Chapter 4
A LADY OF BUSINESS....
"Don't be such a prude, Elaine," Bob Smelton blew out a cloud of smoke and tried to look like a swinger. "It'll be just a good party, a bunch of drinks, you do what you like, go home alone if you like."
"When are you going to learn, Bob?" Elaine Drew gave him a look that put him right into the category of the little boy caught playing doctor and nurse in the barn behind the house.
"Skip the lecture, Elaine. Ifs just a party and I'm inviting you, that's all."
"Thanks, but no thanks. When you give me a legitimate assignment, I handle it to the best of my ability. When it comes to my social life, Marks and Mountain has no say in it."
Elaine saw that she had gotten through to him in a way he didn't like. She was amused. He tried to put the make on her two days after she joined the agency. From time to time, he still tried either that or to line her up with some client who wanted fresh tail without paying for it.
"What's with the girdle campaign?" Bob suddenly changed course and became all business. "Kitely isn't happy about the publicity they've been getting in the trades."
Elaine smiled. She had been waiting for it. Each time she rebuffed his personal advances, she knew he would respond with a criticism of her work. Since it was almost always unjustified, she could always come up with an answer without working up a sweat.
"That's funny," she smiled sweetly, "I talked to him yesterday and he seemed delighted. As a matter-of-fact, he made a point of telling me so."
What Elaine didn't add was that he had dropped all the right hints about her working too hard and how a nice weekend in Florida or the Bahamas would put color back into her cheeks. She had rebuffed him too.
"That isn't the way he came through when I talked to him," Bob pouted. "He didn't feel he was getting enough ink."
"I'll show you the scrapbook, Bob. You can decide for yourself whether or not he's getting ink. Is that all?"
"Mmm? Yeah ... yeah ... I got a million things to do."
Elaine smiled as she walked out of the office. The biggest of the million things he had to do, she guessed, was find a girl for the party.
It was a joke between her and Carl that Bob's biggest contribution to the department was looking after clients with a hard-on. Although they kidded about whether he ever offered them personal service on that score, there were times when she wondered seriously whether perhaps he did go that way.
Elaine was so wrapped up in her thoughts that she didn't see Carl Jordan standing in the doorway of his office until he spoke. She jumped.
"Did he want it for himself or a client this time?" he asked with the grin that caused a lot of the gals around the office to rub their knees together to keep them from falling too far open.
"Damn you, Carl, that insight of yours is too much. A girl wouldn't dare wear frayed lingerie around this place for fear you'd see right through and spot it."
In spite of the scolding, she walked into his office and perched on the corner of his desk.
"There's nothing mystical about it at all," he explained. "It's just the expression your wear when he's tried to put the make on you. It's as if you just smelled something bad."
"That's because under the circumstances, I always do. It's the odor of corrupt human flesh. It stinks."
They chated for a while then. She didn't offer him any details of the session with Bob Smelton and he didn't ask for them. It was an unwritten a-greement between them that they could use each other for blowing off steam without questions being asked.
Punching his phone into his secretary's line, Carl took her arm and led her toward the elevator. It was about a half-hour before the usual exodus to the restaurant and their favorite time for a chat over coffee.
"You look like a dropout from the intensive care unit at Bellvue this morning," Elaine commented as the elevator door closed behind them.
"Yeah, I guess I stayed out on the golf course too long yesterday."
As they laughed, Elaine resisted the urge to make a crack about that being a dangerous place to do it.
The restaurant was nicely uncrowded and they found a table in the far corner where they could hide away from any of the agency types who might drop in early and want to talk advertising jargon instead of English.
Carl announced he was going to have a double bourbon instead of the usual coffee. It struck Elaine as a good idea. She compromised by asking for a Bloody Mary.
While Carl was giving the order to the waitress who bent over him as if she'd like to empty her bra onto him, Elaine found herself wondering why Carl never tried to take her to bed.
It wasn't really jealousy in the accepted sense, she assured herself, but they got along so well that it would seem like the most natural thing in the world.
She had had the same thought before and guessed that he would be as proficient in bed as he was in a chat across a restaurant table or functioning as a really good Public Relations man.
As always happened, she consoled herself by thinking that he valued their friendship too much to risk breaking it with a pass, whether it worked or not.
The drinks came quickly, and for a while they sipped in relative silence. There was nothing strained or strange about that; they often did it. When one of them had something to be said, it would be said. Both enjoyed shared silence from time to time.
Elaine wasn't lusting after his body, but her sexual appetites were normal enough and if he indicated wanting her, she knew that she'd break her basic rule. That was the rule that told her to accept sexual diversion from time to time, but never with a man she was likely to meet in business.
Her reasoning for that was simple enough. Men tend to talk about their conquests and not always without exaggeration. In time, a woman who accepted a casual roll in the hay from time to time could be branded as a tramp.
"I'm sorry the Bloody Mary isn't taking the frown away, Elaine. You're not letting him get under your skin, are you?"
That snapped her out of her reveries. "No, it isn't that at all. Sorry if I'm bad company this morning.
"Don't be silly. You couldn't be bad company if you read a book on the subject."
From there, they returned to casual conversation which included a spot of character assassination of some of the people with whom they worked. There was nothing vicious about it, it was just a game they played by way of mental doodling.
During lulls, Carl wondered why he didn't try to make love to the beautiful woman across the table. He sensed she would accept it and be very good, yet there was always that last minute rejection of the idea.
Somehow, the session this morning hadn't been as good as usual for either of them. When the agency people began to drift noisily into the place, they left by mutual consent.