“Just a minute.” Penny blocked his way.
“What do you mean? I’m next.”
“Yes, I know. But I’m going to have to ask you to be a gentleman and give up your turn. This man is rather aged and infirm and I’d like to ask all of you to allow him the priority of his years.”
“Well, all right, I guess,” the adman said with just a trace of annoyance.
Some of the other grumbled, but a husky young man wearing a cap that said Dandy Diaper Service shamed them out of it. “You just go right on in, old-timer,” he said benevolently. “The rest of us can wait. We’ve got more time left in us to wait, anyway. You just go on and crowd it in while you still can.”
“But it could kill him!” There was still one objector among the group.
“So what?” the diaper man turned on him. “Can you think of a better way to go?”
“Okay.” The protester subsided.
The rest of the group smiled encouragingly at the old man as he entered the bedroom and closed the door behind him. Sighing to herself as she watched it close, hoping she was doing the right thing, Penny sank into a chair and settled back to wait.
She didn’t have to wait too long, It was only ten or fifteen minutes later that the cry of shock and surprise from Sappho sounded from behind the closed door. “Daddy!” she exclaimed loudly. “It’s you! Daddy!”
After that there was nothing but silence for a long time. A very long time. And as still more time dragged by, the waiting men began to grow impatient and restive. Finally the man who’d objected before put the general feeling into words for all of them.
“I knew we shouldn’t have let him go to the head of the line!” he said.
“What do you mean, you knew?” the diaper man retorted. “How could you know? An old man like that—”
“He sure is taking a long time,” the adman whined. “Do you suppose he can’t—?”
“Are you kidding? Listen to them bedsprings go!”
“Wow! That’s' right! Where do you suppose he gets all that energy?”
“For her to be taking this long, he must really be terrific.”
“Well, they say experience comes with age.”
“Yeah, and experience pays off.”
“In this case, it sure does.”
“That’s fine for him, but what about the rest of us? When are we going to get our chance?”
“You aren’t!”
The heads of all the men swiveled to take in Sappho, wearing a sleazy negligee and standing in the doorway to the bedroom. “You can all go home now,” she told them. “I’ll be tied up for the rest of the night. And tomorrow night, too. As a matter of fact, don’t ever come back! You disgust me! All of you! I’m ashamed of myself,” she continued as they started to file out, grumbling and cursing as they went. “I’m ashamed of myself for giving my body to one man after another in a vain quest for satisfaction when all the time there was only one man I ever really wanted, Well, I’ve got him now. And I don’t need any other man! Not now! Not ever again! Yes, I was a nymphomaniac. But now I’m cured. Cured! Do you hear? I’m cured!” She shouted her last words at the back of the last man to depart. Only then did she notice Penny sitting in a chair in the shadows at the side of the room. “What are you doing here?” Sappho asked, surprised.
“Never mind that! The question is, what are you doing?”
“That’s not really your business, is it?”
“Yes. It is. I brought him here. I brought him because I thought that finding yourself in bed with your own father would shock you out of your nymphomania.”
“Well, it has.”
“Yes. And right into incest!”
“Well, what did you expect?”
“I thought you’d stop. Naturally. I mean, your own father— I didn’t think you’d go on—-”
“But why not?‘ Don’t you see, Penny? You meant to help me and you have. I’m over my insatiable appetite for men now. I’ll never be a nymphomaniac again. This is what I always wanted, but I’d never admit it to myself. I never really wanted plumbing fixtures, or men. I just wanted Daddy!”
“And now you’ve got him.”
“Yes.”
“But he’s an old man. The pace will kill him. Then what will you do?”
“I’m not sure. But I won’t go back to what I was. I’m sure of that. Don’t make moral noises, Penny. Be happy. I’m cured!”
On that note Penny left. And as she wended her way homeward, she realized that insofar as editing Lovelights was concerned, Sappho was indeed cured of the insatiable appetite which might have interfered with her work. Yes, she could handle the job now, and Penny wouldn’t have to be afraid of her missing a press date or anything because she was making love to some man in the stockroom.
Annie and Sappho, two down, and that left only Marie. But not tonight, Penny decided. She was too tired. She just wanted to get home and straight to bed. No, she wasn’t going to worry about Marie D’Chastidi’s problem tonight. She wasn’t even going to think about Marie.
And then she was forced to think about her. Just as Penny entered her apartment, the telephone started ringing. She ran to answer it.
“Penny?” It was Marie D’Chastidi’s voice. “Penny, I’ve been raped!”
“What? What do you mean? I don’t understand.”
“I’ve been raped!” Marie repeated, quite agitated.
“But how could you be? Weren’t you wearing your—?”
“Yes. Of course I was. From force of habit, really. I mean, Vito is away tonight, and I was all alone, so there didn’t really seem any need to wear my chastity belt. But out of habit I put it on anyway when I went to bed.”
“Then how could you have been raped? Did some man get hold of the key, or —”
“No! The key was well hidden. No man would think of looking where I put it.”
“Where did you put it?” Penny asked.
“In the freezer compartment of the refrigerator. Under the ice-tray.”
‘That’s so apropos it’s almost poetic,” Penny observed. “But how were you raped? And who raped you?”
“A safecracker.”
“A safecracker! ? I didn’t even know you had a safe.”
“We don’t. You see, we live right next door to a bank. It’s a basement apartment, you know. Anyway, he was tunneling through to the bank vault and he must have taken a wrong turn or something. He came up right under my bed.”
“Sounds like a pretty inept safecracker.”
“Not really. I think he’s just got a bad sense of direction. He’s really a pretty good safecracker. I mean, I haven’t really had too much experience judging safecrackers, but from my experience tonight I’d say he must stand pretty close to the top of his chosen profession.”
“How can you talk like that if he raped you?”
“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you, Penny. I liked it!”
“You liked it?”
“Yes. I can’t tell you how it made me feel. First those delicate fingertips manipulating the tumblers, and then the click when the lock opened, and then— Well, you know! He raped me! And for the first time I realized what’s been wrong with my married life. It’s not that I’m frigid. Not really. I know that now. It’s Vito. He just never knew how to unlock me, to turn me on. Well, I’ve been unlocked now, and I’m never going to be locked again. Penny—” She paused dramatically. “Do you know what I just did ?”
“No. What?”
“I threw my chastity belt in the furnace!”
‘That’s wonderful.”
“Yes. Isn’t it? I’m a new woman, Penny. And best of all, Vito’s working late again tomorrow night and the safecracker’s coming back to have another go at the bank. Except I don’t really think there’ll be time for the bank. Oh, Penny, isn’t it grand? At last I’m a woman!”