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.”