Chapter 1
The tickertape seemed to fly by, and Susan simply sat there, staring. Actually, tickertape was a misnomer. Now it was called the electroscan. Little light bulbs lit up, first two or three capital letters, then beneath the letters and a little to the right there appeared a single number representing the amount of shares of stock traded-said stock represented by the capital letters. Next to the number of shares was the price at which the stock traded, always in eights.
Susan had invested in three different securities, all high-risk companies, but all promising big profits if they came through. She had a thousand shares of Southern Motel Units, represented by the letters SMU, now trading at three-and-three-eights. She also had five hundred shares of Federal United Communications, FUC trading at one-and-one-quarter, and last but also least she had Commonwealth Rubber Plantations, CRP trading at under a dollar. She had two thousand Crp. She had put her last penny into these securities on the word of a certain know-it-all, who had previously been known to make money. But this time it looked as if her money was going to go down the toilet. Oh, she would have enough to pay the final month's rent on her lease, a lease her landlord had no intention of renewing, but if these stocks didn't come through for her, Susan would be in trouble.
Susan Kean, now close to forty years of age, and yet looking almost half her age, was perspiring. Her white skin was still flawless, untouched, unlined. She was merchandise that had been hardly used.
Her hair was the color of the sun just before sunset, golden-red, fluffed out, almost wing-like. Her deep hazel eyes were red at the moment from staring, and she had to take her glasses off and she cleaned them. She had a small, uptilted nose, and a very full pair of lips colored with brilliant orange-red lipstick.
Her petite frame, curvaceous and alluring, was clothed with great care in an immaculate red skirt-suit. It had long sleeves and white cuffs and matching collar.
Susan sat right up front in the brokerage office, near the desk of her customer's representative, Tom Warren. He was the latest in a long line of brokers she had used over the past few years. It seemed as if no stock broker was satisfactory. When Susan wanted to buy a stock, she felt the broker ought to warn her if it was a bad investment. However, if the broker did warn her, she was angry that he was disputing her choice. As a result, she consistently lost money.
Money was never easy to come by, and Susan had found honest work almost impossible. As a result, she had turned to somewhat dishonest work, of late. The worst part of it was, unable to handle things by herself, she had conned Tom, her latest broker into helping her.
Tom Warren was tall, good-looking, but overweight. As a result, the black-haired man with the aquiline nose and the tan skin had trouble finding interesting women. He dressed well, had money, but because of his weight women found him unattractive, at the very least. So when Susan began showing an interest in him, Tom went along with what she wanted. Because of this, Susan had stayed with Tom longer than any other broker. Tom was a good broker, too. But she consistently disregarded his advice, going purely by hearsay, and as a result continued losing money.
Susan had known Tom for six months now, and in that six months, she had promised him many things, and had delivered nothing. Each time he did something for her, instead of her showing her gratitude in any way, afraid that so much as a kiss would lead to something sexual, she found a reason to quarrel with the man, making him storm out of her apartment, thus keeping the "temple of her body" safe.
It wasn't that Susan liked Tom any the less. She liked him more than other women did, and she liked him more than she liked other men. But the truth was, Susan was terrified of sex.
Twenty years earlier, Susan had been married to an overbearing, uncaring man who had used her body for his own pleasure for more than five years. Not once had she been able to enjoy what the man had done to her, rather experiencing pain every time, and as a result, after she had finally divorced the man, she had sworn to never become sexually involved with any man again. For more than fifteen years her body had been untouched. As a result, her flesh remained unwrinkled, her muscles, well-supported by foundation garments remained firm, and her skin was as soft as a baby's. She was as beautiful as a porcelain statue, and just as fragile.
When Tom's work day was over, he always drove Susan home to her apartment in an area known as City Park. He was well aware that she would have to be moving shortly since her landlord wasn't too keen on her.
Susan's primary source of income was diamond-smuggling. Three or four times a year she flew to Europe, going to Amsterdam, Brussels, and Tel-Aviv, the diamond capitals of the world, and each time she returned, she had Tom meet her at the airport, where she was able to hide the diamonds she had smuggled in, in a hidden compartment in his car, and then he would take her to meet her contact, who would give her instant cash for the diamonds. Tom had never met Susan's contact and didn't want to meet the man.
As far as Tom was concerned, Susan was an enigma. She was willing to steal, to smuggle, to lie, and to cheat, but she refused to go to bed with him. But now she was also starting to steal from him, though he was a willing victim.
In the past few months he had shifted money from his own private account to hers in order to help her cover her losses, but he had told her he would not do so again. From now on, if she lost, she lost her own money, because at this point she owed him well over eighteen thousand dollars, and Tom was smart enough to know he would never see that eighteen thousand again.
The last time, when Susan started begging him for a few more thousand to keep her margin account alive, Tom insisted she sign a paper stating that in return for the money, assuming she was unable to pay him back within a reasonable time, he was to have complete control and use of her body. Susan, certain he would never press such a demand since it was illegal, had signed the document. But now, her stocks were dipping.