Apartment Eleven swung open and Ann's eyes were struck by the most expensively decorated and furnished pad she had ever seen or imagined. This was clearly a millionaire's place of residence with a bar, expensive hi-fi equipment, a circular water bed in the living room, a modern kitchen with a well-stocked pantry and everything else an interior decorator could dream up and a fat bank account pay for.

"I'm planning on doing some of Wonder-Wear's promotional entertaining here," Birindelli explained nonchalantly. "Affairs like the one we had the other night really should be held in a more intimate atmosphere. And besides, a place like this has some very special facilities. Follow me."

Mr. Birindelli led the way through to a narrow hallway which ran between the two main bedrooms, stopping in front of a floor-to-ceiling bookshelf built right into the wall and stocked with best-selling novels and expensively illustrated volumes on oriental erotic art.

"If you press here," he instructed, pushing gently against one corner of the bookshelf, "something very surprising happens."

Before their astonished eyes, the bookshelf yielded to the pressure of Birindelli's hand, swinging open to reveal a small, dark room. The corporation executive stepped inside and the two models apprehensively followed him. As her eyes adjusted to the dark, Ann suddenly realized the function of this hidden room: through a series of one-way mirrors, it was possible to see directly and clearly into the livingroom and both of the bedrooms.

"The man who had this room constructed," commented Birindelli, "used it for simple voyeurism. He liked to watch other people fucking, a harmless enough pastime, but no way to get rich. I have a different use for this little facility. Let's get ourselves a drink in the livingroom and I'll tell you about it."

"Have you ever heard of Jacques LaFarge?" inquired the burly business executive when they were all comfortably seated in the magnificent livingroom.

"Who hasn't?" answered Jenifer promptly. "He's that eccentric French fashion designer who's so famous."

"Precisely," agreed the vice president. "Now LaFarge comes once a year to the USA to buy up huge lots of the best in American clothing. The merchandise is taken back to France and marketed under the LaFarge label, and half the women in Europe buy it thinking they're getting something designed by the great man himself."

"Is he the one who writes orders for million dollars?" asked Ann nervously, not sure just where all this was taking them.

"Right, baby, the very same. Last year, he spent one million, two hundred thousand dollars with a competitor of ours after we had spent a mint wining and dining him. It's been the same story for three or four years now. Each time he lands here, he drops hints all over the place that this year he's going to buy from Wonder-Wear. So we knock ourselves out keeping him supplied with broads, booze, cars and anything else he needs, and then he goes over and signs with the opposition. It's a big game with him and he's going to play it again this year. But I'm changing the rules and that's where you two come in."