She moaned softly.
“Johnny!”
He took her skirt off.
He looked at her, saw the naked perfection of her body, saw every bit of her.
And something began to happen.
He didn’t believe it at first. He had thought that it couldn’t happen, that it perhaps would never happen again. But it was happening, and it was happening to him, and he couldn’t have been more pleased by any occurrence.
He was a man again.
He stood up, tearing his shirt off, kicking off shoes and socks and pants.
Then he was naked and she was nude and it was time.
Time to make love.
It was magnificent.
No one could tell it in detail because the details were far too subtle to be told. Everything happened, and everything happened quite flawlessly, and the experience for both of them was not only the quintessence of physical satisfaction but a mental and even spiritual experience at once.
When it was over she cried. He did not cry but wanted to, and he held her in his arms, stroked her face and loved her.
Chapter Eight
“I’m afraid,” she said.
He was lying on his back in her bed and she was lying in his arms, a warm bundle of soft curves. He rubbed her back with one hand while he looked up and studied the cracks in the ceiling. His mind refused to work. It was spinning dizzily. He still couldn’t fully comprehend the reality of what the two of them had experienced together. It was too large for him.
“Don’t be afraid.”
“I can’t help it. Johnny, this was like nothing in the world. It was too good, Johnny. Much too good. It was the sort of thing everybody dreams about and reads about, and it was the sort of thing that never really happens to anybody, and I’m afraid.”
“Why?”
“I just am.”
“Tell me about it.”
She sighed. “Because it was too good,” she said. “Because I’ll lie here thinking it was too good and feeling wonderful about it and then we’ll fall asleep—”
“Wrong.”
“Aren’t you going to sleep here? I thought you would. I mean, you can’t go back to the hotel—”
“I’m sleeping here.”
“But—”
“Before we fall asleep,” he explained. “We’re going to do it again. At least once. Maybe twice.”
“Oh. Sure, of course. I was planning on it.” She giggled, then grew sober again. “But finally we will go to sleep, you know. And then I’ll wake up and you’ll be gone and I won’t see you again. That’s the way it will happen.”
“Wrong.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“You don’t have to stay, Johnny. I’m not just saying that. I mean it. And I’d like to say that if you’re not here in the morning I’ll never let you get near me again, but I can’t say that because it wouldn’t be the truth. You can have me any time you want me. All you have to do is ask.”
“I’ll stay because I want to.”
“Why? Because you like the way I behave in bed?”
“That’s one reason. You’re a tiger.”
“I’m good?”
“The best in the world.”
“I guess you ought to know, huh?”
He couldn’t help grinning. “Would you want a man who didn’t know anything about it?”
“I guess not.”
“Then shut up. Yeah, you’re good. But that’s only a small part of it. There’s more to it than that. There’s something else that’s a lot more important.”
“What’s that?”
He took a deep breath. He was about to say something he had never said to a girl, something he had never felt before. But there was no getting around it now. It was the truth — he was positive of it.
And he wanted her to know.
“It’s very simple,” he said. “Nothing complicated about it at all. I happen to be in love with you.”
“Say that again, Johnny.”
“Starting with It’s very simple?”
“You know what I mean.”
“I happen to be in love with you.”
She stared into his eyes, her own eyes very wide. “You don’t mean that. You can’t possibly mean it. You’re just talking.”
“I mean it.”
“It’s impossible—”
“But it’s true.”
“I don’t believe it,” she said, as much to herself as to him. “A gigolo and a whore in love. I just don’t believe it. I don’t believe anything.”
“You better believe it.”
“Johnny, what are we going to do?”
“We’re going to make love.”
“I mean after that.”
“First things, first,” he said, taking her in his arms. He kissed her, a long deep kiss.
Then she didn’t ask any more questions.
She had better things to do.
The man was named Arthur Taggert. He was seated in a swivel chair behind a sixty-inch oak executive desk. He was between thirty-five and forty years old, and he wore a gray sharkskin suit something like Johnny’s, a white-on-white shirt, a patterned gray tie and heavy horn-rimmed glasses. He had a tan which had been acquired via the sunlamp route and good muscle tan picked up through weekly trips to a gymnasium.
“John Wells,” he read aloud. “Age 25. Born March 10, 1936, in Cleveland. Graduate of Clifton College in Clifton, Ohio. M. A. from Western Reserve University. No previous business experience. That sums it up?”
“That’s about it,” Johnny said.
“Well, you haven’t had a hell of a lot of experience,” Taggert said. “Just college, and that doesn’t really let you know what the real world’s like. Sort of an academic fishbowl, so to speak. Too many graduates come to us still so wet behind the ears that all the towels in Manhattan wouldn’t get ’em dry. Generally I’ll take hard business experience any day of the week. But I just might make an exception in your case.”
Johnny didn’t say anything. Taggert was head of personnel at Craig, Harry and Bourke, a small but dynamic advertising agency with offices, inevitably, on Madison Avenue. Johnny was applying for a job. He didn’t want to get stuck running copy for six months to see if he could make the grade. He wanted to fall right into a copywriting job.
“These samples of yours,” Taggert went on. “Now most college boys just don’t see what advertising is supposed to do. They use their words right and their grammar is flawless but the end-product is rotten. You can’t teach someone to be an ad man. They can learn, but you can’t teach ’em. Too much of advertising is intuitive. You have a feeling for it or you don’t. I think you’ve got the feeling. Your copy isn’t professional or even close to it, but it’s got punch; you’re writing an ad, not a goddamn poem for One Magazine or something. You’d be surprised how few college types can figure that out.”
“I’m glad you like my copy,” Johnny said.
“I like it enough to give you a job.”
“That’s what I want. A place to start.”
“Well, all it is is a start. A hundred a week is all I can offer you, but the job’ll be writing copy, not carrying it around from one room to the next. You’ll get a chance to learn the business. And this is a business where the possibilities are limited only by the capacity of the individual. A man with drive and talent can make more money than he could possibly spend. The industry automatically tailors the job and the reward to fit the man. You can stay at five thou a year for life or go up to fifty in a few years. It’s up to you.”
“I understand.”
“You start Monday,” Taggert said. “Report to Bill McClintock. He’ll show you what you’re supposed to do. It may not be too exciting. Fill-in work — words to go with pictures, printed copy in teevee commercials, the hack work that has to round out the whole picture. It may look too easy. Don’t be faked out. It’s not as easy as it looks. If you’re any good, we’ll be able to tell it from how you handle this stuff.”