Chapter 1
The Jewel Carpet Company was located in Warwick Long Island. It was one of a hundred small carpet companies scattered throughout the East that made quite a profit by advertising three full rooms of carpeting for $200.00, claiming the carpeting was top quality nylon, and the cost included installation and padding. True to their advertised word, the company did offer three rooms of carpeting, up to 450 square feet, for the price mentioned. It was indeed nylon carpeting, and it wore like iron. But what the ad failed to mention was that the carpeting was commercial carpeting, the stuff one found in banks, or in hallways of office buildings. Not that it wasn't pretty, but it had very short, low pile, and it was never a solid color, but a conglomeration of two or three colors, all blending nicely, but a blend nevertheless. According to the ad, all 450 square feet had to be the same color. What the ad neglected to mention was that the padding was a foam rubber already attached to the back of the carpeting.
The last thing the ad neglected to mention was that the installation was not the tackless installation that purchasers expected. Rather it was a glue-down, directly to the floor, and once the carpeting was down, the installation was not guaranteed. No one was able to guarantee the carpeting would remain flat. Air bubbles occasionally formed in the glue, leaving bumps in the carpeting.
However almost no one took the glue-down carpeting, anyway. Even if they took the commercial carpeting, the salesmen and women working for the company convinced the customer their best bet was to take the jute backing, which would make the carpeting last ten to fifteen years longer. Too, with the jute backing, one was able to have tackless installation. Tackless meant thin strips of wood would be nailed to the floor running the length of all the walls, and then the carpeting would be solidly forced onto little brads sticking up from the strips of wood. Then it would be stretched across the floor to fit perfectly. Naturally, the jute backing required that additional padding be put on the floor. Just as naturally, the additional padding cost additional dollars, and the tackless installation also cost additional. As a result, what started out as two hundred dollars worth of carpeting often ended up costing six hundred dollars . . . if the commercial carpeting was used. But if the people didn't want the commercial carpeting, opting for the more luxurious samples the sales people also brought with them, well, the carpeting would end up costing between a thousand and two thousand dollars.
However, let it be noted that the Jewel Carpet Company at no time tried cheating their customers. Even the high-class carpeting offered was sold at prices competitive with remnant warehouses. So shoppers had the convenience of shopping at home, and actually paying less for quality carpeting than they would pay by going out to the largest carpet companies throughout the country. This was because the Jewel Carpet Company had less warehouses than the larger companies, and as a result, much less overhead. More often than not, when carpeting was sold, they went directly to the carpet manufacturer and ordered the rolls cut on the spot.
Reva Brent worked for the Jewel Carpet Company. She had been working for Jewel for six years, ever since she was twenty-four. That was when she had divorced her husband and, having no funds, had answered an ad in the newspaper for an outside saleslady. Reva was more practiced in selling than anyone else and was the company's best sales person. But Reva had a conscience, and so always gave customers the lowest available price.
John Germain, the owner of Jewel, was more than content with Reva's work because of the volume of her sales. But then, it was difficult to resist such a lovely lady. She wasn't too tall, about five-feet three inches in height, with long, black hair which, while not quite wavy, wasn't really straight. It fell down past her shoulders, creating the effect that Reva was about ten years younger than she really was. She had shining brown eyes, wide and innocent-looking, and she had such an innocent smile under her short, straight nose. She was able to charm anyone, male or female. Well, almost anyone. There were people who were immune to her charms because they were hoping to con her into giving them the expensive broadloom for the price of the commercial carpeting. However Reva refused to do so, and as a result, one out of the ten people she saw didn't buy.
She had no trouble with women. It was the men who were more dollar conscious. Too, a lot of the men tried coming on to her. Reva wasn't interested. Sex held very little interest for her. Her former husband had made sex an ordeal for her. Not that it pained her or bothered her. But the man had been built very thin where it counted, and as a result, in spite of her inner tightness, he was unable to touch all her vaginal walls, thereby robbing her of much of the thrill. What this meant was lots of frustration, and so Reva decided to dispense with sex altogether. In the six years she had worked for Jewel, she'd abstained altogether.
John Germain, her employer, was sixty years old. He had married late in life, and his one son had come even later, so that when Len, his son, had reached twenty-two and had been graduated from college, John decided to take his wife and move to Florida and leave the business in Len's charge. Len was a tall, rangy youth with brown hair, a boyish face, and a very slender, athletic body. He had an insatiable sexual appetite, and though he was engaged to marry Lil Warner, and Lil was more than receptive to him, his appetites for women remained unsated. Lil even came in and helped him run the business. She was pretty enough, well-suited to Len in that she was slender, though she had the curves where it counted. But she didn't have Reva's voluptuousness.
For the first few months after Len took over, things continued unchanged. Reva continued making sales at a fantastic rate. Her car was old but serviceable, and it carried her to the different homes of people who wanted to buy carpeting. However, Len, un-like his father, was never content. No matter how well someone was doing, he felt that someone ought to be doing better. If Reva was closing ninety-five percent of her sales, then she should be closing ninety-seven percent.