Well, you can’t win ’em all! Llona thought to herself as she took in her hostess’ appearance. Mrs. Holdkumb was a woman in her late forties with large, decaying choppers, a hog-snoot for a nose, watery, mean, bloodshot eyes, and a body like a rhinoceros. She was wearing a Hawaiian print which was slashed up one side. The calf displayed was varicose and lumpy. No, you can’t win ’em all! A Chihuhua! Who’da thunk it!
E. Z. Holdkumb was a fit mate for her. ‘Nuf said! He was a predator in the world of commerce. Each night he dragged home fresh-killed meat for their larder. Tonight he’d brought home Archer in the flesh.
Llona met Archer there. That’s how they’d arranged it. It seemed the easiest way, even though they hadn’t been asked for dinner, only to play bridge. So, when Llona arrived, Archer was seated on the couch between Mr. and Mrs. Hyena—oops!—-Holdkumb, with his face the color of diaper rash and the expression on it even more uncomfortable.
“We’ve just been teasing Arch here ’bout your honeymoon,” E. Z. confided to Llona with a leer and a wink. He followed up the wink with an elbow-nudge to her ribs which managed to test the resiliency of her left breast.
Neva Holdkumb, who missed nothing, frowned. But she covered her displeasure quickly. “Look at him blush!” She bated her bicuspids at Archer in what was meant to pass for a smile. “Don’t you know it’s the bride’s supposed to be embarrassed, Archer?” She turned to Llona. “Isn’t that so?” she asked.
“I’m not embarrassed,” Llona. told her truthfully. “Sex doesn’t embarrass me.”
“Girls today!” Mrs. Holdkumb shook her head. Strike Two! . . . Strike One! had been Llona’s allure. “They’re so outspoken.”
“I like it,” E. Z. said. “And besides, now we can get the real lowdown on that honeymoon.” He snickered.
“What do you want to know?” Llona asked.
“What’s the first thing you did when you were alone in the hotel room?” E. Z. blurted it out.
“E. Z.!” Mrs. Holdkumb pretended to be scandalized, but when she said nothing else, it became obvious that she too was waiting for Llona to answer.
“Well,” Llona replied truthfully, “I realized it was four o’clock in the afternoon, and that meant it was time for me to take The Pill.”
“The Pill?” E. Z.’s voice was filled with suspicion.
“The Pill?” Neva Holdkumb’s echo had already confirmed the suspicion and was eyeing the jugular.
“Llona!” Archer tried to stop her before it was too late.
“I didn’t want to get pregnant,” Llona explained honestly.
Archer came close to groaning audibly. Now it was too late. The damage had been done.
“You mean The Birth Control Pill?” Mrs. Holdkumb’s voice drove the nails through Llona’s
Llona could only nod dumbly. Now she remembered! Now!—when it was too late. In the long silence following her nod she took Strike Three! She heard once again the explanation Archer had given her the day after the wedding night, the explanation about his aversion to The Pill.
“Do you know what my job is?” Archer had asked Llona that day.
“You’re a promotion man for a pharmaceutical company.”
“That’s right. But do you know what I do specifically?”
“No. Not specifically. Tell me.”
He had told her. He had explained that he was the Assistant Promotion Manager and that his boss, Z. Holdkumb, was in charge of the promotion campaign to sell the firm’s male contraceptive devices to var1ous drugstore outlets. Archer had been an up-and-coming man in his company until the encroachments of The Pill had resulted in a decline of sales of prophylactics. For the past two years Archer—and Archer’s boss—had been waging an all-out promotion battle against The Pill.
“But what does that have to do with our private lives?” Llona has asked at this point. “I mean, just because you have to fight The Pill in business, I don’t see why—”
“I’m a promotion man!” Archer told her fervently. “I believe! I couldn’t do my job if I didn’t! And besides, my boss insists on it. He demands absolute loyalty!”
Now, sitting in the Holdkumb’s living room, Llona knew she’d cast doubts on Archer’s loyalty. She’d really put him on the spot. “Of course, I don’t use The Pill anymore,” she murmured into the ominously deepening silence.
“Archer, can I see you in my study alone a minute?” E. Z. Holdkumb forced a smile at Llona. “A matter of business. If the ladies. will excuse us—-”
“Of course.” Llona managed an answering smile.
“Treachery!” Llona heard E. Z. hiss the words just before the door closed behind him and her husband.
“Will you excuse me a minute, dear?” Mrs. Holdkumb made the “dear” sound like a command to the executioner for the beheading to begin. “I have to go in the kitchen and mix a soufflé for Hubert.”
It took Llona a moment to remember that “Hubert” was the Mexican Chihuahua. When Mrs. Holdkumb was gone Llona got up and strolled about the room, cursing her own damnfool honesty under her breath. Finally she flung herself into an overstuffed armchair, landing particularly hard in her agitation.
That was her second blunder. It would be awhile before she realized just how horrendous a blunder it was . . .
CHAPTER TWO
Once to every man and nation comes a moment of irreversible catastrophe. It is that moment-—unrecognized as it occurs--when the most insignificant of happenstances sets the first pebble on its course toward an avalanche of doom. It is that moment when Fate slips Hope a Mickey Finn!
During just such an instant was the equation E=MC2 evolved and the chasm of nuclear holocaust opened to the world. It is the moment when one plunges into a discourse on the works of Henry Miller to the lady who later turns out to be the head of the local Antipornography League and one’s boss’s sister to boot. It is that moment, perfect in its wrong timing, when Marie Antoinette quips “Let ’em eat cake!” to the starving peasantry. It is the joke about faith-healing told before one finds out that one’s prospective mother-in-law is a Christian Scientist. It is General Custer surveying the prebattle situation and opting to “Mop up those heathen redskins!” It is the vote against the appropriation to build the dam looked back on from the vantage point of the roof of one’s house as it floats along on the tide of the flood.
Such moments can be painfully embarrassing-—if not immediately, then surely eventually. Once to every man and nation . . . Once to every woman, too . . . And now such a moment came to Llona!
She was still sprawled in the overstuffed armchair into which she’d flung herself when E. Z. Holdkumb and Archer came back into the living room. Archer was obviously chagrined. He looked like a Boy Scout whose best friend just tripped up a little old lady crossing the street in full view of the Scoutmaster. It wasn’t his fault, but the Code had to be satisfied and quoted at someone. Archer had caught it and Llona knew he was just waiting until they were alone so he could pass it along to her.
She wondered how E. Z. had presented it. Various possibilities of phraseology tumbled through her mind: “This above all, to thine own self be true and thou canst not then be false to the company . . . Loyalty begins between one’s own sheets . . . If our competitors ever found out, we’d be a laughingstock . . . Your wife is a company wife now, and she must be made to realize . . . The Pill in the boudoir is a blot on the sales chart . . . Do you think the President of U.S. Rubber would equip his car with plastic tires? . . . Hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese anti-Communists have died to ensure the supply of rubber and you, who of all people should know better, have betrayed them with The Pill . . . How can you expect to sell our product if you can’t even convince yourself to the extent of forbidding your wife The Pill? . . .”