Chapter 1
ESCAPE FORM THE OFFICE....
Carl Jordan turned his back on the three people in his office and looked out the window. Behind him, he heard the same cliches that turned up in every public relations or advertising bull session he had ever sat in on.
Turning off his mind, he turned on his eyes instead and watched through the window of the neighboring office building as the cute blonde made a lengthy adjustment to her garter belt.
It wasn't so much that Carl was a Peeping Tom, it was more a case of appreciating beautiful things. Carl's idea of beauty included a well shaped feminine leg, an excellent painting, or autumn leaves framing a placid lake.
At that particular moment though, there were no paintings or placid lakes to be seen so he was content to admire the taut nylon sheathing her thigh and the silky looking strip of flesh above.
Carl knew the adjustment of the garter was just a part of the game she played, but that didn't spoil a thing. He estimated she did it three or four times a day and was convinced that unless someone had sold her a very inferior garter belt, the lady liked to show her thighs.
He had never met her and didn't want to. As long as the game was impersonal, it was fun. She was a well shaped leg and thigh without a name.
The fact that she was a woman didn't scare Carl as he very much approved of women. Still, she appeared to be about twenty as opposed to his ancient thirty-two and from her expression, he had already formed the opinion that all her talent lay just a few inches higher than he was able to see when she hiked her skirt up.
There was no chance he knew, that he could find a woman there to meet his standing rule of never making love to a woman you wouldn't want to spend an hour chatting with. He found enough who qualified to keep his life interesting.
Turning back to the group, he began listening again and decided they had advanced through cliches six, seven and eight which meant there were about four to go. He didn't want to tell them to get the hell out, but he wasn't sure he could tolerate the game much longer either.
"You worry me, Pete," Carl returned to the conversation he had deserted a few minutes earlier.
"What do you mean worry you?" The man jerked his head around to look suspiciously at Carl.
"I mean if I keep hearing you spouting that poop about the contribution of Advertising and Public Releations to the well being of the nation, I'm going to have to think you believe it. That would really worry me."
"Sure," Pete snapped back almost angrily as the others sat back content to listen to their duel for a while, "good old smart ass Carl Jordan. He considers himself so much more honest than the rest of us, but he still picks up his pay every two weeks. Isn't that right?"
"Right. I'm right there with my hand out and I spend every nickel of it without blushing."
"Then how do you relate that to this being such a dirty, dishonest business. If you don't believe it, why do you stay?"
"You keep missing the point, Pete. I know we perform a certain more or less useful purpose and get well paid to do it. I don't think that becomes a sick thing until we fall into the trap of believing all that shit we tell our clients and that gullible world out there. That's the point you don't seem to get."
"Come on Carl, you really are being pretty damn smug about it. If that's the way you really feel," Bob Smelton broke in, "you should get out."
"So why tell me, Bob," Cad shot back. "You run the P.R. department. If you don't like my philosophy, all you have to do is fire me."
"Sure I can fire you and have you walk across the street with a half dozen of our top accounts. No thanks. I'd rather put up with your smug sermons."
"There's a reason I could do that, Bob. It's not that I'm smug, I'm just a hell of a good P.R. man. I know that in the order of things, P.R. stands somewhere between prostitution and the second mortgage business. That puts it one step above Wall Street and two below prostitution. If I ever lose that perspective, I'll stop being a good P. R. man."
Looking at his watch, Bob Smelton turned and walked out of Carl's office. It happened that way every time. He felt Carl was laughing at him. He wanted to get rid of the man, but doing that would mean losing some good accounts. When that happens in the agency game, Bob knew, the top man goes.
He had scratched and clawed too hard to hit the top at thirty-five only to throw it all away. If he got the axe at Marks and Mountain, he would be leaving one of the biggest and starting to slide down the scale. Bob had seen it happen too often to others, and had moved up over their bodies as they fell. He didn't want to take the down escalator.
When Bob walked out of the office, Pete was about five steps behind him. That left Carl alone with Elaine Drew.
He didn't mind that. Elaine was a good P.R. woman whose philosophy was close to his. They had been friends since she joined the agency more than a year ago and, in spite of the fact that she met all his requirements as a bed mate, he had never tried to put the make on her for fear of spoiling a beautiful friendship.
"You really shouldn't spank the boss like that, Carl." Elaine smiled as she spoke.
"It's my only vice, woman. I can't resist sticking needles into thick skin until I finally strike a nerve. Don't worry though, they'll console each other."
"You have to know that. Right now, they're probably reading the Bible. Cunliffe and Centre will show them the path of virtue and right"
"Tell me, Elaine," Carl looked serious, "do you ever think they really achieve a climax reading the P.R. man's bible?"
"They may when they grow up," Elaine answered as they joined in a laugh.
"You just won yourself a cup of coffee, woman. Let me take you away from all this."
Elaine uncrosesd a pair of much better than average legs and they walked toward the elevator. There was a coffee shop in the basement and they would flush away the dust of the bull session with a half hour of chatting over a couple of coffees. It had become their favorite form of escape from a world neither quite believed in.
"How much longer are you going to stick it out, Carl?" she asked as he handed her the sugar a-cross the small table.
"Why me?" he retorted. "You believe in it a-bout as much as I do. When do you make your break?"
"You're ducking the question, mister. I know you're a writer. You're wasting your mind in this rat race. When are you going to walk out and write the great American novel?"
"Great or not, I'll start writing it in a year or so, I guess. First, I'm going to play squirrel and stack away a comfortable supply of nuts. When my tree is full enough, I'll thumb my nose at them and go home and write."
"Who am I to tell you, you're playing the dangerous security game?"
"That I'll like gathering nuts so well I'll never want to stop? I really don't think so. I'll know when I've got enough. I just don't go for that bit about great writers working in cold rooms with one meal a day. I'm a sucker for the good things in life. Now what's your excuse today?"
"The same as it was yesterday," she paused to take a sip of her coffee. "This is a nice place to hide out from marriagable men for a while until I decide whether I want to be a career woman for a few more years or a wife and mother and all that."
"Thanks a lot, lady," Carl pretended a frown.
"Turn it off, Jordan. You know damn well I didn't mean you. With that exception though, I still insist the agency world is the perfect place for a woman not to find a man. There may be a lot of males in it, but so damn few men you wouldn't believe it. Come to think of it, I guess you would believe it."
"This would come as a shattering blow to all the Bob Smeltons, angel woman, but you're right. What I fear is that they may drive you to lesbianism and you won't talk to me anymore."
"Have no fear, Mister Jordan. I turned down that chance way back in college. I don't propose to have at it now as an old lady of twenty-six."
They chatted in the same tone for another few minutes until Elaine looked at her watch and realized that there would be a client waiting in her office. Mentally kicking herself for not having checked her appointment book before leaving, she pushed her chair back.
"Finish your coffee, Carl. I'm a big girl now, I can find my way back."
"Not a chance," he protested as he pushed his chair back and stood. "In this day of automation, the automatic elevator may rape you on the way up."
"And I'd give birth to a whole flock of little IBM computors. I'll have to think about that."
He walked to the door of her office with her, watched the client push to his feet to greet her and took off. He knew she would find a way to placate the man who had been waiting for all of five or ten minutes.
Back in his office, Carl checked his own schedule carefully, found the rest of the day clear and decided his working ended at three-ten that day and golf would commence at about four. Leaving word with his secretary that he would be out of touch for the rest of the day, he stuck one foot into the closing doors of an elevator, pried them open and left.
It was just five after four when he walked to the first tee. He had turned down two invitations to join groups because it was one of those days when he just wanted to knock a golf ball around the course and be by himself with his thoughts.
They weren't particularly pleasant or unpleasant, it was just that they were beginning to crowd his mind and wanted to get out for air. They would have to wait a bit though.
Carl watched a low, hard drive down the fairway and watched it soar well out but with a bit of drift to the right. He held his breath until the ball bounced to a stop about ten feet short of the edge of the fairway. He guessed it had travelled about two-twenty and would leave him a good seven iron shot to the green.
Pushing the driver back into the bag, he began walking down the course pulling the cart behind him. He didn't have to invite his thoughts out to play; they knew the rules of the game. Once the ball had been hit, they were free to jump out and accompany him as he walked.
As he walked on the slightly spongy turf, they told him some things, asked him probing questions, accepted some of his answers and sent others back for reconsideration.
At thirty-two, Carl was six months out of a marriage that had ranged from bad to medicore.
The law of the state had excused him from the marriage when he came home one afternoon to find his wife teaching her version of the facts of life to a sixteen year old boy who lived in an apartment down the hall.
It was one of the rare times he saw her naked since she was usually fussy about that. He recalled having broken into a laugh when he saw the expression on her face framed between her upraised legs.
He hadn't been able to see the boy's reaction right away since his face was buried between her thighs and he was evidently so occupied with the erotic free lunch that he hadn't heard Carl come in.
Amazed at not being angry, Carl had merely slapped the boy's upturned rump and told him to get dressed and go out and play something more appropriate like baseball.
Turning his attention from the pale faced boy who ran out of the bedroom with his clothes under his arm, Carl told her quite simply that he was going to divorce her and thanked her for giving him the evidence.
It wasn't so much the act of adultery that bothered him. It was just that it had been a lousy marriage to a woman who loved herself so much that she had none left over for a husband and didn't require any from him. Once in a while, when she wanted something material, she would consent to lifting her nightie after the light had been turned out, but that was about the extent of their six years of sex life.
He had married her, he recalled, because she was beautiful, seemed intelligent, and he thought he was in love with her. Not long after that, he accepted the philosophy that no man can think effectively with an erection, but it was too late.
Carl wondered how long the marriage would have continued if he hadn't caught her in bed with the kid. Anyway, he decided, it had been a welcome relief.
Her lawyer tried to hold out for a juicy settlement, but Carl laughed at him as he had laughed at his wife. As a token of appreciation, he picked up her costs as well as his own, but that was all it cost him.
Looking down over the ball, Carl made a few tentative swipes with the seven iron, then hit it cleanly and took just a bit of turf with it as the ball took off like a contented dove.
It hit the green just where he wanted it, but forgot about the backspin he had ordered and ran to the back of the green. He knew it was going to require a first class approach putt to get the par, but it didn't really bother him. The world, Carl knew, wouldn't end if he took a bogey on every hole.
As he walked toward the green, Carl thought of how the lure of money had taken him from newspaperman to P.R. man and how he had priced himself out of going back now.
A return to being a reporter would cost him a-bout five thousand a year and put off even farther the dream of leaving the working world to write good novels.
He took time to run a good putt to within eighteen inches of the pin before he recalled Elaine's warning about staying too long in the money race. He was still thinking about it as he tapped the easy putt a little too lightly and saw it hang up on the rim for a bogey five.
Carl knew he had broken the cardinal rule by thinking while making a shot. He listened as the little thought men danced around on his shoulders and laughed at him.
The next hole was a short par three. He dropped a five iron shot four feet from the pin, tapped his putt in for a birdie to square his round and the little people stopped needling him.
Looking back toward the club house, Carl saw no sign of the others who had threatened to play and guessed they would play out their round in the locker room as usual. It didn't make sense to him that with all the good bars there were in the city they would choose to do their drinking in a steamy locker room against a backdrop of steam, sweaty socks and nude middle aged men paddling back and forth in flapping shower slippers.
As he teed up on the third, a long, dog-leg par five, Carl realized that if his tastes were as simple as theirs, he would be a lot closer to throwing the job back into the lake and striking out with his typewriter under his arm to blaze a trail through the path of literature.
After his round of golf though, he would shower and go home to change. From there, there was the beautiful nurse he met at a party a week ago. If , things went according to plan, they would share an expensive dinner, dance for a while, talk a lot, then go back to his apartment.
There, unless he missed his guess, she could minister to him in a manner not approved by any reputable hospital and, if he could muster the energy, he would deliver her to the hospital by eight hi the morning.
The prospect seemed attractive enough on the surface. He had brushed against her enough during the party to know that she had a nice firm body, he had seen excellent legs, his instinct told him she knew how to handle it all, and yet, there was something missing.
Even as he wondered, Carl knew the answer. One night stands could be a lot of fun, but they fell somewhere short of constituting the full life.
To a young man in his twenties, that kind of life was perfect for finding out what it's all about, he reasoned. A nice way of developing and sharpening the technique. There must come a time though when life means more than knocking off another casual piece of tail.
Becoming less than enchanted with the direction his thoughts were taking, Carl worked at turning them off and concentrating on his game. The result of that was a sliced drive that buried itself into rough that suddenly took on the appearance of an impenetrable jungle.
The rough may not have been quite that bad, but it was bad enough to score him a double bogey on the hole in spite of a twelve foot putt that would have looked good in any tournament.
Get with it, he scolded himself. This poor, hard working nurse is probably dying to get out of all sorts of terribly confining things like bra and panties and here you are making like a hoary old philosopher.
Having won that argument, he stuffed the philosophical arguments into the golf bag and birdied the next two holes. After nine holes, he was one over par and quite content with his game.
Checking his watch, Carl considered playing the back nine but rejected the thought in favor of a relaxed cold beer in the clubhouse. That way, it also meant that he would be able to take his time about getting home and changing with perhaps another drink thrown in for good measure. That was more than enough to swing the decision.
Inside the clubhouse, Carl reasoned that he couldn't go on being antisocial indefinitely, so he carried his beer to a table where five of the well intentioned golfers had detoured into a poker game.
Ignoring the glass the steward put down for him, Carl sipped the chilled beer from the bottle and watched the course of the game.
At least, he told himself, I got more exercise today than they did. Remembering that there was even more enjoyable exercise ahead, he hurried through the rest of his beer and went for his shower.