Chapter 12
So on Monday morning bright and early I got into my Thunderbird and drove out to the vineyard and to the series of buildings on the east side where Dad had spent just about every waking moment of his long and arduous life. There was the office building, the processing plant, the bottling building, and there were also platforms for the stocking of baskets of grapes as they were picked. Harvest time would be sometime around the middle of September, and that was always a festival day for the workers. That was the time that the pretty girls got into the wooden casks filled with green and purple grapes, hoisted their skirts high and started trampling with their bare feet, showing their pussies and their inner thighs and tummies to all the glittering-eyed braceros and paisanos. Yours truly would be in the front row, that was for sure. But at the moment, I wasn't thinking so much of pussy as I was of Tulio Verduga, that surly wop who had given poor little Jane Wilson such a hard time at four in the morning just after I had finished giving Madge Fryburg a harder time but in a different kind of way and certainly more pleasurable for her.
There was a crew of about ten in the main office, girls and fellows who handle orders, correspondence, and the switchboard, just about what you'd find in any packing plant or small business. Just about all of them were Italians, too. Dad believed that blood was thicker than water when it came to making wine, so he gave his own people a first crack at the job. Considering how tough it was for a different ethnic group to find a foothold in Fresno, that was a good gesture. But the only trouble was that apparently during the past few years, what with Dad's illness, he hadn't been able to screen his help thoroughly, and so when old Jacopo had kicked the bucket, he had had to settle for a surly bastard like Tulio.
There was a lanky black-haired girl, with a very long, almost horsey face at the switchboard just as I pushed open the swinging doors and walked into the room and she gave me a cold stare and a snippy "Yes?"
"I'm Carl Venturi," I told her. "My father died Saturday, and I'm taking over."
She didn't recognize me. She was new. Besides, even when I had been back in Fresno years before, I had already told Dad that I really didn't give a damn about wine making or the business, and that's one of the reasons why we'd had our quarrel. The other main reason had been Sally Jeffries. So this lanky brunette who was probably about nineteen, feeling very important for herself, tossed her head and sniffed, "You say you're Carl Venturi, and you say that Mr. Venturi is dead, but we haven't heard anything about that and I don't know who you are."
Once again I saw red. And it wasn't the color of the good vino which came from the Venturi vines.
"What's your name, baby?" I demanded.
"It's none of your business," she tossed her head again. She had long black hair which needed combing and most of all a good shampooing. The other people in the office had started to look up, attracted by the trend of our conversation and they were gawking at me. There were about four girls and five fellows, and to my right I could see a low pair of swinging doors which led to Dad's private office. The office door was closed, there was opaque glass all around and on the door it said "Marcantonio Venturi, Owner." And just below that it said, "Venturi Vineyards and Fine Wines." It was all very well to advertise right in your own shop, but what we wanted was distribution that would go beyond Fresno, taking its rightful place on the shelves with the better known brands like Italian Swiss Colony and Gallo and Beringer.
"Well, Miss," I said, "if you won't tell me your name, then there won't be any paycheck this Friday. I sign the checks from now on. All you have to do is call Charlie Karogian, Dad's lawyer, and you will find out who I am soon enough."
"Perhaps you had better see Mr. Verduga," the snippy little brunette bitch at the switchboard tossed at me and then turned back to her switchboard with another audible sniff.
"That's a good idea. Why don't you send for him right now? Tell him Carl Venturi is here," I told her.
"Just one moment, please," her voice expressed considerable annoyance. "I've other calls to attend to. This is a place of business, you know."
I let her sit while I stared at her. I was memorizing her features and also her figure. She didn't know it, but she was going to get a good sound spanking, too. The spanking that Madge Fryburg got, this little snip ought to have had, but on the bare so she would really feel it. Nobody else in the office made a move to come to the desk towards me, so I just bided my time and smoked my cigarette. Finally the brunette turned to me and said, "Mr. Verduga will be out here in a few minutes. I hope that it's important. He is very busy getting ready for the harvest."
"I would think so," I said sarcastically. Then I pushed open the swinging doors and walked on in towards Dad's office.
"Now just a minute, you can't do that! The very idea!" my little switchboard friend cried out as she got up and left her board and came running to me. She took hold of me by the elbow, and I turned around to get a good look at her. She was about five feet five and a half, rather lanky, with long slim legs, but I noticed that she had saucy upstanding bottomcheeks which her tight brown rayon skirt caressed very lovingly. I didn't feel like caressing them lovingly, I can tell you that. My hand itched. She also had big ripe melon-like titties, which seemed to be about a size 38.
"You better take your hand off me, Miss," I said pleasantly, "or I'll give you a hand where you ought to have had it when you were small."
"You just watch your tongue, Mister," she snapped at me, "because I'm just about ready to call the police. You come in here and give me a story about your being the son of Mr. Venturi and that he is dead, and then you act like a boor!"
"Maybe that's because I was treated like one," I snapped back.
"Mister, whoever you are, you'll have to wait out there until Mr. Verduga or someone else in authority can talk to you," the brunette insisted. She gave my elbow a tug. That did it.
I grabbed hold of her right wrist, and I bent it just a little. She squealed. I put my other hand on the scruff of her neck, got behind her and pushed her forward to a leather-padded chair right outside my Dad's old office. I sat down and flung the little bitch over my lap. She was screaming now for help and asking me what the hell I thought I was doing. But still no one in the office made a move. There was some young punk with sandy-colored hair falling down in a curly mass on one side of his forehead, with pimples and a weak chin, who shouted out, "Don't you dare-Jane, call the police!" And a girl near him, a plump girl with glasses on, who could have been pretty if someone had told her not to use the wrong kind of makeup and to wear such a painfully tight dress and also to stop eating starches, made a scramble for a phone and in her excitement knocked it over and squealed aloud herself. But the others stood there goggle-eyed as I dealt out a good lesson to my snippy little switchboard operator. She was mine now, because I had inherited her along with the rest of the office staff. Plus Tulio Verduga.
She had on a shiny brown skirt that reached down to just about the hollows of her knees, and her legs were bare. She wore black pumps and she had already kicked them off in her frantic efforts to throw herself off my lap. I clamped my right leg over her ankles, I pulled up her dress and a pink slip underneath it, and the brunette uttered a scream that could probably been heard all over Tulare County. She wasn't wearing any panties at all. I must confess that I was somewhat dumbfounded to discover how she came to work. Even granted that the weather was hot, I didn't think that girls wore so little in offices any more. Unless, of course, the boss was screwing them and that made things more convenient and faster.
She had pale pink skin like a baby's. And she had an interesting broadly oval pair of buttocks which tightened as she felt the air on them. And then she felt something else. My right hand rose and fell violently, in five swift and consecutive arcs without a pause. She got three spanks on the top of the right buttock and two at the base of the left, and I was just warming up when all of a sudden Tulio Verduga walked in and cried out, "Madre mia, que pasa?" He spoke Spanish as well as Italian. Maybe that was one of the reasons Dad distrusted him. I looked up from what I was doing, and I had pinned the brunette's wrists behind her back and my right palm was lying just across the very tight and narrow groove between her buttocks and I answered: "What's happening is that I am not accustomed to being treated like a criminal in my own business," I said coldly. "What is this girl's name?"
"Why, padrone, it's Maxine Lavolta. She's been at our switchboard for two years."
"And this is her last day," I said. "I'm going to pay her off and I'll give her a week's pay in lieu of notice. And there is no charge for the rest of what I am going to give her."
With that, and while the rest of the office crew was gaping at my recognition by the foreman I raised my hand and proceeded to give Maxine Lavolta the best spanking she had ever had in all of her tender nineteen years. She wriggled and squealed and tried to fling herself off my lap, but after about twenty hard stingers, she was crying like a baby and begging for mercy. Those resilient satiny ovals of hers were flaming by the time I let her up, pulled down her skirt and slip for her, and told her, "You can either wait here for your check or I will mail it to you, Miss Lavolta, and the next job you get I suggest you put panties on." Then I gave Tulio a sharp look and then I said, "Come into the office, I want to talk to you."