Chapter 4
The rest of that first week went smoothly and without incident for the shapely female helper. Mitzi felt proud of the job she had been doing, knowing that whatever success she had would eventually be beneficial for the other women she had worked with before. She did her best not to sit next to Ted Mason in the plumbing truck when he wasn't driving, and she avoided being around him back at the office. The young redhead didn't want him to get the idea that she was a woman on the make, thinking it better to let him forget the whole thing.
Her husband Oscar wasn't making it easier for her by any means, still pretending no interest in his young wife, as if she had done something wrong. Actually, it was no different than it had been for the past few months, but Mitzi couldn't help feeling sometimes as though it might be her fault; her self-imposed guilt about losing control of herself with Ted Mason made it worse.
It was true that Mitzi and Ted were often alone together on a job, but most of the day they were forty yards apart in different rooms, each working on their separate tasks. More than once the middle-aged Dan Roper showed up, supposedly to observe how well the young trainees were working, looking with obvious relish at her straining thighs and buttocks in blue work pants.
The lecherous foreman was still biding his time, waiting for a chance at the new girl who was working for him, but he hadn't forgotten the events of the first day. Besides that, he had been talking to the most notorious easy lay and gossip working for the company, Pat Reynolds. Pat knew several stories about Ted concerning him and other women, even though the young plumber had only been working there a short while, but could say nothing promising about Mitzi. In his own mind, Roper was trying to work out a plan to get into the panties of the snippy little redhead who had treated him so disdainfully, piecing together a plot with what he had learned from blonde Pat Reynolds.
At thirty-five, Pat was a little older than most of the girls working for Golden Gate Plumbing, but she was still hot for a little screwing around when there was someone available. Roper himself had been in bed with her more than once, usually at a drunken company party where the only one he could get his hands on was Pat. She had mentioned that she would like to get her hands on young Ted Mason, and Roper had immediately begun to figure a way to use this to get what he wanted ... namely a piece of the hot little Mitzi's tail.
Now, as he looked lustfully down at Mitzi's well-rounded buttocks stretching the material of the blue work pants, as she tightened a pipe fitting on a hot water heater, Roper smiled secretly to himself.
I'll be squeezing that sweet little ass of yours before long, he gloated to himself. I'll fuck your hot little cunt until you can't walk again for a week.
As soon as Ted Mason entered the room, Roper glanced up, scowling. "Mason, better give Mitzi a hand with this job. The rest of the crew is about ready to wrap it up. You two aren't laying down on the job, are you?"
It was a needless comment, because Mitzi and Ted Mason, aware that as new plumbers in Roper's section they would be watched carefully, had been working as fast as the tedious work would allow. It was a known fact that the men working with them had been assigned less difficult tasks and Mitzi knew that Roper, too, was well aware of it.
"We've done a normal week's work in three days," the tired young redhead told her boss in exasperation. "What do you want ... blood?"
Dan Roper had an answer for that, but he didn't make it at that moment. He would get what he wanted soon enough, so he just shrugged his shoulders and walked away.
Long before the rest of the plumbers showed, both Ted and Mitzi heard their loud, raucous voices.
"Come on, you guys," she heard one of them say to his friend. "I want to get a load of that new broad bending over."
"Me, too," chimed in another, coarser voice.
"The boss says she's got a nice butt on her," said a voice from the doorway as the men entered the room.
The twenty-one year old beauty was tempted to make some return comments, but a few cautionary words from Ted Mason nearby made her decide to hold her tongue.
"They would like nothing better than to have you give them some back talk," Ted told her. "Let 'em have their fun. They don't know any better."
But it was difficult when the heckling plumb ers stood in the background as Mitzi attempted to connect the hot water heater. There were raucous whistles and groans of appreciation as the men stood craning their necks at her inadvertently squirming buttocks. Crouched on her knees in one corner of the kitchen, every time she made another turn with the heavy plumber's wrench, her whole body twisted provocatively, and a chorus of moans and lewd remarks echoed throughout the room.
"Hey, baby, you can screw on my pipe any time you want to," a young plumber called out to her. Mitzi was sweating from the exertion she was putting into her work, and it was all she could do not to answer him with a crushing remark. But Ted Mason had warned her, and she took his words to heart, merely smiling in a distant way at the crew ogling her from behind.
Tenants had not yet moved into the new furnished apartment, so at break time they all sat together at the large maple kitchen table, the men still making suggestive comments that were driving Mitzi crazy with anger. At one point she was ready to call it quits and go back to being a secretary with the company, but stubbornness and pride kept her from it.
She did lose her temper once just before the break was over. "You guys are such a pain," she told them, getting up from the table to work. "Can't you treat me like a human being instead of like some kind of side-show freak? How would you like for someone to tell you had to work pent-up inside a dingy office for the rest of your life?" Then she strode out of the kitchen and into the hallway toward the bathroom.
"She's right, you bums," Ted Mason upbraided the rest of the men when Mitzi was gone. "She's doing a good job. Why don't you leave her alone?"
"Listen to Sir Galahad talk," the young man who had been most outspoken said. "He must be getting a little of that when nobody's around. How about it, Mason?"
"You lousy...." Ted started cursing as he rose from his chair. But at that moment he glanced out the window and saw the panel truck driven by Dan Roper turning into the driveway outside the building. Ted clenched his fists and held himself back. His nerves were already stretched to the breaking point due to working hard to remain on the crew. He thought he had himself under control, but then, just as Roper screeched to a halt outside the building, a second young plumber put in a final insulting remark in Mitzi's absence. Ted flew into a rage.
"You lousy son of a bitch!" Ted shouted to the offending plumber. "Why can't you treat her with a little respect? She's doing her job which is more than I can say for you!" The two men were wrestling each other angrily when the plumbing boss came into the kitchen.
"Okay, you guys. Knock it off!" the foreman ordered, grabbing Ted by the collar of his work shirt. "What's it all about?"
"Hell, boss. I was just having a little fun," the young man who had made the comment offered. "I don't know what got into this guy Mason. He jumped me like I had told his mother to go fuck herself."
Roper turned on Mason immediately. It was obvious what was going on, and secretly Roper was glad, but he couldn't let on yet that he was aware of what had happened between the aloof young redhead and this wise-guy.
"Watch yourself, Mason," was all he could say. "The company don't like rough-necks working for them. Settle down."
At that moment Mitzi returned from the bathroom. She could see that Ted's face was flushed and angry, and she assumed that in her absence he had tried to stick up for her, for which she was grateful. But she deemed it wise not to make any comments, and sat down to have one last swig of coffee from her thermos before it was time to get back to work.
"Hi, Red," the foreman greeted her. "Find the bathroom without an escort?"
The others guffawed and made faces at the boss's humor, except for Ted Mason, who wished that he didn't need his job so badly. He would have liked to punch the coarse bastard in the mouth.
"Listen, Mason, Mitzi. Get on with your job. The rest of you bums climb in the truck. There's other work on the other side of Whittier. Come on, let's go."
After the crew snapped their lunch boxes closed and roared off with Roper in the truck, silence fell once more in the room. Ted made a face of disgust as he packed up his thermos and lunch box, not wanting to say anything to Mitzi.
"Listen, Ted," she told him, placing her hand tenderly on the back of his neck. "I know you were defending me against those nincompoops. You know I appreciate it, but don't make it hard on yourself. It's obvious that, for some reason, Dan Roper has it in for both of us. But there's no need for you to jeopardize yourself. I can take care of myself."
"I know that, Mitzi. But they really get me riled. Acting as if they were God's gift to the world," Ted told her without looking into her face. "Anyway, the job you're doing is as good as anything any of them could do. That's what bothers them most. That, and the fact that you're a good-looking woman they can't get their hands on."
With a gesture of impatience, he strolled out of the kitchen to gather his tools and get back to help Mitzi.
The ravishing young redhead watched his strong muscular legs carry him out of the room, and for a moment she wished she were one of those women who could successfully carry on an affair outside her marriage. If she were, there was no doubt in her mind that Ted Mason was the man she would be having it with.
A frown crossed her pretty face as she forced herself to forget about the handsome one-time lover and get on with her work.