Judy's boss had begun to take an ardent interest in her, that went far beyond any normal business relationship. This created the perfect opportunity for her to get ahead in the world of advertising-after all, she was a copy editor who had previously only fantasized about making the big time.
The president of the agency was not the only man, however, to fall for her. One of her co-workers had a thing for her, and his advances were not very subtle.
With two very desirable men pursuing her, one would assume that Judy had everything she could every want or need-but then another man enters her life and the confusion grows into one tempestuous torrid three-way affair....
CHAPTER ONE
He knew it as sure as he knew his own name. He had to decide. Either marry the girl or get her out of the damned office! Simple as that.
But not so simple. The year was 1970. Nothing was simple.
He had watched her. She didn't seem to be getting much done-and that was supposed to be the important thing. But it wasn't. She was so damned appealing, in her every motion, that's what was important to him. And so unlike him!
He had to reach a decision: whether to marry or fire Judy. That had been his reason for moving her office to a spot where, from his own, he could study the irritant.
Methodically he enumerated her assets.
Assured background. Probably that was why she was so indifferent to current style. Perversely, she appeared more smartly beautiful than those who gave their all, time and money, to clothes.
A graduate of St. Sophia's Hall, the most select girls' school on the coast, which automatically gave her entree to the best homes. Not that she entered them. He remembered she'd really cut a swath when her sister-in-law, Martha Dane Hubbard, had yanked her out of a public high school and nailed her into St. Sophia's.
Now how had Martha achieved that? Oh, yes, money. Judy's brother, ten years her senior, had inherited everything when their parents had died.
"I'll cut her salary," he said, and walked out to his Thursday car, a Cadillac.
No, that wouldn't do. She'd quit, and another agency would hire her.
Marriage really seemed the safest. He would give her only a small allowance. "Oh, my, no," breathed Stayton. "She's capable of going off to work. Imagine my wife working. Public opinion would bankrupt me in no time at all."
He'd better drive off somewhere for some fresh air. This recurring question had a most deleterious effect upon the normal functioning of his brain. It didn't occur to him Judy wouldn't have him.
Yet at the moment she almost loved him: Mr. Status all done up in importance symbols.
"Judy-" Benjy was back.
"Hold it," she begged, and began rapidly writing. "Now how is this? For Men of Status, Blue Tabu."
"Wonderful." Benjy looked his admiration. "Call out the gendarmes. The boys on the way up will be afraid not to wear one."
"At the fabulous price," Judy yawned and stretched, "it will be a sellout."
And then her conscience reared up. Why should she use her creative mind to think up some gimmick which would sell some innocent men something they'd abhor?
"Innocent, my eye," she breathed. "If hair shirts were on importance symbol, the idiots would wear them and scratch. Were you saying something, Benjy?"
"I've been trying to ask you to have dinner with me for the last half-hour. Thought we might run down the coast to the Fish Net."
"Because it's the place to be seen?" she asked.
"It is, but that's not my reason. I want you mellowed by food and atmosphere so you'll break down and tell me what's been bugging you lately. Or maybe you'll tell me en route."
She didn't. Hair and disposition calm, she slept sweetly for fifty miles, awakening when Benjy sighed, "It's safe to open your eyes now."
She opened them and was glad they'd been closed so long. Fog as thick as a grey woolen blanket had closed in. Benjy must have driven by ESP.
"We'll return by the inland route," he reassured her, "so don't lose your appetite."
Wise Benjamin, who knew her mind and appetite were related so closely they worked, or didn't work, in unison.
Wise and dear Benjamin. She looked at him fondly but couldn't see him, and hoped the wooden ramp wouldn't land them in the blue Pacific instead of in the latest in exclusive dining spots.
Benjy leaned down. "What did you say?"
"Just commented on where the word restaurant originated and why. A place in which to become restored. Benjy, I feel the need of restoration."
A trail of lights spotted their way, converged into a diffused glow at the entrance, then burst into brilliance as double doors swung open.
Quite astonishing. A moment before Judy could have sworn they were lost in the Twilight Zone. Now she found people milling about, appearing and disappearing behind fishnets. In the cocktail lounge, she nodded and smiled at one woman.
"Who's she?" asked the other woman in the foursome.
"Judy Hubbard, a Sophia grad. You remember Martha Dane? Judy's her sister-in-law. Switched her to Sophia's after her parents died. Martha married Judy's brother, who inherited everything. Hal was killed a couple of years ago; one of those dreadful one-car accidents with no guilty party to sue for damages."
"Is this Judy still living with Martha?"
"Heavens, no. Martha wanted to look after her, but Judy's the independent type. Kurt," she turned to her husband, "just what does Judy do?"
"Writes advertising copy. Good stuff. Lot of us living for the day some of it will come through with a double-check. Won't sell anything, but, man, will it be edifying!"
"Well," the guest sighed, "I am glad she's salaried. I can't conceive of Martha looking after anyone or anything, love her as I do. Where is she now?"
"Over in Arizona raising pelted Chihuahuas."
"Little Mexican hairless dogs?"
"These have hair. I mean they're supposed to."
Perversely, Judy was thinking of Chihuahuas at that moment. They'd been taken to a choice table by the window, but all the window revealed was black fog-returned images of themselves and a pair of bulging eyes.
"Now what?" asked Benjamin.
"Chihuahuas-those eyes. Oh-" She'd turned from the window to stare at what was supposed to induce an appetite: a giant fish reposing on a platter not only spotlighted from the outside but also lighted from the inside, giving the eyes a yearning, plaintive look.
A waiter hovered, and Judy let him hover. How could she eat fish with this one accusing her of cannibalism? Why couldn't she have just plain hamburger?
"Shrimp creole," she decided finally, shrimp being the smallest of the seafare offered.
"Good crowd," Benjy remarked. Sadly Judy nodded. Imagine all of these nice people driving a miserable distance when they could have gone into their own kitchens for more delectable food. Why hadn't they?
"And such beautiful kitchens," she murmured aloud, "some of these women have. You could live in them twenty-four hours a day, cheerfully."
"Judy," Benjy leaned across the table pleadingly, "why won't you let me give you a cheerful kitchen? I mean why won't you marry me?"
"I love you too dearly," she answered, swimming for a moment in his dark eyes. "You can't afford marriage."
"On my salary?" he protested.
"Dear, it costs you too much to earn that salary."
"It what?"
"Sweet, as a bachelor, all you have to do is take your account guests to the country club, pay green fees, lose the proper amount on each hole, or at poker, or on side bets. Underwrite the liquid consumption on the nineteenth hole. Of course sometimes it's status dining spots or nightclubs."
"We do have expense accounts."
"They don't cover it all. And with the new federal income ruling on expense accounts-"
"Ha, then I'd save by marrying."
"A wife is only a six-hundred deduction. Marriage, with your job, means a house in the top cream of suburbia, with swimming pool and servants and superlative food which isn't deductible."
"I know a guy who bought a boat. Fact is, a lot of the boys are going in for fishing, the simple life."
"And the cost of the boat? And probably a pilot for offshore cruises?"
"Judy Hubbard, that is negative thinking."
Judy waited for the first course to be served, then answered.
"When you find me a bank that requires only the assurance of positive thinking to balance an overdraft, or a credit manager who'll pat you on the back for said thinking, instead of repossessing, or a building and loan company that will accept such thinking instead of foreclosing-"
"But if you positive-think before, these situations won't arise."
"How right you are. I've been positive-thinking about marrying you. See how much I've saved you?"
He had to laugh. "Just don't forget, I'm the best salesman of the agency in the city. I don't give up."
"Um-hum, but you sell intangibles. You are a tangible. Benjy, don't throw the crockery; it really isn't being done this year. Next year, who knows?"
Judy confessed herself restored. They took a final look at the warm cheer of the Fish Net, then, shoulders braced, went forth to be absorbed by the fog.
Neither said a great deal driving over the hump. But when the lights of Los Gatos, San Jose and a few other cities lay spread below, Benjamin asked a question.
"It's Martha," Judy sighed. "I haven't heard from her for six weeks."
" 'And that worries you?"
Judy nodded. "With Martha, not knowing what she's up to is worse than knowing. That girl is a shady salesman's dream. She doesn't wait for him to call her; she calls him."
"But she's all settled in with the Chihuahua deal, isn't she?"
"Oh, yes. She was all settled in with that angle-worm farm, then began having snake dreams. And she was all settled in that antique store, only to find every home within fifty miles was filled with antiques the owners were trying to sell.
"In two years Martha has bought and sold, at a loss, more ventures than most people handle in a lifetime."
And that, she thought bitterly, was why she was so debt-conscious.
"That," she said, as he drew up before her apartment house, "is why it's worse not hearing than-"
She stopped short, and held her breath as a messenger hovered over the mail slots in the foyer. "Wait," she managed, and shot out of the car without waiting for help.
"Ben," she breathed, as he tipped the boy and sent him on his way, "I was wrong. Benjy, I was awfully wrong. Hearing from her is worse. Read this."
CHAPTER TWO
Benjamin Carr took the telegram from Judy Hubbard as though it might turn and bite him. It did. In that long, costly straight wire which should have been sent as a night letter, or even telephoned, lay a not too well hidden threat to his dream.
"Darling Judy," breathed the black type, and Ben could hear her whispering, as coyly confidential as the latest television commercial glamour girl. "Guess what? You can't believe the wonderfully beautiful buy I've made. A ranchero sixty or maybe seventy-five miles from you. It produces fruit trees, nuts; that fabulous climate! Big house; barn I shall convert into kennels. Meet me there Sunday morning and bring plenty of you-know-what for running expenses. I'm a bit short, having paid cash. Now here is how you get there-"
Benjy read the detailed directions and handed the wire back. "Better pack an overnight bag if you expect to find it from this.
"Tell you what; I'll go with you. We'll make a reconnoitering trip before she shows up. We'll start early Saturday morning. Oh, oh."
Judy, who had been about to lean on his shoulder, stiffened. "Now what?"
"Electronics Incorporated. Taking him to the club, elevenish; golf, lunch and who knows what from then on. He wants to park his wife at the clubhouse.
"Judy-" he stood very straight and very handsome-"There is only one answer to this. Marry her off."
"Good thinking!" she sang, cheered.
Why had she never thought of that? Simple. To her Martha was not an entity; she was Hal's widow. And if ever a woman needed a man to look after her, it was Martha.
"Have to be careful in our choice," Benjy ruminated, "or you'll be stuck with two of them."
"You; not we."
"I now realize," he said a bit loftily, "your real reason for not marrying me. Deep in your subconscious lies the fear we might have to perform a costly rescue. If you were not earning-and you wouldn't be as my wife-I'd have to foot the bill. That would crucify you."
He said he had Sunday free; they'd drive up together. He'd be with her to meet Martha and sell her on the proper approach to her latest potential debacle.
The idea was good, but how could Judy live through Friday, let alone Saturday?
She couldn't. She slept neither Thursday nor Friday night, and early Saturday crept down to the apartment garage.
If you've got an aching tooth, have it pulled, she reasoned. Don't put off the agony.
Friday night she had thought maybe Benjy would be free. A heavy rain had fallen. But this morning the skies were promising sunshine, enough to dry off the golf course. And the rain had lapped up the fog.
Judy drove as she felt. By the time the first five hundred cars en route to recreation areas had honked at her, her temper and speed picked up.
When she reached a wide valley and saw the horizon putting on a clearance sale display of cumulus clouds in all colors, she dared hope Martha had done the impossible.
Maybe this time she had made a good buy.
She overshot the first turnoff, and could not make the second because the freeway had become a speedway. Finally she found a cloverleaf that proved a turntable and consigned the highway engineer who'd designed it to an eternity of perpetually following his own design.
Her spirits dropped, but she couldn't drop her speed without being crushed.
Finally, some hundred and fifteen miles from her starting point, Judy came upon a town she remembered. The junction was complete with beautiful traffic control lights; not that many observed the yellow. But on the green she risked life, limb and a dent in the car's fender to breeze down and search for the old two-lane highway.
Promptly she began worrying about Martha, worn from a long drive, trying to find her newest home. She felt she'd better take restoration and drove into an eating place she remembered.
She drove out immediately. Its roof had fallen in.
Occasionally beauty thrust itself upon her. The crimson leaves still clung to the wine grapes of a great vineyard. A row of pale-gold poplars shot up like winter sunshine.
Then, when she'd about given up, she saw a road sign, turned and began climbing a macadamized road. She came down on the other side, saw another sign and said stoutly, "It can't be."
But of course it could and was. Reluctantly she turned onto a poorly graveled lane and began going down.
She stopped the car at the bottom.
At first she saw only a realtor's sign nailed to a fence post, a triumphant banner with a scarlet "SOLD" pasted across.
"Who but Martha?" she murmured.
Cautiously she got out of her car and stood looking out on the dreariest scene of the day: a tall, thin house with no saving grace, completely surrounded by naked trees stretching bent and broken arms toward an uncaring sky.
And oh, the stillness! Nothing moved.
But something whimpered.
Judy looked down to find a beagle looking up, his soul in his brown eyes, his long body one curving symbol of friendliness, his expressive tail waving.
"Adonis," a masculine voice said sternly, "heel."
But it was Judy's heels he chose.
"Strange." The voice was coming out of some brush. "Adonis doesn't like women."
"I doubt," stammered the fear-chilled Judy, "that Aphrodite could stand this climate. He'd settle for-oh?"
There'd been a crash, a word usually reserved for locker rooms, and a man stood forth from the brush, a forked branch like a yoke about his neck.
"I took a short cut," he explained, or thought he did.
"A neighbor saw your car turn down the road. Telephoned me. She suggested smelling salts. Don't use them. All I have is a small bottle of rum. Had," he corrected, feeling his hip pocket.
Judy scanned the distance between the man, herself and her car. This awful house was bad enough without a raving maniac.
"You are Miss Hubbard, aren't you?" he demanded.
Judy nodded.
"And you did buy this place?"
Judy's head swung in the opposite direction so hard her neck cracked audibly.
"Bess Henderson telephoned to say a realtor had called her and told her to watch for a Martha Hubbard due in from Arizona. So Bess dispatched me on an errand of mercy when she saw your car."
Oh well. And he was nice, now that he'd removed his yoke, picked up his hunting cap, smoothed down light-brown hair and wiped whatever it was yokes left on one's face.
"I'm Judy Hubbard," she managed, "Martha's sister-in-law. She's a widow with no sales resistance. I came up hoping to stop her purchase of this-"
She'd shot up in his approval rating. It was in his grey eyes.
"If you'd like to telephone the realtor, you can walk up to my house with me. Road's out just beyond the bend. Or if you'd rather you can back up to the highway."
"Back?"
"No turnaround here until I return with an axe."
She considered the axe with a shiver, then saw the driveway was blocked by a fallen tree, one of the mighty walnuts Martha's wire had mentioned in a P.S.
He sounded all right. And he did know Martha's name. Maniacs seldom bothered to use names for decoys.
Adonis barked encouragingly. Maniacs didn't come equipped with dogs, either.
He started ahead, and she saw why he no longer had the rum bottle. Someplace on the short cut he must have fallen down hard. Surely he deserved cooperation after such a sacrifice.
"I'll telephone the realtor. It's Saturday; we should catch him in. We'll take the long path up," he concluded firmly. "Fewer hazards."
Judy questioned that. They came to a stream with the remains of a bridge across its bed, but the bed was nearly dry so they slipped over it. The boulders were a bit slimy from last night's rain.
And they came to a cliff going up the steep side, because the road, having gone up the less steep side, had given up and doubled back on top of itself, leaving a muddy barrier.
Once on the cliff, the man turned and smiled. "Now that you're no longer afraid of me, would you like to sit down and catch your breath? By the way, my name is Jones. William John, called John by the initiate."
Judy collapsed on an outcrop of rock and caught her breath, then held it. Why, this was beautiful. Even that old house looked livable from here. And how had John Jones known she was afraid of him?
"May I ask if your sister-in-law has any particular plans for the old Cody place?"
So that's what it was called. "Oh, yes," Judy sighed, "Martha always has plans for making money."
And she led him through the many ventures from the angleworms to the pelted Chihuahuas.
"Now she has visions of making money with the fruits and nuts on those poor trees. Could she?"
He gave a negative shake of the head. "I doubt it. The orchard has been neglected for several years. Also, there is another handicap. The sun doesn't reach into that hollow during the early spring and summer months. Hence the crop is always late; the market's glutted by the time the fruit is ready to pick."
Judy nodded. That figured. There was always an angle to a Martha purchase.
"We'd better get on." Jones stood up, and Judy looked at his damp pocket.
"I'd like to replace that casualty," she mused.
"No need. It was just a leftover from last Christmas. My sister believes puddings should throw off flames before being served."
The rest of the climb was easy, and when Judy came to the top she had breath enough to say, "Oh, how lovely."
She wasn't speaking of the big two-story frame house ahead, but of the view to the west. The nearer they came to the house, the more serene it looked. I am what I am, and not even an architect can change me.
There were willow rockers on the wide veranda, hemmed by broad railings. There were globs of mud on top of the railings, mute evidence of masculine feet being lifted.
Judy thought of the plush reclining board Stay ton had installed in their "re-creating room." Stayton was a firm believer in giving the blood a chance to reach the head periodically, and Judy was now able to enter that room without a start when she found some co-worker standing on his head.
Judy remembered how strange she thought the ad world was when she first started out. Everyone seemed so bizarre and unusual. The recreation room was but a part of it-a part of it that symbolized just how crazy her chosen profession was.
She smiled. Her first interview had summed it up perfectly.
Judy had been nervous. After all, she was about to embark on her life's work. She knew that J. Walter Thompson, McCann-Erickson and other agencies were the top ones in the field, but she had scheduled her first interview with a small, little-known agency, only because they were the first one to reply to the massive mailing she'd sent out.
The name of the outfit was Dane-Wilcox, and while it sounded suitably Anglo-Saxon, the prime ingredient in a successful agency's name, she had never heard of them.
She found out why during the interview.
Judy's appointment was with John Dane himself, one of the agency principals. He turned out to be a casually dressed, greying, lean man in his early forties. He invited her into his office and gave her a cup of coffee.
"We specialize in men's magazines," Dane had told her.
"Really?"
"Yes. We like to think of ourselves as a sexually liberated ad agency. In fact, a condition of your employment will be your sexual attitude."
"I don't mind," Judy said. "As you know, things have changed in the past few years. Sexually, I suppose, I'm as liberal as a girl can be."
Dane's eyes lit up. He was a handsome man, and Judy had been without a man for quite a while. She liked his looks and she liked his direct approach.
"Would you mind if I made myself more comfortable?" Dane asked with a grin.
"Go right ahead," Judy had answered. She already had decided that this wasn't the agency for her-too small, for one thing. But there did seem a chance to have some fun, and she was without another interview for the day.
"If you don't mind," Dane said as he removed his shirt, "I'd like it if you removed your clothing."
Judy laughed. "Let's stop fooling around," she said. "I'm as horny as you are. So let's strip and get it on!"
Dane's eyes lit up as she peeled off her clothes. Off with the preppie jacket first, then her sweater and bra in one sweep. Two gorgeous boobs swung free, full and firm with tiny, dark red nipples.
Her squirming off of dress, panty hose and panties revealed an even tastier sight: a tightly trimmed bush of curly down between two thinly curving thighs. Her red lips curled outward underneath in full view.
She was good enough to eat, Dane decided. As nice and juicy as the gals in the mags he worked with. He wanted to catch a shot of her wet spread.
Judy knew the score. She walked up to him brazenly and grabbed his bulge. "How about I liberate this?" she asked. She knew his answer when his cock shifted as it grew.
Judy dropped to her knees and undid him. A shove of the pants downward snapped out his big pecker. It was thick and virile, a monstrous shaft of pulsing flesh that was bigger, thicker, and harder than any she'd ever seen before.
"My cock isn't all that needs liberating," Dane growled at her. Judy took the cue and swallowed him, gulping his hard-on inward with curving wet lips. They gnawed at his veined skin while she slipped him flicks inside with her tongue.
His cock was so big that Judy had trouble getting it all the way into her mouth. But she sucked at him eagerly, almost forcing herself to accept him into her as far as she could get him. Her lips pulled hard at him. Her face shifted and turned, trying to screw the shaft down her throat.
To Dane it was an incredible head-job. He knew what was good, having been sucked by most of the models looking for a job. A job for a job, a spread for a spread. That was how Dane worked and lived. But this one was something else again.
She chewed at him vigorously, until she aligned her face and his cock in so that it began to slink down her throat. At first she gagged, which jolted Dane in a most pleasurable way. Then she turned her head a bit further and slipped him down. His whole cockhead was hugged and buried in her throat. Then she proceeded to work him with her whole mouth. As his cock jammed down, she wrapped him in her wet cheeks. Her mouth felt like a pussy, and his cock begged for release.
Judy started chugging him up and down her throat, fucking him with her deepness. Dane's balls buckled and bulged. He felt a warm rush build in his torso. Then a long stream of bubbling jizm shot through him and down her throat. She took it down easily and happily.
With her mouth still on him she got Dane to lie down. She sucked him like a pivot as she turned around to offer her wide thighs. Dane looked up and saw one of her hands part the pouting hair pie. Inside it was pale and wet, steaming with mucus and juices. The first lick was hot and tart. He buried himself inside her.
He still felt her hand around his face. He knew she wanted to get real hot as he felt her frig her aching clit. Her body heaved on his, her thick tits tickling his hairy stomach. Her sucking was now impassioned-she chewed hungrily at his slightly flagging pecker.
As gushers of love juice flowed across his face, Dane could feel himself getting harder.
Judy could feel it too. She wanted that cock inside her, and though his licking was about to throw her into orgasm, the cock was what her womb begged for. As Dane's tongue slipped down into her, she could feel its tip cut a swath across her inner tissues. The way his teeth lightly scratched her prominent cunt lips made the folds flutter and itch. Only that shaft would satisfy her cravings.
She knew he was ready when his pecker began to shove at her throat again. The very first jab made her reel. She took the throbbing member out and began to lick it lengthwise. The very thought of him inside her made her ardently wet him to ease his entry. Her whole insides seemed to heave at the idea, and with another few flicks of her clit she was writhing on Dane's face, wild with orgasm.
Her climaxing excited Dane, whose cock now rose full and hard, stretching at the skin. He brought his hands around and grabbed at her tits, palming the red nipples. From the way Judy jumped, he knew she was hotter than hell.
Dane rolled the heaving girl off him and set her down. She kept her legs spread wide, and with panting chest and begging eyes she looked up at him.
"Fuck me damnit!!" she implored. Her hand still rested on her mound, and she brought it down and shoved it into her steamy slit.
Dane crawled over and helped her up. They hugged for a minute. As he soaked up the tickling pleasure of her tight nipples heaving and scratching at his chest, she just moaned as she felt the steely rod push against her soft stomach. Soon, if she could take him, he'd be that far inside her.
"What you need, my dear," said Dane, "is the executive treatment." He walked her over to his swivel chair behind the desk and sat down. Then he beckoned Judy to climb aboard.
The sight of that massive throbber sitting there made her weak, almost faint. She fell into his arms and climbed on his lap. Then she let her legs down and faced him, her legs straddling his crotch with her feet on the floor.
Judy was able to raise or lower herself, giving her a chance to control and feel the full length of his incredible thickness as it pierced her writhing, burning center.
The first touch made her start. Dane was so big she could barely put him through the portal. His head slipped in but when she reached the full thickness there was a tug. She squirmed again and he broke through with a jab that sent dizzying rushes to her head. Each inch of that pecker burned up her womb. She swallowed him tightly.
Her arms were around her waist and his wet lips massaged her tits. They were tits of a fine size, round and juicy but without a hint of sag. The skin was pulled tight around the muscle and tissues, and tiny red dots were accentuated by pert little nipples.
Dane took in the whole areola, chewing at the puckered skin and slapping the nipple with his teeth. She wiggled her chest in pleasure as he did it, first to one tit, then the other.
She was red-faced and out of breath with excitement. She now had him almost all the way inside her, and she could feel the hard shaft approaching the depth of her womb. She wiggled her hips and bent her knees, dropping her bottom in his lap and shoving his pecker up inside her so deep it stretched the wet walls of her womb. With that she knocked out into another frenzy of successive climaxes, building, dropping and building again until her consciousness was flooded by the effect of the throbber inside her.
She thrust up and down, going as hard as she could, loving the feel of hardness penetrating and then scathing her sheath. The soft folded flesh of her aroused cunt felt numb.
Inside her, her muscles went crazy. They hugged at his thickness, then just fell weakly apart. With the climax they snapped around his tool even harder.
Then he was throbbing too, pumping hot gallons of fluid into her waiting warmth, his face buried in the valley between her beautiful round melons.
Judy fell off him onto the floor. She lay there on her stomach as she heard Dane make a call on the intercom.
"Hold my calls and cancel my appointments," he announced. "I'm in a high-level conference for the rest of the afternoon and I'm not to be interrupted."
Judy wanted more sex. She wiggled her bottom up at Dane and moaned.
"Come here, you big fucker," Judy said. "Take me here on the rug like an animal. Let's see how liberated you really are."
That only aroused Dane more. His cock was sticky with a mix of juices, but still hard as a steel girder. He was going to give it all to Judy-every last bit she begged for. He was a cocksman who rose to the challenge.
He dropped onto the floor and grabbed her hips, pulling her thighs up to his sword. Then he dipped the pecker in her honey pot, first shallowly twisting it to soak up the profusion of juices, then deep. He shoved her down onto him, and when he pulled out his cock was coated.
Then he leaned over and spread her cheeks. His mouth buried itself busily in her bunghole. He slathered the sphincter up, pushing his tongue down the tight slot to loosen her up-soon he felt it twisting away just a tiny bit. He knew it was time to enter.
He brought up his cock to the portal, jabbing it in, Judy jumped and howled.
"OOOOOHHHHHH DANE!!!" she cried. "SLIP THAT SHAFT UP MY ASS!!! I DON'T CARE IF IT HURTS!!!"
To her surprise it pleasured her more than it pained. Her ass slid open to accept him rather well, tightening up like a fist every inch or so it took inside, but then uncoiling to admit the muscular cock just a little further.
Soon it was deep in her rear, pushing at the wall of her womb from the other side. He pulled it out and her ass muscles seemed to sigh. On the jab back in they screamed with the same passion as her mouth.
"A A A A A AAA A A A A A A A A A!!!!" she wailed. Dane just kept ass-fucking her hard until his jizm burst in her backside and she lay down in a heap.
But that was not all. They fucked the rest of the day and into the evening. She left there with a split but satisfied crotch.
CHAPTER THREE
Jones led her to his house, and once inside introduced Judy to his strange housekeeper, Mrs. Padroni. The lady's odd behavior made her uneasy during dinner; Judy feared that they might drug her or something.
But the meal was wonderful. After dinner Jones explained to Judy that his housekeeper was so strange because she wanted to marry him off. "Can't be done," he announced.
He then handed Judy a newspaper clipping. "This is the hook that caught your sister-in-law."
She looked at the imposing headline:
RETIREMENT WITH INCOME ACRES
The spread of lies had a certain ring. Then William John launched into a tirade against "advertising people-men and women with the gift of creation perverting that gift to steal from the gullible."
"I,"-she said icily, "am an advertising woman. Thanks for your hospitality and help. And goodbye."
Judy made a clean getaway, only stumbling on Adonis outside. Her problem was she didn't know where she was.
She stumbled down the path she had come up until it seemed to dead-end on a cliff. She climbed back up and around until she saw what looked like a driveway. She started to trot down it, until about two hundred feet from the house she tripped and fell.
As she sat back up she spied Mrs. Padroni bearing down in a big coupe at high speed. She stood up and limped back out of the way.
"Come," the old lady ordered. "I take you. William John he take the axe."
And wouldn't Judy like to give him the axe! Axe? Oh yes, the tree across the driveway.
Judy climbed in back, and the car rolled down the driveway, snorting and roaring and reeling. With Mrs. Padroni at the wheel they sped along. Judy pushed aside a paper on the seat.
"You read!" ordered the driver.
Judy didn't want to. She looked at the beautiful country, yelling for the woman to stop when they came to the dirt road.
The woman stopped the car and turned to look at her. Judy just gotten out.
John had gotten there by some back route. It surprised her, but she felt a bit better as the old woman drove off. Already he had cleaned the tree, sliced off the small limbs, fastened a chain to the trunk of the tree and was getting into what looked like a cross between a jeep and a tractor.
It sounded like both, but the old tree fell into line and staggered away in its wake.
There was room now to turn and make a getaway. Judy refused. She had to say thank you if the words burned her tongue.
He said it first. He came down the rutted driveway, wiping neck and brow with a handkerchief.
"Thank you for giving me a chance to apologize. I was a bit wrought up over that misleading advertising."
Judy nodded. "But shouldn't the blame be placed on the person inserting the advertisement? A newspaper or an agency doesn't go faring forth in the country to establish authenticity."
"Like a druggist selling anything brought in because the one who placed it for sale said it was good?"
"Advertisements," she informed him icily, "are not lethal."
"Morally they can be if, say, an old person stakes his last dime on a venture. Oh, here we go again."
Judy was silent. Darn those blue-shirt blues, she thought; they're gagging me.
Smiling, she managed, "Well, as you know all about advertising, thank you for clearing a way for me to turn around."
And no, she was in no mood to wait for her sister-in-law.
"I feel she should have the full impact of this purchase without any assistance from anyone, not even a shoulder-" she looked at Jones' shoulder-"to cry upon."
"Is that being kind?"
"Sorry; my kindness has been used up. What Martha needs is a cure."
He suggested he turn her car around, as he knew that driveway. She almost refused, then looked at the ruts and decided she'd better not. She had no desire to spend the night there, stuck.
Spend the night stuck. The very words stuck in her thoughts. Martha, her heavy station wagon full of dogs, would be stuck there until daylight, for Martha would not stop until she had viewed the place. She'd believe it the charming home advertised, with utilities on, even food conjured out of thin air awaiting her.
Judy glanced up. That cloud clearance sale hadn't been properly advertised. There'd been no takers. Now remnants, ragged ones, were piling up on the bargain counter.
"Want to tell me?" asked Jones.
"I've only known you three and a half hours."
"Then I'll tell you. You're thinking of your sister-in-law pulling in here around midnight and being unable to pull out. Right?"
She nodded. "Alone would be bad enough. But she may have a cortege of bill collectors and maybe a sheriff right behind her. Yet if I give you money to buy them off and there aren't any and you give it to her, she's capable of having the outside of the house painted before she stops to see if the faucets work."
And then she felt terrible. "Please don't pay any attention to me. Martha is lovely, charming, beautiful. But she's so accustomed to being looked after she doesn't realize there's no one but me left to look after her."
Jones looked thoughtful. "Why don't you come up and look the house over? Maybe that will ease your mind."
"You have keys?"
"Keys? I doubt there are any."
Judy made a tour of the house and panted with exasperation. Relieve her mind! Great goodness, this man didn't know his Marthas.
He didn't know how this place would affect her sister-in-law. It would be a challenge, from the high ceilings to the curving staircase which ascended at a fifty-degree angle.
Straight out of the gay nineties, and she'd go forth to buy furniture to match.
Upstairs, she looked at the small bedrooms and saw walls coming out.
But it was the kitchen that froze her to the scarred linoleum floor."
"Primitive?" asked Jones, laughter in his voice.
An iron sink with a hand pump attached! "That won't stop her," Judy worried.
"How much does a power pump cost? And for goodness' sake, is there enough water to make it worthwhile?"
"Oh, yes, water is one asset here. Shallow wells produce as much as deep wells on the hill."
Judy worried her way to the only bedroom downstairs. The house, advertised as furnished, was. But what furniture! How could the exquisite Martha sleep in such as that? The mattress damp, despite the fact that summer had hovered over the place.
"Would your nice Mrs. Padroni have time to clean just two rooms-the kitchen and this? I don't know what to do about this bed."
"How about the living room? There's a couch there. Your sister-in-law is due when?"
"Tomorrow," And at his start, "But she won't be here then. Martha is always late. And no, she won't call me so I can alert you. She'll be coming up through Reno, to Sacramento, then north. If she runs true to form, she'll spend the first few nights in the valley at motels, lost."
They walked back to the car, and now the clouds had gathered. William John cheered her with the five-day forecast: rain, heavy at times. He'd check the chimneys, get in dry wood, start fires and try to dry the place out.
Judy didn't know why he should go to such bother. "We do out here. We're all neighbors." Another asset.
Contrite, she turned. "Please forgive me. I've given you such a poor opinion of Martha. She's really wonderful. When my parents died she took me into her home. She seemed more related to me than my brother. Sometimes I think Martha's weakness is love. She loves everybody and everything."
"You consider love a weakness?"
"A luxury. One I can't afford."
She stepped into her car and patted it. When William John commented, "Nice little buggy," she nodded.
"It's been paid for, three years. It runs beautifully. And I don't have to impress anyone."
"My, you are sure of yourself," he muttered.
It almost spoiled their goodbye. She thanked him again and handed him a hundred dollars, to be fed to Martha in bits. She heard him promise he'd go right after Mrs. Padroni. The tires slithering, she got under way.
When she reached the safety of the macadamized road, Judy took time to glare at the sky. Why couldn't it have gathered earlier, poured, driven Benjy into his car to bring her up here?
Weathermen! They were like newscasters. Nothing good was worth talking about. She could just see them rubbing their hands together, gloating over the storm riding in.
As Judy inserted the key in her apartment door, she heard the telephone ringing. It rang right up to the instant she lifted the receiver, but the person calling had hung up. What was more frustrating?
Martha? Benjy? Who?
Benjy. She'd had a dinner date with him. He'd be starved or would have given her up. It was eight-thirty.
Judy was exhausted. She reclined on the sofa and fell into a deep sleep.
Her dream was fantastic. Benjy had come to the door and walked in as she emerged wet and naked from the shower. She tried to cover herself with a small towel, but her rich pubic mound and fold showed under the hem.
"Benjy!" she cried.
He was grinning as she let the towel drop and cupped her tits. "Like what you see?" she asked him.
"You've got a great body, baby. I've wanted to fuck your snatch for a long time!"
She grinned and turned, giving him a view of her incredible backside. She heard him suck in his breath and fuss with his trousers.
She turned around and Benjy's pulsing pecker was bare. It stood out from his body like a steel shaft, hard and unflagging. She marveled at how thick around it was. The red head seemed to be glinting at the tip with a drop of fluid.
"Don't just stand there," she implored. "Let's do something."
Benjy tore off the rest of his clothes and came up to her, lowering his face to her bulging bosoms. He sucked and licked them until every inch was wet, and her whole chest heaved.
Meanwhile her hands were fondling his huge member. It seemed to twitch with each little stroke. "Now you're a man with something to be proud of," she said.
Judy smiled as she said it. Of all the things that surprised her about Benjy, the size of his cock surprised her the most.
It was at least nine-inches long, and rockhard. It was well shaped and healthy-looking. She looked at his face and laughed when she saw that he was blushing. "There's nothing to be ashamed of," Judy said. "I've never seen a better-looking one in my life!"
He finished his drink and poured out another. "You want me to freshen that up for you?" he asked.
Judy held out her glass. The Scotch was incredibly smooth and hit the spot for her. As Benjy poured another shot into her glass she felt his thick prick brush up against her thigh. Judy reached down and gripped it and Benjy almost dropped the bottles.
"I like the feel of it," she said.
"I wonder if you'll like the taste of it as well," Benjy managed to say.
Judy laughed. "Well!" Judy said. "I didn't think you were ever going to ask!"
She placed her drink on the coffee table and got down on her knees. She could see that Benjy's legs were trembling with excitement.
Judy reached out and gripped him firmly by the root. Then she aimed his now-hard cock at her lips.
It was going to be a pleasure for them both, she thought.
When she pushed the head of his cock past her wet, warm lips, she saw that Benjy's knees almost buckled with the pleasure of it.
She quickly took another three or four inches into her mouth. She sucked eagerly, anxious to get it on. She loved doing it-such a wonderful change from her usual in-charge attitude. She liked to be on her knees with a thick cock between her lips.
Judy was bobbing her head back and forth, loving the feel of his thick member. She cupped his balls and squeezed them gently, aware of how sensitive they were.
And then suddenly Benjy pulled away from her, and Judy looked up at him. He looked guilty. "I couldn't let you go on," he said.
"Why not?" Judy demanded. She did not like to be deprived of pleasure.
"Because I was so close to coming that I was afraid I'd fill that wonderful mouth of yours."
Judy laughed. "Well," she said, "why do you think I was sucking you? It's what I want!"
"I want to save it for later-make a deposit where it belongs!" Benjy answered.
"In that case," Judy said, "get busy down here!" She sat back on the floor and opened her legs for him. "Here's a way you can make up for it," she said.
Benjy dove between her legs instantly. He was crouched in front of her, a thigh in each hand. His warm mouth and hot tongue gently parted her folded flesh and she was quickly squirming in his grip, waves of hot lewd pleasure washing over her.
Judy cupped her firm breasts in her hands and pinched her nipples into erection. She sighed with pleasure as his tongue centered on her aroused clitoris. She held his head in place as his tongue then penetrated her pink softness, edging into her wet, glistening flesh.
She felt as if she were going to burst with hot pleasure. "That's enough," she finally said. She could see that his cock was throbbing with excitement. She wanted it where it would do the most good.
Judy reclined and Benjy wasted no time in mounting her. He thrust into her quickly, loving the feel of her hot pussy wrapped around his hard cock.
Then he pumped steadily, loving the feel of her, the way she linked her legs across his back and the way she seemed to anticipate his every move.
Judy was coming in waves of pleasure that were intensified when she felt the warm jets of Benjy's juice as he poured it to her, screaming her name in her ear all the while.
And then Judy awoke, sweaty and excited. How long had she been asleep? She checked her watch. Only ten minutes.
The doorbell rang, and this time it was Benjy for real. Something in his innocent look after the way he'd fucked her in her fantasy made Judy take notice. She looked over at his pants and noticed a very healthy, still-soft bulge.
Hmmmmmm, she thought. Maybe that dream made some sense.
"I'd been calling and calling. I finally came over to see if you were okay," said Benjy.
"I'm sorry. Come on in. Unfortunately dinner is at the dinette tonight."
Benjy looked almost hurt as they walked in and he saw the bare dining room table, but after she'd whipped up a good meal and started telling him her tale of her trip, he began to feel better. Only when she started describing William John did Benjy again get itchy.
"Judy," Benjy said, fixing her with a stern eye, "are you writing copy for an ad on the guy or are you in love with the lug?"
"In love?" she cried, "with him?"
"By the way you've rated him, he'd make a damn fine husband."
She kissed him. "Oh Benjy, you are so damn smart."
Now he was really confused. "Now just what the hell are you talking about?"
She just looked at him with a bright smile and a finger in the corner of her mouth.
"Oh, Benjy," she said soulfully, "you do have the best ideas. I couldn't, but do you think you could sell him on the idea?"
CHAPTER FOUR
The last biscuit, being buttered, rolled under the dinette table (immovable, being affixed to the wall) as Benjamin Carr rose in indignation.
"I've tried to sell myself as a husband for two years. Now just why should I expend my talents on a man I've never met? How do I know he'd make you a-"
"Oh, Benjy, not me. In the first place, he wouldn't have me. He holds all people in the advertising game beneath contempt. No, sweet, I was thinking of your idea of marrying Martha off."
"Marrying Martha off." Benjy struck his head on the table trying to retrieve the biscuit. "Off your neck. Hey, that's a top-layer idea. We'll do that. You gave her a good build-up, I imagine."
"Hmmmm," said Judy. "Build-up. I could use a good build-up myself."
Benjy had an idea what she meant, and he felt his cock tingle. But maybe not. He'd been with her many times where she seemed ready to fuck him, but then slyly evaded and ducked the issue.
This time she didn't. Benjy was shocked when she pulled open her blouse and plopped a tit out of her bra and offered it to him.
"Build this up, Benjy. Suck it hard and good."
Benjy came over to her and unleashed all he had ever wanted to do to the woman. As he gobbled at the soft and silky globes, he slipped off her dress and started running his hand along her hot crack. He felt the folded flesh ripple underneath.
"Fuck me Benjy. Let me see your big cock and then put it deep inside me."
Benjy tore off his duds, and Judy grinned when she saw that his growing prick was as good as her fantasy. The flesh stretched as the thing grew to stand straight out from his chest. Two fat balls hung underneath.
Judy dropped down and nuzzled at his hanging sperm sac, sucking each testicle into her mouth and rolling it about like a small egg. Her tongue rubbed at the bumpy skin. He felt his balls twinge and shiver.
She then pasted licks all about his scrotum, coming up to his hilt and tracing a wet swathe around the base of his pole. Benjy groaned.
She lubricated his rod eagerly, then swallowed the rocky sword of flesh into her warm mouth. She sucked with tender felicity, nuzzling and nudging his tool. Benjy felt his groin grow warm with tiny shocks exploding inside him.
Then she fell back and spread her gams, letting him get a good look at her sweaty, heaving hole. Benjy dove into the folds with his tongue, wetting up the mounds of mushy tissue with mixture spittle.
Then he nudged open her lips with his hand and crawled up to fuck her. He slipped the pulsing, long, thick slab of pecker inside her, his hands moving up to uncover and explore her bulging, aching love bud. She rolled her clit like a marble as he thrust in with a jolt. "That's just where I've wanted to get in you for soooo long," moaned Benjy.
"Just get it deep," urged Judy. He thrust on into the comforting, velvety sheath. It slid past his rod with the deftness of a kiss.
"Ooooooooo!!! Fuck me like that!!!" cried Judy.
He slung on into her, rubbing her bud at the same time. She then knocked into an orgasm that pulled his fiery bursts up the shaft and into her heated womb. They groveled together on the floor like two teenagers stealing a fuck. Even though they were both numbed from their orgasms, they fucked on.
Judy loved how his cock stayed hard. She slipped off Benjy and rolled down to suck it again. She licked off her own musky love juices like nectar. She nibbled at him in a way that begged him for more pearls, and by the time he was encased in her warm, swirling mouth he felt the urge build again.
He shot and she sucked, taking it all in and down. They lay there for a while, not talking.
He wanted to ask her. "Judy, why do you stick to this place? It's archaic and inconvenient."
"But what a view."
"The view is nicer at my place, especially if you married me."
Judy slipped it off by changing the subject. "Not now, Benjy, just after our first fuck." They talked about this and that until he left at twelve.
On the edge of deep slumber, Judy thought, My, how he's going to miss me when he marries me. Imagine cutting in on an inspired resume to tell him something must be done about some stopped up drain or silly pipe, or that he'd simply have to talk to the dry cleaner man.
She relaxed and wondered if Mrs. Padroni would teach her to stuff zucchinis after Martha and William John were set up together, and the old gal happy.
The next day she stayed close to the phone, knowing Martha might surprise her by arriving on time. But Martha was already in quite a pickle that Judy didn't know yet, beyond the help of neighbors since the previous night. Martha had a friend in Reno who'd put her up overnight and thus save her motel costs. Wonderful.
But Martha naturally really wanted to see Reno. And having seen, she fingered such money as she had left, enough to buy gasoline to carry her to her beautiful estate. A one-armed bandit thrust its handle right into her view.
Why, it was almost like a good omen. Imagine hitting the jackpot and having enough actual cash to stock groceries before she met Judy. That would be a triumph.
Martha's overnight hostess was beginning to feel she had a permanent guest on her hands before Martha confessed she was down to three copper pennies and couldn't bring herself to wire Judy. Besides, how could she wire on three pennies?
The hostess considered wiring Judy herself, then remembered they were sorority sisters. Firmly she drove with Martha to a service station at dawn.
"Now-" the tank filled to capacity, she handed Martha ten dollars and a box lunch-"you have less than three hundred miles to go. Don't spend a penny of this for anything other than gas. Keep your doors locked. By the way, what did you do with your dogs?"
She'd had to sell them with the kennels, she confessed unhappily. Besides, they shouldn't be asked to stand a change of climate at that season of the year.
"I've drawn a heavy line along the shortest route. Follow it."
Martha saluted happily and drove off, looking a picture of competent pulchritude. She didn't remind her hostess she was driving to her homeland and didn't need a road map.
She ran out of money on her last stop. She ran out of gas in the best possible place: on a freeway well equipped with state patrol cars.
The state patrol telephoned the realtor, and he telephoned William John Jones. It was only two-thirty on a rain-sodden morning.
"Why the heck can't she stay in a motel until daylight?" yawned Jones.
"It's too late to find out now, but from what the cops said, she'd run out of money. I can't make it out there in time to give her a hand when she needs it."
"All I've got to say-" Jones ruminated later, getting into high boots, slicker and rain hat-"Judy certainly knows her Martha."
An apprehensive state patrolman turned Martha and her car over to a county patrol. Unfortunately some two-armed bandits began operating, and an "all cars" call came in.
But Martha had reached the turnoff. Now she proceeded uphill alone, as cheerful as one could be after driving for sixteen hours straight.
She was cheerful right up to the moment something in rain-shiny black darted right out on the road, waving a flashlight.
Martha aimed the car at the object, leaned on the horn and shot forward. The object made a flying leap and landed in a patch of blackberry briars.
Some three hundred feet farther on, Martha slowed.
The object had yelled, "Martha," before it lit.
Could that have been Judy in a black raincoat? Oh, but the voice was that of a man.
"Judy with a cold," decided Martha. She began backing, and the object went back into the briars. They were safer.
"Hold it!" came a roar before she backed across and over the side.
Martha put down her window and looked out. "Dear, you do have a dreadful cold."
"I do not have a cold," Jones informed her.
"Oh, you're not Judy." And the window started back up.
"I wouldn't be Judy for a million," roared William John. "Martha, put that window down. The state patrol sent me out to rescue you."
Well, maybe. But a sheet of glass was some protection, and she felt she needed it. The object, a man, had sort of blond hair, soaking wet. What sane man would be out without a hat in that downpour? (He hadn't been sane since he'd lost his rain hat in the briars.)
And there were bloody gashes on his cheeks.
"Mrs. Hubbard-" my, how he bit off the words-"the road to your place is back about a hundred feet. Then turn to the right."
Should she ask him to show her exactly where and how to get there? No, her friend had warned her about keeping her doors locked. Oh, for a dog to protect her. She wasted a minute or two bemoaning the sale of her Chihauhuas. They could at least yap.
"I'll walk ahead." The voice was weary. "On the side," he added, "and play the flashlight on the road."
Martha nearly went over the side in the blackberries, because the creature had been playing the flashlight there. There, he'd bent over, and now his head had disappeared. Oh, he'd donned what she believed was called a souwester.
Wearily Martha added it up as she eased down an awful road. He'd known her name, both the Martha and the Hubbard. And how could he have known about the state patrol if they hadn't alerted him?
Fortunately she could see neither house nor orchard with any clarity in the storm. Obediently she turned when he flashed a turning. She stopped without orders. The station wagon had stuck in deep mud ruts.
William John Jones had also done some adding and subtracting as he slithered down the side of the road. No wonder Martha had put a sheet of glass between them. She must be practically paralyzed with fear after a man had come out of the dark at her.
"Mrs. Hubbard," he said firmly when the motor's protesting died,' "Judy was here Saturday. She asked me to watch for you. I have firewood ready. If you'll just come out and let me carry your bags to the house."
Well, sitting there being frightened to death was nearly as bad as being killed.
Cautiously she flipped the lock, opened the door, started out and sat down in the mud.
"It's my knees," she informed the man with dignity. "They sort of folded."
"How long have you been driving?"
"Since seven this-I mean yesterday morning." Then she added, "More or less."
"Your knees have probably forgotten they can straighten. If you don't mind, I'll carry you in. No sense both of us catching pneumonia just because we're neighbors."
Neighbors!
There was a high droplight in the kitchen. Jones pulled the string tied to its chain, spotted a chair and deposited his burden.
Then he looked at her. Darn women, anyhow. Just as he'd worked up a first-class hatred, she somehow reminded him of Adonis the day John had broken down and agreed to take him in. All she needed was long ears.
"Coffee," he announced brightly, longed for an electric pot and wondered where he'd plug it in if he had one.
"I tried to pull over on the road and wait until daylight, but the police wouldn't let me." Martha's first words were defensive. "I couldn't go to a motel. I had run out of cash and couldn't cash a check. And oh, my goodness, how can I reach Judy?"
"If you're worrying about groceries, Judy had a neighbor stock up for you. When did you eat last?"
"I carried a box lunch," she informed him, and didn't tell him she'd been starved by ten-thirty the previous morning and, except for a cup of coffee, had had nothing since.
She didn't have to. He caught the message. And this was the woman who'd paid thousands for this run-down orchard. Poor Judy.
Judy had hoped Martha would catch the full impact of this derelict house when she arrived.
Martha found herself warmed, fed rather stale bread toasted in a wood oven, strong, hot coffee, bacon, jam (homemade from Bess Henderson's larder) and more coffee.
Because there were no globes, she was walked through a living room lighted only by a fire Jones had built there and which sent a cozy flickering light.
Old Mr. Cody had liked to read in bed, so there was a bed lamp. Judy's money had provided a new mattress. Bess Henderson had provided linens and blankets until Martha's could be unpacked. The bedroom looked a dream to the exhausted Martha.
"It's nearly daylight," the neighbor man told her. "You have nothing to fear, so sleep late."
She did. When she awakened, only because she was starving again, the storm had blown away. Sunlight, which struck the hollow at the time of the year the fruit trees didn't need it, gilded the view with gold; the gold she would find to show the world she was not a complete fool.
One hundred fifty miles away, Judy was stretching, yawning, and awakening too. Between her thighs it felt wet and sticky, with a certain numbness.
Then she remembered her dream.
She smiled. Her dream life had a certain quality, and had certainly taken a sexy turn these days. Every time she closed her eyes it was a torrid love scene, cocks snapping inside her and sperm flying about. Mouths nibbling warm genitals. Tingling all over.
It was as if she was the star of an X-rated show. What was going on?
She wasn't an inhibited woman, but for her, sexual experiences were occasional treats. But her dream had set her off seducing Benjy. Usually she never said no when she meant yes, and never said yes when she meant no. Now all she seemed to want to say was yes, yes, yes.
Why, all of a sudden, these dreams of every pulsing orifice in her body being wracked by the swords of fine-looking gentlemen? Would this make her vulnerable to these men? These dreams were beauties, real nerve-pinchers.
That was the thing-in her dreams, everything worked perfectly. The men pounded into her like well-oiled machines. She always got more pleasure than in real life.
But now they were real men with real cocks, where before they were faceless composites. She discovered with Benjy that the real thing with these fantasies was awfully nice. Too nice.
When she was younger, her erotic fantasies had her loins plumbed by fat-cocked phantom lovers; blacks, movie stars, athletes; all who seemed forgettable the next day.
The night before she had dreamt of William John.
His cock was something else again. Like that handle of his axe, it almost seemed to grow fatter at the end. His prick was bulbous and reddened as she sucked it. She licked at the big head like a puppy at milk.
In her dream he was quite the stud. It began simply enough, Judy dreaming that she was walking near the hills, far from Martha's new home. She had realized that she was lost, but it didn't concern her much, even though it was getting dark.
The weather was warm and humid, and she looked forward to spending the night alone in the wilds. She clasped her hands to her bosoms and squeezed in anticipation.
But as she walked on she heard voices. Martha and William John. She found them in a clearing, kissing.
"Let's go home," he said, pulling away. She pulled him back. With a swoop he undid his pants and laid out his big sausage. He laughed. "I had to see how horny you really were," he said. Then he took off his clothing.
As soon as he did, Martha was on her knees in front of him, stroking his thick shaft. From her hiding place, Judy could see everything.
He held her by the head and forced her forward. Martha wasn't that keen on sucking his cock, but William John wanted it badly.
She took his shaft in her mouth and he began working his hips, forcing the entire length of his hard prick in. She seemed to be gagging, but she was also enjoying it very much. Judy could tell.
Judy was hot herself. Watching Martha and William John was not nearly as much fun as taking part would be. She walked into the clearing.
"Judy!" Martha exclaimed, standing up quickly. William John was still smiling.
"I'm sorry for the interruption," Judy said. "I was out walking-"
"Get over here," William John said. Judy grinned at him, stripped off her clothing, and knelt in front of him. She took his shaft into her mouth and sucked eagerly.
Martha was laughing softly. She stood next to William John and kissed him on the mouth while his hands fondled her large tits.
Then she exchanged positions with Judy.
Judy wanted to show Martha how to do her thing on that gorgeous, bulging penis that William John had hanging from his crotch.
She started sucking it in by slurping it with her tongue and pursing her wet lips around the skin. She would pull up and wet the whole section, then taking him down even further. His uniquely fat-headed cock filled her throat, and Judy felt she might suffocate.
She wanted to take it in, to show Martha. But Martha had a surprise for her. In between her humid thighs she felt a head crawl, and there below and into her slipped Martha's burning tongue. Judy shivered at the touch, but it felt so damned good that she just sat her steaming slit onto Martha's mouth.
Martha chewed and explored, licking the lady with the passionately soft knowledge that another woman has. The way her tongue slipped around the spongy sheath had Judy rippling with love lightning, and then Martha moved on to her clit.
At the inflamed bud Martha did an expert job, lightly licking, blowing, and kissing it until the thing was a nerve center for her whole body, each lick or bite sending off quakes that rocked her bod.
That also made her wild enough to swallow Jones, and when his fat pecker slipped in her throat she flailed wildly in orgasm. She fell away from the pair heaving, letting Martha take over.
Martha was there first, so she got first choice. She told William John to lie down on his back, which he did. Then she told Judy to sit on his fat prick, facing forward.
Judy-overjoyed that Martha was taking her into account-gripped William John's sturdy member as she climbed atop him and guided it to her cunt.
Then Martha squatted over William John's face, and he held her by the hips as she lowered her hot center onto his mouth.
He tongued Martha's hot cunt while Judy bounced up and down on his firm erection. It was wonderful and when Martha reached out and stroked Judy's lovely tits, Judy felt a fresh wave of pleasure sweep over her.
It couldn't go on for long-it was much too exciting to last.
She felt the sudden throbbing of his prick in her cunt and knew that he was going to shoot. He groaned and Martha wagged her ass in his face just as he poured it to Judy, and his tongue did the trick for Martha and she cried out in sharp pleasure.
And then Judy felt her climax roaring through her loins, the pleasure seemingly doubled because of the unique circumstances of the scene.
William John lay exhausted on the ground. Both Martha and Judy were still quivering and excited. They eyed each other.
Martha spread open her thighs to reveal a slobbering wet cunt with thin little lips and a seemingly huge hole. Her whole groin seemed to be a target of wet pink sheath. It sweated and shone in the moonlight.
Judy didn't really know what to do. She lay back and felt Martha crawl over and start kneading her firm tits. She twisted the nips with her fingers, running the little knobs in between them. Then she did a job on each tit bud with her mouth, not unlike the caresses she'd bestowed minutes ago on Judy's clit. It made her weak and dizzy.
Martha slobbered her way around Judy's chest until it was red and flushed, then traced a trail downward to renew her vaginal and clitoral chewing. Her mouth spun around Judy's groin with adept aim, slicing down the slit but nicking at the clit as she covered the fertile, slitted plain with her dripping tongue.
Suddenly, but two inches over Judy's face was Martha's big, wet hole. Judy looked at the pulsing, pulpy tissues, and suddenly a drop of juice fell into her mouth. The taste was okay.
Judy lifted her mouth to the hole and started to lick it. Meanwhile below her she felt Martha mining deep with her tongue to dig out William John's pearly load. It felt violently and pleasurably wicked and depraved.
Judy liked the feel of Martha's pussy-fat and soft, like pillows heaped together. Her tongue slid down into the womb and plumbed the tastes and depths. It amazed her how sweet it all felt to her tongue.
Martha chewed back at her hungrily, eagerly. It wasn't long before Judy flew around the twist into another giant wave of orgasmic convulsions. This prompted her to latch on tight to Martha's clit and wriggle it fast and furious with her tongue.
"OOOOOOOOHHHHHHHHHHH!!!! CHEW ME REAL GOOOOOODDD!!!" cried Martha. "RIGHT THERE!!!"
Underneath the squirming thighs of her sister, Judy let out soft, fast whimpers. "OOOO!!! OOOO!!!! OOOO!!!!" She sounded and wiggled like a crazy lady.
Martha's hot breath tickled Judy's ultrasensitized slit. "CHEEEEEWWWWW MEEEEEEEEE!!!!" she groaned.
The two lay there chewing away in a writhing embrace until they felt the boom come down. Martha, the gal on top, suddenly felt something fat and long fall across the crack of her ass. It was William John in all his erect, pulsating glory.
His shaft slipped up and down the crack. Martha felt her bum pucker as he slipped past it. The brownish-pink little flower grew excited.
But Jones took his sweet time, just rushing past the tight passage with a little nudge to soothe and massage the grasping flesh. It worked, and soon the sphincter gaped and undrew as he passed by, and in one slide he just shoved in and buried the fat head of his pecker almost to the ridge.
Getting past that fat, round, fleshy ridge presented a problem. Getting this far was okay, but with the tight dryness of her ass he didn't know how he was ever going to get further.
It was Judy who had a solution. When she looked up to see that bulging peckerhead slapping and sliding above her, all she could do was lick her lips. Now that it lay lodged in Martha's ass, she decided to give them both a thrill.
She moved up and encircled the whole glans with her tongue, splaying aside with wet licks the tight chute and moistening the taut skin of his manhood.
Both parties groaned in appreciation. Martha renewed her vigor at Judy's clit. That made Judy cover the whole back door area with gallons of saliva, and soon William John shoved himself in further.
That got Martha up into sexual heaven. "OOOOHHHHHH!" she cried. "SHOVE THAT FAT THING IN THERE!!!"
Judy crawled out of the way in time to avoid having two flying balls slap her face. Jones jabbed into Martha, forcing the tight flesh to admit his hugeness. She screamed.
CHAPTER FIVE
The scream was what woke Martha. Then she lay in bed pondering her dream.
Then the phone got her out of bed. She shivered because it was William John. Then she shuddered when she heard the story of Martha the night before.
Martha was running true to form. Judy would have to batten her financial hatches and weather the storm.
Work was no better. Benjy came in to see her writing copy that was not up to form. He could see it in the jabbing of her red pencil, her hasty cuts and sighs.
She was extolling the virtues of a car. Under a banner that read "MATCH YOUR CAR TO YOUR INCOME," she added a kicker: "Fool your friends and neighbors."
But the blurb that turned Stayton's lips white held Benjy's eyes with fascination.
"A mobile casino. De Carlo has everything but the roulette wheel. Built-in cocktail bar, beauty bar, and in the glove compartment a loaded revolver with chart to show you where to shoot when you've shot your wad."
He was ready for the next line: "Live Dangerously," when a strangled cry sounded.
"Judy!"
Wearily she looked up into burning eyes, then looked down. "Oh, I gave you the wrong sheet. Here."
Benjy looked over Stayton's shoulder. Not nearly so intriguing, he thought. Many of the same phrases, but adroitly realigned.
The steam went out of Stayton's exasperation in a long sigh. "Someday," he informed her darkly, "one of these trial sheets is going to get away from us."
He left. Benjy remained, looking wistful. "How about lunch?"
Judy was tempted; then she looked again. "Benjy, something tells me you've just spent our son's college funds. What did you buy?"
He expounded on the glories of the fishing craft. She learned they were no longer boats but craft. Also, that Benjy could double his commission on sales once he had customers off on a long weekend.
"I question that," Judy said thoughtfully. "In this business you build a man up; you don't beat him down to sell him. Has the craft a washer and dryer?"
"A what?"
Judy shrugged. "Just looking toward the future. When we lose our home and the creditors are hounding us through the streets, we could sail out beyond the three-mile limit.
"We might be out a long, long time, and you can't wash clothes decently in salt water, by hand."
He gave her a lecture on negative thinking, then brought up the subject of lunch again. When he named the spot she shook her head. That meant he was back down to a place where he had to sign a chit.
And she was in a mood for hamburger, the cheap kind, without trimmings, at the drive-in. Benjy couldn't afford to be caught at the drive-in. Judy could. She had earned the distinction of being eccentric.
"Martha wafted in, near dawn," she reported. "I'm waiting for a call. She may sleep late, but I'm afraid she'll put one through before the bank closes."
Benjy was happy to learn it had been "that Jones fellow" who'd found Martha and deposited her at the orchard house. It was a first step in their plan of marrying her off to him.
"I've never met anyone with as little business sense as Martha," he stated just before he turned away.
And Judy, chin in hand, watched him go. Imagine having two of them in your life: a run-down orchard and a plush fishing craft in the same week.
Judy sat on, awaiting Martha's call.
One o'clock was Judy's normal lunch hour. But there was nothing normal left in this dizzy world.
Edna Morrison came in, sporting a new fur jacket. "Isn't it a love?" she demanded, twirling before Judy. "Oh, and did you hear what Benjy did? Imagine going to that length for a contract. Not that we all won't benefit from the craft."
"Contract?" That was what he'd wanted to tell her.
"But darling, you'll be the one to do copy on the brochure." She left, and idly Judy's pencil began. "Be Crafty. Buy a Kredit Kraft.
"Take your prospects out where they can't walk away from you."
Angrily she threw the pad in the waste dolly, retrieved it and disposed of the top page.
But the pencil went on enumerating the advantages of a fishing craft.
Two o'clock and no call. Mentally Judy added trimmings to the hamburger. If she didn't fare forth now, she'd want a five-course meal and have no time to eat it.
Martha can wait, she decided.
Ah, but Martha wasn't waiting. The house, the orchard, the land were the first assets she'd ever owned completely.
She did climb the hill to find William John, or rather his telephone. She needed to have her station wagon pulled out; above all, she needed an immediate delivery of a truckload of gravel.
Fortunately William John had left his tractor below, but he agreed gravel was a most sensible idea. He didn't look forward to maneuvering the Hubbard cars in and out all winter.
And he had to commend Martha for good thinking. Maybe she wasn't as addlebrained as Judy had indicated.
She looked different. She had black hair, brown eyes, was a bit suntanned and had good color and very sensible clothes. Being a man he didn't realize those clothes cost five times as much as fripperies. Pretty, too.
A little reluctantly he turned over the last of the money Judy had left.
"Until I have my bank affairs straightened out-" Martha told him, and he assumed she meant until her account was transferred.
Martha intended to go to a bank, but not just yet. She sent the station wagon scurrying downhill to the old highway and along it until the first small city appeared.
Of course at a bank she wouldn't have to pay as much interest on what she planned to borrow, but bankers were so weird. The questions they asked were downright personal, and my goodness, how they dug into a person's past.
Not that there was anything wrong with her past, morally speaking. Nor did she owe any really sizable bills either past or present; just a few little ones here and there.
But if she asked to borrow money, would they come out to her orchard and check? Of course they would. The difficulty with bankers was that they had no vision.
They wouldn't be able to see the old house as it would look once she was through with it; nor the orchard, boughs bending under the mammoth crop they would produce this year.
No, they'd want to know about past harvests. They couldn't lift their eyes beyond plain black and white figures.
And as Judy wasn't there to tell her that was why banks remained in business and were safe repositories for any extra money one had saved, Martha went shopping for a quick loan. High interest? Well, what was interest? Just something one paid like, say, a telephone bill; annoying but expected.
She had discussed the matter with her Reno friend and been told there were credit companies that loaned on next season's crops. The money, naturally, had to be used for pruning, ploughing, spraying.
Naturally and in due time. Meanwhile she must have what that nice Mr. Jones called a pressure pump for the well, and see a plumber about decent bathroom and kitchen sinks and, while she was about it, linoleum tile for the kitchen.
She felt very happy about that. A dimwitted woman would have waited. Think of the mess of having a new sink put in after the tile laid. No, her mind was racing rapidly.
Thinking of plumbing made her think of a bath. It would be foolish to spend good money for a motel just to take a bath. She might well spend the night. She'd pick up a few things she'd need, have dinner at that nice spot on the city limits.
She'd be in a brighter frame of mind to talk to a credit company in the morning.
Judy slept fitfully until near dawn.
Then her sleep deepened, and she began to dream.
At first, it was Benjy.
She had walked into his apartment to find him standing naked and erect. With her clothes still on she fell to her knees and licked at his hard cock, sucking the tip and jabbing her tongue into the sperm hole. It made him twitch and quiver with excitement.
"I LOVE YOUR BIG FAT ROD!!!" she cried out, her mouth slathering affection on the sword.
That humming of her cries thrilled him more, the way it tickled at his skin. Benjy scooped up her hair and pushed her down his bulging length.
"Swallow it, baby," he urged. "That's what makes me feel real good!"
She responded by taking it to the hilt and right down her throat. She then sucked off with eagerness, pursing her face like a pussy to then let him back in again.
"That's great, baby," moaned Benjy. "Just suck a little harder."
She worked on him like a bobbing bird, until she had his cock spitting jizm through the air and into her waiting mouth.
Then she got up and followed Benjy to bed.
As they neared the bedroom door Benjy held her up for a moment. "There's something else," he said.
"What is it?"
"I'm not the only one who feels this way about you. There are a couple of. other guys willing to make the same deal."
What a strange conversation, Judy thought. "So what? What's that got to do with right now?"
"Well," Benjy said. "One of them's in the bedroom."
Judy laughed. What was going on?
She pushed open the bedroom door and walked in.
William John was sitting up in bed, naked, aroused, and smiling. His brown hand was wrapped around his incredibly thick cock.
"Been waiting for you a while," he said.
"I must say I've never heard of two more cooperative men," Judy said. "I always thought men were insanely jealous-what's with you two?"
Benjy answered. "There's no point in that," he said. "It's obvious that neither one of us has much of a chance with you. After all, Stayton's got his eye on you, and he's not only your boss, he's a wealthy man. So we got together and figured this was the best possible deal we could work out."
Judy's eyes were on John's thick cock. "God," she said. "Let me get undressed!"
She stripped quickly, as did Benjy. She could hardly wait to get her hands on that thick shaft.
Judy had never felt so aroused in her life. As soon as she was naked, she leapt on the bed, crouched between William John's legs, and gripped his big prick.
She leaned forward and sucked eagerly on the glistening head of his cock. William John held her head in his big powerful hands and talked to her softly as she sucked.
Judy had forgotten all about Benjy.
But he had gotten behind her and was on his knees, working his thick cock between her asscheeks. When she felt that warm thickness penetrating her, she sighed and reached around and tugged open her cheeks.
Her mouth was filled with warm, hard flesh, and as she sucked she felt the hardness pressing into her from behind. She had never been involved with two men before, and she loved it!
She could feel that Benjy was at least halfway in, and his hands were on her hips, gripping tightly.
William John still held her head between his hands as he fed his massive prick into her mouth.
Judy wondered what they must think of her, but she didn't really care. After all, this was their idea, wasn't it? She was merely along for the ride.
And what a ride it was! She groaned with pleasure as Benjy slammed all the way into her. She didn't think that he had it in him, but there he was, giving her the ride of her life!
Judy couldn't hold out any longer. She groaned once again, reached around and felt where Benjy was ramming into her, and began coming so strongly that it seemed like a few minutes passed before she knew where she was.
Now she was lying on her back in the middle of the bed. Benjy and William John were out of the room. When they returned, William John carried in a drink for her.
"You two are great!" Judy said.
William John grinned at her. "You're not so bad yourself," he said.
Benjy sat at the foot of the bed. "I've never felt such pleasure in my life," he said. "I think we should make this a regular thing."
"Of course!" Judy agreed. "I think we should make it more than that-how about making it a permanent thing?"
"I think that's illegal," William John said. "But it's worth considering."
Judy rubbed herself between her legs. William John saw her do it, and he pulled away her hand and replaced it with his mouth.
While he was tonguing her, Benjy stepped to the head of the bed and fed his erect cock into her open, waiting mouth.
Judy found this more pleasurable than anything that had come before.
She couldn't even think because of the hot pleasure coursing through her body.
It didn't matter if what they were doing was considered perverted or anything else. It was good hot pleasure, and that was all that Judy wanted.
As she sucked she reached down and tousled William John's hair, and he raised up and sucked her fingers and then moved forward, his body now between her legs.
She continued sucking Benjy.
Now he was thrusting into her-William John was larger than Benjy was, and his cock seemed to stretch her to the breaking point.
There was no sense to it-it didn't have to make sense-pleasure rarely did. All Judy knew was that this was what was missing from her life, and now that emptiness was filled.
William John was thrusting deeper now, all the way in. She could feel his heavy balls banging into the soft flesh of her backside.
She opened her eyes and saw that Benjy's prick had gotten bigger than ever-it was all she could do to fit it into her mouth.
But what she liked was the two-way action. It had never happened before, but it would certainly happen again. Two were much better than one!
Then she was coming, the heat and the pleasure overwhelming her.
And when both men let go at exactly the same time she felt as if she were drowning in hot, pure cream.
There was one more bit of two-way action she wanted to try, but to do so she had to revive both flagging men. In her mouth she felt Benjy fall flaccid, while William John's big peter hung in a mushy half-erection.
She knew just what she had to do. She laid both men beside her and grabbed their pulsing peckers with either hand .Between them she kneeled, pulling and fondling the fleshy swords for the longest time, giving them their needed rest and comfort then stimulating the two shafts to get rock-hard once again. As they grew she shifted her face from one to the other, licking and nibbling in a warm, wet way.
"All right, you two well-hung studs," she growled. "Now's the time for you to really prove your stuff!"
"How's that?" asked a panting Benjy.
"I want this cock," she said wiggling his steely pecker, "right up inside my hot pussy. And this one," she now wiggled Jones, "is to go in my ass."
Both men responded to her bluntness, stretching their foreskins to the maximum, dying to violate her dually. Of course Judy was breathless from it all.
She lay between them and they made a sexy human sandwich.
Jones crawled up to her ass and just shoved himself in, starting a bout of jabbing that slipped open her sphincter with persistence. The flesh seemed jolted by his thrusts into taking him in. Once inside her, the massiveness of William John's bulging manhood made Judy feel hot and full.
So as the other fat pecker slipped into her juicy honeypot, Judy found herself snapped into wildness. Her body felt torn by the sensation, as if some giant cock were drilling out some huge hole in her whole bottom torso.
The men made it worse by setting up a rhythmic game that was relentless. Jones had to push in and pull out slowly, lest he pain her puckered bum into shutting tight the warm hole he so savored. But after his long ticklish draw out, she then felt a fat stab into her womb from Benjy.
Benjy went quickly, but his size was so immense in her caving womb that Judy wondered if she could take the two in at once. Parallel jabs might just tear her apart.
"OOOOOOOO!!! JUST KEEP FUCKING ME LIKE THAT, YOU MONSTERS!!!" she cried.
They worked her at that rate until her whole bottomside felt like oatmeal. It slushed and tingled, and she almost couldn't tell who was jabbing her when. All she knew was a continual sensation of cock slicing tissue.
She screamed as her orgasmic pleasure came on in never-ending waves. The men just tried to keep her steadily rising.
"OOOOOHHHH YOU FUCKERS!" she yelled. "DO ME GOOOODDDD!!!"
Suddenly she looked up beside her. Yet another rod flashed in her face, begging to be sucked.
It was Slayton, nude as the rest of them, come from out of nowhere. All she could do was suck in the meaty member and add to the decadent frenzy.
Judy felt like the commonest of whores, debased and debauched by three men. She had visions of a whole pool of come spilling from all three to cover her body with warm stickiness.
"MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM!!!" she groaned with the fat pecker in her mouth. She writhed her whole body in approval of what the men were doing.
Now Jones and Benjy decided it was time to really attack. On a particularly simmering pull outward, the backdoor man aligned himself with Benjy and they both shoved apart her spongy tissues at once.
A giant cock a foot around was all she could think of. The giant cock drilling up inside her.
She bumped and bucked on the men, and she felt hands all over her, rubbing and grabbing her tits and massaging her puckered cheeks around a fat cock. It was all she could do to stay conscious.
Then the two men in her groin spat cannonballs of steaming sperm into her at the same time. She recoiled and dropped Stayton's hot pecker from her mouth.
"OOOOOHHHHHHH MYYYYYYYY GOOOOODDDDD!!!!" she yelled. "I'M BURNING INSIDE WITH YOUR COME!!!"
Then she gripped Stayton's member and milked while she sucked madly at the bulging head. Soon she felt the twitches as his pearly juices pulsed up his loins and into her mouth.
But after the first shot she pulled off and jerked him off onto her chest. Then she fell off all three men and rolled about on the bed, slathering sticky, burning semen about her body.
Suddenly the men were gone and Martha was there. She was licking at the flat of Judy's stomach, sucking up the sheet of cum juice that covered the downy skin. Then she sucked at her tits, pulling in as much of the gushy globes as she could inside her mouth.
What was more erotic was the way she moved to Judy's puss. This time she did a total chewing rim job that had the fluttering folds heaving with electric shocks.
Then they were all over her again-Martha and the three men. Pricks, lips, and tongues pushed and darted all about her body. She knew not what happened where, but she did know that every erogenous zone she had was being fed by them. Her body went into sexual shock.
Judy awoke in a cold sweat. Below her quim was a wet puddle on the sheet. Her body tingled as if it had been fucked, and wanted it again.
Judy's day at work luckily proceeded with no rude interruptions from her sister. But when she arrived home, the phone was ringing as she walked in the door.
It was William John. First he told her how her crazy sister had ordered a load of gravel dumped in the driveway. Then he explained how he searched around for her, finding Martha's car parked in a nearby motel parking lot, filled with rolls of wallpaper that consumed the whole back of the station wagon.
Judy thought that this was a hell of a way to get William John married off to Martha. By now he must think her a certified loony. Then came the telegram. Martha had been good enough to wire her that she'd be in town the next day. Judy shuddered at the thought.
The whole next day was crazed with her sister around. Then Martha left the apartment and disappeared. By the next morning Judy was worried about her, wondering where she was.
Then William John called one last time. A moving van was at the house ready to unload Martha's things. All they needed was to be paid.
CHAPTER SIX
"William John," she began anxiously, "I think Martha's gone for the day. If you don't mind, pay it. I'll run up right away and take care of it. I need to get out."
Judy scrambled together a box lunch of sorts. She wasn't hungry, but she wouldn't have time to stop en route. And she was beginning to be afraid something might stop William John from paying the freighter.
"Martha's clothes are in that load," she reasoned, "and her television and goodness knows what else. She's more apt to go out and buy all new than pay off storage and cartage, and that would run to ten times as much."
Television, she groaned as she got underway. Down in that hollow, installation of an antenna that would bring in the picture would cost a mint.
She passed the freighter at the top of the road. She learned it had been stuck, even though William John had done his best to spread the load of gravel. An interstate vehicle carried more than one Martha Hubbard's load. They had had to unload and load again.
Judy wrote a check, with William John looking on, his brow furrowed.
"Judy hadn't you better let me collect direct from Mrs. Hubbard?"
Judy kept right on writing.
"She said she'd be depositing nineteen hundred early next week," he continued.
And Judy had quit writing. Her pen had skidded.
"Who fed the dogs last night?"
"There aren't any," William John reported. "She said she'd had to sell the breeders with the kennels."
Judy went on writing. If Martha had sold her beloved personal pets, that nineteen hundred wasn't cash left over from the property exchange.
"I'll make a deal," he continued. "I'll take the check and hold it. Something tells me I'll have an easier time collecting than you. Or, Judy, did you by any chance inherit from your brother?"
"No," she sighed, "my brother was an attorney. He specialized in wills. I guess, compared to his clients, he had so little to leave he didn't draw one for himself. But he didn't expect to be killed."
And then, in a final desperate effort to picture Martha back as the type of woman he'd want to marry, she went all out.
"You see, I was underage when our parents died. My brother was ten years older, so he inherited. The folks knew he would always do what was best for me.
"That's basically what is the matter with Martha. She's desperately anxious to invest in something that will assure a living income for me. As she never had to work, her judgment isn't always the best."
William John chuckled. Because Martha was really working for Judy, Judy felt she had to stand around and pick up the pieces. Well, he had an answer to that.
Meanwhile, "When Rosa Padroni heard you were coming, she started cooking. You'll have to come up for lunch, which will be dinner."
She couldn't refuse. Besides, she wanted to get out of the gloomy hollow which presented so many future problems to her.
Rosa Padroni had her arms out. She was a good head shorter than Judy, but went into them like a homing pigeon after a storm-tossed flight.
William John had looked on, amazed. Rosa had all the grimness of an immigrant whose first husband had died soon after they had been admitted to the States. She'd raised a brood of children before she married the second time. She still had not time for "the foolish."
He was diverted by the pounding at the door, went out, closed it behind him and was soon heading back down to the hollow.
Martha had started her bathroom. That is, she'd had the pressure pump delivered, along with a plumber to lay pipes. He'd be happy to work Saturday afternoon. Double pay, y'know. Oh yes, Mrs. Hubbard had arranged this. She'd said she need not be present.
On a hunch, William John lifted the hood of Judy's car, located an extra key in a magnetic holder and proceeded to drive the car to his house.
The longer Judy remained in ignorance, the more rest she'd have. Just what Martha was going to live on after the nineteen hundred whisked through her fingers, he didn't like to contemplate.
Martha was considering the same problem but not in the same way. Martha was being entertained with deference. Instead of failing, their Martha had maneuvered a coup. She was owner, complete owner, of a fruit ranch. It was a fabulous place, and everybody knew the ridiculous price of fruit.
"There will be plenty for all of you," Martha said happily, and thought it was a heavenly way to pay off past favors.
But then Martha had never seen people accustomed to paying from three to five dollars a box for such delicacies turned loose to pick them for nothing.
She was sorry, but nobody could visit the house until it was decorated. They all knew how tempera mental a decorator could be-quite capable of walking off with his crew. But she could have them out, she thought, a few at a time, when the trees were in blossom.
That meant feeding them. Well, she'd establish credit. And surely there'd be some money left over. She'd pay just so much down on each project. Everyone in that area knew ranchers were carried until the current crop came in.
Judy was having a wonderful time. She felt so "cared for." Automatically she had set the table and helped Rosa Padroni serve. When William John thoughtfully delivered her car, she beamed.
She really overate. With each dish Rosa would stand over her with "You like?" and she did.
"Next time, you let me know, I make ravioli. Three days she take."
She plopped down a dish Judy couldn't face but did. It was sheer ambrosia.
"Your sister's orchard, these apricot. More taste."
William John explained, "When we can, we buy fruit from the Cody place for drying. More flavor."
Judy went to her car, protesting at the food being carried to it, but was told that was a country custom. And happily she drove off. She'd learned something good about the orchard.
William John watched her leave, then turned when Rosa asked, "What this merger mart? Miss Judy say her sister's papa he was one before he die."
"Oh, merger martyr." William John's spirits fell. He'd hoped Martha Hubbard had parents to underwrite her venture if the going got too rough.
"That's where big companies combine, merge to cut down running expenses. Men get squeezed out top and bottom because not so many are needed."
Rosa shrugged. "They save money, they no care."
"They can't save, Rosa, if they're executives. They have to rent the best houses in the best districts."
"So they buy."
"They can't buy, because they're subject to transfer. They have to entertain at home."
He told her of a friend who had unexpected company and had dared serve meat loaf. The guest said it was the first dinner that had rested easy on his innards, but the friend had received a bitter letter from his general sales manager.
"The guest had raved about the meat loaf. Now the man was told from then on he was not to serve cheap food to top brass; he was to take them out to dine at the proper places."
"This America I love," Rosa pronounced, "but sometimes I thinka she crazy. All the time pretend to got to make the show. Me, I like to get and keep."
"Not all, Rosa; just a few, the ones you hear about. But take Miss Hubbard. I imagine she makes a fine salary, yet look at the car she drives. No pretense." Rosa beamed.
Judy had lots of salary saved. Rosa intended it should remain in the bank.
"I get Luigi to do the pruning. Luigi wait till the crop for the money." ' "Couldn't have a better man," William John agreed thoughtfully, and began to line up a promotion campaign on Martha.
He went down early the next morning, hoping to forestall all-out improvements on the house by presenting the freight bill.
"Oh, dear," cried Martha, "why did you pay that? I would have taken care of it when the money was deposited."
"Plus double handling and storage," he reminded her, then explained carefully, "and while you waited, I imagine you'd have had to purchase duplicates to see you through."
From that he went into pruning.
"Oh, that. She waved an airy hand. "I'll prune after the trees blossom. So much prettier, and my friends can have simply armloads to carry home."
"I can't think of a quicker way to kill your trees." Then he went into a simple explanation, ending by saying Luigi Padroni would prune and accept part of the apricot and prune crop as payment.
My, how relieved she seemed.
Luigi, driven by Rosa, was pruning when the loan company's field man drove down for an appraisal. Luigi, again impressed by Rosa, went all out to explain this orchard had the best-tasting fruit in the whole valley. He himself grew apples. Always he came there for other fruits.
Martha was brisk and charming. While the loan was to be on the crop, the house and the land were the company's collateral.
Crops could get nipped in the bud by an untimely frost, or cooked by a furious sun. This year anything could happen to the weather.
This Martha Hubbard seemed enterprising, the field man thought. The bathroom was finished except for painting the upper walls and the kitchen. Two good selling points if his company had to take the place over.
Good roof (the last owner had had to re-roof) and sturdy foundations. Old houses seemed better built, and this was an old one.
Martha apologized for the other rooms. She knew a bit about decorating. And he assumed she would use her spare time up a ladder, putting that knowledge to practical use.
And the loan went through. If Martha Hubbard's orchard didn't produce a crop, the company could sell the place for what they held against it.
Martha promptly went up to use the telephone at William John's. She must have one installed, and the company was being derelict in its duty. Something about a line being run at so much a foot. It was ridiculous.
"Did you discuss this with Judy?" William John ventured.
"The silliest thing," Martha confided. "I went down to have a cozy weekend with Judy, and guess what happened? I let a few friends know I was in town, and I caught only a glimpse of my little sister-in-law."
"Hm," said William John.
And him, Judy had thought when Martha telephoned from her last stop to say she simply had to hurry on home.
"She's up to something. She didn't want to talk to me, answer questions."
Judy went to work the next morning in a chastened mood. She had to change her attitude toward her work, be grateful she had such a well-paying position. And it was such a beautiful office.
She could be working in a gloomy factory with ear-splitting sounds, making half what she received now. Instead she worked in a quiet, low building, the walls painted to induce eye comfort. There was shrubbery outside, potted plants and truly wonderful co-workers. Take Benjy.
"Why so low?" he asked.
"Thoughtful," she corrected him. "Just appreciating my good luck in working here. How was your weekend?"
He was off. He talked her right into her office and was still describing, with gestures, the wonder of owning a craft of his own when Stanley Stayton came in.
"Either of you any ideas on moving campers?"
Now there was a thought. If she bought a camper she could save on rent. Maybe all people in her business should have one, as sort of a shelter should a process server remove their split-level.
But that was negative thinking. "I heard a couple of women fussing because their husbands wouldn't take them hunting," she mused. "How about: Buy a Camper For The Family Christmas Tree; look forward to fishing and camping with loved ones near to share your fun."
"Wonderful." His fingers snapped again.
"Jack overbought, and the hunting season's about over. Foresight; buy for next year; a Christmas present. Give me a rough draft."
She turned out such a beautiful piece of copy Stayton thought maybe he should marry her to insure her remaining with the firm.
"Why do you look so pleased?" Benjy asked darkly. "Thinking about that rancher, I'll bet."
"You are so right," Judy agreed happily. "I'm seeing him come in from a hard day's work in his orchard, sitting down and trying to find a railing on which to rest his feet."
"No railing?"
"With Martha his wife?" she cried, and Benjy was mollified.
But Martha was one up on her. Martha, Judy might have thought, was getting practice. She'd learned Luigi was a cement man before he'd retired to an orchard, and Luigi had been taken from his pruning job to do something Martha considered of greater importance.
Down would come the ugly narrow verandas and in their place rise broad terraces, with maybe a pergola on the east side.
She could just see the housewarming party she would give: the orchard in full blossom, and on the terrace gay tables and lovely lounging chairs and all of her friends cooing and asking why they hadn't thought of something like this?
But Luigi was proving stubborn. Martha had studied Italian, but to every carefully intoned phrase she received only, "Che cosa dice?"
"Now I do the orchard," he insisted; "then I do the parterre."
Having a woman like this to handle, he went to a friend in town and returned with a carefully worded document to which Martha affixed her signature. And Luigi called in a chattering group of men, all of whom scrambled up and down ladders like monkeys.
Luigi said nothing of this to Rosa until the day before Thanksgiving. Then having asked a question of Martha and not receiving a right answer, he went home to erupt before his wife.
Rosa trotted out to her car and went bucketing uphill to William John's telephone. He wasn't home but he had Judy's numbers, both of them, pasted on the telephone book.
"Judy, Rosa Padroni. You come talk to your sister? Only fifty dollar an acre Luigi charge when seventy-five it is. Men he bring in to prune fast so he lay the piazza with the cement. Now she no pay. You come make her pay the men?"
Judy grasped her desk with one hand. Fifty dollars an acre; twenty acres. And this was owed to Rosa's husband for men he had hired.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Judy sat for a moment, stricken, then looked up. Stanley Stayton stood in the doorway.
"If it wasn't the Padronis-" she exclaimed.
"An emergency of some kind, Judy?" He glanced around. Everyone within hearing distance was watching.
"You'd better come into my office. Maybe we can work this out."
Maybe, she thought hopefully, followed him in, sank into a chair and burst out, "I have to have a thousand dollars cash, and the bank is closed, and I've less than three hundred in my checking account."
"It's that important?"
"Think of those poor men without money for their Thanksgiving if I don't-"
Ah, the key phrase.
"You're not being coherent, Judy. If you'll begin at the beginning-"
She did, and when she was through Stayton nodded. "I think I can arrange a loan for you. I know Hammil of your bank quite well." He'd co-sign, and have Judy under control for a long time.
"But I don't need a loan," she protested. "I need only to reach my safety deposit box and then cash a bond."
At that, she'd be indebted to him. Stayton pulled the telephone to him and dialed the bank.
"Judy," he said thoughtfully when he was through, "I think it would be advisable for me to run you up there. We can make better time in my car, and you do have some work to finish."
Before she was through trying to explain Martha to Stayton, his sympathies were all with Martha. She had been Martha Dane, had she not? Everyone (that is everyone who counted) had been amazed when she had married Hal Hubbard. He was not quite U-C; just middle class, though with prospects. But Martha was upper class enough to carry him.
"Judy," he reproved as his car shot across bridges and up freeways, literally airborne, "Martha has vision. You're taking a very plebian attitude toward this."
"If you mean I don't plunge into debt without money to meet my obligations, then I'm glad I'm a plebian," she flared.
"No, no. Martha has made an investment. Naturally she has to have the orchard in prime condition to reap the best harvest. You wait; she'll have a proper explanation."
Perhaps she had, but she wasn't there to give it. Fortunately Stayton had seen service in Italy and was able to comprehend the buzz of words hurled at him.
"Your sister-in-law," he interpreted to Judy, "seems to be spending the holiday weekend with the Hamiltons. The Curtis Hamiltons," he added, savoring the name. "She had to leave, not knowing we'd be here."
One of the younger men described her method of leaving. It had to do with a winged rodent who flew at night and seemed heading for a region not mentioned in his society in front of ladies.
"But how do I know what to pay them?" Judy worried. "I show," Luigi offered eagerly, and drew forth his copy of the contract.
"Me, I don't care. Them-" he waved at his crew-"need the money."
The men had departed when a fusillade of sound proclaimed the advent of Rosa Padroni.
"See, I show you," she urged with only a brief nod at Stayton.
They went to the house, Rosa waving to the new pressure pump en route. She took them into the bathroom, the kitchen, the dining room and the living room, arms waving.
"She has to pay the retain'," Rosa explained. "That nineteen hundred dollars, she go fast."
Stayton was nodding solemnly. "She's making a charming place of this, Judy, but perhaps her expenditures should be curtailed the first year. I suggest you take a mortgage on the property."
Rosa Padroni's arms shot straight up. "Already they lean on the place. First leaner he's crop credit; second leaner-"
She meant lien, of course. Judy's spirits dropped with each one listed.
And to think she had meant simply to step out and let Martha face this fiasco alone. Well, she would from now on. If tradesmen and artisans were fools enough to give credit where credit wasn't due, let them collect.
Fools enough! She was out fourteen hundred dollars herself. Now she'd have to see it through to win back her savings.
"I am sure if you talk to your sister-in-law-"
"Talk to her?" Judy's voice sounded like a toothpaste commercial. "I can't get within talking range of her. Rosa, did she know I was coming?"
"I think she made the-how you say-bolt when these men, they demand the money she's not got."
Rosa nearly wept over Luigi's acceptance of his fee. They'd planned to take most of it in fruit for drying.
"Just be glad you have the cash," Judy sighed. "The way things are going, somebody else may own this before the fruit is set."
Stayton was striding around, looking the place over, standing off and viewing it.
It was not, he confessed, his "cup of tea," but lovely.
Lovely it was, with a winter sun drenching it in an apricot reflection from overhead clouds.
But that apricot meant it was sunset, and she still had a layout to finish. Why did holidays ever come on a Thursday?
Judy pl-edged Rosa to secrecy. She was not to let Mrs. Hubbard know the men had been paid (not that that did any good; one workman returned for pruning shears he'd left in a crotch of a tree and told all).
As Stayton's big car swished in to a stop on the secondary highway, another car neither so large, so new nor so beautiful turned in on the road they had left.
There was a startled exchange of glances, a lifting of hands, a "Hi." But by then Stayton was on his way.
"That man looked familiar," he observed.
"Urn," mused Judy, "William John-"
"William John?" he asked. "Oh, you mean Bill Jones of Jones and Hadler. Haven't seen him for four years, at least."
Before Judy could gather her wits about her, Stayton had made the crossroad and was heading up the ramp to the freeway. No back roads for him.
Deftly he cut into the freeway traffic. Judy breathed a little hard; then, as she caught her breath to ask her question, he settled down to a swift cruising speed, center lane, and began a lecture.
"Judy, we must do something about your attitude. Your perspective handicaps us."
"Perspective?" She was getting ready to do battle. "Now I will concede Martha doesn't always have balanced judgment; yet her future graph shows an alert faith in our economy. First the vision, you know."
Judy opened her mouth, but she hadn't a chance.
"Take your car. You are driving an old model, right? Yet you have the means to drive the best. Now cars-reduced to their intrinsic values represent transportation, right?"
What else?
"If you were riding a bus or a surface car, you wouldn't be looking forward to the day it would be yours by right of money paid out for transportation."
She was all ready to tell him that neither would she expect to pay for power, repairs and labor, when he was off again.
"Transportation is like utilities, like the electric power you use: something to be paid for on a monthly basis, not paid off and owned."
Judy's mouth opened again, all ready to tell him anytime she made sixty to ninety dollar monthly payments for electric power, she'd start using kerosene lamps and a wood stove.
"Now watch," Stayton ordered. "I am offering proof it pays to drive the best on the market. See how other drivers give way as I approach? They don't impede my progress. They recognize a superior vehicle and do not try to compete."
Ha, she thought, and clung to her biting retort. She couldn't afford to tell Stayton the truth right now. Those smaller, less glamorous cars weren't giving way to anything superior; their drivers were simply determined to reach home in one piece, and without a repair bill.
Then she grabbed for something to steady herself. There had been a loud report; the car had slithered while heading for the opposite lane, though a low fence ran between the two. Now with a mighty effort Stayton had it under control.
But my, how the other superior cars in this choice lane were talking to him.
He tried to ease over to the middle-class lane, but those drivers had a date with the dinner table. Finally he gave up, and they banged along on the flattest tire a car could suffer.
A traffic island appeared ahead, and he eased the car in, stopped and pulled out a handkerchief.
"This," he announced savagely, "is what comes of taking a car on such a confounded road. Those workmen of your sister's are careless. Must have been a nail or a wire."
Judy sat thinking of her own modest car, which would have been rolling along at a comfortable speed, ready to absorb the emergency of a blown-out tire and tube without endangering herself or other drivers.
Well, she supposed Stayton would find a lesson in this. His superior car had traveled a low-class road. Ergo, a puncture.
A state patrol car eased up, checked on the damage, and the officer nodded. "You may have to sit this out. All nearby garages are flooded with calls. Some super job riding the inner lane lost a heavy glass window when he didn't stop fast enough for the car ahead. You rammed right past the man trying to sweep up the glass, you and fifty other cars."
Stayton made an icy remark about efficient highway patrols setting up roadblocks at a scene of disaster. It didn't go over too well.
"The roadblock went in just as you passed," the officer, equally icy, replied. "You failed to see us signal. I suggest you change your own tire. This island may be needed."
Stayton looked at his Brooks Brothers suit and shuddered.
"You give me a hand; I'll do it." Judy sighed. "One thing about wearing LMC clothes; the replacements are less."
He wouldn't hear of it, yet somehow he did. Judy simply took over his problem as she'd taken over Martha's. This lower-middle-class dress she was wearing had come off a bargain rack, and she was tired of it anyway.
Stayton had planned to take Judy to one of the better spots for dinner. He said so. Judy, hands and face begrimed, said she'd prefer he have something sent in to the office.
She wanted that layout on its way tonight. She was having Thanksgiving dinner with Benjy on the morrow, on his craft. The way things had been running for her, she wanted plenty of time to give to it.
Stayton was willing. Of all times to have his sound theories thrown back into his face by a freak of fate!
Judy ate Thanksgiving dinner in solitary splendor. Occasionally someone opened the galley door, thrust in a head, sniffed, groaned and tore off for the nearest deck railing.
Red sky at night might be a sailor's delight as far as overhead weather conditions were concerned. It did not take congnizance of a ground swell, forerunner of a storm working its way north.
So Judy ate standing up, having a slice of this, a dab of that, as she dished up a tasty assortment for the pilot.
She carried a plump drumstick with her and sat in the door of the pilot house, looking out on the not-so-blue Pacific.
"I'll put back as soon's the tide turns," the pilot confided affably. "If I did it now, your party'd jump overboard and try to walk in. You seafarin'?"
"No," Judy sighed. "I guess I've just been so doggone upset over other things this seems like smooth sailing."
It was more than that. It was, she thought, "getting out where I can't be got at." Now there was a sales idea; she'd bet a thousand of the Stayton Agency's friends and accounts would buy it.
A still-green Benjy drove her home. Occasionally he apologized, or tried to. He'd apologized to his guests so fluently he was about out of words.
"Cheer up, doll," Judy said slightly, "this is one Thanksgiving they'll never forget. I'll bet the country holds few as thankful as they are this evening; thankful to have made port."
Later, the question which had been pricking her for hours jabbed.
"Benjy, did you know Jones and Hadler?"
"Umm." He groaned a little.
"What happened to them?"
"Never knew. Top-hole business; then the partnership dissolved and Jones went into hibernation."
Hibernation? Judy thought of the big veranda with its many-miled view below, and the hard-working William John.
"Benjy, what business-"
The car swerved to the side of the highway, and Benjy swerved over its side. When he returned he was in no mood for talking. About Jones, especially. He had remembered the farewell banquet they'd given Bill at the club.
"What became of Hadler?" Well, she'd waited a long time before she'd started digging again.
"Hadler? Oh, he got mixed up in something, lost his license, moved away."
Then, rather frantically, he began talking of other things. Judy must not judge his fishing craft by what had happened today. Now that he knew, he wouldn't plan trips too far ahead. Weather, he informed her, was antagonistic to all ventures. One had to outwit it.
"Urn," muttered Judy. Lost his license. Now what had Jones and Hadler been to have needed one? Accountants, lawyers, doctors, realtors? Ah, realtors, she'd bet.
Benjy left her at her apartment and made no offer to come up. Nor did he, as usual, plan a future engagement of any kind. Why, he hadn't even brought up the subject of marriage again. Ah, well, he had another she in his life: his boat.
And that she, she realized as she opened the apartment door, was rougher on him than I've ever been.
Judy sat down and began counting her blessings.
She was ah, thankful for her steam-heated apartment; for the view, though the view was a bit futuristic right now, seen through steel scaffolding; for the friendship of Rosa Padroni, though that was running into cold cash. She was also thankful for her paid-up car.
And she'd better be thankful for her job, or she'd be starting a new trend: housekeeping in a sedan. Maybe Stayton was right. Maybe if she bought a station wagon and he then blew up to the point of discharging her, she'd at least have sleeping room.
But no. She would lower the boom on Martha. She would pay nothing more. And she would drive up and make Martha remember Judy was no longer a young teenager to be talked down.
Not this weekend. If she knew Martha's crowd, and she did, Martha wouldn't return to the orchard before Monday.
Neither did she see much of Benjy. They had dinner together the next night, but he was, he sighed, taking a party out late Saturday. The storm was due to have blown itself out by then.
Judy did a lot of thinking that Sunday. It was restful and just a little lonesome. She wasn't so dedicated to her job she wanted to give her life to it. She'd enjoyed Benjy so much she'd withdrawn from other friends.
Well, she'd look them up.
A determined Judy Hubbard appeared at the agency on Monday morning. A few moments after her arrival there came a telephone call, and the moment she heard Rosa Padroni's voice Judy's shoulders drew together.
"That sister to you she's crazy. She come Luigi, tell him rebuild the barn for the eagle-"
"The what?"
"She grow the eagle. Luigi he say, 'Pigeon she breed, all right; duck is okay; even the pheasant, si; but who wanta buy the eagle after she raise?' "
CHAPTER EIGHT
Judy looked so faint Stayton arose from his desk and came to her doorway.
"Rosa, are you sure?"
"The man he here with the breeders. He's got dogs with him too, like Adonis."
"Oh, heavenly day," cried Judy, "not eagle; beagle. Oh, but, Rosa, don't let Luigi convert the barn to kennels; Martha's going to need that for an emergency fruit shed."
"I tell. What we do with the dogs? Two hundred dollar he want. William John, sudden he has the business in town."
"So have I," Judy said earnestly. "And Rosa, don't you or Luigi put out a penny. Promise?"
"I think we go St. Helena to Luigi's cousin now." And Rosa hung up.
Judy leaned back and closed her eyes. Martha was home. And evidently she hadn't the two hundred and had either gone to William John or sent Luigi; probably the latter.
"I believe," murmured Stayton, "it will be to your advantage to come into my office and discuss this."
Eyes opened and ears pricked as Judy followed Stayton back to his suite.
Dutifully she reported the last of Martha's "ideas." And then she sat back and was lectured.
Stayton said gently he was surprised a girl in her position could take such a negative attitude.
"Mrs. Hubbard has made an investment. She will not benefit before late fall. Meanwhile there .are running expenses, higher than usual because this is her first year, and she is taking steps to meet them."
"There will be puppies to sell."
Judy looked at him in amazement, and after a moment he turned a faint pink. "Well," he defended himself, "I assume this will be only one of her sidelines. She will find something else to bring in more immediate cash."
This Judy dreaded to contemplate.
"I," Stayton told Judy sternly, "consider Mrs. Hubbard most enterprising. I have such confidence in her vision I am ready to invest. I believe you said she needed two hundred."
Like a bird hypnotized by a snake, Judy watched Stayton's arm go forth to a block of checks, saw him draw them near, reach for a pen.
There went her station wagon with a bed in back when she no longer had rent money. Knowing she was under financial obligation to Stayton would sharpen her wit, whet her tongue. She might even develop enough cunning to maneuver some acid copy straight through to the printers.
This situation called for guile, and she was fresh out of that commodity.
Stiffly she rose, looking like a chastened child. "Mr. Stayton," she said, "as you have such faith in my sister-in-law's enterprise, I believe I should be the one to back her in this venture. But I do deeply appreciate your willingness."
Now let her tongue burn.
"Very well. Judy, you have no important assignment today; I'd suggest you take a run up to the orchards. This time you will see Martha. In the meantime, to hold the beagle man, I shall try to reach him. Now run along."
William John Jones, believing he had put time and distance enough between himself and the old Cody place, ventured home to hear the telephone shrilling.
Telephones were safe. Mrs. Hubbard's had not yet been installed.
"Bill, old boy," a voice greeted him. "I need a little favor of you."
Eventually William John turned from the telephone to find Adonis looking up at him pleadingly. "Boy," said William John, "we didn't move far enough. Come on. But I am not going down to establish any of your kin in the hollow. No sir! I'm going down the highway to stop Judy."
Heading north, Judy was thinking she had made more trips to the orchards than Martha. She wished someone would put in a monorail. Driving was a waste of effort.
And how was she going to stop Martha and save her own bank balance? What could she do to marry her off to William John?
An hour later, she took one look at his grim features and answered herself. Nothing, at least at this moment. The only way she could bring that off would be to see that Martha made a success of the place.
He came over, slid into her car, patted the dial board and said, "Neat." Then he turned on her with a scowl.
"All right, out with it. I heard how you paid off Luigi's crew. Why?"
Judy's hands went out. "I couldn't let those poor fellows wait until next fall for their money, not knowing they'd have it even then. I felt Luigi had gone ahead because Rosa and I were friends."
He had. This William John knew.
"Don't tell me this beagle man is a friend of yours so those dogs can't be taken back."
This time Judy's face registered sheer distress. "I didn't give in until Mr. Stayton started writing a check. William John, I just couldn't work for Stayton with him underwriting a venture for Martha. I know both of them."
William John didn't know Martha. He did know how quickly personal indebtedness between employer and employee could curdle.
"You were in a bind," he conceded.
That was only the beginning. There would be kennels to build, food for the dogs, veterinarian's fees, shots. And with Martha, expenses for every dog show within driving distance.
Judy came to with a start. Here she was downgrading Martha again.
"Stayton says that's enterprise. He says the West would never have been settled had there not been brave, adventurous souls willing to take a gamble."
"Indians," mused William John, "could be discouraged with gunfire. I've never met a bill collector who could be discouraged by anything but cash. And what's more," he warmed to the theme, "had horses, Conestoga wagons and rifles been reclaimed by bill collectors before the pioneers got out of reach, darned few would have made the west coast."
Judy brightened. She wasn't a reactionary as Stayton had said; just realistic.
"Stayton said Martha would make a man with capital a wonderful wife," she breathed hopefully.
Hurrah! William John had sat up, and oh, how interested he was looking. "Good thinking, Judy. I'll see about that."
Now it was Judy's turn to warm to a theme. Martha was beautiful, had artistic ability, vision, was a delightful companion and, when she needed to be, a fine cook.
"Ah," breathed William John, "speaking of cooks: how about you running up to the house to warm up some lunch for us? I shall go after Martha."
"Then lunch for three?"
"Well, no, I used 'go after' in the figurative sense. I'd better discuss the results with you alone."
Judy looked up. Silly. She would have sworn the sun, hiding behind thick clouds thus far, had burst out.
It hadn't, but happily she drove on to Jones' house, made her way to the kitchen and again, happily, surveyed refrigerator and cupboards.
She also washed William John's breakfast dishes.
She was well started when the rain began polka-dotting the windows. Wonderful. Maybe she'd teach this austere Mr. Jones how to really live. She'd take that big coffee table (cut down from a small, old-fashioned round dinner table) move it close to the hearth, build up a fire and then get him into the mood to marry Martha.
She was faced with one problem: making something out of the nothing she found in the refrigerator. A few slices of cold turkey and a bowl of ravioli.
Judy was beginning to believe she'd have to start from scratch when the telephone sounded.
"Miss Hubbard, this is Bess Henderson, a neighbor. Mr. Jones met me on the road and asked if I'd call you. He said you'd find everything you'd need in the freezer. I believe everything is labeled. You're to make your own choice."
Judy thanked her properly and went looking for the freezer, finally finding it; the door opened onto the utility room in rear.
She came out, her flag of triumph at half-mast. That room held everything a bachelor could or would need. All he had to do would be to make a choice and thrust that choice in the oven.
"He doesn't need a wife like Martha," she mourned; then deliberately she rolled up her sleeves and, defying the freezer, went to work.
Turkey pot pie; a salad-she'd seen tomatoes ripening on a tray in the utility room-and for dessert a dish of peaches. They would be disguised by the dry malted milk she would sprinkle over them and let dissolve before they were served.
She had just tucked the pie into the oven when Mrs. Henderson called again. "Forgive me," she began. "Mr. Jones told me to tell you he'd be rather late. Not before two o'clock. You'd better nibble a sandwich; you know these men."
Judy, on her heels looking into the oven where the top of the pie was beginning to color, simply sat there.
Now why would it take all of this time for William John to settle with Martha? And how would he know in advance how much time it would take?
Stupid. She closed the oven door and stood up. He probably had business of his own. Well, I'll wait.
She built up the fire from morning embers, then settled down happily. Bless Stayton for sending her. This was wonderful-rain splashing and firewood crackling and not a thing to do.
William John made good time. The pot pie, golden brown, hadn't been out of the oven too long. Coffee was ready to be served shortly afterward, and the two sat before the fire.
"I like this," he said, as though surprised at himself.
Maybe the dear man knew nothing of the comforts of home. Now if he could pretend it was Martha across from him "Everything all fixed up?" she asked brightly.
"All we need is your consent."
"My consent!"
"Good pie. What'd you put in it? Oh, yes, about Martha. If you'll remember, you wrote her some time ago about the money you had in savings; the bonds you'd bought; your salary. Well, naturally, as she looked on the orchard as an investment for you as well as herself, she felt she had a right of call on your cash. She's pretty deflated now. I told her you had bought the old orchard across the lane from her, showed her the earnest money receipt-"
"The what?"
"The two hundred dollars you paid down on the orchard you bought this morning."
"That I bought?"
CHAPTER NINE
Judy hung onto her chair. She had bought an orchard. She had bought an orchard she had never seen or heard about, when an orchard was the last thing in the whole wide world she wanted.
Someplace along the line she had slipped out of time. Any moment now a commercial would come on and Rod Serling return her to the proper dimension.
"It's this way." William John took a third helping of pot pie; he'd probably had an early breakfast. "As long as Judy Hubbard has any money in any bank, she will find herself underwriting her sister-in-law's demands because she'll be placed in a position where she has to. All right. So how do we cure this condition? Simple. Remove the money, and put it in the one investment Martha doesn't dare criticize."
"But-" Judy began.
"But nothing. By the time Luigi and I work your orchard over, you can sell it and make as much on it as your savings and bonds put together would have given you in interest. So what have you got to lose?"
Judy leaned far back in her chair. She'd had a symbolic vision of her money as a batch of eggs, a bag of cement hanging over them, ready to drop at any moment.
The bag had dropped but she still had her eggs-that is, her orchard.
Suddenly she sat up, radiant. "What a wonderful idea! How much am I paying for it? Am I in debt so I'll have to spend most of my salary? Is it an oldy like the Cody one?"
"How much money have you put away?"
Judy closed her eyes and added. "Only about twenty-seven hundred left, plus two bonds. Altogether I could raise, with what's left in my checking account, forty-five hundred. Is that enough?"
"Do for a starter. Your take-home pay, I understand, is two hundred and ten a week. Incidentally, you have only two acres. It's on that rise that juts above the Cody lane to the east, the one that cuts the sun off the Cody orchard."
"It wouldn't have a house?"
"Now that is the question, if what's there should be called a house. I'd say shack. Artist threw it together for primitive living while he did primitives of the area."
Then she wouldn't need a station wagon for a bed when she ran out of rent money. Wonderful. She had a roof, one big room and a lean-to and a fireplace.
If she had any money left, after she was fired, she'd buy a beagle baby from-"William John," she cried, "the beagles-what about-"
He waved an arm, and she turned. Pressed against the big front window were five black spots: noses. Adonis and four other beagles were all anxiously surveying warmth and smelling food.
"I bought 'em. Fellow was unloading on Martha because he had to get rid of them; new zoning law. No, I'm not going in the business. I'll sell them at cost to friends who're looking for beagles."
He finished the coffee, drew a deep breath and asked, "Now shall I tell you the truth?"
She reviewed the truth all the way into the nearest town. She had driven past her orchard, caught one glimpse of her shack. Well, almost hers.
Martha had spent the Thanksgiving weekend in town, and Martha had been at her enterprising best.
William John Jones' orchards had the nearest telephone to the old Cody place. Martha had given his telephone number and assumed, since he'd been so kind, he would accept delivery of various items and pay. Judy would immediately reimburse him.
In short, Martha was buying up sidelines which would keep her in funds until the crop came in.
"Take ceramics," Jones had said. "First lessons; then a kiln, clay, paints, the works."
After the third call William John had done "some heavy thinking." He didn't reveal he'd had Thanksgiving dinner in the city and had had quite a run-down on the lovely Martha and her little sister-in-law.
Martha, having handled Judy's money, school allowance, clothes and incidentals since she was sixteen, still felt her responsibility. She intended for Judy to have the social life she'd enjoyed at her age, and for that she needed a good income.
William John had known the two acres and artist's shack would be put on the market for a quick sale to close out an estate. When the beagle incident had occurred and Judy had given him a check for two hundred without filling in the name because she hadn't known it, he'd taken a chance, subject to her approval.
"You don't have to go through with it," he had told her earnestly. "I had to work fast. I'll take it off your hands, buy it myself as an investment." , "And I can buy it clear, no payments?" she'd asked. "Then suppose I'm pushed into obtaining a mortgage on it?"
"We have a homestead law here which will take care of that."
Judy had dropped back into the big chair, a great sigh breathing out. She felt safe for the first time since Martha's return. Now if Martha lost the old Cody place, Judy had a roof to offer her.
"William John," she said earnestly when they came from the realtor's office, "you are wonderful. Now I can work without worrying about what's coming out."
"For instance?"
"A clearance sale ad. I wrote: Values slashed, instead of prices. Unloading instead of clearance. And-Pay now; buy later. You'll be glad you did when you've seen our stock."
The little car floated through the rain like a silver cloud. Not only did she, Judy Hubbard, own a roof with two acres of roof trees; she had a place to spend her weekends while Benjy was out with his other woman.
She would be "on the scene" to help Martha win William John. He was already interested. He said he had never met any woman like her.
He'd also said, as had Stayton, if Martha was ever lucky enough to find a partner who could back her schemes, she'd be a onewoman gold rush.
"She's a challenge," he'd confided.
Not until she'd reached her apartment did she consider how she was going to tell Stayton about the beagles.
By the time he was ready to discuss it next day, he'd received a call from his banker friend. Had they done anything to offend Miss Hubbard? She'd withdrawn every penny she had in the bank, even cleared out her safety deposit box and turned in the keys.
Had she given any indication why she had done this? Stayton asked anxiously.
"Well, she had a certified check drawn for the full amount, made out to a bank in Sonoma County. She said something about money going into an orchard."
Stayton's head dropped into his hands. He'd really tossed Martha to the beagles.
Then up came his head and on his face was a pleased expression. Now Judy would have to write copy as he wanted it. She'd again be the girl he'd hired, eager to please. Now she had to keep her job.
And if the two girls came a financial cropper he would give them a financial hand; then he'd really be in control.
Just as he'd told the boys in the locker room, when discussing missing out on the Wednesday night dinner, "But the lads doing the pruning on the orchard needed cash for their Thanksgiving dinner, so I took a run up." Well, just so he could refer to "my little fruit spread up in the country."
Benjy, coming in feeling a bit low (that storm due to blow out had, but it had turned around and blown back in again), saw Judy looking as she hadn't looked since their first real date.
"What gives?" he asked, leaning against the doorway.
"Oh, Benjy, I bought me a he."
Benjy's mind took a leap. So old Bill had crashed. And for Judy, when they'd planned this for Martha. Maybe that was what she meant. She had cleared the way for Martha to hook William John Jones.
He repeated the name and shuddered. No wonder he hadn't recognized it when he'd first heard it. Imagine Bill Jones, of all guys, being an orchardist.
"Well?" Judy demanded of him. "You had a she, so-Oh, Benjy, you're getting dense. Your boat is a she, isn't it? Then a shack on terra firma would be a he. I bought one so I could play weekends while you were out liquidating your hard sells."
Contrite, he stepped in. "Darn it all, Judy, I'd thought we could weekend together, but these lads I take out want a femme-free voyage."
Naturally. What man could maintain his masculine supremacy once his girl or wife had seen him slapped down by a rough sea?
"Look, I can't talk now; Stayton's giving me the come-on. How about dinner tonight?"
"Good; at my apartment. I've loads of food begging to be eaten."
"What time?"
"Oh, just powder your nose and come up. And, Benjy, don't tell His Highness about my purchase. Promise?"
Benjy spent quite a little time with Stayton. Judy glanced across occasionally. They weren't talking about her. Or were they?
Responding to the buzzer, Judy went to Stayton's office to have both him and Benjy look at her as though they expected her to pull a rabbit out of a hat. And she had no hat handy.
"I suppose Benjy told you he sewed up the fishing craft contract," Stayton remarked. "Now they want an idea for a TV commercial. I think we can get Babine Brewster, build it around her. What's your reaction?"
"If you want Mama to think a gorgeous blonde like Babine goes with every fishing craft, Papa's going to have a tough time buying one."
"Break it down," ordered Benjy.
"Few young men," she bowled to Benjy, "can afford a fishing-craft. Customers are the middle-aged and older men, the married ones."
"Don't tell me you'd pose some plump matron on the bow of the boat trying to land a salmon."
Judy brushed aside that idea. "Buying resistance will come from the home. So what does Mama want most? To keep Papa around. These days, with every medium advertising ulcers and heart attacks as the thing for UMC men, she'd relate to an antidote."
"Ease the ulcer," mused Stayton, delicately resting hand to belt.
"Soothe the heart." said Benjy mournfully.
"I have it." Stayton brightened. "The rest that restores."
"Sounds like a mattress ad," objected Judy. "Now if I were a middle-aged man with a telephone," she waited until Stayton was through with his, "and/or a ticker tape," again she waited while, brow furrowed, he checked his, "and a reception room full of people waiting to take up my time-" This time she waited until their receptionist left, having thrown her hands in the air.
"Go on," urged the two men.
"I'd use this: 'Help Dad get away to where he can't be got at.' "
"What execrable-"
"Wait," offered Benjy hopefully.
Judy was gazing into the distance. "Pan in on an old fisherman talking to an exhausted city man; background harbor with fishing craft in the foreground. Fisherman says, 'Now me, I'd get out-' et cetera. Full view of craft salesman doing promotion bit; then fade into cyclorama of clouds and sea, deck of craft with close-up of no-longer-exhausted city man, feet on the railing."
"That's it." Stayton's hand hit the desk. "Do me some sketches, now. Phrase acceptable, coming from the old salt." And wistfully he repeated, "Get out where I can't be got at," as he reached for the telephone.
Judy's intentions were perfect. Now, above all times, she must give her best to her job. But something was happening to her best. The clouds ballooned on the horizon, beautifully, but the sea kept humping up into hills, and the fishing craft took on the look of a shack with a fireplace.
Sublimation, she stormed at herself. Now stop it. Your orchard isn 't going to get you away from getting got at, not with Martha across the lane.
And thank goodness William John had loaded her car with frozen food. And she had left some out of her own small compartment to thaw. William John had confided, that as he was a bachelor, every housewife in the area imagined he was starving to death and brought largesse to his larder.
She could feed Benjy well as they talked. Oh yes, the sketches. Now that she had a shack and an orchard as well as a sister-in-law, she'd better please Stayton.
She did. He took her first draft in one hand, his hat in the other and, with Benjy, took off. She knew the routine. They always made the buyer feel that it was he who supplied the ideas. Adroitly they would feed the line to him, and just as Stayton would swear he'd been the orginator, no matter which member of his staff had supplied the thought, so would the buyer.
Steaks were ready for the broiler, french fries browning, when Benjy reached Judy's apartment, wearing an air of triumph like a red necktie.
"Going to shoot the first clear weather; be ready to run the commerical with a new sportsman series which starts middle of January. Darnedest thing, Judy; I had a time keeping Stayton from buying a craft."
"Why stop him? He's beginning to look ragged."
"Heck, honey, that fellow gets sick in a rowboat."
Judy didn't go into her purchase of an orchard too deeply. She merely said she'd heard of this good buy and thought her money safer in the ground than in the bank.
"You're so right," Benjy agreed. "To tell you the truth, I'd rather have a spread than a craft, but-"
"An orchard isn't a status symbol," Judy finished for him, "unless it is on the edge of a forest with a hunting lodge attached. But then the hunting season is so limited it wouldn't pay off.
"Benjy-" she whisked a hot platter out and carried it to the table, now artfully spread,-"don't your customers catch the 'bit' when you invite them on a cruise?"
"Oh, sure, but they're old hands at being fed malarkey. Not one of them but believes he can't be sold anything he hasn't wanted to buy before the salesman ever showed up."
"Hm," buzzed Judy.
The dinner was delicious. Benjy said so. Judy knew it to be true and blessed the ranch women for looking after William John so thoughtfully.
And now she and Benjy would have that talk that had been put off since he'd bought his fishing craft.
"I'll just tuck things in the fridge and stack the dishes," she said. "You relax."
A few moments later she found Benjy had really obeyed her. He reclined in her one extravagance, a contour chair. She doubted that even as a baby had he ever slept with such complete abandon.
My, do I feel married! she mused, and decided she might as well wash the dishes.
Occasionally she looked in, smiled and turned back. This surely must be love. She yearned for a robe to tuck him in, to pat his head and murmur soothing words.
Fire sirens on trucks caroming around the block did the necessary. Benjy opened his eyes, yawned, stretched, then came to the floor with a leap.
"Just dropped off a minute," he began, glanced at the clock and groaned. "It's your fault, Judy; you make a fellow feel so at ease."
"Run along home before you pass out on your feet," she advised.
He did, but not before his apologies had revealed something new, something that wiped sleep from his eyes.
For a long time she sat looking out on the scaffolding of the building going up next door. Despite new accounts, Benjy was getting more deeply in debt. It took time, he explained, to gain a license. Fellow had to know everything, from how to handle his craft to tides, undercurrents, shorelines and how to read weather reports.
It also cost money, as did a pilot, moorage and a few other minor items.
We'll be ready for social security before we can be married, she worried. I do wish he wasn 't another Martha.
And then she thought with longing of the acres and shack she had bought, sight unseen, and sat straight up.
Who was she to talk? She'd sunk every penny she had as a result of the super-sales talk, the indirect approach, of one William John Jones.
She had to get up-country immediately and stop the sale.
CHAPTER TEN
Judy arose early, had her car serviced, rushed to the office and gave thanks Stayton was there before his usual time.
But she didn't go to the country. Stayton was almost bubbling with joy. They had a ten o'clock appointment with the fishing craft representative. She was to sit in and absorb.
It was a harrowing experience. Here she was using her talent to maneuver some other poor man into the condition Benjy had been in the night before. She, who had indignantly told William John advertising was no more than making prospective buyers aware of what was on the market; a shopping service.
And if she didn't do a good job, there would be no weekly paycheck, which she was going to really need if she couldn't stop the orchard deal.
She'd tried to call both William John and the realtor during each free moment, with no success.
"Get out where you can't be got at," chanted Stayton with delight as they drove back.
Judy thought of the shack. If she ran a fifteen-foot fence around the two acres, she might be in such a spot. But she couldn't afford the fence.
He said, "You deserve a bonus, Judy."
She wanted to ask for another half-day but remembered what had happened the last time. She'd manage to live until Saturday morning. It would be more effective to appear in person.
Having never purchased property before, she didn't know how quickly some deals could pass through a title company at that time of the year. She had mailed her deposit to the bank, and a check against it to the realtor.
Judy arrived Saturday morning to find herself the tied-up purchaser of two acres and a shack.
The realtor wasn't in, but his secretary was. She said he was out in that vicinity;
Miss Hubbard would probably see him there if she had anything to discuss.
Judy's little car hurtled on, a little resentful of the speed she was demanding of it at its age. But in time it pulled up to two new posts which marked the driveway up through her land.
Obediently she turned in. The drive seemed newly graveled and rolled. The trees looked shorn; just short twigs thrust out from bare branches.
And there was the shack-unpainted, boards running up and down instead of sideways.
There were little squinty-eyed windows too high to look into.
Judy left the car and had reached a door just as the skies opened up and let go. She reached for the doorknob hopefully. It turned, and she was inside.
"Oh," she said.
The whole north end of the house was one vast picture window. Of course, an artist would want north light.
There was the fireplace on the east side, a fire laid and matches in a glass tumbler on a ledge.
And there was a chair, an ugly old rocker revarnished as often in so many shades it resembled one of the trees outside.
Judy struck a match, sank into the chair and stared out of the window, laced with long slanting lines of rain. Overhead she heard the steady thrum of it beating on the low roof.
Um, that heat felt good. She eased back.
In a very few moments all of the little nerves that had been standing up like the fur of a frightened cat lay down. She rocked a little. Then she looked around. She'd like to investigate.
"Well, this is mine, isn't it?" she demanded aloud.
She began tiptoeing around. There was clean linoleum. Everything was remarkably clean. The tiny kitchen was more like the galley on Benjy's fishing craft. A door led to a wood house, close in and with yet another inner door. The bathroom had a tin shower.
She tiptoed back, put a log on the blaze and settled down.
Maybe William John hadn't oversold her. She didn't have to put in a new bathroom or even lay tile in the one there. As for furniture, she could buy a few pieces at a time, second-hand, naturally.
The storm had abated. Now she could see through the big north window, and what a view! It looked up through the valley that rose in a series of rolling hills, each higher than the one before, mounting like waves until held back by a great dark-blue bulk that was a piece of the coast range.
Judy heard a blasting sound, shuddered, then laughed. Only Rosa Padroni and her car could make that much noise.
Rosa came in beaming. "We see your car. Maybe you stay tonight? Luigi he say he got the truck, you wanna buy some few furniture. You ride with him."
Judy began withdrawing, but Rosa didn't see her.
"This is a good thing. The roof she all paid. Just the tax. You not spend too much for the furnish, you fix all right."
Still Judy held back. Except for the contour chair, the only furniture pieces with which she was familiar were those she copied in sales layouts.
"Rosa," she said firmly, "I simply haven't money for furniture. Actually, I have only fifty dollars I dare spend, and I refuse to go into debt."
"Fifty dollar!" Rosa's arms went up. "You buy lots for that. My Luigi he take you second-hands place. Clean, everything defect."
"But I don't want anything defective."
"Na-na-na, defect like in make clean." Disinfected, thought Judy. Well, she'd buy a couch, and maybe she could learn to brew coffee in the fireplace. After all, she'd be there only weekends, until she could sell the place.
Judy drove off with Luigi and an empty pickup truck. She drove back with the truck piled so high the contents had had to be roped in.
Luigi had taken her to a permanent rummage sale maintained by a religious order. And Judy had gone, Luigi told Rosa, "hog wild."
For fifteen dollars she had bought an old divan, clean and spring-tight but faded; a tiny drum stove for the kitchen. Tables-Luigi shook his head-so whipped up they no color. Even curtains.
"Chairs?" asked Rosa, and Luigi's hands went out imploringly.
"Outside chair, the canvas she most gone."
"Where is she? You tell her come to dinner?"
Again the arms went out. "Back to the city."
Judy was definitely going back to the city, in a hurry. She didn't know when she'd been so skylark happy. She had bought the divan to fit slipcovers she'd had to buy for her first apartment. She'd bought drapes that wouldn't fight the slipcovers.
Tucked away in her "something box" were cans of enamel. Fresh canvas she'd have to buy. And in her hopeless chest were linens and bedding. She'd have plenty of time to replace them, one at a time, before Benjy was out of debt.
Then she had that set of dishes a pleased client had given her; she'd wondered how or when she'd ever use anything that shade-rusty red. Now that was to be the motif of that chill north room.
A pad on the seat beside her, she scribbled items as she drove. On her return trip they were all checked off.
Twilight came very early in December. The Padronis and William John saw headlamps cutting through the dusk, but didn't see the shack blossom.
Tiptoeing, they walked up the hill and found a broad band of yellow light reflected to the north.
Rosa walked around to investigate. She returned, shaking her head and motioning the men away. "Already she make the home."
"How about Martha; that is, Mrs. Hubbard? Has she-"
"To the city weekend." Judy sat in blissful contentment. She didn't see the disorder in the big room, blinds without rollers tacked up on the squinty-eyed windows, scratchy tables, faded chairs. She saw it as it would be when she was through with it.
Later, bed made up on the "defected" couch, she lay looking at the embers of her fire.
Morning was a time of sheer delight. Even the hearth fire picked up to burn briskly. Coffee and juice and dry cereal; then, for fun, she tried to toast bread on a twigged stick.
Maybe some day she and Benjy would build a larger place here, though she doubted she d enjoy it more. It was like coming into a kingdom of her own, she thought.
But kingdoms like hers had doors. When the knob didn't give, there was a sharp rap at the door and Martha called her name.
"Oh, you poor child," Martha cried, looking around. "Don't tell me you slept on that awful couch; dear, is it safe to sit in this? Judy, why didn't you go on down to the house? As soon as I learned you were here I came home."
Fourteen hundred dollars earlier Judy would have been thrown on the defensive; now she smiled indulgently. "Considering you have been here a month and visited the city each weekend without giving me a call, why should I presume on your hospitality?"
"If you had any idea how busy I've been-"
"Oh, but I have good reason to know how busy you've been; also reason to wish you'd been less busy and more analytical."
Swiftly Martha changed the subject. "This buy of yours was sheer genius; now we have this whole corner with road frontage. Dear, do get dressed. I want you to see the house and pick out a room of your own; I have so many guests coming down over the holidays. We'll have a family dinner, you and Benjy and maybe that nice Mr. Jones."
Judy returned to the city much earlier than she had planned, all of the zest of her small kingdom gone. Martha had had the old Cody house "done" by Maitins, and Judy knew what that elegant young man charged merely to give an estimate.
Martha was assuming that just as she was investing in an orchard for the Hubbards, so did Judy's acres automatically become "part of the spread."
I wish she were really mean so I could hate her, she groaned.
She wasn't. She was more giving than grasping.
Judy looked up from an Easter bunny that had just landed on a moon blossoming with new and enticing Easter bonnets, to find the receptionist at the door.
"There's a man and his family waiting for you," the girl said. "Something about a bill for a cupboard. He brought the family down to do their Christmas shopping. Do you want me to take him a check for a hundred and fifty?"
Judy nearly made the moon on her rise. She passed the speed of time reaching the reception room.
"But, Miss Hubbard," the man defended himself, "the cupboard is built on your land right there at the entrance. It's a beauty, too. Never did see a fruit stand so fetching."
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Martha had done it again. Judy looked at the little family, painfully clean and painfully shabby.
"This sure came as an answer to a prayer," the man went on. "Had an accident couple of years ago. Took the insurance money and bought a little place so's the family'd have a roof and ground to grow food. We have, but there's not been too much more.
"Getting back in my trade this spring, but now we don't have to wait. We'll get the kids outfitted; do those boys walk through shoes!"
Last time it had been Thanksgiving dinner for Luigi's crew. If there were a long enough stretch without holidays, she might be able to turn such as these back at Martha.
"But how did you build it so quickly?" she managed.
The man beamed. "Oh, I know the weather round here. Figured you wouldn't want an unpainted stand right there at your gate, so I had everything cut and painted before I took it up to put together."
Judy didn't want a painted or unpainted fruit stand anywhere.
She could say she hadn't ordered the stand, that she wanted it removed, that he should go to Mrs. Hubbard for his money.
She couldn't. This was her own fault. She should have established an understanding with Martha. She hadn't. True, she'd had only the few hours Sunday to talk to her, and not alone. Martha had had friends from the city "drop in."
She wrote the check. The man beamed.
"Bet you're going to like it. I let myself go," he said proudly.
She was to find he had let himself go. The fruit stand looked exactly like a cupboard. Closed, it presented a painfully pink exterior except for one telling detail.
Across the top ran a sign: "OLE LADY HUBBARD'S CUPBOARD." And across the front, the builder's idea of the rear view of a dog clawing to get in was superimposed in brown paint.
One thing about the building: it brought people from miles around to park and roar with laughter. Unfortunately they were all orchardists with fruit of their own; not buyers.
Judy folded her checkbook and marched into Stayton's office.
"At the risk of being fired, I am demanding the rest of the day off," she said grimly. "At that, being fired would be cheaper than paying for Martha's whimsies. I have to see her now, right now, while I am mad clear through."
Stayton, who'd received a report from the receptionist, nodded. "Want me to go with you?"
"No, I want no brakes on my tongue or my temper."
Judy drove north with a verve that had state patrol cars following hopefully. However, her car, at its age, was limited, and they dropped back after a few miles.
Turning onto the country road, she began to calm down. This was such beautiful land, and not too far ahead was her little kingdom.
It was indeed. One look at the fruit stand, and the little car leaped into the air with her fury. It came to a grinding stop inches from where a crew of men were running forms for cement. Martha, a smart figure in country tweeds, was overseeing.
"For the parterre," Martha greeted her gaily.
"Well, I hope you have the cash to pay the men," Judy flashed, "because I am not putting out another penny for you. I can't. I just paid out my last hundred and fifty for that idiotic-"
"Darling, wasn't that dog the cutest thing?"
The crew laughed with her.
"Come in; the coffee's hot."
Judy wanted to talk before these men, who were going to wait to be paid as far as she was concerned, but she hadn't Martha's experience in handling awkward situations.
Martha went into the house. If Judy wanted to talk to her sister-in-law, she had to follow. And she jolly well wanted to.
"But dear," Martha protested, "you've such short vision. Don't you realize how that cupboard will pay off this summer? People driving by will find it so cute they'll have to stop and look and, naturally, buy our fruit."
"And don't you realize," flashed Judy, "the only people passing on this dead-end road will be those with fruit of their own, or their friends en route to pick up free fruit?"
Martha looked superior. "You've forgotten about the 'better mousetrap.' "
"Trap is right. But I'm the mouse, and I'm getting out before the jaws close down on me. Now don't ever again send anyone to me with a bill."
"If I," Martha began sorrowfully, "had over eight hundred dollars a month-"
"You'd buy the Taj Mahal from a tramp on Skid Row. I mean this, Martha. What you do with your property is your business, but I'd advise you to have the orchard ploughed before-"
"Orchards aren't ploughed-"
"-One of the field men from the loan company comes out. And if you prefer the word disced to ploughed, all right, but get the ground turned over. That, too, costs cash money."
"You still don't appreciate my foresight in having the mousetrap; that is, the cupboard, ready."
Judy sat down. "Martha, there'll be no fruit for months. Why tie up money you could use for immediate needs?"
"That," Martha informed her, "is preparedness. I plan to be so busy with the fruit, I won't have time for minor details. And what's more." she continued, "how you can feel as you do about a meager little one hundred and fifty dollars, at Christmas, when it means that poor man and his family-"
"Then why didn't you pay him out of whatever you are using to gild this place?"
"I would have happily, and you know it-" and Judy did, "-but I haven't the cash right now."
"And from now on," Judy stood up, "neither have I, no matter how sorry I feel for anyone. Including you."
Martha walked out to the car with her, kissed her good-bye and said they'd talk things over further on Christmas, and would Judy remember to bring the largest turkey she could find?
"It might be well for you to dress it at your apartment if you're not free the day before," she added. "Oh, and, dear, cheese and celery, and if you can find fresh cranberries at a decent price-"
Judy drove uphill, more or less defeated. She longed to go to her shack and think things out. She had not the time, really. She had work to do in the city.
There was a man standing before the cupboard; he signaled as Judy drew near.
"Knocked me for a loop," said William John.
"It knocked me for a hundred and fifty," Judy returned stonily. "How can I get rid of it without hurting the poor man who gave it, he said, 'his all'?"
"Want to go up to your shack and talk it over? I brought some sandwiches and cookies."
It wouldn't take any longer than stopping at a drive-in.
William John built up a fire while Judy brewed coffee; then they sat before the big window and talked.
"I can't get through to her," Judy explained wearily, "And she's such a wonderful person I can't stay mad. Well, now I really haven't any ready money, nor am I going in for Christmas credit."
"You have an out there. Sketch your orchard, fruit in the foreground, and add a line: 'Your Christmas present is growing; delivery in-whatever month is right for the type of fruit you've decided upon.' "
"Whew," breathed Judy in relief.
"I had to do that my first year up here. Now my friends prefer it to anything I could buy in December."
They discussed Christmas then. Jones said he'd had to refuse Martha's invitation.
His married sister and her brood enjoyed spending the holidays at his house. He supposed Judy would be with Martha; he hoped she'd come up. He'd have his sister call on her.
But Judy was shaking her head. "No. I thank you, but no. I'm a turkey and cranberries, and before the day arrives I'll also be mince pies and plum pudding. But this year I can't be. I won't have the money."
She hadn't told Martha because Martha would not have accepted her spoken word. She would write immediately.
"Then you'd better let me hand-deliver the letter. She's not opening mail these days, I understand."
"William John," she pleaded, "how long can Martha last financially?"
"She'll be able to refinance soon. The status of the place is rapidly changing from orchard to gracious country home."
"And then?"
"When she goes through that, comes her much needed lesson. And don't you interfere, Judy. I know. I had to do something cruel to teach a fine guy such a lesson."
"I do feel better." Judy stretched as though relieved of a burden.
"And you won't be lonely Christmas?"
"Not unless I want to be."
"See you the first of the year," he said as she drove off, leaving him with the note to Martha.
Judy drove back, relief taking the place of the depression her talk with Martha had evoked. She wasn't being close or stingy or without wisdom. William John had explained that to her.
"You don't shingle a roof for a house that hasn't been built," he said. "All of Martha's plans are safe within their radius. Her trouble is that she puts the end result before the foundations."
Judy made one stop. She visited the agricultural office of the county agent and came out with a sheaf of pamphlets. She wanted to know all she could about orchards.
Stayton demanded that she report the morning's events to him. He chuckled indulgently when she told him about Martha's blithely going ahead with the house and neglecting the orchard, the source of her income.
"I wouldn't worry too much," he advised. "Now about the spring redecorating ad Milford wants. Can you give it a fresh approach?"
At Christmas? What else? She'd pretend it was her shack undergoing a rejuvenation.
Benjy came in to announce he was taking her out to dinner. He did. They drove into the city proper, then through, then parked near a wharf, famous the world over for the cuisine of its restaurants.
"Judy," he waited until the shrimp cocktail was served, "I've news for you. I've learned my lesson. We can be married, immediately."
It took her three bites and a quick gulp of water to wash this announcement down. "We can?" she asked dubiously.
Solemnly he nodded. "I've given up my room at the club, moved the craft to this bay, found the perfect moorage, with a view of the hills, the bridge, everything.
"We'll talk more about it after dinner. Right now, what if in between courses, we stroll down on the pier. I want to take you someplace where I can kiss you. I'll tip the waiter to hold our food off for ten or fifteen minutes, it'll be okay."
She was too much in shock to protest.
He didn't lead her down on the pier, he insisted they remove their shoes and walk in the sand under it.
"Benjy, please!" Judy's voice rose and she squirmed, trying to break off his passion-filled kiss. She gave him a severe look in the semidarkness, but she had to admit that the kiss had ignited a spark deep within.
Halfway through the second kiss, her mind went back to that interview for the job at the agency. This sent even a hotter thrill coursing through her body. Soon she was smiling up at him sweetly, when he whispered, "You're lovely," and his hand stroked the baby-like softness of her inner thigh. He squeezed the smooth flesh and she felt herself breathing a bit unevenly. She loved it when someone touched her soft skin, sending the sweet shivers oddly cascading over her flesh. It made her feel so wet, so warm, so heavenly. She kissed him back, wetly, hotly, and expectantly. She was aware of a small tear of her own love juice nestling against her panties at the crotch, and then Benjy's hand was against it. "Oooh! she breathed into his ear.
His hand moved gently and she squeezed her thighs together, trapped it there, then pressed down against it.
Judy pressed her lips together against his ear, then bit lightly with her small, white teeth. She knew he could feel the wetness of her, the hair above the pussy lips that she strove to open on his hand.
"Hmmm, so sweet, honey," he whispered. She squeezed her thighs together more tightly, trying to lock his hand there forever. But he swished his fingers across her slit, bulging but still covered by thin wet panties. She felt her slit ease open and ooze as he slipped his fingers against the material and upward into the slithery trap.
Judy lay back and growled. "Chew 'em off!!!" she urged Benjy.
He licked his way up her gams and grabbed the wet lace with his teeth. Carefully he pulled the material out at first, making sure he wasn't snapping out pubes from her bush. Then with a gnashing of teeth and a vicious round of tugging he finally split the panties right at the crotch. He let them snap back to her heaving center.
"Eat me Benjy!" she cried. "Eat me real good, just like you know how."
Benjy responded with a dart of his tongue through the tear into her sweaty gash. It was salty and humid with her wetness. He slurped it up.
His face locked against her hard clitoris, shoving aside the hood and then nibbling it fiercely. Goose pimples rose all over her body, and waves of sweetness washed across her.
She wanted his pecker. "Turn around!" she ordered Benjy. He'd never heard her so assertive. He climbed about until his clothed crotch was right over her face.
She bit at his cock through his pants and underwear, gripping the bulge and running her teeth along the thickness. Her bites made his cock quiver, and he soon felt her hot tongue wet the line of his throbbing pecker.
Suddenly her hands undid him and whipped the pants down. His cock fell out and smacked against her face. She pulled it into her mouth and swirled the tip hotly with her tongue. It started to grow red and bothered from her attentions.
Of course this only made Benjy go at her slit with relish. He started gulping at the long folded lips, his tongue slurping up pumping juices and then knocking against her inflamed clit. Her whole bottom seemed to bubble and froth, and her ass could barely sit still.
She pulled Benjy all the way down her throat and without a choke swallowed him deep and tight. Her lips churned around his base, urging him lovingly to shoot his white sticky beads. Her tongue did a swirl across the excited skin.
Benjy reached around and tore off the panties that were still hugging her bottom. Then he grabbed her rear and dove his face deep into her simmering womb. His tongue stretched to touch and tickle the very deepest part. Each lick cut a scalded swath against her swollen, sweating tissues. Her sheath felt electrified.
She went into a sucking spree on Benjy, sliding her pulsing mouth up and down the long, thick rod, aided by the lubrication of her slathering saliva.
Her adept bobbing left Benjy's thick tool quivering as his balls grew warm. His gobs pulsed into her mouth in thick, sticky dollops while his hips did an involuntary wiggle in the tingling heat of ecstatic orgasm.
"Swallow that stuff, baby," Benjy urged her.
Judy sucked at his tool with an eagerness that pulled out the spurts again and again, after which he heard her gulp the salty brine down. The gurgling and warmth kept his cock tingling and erect. His balls were quaking with happiness while his spine shot out missiles of pleasure through his whole body.
Judy pulled her face off and kept her hand affixed to the shaft, pulling at it vigorously as she crawled around and straddled him. Then holding the pecker straight in the air she shoved it past her steaming lips.
Benjy reached up and pushed the girl's dress up over her shoulders. Beneath it was a bra that was as sheer as her panties. Benjy leaned up and chewed her nipples through the sheer material.
Her whole upper torso heaved as his attentions made her tits ache. Rocking her body were two sensations; below her wet center was inflamed by the entry of his thick love torch. Above she jingled with the tiny bursts of nipple orgasms. She reeled her head back and howled, not caring who heard her.
"Ooooooooo Benjy!" she cried. "Fuck me deep!!! Fuck me hard!!" , She slipped up on her haunches and started to shove her pulsing pussy up and down on the rock-hard rod. Benjy felt and heard the wetness slurp as he pierced the mushy flesh and slid down into the tightness.
"OOOOHHHHH!!! TEAR ME OPEN, YOU STUD!!!!" she cried. "I WANT YOU TO FUCK THE HELL OUT OF ME!!!!"
It was music to Benjy's ears. He rotated his stiff shaft by circling his hips as she thrust. It dove inward and slashed at her cunt walls. She groaned as it skewered her slit.
"UUUGGGGGHHHHHH, BENJY!!!! KEEP DOING THAT!!! SLASH ME OPEN WITH YOUR HORNY PECKER!!!"
He came in buckets as she writhed upon him, moaning like a dog under a full moon. Her pussy sizzled as it filled with the boiling fluids, which only served to drive her higher.
She jumped her wet and quivering quim off him and let it pulse for a moment. But Benjy, still thick and horny, wanted to snap his pecker back inside her.
His mouth came up to her rear and with circling tongue he wet and reamed out her brown asshole. Judy whimpered and rolled into the sand. Benjy kept his face attached to the tight-fisted chute and kept swabbing it. The curled skin barely responded.
He didn't let that stop him.
"OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!" cried Judy in a wailing siren's voice when he shoved his tongue hard into the fisted center of her bum. He wagged it hard, in and through the sphincter. It started to uncurl.
He brought his cock up and wrenched open the sphincter with one big push. Judy screamed.
"OOOOOOOOHHHHHHHH GOD!!! YOU'RE SO BIG!!!!"
Benjy jabbed again and again, until the hard flesh gave way and swallowed up his rippled skin throbber. It then clamped shut around him, almost jacking him off as it held him in her ass.
Benjy reached around and tickled her clit. It made Judy jump. He frigged it with firm pressure, amazed at how he got her rolling about on his fleshy pivot, and at how her ass muscles curled and uncurled with each noisy climax. When he came, she jumped and bucked and pulled out a steady, enjoyable hot stream of jizm.
When they returned to the restaurant nobody even noticed them.
Later that night as she lay in bed, Judy's cunt still ached for relief. She jumped from her bed and went to her chest of drawers. Buried beneath the underwear was an old present-a joke from a girlfriend that was not a serious aid.
She scooped out a vibrator and turned it on. The batteries were still good, and it wiggled invitingly.
She started out running it across her neck and cheeks, then down around her tits. She swirled it over them as her hands plied the mounds of juicy melon around, letting the dildo reach up under the overhang and tingle the flesh. As the thing buzzed past her nipples her body jolted.
Then she moved it down and shoved the tool into her sweaty, anxious pussy. She was damned determined to release everything that the dream had done to her. It had to be done.
As she shoved the hard, fluttering plastic shaft up into her tight, juicy sheath, her other hand tickled her asshole.
She lay there quivering and coming, dreaming of depravities. Her real life grew more fantastic sexually every day. She was confused, but so heated that she had to give in and soak up every bomb of sensation.
Then she fell back asleep, one ear cocked to the phone for Martha's inevitable call.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Later that evening Benjy hit her with a shocker. He wanted her to move in with him on his boat.
"And I want you to marry me," he again stated with full determination. Judy responded in a way that led him to feel that he was finally breaking through.
Martha's plans for a Christmas party fell through when the weather prediction for fog made driving over 100 miles an insane notion. Benjy and Judy spent a quiet, sexy Christmas together.
Then one evening she made up her mind. She dispatched two quick messages, one to the hostess of the upcoming party and another to Benjy. The messenger got to the dock just as The Gulliver eased into her moorage.
Tom was with Benjy, and he grew concerned as he saw his furrowed brow. "Benjy," he urged. "With a girl like Judy, be careful. You're probably going to lose her."
Benjy looked at him as though he had lost his mind. "Judy? Man you're crazy. Why, Judy wouldn't look at another man. No, she's just hepped on this idea of not going into debt."
Tom gave a look at the long, sleek lines of the fishing craft and grunted, "That's what I mean."
Judy talked to herself for seventy miles. Now why had she been packing for days? She had told herself it was to ease the space in the crowded apartment. Yet she wondered, considering what she'd packed, and which now rode jauntily in every inch of space in her small car.
Favorite pots and pans. Her best set of dishes. All of the bits of brass and copper, the favorite books which turned her apartment into a home.
She rose early the next morning and went into action. She sandpapered, wiped off and set out to dry chairs and tables. Drapes went up as she waited; the kitchen cupboards were enameled.
She worked with what she would have called "controlled fury," to drop into bed, exhausted.
Bookcases were a problem, she found the next day. She also found old bricks, scoured them; old boards, scoured them; and when they'd dried lay them between tiers of clean brick.
Clothes were a problem until she found a length of pipe, laboriously carved half-circles in cleats into which to fit the pipe, then used shower curtains to enclose a corner clothes closet.
What I need, she informed the shack, is a bedroom. And tile for the floor; this linoleum is awful.
Anyone else would have had another room built. It wouldn't cost much, and she was making over eight hundred a month, wasn't she?
She looked at the salmon-pink shower curtains with their white storks and water lilies and saw what they did to her otherwise lovely room.
Monday she drove swiftly into town, bought quick-drying floor enamel, some cheap drapes that didn't scream at the room proper, and groceries.
She moved all of the furniture to one end of the big room and painted as far as she could, muscles screaming a protest. And that night she sat far from the fire.
What a way to spend New Year's Eve, she stormed.
There were others who echoed her thought. But Rosa Padroni had warned William John, and he had warned Bess Henderson.
"If she can't take it, the sooner she finds out the better. There'll be other New Year's Eve celebrations at the Grange."
It was the first New Year's Eve in her memory Judy had slept through.
Also she awakened earlier than ever before on New Year's Day. The painted half of the floor waxed and dried, she moved the furniture to that area and painted the other half, the bathroom, the kitchen floor. Unable to clear off the paint because she couldn't reach the paint remover, she backed out of the kitchen door into her car and took off for the city.
At the apartment she softened momentarily. An armload of roses and a huge box of the best chocolates awaited her, with Benjy's apologies.
Swiftly she computed the cost. Fifteen dollars. Well, maybe it was just as well she was fixing up a home for her old age. If she started saving fifteen dollars at a time, she could add a bedroom with clothes by then.
Her head went into her hands. She wasn't being a cheapskate. No, she was simply fed up to the eyebrows with having those closest and dearest so bound to do the right thing no matter what it cost, they would do it if it put them into bankruptcy.
Judy shuddered at the word the next morning. Mr. Stayton was being Mr. Status. Saturday the agency would hold its annual cocktail party, which preceded the Executives' Dinner, held later at the same hotel.
"Now here," Stayton handed a sketch, "will be the ideal frock for you, as our senior hostess."
Two years before, maybe even a year before, Judy would have gone forth and wasted a week's wages on a frock she would wear once, then submit to hairstyling which made her feel alien.
Stayton waited. So did Judy; then she sniffed a little and shrugged her shoulders. "The model looks like the Leaning Tower of Pisa. It's all right, of course, but I do hope none of St. Sophia's girls drop in. They'd think I'd gone shop."
"Gone-"
"Come now," she beamed up at him.
"You know only those who have to impress the clientele resort to looking like something in an exclusive shop window."
"Oh, yes," he agreed hastily, "I merely thought the ensemble would be especially flattering to you."
He insisted a moment, so she broke in. "As a man, you may not have noticed Mrs. Sealy has worn the identical frock three years in succession. Of course with their social and financial background, she can afford to."
He nodded and looked at her musingly. He was really going to marry her as much as he disliked giving up the freedom that allowed him to play the field.
He smiled and looked at her so tenderly, Benjy, watching from outside, clenched his fists. "I know I can trust your judgment. Just appear as though you were to meet all of your old classmates."
She saluted and left and felt not a bit guilty, because she had been right.
Benjy came to the door the moment Stayton left. "Now what have you been up to?"
Judy wondered what he'd say if she confessed she'd just saved herself a week's salary to tell the truth.
"Debating," she replied, "wondering why one must pretend to have more money than one has to be acceptable. Who's fooled when we do? I'm worried about this merrygo-round of false standards. We're not really getting anyplace."
Benjy felt cheered. If it was the line she'd been handing Stayton, the old boy had probably been trying to convert her to production; pointing out how advertising agencies such as Stayton kept the production wheels in motion because said agency kept the goods produced moving into and out of the market.
"Going to your ranchito this weekend?"
"My what? Oh, you mean my shack." Judy shook her head. "Not worth it for one day."
All of the staff members were extra-busy the rest of the week. Occasionally Judy would lift her head and think wistfully of the shack. On her next visit she could relax. Maybe it would rain and she could just sit before the fire, knowing there was nothing to do because she could not afford to do anything.
Or maybe she'd be smart, like Martha, and take the new girl up with her so if Martha called she couldn't quarrel with her about what she'd done with what she had.
But Saturday she had no time to think, except under the dryer, and then she was too busy looking at magazines, picking up ideas for the shack, and recipes.
A change of hemline and narrowing of a skirt on a bronze cocktail dress Slayton had never seen, and Judy was ready for the big event.
"Rich but not gaudy," she muttered, twirling before the long dressing mirror and hoping her hair would stay under control until Stayton had seen that is was controlled.
The staff was early. The guests were late, as was anticipated. And, also as usual, Judy drew the boors as honey drew flies.
She had to listen to the distributor of fishing crafts tell of his great sales promotion idea. Yes sir, the crafts were selling rapidly. Of course, he admitted modestly, it was that little line he'd thought up; "Get out where you can't be got at." Neat, wasn't it? The subconscious desire of every harassed businessman.
Judy murmured at appropriate moments and longed to tell him just who had thought up that line and when and why.
Judy's lips parted. They remained open a little too wide for beauty. She was shocked.
Coming toward her was quite the handsomest man she had ever seen, in a well-tailored dinner jacket. And on his arm was a beautiful woman wearing the very gown Stayton had chosen for her, exclusive, expensive.
William John Jones and Mrs. Martha Hubbard.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Benjy broke the spell. "I wish you'd look. Old Hard Sell himself, with Martha on his arm. Girl, you've put it over." And having whispered, was gone.
"And I said-" continued the fishing craft man, but Judy didn't hear him.
She'd put the deal over? William John and Martha? But she'd hardly seen Martha since she'd bought the orchard. And how often had she seen William John?
They weren't making progress. Judy heard shouts of "Bill, Bill Jones-why, you old-" and "Come on, I want you to meet Bill."
Martha disappeared from view, being shorter than most, but William John's head was still visible. They'd never reach her at this rate, and she was stranded. She couldn't walk off from this account with a blithe wave of the hand.
"Any questions?" asked the account.
Judy dredged up one that had been bothering her. "Why craft instead of boat?"
"My dear child, consider the word 'boat.' Instantly the mind sees something broad in the beam, wide in the middle, wallowing on a wave. Ah, but craft-"
The "new girl" wandered past, looking lost. Judy reached for her. "Do meet our newest member and tell her how you out-lined your astonishing sales promotion-"
Whew. Had she remained another moment she'd have brought disgrace on Stayton.
There, Martha had ducked under someone's arm and, with William John securely stowed in her wake, greeted Judy.
"Wasn't he a doll?" she asked. "My wagon broke down."
Judy winced at the thought of a garage bill which could ground Martha either in town or at the orchard. Quickly William John brought forth a pacifier.
"Just the gas gauge," he said.
Credit's run out, groaned Judy inwardly.
"Oh, Benjy, Benjy Carr, I swear you look sixteen," cried Martha.
"As I'm two years older than you," Benjy tossed back, "you're too young for a cocktail party."
Stayton strode up. "Bill, I'm glad I persuaded you, I-"
But Martha whisked Judy away to be presented to women she'd been meeting regularly for years.
Over heads Stayton watched, and heard.
"You dear child," said Mrs. Sealy, "I recognized you by that dress." And Stayton writhed. Then his ears pricked and his morale rose. "Such a relief to find there are young professionals who don't feel they have to spend their all on the latest nightmare."
And she said. "Oh, this? I just let the seams out each year."
So Judy knew. That settled it. Marriage was a must. Meanwhile he'd sound "Bill" out on these fruit orchards the Hubbards had purchased.
Judy thought the evening would never end. Benjy appeared to escort her into the private dining room, but Stayton materialized at her elbow and walked her away. That was unfortunate. With William John, she was being seated at the speaker's table, but unless she leaned into soup, salad or entree, or tipped her chair back in unison with his, she couldn't see him.
She could see the baffled Benjy. What a precious lad. Lad? He was two years older than Martha.
"But," she reasoned, smiling with opaque eyes at some supposed witticism of the old bore on her right, "Benjy will be a lad when he's seventy." She wasn't cheered by the thought.
She wasn't cheered about anything. These events were something she endured. She was not cast to be the wife of a man like Benjy.
Then she looked at the wives of the executives as well as those of advertising men and conceded she was no different from the other women present. Each looked as though she'd rather be home, feet on an ottoman, snack tray at elbow, nibbling her way through a good television program.
William John was at her elbow the moment the last applause died. "We're driving up tonight. If you'd like to go along I could bring you back."
For a moment she was tempted, then saw herself sitting in the back seat listening to Martha and shook her head. "Such a short visit would be like offering a split cracker to a starving man. I'd rather wait for a full-course meal."
Benjy and Stayton started toward her, but Stayton was detained. "My car's ready," Benjy announced, said the proper things to William John and whisked Judy away.
"I am not asking," Benjy remarked, "but I can't help wondering what you and Bill have in common that calls for such serious conversation."
"Spray," murmured Judy dreamily. "My two acres. He has a copter coming in to spray his trees and wanted to know if he should send it over my little place."
"Hm. What did you say?"
"How much."
"How much spray?"
"No, how much would it cost. And then," she relaxed, "I wouldn't have to pay until the crop was in and paid for. Imagine, fruit isn't paid for as its delivered to canneries and warehouses. It comes in one lump sum. Oh, dear-" she broke off.
Martha with one lump sum in her hand would be formidable. She was capable of uprooting producing trees to sink a plush swimming pool.
Benjy admitted being a "bit tired," so he wouldn't stop for a chat. He wanted to catch flood tide next morning. He was taking out some squeamish old duffers. He was hoping for a smooth sea.
"Have to get that house paid for," he explained as he was leaving.
Judy spent a quiet Sunday, and then a quiet week. All of the copy she was asked to write met with her approval.
Stayton, looking in, found Judy bracing her forehead, elbow on her desk, just staring at something.
He checked his assignment sheet, noted she was working on Winter Clearance, Dubois Furniture, and decided it must be a headache. Judy wouldn't be in the market for furniture.
But Judy was, and Stanley Stayton would have been set back a bit had he seen the glossy that held her enthralled. It was a bed, just a single bed, yet with enough width to allow one to flip over without landing on the floor, as one did from a "defect" couch.
Dubois sold out that number, despite the fact Judy had sternly crossed out a ribald: "If you flip when you flop, buy a bedward anchor; buy a Dubois."
She waited now for the weekend, for the drop of the labor flag that would send her tearing north, Friday at five or one o'clock.
Judy refused to accompany Benjy aboard the Gulliver-even though he told her there would be a good crowd and a wonderful dinner.
Instead, at five o'clock, she set out for the shack. When she arrived she saw that the cupboard had been moved, and she was happy with that.
She spent the weekend, content with herself. Luckily, Martha was out somewhere having fun. Judy didn't even think about the agency or Benjy or anything else until it was time to return.
But her car broke down ten miles from home. She had "to wait for the tow truck, and then she was informed that the part would have to be shipped from the East Coast.
She managed to hide the fact that she was without a car until the day it rained. Stayton saw her running for a bus and made the proper inquiries. When she told him what had happened he nodded. They were sitting in his office. "Then as soon as we marry I'll get you a new car."
Judy looked at him in shock. "No," she said.
"No?" Stayton smiled. If she wanted to play hard to get, that was fine with him.
And Judy realized she was in a fix. To deny him was to lose her job. She quickly added, "I don't know you socially. I think we should know each other a bit better-don't you?"
Stayton agreed heartily. "Your sister-in-law has been kind enough to invite me to her home," he said. "We can begin to get better acquainted socially this weekend."
Benjy, who had been in the hospital with a flare-up after the dinner trip on the Gulliver, chose that time to make his reappearance. When he saw Judy sitting at her desk he asked her what was wrong. When she told him, he wanted to punch Stayton out. "But he hasn't done anything." Judy said.
Benjy cooled himself off. He knew very well that his contract with the agency would be worthless if he flew off the handle.
Later the mechanic called to say that the repairs were complete. He would be driving the car in later that day.
But before Judy could pick up the car, she received another phone call. This time she was informed that she could pick up her new car whenever she wanted to. "What?" she asked.
The salesman at the Porsche dealership told her that following Mr. Stayton's instructions, they had prepared a new car for her.
She told them to unprepare it and wrote a note to Stayton: it told him that she couldn't accept such a gift, no matter how graciously given.
He told Judy that he would drive it up for her and leave it with Martha.
That weekend, she hid out until Jones finally came to check on her.
She told him all that had happened. "Well," he said. "They've all gone off for something or other. I guess they were annoyed that you didn't scamper over there."
It turned out that Benjy had made the trip as well. Judy accompanied Jones on a business trip of his, with other growers in the area. After the meeting, the growers and their wives went to an Italian restaurant for dinner. Judy had a wonderful time.
Stayton had left in a huff. He had also left a note with Martha telling Judy that he would send her two weeks' termination pay.
Benjy had told Stayton off and had lost his job in the bargain. But the day hadn't been a total loss: Benjy and Martha had decided to elope, on the spur of the moment. They planned to sell the Cody place and buy a motel in Oregon.
That was when Jones showed Judy the ring he'd brought for her. "I've had it for a while," he said. "But I wanted to wait until the dust settled before I asked you to marry me. I guess now's as good a time as any." It was perfect.
They could raise enough money to buy the Cody place themselves, and Judy was willing to make a marriage gift to Martha of the money that Martha owed her.
"But that motel they're going to buy-it's on a back road that's only used in summertime," William John said.
