"Not Jack, Jacques," corrected Henri. "Well, Shack-" Bettine mouthed the word.
Henri made another try. He couldn't come right out and admit openly that there were people who did not consider a beauty salon such as the Hair-After the epitome of desirable bequests.
Bitterly his thoughts ran contrary to the words he used. He had thought Mary Morgan would leave a stipulation in her will that he, Henri, would be named executor-manager until the will was through probate.
Instead she had left the salon to a grand-niece, Susanne Morgan. Not that he had given up. He'd caught a glimpse of the girl at the funeral. She would be wax in his hands. Before the six months had elapsed she would make a gift to him of the salon, even if he had to marry her to gain the gift.
As for that other man in her life, pouf! He was not the type to desire a beauty salon.
Neither was Susanne. At that precise moment she would have offered it to anyone who'd take it off her hands, except that she couldn't, not for six months.
I, she informed traffic, am in a vile humor.
But who wouldn't be after a night in a motel situated in a gore between freeway and arteries leading into the city, and on a truck route?
She glanced at the dial-board clock. She was late. And the attorney was meeting her at the salon. Such a nice old man. They'd become quite chatty at the hotel after the funeral.
Practically every eye in the Hair-After was glued to a peephole as Susanne drove up. Jansen, the janitor, purportedly giving an extra shine to a window, had alerted them.
"Oh-oh," said Jacques.
It wasn't what Susanne was saying. Some insolent young man had literally snatched the one parking space on the street, right out from under the nose of her car; an angry young man who stepped out, glared and stalked to the meter.
Now where should she go? The cars behind left no doubt where they thought she belonged. She drove on slowly, and two blocks farther on held up a long cortege waiting for a shopper to load.
The angry young man whisked up the sidewalk to the crossing and strode across the street, his coat tails literally standing straight out behind him.
Imagine him, Bert Leehoff, being detailed to a beauty salon to tell some fool girl the details of her inheritance, while a most important committee meeting of Citizens' Green Light was under way.
There were times when he found being the junior partner of Barnes, Burdon, Ames and Leehoff not the seat of opportunity he'd envisioned.
Well, he'd make short work of this chore. He had everything in his briefcase. Ha! And where was that? In the car. That girl had made him forget it.
Leehoff wheeled and saw himself in a mirror wearing a pink and gold choker and long loop earrings. As he was hatless, the petal pink turned crimson, and off he strode to miss the traffic lights coming and going.
By the time he was back, the girl who'd tried to steal his parking space was striding in. Probably late for a beauty appointment. Well, if he'd ever seen anyone who needed one more, he'd been wearing dark glasses.
She was fairly tall, with straight light-brown hair crammed up under a most unbecoming hat, a shiny face, too much rouge and lipstick. At least her cheeks were scarlet. And what eyes-tiny and sharp. Ha, she was still mad at him.
Automatically he held the door for her, and she sailed in, then came to such a short stop he, in his hurry, barged into her. "Welcome, Miss Morgan," chanted the staff.
"Good morning, and thank you," Susanne managed. "I'm probably late."
All seemed to be waiting for something. Henri looked at Leehoff and identified him from news photos, though no photographer had ever caught that expression on his face.
"Mr. Ames is waiting?"
Leehoff stepped forward. "I am representing
Mr. Ames. Leehoff, Bert Leehoff."
"Oh?" Susanne smiled sweetly. "And I took you for a professional curb opportunist."
Leevoff smiled right back. "And I thought that meeting a client was more important than waiting for some shopper to make up her mind where she wanted to park."
Mentally Henri rubbed his hands. Excellent, excellent. Let these two get off to a bad start, and the Hair-After would be his the moment it went on the market.
"Chilly this morning," he offered brightly. "Should we not go to Miss Susanne's office for coffee?" He slapped his hands briskly, sending Jennet, the maid, into a flurry of activity.
Both Susanne and Leehoff were surprised at the office. Contrasted with the reception room of the salon, it seemed austere. Even the chairs were uncompromising; purchased, it seemed, to keep any caller from overstaying a brief business appointment.
Susanne thought it looked like a jail. Gray walls, furniture, filing cases, desk, even the typewriter were all that one dull color.
The walls were relieved only by pinup cards on which were hand-inscribed mottoes of some kind. Susanne blinked at the one above the desk where she had been seated.
"Beauty is an inside treatment."
It hung slightly askew.
Henri smiled apologetically. "A peculiarity Of the late Miss Morgan," he explained. "Reminders, she called them."
"But this inside treatment-" mused Leehoff.
This time Henri's arms were extended. "Understand please. Much money it has cost us since the late lamented began this inside-out campaign. There were patrons she would not accept, but would send instead to the mental doctors."
"Oooh." Leehoff listened with interest. "I think I understand. An individual's disposition usually shows up on his face; right? And she felt no amount of facials, creams, and the goop women use could cover it up. Good thinking."
"But expensive," mourned Henri. "The worse the disposition of the patron, the madder she grows when this is pointed out. The madder she grows, the more patrons she draws from the Hair-After. I shudder at what the books reveal."
Susanne was leaning forward with interest. "What would you do to such a patron? How would you handle her?"
"What but make the best of what she has?"
"Outside?" persisted Susanne.
"The beautician does not build the structure," Henri informed her earnestly; "he or she but finishes the facade."
"Think you've got something." Leehoff nodded. "He lops off the hair, or shingles, then slaps on the paint."
Susanne's eyes were no longer small and sharp; they were wide, dove-gray, and dancing with the light of inner laughter.
Where, she wondered, could be found two men more unalike? All she needed was Danny Harper in another chair with some of his obviously trite but telling comments.
Henri continued to talk, to downgrade the Hair-After. Hm. Could be she had inherited a lemon from which the juice had long since been squeezed. Business had fallen off, he intoned.
Could be. Yet judging from the sounds she'd heard when the doors were opened after they'd reached the inner office, each booth outside was well filled with patrons waiting for the first line to reach the dryers.
She glanced at Leehoff. My, how grim he looked. Henri was giving the salon's history. In the beginning it had fared well, but now that Leesburg was becoming a metropolis, only business girls were steady patrons.
The clientele upon which the salon had been founded now went to the petite salons at shopping centers in the better areas, where there was plenty of parking space. To the Hair-After was left the after-work hours young women. After-work hours meant the payment of overtime.
Why not stagger the operators' hours? Susanne wondered. If there are so few customers during the daytime, let some come on at noon and work through.
Her thoughts came to a grinding halt. What had Henri said just before that? Something about parking space.
Susanne swept up, grabbing her bag, smashing hat on her head, and streaked to the door.
"See you in court," she called back.
She had reached and passed the entrance before Leehoff swept the papers into his briefcase, cried, "You certainly will," and swept after her.
Henri came from the office, a fatuous look on his face. He had succeeded. This niece of the late lamented wanted no part of a losing business. She would appoint him to run it. And he would, with such a careful hand no profit would show before the six-month period was up.
He floated around on a roseate cloud until his first appointment, eleven o'clock and late as usual, came in, laughing.
"Country girl had forgotten she was in a one-hour traffic zone, and who but Bert Leehoff was trying to talk the traffic officer into giving the ticket to him? I mean, he already had one on his own car."
Leehoff was addressing the traffic officer as he hoped some day to address a committee of businessmen with influence at City Hall.
If it were not for the men who owned the older business houses in the city, the city would not have grown so that no customers could park and shop without fear of tickets. Something had to be done, some new parking area created.
"Could be a Space Needle like at the Seattle Fair," suggested the officer happily, and went on with the theme of elevators which would carry cars to temporary resting places.
"Thank you," said Leehoff. "There is the old Morrison Building; I'll look into it.
Now if you'll turn that ticket over to me-I represent Miss Morgan-"
"Morgan? Ah, yes, 'tis on her car license."
"Miss Mary Morgan's niece, who inherited the beauty salon."
The officer swung on her. "You'll be carrying on as did she, and you so young? Saved my daughter's marriage, she did. Well, as you're a guest in the city for the moment, this we will forget." And he disposed of the ticket.
He swung on Leehoff. "But you are not a guest, and your car is rapidly gaining overtime."
Susanne and Leehoff exchanged expressions of dismay. They hadn't had a chance to discuss the salon. Henri had done all of the talking.
"Could you face an early lunch?" Leehoff asked. "Then get ready to follow my car when I pass."
Dutifully Susanne fell into the wake of the Leehoff car and nearly got a dented fender for her determination. This was certainly an up-and-coming small city, mostly coming, with no one giving way to anyone else.
Far on the outskirts of the city, Leehoff pulled into a drive-in where customers were already having an early lunch or perchance a late breakfast.
"I choose this because it has booths and no one I know comes here," Leehoff explained as he helped her from her car. He made a quick recovery. "I mean, we must talk without interruptions."
Seated in a booth with nothing but the view of a sharp mountain beyond to distract them, they waited until their order was taken. Then Leehoff leaned forward.
"Miss Morgan, I am bound to let you know there is an escape clause in the will. You are not forced to take over the beauty salon to benefit by your bequest.
"You need not give final word at this time. However, having listened to Henri, do you feel inclined to go into the business angle of the salon further?"
He sat back rather sharply. Susanne's eyes were no longer round; they formed a straight, narrow line.
CHAPTER TWO
"I most certainly do." Sparks seemed to fly from Susanne's lips. "This morning, driving in, I would have given the Hair-After to anyone who wanted it. But after listening to Henri, I vowed I would take over and run the salon if I landed in the Bastille in bankruptcy. Why, I couldn't live with myself if I allowed something Aunt Mary looked upon as a sacred trust to close its doors."
"Hurrah!"
Diners in nearby booths reared to see what had brought forth the shout of triumph. All they saw was a personable young man shaking hands with a rather wild-looking young woman.
"I had the desire to take over myself," he confessed; "if you gave up, that is. Heaven knows there is nothing I want less than a beauty salon.
"Miss Morgan, despite curb-snatching .and traffic tickets, you and I are going to get along. We react the same way."
He had to wait until their chicken in the rough was served; until an interested waitress hovered as she poured coffee. Once she was gone, he started in again.
"Now then," he drew a deep breath, "either Henri does not know the financial assets of the Hair-After, or has some personal reason for downgrading the salon. I know, and have proof here in my briefcase, that the salon has continued to show a profit even during Miss Mary's last illness, and that it has a fine potential.
"Every city has its parking problems. Most are building urban and suburban shopping centers around non-metered parking areas. We've done the same here, but short of moving the Hair-After, I don't see an immediate solution."
"I do," mused Susanne. "Change the clientele. Meters go off duty at six p.m., and lore space is available. By staggering work crews on an eleven-to-seven basis, or one-to-nine, we could serve business girls and schoolteachers. And let it once be found difficult to gain an appointment during other hours, we'd have all the patrons we could handle."
"I assume you majored in psychology," mused the delighted Leehoff. "So has the owner of this drive-in. Would you care to come to my office? I'm due in court at two, but until then-"
Susanne leaned back. "Could this go until another day? Frankly, I'm bushed. I need to settle in, to unpack, then quietly visit the salon without the chaperonage of either Henri or an attorney."
"You've decided to take your aunt's apartment?"
Susanne sighed. She couldn't see that she had any choice. The lease ran for seven months, and with it went the services of a maid, Maggie, with pay. At the end of the seven months Maggie would be eligible for Social Security which, with the endowment left by Miss Mary, would give her comfort elsewhere.
Susanne hadn't met Maggie. She let Leehoff drive ahead of her to the old apartment louse on a hill, waved, promising she would call for an appointment. Then she met Maggie.
"Hmph," Maggie greeted her when Susanne had identified herself. "You look like a plucked chicken. Here, this is the guest room. Get into comfies and relax."
Susanne got into "comfies" because the bags deposited inside the door were rapidly emptied and Maggie, having made a choice, put Susanne into a housecoat and slippers.
Her hair brushed and plaited in pigtails, she was allowed to make a tour of her new domain.
"This is lovely," Susanne cried, going from window to window looking down on the sprawling city or up on mountains which thus far had defied man's attempt to tame them.
"Now this," Maggie threw open a door, "is your thinking room. Was Miss Mary's. She says trouble with this world is: people don't take time to think. Drat that telephone."
Amused, Susanne watched the woman stalk to the extension, lift it, and bark, "Well? Oh, it's you, Henry. Yes, she's here and tuckered. No, she's not coming down till tomorrow. Now calm yourself. And drop the accent with me. If you'da been in the front lines, you wouldn't have had time for Paris. Yes, I'll tell her."
She turned to Susanne. "Henry wants you should have dinner with him tonight. Could have it here if you had a mind to. Miss Mary often had the help up. I'd say wait till you're rested."
"I am tired," Susanne admitted, "and I would like time for a conference with the attorney first."
Susanne settled on a chaisette as the word battle behind her continued; then Maggie, defeated, came to face her.
"Henry says Wednesday night at a place you should be seen; not here. If you ask me, he's afraid I'll chip in my two bits' worth."
Susanne imagined her words would be worth more than twenty-five cents. Yet in all fairness she had to make her own evaluation of the employees.
"I think," she mused, looking out across purple foothills to the triangular shining gold peak of Mt. Hood, "I shall just lie here and think."
She meant to, but Mt. Hood was salmon pink with the last of the afterglow when Maggie shook her.
"Man says I should wake you. Name of Danny Harper. Know him?"
Know him? She was practically married to him.
"Calling from Des Moines, Iowa. Shoulda waited for the night-toll rate. Saved some money. Here."
Susanne took the telephone, shook sleep from her eyes and replaced it with a vision of Danny: six foot something, bronzed, black of eye and reddish-brown of hair. Danny always knew all of the answers.
Danny's conversation consisted largely of questions. How had she made out? Was it going to be too much of a hassle? She could cut out any time. They needn't wait until he had the right job. They could be married "at the drop of a hat."
Susanne had a ridiculous mental picture of someone dropping a hat and she and Danny springing to a stance before a preacher, complete with license. Ah, but that was Danny, the one student who drove even doctors of literature to white hair and balding scalps. But he could and did play football.
The receiver replaced, she leaned back to dream of Danny. They had become engaged in their junior year at the University, agreed to wait until they were seniors, then, having reached that estate, decided it advisable to graduate and then marry.
Susanne sighed blissfully. Theirs was such a satisfactory understanding. Naturally, she felt, Danny couldn't marry until he had won the particular position he felt was destined for him; In the meantime, as extra man with his father's trucking line, he traveled across the continent, piling up savings against the great day.
She'd been much too busy to worry over the delay in their wedding plans. Automatically, once she had returned from college, she had become executive director of many organizations in her home town.
In a sense, she had been filing away assets for their future. Her work was charitable, but it was making her name and ability known. This would inadvertently work to Danny's benefit.
And it was having its effect upon her inheritance. She had learned to evaluate, to analyze, to direct. At the moment she was applying these assets to Maggie.
What did one do with an older woman who simply took one over bodily? Her father had said she was "a jewel, but some jewels are rough to wear." Her mother had shushed him with a reminder about how she had cared for his aunt for years.
Susanne found herself dressed with little memory of dressing herself; seated at a table and almost spoon-fed. But the food was delicious, and when she did it justice, Maggie beamed.
"Pleasured me considerable you chose to live here," Maggie confided. "I need someone to do for. Maybe you don't know it yet, but you're going to need doing for."
Susanne lifted her head, a question in her eyes.
"Miss Mary talked over business with me, nights. Needed a sounding board, she said. Sometimes I talked back, argufying. She needed it. Made her more determined she was right. When you get ready, I'm here."
"Thank you, Maggie," Susanne stammered. "But first I think I should view the business, including the employees, from a purely impersonal standpoint, don't you?"
"That I do. There's nothing like a good kick in the shins to make a boy know he's got him an enemy."
Susanne digested this right along with a luscious triangle of peach pie half-drowned in whipped cream.
She arranged to be called early, planning to visit the salon before the employees arrived, then retired with a book Maggie thrust at her.
"Miss Mary said," Maggie intoned, "if a body's to work on the outside, it's best to know the inside."
Susanne fully expected a treatise on structural anatomy, the basis of facials; instead she found a book of poems, Blanding's last, and understood the note tacked to the office wall.
Susanne breakfasted with a silver-framed reminder card smack in the center of her place setting.
It read, "7:30 to 8:30, salon inspection. 9:00, conference at Mills Bldg. with Leehoff. 40:00, bank to establish signature. 11:00, conference with accountant."
"Hm," murmured Susanne, "and I thought all there would be to running a salon would be to encourage the employees."
The accountant was also the part-time bookkeeper. He came in Monday afternoons to draw up the payroll, check the previous week's bank deposits and the books. Susanne would make the deposits each afternoon.
She drove to town feeling very sober, found a two-hour parking spot several blocks from the salon, and made her way through the early stillness to the Hair-After.
She was too intent upon unlocking the doors to look at the display window and receive the lift or letdown of other casual viewers, and when she stepped into the interior she waited, a little frightened.
The salon too seemed to be waiting for a signal to start breathing, and she didn't know the signal.
Nor could she identify the delicate perfume which seemed to pervade the big room. It seemed composed of many odors, no one distinct; of soaps and sprays, disinfectants and deodorizers which hadn't been too efficient, obviously. On tiptoe she walked around the reception room, straightened ashtrays and piles of magazines that had not needed straightening, squared the appointment book on its pedestal desk. Then she went on to the cubicles where the four girls and two men carried on their art.
This, she tried to convince herself, was all hers, right from the foyer to the back where Jansen and Jennet, the maid, had their neat small room with arms against dirt attached to the walls-brooms, mops, and shelves of canned cleaners of all kinds.
She read a city health inspector's latest stamp of approval and shuddered. She didn't know upon what the approval was based.
Back in the office, she found an order lying on her desk, awaiting her signature. She didn't know if it were bona fide or merely Henri's idea of what they should have.
Salesmen! And she knew nothing about the beauty business. How dependent she was going to be upon her employees.
She collapsed in her desk chair. Just why did Aunt Mary leave this to me?
Out of half a dozen nieces and grand-nieces, Mary had chosen her. Why?
She hardly knew me, she mused. Maybe that's why.
Well, she'd go into that later, or try to, with Maggie's help.
Now to the conference with Leehoff. Really quite a decent fellow after you got to know him. Perhaps she too would snatch parking space after she'd lived in this city long enough; snatch it from some elderly woman, perchance in desperate need of a physician.
The conference was quite painless, though it seemed to her the various stenographers and secretaries took a really personal interest in her.
And there was no one to tell her one had overheard Leehoff explaining her to Ames.
"One thing," he'd stated grimly, "she'll have nothing to unlearn. I doubt if she's ever been in a beauty salon. But she has spirit. She'll see it through."
They walked to the bank. Susanne didn't know how Leehoff negotiated his return. She floated. Having a dry voice tell you, you were worth so many thousand dollars, while reading a will, was one thing. Having a bank vice-president establish your right to withdraw at the stroke of your signature more money than your father made in a year was something else. It was dizzying. - "Are you sure you're feeling all right?" Leehoff asked.
"No," Susanne replied, "I am not sure. There is something about dollars that makes this inheritance real, like waking up from a pleasant dream. I'm scared."
Again came a laugh and a cheering "Good girl." Then, warily, "What are you going to buy first?"
"Buy? Goodness, that money isn't mine; it belongs to the Hair-After. Mr. Leehoff, could we pay me an allowance or something for stamps and stocking and things? Something I've really earned?"
And Leehoff, who with Susanne had wondered why she had been chosen as heir, understood.
He reminded her Miss Mary had taken a definite percentage of the profits. Then, shaking his head a little at his own idea, he blurted, "Why not have dinner with me Saturday night? You'll have had time to absorb the overall picture of the salon."
"I'd like that," she agreed, "but at my-that is, Aunt Mary's apartment. I am confident Maggie will put us back on the track if we stray. I think she knew more about the business than, say, Henri."
Susanne found the conference with the auditor equally comforting. He was elderly. He was prosaic. He talked figures, and those she could understand.
Outside her office, the hum of a busy morning, the whirr of dryers, voices, and the aroma of perfumes of all kinds wafted in.
Susanne walked to the front entrance with him, asking questions that seemed to be endless. They paused a moment. Then she turned back, smiling absently at women who waited; women who sat under dryers, one or two who'd swung their cubicle chairs to view her.
She didn't quite close the door and thus heard a high-pitched voice: "Oh, no, it can't be. She's certainly no- advertisement for the Hair-After."
And a second voice: "Really! I wonder if it's safe to patronize this salon. She obviously has no confidence in her operators."
Susanne sank into the salon chair and stared at the girl in the mirror immediately behind it. The same face she'd been viewing for years stared back. What was wrong with it?
Susanne smiled.
She had had her share of successful love "affairs-hers was not a face that turned men off. Still, she was enough of a businesswoman to know that changes had to be made.
How would Danny view those changes?
Susanne's face softened as she remembered Danny.
What a big, gorgeous man! Susanne had always felt lucky that Danny had singled her out on campus. There were plenty of beautiful women there, far more glamorous than Susanne. But Danny had sensed that extra something in her, and he had fastened on it immediately.
"We'll be married someday," he told her two hours after they'd met.
She'd had no doubt that he meant it. But they weren't married yet, and with each day that passed, the chances for it dimmed somewhat.
She felt Henri's hands in her hair and she closed her eyes and let her mind swim in memories.
Perhaps it was because she was now caught up in a world totally foreign to her way of being. Perhaps it was because there had been a lack of masculine flesh in her life recently. Or perhaps it was because Danny was still the most incredible lover she had ever experienced. For whatever reason, she found herself remembering that day by the lake, that beautiful sunny day of pleasure.
Danny had picked her up early that morning. "It'll take us a good three hours to get out there," he'd said. He was right. They drove until the road ran out, then hiked another two miles to the lakeside. They were alone in a vast garden of beauty.
Danny opened the picnic basket and pulled out a checkered blanket, spreading it out across the ground. Then he pulled out a large bottle of wine and two glasses.
They drank and ate in the sunlight until they were both heady with the brew of joy and wine. Then Danny leaned over and kissed her openly with his mouth, sticking his tongue softly to the back of her throat.
Suddenly Danny stood up. "I don't know about you," he said. "But this is a beautiful day and I'm not going to spend it with all these clothes on!"
She watched as he quickly peeled off his shirt and tossed it to the ground. Then he kicked off his shoes, skinned off his pants and shorts, and grinned down at her.
His cock hung like a fire-hose between his legs. She felt her mouth tightening with excitement. Danny knew the signs too-and his thick member began to stretch and thicken as she watched.
"Look, Ma," he said. "No hands."
Susanne gasped at the sight. His pecker was big in repose, but downright frightening as it grew. She watched as the skin buckled and smoothed out, as the rod seemed to grow in thickness to double its size as it lifted upward in erection.
"It's so big!" she cried.
"And it tastes great," he said, urging her on.
Susanne looked away, but there was no concealing the evidence of her excitement. She felt herself reddening, and she knew he was watching her and waiting. She turned suddenly and got onto her knees in front of him and deftly flipped the hardening slab of manhood into her mouth.
Danny chuckled. She felt his hands on her head as she sucked eagerly at the stem. He tasted fresh and masculine and she loved the way he continued to thicken and lengthen in her mouth.
Her oral cavity stretched as his throbbing meat got bigger, hugging it hotly and firmly. At first she could only fit it a small way down her throat, but as she worked on the pecker she was able to pull and suck the whole hard throbber into her face and swallow it down.
Then she drew off and bobbed about on him, sucking and wetting his rippled skin, pulling at his prick as if she wanted to milk him.
His staff bucked as she swirled her mouth around it, occasionally nicking it erotically with her teeth. She knew just what to do for a fine blow-job-the right pressure and touch, the mushy sucking, the combinations of fast, furious face-fucking with slow and erotic nuzzling.
He sprayed himself into the air when he came. Susanne pulled away just as she felt the Jism pulse upward and jerked out his pleasure with her soft and fast little fingers.
The gobs shot skyward, landing on his stomach and the dark patches of pubes framing his tall pole.
Then, as the final gushes slowly oozed out, Susanne put her face back over him and sucked out his sticky seeds. It was amazing the way she could control her mouth pressure, sending spurts of suction down the tiny tube that ran the length of his pecker to pull up the last sticky droplet of his love juices.
Then she started licking up all the semen from his stomach and pubic patch. It felt hot to her tongue, almost burning her taste buds with its saltiness. She gobbled it up and swirled it into her mouth.
When her face returned to the shaft he could feel his juices still sticking to her tongue and lips, all gooey and heated. It made her lips smack loudly as she kissed his tool and rubbed it hungrily with her face.
She was making love to his shaft, rubbing it against her big tits and kissing it fondly.
She wanted to make his tool absolutely tingle with excitement.
Then he pulled her to her feet and undressed her, enjoying the whole of her body with every touch.
Her bra fell away lightly to reveal two firm breasts-mighty round hillocks of pale flesh topped by red cherries of nipples.
Danny cupped them in his hands and hefted them up, feeling the weight and firmness of her melons. "These," he told her, "are two very beautiful boobs."
"Well, if you think so, you should kiss them."
He put his mouth around a nipple and smacked it. The tit fell hard out of his mouth and grew flushed and red with excitement. She moaned a tiny sound.
"Mmmmmmmmmm!!! That's nice..."
Danny then splayed his whole tongue along the line of her red nipple, wetting the whole button and coaxing it to get hard. He plucked at it and bit it, chomping down hard to squeeze the tight, hard flesh. She felt her body grow damp and weak.
He jumped to the other bud and ate it ever more feverishly, until his whole mouth was cupped over the mound while his tongue wagged the tingling nipple mercilessly.
His hands came around and squeezed the tits at their base, pushing the hard flesh together so he could suck it in even more easily. She quivered with shivering jabs of pleasure making her body pulse and wrench.
Then he lowered her to the blanket. She was lying on her back, and he quickly climbed atop her, their heads reversed, and twisted his face between her legs, his hot tongue ravishing her center.
Susanne twisted in the agony of pleasure as he tongued harder and harder, parting her soft lips with his fingers. She sighed, and then noticed that his erect and throbbing cock was dangling mere inches from her mouth.
She seized it with one hand and quickly fed it into her waiting jaws. She sucked even more eagerly now, loving the feel of his head between her thighs, enjoying the droplets of moisture that quickly gathered at his cock-head.
He happily lapped away at her muff, spreading open the lips that hid the moist softness and plunging his tongue down inside. He chewed at the hood above her clitoris, tickling the bud underneath as he stretched and pulled at the fleshy bonnet.
He cracked open her love nest with his face and let all of her sweet juices spill out upon him. As she tugged at the flesh of his prick, he neatly chewed at the ridge of her wet folded hips. He ravished her quim, making it a five-course meal.
Each course was different. The outer lips were the first-rubbery, and chewy, they had a tinge of muskiness from the juices that rolled out over them. Little bits of pubic hair mixed in as he drew in the long folds.
Course two was her slit, a marvelously tight and wet tube of spongy flesh that had a rich inner coating of tangy juices. The meat of her tunnel was impossible to chew-he could only lick at it until it heaved orgasmically.
Course three was her stew of juices, which seemed to permeate the whole folded, slitted center but brewed deep in the walls of her womb. The tart stickiness that he pulled from her walls stayed on his tongue with a musky aftertaste, while the gushing thin fluids rolled about his tongue, stinging and pricking at his taste buds.
Course four was of course her puckered clit, but he saved that for last and went onto the fifth course - Susanne's tight and puckered little rear. The tight pink spot curled and nipped at his tongue, refusing him entry. But Danny darted away at it, tickling her bottom.
Then he settled in on her clit to give her a mouthful of love.
"OOOOOOOOOOO!" she howled as his tongue scooped the bulging bud from under its hood. "Eat me there-baby, and eat me good!"
He sucked the tiny thing into his mouth and rolled it with his teeth. She rolled about the blanket in moaning response.
He chewed at it, sucked the sensitive cap, and she flailed about, unable to control the orgasmic tidal waves that splashed inside her.
Then he came up and entered her with a sharp thrust.
"UUUGGGGHHHHH!!!" she yelled. "SHOVE IT IN!!!"
He hunched up and snapped it to her again, breaking past the folds and enlarging her inner sanctum to erotic limits. He stretched and twisted her quim as his cock dove downward.
In he thrust, mushing and mashing her insides, which felt as if they were swirling apart as he feathered his taut-fleshed member back out from the portal.
With the next series of slammers his pecker was jabbing at the bottom of her womb, assaulting it like a boxer in a championship round. Her insides felt bruised with excitement.
"OH YEAH BABY!!! SLAM THAT SLAB DEEP INSIDE ME!!!"
The words made him speed up and thrust furiously. Suddenly he popped into overdrive and each thrust milked a hot explosion to cover and spray the walls of her womb.
Danny just kept thrusting away, leaving his scalding deposits as her quim rolled around and contorted on his cock. His love milk filled her up and made her bottom burn.
Then he pulled her around, guiding his cock out gently for a second and positioning her doggy-style. Susanne couldn't believe it. Here she had just drained him and he was ready for more. She threw her ass back and offered her quivering, pulsing, juice-stained slit to him.
Of course Danny accepted it eagerly, this time pushing up into her from an angle that gave his dangle the perfect aim to reach the very end of her sheath. It slammed at her back walls, crumpling the wet flesh around it.
Danny's hand came around and fingered her clit, rubbing the little bud fast with the tip of his finger until she lay there, impaled and helpless, letting out long anguished sobs.
When he finally came again he pulled out and sprayed the crack of her ass. Then using his own lubrication he took her there too. By the time they were done that day her whole body ached and dripped with happiness and satisfaction.
Danny was a stud who could give her all the service she needed. Oh, how fondly she recalled him!
CHAPTER THREE
Henri, always the diplomat, soothed his client with carefully chosen words. Miss Susanne had come but recently from the small town, from college. She had found here such a burden of work she had not had time to have so much as the shampoo.
"But wait," he intoned, "until I am through with her."
For hadn't his fingers itched since the first moment he'd laid eyes upon her?
"A good head," he informed the woman he was rapidly turning into his idea of an upper-class society matron. "She will make of the Hair-After much."
With his assistance, he might have added, and did imply, she would allow the artistes more leeway than had Miss Mary.
Susanne waited for Henri's lunch break, then signaled Henri to prove his craft on her own hair.
When he was done Susanne spent a while staring at the reflection in the mirror. Really nice-looking. She wondered who she was. She twisted a little to see if someone else had come into the booth and was handed a mirror for the side view.
"You mean-well, of course-" And then she cried, "But I don't look weird."
Her hair, gleaming with soft tan lights, fitted her head like a comfortable cap, two swirls softening the line of her cheeks. Why, she looked like all the girls she'd admired. Now she was one of them.
"Voila! Tomorrow the clothes. Maggie will tell you where Miss Mary she found the best."
"Henri, thank you." Susanne's guard was down. Henri had done this for her.
Even Maggie approved.
"You're beginning to look like yourself," she commented.
Susanne carried that thought around
"like a plate full of water," something liable to spill and be lost.
How could Maggie know Susanne's self when Susanne herself didn't? And what was Danny going to say?
Having ruined her appetite at lunch, she now ruined her dinner. Danny. She knew only too well. One look and then: "Come on; you look all right."
She wondered if he had ever seen her in those quick glances?
Maggie came in with a cup of coffee and sat down opposite her. "Stop kicking yourself around the table," she ordered. "Eat up. You're going to need strength the next few days."
"More than I've been needing?"
"You've just skimmed the surface. You have to get acquainted with yourself first, naturally, then with each of the employees, then with your regular patrons. Yes, there is more to running a beauty salon than sitting in the office toting up the profits."
With that many persons to consider, thought Susanne, she'd better make short work of herself.
She laughed a little. She had really scorned her inheritance. Anyone could run a beauty salon. Imagine a girl with her education wasting time on one, especially when there were so many really worthwhile projects begging for her services.
Yet think what she had learned about herself within the last twenty-four hours. Why, she might have gone on through life believing her good works' more than made up for her dowdy appearance.
Maggie smiled at her. "If you're thinking what I'm thinking you're thinking, cheer up. Took me a year to find Maggie. I had the old girl all mixed up with a put-upon bear; you know, the kind that has to snarl and claw because it feels it isn't getting its just due."
"What happened to awaken you?"
"I got my just due," she replied dryly. "We all fall into our own traps, given time. I'll tell you someday. Now how about clothes?"
She needed some to match the new person she was becoming. "Have I the right to spend money on myself?" she asked anxiously.
"You're not. You're spending it on the salon. Wouldn't quibble if it was new wallpaper, would you? Or fixings? You and the way you look right now are more important.
Folks got to know things is going to keep on running right."
Susanne looked up, her eyes shining. "I've never really let myself go," she confided.
"Then do, at Julienne's. Value for the money," she added a bit lamely. Henry did have good taste. As much as she resented him pre-choosing Miss Susanne's clothes, she would cooperate this time, until the girl learned.
Susanne would have to write Danny that evening if she were to catch him at his next stop. She went into Miss Mary's thinking room, sat before a small gold and ivory typewriter, and just stared at it.
Danny, the complete love of her life. What could she tell him? How much of what had happened to her in the past two days would he understand?
Why, she couldn't even let him know she'd had her hair cut without him thinking she had let herself be sold on "all that doodling up rot."
For a few moments she rattled away at the keys. Figures he would understand. She would tell him how much money she had at her disposal; about the auditor; a little, very little, about Leehoff.
And then her fingers crashed on the keys. This was dreadful. Not only was she seeing herself in a different guise, but Danny from a different perspective.
How long had she been withholding the absolute truth from him; how long substituting such facts as she felt intuitively he would approve? Oh, poor Danny. She hadn't been fair to him at all.
Maggie tiptoed away from the door, looking wise.
Susanne, chin in her hands, stared at the girl in the mirror beyond the desk. Oh, drat the house, the salon. Every place she turned there were mirrors, like so many consciences.
She should write Danny and, if typewriter keys could weep, cry, "Danny, I'm not at all the girl you think you love. Right now, if I had to make a choice between a date with you and going shopping tomorrow, I'd choose shopping first."
Eventually she wrote a brief note to be airmailed.
Awakening at dawn, Susanne decided she hadn't felt like this since her tenth Christmas morning-excited, eager, wondering what delight would be found under the tree.
She managed a calm appearance at the salon, where the staff expressed admiration of her hairstyle, each in his or her own fashion.
"Now you look like you belong to us," said the silver-blond Nelsa.
"Don't you feel you've had a load taken off your head?" cooed Dove. "I went from braids to a shingle in one hour and nearly took off into outer space. I mean, even my feet felt light."
Lurline swept a wise glance from Susanne to Henri and remarked a conservative change was advisable, and this style was so adaptable.
Bettine came out with a frank, "Me, I like it. Are we ever glad Miss Mary chose you!"
Susanne almost tiptoed into Julienne's. She sailed out. She had never encountered such a person as Julie. She had made no more than a single purchase, but she needed no more at the moment.
Fortunately she wasn't driving. The only apparent casualties were one wide-brimmed hat tipped over the owner's indignant nose; one pair of heels trod upon.
Susanne didn't plan an entrance at the Hair-After, but she achieved one. A patron leaving still clung to the inner door to talk over her shoulder to one who had just entered.
"I don't know, and neither does he," she was saying. "Check with Henri. Imagine an evening watching the goon girl. Bert will writhe."
Susanne fixed the girl with her best patronizing look.
"Oh, sorry," said the girl, and moved on quickly.
"Considered," replied Susanne, and left her baffled. Had she meant she would consider the apology or consider its source?
"Who is she?" the girl whispered.
Bettine couldn't resist replying, "The goon girl."
CHAPTER FOUR
Bettine's client settled into her chair with a deep chuckle. "That should curb Ranalee's tongue for twenty-four hours."
"Oh, but I shouldn't have said what I did," Bettine mourned. "Miss Susanne is lovely."
"Now stop spoiling things. You merely threw Ranalee's wishful thinking back into her teeth. Bettine, I want you to do my hair today. Henri is excellent when I'm out to shock the natives, but, dear, it takes me two splashes of ice water a morning before I dare look in the mirror."
"You mean it doesn't stay?"
"I mean it stays so well, I have the weird feeling somebody else is running around in my robe. No, it is well you spoke when you did. Ranalee learned where Henri was taking Miss Susanne tonight. I think she planned something. Now she won't dare."
Bettine ran her hands through the thick hair, frowning. "Why?" , "She managed a dinner date with Bert Leehoff. If that is Miss Susanne," she waggled her head backward, "Bert would spring to her help and leave Ranalee dangling."
Bettine managed a trim without scalping the client but longed to know more. Should she warn Miss Susanne? Or was it better to leave things as they were and trust they would work out?
There,' the shampoo was over; now to bring her fingers under control for the setting; Oh, dear. Here came one of the salon's best-customers, operator's stool in hand, to cozy down in a corner and say brightly, "Bettine won't mind; I'll keep out of her way. Laura, wasn't that 'goon girl' bit priceless?"
Perhaps this compensated. Miss Mary had said she had kept the individual booths small to forestall any general committee meeting from getting underway while an operator was trying to set a patron's hair.
Idly she listened to the two talk until the visitor came to the evening's plans. "Heard Henri on the phone, I believe, and promptly affected a must-attend birthday dinner for her uncle at the same place. Planned inviting them to their table; you know how the old judge can't abide Henri."
"But why?"
"Basically, because Leehoff wouldn't break a Saturday night date to take her to the Kilmer's mountain place for the weekend. The date was with Miss Susanne."
Some signal was given, and the speaker promptly said, "Oh, Bettine won't talk; these girls never do."
"I'll bet they would bring the whole city down around its own ears if they did," commented the other. "But I still don't see what she hopes to gain."
"You are obtuse, darling. Helene saw the girl and said she was a complete wash-out, awkward, naive, with all the attributes a man can't stand. And her clothes were from the not-so-gay nineties."
"Helene must have seen the wrong girl. This one is poised, charming, and you should have seen her delete Ranalee with one word and one glance."
"Dryer, please," murmured Bettine.
Bettine glanced at the clock. Ten minutes before her next appointment. Swiftly she gathered her implements, signaled Jennet and rushed for the little cubicle Susanne had ordered made into a coffee-break room.
"A place to put your feet up," she called it.
Susanne was working on the thought if not the room at that time. She was ordering a six-by-nine-foot mural of a quiet mountain lake to stretch across one side of the room. She had an idea a complete change of scenery might be restful for the staff.
The wall was bare now. There was only one rather broken-down chair as yet, and the hot water was in a carafe, but who knew for how long? Yet Bettine sipped quickly made coffee, planted her feet on a wooden box and watched an inner vision.
By the time she was called she had reached a decision. She would simply place her money on Miss Susanne and neither tell her nor telephone Leehoff to watch for chance trouble.
That was one rule about which Miss Mary had been adamant. "What you hear in the salon," she had said repeatedly, "goes in one ear and down the drain."
And she had said, "There is something about a woman relaxing in a long chair that brings up the gossip in her. Why do you suppose a psychiatrist uses a couch?
"We are not psychiatrists. We can't be, nor have we time to sift the false from the true, so we discard all that is said."
Susanne turned from an inner contemplation of the coffee-break room to an outer contemplation of herself. She wouldn't have believed a single frock could have made such a difference. Julie had called it, "the executive."
It was, but why, Susanne didn't know. There was something in the way the folds were drawn up and caught that gave it, or rather the wearer, a look of competency.
And the hat! Imagine a hat both looking and feeling good on her. Then there was the shoulder cape. This wasn't a cape year; consequently, Julie had said, one wore a cape if one were tall enough to carry it with dash. Susanne was.
One thing, the ensemble certainly had pulverized that rude girl she had met at the entrance.
She had better learn her identity. If ever anyone needed Miss Mary's treatment, it was she. She was still young enough to do something about her mouth. Why, in no time it would look like a fly trap.
It was late before she got around to asking. Bettine was giving her a facial, though Susanne couldn't understand why. Henri, Bettine had sighed, would put on the finishing touches.
Bettine explained night lights cast different shadows from those of the day and one used different makeup. Henri was, naturally, an artist.
"And as I sail forth representing the Hair-After," mused Susanne aloud, "I'd better prove our salon's efficiency."
Bettine was swallowing the term when Susanne's question came briskly. "That girl who was blocking the entrance this afternoon-I'd better know her identity."
"I'll say you had," Bettine blurted. "She's Miss Ranalee Graton, her father is old Judge Graton, and she goes out with Leehoff whenever she can." She stopped. "I'm sorry, Miss Susanne; that's pure gossip."
"Imagine gossip being pure," murmured Susanne. Then she sat up despite Bettine's hands. "I am coming, too. Bettine! I am the goon girl; right?"
"Not anymore; I mean she doesn't think that now. You should have seen her when you were identified."
"Hm."
"And, Miss Susanne, it wasn't Mr. Leehoff who gave her that idea."
"And she's planning something for tonight. Bettine, give me the works!"
Frantically Bettine pawed through a drawer to come up with a small sign she thumb-tacked to the wall right where Susanne couldn't help seeing it, once Bettine had removed the pad from her eyes.
She did, and idly Susanne scanned the immediate wall surfaces. Finally she read the sign, unaware of its recent appearance.
"Cosmetics are but a feeble substitute for an inner conviction."
Interesting. Interesting? Ouch? That was one right between the eyes. What was she trying to prove? She had achieved more with one word and poise than she could have done with every jar and bottle at Bettine's command.
"Correction, Bettine," she said. "I'm not up to more than one layer yet."
Ranalee Graton had done all within her power to change the table she had reserved for that night. She was too late, the "spot" too popular. The most she could achieve was a change of place settings.
"And if I do that," she mused, "she won't hear what I say."
It was that or having Leehoff facing Susanne. With the change, he would be facing the entrance. She really didn't know which was the more devastating to her original plan.
She knew when she saw him rise, saw the look of amazed appreciation lighting his face. When he ignored her sharp, "Bert," and left their party to accompany Susanne and Henri to their table, she was furious. So much for plans.
"Hm, interesting," drawled her father. "That would be Miss Mary's niece?"
"Why?" snapped his daughter.
"Mary's inside-out theory," he replied. "Might be a good thing for you to learn, daughter."
"Dotage," snapped Ranalee.
"Watch that chin line," he reproved her.
Ranalee looked at Susanne. Well, really! She herself was much prettier, her frock an exclusive and not purchased in that small city. Just what had this Susanne to draw the eyes of everyone?
And here was that idiot Bert trying to draw them into their party, as though she'd have the owner of the salon she patronized, the very man who styled her hair, at her table. Democracy. Ha!
"Sorry," the Susanne person was saying. "Henri and I have so much to discuss in private, we decided upon a public place to do it."
"Smart girl," boomed the judge. "Another time, then, Ranalee?"
"Yes, Father, of course, another time. Bert, doesn't it occur to you you are not included in that private conference?"
It had, and he wasn't sure he approved. Something had happened to Susanne that made her shine. Having no eye for clothes, he attributed the change to Henri's company. Maybe he personally didn't mind her getting mixed up with that fop, but he owed it to Miss Mary's memory to see that the girl at least knew what she was getting into.
"Bert, why are you frowning?"
How could he tell her he was frowning at himself for being unfair? Henri was not a fop in any sense of the word. He, Bert, was proud of knowing Brion Case, an artist. Well, both Henri and Brion were artists. Both, in a sense, worked in oils. Both made women appear more beautiful than they were.
Henri on the golf course was so formidable he could play only when he offered a handicap. When hunting season opened, it was Henri the Hardy who was the first to return with a deer, an elk, and if he had time for a Canadian trip, a moose.
Henri could and did swim the lake when others, like himself, hugged the club fireplace.
Bert tried another mental approach, "He's a phony."
Was he? How about the Spot? The real West had finally accepted the image script writers had been giving it. The spirits of original westerners might stalk the Spot, completely bemused, but it was accepted as authentic, from vest-clad waiters with walrus moustaches to dance-hall hat-check and cigarette girls. The atmosphere made it a moneymaker.
Henri had had French ancestors; he could be a throwback. His accent, his appearance were no more phony than the atmosphere of the Spot. They were moneymakers.
"Bert, Father is speaking to you."
"Sorry, Judge."
"You should change places with me, son; you can watch your charge better. Quite a responsibility. Pretty girl with a pocketful of money will bring out the wolves."
"Oh, she doesn't look upon the money as her personal asset." Bert began to rise, then was reseated briskly.
"Father," Ranalee had cried, "surely you two won't be so obvious. Well, really."
Susanne was having a wonderful time. She didn't know why. She might have said she "fitted in." She was not looked upon as being different. And Leehoff had seemed so pleased to see her.
She'd better stop trying to listen to what was going on at the next table and concentrate upon Henri.
"Beauty," Henri was informing her, "is important. Do you garden?"
Susanne blinked at him. "No, but my mother has one of the best."
"She plants, then. Perhaps once in a while she waters the plants, occasionally feeds them, but bothers not with the weeds and the insects, the caked ground of summer?"
For a moment Susanne looked shocked; then she smiled. "No, Henri. She gives some a trim, she massages the earth to make it pliable, she feeds each what its species needs.
Insofar as she can, she tries to bring every plant to its greatest beauty. Even," she added softly, "as each dedicated beautician tries to bring each patron to hers. But I'd never thought of it that way before."
She had thought of the profession as superficial. Yet since humans were more important than plants, why not give to each its acme of beauty for the sake of everyone who saw her, as well as for her own sake?
Henri nodded. One hurdle was passed. This girl was not so naive as he had anticipated. She was even too quick to grasp the purposely recondite, bring it forward into the bright light of her analysis, and show him aspects of which he hadn't dreamed. She would need watching, and handling.
For her own good, naturally.
As they dined, he discussed the rising costs of maintaining the Hair-After; seemingly small costs which were barely visible on the books, yet totaled up to an alarming sum.
"As in groceries," he said fatuously. "A penny up here, two there, and you do not feel the rise until, finally, the many pennies make the dollars. Ah, these spiraling costs."
"We are a nation of sheep, aren't we?" she soothed him. "We nibble the little and run from the big. Now what is your idea on how to absorb these rising costs?"
Oh, to be a Frenchman, Susanne thought, as Henri used eyes, brows, shoulders, and hands to express ideas that could never be held against him because they were not articulated.
Susanne's head tipped a little. She'd had a French grandmother, hadn't she? Bien, two could play at this game. When Henri reversed the question, literally laying it on her plate, she was ready.
"Shall we take this up in six months?" she asked.
A cowboy band appeared, and Henri was up, asking her to dance. And again she was surprised. Didn't he ever let himself go, even a little?
Ranalee saw them dancing and took the occasion to invite her ancient uncle for a duty dance.
It was a mistake. The next time she could focus on Susanne she saw her in Leehoff's arms. Bert was talking to her in such a serious manner, the ancient uncle protested this was not a gridiron nor he a football to be carried through such a milling crowd.
Leehoff had literally scooped Susanne from Henri's arms. "Sorry," he'd said bluntly, "it's important. Wait. This is just once around."
Henri's dark eyebrows had neatly met his hairline; then he'd nodded.
"Susanne-" Leehoff forgot the Miss Morgan-"what are you doing Sunday?"
"Gathering loose ends together," she replied promptly.
"Is there anything at all, no matter how important it might appear, that would make you change your mind?"
Susanne backed away a little, the better to study him. My goodness, she hoped she'd never have to appear in court with him representing her opponent.
"There's nothing important enough," she told him. "I had no idea what I was getting into at the Hair-After. If the next three days are anything like the last, I'll need a solitary three-day weekend to recover. Why?"
The why breezed in under Leehoff's arm: Ranalee Graton.
"My uncle is just dying to dance with you, Miss Morgan. He says you're so much like your Aunt Mary. But before Bert releases you, do promise you'll weekend with us at the Kilmers' lodge. You will, won't you? Such an excellent opportunity to meet so many who are important to you."
Henri materialized at her elbow. Gratefully Susanne turned to him, then smiled at the old uncle. "We should have a full number. The next one?"
"But you haven't said if you will be my guest," Ranalee cried petulantly.
CHAPTER FIVE
Susanne's mind whirled. She was no longer merely the daughter of a small-town businessman who would protect her interests, or a student whose attitude would not affect anyone but herself. She was, literally, the Hair-After, and this Ranalee Graton was a client.
"You are very kind," she said just as the music stopped, and her voice rang out clearly, "and I am sure you are understanding. My personal effects have been unpacked and put in order, but my personal impressions haven't. I truly need solitude this weekend."
And before Ranalee could say anything, some signal was given, the cowboy band went into a galloping tune, and Henri so far forgot himself and his painful dignity as to gallop with it.
He didn't gallop far. He'd been aware a trap was being laid for Susanne. He'd hurried to her side. He had reveled in her handling of Ranalee Graton, but alas, that very ability awakened him to the problem she could present to him.
"It was kind of Leehoff to forewarn you," he ventured.
"Oh?" She made it a question. "I wonder if he knew." And Henri was more baffled than ever.
"You would have met many of our better patrons," Henri told her.
"If social communication is an asset, I'd better learn more about the business before I indulge, don't you agree?"
Susanne was home by ten o'clock.
"Have a good time?" Maggie asked.
"The barbecued beef was delicious," Susanne replied. "Maggie, did Julie send the dress I am to wear tomorrow?"
Maggie grunted an assent, and Susanne regretted her abruptness.
"Maggie, this evening was one large puzzle. I went to dinner with Henri to hear him discuss business. I met a number of people. Each and everyone from Henri on talked riddles."
Maggie wagged her head. "So what did you do?"
"Talked riddles back at them. I don't know enough to commit myself. Right now I wonder if I'll ever learn."
"You'll learn," Maggie assured her. "Then you will riddle them riddles such as they've never heard before. Ah, Miss Mary chose wisely. Now to bed with you."
At the breakfast table, she offered a bit of advice. "Don't go making judgments yet. Three days you've been here, and you are as big a puzzle to them as they are to you. And right pretty you look in that orange dress, though it's not a color I hold by."
"Cheer up; it's burnt umber," soothed Susanne, donned a brown topcoat and crush hat to match, and set forth for the salon.
Maggie was wise. Snap judgments snapped both ways. Actually, the only thing upon which she could depend was figures. Promptly she turned two keys, one to the office door, the other to the file holding the salon's books.
There were interruptions by decorators and furniture men and a disapproving Henri, who questioned her legal right to establish a coffee-break room.
"I am paying for that myself," Susanne told him lightly. "If I don't last more than six months, fine; for that length of time the girls can relax."
Then she wasn't indignant. And it did add to the status of the Hair-After.
"Maggie," she asked that night, "why didn't Aunt Mary provide one?"
"If Miss Mary had a weakness, and that I'm not ready to say, it was that she thought of the mind and the spirit and not a body's underpinnings. And me with me feet that swollen at times not even slippers could I wear."
Yet the girls' spirits responded as much to the consideration Susanne was showing them as to their rest periods. And of course the girls talked.
Susanne looked at the finished room before she left for the apartment Saturday night. It was a cheery yellow and green; the big mural made it seem twice its width. The lounging chairs were inviting; the electric plate and other appliances shone in their corner.
Driving back to the apartment that murky fall evening, she wondered what to expect of it. Henri had asked to see her Wednesday to discuss business, and none had been discussed. Leehoff was seeing her Saturday evening, purportedly for the same reason.
He groaned in defeat after dinner. "Maggie's cooking," he explained. "But I shall nobly respond to any questions asked. Have you any?"
"Yes. Why didn't you beg off and go to the Kilmers':"
"Easy. I preferred being here. Now wait." He lifted a hand. "I'll answer the next one, too. Why? Because I am interested.
"Admittedly, I first looked upon the salon angle as a bore. Now I don't. I could tell you it is because you are charming and beautiful, but if I did you'd show me out the door before I had the strength to go.
"Seriously, Susanne, there is more to the Hair-After than meets the eye. You wouldn't believe the number of people, men as well as women, who have questioned me about it."
He confided he'd been asked if the salon would be sold when the estate was settled, and if so, what the asking price would be.
"Now," he conceded, "I have to find out hat there is about the Hair-After which sets it apart from most of the other salons in town. Our firm has two they can't give away."
"I imagine," Susanne said thoughtfully, "it is Aunt Mary's personality, something she added to the routine of cosmetology."
"Yet she is no longer there."
"What she taught is there. As long as we retain the same operators, I believe that something she instilled in the salon will remain. Maybe it can be passed on to others, too. I hope so."
He asked a few questions: how she'd been spending her time; if she was as enthusiastic as on that first day; if she'd run into any major problems.
"I wouldn't recognize them if I had," she answered the last one first. "That is why I am boning up on my subject. It will take me at least a month to learn enough to ask an intelligent question."
When he looked startled, she admitted she had thought running a beauty salon, as her aunt's heir, would consist of no more than smiling at patrons.
She learned patrons asked questions and that she, the current owner, didn't know the answers. would be until after the holidays; then, with rains washing the city and necessitating long walks from parked cars, there would be a definite drop.
"I am even considering a shuttle service from the municipal parking lots to the salon."
Restlessly Leehoff walked to the big window and looked down on the sprawling young city, now glittering with lights washed by a drizzling ram.
"The problem is bigger than the salon," he said thoughtfully. "All of the merchants in the city center, the physicians, dentists, lawyers and bankers are faced with it. They have a choice of establishing branch offices, removing to suburban areas, or suffering rapidly dwindling business.
"Large cities have inter-area transportation-cars, buses. Smaller ones can't support such an investment. The only answer is adequate parking space within walking distance of the city's center."
"There's always the Space Needle," Susanne offered lightly.
"I know." And he did know she was talking of the conversion or building of block-wide areas to garage shoppers' cars.
"But try to get any of these die-hards to relinquish their holdings."
Susanne nodded. She wouldn't like to give up the Hair-After site.
Maggie slipped in with a coffee tray. Nothing, she thought fondly, looking at the two young people, like a rainy night, a cozy fire and a girl pouring coffee from a tall silver pot.
She didn't know that she held with this Danny. He'd been trying to reach Susanne now for two hours, although she herself told the operator Miss Morgan would not "be back" before eleven. And he came right in on the line to yell. "That will be three o'clock here."
Returning for the tray, Maggie shrugged. She might as well have let Danny break into the party. The two of them present were still talking business.
Leehoff left early, with an enthusiastic, "We must do this again soon." The moment the door was closed, Susanne whirled and went directly to her room to sit before a mirror.
Danny, Henri, and now Bert-each in his own way had said, "Oh, come on; you look all right," never seeing her.
"I'm just a symbol," she mourned. "To
Danny, I'm something he's always had around; to Henri, a new boss to be placated; to Bert, a client. What's wrong with me?"
The call from Danny came through just then, and Susanne turned to the telephone, eager to be reassured.
Danny was not at his best. He had been steering a mammoth truck through the Cumberlands that day, finally stopping off in a small town to sleep in his quarters behind the driver's seat. What was more, he had had to bribe the telephone operator to keep the line open until he could put through his call.
"Well, where on earth have you been?" was his greeting.
A glance around to assure herself the apartment was still moored to the planet earth, and Susanne's chin came up. Where but here, but why let him know?
"Talking to my attorney," she replied.
"At this hour?"
"Oh, Danny, remember your geography. It's only ten-thirty here."
That quieted him a little. He was en route to Florida. If he didn't pick up a load for the northeast, he'd be heading back west in a few days. However, he couldn't tell in advance how many detours there'd be, nor had he the vaguest idea when he'd reach home.
"But that's all right," he concluded happily. "One thing about my girl: I don't have to worry about other fellows making passes at her. Good night, dear."
Gently, carefully, Susanne replaced the telephone in its cradle.
In her room, she strode to the full-length mirror in a frontal attack. Now just what was wrong with her that Daniel Harper thought no other man would look at her?
She looked all right, she thought. She had changed to a campus casual upon returning from the salon. Perhaps it was a bit drab in color, but her hair looked lovely. Her face wasn't too bad, either, was it? Regular features, that sort of thing. Her eyes?
At the moment they appeared anxious.
This week, she informed her reflection, has been too much for me. Tomorrow I'll take a rundown on me as a person. I'm tired.
She didn't sleep until a wet dawn came in. She had been trying to be calm and collected so she would rest properly.
Her dreams were a reflection of her inner confusion.
Everything was so simple before she arrived to take over the salon. What had happened?
In her mind she saw her nude lover Danny, all erect and bulging. What was she picking up from him? Nothing had changed, as far as she could see. She still wasn't certain she had done the right thing.
Then she was fully asleep and dreaming of Bert, and his solemn face, like that of an old man, incongruous on one so young.
She saw him approach her bed where she lay unable to move. Was he really here? She could hardly tell. He stood over the bed and smiled at her.
Suddenly with a shiver of excitement she felt herself want him.
But Bert hadn't made a move. He seemed to be frozen in place. Susanne reached out and ran the palm of her hand over his crotch.
The big thing bulged and nudged as she touched it, giving her a hint of its thickness and power. She felt at the big tool until in the dim light she could tell that he was excited.
She rubbed flat against the hard pecker, pushing it around in his pants and making the thing jump about sensitively.
His prick stood out in relief from his trousers as she slowly pulled down his zipper. He grinned at her in a very wicked way.
Bert stepped closer to the bed and cradled her head. "Why don't you suck me off?" he asked.
She was glad to oblige. Susanne reached in and tugged out his throbbing penis, then stroked it gently, loving the rippled feel of its taut flesh.
She loved the sight of men when they were excited. When they were soft, their cocks looked small, almost laughable. But when their members grew, stretched, and thickened, their hard long bats had a power and majesty that made her mouth water.
"Oooooooohhhhhh, yeah!" she moaned. "It's so fat and thick. I'd love to suck it!"
She couldn't stand just holding and looking at it any longer. She leaned forward and jabbed the head of his pecker into her hot waiting mouth. She encircled his hard flesh with her pliant wet lips, encasing the head of his slab in her mouth.
She licked at it while she trapped the sensitive bulging head there, raising blood and wild feelings in his tool.
He began to push himself in on her slowly. Her tongue pushed back at him with erotic resistance, holding its ticklish surface against the slit face of his tip and rubbing it. He felt his groin swirl and quiver.
He worked a few inches into her, which she sucked at with wet affection. Her tongue swirled all the way around the fatness of him, feeling how smooth it was but for the tiny bulges where blood pumped fast and hard through blue veins.
As he held her head in his hands she hummed with excitement. The buzzing noise made his glans lurch and grow wet. She licked little droplets from the tip happily.
She loved the feel of his slick hard flesh as it passed through her lips. It made her folded, curly center get wet and hot. She felt a twinge between her legs.
Then he started moving his hips faster, his hands on her head and his groin setting up a beat as he pounded his pud into her face.
Her mouth gave way and then sucked at him, surrounding him with a hot and moist breath that made his skin crawl. He felt his balls start to cook his brew.
Then he was moving faster and she was getting more excited. Would he come in her mouth? She longed for him to do the hot sticky act.
Bert was groaning, overcome with passion. She felt him attempt to withdraw from tighter around his shaft and worked her tongue on the underside of it.
Then he groaned once again and her mouth filled with warm delicious juice and still she sucked, swallowing hard, loving the jets of pleasure that filled her mouth.
Then she was lying on her back, gasping for breath. She had never felt so excited in her life.
Bert was still standing beside the bed. As she watched, he undressed, carefully folding his clothing. There was a businesslike manner to him, now that he had reached his peak.
She felt excited and wanton. She rubbed herself between her legs while Bert watched and grinned. Then she quickly slid two fingers into her moist center, writhing as she did so.
She brought her fingers up to his mouth and Bert licked them, sucking off the savory juices.
"Your pussy tastes oh-so-sweet," he told her. "Where do you want me to eat you?"
She put her hands back down and with one spread open the damp and mushy folds. With her other hand she stirred the sheath of her womb, indicating the desired route for his tongue to follow.
"Come on, Bert," she urged. "Chew me!!"
His tongue rose gallantly to the challenge. He laid his face by her quim and stuck it down into the deepness of her fleshy womb. The juices stung and tantalized him. He lapped and rolled it about, pushing aside the mushy flesh to dig deeper.
"OOOOOOOOHHHHH BERT!!! EAT ME!!!! EAT ME!!!"
She grabbed his head and pressed his face deeper inside. She could feel his nose nuzzling her clit, and she rubbed his head from side by side so it might touch the aching spot and give her a touch of release.
He moved his face up to the burgeoning bud and slapped it with his tongue. She cried out.
"OOOO YES BERT!!! SWAB MY CLIT!!!"
He put his tongue right against the button and started mushing it around in circles, sending out hot flashes from her toes to head.
Then he pulled back down to go into her deeply. He brought his hands around to open her up.
Bert laid a hand on each of her inner thighs and pushed apart her legs. He tongued her above the juncture of fingers and flesh. His lapping quickly teased her to the point of orgasm, and then he stopped.
Susanne was beside herself with excitement and desire. She tugged his arms, helping him mount her. Once he was in place between her legs, she reached between them, grasped his once-again hard cock, and guided it to the soft lips of her center.
And then he pushed in.
She shivered with pleasure and opened wider for him.
Bert seemed larger than Danny, longer and thicker. It felt as if she were going to tear apart, but he held his movements until she was loose and ready, and then he began to slowly feed it to her, stuffing it in all the way.
She was groaning and moving her head from side to side. No longer concerned with anything, her mind a complete blank except for the pleasure she was receiving, Susanne felt her blood seemingly thicken and heat up. She felt a warm glow, as if she were sitting in front of a fire.
And still he plunged on, stroking harder now, the weight of his body completely supported by Susanne.
She locked her legs around his back, urging him on by digging her heels into his buttocks. He grinned down at her now, as if to ask if she wanted more.
She was unable to think or talk as she felt her center expand until it filled her entire consciousness. All she wanted was more of this, all of it that she could get. And Bert seemed willing to give it to her, whenever she wanted it.
Then she was twisting, trying to get even more of him inside, but he was in all the way now, grinding down on her, keeping her firmly planted on the bed.
She screamed once and then it seemed as if she began to dissolve, and all that she could sense was the feeling of thick heat between her legs, satisfying, soothing, and completely pleasurable.
He split open her rippling folds, making them itch and tingle. Her firm round bottom fell open for him, taking in all his meaty length with a loud gulp and sucking it tenderly.
She thundered her heels into his back as he shot his cock into her with a pounding faster than she could believe. Bam, bam, bam smacked their hips as he stretched open her sheath, making it feel ripped and charred with his touch.
Suddenly his heat came rushing from the tip of his cock and into her swirling velvety passage. Thuds of hot jism fell into the bottom of her slit, launching her in mad cries and wild kicking.
"OOOOOOO BERT!!! IT'S SOOOOO HOT AND SOOO STICKY. POUND THAT COME INTO ME WITH YOUR PRICK!!!"
He beat at her still, hard and fast, each sword stroke firing the cannon of love that destroyed her walls and left her tumbling hot and pleasured on the bed.
They fell together and she lay there feeling his cock quiver within her. Then she awoke, surprised that the quiver still persisted.
CHAPTER SIX
"Didn't stay long," Maggie remarked as Susanne whisked into the apartment.
"Forgot my keys." Then hurriedly, "I wanted to pick up some books I saw in Miss Mary's office."
"Duplicates in the thinking room," Maggie told her, and trotted out so Susanne couldn't see the triumph on her face.
Susanne went into the thinking room, but she did not go immediately to the bookcase Maggie had indicated.
She had analyzed the image in the mirror at the salon entrance; now she had to fix it in her mind.
Sparkle, she called it. A girl or woman could be perfect in feature, exquisitely groomed, beautifully dressed. But without sparkle, without that touch of sunshine that came from within, she was not attractive.
She thought of the display at the entrance. Without the glint of gold, it would do little for one chancing to see it.
Now how to isolate its secret so she could have it to use when she needed it? What was it? Sparkle, yes, but what was sparkle?
Above all, how did one raise a sparkle?
Pacing the floor brought no answer. Susanne sat in a deep chair, the arms of which were designed to hold note pad and pencil. She tumbled through books, words. arresting her attention here and there. She made notes. But she found no sparkle.
"Dinner," Maggie informed her from the doorway, "is fair growing cold. I called you twice."
"You did?"
Susanne followed her back to the dinette and looked down. Street lights were coming on, cutting the gloom with sparkle; shimmering arcs that turned a drab world into a thing of beauty.
"Maggie," she began thoughtfully, "if you found something that made a person beautiful, an inside thing, how would you go about isolating it? I mean, finding out what brought it about?"
"Figure I'd study the folks as had it alongside them as hadn't." As simple as that.
"Maggie, this is the very best dressing that ever came to rest inside of a chicken. Besides, I love you."
"Getting kind of a soft spot for you, too. Now don't eat up too much. Made a Dutch chocolate cake."
Susanne retired early and slept deeply. She'd done one bit of mind searching. Costume jewelry, junk jewelry. How she had scorned it. Well, just let the stores open, and she, Susanne Morgan, would soon be going around looking like a Christmas tree.
If I sparkle outside first, she reasoned, maybe I'll reflect something inside. Meanwhile, I'll study people.
She awakened to a fresh approach.
"Looking chipper this morning," Maggie remarked as she poured Susanne's coffee.
"Foot in the door. Fresh air coming in."
Fortunately Maggie had spent twenty years with Miss Mary. She had learned to wait.
"I," Susanne informed her, "have been going around with a closed mind. Once I had accepted the fact that something was not authentic, I closed my mind, locked the door and threw away the key. And I have despised opinionated people."
Maggie nodded. "Miss Mary always said quickest way to spot an ignorant person was to notice they thought they knew every answer. She waited a moment, then added, "I could shorten that dress you laid out to wear in twenty minutes."
She gave Susanne a vast chest of costume jewelry to rifle as she worked, and Susanne considered the baubles and herself.
Had she not inherited the Hair-After, she would have gone on through life an aging college girl. Now she realized that what was correct on the campus was not necessarily so elsewhere.
She had met some of the species at homecomings, still wearing a reasonable facsimile of the clothes they had worn twenty years before; their minds, she didn't doubt, also clothed in the restrictions of their particular era.
They were smug, self-satisfied.
"There," Maggie smoothed the lines of an old campus dress around Susanne; "you need some heels now."
"I'd fall on my face with those horrible stilts."
"Probably," agreed Maggie. "Body going to climb a ladder don't start on the top rung."
"Oh," said Susanne.
She was quite late reaching the salon. Henri, back to the entrance, was talking earnestly to a young salesman. He heard a low whistle from the man and wheeled.
He didn't believe it. Susanne Morgan was wearing a dress definitely not a Julienne, yet looking as gay and brisk as a stand of autumn foliage in the sunshine.
The brown frock had a tiny line of coral. Now that coral was picked up, intensified in the knotted strand of coral and gold beads at her throat. And she wore heels; not tall ones, but heels. Yet she'd insisted upon flatties even with her Julienne ensemble the night of their date.
"Miss Susanne Morgan," Henri reported dutifully but in a dull voice. For if she could change this much in one week, what would she become in six months? And he had started this.
Half an hour later, a bemused salesman tottered out of the Hair-After. His order was but half of what Henri had proposed, but Henri had been called to the appointment, and Miss Susanne had admitted her ignorance and put the salesman on his honor.
"Oh, well," he soothed his salesman's conscience, "for some reason Henri's padding the stock. Wonder why? Could be one way to make the outgo seem more than the income."
Susanne waited until he had left, then scooped a crumpled order blank from the wastebasket where the salesman had tossed it.
Carefully she scanned it. This was the order Henri and the salesman had been drawing up when she came in. In another moment she had opened a file to check on the October (to be delivered in November) orders of the previous year; to compare those with the crumpled sheet and then with the one the salesman had finally filled out.
Inventory would be taken within two months of this order's delivery. The previous year's order had taken cognizance of that. It tallied with the final order made out in her presence.
When the bookkeeper came in after lunch, Susanne was ready with questions. Did the Hair-After use the end of the calendar year as the end of its fiscal year? It did? What taxes would be based in inventory of that period?
"County, state and federal."
"Ha," said Susanne. Then why should Henri, who had warned her of a seasonal slump after the first of the year, want to carry over an excess load of supplies?
She made a swift trip to the apartment to face Maggie.
"I'm ready to ask questions. How important is Henri to the salon?"
"Well, now," Maggie sank into a kitchen chair, "your Aunt Mary said having Henri as an employee was a lot like having a certain kind of husband. You couldn't get along with him; neither could you get along without him. So you figured which was worse and worked from there."
"Why couldn't she get along without him?"
"Has a way with the ladies. He's like a small boy. Part of the time you want to slap him down, but when you do you want to pick him up and ease the hurt. Right valuable to the salon, and he does know his business."
"What's his background?"
Maggie smiled. "Figure from that, Henri's aiming to take over command. Natural, him being the oldest one there and knowing the most, and you being young."
"Just take over?" mused Susanne. "But he would not do anything dishonest?"
"As in stealing? No. Could be he'd manipulate to prove himself the smarter. Now if I was young, I'd handle Henri, smart like. I'd ask him to help me. Then you'd have him."
And Susanne sailed back to the salon to bend a head that looked wearily over the books until Henri's shadow, returning from the appointment book, hovered nearby. "Henri," she breathed, "I am so glad you caught that salesman trying to overload us this morning. Now please, whenever one comes in, do call me so I can learn from you. Promise?"
A baffled Henri promised, looked at Susanne's head and murmured, "We'd better use a golden tint next time. More effective under these lights."
Maybe, thought Susanne, she was pushing guile to thwart duplicity, but Henri would be the better next day, and she didn't wonder he considered himself slightly above par.
She caught a glimpse of her first sparkle the next day. Surprisingly it came from Henri. Or was it a mere reflection?
Intent upon her research, as outlined by Maggie, she had been watching girls and women enter the salon and leave; plain girls, pretty ones, beautiful ones.
Now she saw Henri sparkle and thought: My goodness, he is handsome when he lights up like that.
Eagerly she waited for the patron to turn around and then all but gasped. The woman was eighty if she was a day, yet there was that about her which caused every head to turn toward her.
"Who on earth is she?" Susanne whispered to Dove.
"A Mrs. MacGregor. Isn't she a love? We always feel better after a visit from her."
No, she was anything but wealthy. Her one extravagance was having her hair done. "She doesn't know of the increase in charges," Dove began, then glared at Susanne.
"You mean we do not charge her current fees?" her makes up the difference. It's worth it to us. Usually it's Henri. He even went to her funny little apartment last winter when she was recuperating from influenza."
Oh, darn Henri, thought Susanne, just when she had worked up a healthy distrust of him.
"Then it's the operators who make her sparkle."
"No, I imagine it's those jet and silver beads, or the crystal ones. Or maybe it's something inside. I don't know. She thinks life is wonderful."
"Isn't it?"
But Dove's late appointment had arrived.
Susanne debated a moment. Should she tell the operators not to charge Mrs. MacGregor anything? No, she wasn't the type to enjoy that. Ah, then, she'd have the operators deduct the difference from the salon rather than from their own billfolds.
And deprive them of sharing?
Another sparkle arrived the next day, a small one, but brilliant: a girl stopping over between trains who did hope they could squeeze her in. She wanted to look outside as she felt inside, she confided.
Henri and Bettine, ready to bring Susanne another step upward toward their idea of what the Hair-After's proprietress should look like, were a little shocked.
"Do take her," urged Susanne, "and let me watch."
She had meant listen, though she heard little enough. Relaxed under first Henri's and then Bettine's fingers, the customer promptly went to sleep, was awakened to be led to a dryer, and dozed again. Brought back for a final loosening of waves, she stared and clapped her hands.
"I just knew I could look like that. Isn't it wonderful? Oh, my, the time!" And after paying, she was gone.
Henri followed Susanne home that night, after they had made a quick call to Maggie.
When he removed combs and rollers and stood back awaiting Maggie's praise, even Susanne was surprised. She looked positively stunning, her head a delicately shining orb, each strand of hair accentuating a feature.
Yet Henri seemed just as delighted at this success in tossing together a salad under Maggie's admiring gaze.
Bert Leehoff would choose that moment to bring papers to be signed. After a startled glance at Susanne, he sat sternly in a chair Maggie proffered, completely spoiling their dinner, he having had his.
In the living room, which looked down on the sparkling lights of the city on one side and upon the sparkling lights of low hills on another, there was a moment's strained silence.
"How is business?" asked Leehoff.
Solemnly Henri shook his head.
"But, Henri," protested Susanne, "we haven't an open appointment."
"At this time of the year, with football games and dances, ice hockey getting under way, country clubs transferring their activities from golf to bridge, we should be rushed."
Bert said it was natural there should be a temporary slump following what was literally a change of ownership.
"Expansion," Henri intoned solemnly. "We need to expand. We can't. Nor can we adequately handle those we have unless they come in chauffeured cars."
"That," stated Bert, "will be handled in due time. Not that I am conceding a need for expansion as yet. You have quality clientele. Suppose you expanded; could you hold your regulars if the atmosphere of the salon changed?"
The argument was brisk, even a little sharp, and Susanne listened, intrigued.
"Would you say a dentist with offices in the core area needs more patients?" Bert demanded.
A call from Danny Harper brought the argument and the evening to a close. This time Maggie didn't hesitate. She brought the telephone in to plug it in at Susanne's elbow.
Danny, it seemed, had reached his destination and picked up a "through" load to Los Angeles. Unless he was sidetracked from there, he'd be home in no time.
The other two men left as she started to talk. Maggie, handing them their topcoats, remarked brightly, "Miss Susanne sure is looking pretty these days."
"She is," agreed Leehoff anxiously.
"Hm," said Henri thoughtfully. Again, he had brought this on himself. Now if old Ames were handling the estate, he'd have had no worries. But this young know-it-all, unengaged, could see a potential in Miss Susanne which would mean trouble for one Henri, who really knew more about the business than the two of them would ever learn.
Then there was this Danny person who often telephoned across the continent. He should call at the office; then he could write it off as a business expense, though what a truck would be needing with a beauty salon he didn't know.
But those calls were wasteful, profligate. Let this Danny see the possibilities in the Hair-After, and he'd marry her, fast.
Ames, prodded by Leehoff, made a few well-chosen calls, and promptly Susanne was invited to join the Business Women's Club, to Chamber of Commerce luncheons, and to a dinner for Citizens' Green Light.
The Hair-After came into new focus. It was now not merely a beauty salon; it was a cog in a great wheel, of equal importance with all other cogs, and she had to be responsible to the whole if all were to revolve economically.
This did take time from the salon, but she seemed to be there when she was needed.
She was on this particular afternoon. A regal woman had been arguing with Henri for twenty minutes before, with uplifted palms, he brought her to Susanne.
"She has come from the Mediterranean; took a side trip to Cairo where a friend has given her this powder, used by famous beauties. Me, I do not know the contents. I fear to use it lest we subject ourselves to a damage suit."
"Henri," cried the woman, "you know I would never do that. Besides, this is so simple. It is no more than the henna originally used in this country, or something similar. The best, naturally, did not reach our shores."
Henna? Susanne sighed, looked at the warring couple, recognized the woman as one wielding great social power, and bowed her head.
"Shall we try it on my hair first?" she asked.
"Excellent," cried the woman. "I'll return in an hour."
Henri hesitated only a moment, then, receiving a whispered message from Jensen, nodded. "Say in an hour," he ordered, and drew Susanne to his lair.
Susanne thought her hair looked a little dark when the shampoo and pack were over. But it would, naturally, And it would wash out. Henri spent little time setting it.
She read happily under the dryer; then, the patron back, was whisked in for the final touch.
"Oh," she breathed when net and curlers were removed, "oh, my!"
She had not auburn, or red, lilac, mauve or lavender, but brilliant royal purple hair.
And standing behind her, reflected above the purple, was a face that nearly matched its color: Danny Harper's.
CHAPTER SEVEN
"What," demanded the outraged Danny, "have you done to yourself?"
Susanne blinked at the purple hair. She wanted to say she had probably saved the salon a damage suit, considerable money and a devastating amount of bad publicity.
"It will wash out," she told him.
"I fear not," Henri spoke suavely. "This is dye, not tint. In time it will turn green."
"She," an hysterical note sounded as the patron responsible appeared, "would have done this to me! She planned I should use it months ago. Oh, that woman!"
No word for Susanne, no gratitude expressed. Miss Morgan owned the salon. She had merely done her duty, as this woman saw it.
Bettine eased in under the shoulders of those at the booth entrance, a wig in her hands, consternation on her face. She had thought Miss Susanne was being made beautiful for her "intended," whom Jensen had reported waiting outside, afraid to enter, an hour ago.
"Perhaps now you will have confidence in Henri's judgment," he said softly in her ear. And louder, "At present the wig. As soon as I have the free time, a heavy bleach. Not good for the hair, but what will you have?"
Susanne called for a telephone, talked to Maggie, then sent the distraught Danny on to the apartment. She would follow soon.
Then she turned to the girl in the mirror. The purple hair rapidly disappeared under a glossy red mane that fell to her shoulders; the only wig in the place at the time.
Well, her month at the Hair-After was certainly revealing her to herself in a variety of guises.
Maggie, after hearing Danny's horrified version of the purple hair incident, settled him down with the evening newspaper, a pot of strong coffee and some especially crisp and sugary crullers. Then she hurried to the kitchen telephone.
Bert Leehoff, recovering from the initial shock, listened to Maggie and nodded his head. The story, spread city-wide, could make or mar the Hair-After and Miss Susanne. If he called his close friend, a columnist on the morning newspaper, it could be turned into an asset.
His friend made a delightful story of the purple guinea pig, Miss Mary's niece, Miss Susanne Morgan, who subjected herself to an unknown tint rather than have a patron risk disfigurement.
He had caught Susanne before she left the salon, and she had been laughing. "Now," she told him, "I can try out every shade of hair, by wig, without criticism. Think of the fun I'll have being a blonde, a brunette and a redhead all in one day."
She added that having proven the Hair-After used only carefully tested and proven materials, it would not be necessary to go to such an extreme again.
Meanwhile, Susanne, adjusting the wig, heard Henri say smoothly, "With that tone above, the complexion needs a small alteration." And he proceeded to use powder of a different color, a suggestion of rouge with tangerine predominating, and the barest touch of lipstick to match.
Then, naturally, the brows and lashes needed darkening.
Susanne, in a hurry to reach Danny, paid very little attention. As Henri had pointed out, she had to trust him from now on. And flaming red hair did require skin of a different tone.
"You do look-" began Bettine.
"Stunning!" supplied Jacques.
Evidently. In the four blocks she had to traverse to reach her car in a paid parking area, hardly a man passed who did not look once, then turn and look again.
Fine, thought Susanne. Now to explain things to Danny.
He stood up as she entered, nodded gravely, and was about to reseat himself when he recognized her.
"Susanne! I don't believe it. Why, this is worse than the purple cow effect."
"All for a good cause," she assured him blithely. "Oh, Maggie, Maggie, the mouth!"
Maggie closed the mouth, she supposed. Actually, she wheeled and headed for the kitchen before something not meant for Danny Harper's ears came forth.
"Well?" Susanne held her face up.
Danny backed off. "I can't kiss that," he groaned. "I mean-well, darn it all, Susanne, it would be like kissing a stranger. Go look at yourself, or have you?"
She had. So had others; quickly, of course.
"I was told I look beautiful," she stated.
"You do. But Susanne wasn't-"
"Beautiful?" she asked.
"She looked all right."
He shouldn't have said that, but he didn't know. After all, it was no more than he'd been telling her for four years. And why did he keep talking to her as though she were somebody else?
Susanne's eyes were neither grey or blue. They were silver scimitars at that moment, and very visible. Henri hadn't added false lashes; he'd merely made the long ones she'd always worn ray up and out until her eyes seemed twice their normal size.
This, they were saying accusingly, is the man I thought I loved, the man I believed I was going to marry. And he doesn't see me clearly enough to penetrate a thin layer of powder and a touch of lip paste.
"I was afraid of this," he said heavily and, as though his thoughts were unbearably burdensome, sank into his chair. "Turn a girl loose in a beauty parlor, and she goes whole hog."
Maggie came back to the doorway. "You young folks having dinner in or out?" she asked.
Susanne waited. Danny always preferred to dine out.
Now he was shaking his head. "Don't you see," he asked, "every man within a mile would be staring at you?"
Suddenly Susanne laughed, gay, carefree, happy. At long last she understood Danny and his "You look all right."
"Here, Maggie," she said. "Sit down, Danny; let's see what I can do about the stranger in our midst."
She could wash and cream and remove the wig. She could then bind the purple atrocity in a pale cream turban and, that finished, slip into a familiar dress.
"Aw, honey," Danny was up, his arms out, the moment she appeared, "now you look natural."
"Familiar," she corrected and added, "You're reactionary, forever afraid of anything new."
Maggie slipped from the role of the perfect maid only once. She'd looked at Danny, recognized him as a steak-and-potatoes man and whisked meat from the freezer. An apple pie topped with ice cream had completed his idea of a perfect dinner.
Following them to the living room with coffee, she stood back a moment to ask thoughtfully, "Did Henri know Mr. Harper was around?"
Quickly Susanne caught the import of that. "Not when he tried out the powder on my hair."
Danny looked from her to Maggie. "I pulled in about an hour before I saw Miss Morgan. Asked a fellow-janitor, I guess-if he'd tell her where I was parked. He came after me in about an hour's time."
Again Susanne laughed. "I guess Henri merely improved that shining hour," she offered. "He naturally wanted me to look my Hair-After best when Danny saw me."
"That's one way of looking at it," agreed Maggie.
It wasn't the evening Susanne might have dreamed about had she had time; a homecoming evening for Danny.
They both tried. Danny talked of the weather in different parts of the country, and Susanne talked of the salon and its problems. But they didn't talk of themselves and their mutual future.
Each caught the other studying him or her with a wary glance. Danny was watching Susanne as though at any moment she might change right before his eyes. And Susanne was watching Danny, thinking she had never really seen him before.
Finally Danny gave up. He'd had a long haul. He'd driven all night to have this extra time with her. Maybe they could get together someplace in town for breakfast. Okay?
"If you're not afraid," she teased.
"Just speak first," he teased back. "I'd hate to be caught making up to the wrong girl at that hour of the morning."
Bettine, with romance and a doubt of Henri in her heart, had spent a busy evening. She had seen the shock on Danny's face at the sight of the purple hair. She knew the Danny type. She doubted the red wig would reestablish loving relations. And he was so handsome and Miss Susanne normally so lovely.
Even as Maggie was washing the sleep from her system with early coffee, Bettine called, carrying a medium blonde wig, short and smoothly waved. sleepy Susanne's head. "Now," she said, "You look like yourself."
Susanne looked at the girl in the mirror. So that was herself? The wig wasn't doing a thing for that self. No sparkle, thought Susanne, and remembered, surprised, there had been a sparkle under the purple dye.
She drove Bettine to the salon, heard the young woman say, "My, you do look smart," then drove on to her rendezvous with Danny.
She had cost enough to look smart, Susanne reasoned. To offset-or was it to compensate for?-the drab-colored wig, she had donned a Julienne suit of black and a hat that covered only half of her head, the right half. She had to remember to keep Danny on the left.
An apprehensive Danny was wearing ridges in the cement when she drove into the cafe parking lot. At least he recognized her car and came loping toward it, his handsome face a wreath of smiles.
They faded a little as she stepped out; then he looked at the left side of her head and was reassured. That, at least, seemed back to normal, though she did seem taller. She came above his shoulder. Odd.
There were no booths in the busy cafe, and he was quite puzzled. Now why should every masculine head in the place be swinging their way? Must be that sparkly thing Susanne wore on the lapel of her jacket.
"Junk jewelry," he commented.
"When the sun goes down, we happily turn on electric lights, don't we?" she asked.
He was through his ham and eggs, hashed brown potatoes and two pieces of toast before he grasped the idea.
"Oh, I get it. Sun's the authentic source of light. But electric power-"
"Doesn't pretend to be the sun. Neither do these pretend to be jewels. But why restrict ourselves to darkness? Oh, Danny, put a little sparkle in your life."
Swiftly he changed the subject. He'd talked to the home office that morning. He was picking up a load in Seattle for Idaho. When he returned, they'd settle down to a real talk and get things squared around; right?
Dubiously Susanne nodded. "And try to stay blonde," he urged. She shook her head. "I'll be turning green about then. That is, unless Henri has time to bleach me to platinum."
"Heaven forbid," moaned Danny. "I liked you as you were. You always-"
"I know. I looked all right."
She saw him out to his truck and stood watching as the mammoth affair plus trailer eased off and melted into the freeway traffic. He handled it like a go-cart. How handsome, how capable was Danny. And how lucky she was.
Maybe men on the highways like that wanted to be sure they would return to the familiar. It gave them a feeling of security. She simply must be more understanding.
She was-right up to the moment she paused at the entrance to the Hair-After to take a rather guilty look at the display window.
All right! What was wrong with looking beautiful? Wouldn't you think a man like Danny would feel a bit puffed up at having won a girl who could look like that?
Henri hovered over her as she removed her gloves, then, reassured by the lack of a diamond on her left hand, relaxed. That lack and the expression on Susanne's face told him he had not manipulated in vain. Not that he would have deliberately turned that beautiful hair purple. That had merely been Fate's way of lending a hand to the deserving.
It was to be expected that Ranalee Graton, after a leisurely reading of the social news and a glance at the Tidbit column, should reach for the telephone.
She must have an appointment immediately at the Hair-After. She must, simply must see that Morgan girl at her purple worst. If she were wearing a wig, she, Ranalee, would somehow connive to have it removed in public.
She found quite a few patrons had had similar ideas, though perhaps from different motives, and even possible cancellations were taken by those eager to accept any time at all.
"I," stated Ranalee, "shall give an impromptu dinner."
It meant canceling one with a dear friend, but what were friends for if not to be pushed aside for more important business?
Her second call went to Maggie. Sweetly she talked. Miss Susanne was always so busy; could Maggie assure her she would be free that evening? She would like to run in with some friends who could do a great deal for the salon.
"Might as well," said Maggie aloud, and silently added, "get it over with."
"A rallying to the standard," murmured Ranalee. "Buffet, don't you think? I'll call a caterer."
Maggie shrugged. Why not let the fool girl pay for her folly?
"And, Maggie," Ranalee caroled, "this will be a surprise. Won't that be fun for Miss Susanne? I know how lonely she's been in a strange city." She then added, "Hasn't she?"
Maggie didn't reply, "Take the hook off your line; I don't tote up the times Mr. Leehoff calls in person or by telephone." Instead she asked briskly, "What time will you be coming? Seven? Goodbye."
Susanne was having a wonderful time. For the first time in the six weeks she had been at the Hair-After, she felt needed.
Women thronged in. Told there were no appointments available, they said they would remain "just in case." And they did. They settled on settees and chairs, and some of the bolder appropriated the operators' stools.
It was a veritable open house, a reception, a gathering for a good cause. Susanne was in her element.
She sent Jensen in one direction, Jennet in another. Extra coffee makers were brought in, trays of cookies. Susanne and Jennet served.
Susanne sent the operators for a few moments' rest and took over customers, escorting them to dryers, adjusting the metal hoods, bringing them coffee.
She also allowed one and all to admire her wig and took orders for seven wigs and the promise of twice seven more. Jennet sold practically everything they had in their display cases: creams and lotions, hair sprays and scented soaps.
Through it all Henri looked on hopelessly. How could anyone compete with a girl like Susanne? There was only one way he could win. His round face grew long at the thought.
Then, manfully and with a deep sigh, he made his contribution to the cause.
The salon didn't close until seven-thirty that evening; the operators were happy to pick up overtime with holidays so near at hand.
Susanne, completely exhausted but happy, drove home, considering many things. Basically, where was she failing to meet her Aunt Mary's standards?
"So many of those women today need more than hair styling and facials. How can I tell them?"
She unlocked the door to her apartment, stepped into a dark cubicle, then jumped as a glad, "Surprise," rang out.
Someone reached for her hat. She could have sworn it was more than her hat, for something sharp seemed to gouge the side of her head. Then her hat was lifted high in the air.
And the lights came on!
There was a moment of startled silence. Susanne looked at doorways filled with unfamiliar faces and knew she was dreaming. This was some kind of nightmare.
Then someone laughed. Susanne glanced toward the right-hand door. Maggie, looming over those standing there, was laughing right out loud.
Carefully Susanne lifted her hand to her head. It held no wig. Now she understood.
CHAPTER EIGHT
"She looks adorable," said a woman's voice.
Susanne looked at the girl in the hall mirror. That was what Nelsa had said when Henri had finished with her. Too bad Danny couldn't see her tonight with a mop of silvery curls, as short as a baby's.
"Thank you," she managed.
Maggie pushed forward. "Miss Graton planned this surprise for you, Miss Susanne, so's you could meet some of her friends. Dinner's ready; buffet; to your left, if you please."
Susanne met Ranalee Graton's eyes. The girl looked completely bowled over. Why, the poor thing! Hadn't she learned one couldn't play a miserable joke on another without the stain coming off on one's own hands?
So this was why Henri, white with fatigue, had demanded she remain and let him bleach and then curl her hair. He had known. How? Maggie's laugh.
Ranalee had misgauged Susanne in another area. She hadn't known group participation was more prevalent in small towns than in cities.
Thank goodness Leehoff had refused her last-minute invitation; last-minute because she had been afraid to invite him earlier. She had so hoped to show him that this Susanne Morgan would be a complete loss in the political career he was forging for himself. Maggie, calmly turning her blessed kitchen over to the catering staff, retreated to her room and left the door slightly ajar.
"Ran, honest-" came a hiss, and Maggie's ears pricked up. "Well, she did look dreadful when she came from under the dryer. Had Nadia not been so furious at her friend for trying to make her use that stuff, she would have paid her for her sacrifice."
And again, "But she did! I mean that purple hair stuck out like wire, and her face-well, that shade and her face-"
Later there was resentment. "I'm beginning to think this power you use as a big stick is all talk. Go ahead and tell your father. I can't think Dad has done anything so socially indiscreet it could affect his appointment."
Maggie debated seeking another aerie where she might watch Susanne, then shook her head. Susanne was Miss Mary's niece, wasn't she?
Ranalee had chosen her guests with what her father would have labeled "malice aforethought." They were the young hopefuls socially insecure, who believed the way up the ladder of social success was through social gymnastics. "Taking advantage of opportunities," they would label the gyrations.
Susanne recognized the type immediately. Even small towns harbored them. In the charitable organizations she had headed, they were the most indefatigable workers if personal publicity was assured.
Cheerfully she set about coping with them.
The bolder asked about the purple hair. "How does your head feel now?"
Susanne patted the curls. "Tender," she replied. "Henri marinated it in oil both before and after the bleach. How fortunate to have such a consummate dermatologist on the staff of the salon. I could have come out looking like a wire brush."
Deliberately Ranalee steered the conversation to political economy and then wished she hadn't. Susanne had no time for personalities; she depended upon principle.
A thoughtful Maggie signaled, and Susanne made her way past a doorway to be handed a scribbled note.
Danny had telephoned. He would call later. But the note contained something more.
To her guests she could apologize for "a long distance call." The note went into the fireplace. But she was ready when the party broke up early.
Ranalee was now eager for the guests to leave. She called attention to Susanne's weariness. The little girl had had a trying day.
"Thank you," Susanne said to practically every girl present, and to two young husbands. "You will understand my not accepting outside social engagements until after March?" She sought Maggie the moment the last guest had left. "Thank goodness you alerted me. I wouldn't have known how to refuse without fracturing the social amenities."
"Did you want to accept?" Maggie asked. "Miss Mary would be the last to ask you to observe a period of mourning."
"No. I don't want to become a cause celebre. They have such a short duration. Oh, Maggie, am I ever tired!"
She was still tired the next morning when she stumbled into the kitchen in a robe, silver curls tousled, looking, Maggie thought, like a wise child.
"Maggie, why does Ranalee hate me enough to plan an affair like last night's?"
"Meanin' you've no illusions about that? Good. Well, Miss Graton's been raised in the political arena. She enjoys a good fight. Bein' a girl with a father like hers, she can't get into the ring, so she's looked around, spotted the best young hopeful and wants himself for herself."
Susanne looked as puzzled as she felt.
"Bert Leehoff," Maggie explained.
"But he's only my attorney," Susanne protested. "Are they engaged?"
Maggie shook her head. "Not that I've heard. Figure maybe she plans to keep him in a 'just your attorney' stage till she can wangle an engagement."
Susanne ran her hand through the short-cropped curls. "How silly can you get? Why, Bert Leehoff only sees me as a signature on the Hair-After business documents."
"Hm," said Maggie.
But Susanne was bothered by the prospect of Ranalee snaring Bert.
She drove up before the Hair-After, at the loading zone, eased out and went on to her costly parking area, to walk back, literally kicking herself every step of the way.
Imagine being so concerned about two persons who meant absolutely nothing to her she'd expect parking space in front of the salon at that hour. She'd better attend to business.
She did. He was waiting for her when she entered, ripped off a postage-stamp beret and ruffled her hair.
"Oh, I didn't see you," she stammered.
"I saw you, and now I see what a couple of chaps were raving about. But, Susanne, are you sure you're old enough to sign these papers? Shouldn't we have a guardian appointed for you? Preferably me?"
She looked at the girl in the mirror and laughed. "Isn't it amazing what hair styling and color can do to a person? Outside, that is."
"Now you're going Miss Mary on me," he charged.
"Perhaps. But had you seen me for the first time this morning, would you have thought I had a brain to my head?"
"I would have known after a brief conversation."
Solemnly she shook her head. "Not had I decided otherwise. Y'know, that's why so many nice men wake up married to the wrong girl." There; she'd given her warning. "Makes me feel guilty about the Hair-After."
Leehoff laughed. "Grandfather has a little rhyme you'd like. It goes, 'Little puffs of powder, little dabs of paint, make the pretty ladies look like what they ain't.' "
They attended to business then, and when it was completed Leehoff suggested they lunch together. Susanne wondered if she should. Ranalee would win by the law of averages if she continued looking upon Susanne as a threat to her plan. Yet didn't she herself owe something to her fellow man, Bert Leehoff?
He would pick her up at one o'clock; meanwhile she had to see Henri.
Henri had quite a time with himself when she caught him between appointments. She looked so sweet, so naive, so defenseless, he grew in stature by the second, yearning to protect her as a man should.
Deliberately he intoned mentally: I made her look like this. It isn't natural. She's smarter than any girl I've ever met. I will not be taken in by something I myself have created.
He was greatly relieved to learn she only wanted to thank him for his extra effort the previous night.
"Henri, I don't know how you knew what had been planned, but you really handled it. I still have a scratch here," she showed him where something sharp had gouged her neck, "so I know my wig was supposed to come off and reveal me as a horror. Instead-"
He brightened. "How did your guests like it? What did they say?"
"That I was adorable," she replied so impersonally he knew she hadn't accepted it as a compliment to herself, but to him, to his artistry.
"Henri," there was an anxious note in her voice now, "how long do I have to look adorable? Danny Harper is going on a very short run. I doubt he could stand another change in me."
"You are engaged to him, that he says how you shall appear?"
"Well, not exactly, but if you could have seen how he suffered-"
Patiently, as though Henri came from some foreign land, she explained about engagements and understanding.
"People who are very rich or very poor have no trouble at all. They just up and marry when the notion strikes them. But us in between-"
In her grandparents' day young couples married, rented a small house or apartment and accepted cast-off furniture from relations.
But not today, especially when the man was starting out in a business or profession. To admit he hadn't enough to purchase a home in a better district, furnish it in the current mode and have an extra good car in the garage would ruin him.
Some waited. Some didn't and grew ulcers.
Henri asked what profession Mr. Harper was following, or if he was in business for himself. Susanne had to admit neither really applied to him. He felt his college education would be wasted in his father's business.
"Meanwhile," she informed Henri, "he is finding himself."
And Henri breathed easy again, until Susanne left. Then he began wondering how long it would take this Harper person to find himself if Miss Susanne decided to retain the salon with its comfortable income.
He, Henri, had to take action. But as yet he didn't know what kind.
Bert Leehoff handed Susanne into his car as though she were his favorite client. Then he said it was such a beautiful day (it was pouring rain), he thought they should drive to a place in the country where excellent food was served. The better to keep Ranalee from knowing we're together, sighed Susanne.
The big old farmhouse was beautiful even in the rain. True, the porte-cochere had been added to the structure, rather spoiling its authenticity, but it was most comfortable in such a downpour. And the original owners would have shriveled in their denim and gingham at the small intimate corners provided for couples.
Susanne promptly started talking business, to be silenced by Leehoff, who said he'd hoped to carry her beyond the perimeter of the Hair-After.
Ah, then he wanted to talk about Ranalee?
Evidently. He mentioned the previous night's surprise party. Thoughtful of Miss Graton; didn't she think so?
"Just full of thought," agreed Susanne, and left him guessing.
"More patrons for the salon-"
Solemnly Susanne nodded. "You mean that lovely young Catherine Mason. Oh, dear, I forgot; she's only here for a few days. Visiting the Van Dusens, you know."
He had meant the others.
"Except for the men, all of the others are salon regulars."
"Ranalee felt," Leehoff spoke heavily, "that that purple hair fiasco needed a follow-up-"
"My, didn't she!" agreed Susanne. "But then, as you and she have an understanding similar to Danny's and mine, you would naturally know her motives."
"Understanding? Ranalee and I?" He seemed horrified. "Oh, you mean because I attended that dinner for her uncle. We were the only young couple there."
That carried them through the first course. As the second was served, he seemed deep in thought.
"This understanding you have with Mr. Harper-I am speaking as your attorney," he added swiftly. "Is there any chance of you marrying before the probate term is completed?"
"I doubt it. My, these biscuits are light. You see, Danny likes me as I used to be. Well, from what Henri tells me, I won't be like that for quite a while."
Leehoff seemed startled.
"In appearance. Danny, too, is a man who can't see below the surface. My hair must be kept like this until it grows out. To continue tinting itwould turn it brittle, and I could show up some morning bald. Wouldn't that be fun."
"Fun?" gasped Leehoff. "Horrible."
"I know. That's what I used to think at college when the boys had their heads shaved. But it was the smart thing to do. I might even start a new style."
Actually, Leehoff thought as he tromped up the courthouse steps two hours later, the only thing he had accomplished was to get Susanne to use his first name so he might use hers. As he had explained, she wasn't Miss
Mary, and every time he said Miss Morgan he fully expected Miss Mary to materialize.
"I wish she would," Susanne had said wistfully. "I can't cope with these women's insides."
It had taken her the eight-mile drive back to the city to explain she had been speaking psychologically, not anatomically.
She had had to illustrate, and no one would ever know how sternly she had pushed Ranalee Graton into the background and brought forth a fictitious character as an example.
It would be continued, Bert told her, in the next issue; that is, on their next date, a prearranged one for the first evening she had free.
Susanne teetered into the salon to her office. Had she gotten through to him? And why had he seemed so shocked when she'd spoken of an understanding between himself and Ranalee? Maybe Ranalee was the only one who knew about it.
Now, how to curb that girl before she spoiled a fine young man the city, state, and nation needed?
She was sitting thinking about how her Aunt Mary would have handled such a situation when Lurline came to the door.
She knew Lurline the least well of any of her operators. Lurline was a quiet, self-contained girl, gentle and kindly, who never seemed to need anything from anyone.
"Miss Morgan," she said now, "there is a woman here who wants a consultation."
"A what?"
"Little Miss Mary used to give. I've been trying to do her face, but it's so ravaged it will have to be handled from the inside. I told her I doubted if you had taken on that part of the work, but I knew how nothing ever got you down; not even purple hair. So, please, may I bring her in?"
Without waiting an answer, she turned back to the salon, leaving Susanne feeling all she needed on her head right now was a turban, and before her a crystal ball. What on earth should she do? She couldn't pose as a counselor.
Suddenly Susanne felt as if she needed a man-right away, too, she thought. She needed to get away from all of this and relax in deep hot pleasure.
Susanne picked up the phone on her desk and called Lurline's station. "Hold it up for fifteen minutes or so," she said. "Then you can send her in."
She closed the door to her office and locked it.
She reached underneath her dress and ran her hands along her legs. Then she quickly flipped up her skirt and ran her hand under her panties. Her flesh was warm and she began to pinch and torment her soft flesh, loving the painful pleasure of her acts.
Susanne wanted a man. She wanted him at that moment, in her office. She had no doubt that, feeling as she did, had any man been in the office, she would have made love to him. It wouldn't really have mattered who he was-just a man. Any man.
As her fingers flicked at the portals of her wet slit, Susanne thought about Bert's big, bulging pecker. She thought of how it would feel violating her inner warmth, smashing aside her tissues and digging its way down her heaving hole.
That only made her push into herself deeper, crumpling her fingers together to shove them in and then letting them wiggle about against her tight womb walls. All her fingers could feel was a sticky wet sponginess as the tube was pulled apart by her hand.
She breathed hard and brought her hand up to grab a tit. Then she pulled away from it.
Her head spun. Her pussy was starting to flow shamelessly.
Susanne closed her eyes. She had to get control of herself. This wasn't right.
But it was too late for pure reason. There was nothing she could do about the state of her emotions, or of her physical desires.
She stood up and quickly skinned off her panties. She leaned back against the desk, her legs widespread in front of her.
She pinched her tender flesh, almost swooning from the pleasure of it.
Then she quickly inserted two fingers into her moist center, loving the full feeling. Her other hand cupped a breast, working on the nipple.
She was breathing hard, not aware of what she was doing. Her mind was filled with images of men, lines of them, naked, erect, smiling at her.
She shivered as a powerful, pleasurable flow worked its way through her loins.
She grinned. How was she going to be counseling someone in a few minutes if this was where she was at right now?
But her mind put that thought away and concentrated on other things. She remembered the fierce pleasure of her couplings with Danny, the hard smooth feel of him as he entered her.
She was breathing hard now, getting ready for it.
She hiked her feet up onto the edge of the chair she sat in and opened her womb wide and full. She took hold with both hands of her slit folds and spread them apart, amazed at how far she could spread the flesh. She looked down on herself as her sticky tube opened wide and yawned.
She let the flaps back with a plop. Then she dug both sets of fingers down into her hole as if to pry herself apart down the middle.
Susanne was amazed that the gap in her bottom could stretch enough to accept the abuse she was performing on herself.
She knifed her fingers along and down her hair-pie, filling the slit and then pulling out to feel it heave shut with a tingling quiver.
Her thumbs diddled at her clit quickly, flapping the bud about to stimulate it to nearly painful proportions. She taunted her own love nut, rubbing it hard until the thing was shuddering and making her whole body dizzy with sensation. Her hands would then gouge out her slit even deeper.
She was lost in erotic fantasies. She dreamed of fat thrusting cocks in her puckered bum, in her shuddering quim, and in her warm and wet mouth. They were all firing endless hot tracers of come inside her.
Would Lurline send the woman in before time? Would she be surprised, standing in front of her desk, two fingers working furiously in her center?
She bit her lip to keep from crying out with pleasure. It wasn't as good as a man, but it was all she had available at the moment.
What if Bert were here, she thought. What a pleasure that would be! She'd show him what he was missing-he'd never look at another woman after fifteen minutes alone with her when she was in a mood like this!
- She felt herself dripping with excitement and she thrust yet another finger into her cunt. She was wide open now, longing for the full feel of a well-hung male.
She was about to fall forward from the pleasure of it; she gasped and maintained her balance and worked a fourth finger between her legs.
She was feeling it now-she had never masturbated with this much abandon in her life. Suddenly she froze-her pleasure was trembling on the brink.
And then with a soft cry she jammed herself one more time and felt the soft fluttery explosions of pleasure rack her body.
Five minutes later, composed, her face shining with relief, she called Lurline and told her that it was all right now-go ahead and send her in.
CHAPTER NINE
Susanne had left her panties off so she could feel her pussy trickle and breathe. Her bottom still stung with passion. Oh, how she wanted a man!!!
The vision that bounded in made her even hotter. Susanne appreciated beauty in her own gender, but what came in was not just beauty-it was hot and fiery passion made into flesh.
She was blonde, bouncy, big-boobed and smiling. Her face had an effervescent quality, and she had ample curving hips that were hugged by the pants she wore. Underneath them Susanne could see a faint line of the briefest bikini she'd ever known. And along the open center of the crotch of her pants Susanne swore she could see bulging pussy lips form the line of the woman's slit.
The bombshell introduced herself as Meagan. "I was very close with your aunt," she breathily explained.
Susanne couldn't believe it. If her own body was hot right now, how did Meagan feel when she got excited? Her whole body seemed to be mounds of sexual curves and flesh. Nothing was left to mere imagination.
"Call me Meg though, because that's how Mary knew me," cooed the girl.
"Well Meg, what can I do for you? I'm a little new at this business, especially this end of it all. But I am understanding and interested."
"Interesting is more like it," said Meg, eyeing the still-flushed figure of Susanne before her.
"How's that?"
"Well . . . your aunt and I were very interested in each other's feelings. We really opened up with each other."
"Try me," urged Susanne, while the blonde fluttered her eyes at her.
"Do you really understand what I mean about feelings and opening up? If you're at all like your aunt, we could have a fine time. But Mary and I had no barriers between us when we got together."
Susanne couldn't be sure, but it almost sounded as if the girl was propositioning her. It made her pussy itch. She bet that Meg had a lot of feelings in her-sex feelings.
Susanne hesitated. "Give me an example ..."
"We weren't embarrassed about our bodies or our sex lives," stated Meg bluntly. "We opened up to each other in every way."
Susanne knew it was happening, and even though the idea made her feel a twinge of guilt, she plunged on. So Aunt Mary was into women. If this girl was any kind of example, it might be lots of fun around here.
Susanne had always wanted to chew another gal's slit, but of course she needed to find the right time and place to really test her temptation.
This was it.
"Well . . ." said Susanne. "If you open up to me I might be able to open up to you. But you have to lead the way since I'm not Aunt Mary, and these were her sessions."
"Now they're going to be yours!" growled
Meg. She was wearing a tight jumpsuit that came off her in a flash. Underneath, the bounteous body was held in by pale peach strips of material, each so small and sheer they looked as if they would burst from the load.
Susanne couldn't believe her mouth. "What a great body you've got, Meg!"
"It's all yours," Meg answered.
Susanne sat back in her chair, stunned by what was before her.
But Meg was a gal of action. She came over and grasped at Susanne's tits, gripping them hard and heavy.
"These feel good," Meg said, "Let's see 'em!"
Susanne willingly unbuttoned her shirt and drew it off. Meg lifted her out of the chair and kissed her on the mouth softly and erotically as she unhooked the back of Susanne's bra.
She cupped Susanne's fullness and weighed them. "Feel great, baby. Bet they chew real nice."
Meg's directness was sending animal passions to Susanne's already wet and longing pussy lips.
The blonde brought her face down to Susanne's bulging globes and started to lick them with calculated little flicks, going at the nipples back and forth, making the buds stand up tall. Meg was adept at loving another woman, knowing how to chew a tit softly until it begged to be broken. Then she gnawed down firmly and gave it her all.
Susanne was spinning. Her body quaked and she felt the need to do something. She just didn't know what.
Her hands gave her an accidental answer. As Meg bit down hard on a nipple, Susanne's body shivered and her arms flailed upwards. One hand flapped against the soft, bra-encased flesh of Meg's tit. It felt good-soft and warm. Her hand stayed up there and tentatively grabbed at the melon.
She heard Meg groan against her chest. "Don't be bashful. Go ahead!"
Susanne gripped it harder and noticed how it would give way and bulge apart only so far. As she pressed it she felt the growing nipple push against her palm through Meg's sheer bra.
Susanne knew what she had to do-get under the bra and feel what those mounds of joy were really like. It hooked at the front so all she had to do was open it with both hands and let the bulging tits fall into her palms.
She gripped at the fat nipples and twisted them, seeing how the two fat barrels got harder and harder as she tweaked them. She loved how Meg felt, all bulging and bounding with flesh. She thought the idea of making it with another gal right now was wonderful.
Meg pulled away from Susanne's now heaving chest and undid her skirt. As it fell Meg noticed that Susanne's cunt was bare.
"Well now," she said to Susanne. "You were ready for me, weren't you?"
Susanne could only groan as she fondled Meg's fat tits harder. They fell milkily out of her hands as Meg fell to her knees.
Meg placed her face at Susanne's hot quim, and Susanne spread her legs in an arch to give her a better route of access. Meg's tongue slipped up along the folds, trying out the way they tasted. She could tell that Susanne had soon before been flowing heavily with juices from the wet touch she felt.
"Really ready for me!!!" she grunted. "Your pussy is soooo wet!!!"
For the first time Susanne talked back. "Today I was so hot and bothered I did myself right here in my chair before you came in. And am I glad it was you that did come in right afterward!"
"Well, now let me chew your clit," insisted Meg. "It's so much nicer than doing it yourself."
"MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM!!!!" moaned Susanne in assent. She held Meg's face and had her crawl up to the chair where she dropped down and spread her legs.
Susanne was stunned by the deftness with which Meg dived into her hair-pie. She licked about the folds with such a light tread that she could barely feel her touches. But when she did touch she knew just where and how to set Susanne off in a frenzy.
Her thoughts were a jumble of sexual longing. Susanne couldn't figure out what to do about the woman whose lips and tongue on her furry center were making her so happy. The sloppy flap of Meg's tongue made her ready to burst. She grabbed at Meg and fell to the floor.
Meg crawled around and kept her face busily at Susanne's hair-pie while Susanne grabbed at Meg's thin panties and tore them down her long and curvy gams.
Meg split herself open for Susanne. Susanne eyed the fleshy flower, with all of its wet folds and hidden crevices. The most hidden place was opened to Susanne as Meg's legs spread apart. She could see pouting pink flesh that looked quite tasty to her.
Susanne slipped her tongue along the pink fleshiness and then jabbed it into Meg's womb-well, checking out the sticky muskiness and exploring the feeling. She decided she liked another pussy and put it to her face, slobbering at it.
They chewed one another to a heat for a heaving half-hour. Then after fond goodbye kisses and embraces, Meg left. Susanne knew she'd be back, and that she herself would want her.
Susanne really started to feel at home at the Hair-After and around her new place. In order to celebrate that fact, she decided to give a big Thanksgiving dinner for her friends and workers.
It was a gala affair, with a huge turkey and people oo-ing and ahh-ing at the various delicacies that Maggie was able to whip up.
It was quite an affair with the three men in her life there at the table-Bert, Henri, and of course, old Danny.
Just the proximity of all three heated her up. There they sat, fixed to the easy chairs as to cement.
Susanne excused herself and walked to the bathroom. Once inside, with the door locked, she considered what had been bothering her.
The three men in her life were all in the same room. She was able to look at them sitting side by side for the first time.
It was insane.
No woman should be put into such a position. She knew that there was no real way to decide the issue-each man had a certain something.
Yet she also knew that she was going to have to decide. If not tonight, then tomorrow, and if not tomorrow, then the next day.
After all, how long could she put it off?
Just the sight of the three men was enough to fill her with desire, all the more confusing because she couldn't figure out which man attracted her the most.
Each one had problems, and each one had qualities that made him attractive.
She ran the palm of her hand over her swollen and sensitive mound.
There had to be a way to decide.
And she had to get back, and soon. She
Or could she?
Perhaps she should consider them one at a time.
Wasn't that the way to solve problems? She had read it somewhere-break the problem down into all of its parts and then consider each part.
First, Danny.
His attractions were obvious, of course. He was her lover and had been for some time. He wanted to make her his wife, and had told her so.
He was an ardent lover, easily the most passionate man that she had ever encountered.
She often dreamed of him, and yet her dreams were a pale reflection of the reality of his sexual powers. She remembered that one time she had climaxed over a dozen times, due to his tender, loving techniques.
Just thinking about it was getting Susanne excited. She removed her panties and began to masturbate, using one finger, rubbing it lengthwise in her trench.
She smiled. She was feeling good now, her mind suddenly clear. Perhaps she should have a competition of some sort-take each man to bed within twenty-four hours, and then decide which one most suited her, sexually.
Would it be Danny, with his tireless energy and thick, hard cock? Or would it be Henri, with his world-weary sophistication, or Bert, with his clean-cut and wholesome good looks?
Susanne was gone. Her mind quickly filled with images of her lovers.
Her fingers worked her insides with frothy vigor, building her need quickly until her center was burning with desire.
She imagined herself in bed with Danny. She was lying there fully spread, while he stood at the end of the bed holding his hard rod.
"C'mon Danny," she urged him, "fuck me!!"
He still stood there, holding the thing and stroking the long shaft in slow, agonizing movements. She watched the skin curl up and down under his hand and got hornier.
"Please Danny," she begged, "put it into me!! Don't just stand there pulling at yourself!"
But he still stood there, and she felt herself locked to the mattress, unable to move upward and pull him to her. She decided that she had to tempt him into fucking.
Her hands ran down into her womb. With the fingers of both she started tickling across her folds, flapping them open with walking fingers. She could see Danny's eyebrows rise and he speeded up his pud-pulling at her inspiration. But he came no closer to her hot and willing flesh.
She kept picking at her slit, running the fingers and dipping them in the dampness. Her own touch stung her sweating pink tissues.
Danny remained rigid in his place and his cock size.
"OOOOOOOOO!!!" she whimpered, slipping a finger around in her dampness. "Wouldn't it feel real nice to put your prick in here where it's hot, wet and tight?"
No answer. She knew she had to try harder.
With one hand she held apart the lips while the other one started exploring into her wet womb. She pried herself open and jabbed down two fingers, slipping them deep, then sliding them around. The sensation made her whole rear buck and quiver.
"OOOOOOOEEEEEEEE!!!!" she cried, her body now flushed with desire to be pierced. "Stick it in me, Danny! Sock that wad to me!!!"
He still stood there, cracking a faint smile and pulling at his meat just a little faster.
Then she ground her whole fist into her cunt, opening it and paining herself badly in an attempt to split open her cunt and relieve the tensions she got from Danny's big slab-so near, yet so far away.
The fingers that were splitting her lips went up to her puckered clit and grasped it.
"AAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!!" she sighed to herself in relief as she frigged herself.
"OH GOD, DANNY!!" she yelled at him. "FUCK ME!!!! PUT THAT PECKER INSIDE AND SLAM IT TO ME!!!!"
He came onto the bed, still holding and stroking his erect and thick prick. He kneeled between her quivering legs, brought the tip of his cock to her gates.
When if hit, the tissues below sizzled. She tried to move her snatch around to grasp at the giant meat that lay at its door, but she found she could barely move herself.
"COME ON DANNY!!" she taunted him. "PIERCE ME!!! DRIVE IT INTO MY CUNT!!!"
Then at once he jabbed, putting himself inside her slithering sheath a good way, running himself down into her hole until he felt her wet bottom wriggle.
"THAT'S IT, DANNY!!! DEEPER! HARDER!!!"
He pulled out and slammed in, this time hitting the hilt and pulling her inner tissues into a contracted spasm. She loved the way her quim sucked at his fat throbber, her skin surrounding it and licking the thing.
She linked her legs around his back. Now he was grinding down on her, hitting hard at the clit mound and making her spin. She had a smile of delight on her face.
Was there anything else in life? She saw how well and powerfully built Danny was, and she could feel the surging muscularity of his manhood stretching her sweaty interior.
It was curious. She lay there on the bed, underneath Danny, having him fuck her in a blissful frenzy, but she had not a bit of control. Her fantasy controlled it, leaving her helpless to the circumstances.
She watched it from two places, quivering beneath Danny's fat-headed pecker, and then drifting through the bedroom, seeing everything from another vantage point. And suddenly Henri was also in the room.
He quickly undressed while he watched Danny making love to Susanne, and then he climbed on the bed with the couple. He crouched by Susanne's head and held his thick shaft in his hand. With his other hand he turned her head to face him, and when she smiled, he eased the head of his throbbing cock between her wet lips.
She sucked eagerly now, loving the feel of Danny between her legs and Henri in her mouth.
It was wonderful-why couldn't she marry both of them? Perhaps that was the answer!
Whatever the answer was, the fantasy felt good. Danny pierced her loins with long stirring strokes. They carried her womb upwards with feathering glee. The sticky tissues of her insides hugged and kissed his tool. He grunted in happy appreciation.
Meanwhile she was jamming what was now half of Henri's pecker in her mouth, and then she had all of it lodged in the warm and wet cavity.
As Susanne sat in the bathroom, her fingers flying between her legs, she realized that she had to finish up quickly, no matter how entertaining her fantasies were.
She bore down with all her might. She was close to a climax-she could feel its heat in her loins.
Then she remembered her fantasy. Now Bert was in the picture as well.
He entered the room and saw that Susanne was engaged by both Danny and Henri. Far from being annoyed or outraged, he seemed overjoyed at what was going on.
He too quickly stripped. He told Danny to ease up a moment so that he could take part.
Bert reclined on the bed on his back and Susanne was atop him, facing him. He entered her while Danny, now on top of her back, bore down from the rear.
Henri knelt in front of them, still feeding his thick member into her mouth.
It was incredible-three men at once!
Susanne moaned as the images faded and her climax rolled, and she bit her lips to keep from crying out until it was over. She freshened up and walked back to the group. No one seemed to have noticed how long she was gone. There sat the three of them, much as she had left them. She grinned-if only they knew what her fantasy had been!
CHAPTER TEN
Thoughtfully, Susanne walked into the cafe, allowed herself to be seated and listened to Danny order for himself and for her.
"We can take the truck back home," he picked up the one-sided proposal where he'd left it at the entrance, "and find someplace down there we can live until I finish this next trip. One thing for sure: when I return from that I'll be able to recognize you.
"Now, then, where will we be married? Church or at the registrar's, or does it matter?"
Susanne looked at him in wonder. As far as Danny was concerned, she was his to order around.
"We're not engaged," she reminded him.
"Good thing. Don't have to go through all that shower business; make your folks and mine waste a lot of money on the wedding. This way, we walk in single and walk out married."
Sweetly Susanne smiled at him. "Not in this state, Danny. We've a three-day waiting period. Remember?"
"By George, you're right. I'd forgotten. Well, good. Truck will be ready to roll late today. Gives us more time. I'll pick you up at daybreak, drive home and call in a minister, maybe after church services on Sunday, to tie the knot. Now that's settled."
And he settled down to steak and fried potatoes.
She merely settled in the booth. Had he said he loved her, didn't want to go on without her; had he said he wanted to marry her in order to care for her; in fact, had he said anything at all about her and not talked about himself exclusively, she would have been impressed.
He hadn't. His whole concern had been his own reaction to the change in her; a reaction he hadn't analyzed.
"You're not eating."
"I am not hungry, nor can I eat a steak at noon."
"Well, eat what you can."
He went on with his plans, not theirs, all during the steak, potatoes and inevitable apple pie. Finishing, he ushered her out and, hooking her elbow under his arm, asked about the courthouse.
"My car's parked not far from here," she told him.
"I'll drive," he announced when they reached the car, and held out his hand for the keys.
"No," she replied thoughtfully, "I haven't given up the wheel yet. Get in, Danny; we need to talk."
She'd heard most girls swooned at the very thought of masterful men. She had never felt less like swooning, more like zooming up and out of his life. Had he not been the Danny she'd known for so long, she'd have been tempted.
"Danny," she began, "doesn't it occur to you I have a beauty salon to run for four more months?"
"Oh, that. Henri can manage it. Hell, honey, any man who could handle a motor transport in the Army could handle a piddlin' little old beauty shop."
"Could you?"
"Me! I wouldn't be caught within a mile of one unless it was to drag you out. No real man would."
"Danny, Henri is more of a man than you. You are just a teen-age kid who hasn't grown up. Oh, yes, you are."
She had started the car, driven out and was traveling too fast for him to risk leaping out. "You have the same set of values you had in high school. They crystallized in college. That's why you're fighting me."
"I'm fighting those confounded hairdos, that clown makeup, the ratty change in you."
"No, you're not. You're angry because I no longer symbolize the girl you knew in -high school and college. I've dared to change, temporarily, but you're not quick enough to see that. You just resent change."
When he started to argue, she silenced him with one telling line.
"We didn't marry right after graduation because you wanted to find yourself. All right. Danny, have you been looking for yourself?"
She had driven to the big terminal where his truck was garaged. Now she stopped, aware his hand was already opening the door.
"Danny, in high school and college I was pretty sure I loved you. But I've grown up. If you're still interested, come back and see me after you've settled on what you intend to be."
"You've changed," he charged as he stepped out.
"Things should," she replied wistfully. "Change can be growth."
Danny gave her a man-to-wayward-child smile. "See you next trip through; you've too much good sense to let a beauty mart throw you."
Susanne drove off, wondering if she had let the Hair-After bias her judgment. She'd talked to Danny as she'd talked to the woman with mother-in-law trouble.
All right, she told the girl in the rearview mirror, Danny had it coming. Imagine being expected to remain exactly the same my whole life just so he won't be disturbed. Marriage is a two-way proposition.
She had a picture of being married to Danny. It would mean living "medium rare," as she called it, in a middle-class home in a middle-class town, with security wrapped around every venture like a smothering comforter.
I'd almost sooner be married to Henri, she decided. At least there'd always be a surprise hanging over her head. Or on it, she qualified, one hand going up to the tower of Pisa above her.
Marriage to Danny would mean a permanent home, from which nothing short of a hurricane or a fire would force him to move.
Why, in no time at all he'd look upon me as part of the furnishing, as he'd look at an easy chair, never seeing it needed reupholstering or perhaps a mended spring. He'd like it the way it was when he acquired it.
Yet habits were not easy to change. Having thrust Danny out of her life, Susanne reached the salon looking bereft. And Henri, on watch, literally leaped across the intervening space to glance first at her left hand, then at her hair.
"I have had word," he intoned gravely, "that every woman tonight will wear this tower of Pisa arrangement. We will change, yes?"
"Who cares?" sighed Susanne. "I have the hat," he confided, leading her to his chair. "It will create the illusion."
He waited until she should that point of relaxation where women talked. When she didn't, he probed a little.
"You are too tired from yesterday?"
"No, I just cut off a leg, and it hurts me even though I didn't need three legs."
Danny would have sent for the nearest psychiatrist. Bert would have been at least temporarily mystified. Henri grasped the allusion immediately.
"Four legs are good, but three, never. With the two you make progress."
Henri was so comforting. Susanne nestled into the chair and went to sleep.
She awakened to stare at the girl in the mirror in horror. She was wearing a Christmas tree on her head, wide at the base and tapering to a point. Its branches, or folds, carried shining gadgets, and at the tip was a shining star.
Lights which had been turned off were turned on. She relaxed. Just a bauble.
All around the booth were beaming faces.
"My," breathed Dove, "you sure will be the talk of the conference in that."
"So seasonal," murmured Bettine.
Lurline, with a glint of mischief in her eyes, said, "Just plug her in and let her revolve,"
Henri stood behind her chair, a fatuous smile on his handsome face. He was well pleased with the picture he had created. Too bad. Imagine lopping off two men in one day.
"Would Aunt Mary Morgan have worn such a conversation piece to a conference?" she asked.
Every face registered shock except Henri's. His revealed an expanse of defeat. Susanne had asked the one question he couldn't answer and retain the right of the hat to sit on that head.
Lurline came in quickly with soothing words. "You wear everything so beautifully, Miss Susanne, we forget you are not a model as well as the proprietor, but of course you are right. Miss Mary looked regal regardless of what she wore."
Julie seemed to be awaiting Susanne, "judging from the mischievousness in her eyes. Of course they would be happy to exchange that Merry Hat for something more conservative. Miss Susanne was wearing the silver-beige this evening? Then would she care to try this?
The glistening toque sat neatly on her head, leaving just a fringe of silver curls below, curls that took on the sheen of the beige.
Susanne drove back to the apartment to dress, walked in and paused. A florist box sat on the tiny foyer table, a gargantuan box of candy beside it.
"And just when I had the pain of that third leg out of my mind," she moaned, "come roses and chocolates;"
"He brought them," Maggie said from the inner doorway, "and asked questions, such as did I think you would change back to yourself, and how could he help you before it was too late?"
"Oh, dear," sighed Susanne. "What did you tell him, Maggie?"
Maggie maneuvered her into the living room, removed the two boxes from her hands and settled her into an easy chair.
"Got him talking so's I'd know what to say. He told me this beauty bit was a racket. I told him that was what they'd been saying back in the days of Cleopatra, but looked to me it was the one racket that didn't peter out with time.
"Then he said he wanted to make a good safe home and wanted you in it. Security, he said, was his goal. So I said to him, 'Well, there's security and security, and a lot of them that has financial security don't have it emotional like. A wife wants more than a house with good foundations.' "
Oh, poor Danny, thought Susanne, he'd never have been able to understand Maggie.
"What did he say?" she asked eagerly.
Maggie shook her head. "Said just to let him lay those foundations, get you in the house and the key turned, and he'd prove me wrong."
A moment later she asked, "What's that?"
Susanne repeated her words. "My sympathies are with him. I must have changed; else how would I ever have thought to marry him?"
"Could be you didn't. Think, I mean."
Henri arrived at the appointed time, carrying a short spray of tiny slipper orchids. Susanne was puzzled. They were almost "the identical color of her suit. Then he asked Maggie for a particular clip from Miss Mary's jewel box, and she understood.
She looked sparkling. Thank heavens the heavens sparkled with frosty stars that night. Rain would have completely destroyed the illusion.
As Henry acted as nominal host to out-of-town members and other local beauticians, Susanne had little to do but bob her head and say, "So happy," which was only partly a lie.
Susanne the girl was anything but happy. Susanne, Miss Mary's heir to the Hair-After, was happy to meet those in the profession.
They were really a wonderful group, no different from any other business or professional group except there were more women taking an active part, not there merely as wives brought along because it was an open meeting.
She wasn't really surprised at the number who spoke of "Miss Mary." But she hedged when a few earnest ones drew her aside to ask if she intended to carry on Miss Mary's therapy.
"I haven't the wisdom," she replied so unhappily they wondered.
Henri deposited her with Lurline and Dove, then began circulating. Susanne watched. He was surely popular with both men and women. He had poise, distinction and executive ability.
Now why hadn't Aunt Mary left the Hair-After to him?
Words between Dove and Lurline alerted her.
"You can certainly tell the men from the boys," Dove exclaimed, then turned to. explain to Susanne. "I meant the operators from the models."
Susanne looked at her own staff. Each was beautiful, each smartly groomed, yet none looked as she had that noon.
Beauticians, she decided, might show a trend, but they did not shock the eye with the ultimate of that trend.
That was a real thought provoker. Then why had Henri repeatedly treated her as a salon model? Each time, she remembered, her interest rising, it had been just when Danny Harper was due to see her. Was the timing coincidental? Oh, it must have been. What possible motive could he have for wanting either to discourage Danny or to encourage him?
Oh, she was being fanciful. Here came Henri, looking at her as though she were the prize of the evening.
The thought left her completely within the next few moments. Henri was introducing her to all of the important people with such pride, stressing the fact she was "Miss Mary's niece and very much like her beloved aunt."
Then they were seated at the head table, and for all of a half-hour Susanne dined in peace. A twinkling hat far down one table caught her eye, and again doubt zoomed in like a black cloud.
If Henri were so proud of her as the successor to her Aunt Mary, why had he tried to make her wear that terrible Merry Hat? Imagine sitting up here on the dais in that!
The speaker of the evening took her by surprise. Imagine beauticians being dedicated to a cause!
Two months ago she would have jeered. Now she was remembering Henri's words about gardening. Why not have beauty wherever possible? Why must the world be a dull, lusterless place to be good and efficient?
And what was this speaker saying? That one of the most important therapy treatments in mental homes was changing the patients from drab, beaten individuals to well-groomed men and beautiful women.
Danny should hear that!
Why, she had a friend who taught the mentally retarded and accomplished as much with daily showers and clean new clothes as with the actual books and exercises. Hair trimmed and a new shirt, hair curled and a new frock, and they took their places behind their desks with pride of achievement and attempted concentration, a first step.
And now, the speaker having been applauded, came the big moment, more or less synchronized over the nation.
The parade of models revealed for the first time the impending changes in hair styling.
Now that is odd, thought Susanne as the first model came into a spotlight. Probably a page of some kind. A slim, boyish figure with an extremely short haircut, capris, shirt, and a hip-length cape tossed back over one shoulder to reveal a glittering lining.
"Ah," murmured Henri beside her, "the Martian look."
Martian? Oh, outer space, where, according to illustrators of science fiction, girls wore the type of clothing, and presumably hair styles, which least impeded their travels.
And here came a model looking like El Greco at his best, the hair shining black.
Another was a tomboyish figure with a raffish hair trim, smooth in back but in front hanging in elfin locks to the brow.
Beside her, Henri groaned. The groan was repeated throughout the big dining room. Beauticians were looking at one another as well as at the models.
The new styles, Henri whispered, were not only revolutionary; they would revolutionize the business. Not a permanent wave was visible; nothing but mannish short-cut hair such as only a well-trained barber could hope to achieve.
Arid this new style was coming in immediately.
How long could the Hair-After last?
"This," cried a voice down the table, "is worse than automation. This strikes a death blow at the executives as well as at the workers."
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Susanne thought the evening would never end. But when it had and Henri had driven her home, then suggested he come up for a moment, she assented eagerly.
In the apartment he set about building up the hearth fire, arranging chairs and eventually going to the kitchen to prepare coffee, as one accustomed to such tasks.
Again Susanne wondered. Her aunt must have had him up often, that he should be so familiar with these homey tasks.
"Henri," she began abruptly when he had served the coffee, "what does this style change mean to us?"
He literally shrugged his body. "Who knows? Our particular clientele is inclined to follow the mode. There will be the few wise older women who dare not risk the severe styling. They will perhaps compromise with the smooth coiffure, but-"
He spoke then of the many changes their profession had faced. Some salons had fallen; some had carried through and created finer establishments.
As for the new look, who knew how long it would last, and what effect the duration would have on the Hair-After.
A great comfort he had been, she thought when she closed the door after him. Yet what could he have said without false optimism?
She tossed about quite a bit that night, then awakened to fog as dense outside as it was in her thoughts.
Four months to go. She could sell within four months. Oh, fine. Having had a taste of the Hair-After, what could she do after selling? Go quietly mad with her program of club work in a small town?
"Maggie," she cried at the breakfast table, "just why do things have to keep changing-styles, hairstyles, particularly?"
Maggie neatly placed a dish before her. "It is too bad. Now there was a time when cave women didn't even have to wash their hair.
"Then I mind the time when I was a girl. Come winter, hair washing meant an all-day stay in the house sitting by the stove or you'd catch your death of dampness."
"I suppose you mean a change in styles is indicative of general progress. Then how about changes in dress and of shoe styles? Think of the fortune shoe manufacturers made when they brought out the pointed toe."
"And me thinkin' the chiropodists thought up that change."
"You watch. When they're sure nobody has a blunt-toed pair in the attic, that no store carries a supply in a back room, they'll switch back, and the pointed toe will be as tabu as the square has been."
Maggie filled her own coffee cup and sat down on the opposite side of the table. "Could be, though even pinched toes aren't too much to pay for all the work that change of styles bring men and women.
"A body wonders if the same style stayed in, if maybe we'd stay the same for all time, never getting any forwarder. Have to try out a change to find out if it's worth keeping. If it isn't, it goes back down the drain."
Susanne nodded. She was afraid the Hair-After could go down the drain because of the new hairstyles coming in.
Susanne walked the four blocks from parking area to salon, resenting the fog, the distance, the necessity of having to walk. Ridiculous. She'd walked farther from sorority house to campus for four years without minding. Wherein lay the difference?
She reached the salon without bothering for a pickup glance at the mirror, intent upon her problem.
Through the door she saw Henri step forth quickly, and when she reached her office he was there.
Perhaps dinner tonight at some quiet spot? They could discuss the future of the salon, should it be affected by the change in half styling.
Susanne shook her head. Another dose of Henri's negative thinking, and she'd be tempted to take the alternative Aunt Mary's will had made possible.
"Another time?" she suggested.
Inside, she found a note in Henri's handwriting. Would she call Mr. Bert Leehoff?
Estate business? The morning newspaper had carried a rather ribald front-page story on the great change about to descend upon the heads of women; a story even men would read.
But if he dared say one word about the Hair-After not being able to survive the change, she would inform him that she, a woman, knew more about hair and women than he.
Bert's opening gambit wasn't at all reassuring. "Susanne, would you take pity on an overworked attorney and have dinner with him tonight? A purely selfish invitation."
When were men ever anything but selfish? Take Danny yesterday morning, Henri last night-
"I've been working on a case that comes up in court on Monday," he continued. "Principals were due in this evening. I just received a wire they've been grounded by fog and are switching to a train, so I can't see them until tomorrow.
"Now if I stay home, I'll keep on going over this affair until I'm rattled. I've learned when I am with you, I can't think of anything else."
Susanne grabbed the desk. At last! One man had seen her as a woman.
"It's too foggy to go out," she temporized, "and I'm so tired after last night's banquet, nothing but a tray dinner before the fire appeals to me. Would you mind leftovers?"
"Ah," came a sibilant sigh of relief, "I prefer them. If you're tired, we'll make it early. Shall I call Maggie?"
The day improved immediately, except that Henri seemed overly solicitous when asking if she had been able to reach Mr. Leehoff.
I wonder, she mused, if he had a motive in suggesting a date this evening before telling me about Bert calling. Yet why shouldn't he want her to date Bert? And how could he guess it wasn't estate business Bert wished to discuss either at her office or his?
Poor darling, she thought, as he turned away, defeated, he had gained nothing from adroit questioning. It must be maddening to be- practically running a place of business and not know what might be going on behind one's back.
Suddenly Susanne swooped into her office, closing the door behind her and wishing it were the back alley door and a way of escape lay ahead.
Ranalee Graton had come in, determination in every sharp step.
Now her voice sang out imperiously. She wanted Henri immediately. Her want being met with alacrity, she demanded of Henri a hair-styling such as she had read about.
Henri made soothing sounds Susanne couldn't decode. Ranalee's voice came again. "I suppose, though, you had time to style her hair. Oh? Not the type? As though that would bother her."
Again Henri's murmur, and again Ranalee's rebuttal. "I know, I know, but that appointment will be cancelled any moment now. I shall take her place. I've a most important engagement this evening."
The telephone buzzed, Henri answered, and a moment later Ranalee's voice picked up again. But Henri was content. Judging from what Miss Graton was intimating, Miss Susanne would not be seeing her attorney that evening. He was more than happy to turn Miss Ranalee into the most bewitching gamine his clever fingers could contrive. She was the type.
Susanne sat listening with clinical interest. She wondered if people ever realized how much of their characters was revealed by their voices when the hearer's attention was not distracted by another sense-sight, for instance.
Ranalee would have tossed her head, flashed her eyes, used her shoulders seductively as she talked, thus concealing the arrogant self-will the voice alone revealed.
Poor Ranalee, she mused, immediate victories won as she won them were never lasting or satisfying. She wondered which friend she had talked into giving up an appointment with Henri, and with whom was her date.
Fast on that came the answer. Who but Bert Leehoff would have brought forth that note of triumph?
She spent the rest of the day waiting for a call canceling their evening's engagement, then drove home expecting word would await her there.
Instead Bert was waiting, one of Maggie's mammoth aprons belted around the middle and flaring at his shoulders like ruffled wings.
"Come in, come in," he greeted her. "Maggie was called out on a do-good mission and turned the kitchen over to me. Wait till you taste this turkey a la czar. It has authority. How about getting into something easy?"
"Such as you're wearing?" she laughed.
"We're eating in the kitchen," he warned. "Choose your garments."
She returned in a soft shirt and pedal pushers, and they sat in the window embrasure looking down on a fog blanket blurred with light.
"Know something?" He had removed the apron but hadn't donned his coat or tie. "The Romans had something. Now we doll up in stiff clothes, sit on stiff chairs and eat with one eye on the clock. I'm all for easy does it when that's possible."
Susanne tried to conjure up people such as those at the previous night's banquet lounging on divans, reaching for a leg of mutton, a goblet of wine, a full roast chicken, and laughed.
"Wouldn't I hate to clean up after such diners!"
He guessed that that relaxed format had gone out with slaves, but TV trays were offering a modern substitute. His only reason for suggesting the kitchen and the tiny table was the aftermath. He had no sisters. He'd been brought up to dry dishes until he'd grown old enough and earned enough to make the down payment on a dishwasher.
"I let Dad take over from there on."
They spent a companionable hour, with Bert washing dishes and she drying them; then came the inevitable move to easy chairs before the fire.
Warily she had waited for some special subject to be broached, something which would reveal his real reason for wanting to spend the evening with her. When there was nothing forthcoming, she could wait no longer.
"Did you want to see me about something special?" she asked.
"Susanne," he leaned forward a little, "there are times when I regret I am your attorney. I can see you as just the kind of a girl I want to be with, but all you see in me is a briefcase. Right?"
She couldn't defend herself by telling him how little experience she had had with men. Once she was isolated by Danny, both high school and college boys had kept away from her.
Bert watched her. What a change since she had come to Leesburg. Probably the hair-styling. There she sat, one foot folded under, short curls giving her a small-child look; an adorable small child, he amended.
He thought of her as she had been when he had barged into her at the salon entrance that first day: completely self-assured, definitely superior in attitude. There had been condescension in her willingness to take over the Hair-After that first hour; later, a fighting determination to meet a challenge.
Remembering the tilt of her chin, he shook his head. Maybe the hair-styling was only an outward symbol of an inward change. The girl across from him was no longer convinced she knew all of the answers to everything.
"A briefcase with legs, especially one who can cook," she was replying gravely, "is quite an asset. I enjoy having it around. And you must admit our contacts have been more or less confined to legal business."
"That's inevitable even on a social occasion. Things can crop up, but not tonight."
They talked of other things until Susanne mentioned her dread of the long walk from parking area to salon when winter storms started.
And Bert was off on his favorite subject. The Green Light committee on customer parking had made initial surveys. They'd chosen the ideal spot. Had she noticed an old church in the center of town?
"Churches, too, are having parking problems," he confided. "This denomination has purchased and is erecting a new edifice on the outskirts, with adequate parking space."
The committee had taken a "right of first refusal" on the land a year ago. They had bought up other small pieces of property within the block. They were and had been negotiating for the old Morrison Building for months, but had run into a snag.
The old Morrison Building was part of an estate, and some interest held an option through one of the heirs. That heir was holding out for such a preposterous price that the eventual buyer, the city, wouldn't consider it.
"Do you know which of the heirs?"
Leehoff threw up his hands. "There are a dozen, and none of them are talking. Naturally, their attorneys are equally silent. We're stopped cold." -"Is this block the only one available?"
It was the only one with buildings old enough to warrant destruction: two houses, the church and the ancient Morrison Building, covering half a block, once the pride of the city.
Once they had cleared with the heir and managed to force the sale of one lot, unfortunately in the center of one section, the city would take over; the parking palace, as it was to be called for some inane reason, would be started.
Susanne sighed. What a joy that would be to her and to the Hair-After: a spot right in the center of the city's core where patrons could leave cars and not worry about parking violations.
They had the backing of chain stores. They were tired of maintaining parking strips where, while tickets had to be validated by purchase, many people parked for hours for fifteen cents, crowding out actual buyers.
"Now," said Bert as he finished, "how about telling me your problem?"
"How did you know I had one?" Susanne cried, sitting up.
"It's hiding behind your eyes but peeking out occasionally. Something wrong at the salon?"
Her story poured out: the banquet, the style show, the reaction of those present and Henri's gloom upon their return.
"He even intimated I might have to discharge most of our regular help to install specialists," she concluded indignantly.
Back went the Leehoff head, and laughter rang out. "Susanne, did you sit still and let him sell you a line like that? Now listen."
CHAPTER TWELVE
Susanne offered one protest. "It wasn't just Henri but some of the older people present-"
"Naturally," agreed Bert. "They are remembering back to the day the first 'bob' was introduced by Irene Castle, then made popular. But at that time only men and a very few women barbers knew the first thing about cutting hair. The moment the business realized short hair had come in to stay, more or less, beauty colleges placed that art on their agenda, and in no time every beautician had at least the rudiments. Don't all of your operators cut, trim or what have you?"
"They may trim, but Henri and Jacques do the styling. I suppose they could, yet with such an extreme change-"
"Then they'll take a refresher course. Believe me, they'll be made available. Now what do you imagine the small shops will do, the ones with only one or two women and no men: go out of business or adapt?"
"Of course," she agreed, then frowned. "But I don't understand why everyone groaned and predicted financial disaster."
"We're a nation of groaners. We groan at change, predict catastrophe. Then we heave to and avert catastrophe by working out something better than that which had caused our groans."
"In a beauty salon, what?"
"How about the counseling bit?"
Well, more women and girls were dropping in for "a little chat." It was not anything she deemed of great value. She found she was suggesting books for them to read, letting them talk their troubles out, but only occasionally offering any actual therapy.
"Which is exactly what your aunt did."
And meanwhile, by studying the faces of the salon's patrons, she was learning which books to suggest, for weren't they like so many maps? Maggie, who'd slipped into the kitchen without them being aware of it, came in with a coffee tray, beaming.
"Anytime you are out of a job, I'll hire you as chief cook and bottle washer."
Bert laughed and promised to remember it. Later, as Susanne walked to the door with him, it was she who said breathlessly, "It has been a lovely evening."
"The best yet, with more to come."
Turning back, Susanne stretched and said. "I feel just wonderful."
Maggie nodded. "There are folks that make you feel that way. Worth seeing often."
In her room, Susanne frowned at the girl in the mirror. Now what had Maggie meant? She'd used her double meaning voice. Ah, that one should choose friends who made one happy.
She thought of Henri. Disturbing, though only on business matters. Danny? Irritating of late, but had she always felt that way? Could that be, rather, a change within herself?
And what did any of this matter? Yet she posed the question the next morning.
"Well, no," Maggie replied to her question, "not always. There's smooth-talkin' folks who make you feel like a million while they're takin' your last dime."
She might have said more but was called to the telephone, and Susanne carried the thought to the thinking room.
Why should Bert soft-talk her? He had nothing to gain. And she had approved what he had said.
She worried the thought until, in exasperation, she went to the desk to draw a pad toward her and start a graph of the salon business.
If the new style became popular in Lees-burg, should the salon or the operators pay for the "refresher course" in haircutting? And how much would it cost the salon in money and in time?
They needed another operator to help with the Christmas holiday rush. There was a spot that could be converted quickly and at not too great expense.
But should she go to that expense, with the seasonal slump just ahead?
Why not accept that as the challenge Bert had mentioned and think up a way of overcoming it?
Hadn't she, those first days at the Hair-After, conceived the idea of staggering crews so some would be available for after parking-meter time?
She had seen a large display advertisement in a big-city newspaper catering to such after-hours clientele as businesswomen and shopgirls. Well, Leesburg had enough of them even within its core area to keep the Hair-After working overtime.
And if the salon loses, she reasoned, I will be the one to suffer the loss. As I've never had anything to lose before, I won't actually suffer. And at least I will have tried.
She carried the thought on. The so-called social group in Leesburg might slight their appearance during the severe weather. The business girl couldn't afford to neglect her appearance.
Perhaps the Hair-After would be taking business from small outskirt shops, but she was inclined to believe they would be substituting for the do-it-yourself-and-groan variety.
Of course she would have a battle royal with Henri. Yet why should she? She must remember it was she who had inherited the salon, not Henri.
Yet suppose Henri became angry and left; how much of the Hair-After business would he carry with him?
"All right," she cried aloud. "Suppose Henri walked out in front of a speeding car, what then? That's no more than a business hazard, depending entirely upon personalities."
Except, of course, Henri before a speeding car was one thing; Henri taking his or her customers to a different salon, another. As Maggie reported her Aunt Mary as having said, Henri seemed a necessary evil.
Well, she had handled him before. She could do it again.
She started Monday morning and ran, not into a blank wall, but into a fusillade of fireworks.
A six-foot square removed from the reception room for an extra operator? Was Miss Susanne serious? She couldn't be. Not at a time like this. Why, the extra operator would be needed for no more than ten days to two weeks at the most. After that-and down went his hand to indicate a slump.
"Then the space won't be needed," flashed Susanne. "So we've lost nothing but the cost of a room divider, a mirror and a chest."
Their spirited altercation reached the eager ears of an early client. She could hardly wait to leave the salon and hurry to the nearest telephone.
"Henri," she concluded, sounded completely exasperated. Imagine being bossed by someone who knows nothing about the business. I wouldn't be surprised if he quit."
Susanne left her business conference with Henri, and she knew that the last thing she needed now was a fight with Danny. And Danny was waiting for her in her office.
Danny told her that he was glad she'd taken his advice. "Soon your hair's going to look all right again."
She was fuming.
"I also took your advice," Danny said. "Thought the whole thing over. You know, this is a good place. We can make it a branch office. Get ourselves married, and you can forget this silly businesswoman thing that's gotten you down."
Susanne was furious, and Danny went on. "Saw Henri this morning," he said. "Had breakfast at the hotel. Filled him in on the details."
So that was it-that was why Henri was in such a mood that day! "Look Danny," she said. "We are not engaged now. Do not buy property here because we're going to marry. That might not happen."
He grinned. "Regardless of our marriage," he said, "this place is perfect for a branch office."
Susanne nodded. "Just so you understand," she said.
Later when she saw Henri she told him that she had no intentions of marrying Danny, regardless of anything Danny had said.
Henri was visibly pleased. "Then I wish you good luck tonight at the businesswoman's meeting," he said.
By the time Susanne arrived home she was exhausted. She kicked off her shoes, prepared a cup of coffee, and had just settled down on the sofa when Henri presented himself. He entered with the air of a man about to propose something quite serious.
"I would suggest the announcement of our marriage as soon as possible," he said.
"Henri-what are you saying?"
"I am saying that the only way to save the salon from bankruptcy is for us to marry as soon as possible."
Susanne prepared a cup of black coffee for Henri while she got the story out of him.
