“Close the door,” Pierre told Cal, who had trailed hesitantly along behind the others.
“Look at these.” Raunch produced a large box from his desk as Cal shut the door. He opened the box and displayed half a dozen pairs of black lace bikini panties. He held one pair up so the others could see. He turned them around so that the embossed letters spelling out “NYMPH” were visible down the left side of the rear of the panties. “Now here’s what I propose,” Raunch told them. “I’ll have the young lady’s name—Llona—- embroidered on the other half of these panties and I’ll present her with seven pairs of them—one for each day in the week. Now, I shall call the young lady in here, present her with the panties and insist that she wear them off the job. She’ll think it’s peculiar, but I’ll insist on it as an idiosyncrasy of mine having to do with the Nymph image. I’m sure I can convince her, since there won’t be any reason for her to object. Okay, now the rest is simple. Whoever can produce a pair of these panties will have proven they’ve had intimate relations with her. The panties will be the proof.”
“What’s to prevent someone from just having a pair of panties made up like these and bringing them in as proof?” Beulah asked suspiciously.
“I’ll put a code number in them—-sewn into the elastic. I won’t even know what it is myself. I’ll ask the manufacturer to do it and keep the number in his safe.”
“You could pressure the manufacturer to tell you the number,” Irving pointed out.
“I suppose so,” Raunch granted. “But you’ll just have to trust me in that respect. I mean, I think you’ll all grant that of all of us I’m the only one to whom the money is meaningless. I’m in it for the sport. I wouldn’t cheat. It wouldn’t be any fun for me that way.”
“Raunch is right,” Pierre said. “I’ll buy it.” He laid a fifty-dollar bill on the desk.
The others followed suit. Last of all Cal Lowe approached the desk and laid down a white slip of paper. Raunch picked it up. It was an IOU for fifty dollars.
“I don’t think you belong in this, Cal,” he told the office boy.
“Yeah,” Irving chimed in. “No virgins allowed. We have to maintain some standards.”
“We couldn’t allow it, Cal. You’re the office virgin. Do you want to ruin your status?” Reb kidded him.
“And just a little while ago you were insisting on her chastity,” Beulah remembered. “Can we have destroyed your illusions so quickly?”
They could and they had. But Cal was forced to bow to their opinion. He withdrew from the contest and from the publisher’s office. Under his breath he was muttering to himself that he’d show them. Innocence had departed; the spirit of competition was new and strong. Stopping to peek at Llona as she sat naked at the reception desk, Cal saw her now with different eyes. No longer was she a work of art and nature to be admired but never touched; now she was a Mona Lisa daring him to desecration, a wondrous Everest challenging him to the climb. He’d show them all!
Back in the pub1isher’s office, slips of papers had been numbered, folded, tossed into a hat and stirred around. Each of them reached into the hat and withdrew one of the slips. They unfolded them and looked at the numbers.
“I’m first!” a voice exulted. “I’m Number One!”
Outside, Llona sat naked at her desk, unprotected, unknowing, unaware that she was the prize in the office lottery . . .
CHAPTER SIX
One hand behind her back, the fat nurse waddled toward Archer, a glint in her eye.
“What now, you predatory Nightingale?” Archer asked in a voice heavy with suspicion.
“My, we’re testy this evening, aren’t we?” she cooed.
“That we are. We suffer from lack of sleep, we do.”
“We’re insomniac,” she clucked. “We’ll have to ask Doctor for some sandman pills.”
“Oh no we won’t!”
“We’re stubborn! We’re very stub-bor-en!”
“We’re learning, is what we are,” Archer told her. “We were sleeping like a jam of logs last night until we were waked up to take our sleeping pill. Three times we made the Land of Nod, and thrice we were exiled by our night nursey to take our sleepy-bye pill. And then we were awakened for good at five in the ayem for our wash and prune juice and poached eggs. Have you ever opened your eyes and found a pair of underpoached chicken embryos staring back at you? We were not delighted; our appetite was not aroused.”
“Hospitals have to be—”
“—run on schedule. We know. But wouldn’t we think that some day a hospital might be run on a schedule conducive to the well-being of the patients, instead of for the convenience of the staff? We know this is probably an anarchistic, communistic idea, but— what the hell do we think we’re doing?”
“Turn over. We have to take our temperature.”
“We have flipped our white cap is what we have done!” Archer fended her off with both hands. “In case we’ve forgotten, we have a busted leg which if we’ll have a look-see, we’ll find is in traction, which makes it impossible to turn over.”
“We have a point there,” the nurse granted.
“Stop that! Stop groping!”
“I’m only trying to find—Ahh! There we are!”
“Whoo-ee! Get your finger out of my——-”
“Now just hold still. We had to find it first. If we’ll stop thrashing around, we’ll be able to put the thermometer—!”
“Isn’t it time for visiting hours?” Archer was plaintive. “Why do we have to take our temperature now? Why can’t we do it after they’re over?”
“Because then we have to have our enema,” the nurse informed him joyfully.
“Hello-hello.” Llona called from the doorway as the nurse extracted the thermometer. “How do you feel today?”
“We’re cranky,” the nurse told her.
“Let’s leave us alone with our wife now,” Archer said through clenched teeth.
“She seems a jolly sort,” Llona observed after the nurse had left.
“If you like anal sadists,” Archer grumbled. He was thinking about the coming enema, determined to fight Nursey’s obsession.
“She’s only doing her job, I’m sure.” Llona tried to placate him. “Which reminds me,” she continued. “I’ve found one. A job.”
“I told you, I forbid it!” Archer became very agitated. “I’m not going to have my wife supporting me!”
“I’m supporting me.” Llona tried to reason with him. ‘“That’s something you’re unable to do right now. Be sensible, Archer. I have to pay the rent. I have to eat.”
“I don’t care!” Archer was adamant. “We can give up the apartment. You can move in with my mother until I’m back on my feet again.”
“With your mother!” Llona reared up like a bucking bronco. “So you want me to go out of my mind altogether?”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean? What’s the matter with my mother?”
“First of all, we don’t get along. Us living together would be like an Arab and an Israeli trying to share the same waterhole in the middle of the desert.”
“If you live together, you’ll learn to get along.”
“Second of all, she’s paranoid. She’s obsessed with the idea that I hate her.”
“Well, don’t you?” Archer asked.
“Of course I do. Who wouldn’t. When somebody is that suspicious of you, naturally you’re going to hate them.”
“That sounds more like State Department policy than logic,” Archer protested. “Haven’t you ever heard of coexistence?”
“With the Russians, "yes. Maybe even someday with the Chinese. But with your mother, never! Never!”
“Then go back and live with your own parents. I don’t care how you work it out. I just don’t want my wife working.”
“With my own parents? Don’t be funny, Archer. You very well know I’d rather live with your mother even than with my father!” '