“Aw, come on now, Rosie. The way things are going with you and Mr. Antrobus down in Accounting, I’ll bet you got a rock on your knuckle before the year’s out.”
“Shh! You can never tell who might be listening.”
There was a silence as the two girls surveyed the closed stall and looked at each other with questioning eyes. Then Rosie’s eyes dropped lower, and she gasped.
“What is it?” Gertrude asked.
By way of answer, Rosie pointed to the space between the stall door and the floor. The young man’s shoes and trousered calves were clearly visible. Gertrude’s jaw dropped.
“That’s a man in there!” Rosie hissed.
“There can’t be.”
“I tell you there is.”
“Ooh! What’ll we do?”
“Nothing! I refuse to do absolutely anything while he’s here.” Rosie was adamant.
“Not even what we came in here to do?”
“Absolutely not!”
“But I have to!” Gertrude protested. “It can’t wait.”
“Oh, go ahead then. I’ll stand guard.”
“Thanks, Rosie. I’ll make it as fast as I can.” Gertie quickly seated herself in front of the vanity mirror and began wiping her face clean with cold cream. Then she patted the cold cream off with a Kleenex and applied her make-up. “Okay,” she said when she was finished. “Let’s go.”
“I’ve been thinking,” Rosie whispered. “Maybe we’re wrong. Maybe it isn’t a man. Maybe it’s really a girl in slacks.”
“Don’t be silly. Look at those shoes.”
“That doesn’t mean anything. Not the way styles are today. What with those high-heeled boots the girls are wearing and all.”
“Well, those are mighty hairy shins for a girl!”
Hastily, the young man tugged his pants cuffs down.
“I guess you’re right. We’d better report it to the supervisor,” Rosie said. “He might be some kind of sex maniac or something.”
“Do you really think so?” Gertrude mused. “Then maybe we’d better not report it to the supervisor. After all, what did she ever do for us!”
“You’re right. No man who was a sex maniac would be safe with her.”
The door closed behind them. The young man got to his feet, trembling in the aftermath. Just as he emerged from the stall, Penny entered the lavatory.
“The coast is clear,” she told him. “You can go now.”
“Good.” He started for the swinging door.
“Migosh! Don’t do that!” Penny pointed dramatically past him through the opened door of the stall he’d left.
“Do what?”
“That. Leave the seat up. Do you want to cause a scandal?” She strode past him and lowered the seat.
“A scandal?”
“Sure. That’s what happened at Girl’s High when I went there. The principal found a toilet seat up in the little girls’ room, and the next thing we knew the whole school was lining up for internal examinations.”
“Sorry.” He followed Penny out into the hallway.
She led him around a bend, down a long corridor, and through a door. “These are the back elevators here,” she told him. “You can go down that way and out through the alley to Madison.”
“Wait a minute,” he told her. “You can’t just leave me like this. I have to see you again.”
“Oh, you’re not going to start that again, are you?” Penny sighed. “Boy, you never give up, do you?”
“Wait! It’s not what you think.”
“The heck you say. Once a masher, always a masher.”
“No. Please. Listen to me. It’s not that I find you attractive, it’s—”
“And being insulting won’t get you anywhere either.”
“I’m not being insulting. I —”
“You are too! You as much as said I wasn’t attractive!”
“I didn’t mean it that way. I only meant I wasn’t trying to make another pass at you. I was just trying to say that I have to see you again because you’re the only one who can save me.”
“I already did that once today. And I can’t say it impressed me much as a career opportunity, either.”
“But you have to! They’ll send me to jail if you don’t,” he insisted.
“Who’ll send you to jail?”
“My draft board. I have to report there tomorrow, and when they find out I burned my draft card—”
“Oh! I see!”
“You’ve just got to come down there with me and back up my story of what really happened. Maybe then they’ll believe me. They’ve gotten very tough, you know. Just a hint of smoke where draft cards are concerned, and the next thing you know, you’re in Viet Nam.”
“Don’t you want to die for your country?” Penny asked loyally.
“Absolutely! Believe me, I’m absolutely dying to die for my country. My only regret is that I have but one li—”
“All right. Don’t overdo it,” Penny interrupted.
“Sorry. It’s just that I don’t want to go to jail as a draft dodger. That’s why you have to go down there with me.”
“Oh, all right.” Penny’s sympathies, always easily aroused, bubbled forth now. “I’ll go with you.”
“You will! Oh, gee, I’m so grateful. I don’t know how to thank you, Miss—?”
“The first time you opened your mouth to me, I should have known you’d manage to get my name somehow,” Penny observed with resignation. “It’s Miss Candie. Penny Candie.”
“Glad to know you, Penny. My—”
“Miss Candie to you.”
“Sorry. Miss Candie. My names Balzac. Balzac Hosenpfeffer. My mother was a literary snob. Balz to you.”
“I beg your pardon!”
“Balz. That’s what my friends call me.”
“Then I’ll call you Mr. Hosenpfeffer, she told him pointedly. “I’m not about to get on familiar terms with any Balz.”
“Ahh, come on. Be friendly. Say Balz.”
“No. And quit pushing, or I’m liable to change my mind about the draft board.”
Balz dropped the topic. He borrowed a pencil from Penny and scrawled the address of the draft board on a piece of paper for her. “Eight-thirty tomorrow,” he told her.
“Eight-thirty? That’s pretty darned early. How do I let myself in for these things?”
“It’s ’cause you’re all heart,” Balz told her. I knew it the minute I laid eyes on you.”
“Oh, sure! And I suppose the way you were staring at me was just cardiac research!”
“Heart and lungs,” Balz admitted blithely. “And your lungs would impress anybody interested in anatomy.”
“Your draft board better not turn out to have etchings on the wall,” Penny told him as she turned to leave. “I’ll see you there in the morning.”
“Good-bye for now,” Balzac Hosenpfeffer called after her.
“Good-bye.” Penny went through the door and back the way they’d come.
A few moments later she was seated behind her desk in her office at Pussycat Publications. The sign on the office door said: Lovelights, Editor. It didn’t say that Penny was the youngest romance-book editor in the magazine field, but she was. There were a few assistant and associate editors around her age, but at twenty-one she was something of a prodigy to have earned such a responsible position.
Now, having put Balzac Hosenpfeffer out of her mind, Penny was considering the responsibilities of that position. One in particular weighed heavily on her mind. She had to decide upon a temporary replacement for herself while she took a leave of absence due to circumstances she was convinced had passed beyond the point of her control.