Chapter 9

Carol didn't get to Zina Allen's house until after four o'clock the next afternoon. The trip from Burbank where she went to school, to Beverly Hills, took up most of the time. Even at that, nothing much happened until after she and Zina had dinner. Then the woman took Carol into a sort of study that was set off from the rest of the house. Carol was quite surprised to find out that the books that filled the shelves that -lined two of the walls, floor-to-ceiling, dealt exclusively with sex. From what she could see at first glance, they seemed to cover every phase of the subject. There were even shelves devoted to out-and-out pronography manuals.

"I'm going to ask you a rather personal question, Carol," Zina said after she had given the girl a chance to look around and become a little more acquainted. "Are you a virgin, darling?"

Carol dropped her gaze to the floor, too embarrassed with the sudden bluntness of the question to answer.

Zina smiled tolerantly. "I've got to know, Carol. It's rather important." She repeated her query. "Are you a virgin?"

Carol swallowed and answered in a small, timid voice. "No ... ma'am....

"Have there been many men?" Zina asked. When Carol hesitated, she reassured the girl. "I promise you, darling, whatever you tell me will go no further than this room. It's simply that before I start to work with you, I've got to know. Now-have there been many men?"

Carol hesitated, then said reluctantly, "Not ... not too many."

"Good," the woman declared. 'That means the first thing we have to do is make you forget everything you've learned about sex, in any shape or form, and start all over again and teach you properly. In fact, darling, I'm going to remake you, completely. I'm going to teach you how to walk and talk and conduct yourself in a way that will appear both demure and seductive at the same time. You're going to eat the right kinds of foods so that you'll never have even the slightest blemish on your lovely face or body. We're going to exercise daily, so that your delightful curves remain, but without an excess ounce of flesh anywhere on your limbs of body. You'll be taught how to make up your face and arrange your hair to best advantage. So that when your training is over, no man will be able to resist you."

As it might have been with any girl of Carols age, with a headful of romantic dreams and notions, she was thrilled beyond comprehension at the things that Zina was telling her. Even when the woman told her to take off her clothes, Carol's enthusiasm didn't dim. With the promise of all the things that Zina said was going to happen to her, Carol wasn't sure if she would have objected too much if the woman had been a lez. But she was not. Even when Carol stood stark naked in front of her in the studio-study, Zina didn't begin to make a pass at her. Instead she told the girl, "No, no, darling. That's no way to take off your clothes. There's an art to disrobing. A former burlesque queen, made a film-HOW TO STRIP. I have it in my library."

She went into a closet off to one side of the room and came back with the film. She put it on the 16mm projector in the room and showed it a couple of times on the big screen, carefully pointing out all the intricate details in the film, on the fine art of stripping.

That was how Carol's new life with Zina Allen began, learning how to take off her clothes properly. It didn't take very long after that for Carol to find out exactly what Zina did to own a couple of Caddies, maintain a veritable mansion in Beverly Hills, a beach house at Corona Del Mar, an expensive high fashion wardrobe that included a couple of minks, plus unlimited real estate, stocks and bonds and a bank account that ran into six figures. Zina Allen maintained a high-class call-girl service, who received anywhere from one hundred to five hundred dollars a trick, from a hand-picked clientele.

As Zina explained it to Carol, because of the high caliber of her customers and the prices that she charged, her girls had to do more than just satisfy. They had to be trained to needle-point sharpness, perfected in the art of love-making until they became expert in every phase of the art of their chosen profession. In her studio-study, Zina had the makings of a miniature classroom, unlike any other perhaps in the entire world. Here she taught her girls everything that they needed to know about pleasing a man. Not because she considered men superior beings. In fact, on more than one occasion, Carol heard the woman say that men were stupid, believing such old wives' tales as the ones about women with big breasts or an over-abundance of pubic hair being more passionate.

"That's why I had silicone pads put in my breasts when I was younger," Zina confessed to Carol. "So the dumb bastards would think I was sexier."

To illustrate her lectures, Zina used charts, motion pictures and even live models-usually young boys, anxious to pick up a few extra bucks. At times, these live models went through some strange and racking experiences at the hands of Zina and her "students." Once, Carol remembered, when Zina called in several of her girls for a "refresher" course, they got a hold of a boy who couldn't have been more than fifteen. First, they engaged him in intercourse. Then, made him perform cunnilingus on them while they masturbated him. After that, they took turns sucking him off, until the poor kid passed out cold.

At high school, as part of an art course that she took, Carol had learned the bone structure of the human body, as well as a smattering of anatomy.

But Zina's teachings went much further than that. She pointed out each and every erogenous part of the body and how it affected the brain and nerve centers.

Carol was shown how to arouse a man; how to hold and caress him; how to sustain his ecstasy until he cried "Uncle." She learned the intricate secrets of revitalizing a man, even when he was sure that he couldn't possibly get it up again.

She was taught the French way, the Swedish way, the Oriental way, and all the other fifty or more different methods-including the Greek way, in which after Joe Papadosos, she hardly needed any instruction. There were many other things that Zina told her about pleasing a male-including exciting his sense of sight and smell with the proper color of her underthings, the right scent of her perfume.

Carol couldn't help but be amazed at Zina's thoroughness, that the woman had actually made a scientific study of the art of of sex. It was no small wonder that she had once snared a millionaire for a husband, who put her in a position to conduct the kind of business that she was in, on such an elaborate scale. The surprise was that Zina had been careless and promiscuous enough to let him divorce her. Carol was positive that if ever she were lucky enough to snare a millionaire, never would she ever let him get away.

by the time that Carol was ready to "graduate" from Zina's school of sex and take her rightful place along with the rest of the "alumni," she was as right as knowledge could make her. She was well past her eighteenth birthday now and not only did she have her high school diploma, but she also had several months of business administration and typing and shorthand. This was for more than just insurance, in the event that the bottom dropped out of her dream world. Like Olivia Grant, back in West Allis, Zina was a staunch advocate of education. As a rule, her girls were recruited from colleges around the country. Carol had been the exception. Zina took a chance with her, because she saw in the girl such tremendous potential.

During the two years that followed, Carol more than lived up to Zina's expectations. She threw herself into her work with a zeal and enthusiasm that few of the other girls had shown. Not necessarily because she liked it, but because it had become a part of Carol's nature to try to do her best in whatever she might attempt. That's why, once she was on her own, she became such a good student and why in a very short time, she became one of Zina's most sought-after girls.

To say that some of her experiences were strange and erotically bizarre would have been a gross understatement. There was the man, for example, who wanted to pretend that he was her little baby; had her bathe him, powder his bottom and then cuddle in her lap and nurse at her breasts while she fondled his penis.

Another client insisted on dressing up like a Nazi officer and have her make believe that she was a French peasant whom he stripped and raped. Then made her pretend that she liked it so much that she performed fellatio on him.

Then there was the sixty-eight-year-old man who paid Zina two hundred dollars just to have Carol visit with him. so he could undress her, fondle her and have her warm his cold bed. He insisted that he was impotent, that he hadn't had a proper erection since his wife had died more than three years before. Carol not only got his cock hard, but also prepared him to engage her in coitus. He was so profoundly grateful that he wept openly against her naked breasts and when she left he gave her an extra hundred dollars all for herself.

There was the guy who wanted her to play Jane to his Tarzan, while he beat his chest and swung through the rooms on the drapes and chandeliers, but unfortunately his yell was the only big thing about him ... And the man who wouldn't do it any way but on a mink coat because he said he liked the way the fur tickled his balls and insisted that it made a girl feel more horny. When it was over he gave the coat to Carol-her first mink.

Some men wanted to buy her, keep her as their own exclusive property. Others offered to set her up in her own place, to entertain them and friends. Mixed in were several proposals of marriage, but unfortunately none of the men met the requirements that she had set up for herself-which included a little thing called love.

Several months before Carol was graduated from junior college, she began to get restless. She told Zina in the beginning that she didn't want to spend the rest of her life as a call-girl. Now she informed Zina that she was getting a little weary, bedding down with every John-and even an occasional Jane-who might pay for her services, and that she wanted to try to move up the next rung on the ladder. Instead of being angry, Zina understood and sympathized with her.

Not that Zina wanted to lose one of her best money-makers, but Zina wasn't running a white slave mart. Zina was a practical businesswoman and had been through the mill herself. She therefore arranged with each girl that when she had earned enough to pay for her training several times over, the way Carol had, she could be free to go if she wanted to. Besides, Carol's was an unusual case. During more than the two years that Carol had been with her, Zina had acquired a great fondness for her, much more so than for any of the other girls. Carol and Zina's association bordered very closely on a mother-and-daughter relationship and Zina sincerely wanted to see Carol have an opportunity to achieve her goal.

So she began an entirely different phase of Carol's training. She still went out on calls, servicing Zina's clientele. But whenever the occasion presented itself, Zina took Carol on a round of Los Angeles' legit shows, concerts, smart supper clubs, the races, tennis matches, art shows and fashionable restaurants.

"These are the kinds of places where you'll meet the type of man you're looking for, darling," Zina told Carol. But after a couple of months of this sort of thing, Carol began to wonder if Zina was right, or whether they were just wasting their time visiting all these places. Until finally, one night lightning struck-exactly the way that Zina had said it would.

Carol and Zina had just paid their bill and were on their way out of a Sunset Strip bistro, when he came in through the front entrance. He had a girl with him. But Carol hardly even saw her. She centered her gaze on him.

She had guessed that he must be somewhere in his late-forties, tall, with an aquiline nose and a strong jaw that made him look ruggedly handsome. His even clothes, made by one of the city's finest tailors, seemed as much a part of him as his dark hair which had begun to gray, distinguishably at the temples.

Carol caught his penetrating brown-eyed gaze and held it for one long, magical moment, that made her feel as if she were starting down the highest hump on a roller coaster. So intense was the feeling that she was sure that if he had stepped forward, put his arms around her and kissed her, she would have experienced a full-scale orgasm.

Zina's light touch on her arm shook Carol back to reality. She turned and followed the older woman out the door. She could feel the heat of his gaze on the backs of her shapely, nylon-encased legs, and self-consciously fought to keep her girdleless buttocks from wiggling too sensuously under the silky material of her miniskirt gown.

The moment that they reached the sidewalk, Carol grabbed Zina's arm and declared, emotionally, 'That's him!"

Zina frowned. 'That's who?"

"The man I've been looking for," Carol said.

Zina followed the girl's gaze through the glass door. The man and the girl were still standing inside the lobby, waiting for the maitre d' to show them to their table. Zina's frown deepened and she shook her head. "You certainly picked yourself something to shoot for."

"You know him?" Carol asked eagerly. Zina nodded and the girl asked, "What's his name?"

"Quincy Palmer," Zina replied. "Owns the Palmer Advertising Agency. Has offices all over the world. According to Dun and Bradstreet he's worth in excess of thirty million."

Carol felt suddenly dizzy. Then sort of hesitatingly, she asked, "I-I don't suppose he's listed among your clientele?"

Zina smiled. "If only he were. But no such luck. A man with his money doesn't need anybody like me. All he has to do is flash his checkbook and he can have his pick."

Carol didn't know why, but she felt very relieved that he was not on Zina's list. As they stood there on the sidewalk in front of the restaurant waiting for the doorman to flag down a taxicab for them, Carol asked, "Was that his wife with him?"

Zina shook her fashionably-coiffured head.

"But I suppose he is married?" Carol exacted as she turned her head for one last look at him as the taxi pulled into the curb.

"He's had two wives," Zina said as she climbed into the taxicab.

"I'm going to be wife number three," Carol proclaimed as she followed after the woman.

Zina was amused by the girl's confidence. "You've really cut yourself an awfully big slice of cake to swallow."

"I'll find a way," Carol declared, settling herself into the back seat of the cab as it pulled away from in front of the restaurant.

It didn't take Carol long to appreciate the wisdom of Zina's words, to find out that Quincy Palmer, as far as accessibility was concerned, was a worthy counterpart of Howard Hughes. Several times she returned to the restaurant, hoping to see him. But the maitre d' told her that he hadn't been there since the night she had been there with Zina. From Dun and Bradstreet, as well as several sources, Carol learned about his hobbies and avocations; that he owned a stable of thoroughbred race horses, liked automobile racing, swimming, tennis. She made it a point to visit all these events. But there wasn't even a sign of him. Then one day, she read in the newspaper that he had flown to Paris to open a new branch office and that he would be gone for more than a month.

Carol used this one month to full advantage. She told Zina that she wanted a job with the Palmer Advertising Agency. Zina tried to talk her out of it. But when she realized that Carol was stubbornly determined, she applied a little pressure and managed a job for Carol in the agency's Radio-Television Department, as a stenographer.

Carol reverted to her innocent, scrubbed look and, making sure that she always wore her most modest dresses and only a minimum of makeup, she began work in the steno-pen. But even a snug bra and a demure costume couldn't hide Carol's voluptuous breasts and it wasn't long before the males in the office-from account executives down to office boys-began swarming around her desk like drones around a queen bee. Some of them were very attractive; some of them had rather lucrative jobs. But Carol very diplomatically brushed off each and every one, which was no small feat, since some of the men were very insistent. But if all Carol wanted was a man and some money, she could go back to working for Zina, who called several times to try to get Carol to take on an "assignment." But Carol gave Zina the same answer that she gave when refusing her fellow employees-she wasn't about to settle for anyone except the top man.

Among those in the office who were interested in Carol was her immediate superior-Floyd Bedell. Floyd was the office manager, a frail, mousy-looking man, no taller than Carol. He had sparse hair, hardly any chin and wore owlish, black-rimmed glasses-and a perpetually worried look. The interest and consideration that he showed Carol might have proven rather sticky-except for the fact that the "silver cord" with which he was attached to his mother was more in the form of a heavy, cast-iron link chain.

According to the other girls in the pen, this was the first time that Floyd took even a second look at any of the office girls. In fact, one of the gals, more outspoken than the others, took Carol aside one day and with a giggle told her that she had actually seen signs of life in the office manager's groin area when he stole a peek down Carol's decolletage. However, Floyd kept a discreet distance from Carol and, unlike the others, didn't even ask her to have lunch or dinner with him.

It wasn't until Carol's fifth week on the job, still successfully parrying all proposals, that the news circulated throughout the office that "the big boss" was coming back from Europe. Carol found it impossible to keep her heart from thumping with the thought of actually meeting him.

The first day he returned to the office, after his five weeks' stay in Europe, Carol made sure that she looked her loveliest. She arranged her hair in its most flattering style and wore the most attention-getting dress in her wardrobe-but one she made sure that wouldn't make her look cheap of too seductive.

From the moment that Carol first heard that Quincy Palmer was in the building, she kept hoping and praying that he would come to the Radio-TV department from his suite of offices. But Floyd told her that "QP" very seldom visited the Radio-TV department.

When it got to be about four o'clock, Carol's hopes began to abate. She guessed that Quincy Palmer wasn't going to see them after all. So she decided to button-hole one of the office boys, who spent considerable time in the immediate vicinity of her desk. She told him that she would give him five dollars if he would keep his eye peeled for the big boss and let her know when he was leaving for the day.

At 4:45, the boy called Carol on her extension and whispered, "He's on his way, Miss Francis."

Carol grabbed her handbag and told Floyd that she had a headache and that she would like to get home before the five-o'clock rush began, and that she would make up the time the following day.

She hurried into the corridor, figured out how long it would take Quincy Palmer to walk from his office, which Was located two floors above Carol's office, to the elevators and watched the lights above the bank of cars. One of the cars stopped at "QP's" floor. She pressed the DOWN button and whispered a tiny prayer. There was a pause, then the door to the elevator slid open.

Carol caught her breath and was sure that she was going to pass out. After all her waiting, all her chasing after him-there, except for the operator, he stood alone in the car. She met his eyes and fet a terrible weakness in her knees, as that self-same sensation that she had experienced that night when she first saw him in the bistro swept through her.

"Going down?" The operator's voice shook her back to her senses. Her heart hammering, she dropped her eyes and stepped into the car.

Quincy Palmer removed his hat and kept staring at her. She could feel his eyes on her but she didn't dare look up. The car stopped only once before reaching the ground floor. The door puffed open. Carol got out and took no more than half-a-dozen steps when a voice close behind her stopped her. "I beg your pardon...."

She turned and looked up and saw him standing there.

"It's a rather corny line, I know, but haven't I seen you somewhere before?" he asked.

She tried to quiet the upheaval going on insode her and managed to say, 'It's quite likely, Mr. Palmer, I work in your Radio-TV department."

She wanted so very much to stand there and go on talking to him, hoping that he might ask her to join him for a cocktail, or perhaps even have dinner with him. When he didn't, she simply turned and walked away, difficult as it may have been for her. One thing that she had learned for Zina-never try to take the reins away from a man you care for. Let him be the driver, the hunter. Besides, she had gained her objective, her purpose. She had let him know where he could find her, if he wanted to see her again.

The next day proved to be another of hoping and waiting. Every time that the door to the Radio-TV department opened, Carol's heart would begin pounding inside her ribcage, until she turned her head and saw that it wasn't him. If it had been him, she had made damn sure that he got an eyeful, because today for the first time, for his special benefit, she had worn a sexy-looking dress to the office. The micro-skirt was especially designed to show off her exquisitely shaped legs and the neckline cut just low enough to spike any man's interest and give proof that her luscious breasts were all her own.

Whether or not Quincy Palmer ever got a look at her charms in the outfit certainly caused a furor of excitement among the males on Carol's floor. She even saw Floyd Bedell wipe the perspiration off his black-rimmed glasses several times so that he could have himself a better look.

by the time three o'clock rolled around, Carol again felt all her hopes begin to sink, because it looked as if he were going to disappoint her once more and not visit her floor. Maybe she had overplayed her hand the day before? Maybe she had been just a little too over-confident, played it too cool? Maybe she should have taken advantage of the situation and not let him get away so easily. But it was too late to worry about that now.

Then at 3:30, word crackled through the department like forked lightning. "QP is here! QP just got off the elevator! He's on this floor, coming toward the Radio-TV department!"

The place suddenly became a beehive of activity. But it was nothing compared to the buzzing going on inside Carol's brain and tummy as she twisted in her Steelcase chair and saw him coming through the front door. Even more startling was the fact that he was heading straight for the low railing that enclosed the steno-pen. He halted directly alongside her desk.

Watching from his partitioned-off office, Floyd Bedell shivered from fear. He was deathly afraid of Quincy Palmer, because he knew that his job, his future, his whole life could be wiped out by the man's slightest whim. But Floyd knew that something must be wrong when, earlier in the afternoon, "QP" had sent down for one of the TV scripts that Carol had typed. Maybe "QP" had heard about, or even caught a glimpse of that "perfectly dreadful, all-revealing dress" that Carol was wearing and had come down to reprimand her. Maybe even fire her! But why would he be going through so much trouble? All he would have to do was call the personnel office and have her discharged-and certainly it didn't explain why he wanted to see one of the scripts that she had typed.

Fearfully, Floyd minced out of his office and slunk up behind the big boss, just as he saw "QP" hand the script to Carol and heard him ask, "Is this a sample of your typing, Miss Francis?"

"Yes, sir," Carol replied.

Floyd standing directly behind the big man now, swallowed nervously, and felt that it might be a reflection on him, if a girl's work didn't come up to "QP's" high standards. Bowing dutifully he squeaked out, "Miss Francis has only been with the agency a few weeks, sir. She was hired while you were in Europe, sir. If her typing isn't satisfactory-"

Quincy turned his head and looked down at the office manager with slight annoyance, "Who said it wasn't satisfactory? I think it's an excellent job. That's why I came down here to tell her so. I always like to let our employees know when I'm pleased with their work."

"Yes, sir," Floyd acquiesced, shivering violently. It was the very first time that he had ever known "QP" to personally praise anyone in the department. Could that mean that no one else's work had ever been satisfactory?

Meanwhile, Carol took advantage of the opportunity, to move her hair back and bring her knees out from under the cubby-hole desk so that Quincy Palmer could see her shapely legs encased in the sheerest of sheer black hose. At the same time she leaned forward just enough to afford him a glimpse of her milky-white breasts almost down to her areolas. It was done very subtly, so that "QP" would have no reason to believe that she had done it solely for his benefit, no more than he could begin to suspect that she had dressed this way for him-that it was all part of the tender trap.

But she didn't fool Floyd Bedell for one instant. After Quincy Palmer was gone, Floyd called her into his office and perspiring profusely, scolded her. "That was the most brazen, most unbusiness-like exhibition I've ever seen. Miss Francis."

Carol put on her most innocent face. "I don't know what you mean, Mr. Bedell."

"Oh, yes you do!" he reprimanded. "Showing off your legs-letting him see-" He didn't say the word, he simply indicated her breasts with a bob of his head. "Don't be surprised if Mr. Palmer fires you."

Carol made no reply.

Shortly before five o'clock, Floyd emerged from his office and halted beside Carol's desk. He shifted uneasily for a moment, coughed and said, "I hope you have nothing planned for this evening, Miss Francis. I have some very important letters to get out. I'd like you to stay and work on them with me."

Carol agreed to stay. At six-thirty, when the office was cleared of everyone except Floyd and herself, he said to her, "I'm afraid we're going to have to work a lot later than I figured. So maybe we'd better knock off for an hour or so and have some dinner."

During the dinner Floyd said, "I've got a confession to make, Miss Francis," his speech just a little garbled. "I didn't really object to you giving the old boy a free show this afternoon. Probably gave him a rise-I know that it gave me one."

She pretended that she hadn't heard him and that she was unaware of his arm around her-until she felt his fingers start to slide down toward her breasts-and his free hand rest on her thigh and push up under her skirt. Then she tried to push him away. But he persisted.

"I got another confession to make," he went on. "I never went for any of the other girls in the department. But you-I've had my eye on you ever since you first came to work for the company. But I never thought I'd ever have the courage to even ask you out."

His left hand was almost down inside her neckline; his right dangerously close to the lace border of her abbreviated panties.

"Please, Mr. Bedell-stop it!"

He began to breathe heavily, pushing against her hands that were blocking his further progress. "You don't understand-a man in my position-I can do an awful lot for you. I can give you all the time off you want ... maybe get you a nice fat raise ... see that you don't have to work too hard."

"Please-take your hands away," Carol begged him.

"Look, I'm not asking much, I only want you to be nice to me," he said, passionately. "I even called my mother. I told her I might have to work all night. I figured maybe you and I could go to a motel ... maybe even to your place...."

"What about all those letters we have to get out?"

His hand eluded hers and brushed over her flimsy panties. "That was just an excuse. You knew that, it was an excuse. I guess I just didn't have the nerve to come right out and ask you to have dinner with me."

She felt his fingers worming their way up beneath the tight leg-opening of her panties. She clenched her legs together, tightly, then pushed him away, so that she could slide out of the booth and stand up.

He frowned disappointedly. "What's the matter?"

"I'm sorry," she said flatly. "But I'm afraid you just aren't my type."

His anger flared and his frown turned into a glare, his mouth ugly. "Okay-okay-but you're gonna be sorry ... and I really mean sorry!"

Carol made no reply. She simply turned on her spike heels and walked away and left him sitting there, stewing in his fury.