Chapter 2
"I most certainly do." Sparks seemed to fly from Susanne's lips. "This morning, driving in, I would have given the Hair-After to anyone who wanted it. But after listening to Henri, I vowed I would take over and run the salon if I landed in the Bastille in bankruptcy. Why, I couldn't live with myself if I allowed something Aunt Mary looked upon as a sacred trust to close its doors."
"Hurrah!"
Diners in nearby booths reared to see what had brought forth the shout of triumph. All they saw was a personable young man shaking hands with a rather wild-looking young woman.
"I had the desire to take over myself," he confessed; "if you gave up, that is. Heaven knows there is nothing I want less than a beauty salon.
"Miss Morgan, despite curb-snatching .and traffic tickets, you and I are going to get along. We react the same way."
He had to wait until their chicken in the rough was served; until an interested waitress hovered as she poured coffee. Once she was gone, he started in again.
"Now then," he drew a deep breath, "either Henri does not know the financial assets of the Hair-After, or has some personal reason for downgrading the salon. I know, and have proof here in my briefcase, that the salon has continued to show a profit even during Miss Mary's last illness, and that it has a fine potential.
"Every city has its parking problems. Most are building urban and suburban shopping centers around non-metered parking areas. We've done the same here, but short of moving the Hair-After, I don't see an immediate solution."
"I do," mused Susanne. "Change the clientele. Meters go off duty at six p.m., and lore space is available. By staggering work crews on an eleven-to-seven basis, or one-to-nine, we could serve business girls and schoolteachers. And let it once be found difficult to gain an appointment during other hours, we'd have all the patrons we could handle."
"I assume you majored in psychology," mused the delighted Leehoff. "So has the owner of this drive-in. Would you care to come to my office? I'm due in court at two, but until then-"
Susanne leaned back. "Could this go until another day? Frankly, I'm bushed. I need to settle in, to unpack, then quietly visit the salon without the chaperonage of either Henri or an attorney."
"You've decided to take your aunt's apartment?"
Susanne sighed. She couldn't see that she had any choice. The lease ran for seven months, and with it went the services of a maid, Maggie, with pay. At the end of the seven months Maggie would be eligible for Social Security which, with the endowment left by Miss Mary, would give her comfort elsewhere.
Susanne hadn't met Maggie. She let Leehoff drive ahead of her to the old apartment louse on a hill, waved, promising she would call for an appointment. Then she met Maggie.
"Hmph," Maggie greeted her when Susanne had identified herself. "You look like a plucked chicken. Here, this is the guest room. Get into comfies and relax."
Susanne got into "comfies" because the bags deposited inside the door were rapidly emptied and Maggie, having made a choice, put Susanne into a housecoat and slippers.
Her hair brushed and plaited in pigtails, she was allowed to make a tour of her new domain.
"This is lovely," Susanne cried, going from window to window looking down on the sprawling city or up on mountains which thus far had defied man's attempt to tame them.
"Now this," Maggie threw open a door, "is your thinking room. Was Miss Mary's. She says trouble with this world is: people don't take time to think. Drat that telephone."
Amused, Susanne watched the woman stalk to the extension, lift it, and bark, "Well? Oh, it's you, Henry. Yes, she's here and tuckered. No, she's not coming down till tomorrow. Now calm yourself. And drop the accent with me. If you'da been in the front lines, you wouldn't have had time for Paris. Yes, I'll tell her."
She turned to Susanne. "Henry wants you should have dinner with him tonight. Could have it here if you had a mind to. Miss Mary often had the help up. I'd say wait till you're rested."
"I am tired," Susanne admitted, "and I would like time for a conference with the attorney first."
Susanne settled on a chaisette as the word battle behind her continued; then Maggie, defeated, came to face her.
"Henry says Wednesday night at a place you should be seen; not here. If you ask me, he's afraid I'll chip in my two bits' worth."
Susanne imagined her words would be worth more than twenty-five cents. Yet in all fairness she had to make her own evaluation of the employees.
"I think," she mused, looking out across purple foothills to the triangular shining gold peak of Mt. Hood, "I shall just lie here and think."
She meant to, but Mt. Hood was salmon pink with the last of the afterglow when Maggie shook her.
"Man says I should wake you. Name of Danny Harper. Know him?"
Know him? She was practically married to him.
"Calling from Des Moines, Iowa. Shoulda waited for the night-toll rate. Saved some money. Here."
Susanne took the telephone, shook sleep from her eyes and replaced it with a vision of Danny: six foot something, bronzed, black of eye and reddish-brown of hair. Danny always knew all of the answers.
Danny's conversation consisted largely of questions. How had she made out? Was it going to be too much of a hassle? She could cut out any time. They needn't wait until he had the right job. They could be married "at the drop of a hat."
Susanne had a ridiculous mental picture of someone dropping a hat and she and Danny springing to a stance before a preacher, complete with license. Ah, but that was Danny, the one student who drove even doctors of literature to white hair and balding scalps. But he could and did play football.
The receiver replaced, she leaned back to dream of Danny. They had become engaged in their junior year at the University, agreed to wait until they were seniors, then, having reached that estate, decided it advisable to graduate and then marry.
Susanne sighed blissfully. Theirs was such a satisfactory understanding. Naturally, she felt, Danny couldn't marry until he had won the particular position he felt was destined for him; In the meantime, as extra man with his father's trucking line, he traveled across the continent, piling up savings against the great day.
She'd been much too busy to worry over the delay in their wedding plans. Automatically, once she had returned from college, she had become executive director of many organizations in her home town.
In a sense, she had been filing away assets for their future. Her work was charitable, but it was making her name and ability known. This would inadvertently work to Danny's benefit.
And it was having its effect upon her inheritance. She had learned to evaluate, to analyze, to direct. At the moment she was applying these assets to Maggie.
What did one do with an older woman who simply took one over bodily? Her father had said she was "a jewel, but some jewels are rough to wear." Her mother had shushed him with a reminder about how she had cared for his aunt for years.
Susanne found herself dressed with little memory of dressing herself; seated at a table and almost spoon-fed. But the food was delicious, and when she did it justice, Maggie beamed.
"Pleasured me considerable you chose to live here," Maggie confided. "I need someone to do for. Maybe you don't know it yet, but you're going to need doing for."
Susanne lifted her head, a question in her eyes.
"Miss Mary talked over business with me, nights. Needed a sounding board, she said. Sometimes I talked back, argufying. She needed it. Made her more determined she was right. When you get ready, I'm here."
"Thank you, Maggie," Susanne stammered. "But first I think I should view the business, including the employees, from a purely impersonal standpoint, don't you?"
"That I do. There's nothing like a good kick in the shins to make a boy know he's got him an enemy."
Susanne digested this right along with a luscious triangle of peach pie half-drowned in whipped cream.
She arranged to be called early, planning to visit the salon before the employees arrived, then retired with a book Maggie thrust at her.
"Miss Mary said," Maggie intoned, "if a body's to work on the outside, it's best to know the inside."
Susanne fully expected a treatise on structural anatomy, the basis of facials; instead she found a book of poems, Blanding's last, and understood the note tacked to the office wall.
Susanne breakfasted with a silver-framed reminder card smack in the center of her place setting.
It read, "7:30 to 8:30, salon inspection. 9:00, conference at Mills Bldg. with Leehoff. 40:00, bank to establish signature. 11:00, conference with accountant."
"Hm," murmured Susanne, "and I thought all there would be to running a salon would be to encourage the employees."
The accountant was also the part-time bookkeeper. He came in Monday afternoons to draw up the payroll, check the previous week's bank deposits and the books. Susanne would make the deposits each afternoon.
She drove to town feeling very sober, found a two-hour parking spot several blocks from the salon, and made her way through the early stillness to the Hair-After.
She was too intent upon unlocking the doors to look at the display window and receive the lift or letdown of other casual viewers, and when she stepped into the interior she waited, a little frightened.
The salon too seemed to be waiting for a signal to start breathing, and she didn't know the signal.
Nor could she identify the delicate perfume which seemed to pervade the big room. It seemed composed of many odors, no one distinct; of soaps and sprays, disinfectants and deodorizers which hadn't been too efficient, obviously. On tiptoe she walked around the reception room, straightened ashtrays and piles of magazines that had not needed straightening, squared the appointment book on its pedestal desk. Then she went on to the cubicles where the four girls and two men carried on their art.
This, she tried to convince herself, was all hers, right from the foyer to the back where Jansen and Jennet, the maid, had their neat small room with arms against dirt attached to the walls-brooms, mops, and shelves of canned cleaners of all kinds.
She read a city health inspector's latest stamp of approval and shuddered. She didn't know upon what the approval was based.
Back in the office, she found an order lying on her desk, awaiting her signature. She didn't know if it were bona fide or merely Henri's idea of what they should have.
Salesmen! And she knew nothing about the beauty business. How dependent she was going to be upon her employees.
She collapsed in her desk chair. Just why did Aunt Mary leave this to me?
Out of half a dozen nieces and grand-nieces, Mary had chosen her. Why?
She hardly knew me, she mused. Maybe that's why.
Well, she'd go into that later, or try to, with Maggie's help.
Now to the conference with Leehoff. Really quite a decent fellow after you got to know him. Perhaps she too would snatch parking space after she'd lived in this city long enough; snatch it from some elderly woman, perchance in desperate need of a physician.
The conference was quite painless, though it seemed to her the various stenographers and secretaries took a really personal interest in her.
And there was no one to tell her one had overheard Leehoff explaining her to Ames.
"One thing," he'd stated grimly, "she'll have nothing to unlearn. I doubt if she's ever been in a beauty salon. But she has spirit. She'll see it through."
They walked to the bank. Susanne didn't know how Leehoff negotiated his return. She floated. Having a dry voice tell you, you were worth so many thousand dollars, while reading a will, was one thing. Having a bank vice-president establish your right to withdraw at the stroke of your signature more money than your father made in a year was something else. It was dizzying. - "Are you sure you're feeling all right?" Leehoff asked.
"No," Susanne replied, "I am not sure. There is something about dollars that makes this inheritance real, like waking up from a pleasant dream. I'm scared."
Again came a laugh and a cheering "Good girl." Then, warily, "What are you going to buy first?"
"Buy? Goodness, that money isn't mine; it belongs to the Hair-After. Mr. Leehoff, could we pay me an allowance or something for stamps and stocking and things? Something I've really earned?"
And Leehoff, who with Susanne had wondered why she had been chosen as heir, understood.
He reminded her Miss Mary had taken a definite percentage of the profits. Then, shaking his head a little at his own idea, he blurted, "Why not have dinner with me Saturday night? You'll have had time to absorb the overall picture of the salon."
"I'd like that," she agreed, "but at my-that is, Aunt Mary's apartment. I am confident Maggie will put us back on the track if we stray. I think she knew more about the business than, say, Henri."
Susanne found the conference with the auditor equally comforting. He was elderly. He was prosaic. He talked figures, and those she could understand.
Outside her office, the hum of a busy morning, the whirr of dryers, voices, and the aroma of perfumes of all kinds wafted in.
Susanne walked to the front entrance with him, asking questions that seemed to be endless. They paused a moment. Then she turned back, smiling absently at women who waited; women who sat under dryers, one or two who'd swung their cubicle chairs to view her.
She didn't quite close the door and thus heard a high-pitched voice: "Oh, no, it can't be. She's certainly no- advertisement for the Hair-After."
And a second voice: "Really! I wonder if it's safe to patronize this salon. She obviously has no confidence in her operators."
Susanne sank into the salon chair and stared at the girl in the mirror immediately behind it. The same face she'd been viewing for years stared back. What was wrong with it?
Susanne smiled.
She had had her share of successful love "affairs-hers was not a face that turned men off. Still, she was enough of a businesswoman to know that changes had to be made.
How would Danny view those changes?
Susanne's face softened as she remembered Danny.
What a big, gorgeous man! Susanne had always felt lucky that Danny had singled her out on campus. There were plenty of beautiful women there, far more glamorous than Susanne. But Danny had sensed that extra something in her, and he had fastened on it immediately.
"We'll be married someday," he told her two hours after they'd met.
She'd had no doubt that he meant it. But they weren't married yet, and with each day that passed, the chances for it dimmed somewhat.
She felt Henri's hands in her hair and she closed her eyes and let her mind swim in memories.
Perhaps it was because she was now caught up in a world totally foreign to her way of being. Perhaps it was because there had been a lack of masculine flesh in her life recently. Or perhaps it was because Danny was still the most incredible lover she had ever experienced. For whatever reason, she found herself remembering that day by the lake, that beautiful sunny day of pleasure.
Danny had picked her up early that morning. "It'll take us a good three hours to get out there," he'd said. He was right. They drove until the road ran out, then hiked another two miles to the lakeside. They were alone in a vast garden of beauty.
Danny opened the picnic basket and pulled out a checkered blanket, spreading it out across the ground. Then he pulled out a large bottle of wine and two glasses.
They drank and ate in the sunlight until they were both heady with the brew of joy and wine. Then Danny leaned over and kissed her openly with his mouth, sticking his tongue softly to the back of her throat.
Suddenly Danny stood up. "I don't know about you," he said. "But this is a beautiful day and I'm not going to spend it with all these clothes on!"
She watched as he quickly peeled off his shirt and tossed it to the ground. Then he kicked off his shoes, skinned off his pants and shorts, and grinned down at her.
His cock hung like a fire-hose between his legs. She felt her mouth tightening with excitement. Danny knew the signs too-and his thick member began to stretch and thicken as she watched.
"Look, Ma," he said. "No hands."
Susanne gasped at the sight. His pecker was big in repose, but downright frightening as it grew. She watched as the skin buckled and smoothed out, as the rod seemed to grow in thickness to double its size as it lifted upward in erection.
"It's so big!" she cried.
"And it tastes great," he said, urging her on.
Susanne looked away, but there was no concealing the evidence of her excitement. She felt herself reddening, and she knew he was watching her and waiting. She turned suddenly and got onto her knees in front of him and deftly flipped the hardening slab of manhood into her mouth.
Danny chuckled. She felt his hands on her head as she sucked eagerly at the stem. He tasted fresh and masculine and she loved the way he continued to thicken and lengthen in her mouth.
Her oral cavity stretched as his throbbing meat got bigger, hugging it hotly and firmly. At first she could only fit it a small way down her throat, but as she worked on the pecker she was able to pull and suck the whole hard throbber into her face and swallow it down.
Then she drew off and bobbed about on him, sucking and wetting his rippled skin, pulling at his prick as if she wanted to milk him.
His staff bucked as she swirled her mouth around it, occasionally nicking it erotically with her teeth. She knew just what to do for a fine blow-job-the right pressure and touch, the mushy sucking, the combinations of fast, furious face-fucking with slow and erotic nuzzling.
He sprayed himself into the air when he came. Susanne pulled away just as she felt the Jism pulse upward and jerked out his pleasure with her soft and fast little fingers.
The gobs shot skyward, landing on his stomach and the dark patches of pubes framing his tall pole.
Then, as the final gushes slowly oozed out, Susanne put her face back over him and sucked out his sticky seeds. It was amazing the way she could control her mouth pressure, sending spurts of suction down the tiny tube that ran the length of his pecker to pull up the last sticky droplet of his love juices.
Then she started licking up all the semen from his stomach and pubic patch. It felt hot to her tongue, almost burning her taste buds with its saltiness. She gobbled it up and swirled it into her mouth.
When her face returned to the shaft he could feel his juices still sticking to her tongue and lips, all gooey and heated. It made her lips smack loudly as she kissed his tool and rubbed it hungrily with her face.
She was making love to his shaft, rubbing it against her big tits and kissing it fondly.
She wanted to make his tool absolutely tingle with excitement.
Then he pulled her to her feet and undressed her, enjoying the whole of her body with every touch.
Her bra fell away lightly to reveal two firm breasts-mighty round hillocks of pale flesh topped by red cherries of nipples.
Danny cupped them in his hands and hefted them up, feeling the weight and firmness of her melons. "These," he told her, "are two very beautiful boobs."
"Well, if you think so, you should kiss them."
He put his mouth around a nipple and smacked it. The tit fell hard out of his mouth and grew flushed and red with excitement. She moaned a tiny sound.
"Mmmmmmmmmm!!! That's nice..."
Danny then splayed his whole tongue along the line of her red nipple, wetting the whole button and coaxing it to get hard. He plucked at it and bit it, chomping down hard to squeeze the tight, hard flesh. She felt her body grow damp and weak.
He jumped to the other bud and ate it ever more feverishly, until his whole mouth was cupped over the mound while his tongue wagged the tingling nipple mercilessly.
His hands came around and squeezed the tits at their base, pushing the hard flesh together so he could suck it in even more easily. She quivered with shivering jabs of pleasure making her body pulse and wrench.
Then he lowered her to the blanket. She was lying on her back, and he quickly climbed atop her, their heads reversed, and twisted his face between her legs, his hot tongue ravishing her center.
Susanne twisted in the agony of pleasure as he tongued harder and harder, parting her soft lips with his fingers. She sighed, and then noticed that his erect and throbbing cock was dangling mere inches from her mouth.
She seized it with one hand and quickly fed it into her waiting jaws. She sucked even more eagerly now, loving the feel of his head between her thighs, enjoying the droplets of moisture that quickly gathered at his cock-head.
He happily lapped away at her muff, spreading open the lips that hid the moist softness and plunging his tongue down inside. He chewed at the hood above her clitoris, tickling the bud underneath as he stretched and pulled at the fleshy bonnet.
He cracked open her love nest with his face and let all of her sweet juices spill out upon him. As she tugged at the flesh of his prick, he neatly chewed at the ridge of her wet folded hips. He ravished her quim, making it a five-course meal.
Each course was different. The outer lips were the first-rubbery, and chewy, they had a tinge of muskiness from the juices that rolled out over them. Little bits of pubic hair mixed in as he drew in the long folds.
Course two was her slit, a marvelously tight and wet tube of spongy flesh that had a rich inner coating of tangy juices. The meat of her tunnel was impossible to chew-he could only lick at it until it heaved orgasmically.
Course three was her stew of juices, which seemed to permeate the whole folded, slitted center but brewed deep in the walls of her womb. The tart stickiness that he pulled from her walls stayed on his tongue with a musky aftertaste, while the gushing thin fluids rolled about his tongue, stinging and pricking at his taste buds.
Course four was of course her puckered clit, but he saved that for last and went onto the fifth course - Susanne's tight and puckered little rear. The tight pink spot curled and nipped at his tongue, refusing him entry. But Danny darted away at it, tickling her bottom.
Then he settled in on her clit to give her a mouthful of love.
"OOOOOOOOOOO!" she howled as his tongue scooped the bulging bud from under its hood. "Eat me there-baby, and eat me good!"
He sucked the tiny thing into his mouth and rolled it with his teeth. She rolled about the blanket in moaning response.
He chewed at it, sucked the sensitive cap, and she flailed about, unable to control the orgasmic tidal waves that splashed inside her.
Then he came up and entered her with a sharp thrust.
"UUUGGGGHHHHH!!!" she yelled. "SHOVE IT IN!!!"
He hunched up and snapped it to her again, breaking past the folds and enlarging her inner sanctum to erotic limits. He stretched and twisted her quim as his cock dove downward.
In he thrust, mushing and mashing her insides, which felt as if they were swirling apart as he feathered his taut-fleshed member back out from the portal.
With the next series of slammers his pecker was jabbing at the bottom of her womb, assaulting it like a boxer in a championship round. Her insides felt bruised with excitement.
"OH YEAH BABY!!! SLAM THAT SLAB DEEP INSIDE ME!!!"
The words made him speed up and thrust furiously. Suddenly he popped into overdrive and each thrust milked a hot explosion to cover and spray the walls of her womb.
Danny just kept thrusting away, leaving his scalding deposits as her quim rolled around and contorted on his cock. His love milk filled her up and made her bottom burn.
Then he pulled her around, guiding his cock out gently for a second and positioning her doggy-style. Susanne couldn't believe it. Here she had just drained him and he was ready for more. She threw her ass back and offered her quivering, pulsing, juice-stained slit to him.
Of course Danny accepted it eagerly, this time pushing up into her from an angle that gave his dangle the perfect aim to reach the very end of her sheath. It slammed at her back walls, crumpling the wet flesh around it.
Danny's hand came around and fingered her clit, rubbing the little bud fast with the tip of his finger until she lay there, impaled and helpless, letting out long anguished sobs.
When he finally came again he pulled out and sprayed the crack of her ass. Then using his own lubrication he took her there too. By the time they were done that day her whole body ached and dripped with happiness and satisfaction.
Danny was a stud who could give her all the service she needed. Oh, how fondly she recalled him!