Chapter 5
NEW PROBLEMS, AN AGE-OLD SOLUTION....
"Spare me the crap, Bob," Darcy Sinclair was obviously enjoying the role of vice president and played it to the hilt, "the P.R. dapartment is dragging if s ass. Who do I blame if not you?"
"For chrissake, Darcy, your account people keep using us as a throwaway service to keep their clients happy. How in hell are we supposed to run our department efficiently?"
"It still comes out crap, Bob. Even if we cross-billed to cover agency services you still wouldn't do much better than break even. Where's the new business?"
Bob turned on his best display of verbal footwork and gave a quick rundown of all the irons he had in the fire under the heading of new business.
To Darcy, it was last year's hit parade and he said so.
"But these things take time?" Bob was sweating now, literally, and that only made it worse.
Darcy saw it and liked it. It meant that his needle was getting all the way in. He reached into his arsenal for more. Brushing a hand over his thick, wavy hair, he smiled the confident smile of the man with the whip hand as he made Bob Smelton squirm in his chair as he tried to justify the fact that the balance sheet for his department didn't read the way it should.
Darcy was still smiling and jabbing blunt needles into the squirming P.R. boss when the buzzer came to life on his desk.
He listened without talking for a few seconds, then jabbed the final needle by looking up and dismissing Bob with a nod.
Outside, as he passed the secretary's desk he took the bright smile she offered him, but it didn't make him feel any better. He was sure she was really laughing at him. Pretending to be preoccupied, he hurried past her.
Bob jabbed the elevator button as if he wanted to fracture it. Something was going wrong and he tried to ward off the threatening panic.
His rise had been little short of meteoric. Using his father in law as a lever, he had pried a lot of good P.R. accounts into the agency. More than that, his work had brought some fat accounts into the advertising side of the business.
He had been the fair haired boy and when Ken Galloway got the axe as head of P.R. two years ago, he sensed that he was going to take over.
There had been a bad time when Dick Haggerty was given the top spot on a temporary basis, but before long Dick was given a special assignment and Bob got the job.
A lot of people who hadn't taken him seriously before began to do so. He liked remembering those days. Hope Bell was first to get into line.
A cool, always poised English secretary in her mid-thirties, she had worked her way up to being Dick's right hand. She pushed a lot of people, including him, around with the sure knowledge that Dick would protect her all the way.
He saw the change in her the day he was appointed. In a quick about face, she pledged her loyalty to him and assured him she would do everything to assist him in his new role.
"Pompous bitch", he snarled under his breath. For the first few days, he let her stew as to whether he would keep her on or send her back to the secretarial pool. It was the perfect approach and he knew it.
Since her graduation from secretarial status, she had been an absolute dragon toward the other secretaries who hated her with a passion that knew no bounds. The thought of being sent back to their status was more than she could bear. They'd tear her to pieces the first day and both she and he knew it.
He could see her sweating and he loved every wet drop of it. When he figured she was about ready to crack up, he called her into his office.
After a brief discussion about the difficulties of a loyal secretary switching her loyalty from one man to another, he placed one hand on the front of her blouse and squeezed a little.
Bob knew that with a more subtle approach, he could get her panties off, but that wasn't what he wanted. He had to pay her back for all the sarcasm of the past. It called for destroying her and making her grovel in the dirt.
"Okay, Hope," he went on then, "I've been doing a lot of thinking and if you're sure you have all the qualifications, I'll announce your appointment later today."
He saw that she wanted to scream and he smiled a quiet smile of victory as he slid his hand up the back of her dress. He didn't stop when he reached the top of the full nylon. Instead, he moved it all the way until he found the fully packed girdle.
"Bend over the desk," he commanded.
She hesitated and for a moment, he thought he had pushed too far too fast, but then she was bending with her hands gripping the desk.
Moving behind her, he quickly flipped her dress and slip high over her back. He was pleased to see she was wearing the girdle. Panties would have been too easy, this way, she would suffer even more as he tugged the girdle down to bare her plump backside.
It was the biggest behind he had ever seen and he liked the feel of it as he let his hands roam over the wide, smooth surfaces for a long time before dropping his pants and shorts to stand close behind her.
With his wife, there was always difficulty getting in shape to have at it, but with Hope there was no trouble at all. He was big and strong and ready right away.
He probed between her parted thighs for a while and watched her squirm. When he did drive it home, he heard her little gasp of pain. He pushed harder and she gasped again.
At last, he had pushed all the way and felt the warm, fat buttocks rubbing against his belly. Taking a firm grip, he was about to start pumping when he came up with another idea.
His hands worked fast and both her dress and bra were unfastened. He felt the big breasts dangling freely and played with them for a while. It thrilled him that in spite of her obvious revulsion of what was happening to her, the nipples came to life under his fingers.
Only then did he start slamming his body back and forth against the arched behind. He knew he was slapping his body against her hard enough so that it could be heard by anyone close to the door, but that only added to the thrill for him and, he knew, her degradation. That was the way he wanted it.
When the end came, he pressed as hard as he could against the soft cheeks and gave her everything he had. Without pulling his clothes up, he sat back and smirked at the tears flowing down her face as she picked up her clothes and began dressing.
Watching her, he thought of other ways he could debase her, but decided to save them for later. It would be more fun that way.
He was deprived of that opportunity though. On her way home from work that night, Hope fell in front of a bus and was killed instantly. When he got the news, Bob felt his whole body tremble and all the excitement seemed to center in the front of his pants.
Marg was surprised when he took her to bed then and gave her the best one she'd ever gotten from him. It was just as well he didn't tell her what had brought on the sudden arousal.
But Hope wasn't the only one to feel his wrath when he hit the top of the department. Three of the old hands had been dropped from the staff and replaced by relatively inexperienced men.
They would be loyal and, more important, they would respect him. He thought of getting rid of Cad Jordan then, but stopped just short of it. Carl was too highly regarded to be dumped that way.
Still, he told himself, I won't take any crap off him. That was one promise he wasn't quite able to live up to.
And now, as he sat in the bar across the street nursing the Martini, Bob Smelton saw his whole, wonderful world coming apart at the seams.
It was as if his wife were behind it all. She was the first to get through to him and begin making him feel less than secure. Now, they were ganging up on him.
This morning it had been Marg rubbing it in that she'd mess around with Carl Jordan any time she wanted to and he couldn't do anything about it.
After that, had been that uppity bitch Elaine Drew. Who did she think she was anyway? He wasn't going to believe that she didn't like to take her panties down and let the boys play. Why the phony act?
That had gotten through to him, but the session with Sinclair was roughest of all. If Darcy really went after his scalp, he could get it. What then? There was only one direction and it wasn't up.
As he looked up from his drink, he saw the man at the next table looking at him and realized that their eyes had met a number of times in the last few minutes.
The man was well dressed and looked like a businessman sneaking out for a drink as he was doing. He was sure he didn't know him, hadn't met him before, and yet, the expression the man wore was one of friendliness.
Annoyed at himself for being so nervous about it, Bob picked up his drink and downed a big belt of it. Just then, he realized that he had been stalling a trip to the washroom too long and was going to have to make it.
Pushing his glass back, he got up and started weaving his way between the tables. He wasn't drunk, he knew, it was his first drink of the day, and yet he had trouble walking.
A thought was lodged in the back of his mind fighting for expression, but he kept forcing it back. When enough of it emerged to be recognized, he almost screamed as his conscious mind tried to reject it.
No, he told himself, it's been years since I've done that. That's all in the past now. I don't need it. I won't ever do it again.
He Was standing at the urinal trying to force tense muscles to relax and let it go when the man walked in as he knew he would.
Smiling, the man moved to the urinal next to his and slid the zipper down with a flourish. Bob knew what he was going to see next and tried to turn away. He failed.
No, Bob wanted to scream, I mustn't. I haven't done that in years. I can't start that again. It was a losing battle and he knew it.
By the time he reached his office, Bob Smelton had returned to form. He was ready now to take control of his department again.
Darcy Sinclair's words were still ringing in his ears, his sarcasm scathed, but now he was going to show Sinclair that he was in charge of the P.R. Department and could really make it run.
Picking up a handful of messages from his secretary, he walked quickly into his office and slammed the door behind him.
He barked into the intercom for the complete file of new business memos and leafed through the notes. None of them were important, surely not the one that told him to call his wife, so he dropped them on the end of the desk to be looked after later.
Unless he could improve the new business picture, he knew, he was going to be out. Bob Smelton wasn't going to let that happen.