“What’s your game?” Marta asked Fletch from across her desk in the executive office of the Ben Franklyn Friend Service.
“Game?” Sitting in a small wooden captain’s chair in front of the desk, Fletch looked down. He was still breathing somewhat heavily, still sweating, and the front of his flimsy yellow shorts indicated to any observer that his attention was still elsewhere. “Warden, I’m suffering.”
Marta picked up the phone on her desk and pushed three buttons. Into the phone, she said, “Cindy? Get dressed. Then come in here.”
“Take pity on me!” Fletch said.
Reluctantly, he had followed Marta down the dark, carpeted corridor to the office behind the reception room.
Walking, Marta had more of an atheletic spring in her step than sexy wriggle in her hips.
“You’ll calm down in a minute, boy.”
“I don’t think so. You may have created a permanent condition here.”
“Don’t you wish.”
The ferns in this office were alive. Venus de Milo stood on a pedestal in one corner. On a wall was September Morn. Another wall had a large panel of color photographs of women weightlifters, flexed.
On Marta’s desk was a stack of bills which looked suspiciously like seven twenties and a ten.
“Am I being expelled from the Ben Franklyn Friend Service?” Fletch asked. “Won’t you be my friend?”
“I asked you what you’re playing at.”
“I’m just a red-blooded boy out for a morning of sport.”
“Like hell you are.” Marta fingered the pearls draping her stomach. “I remembered where I saw you before.”
“I know!” Fletch said. “I just remembered, too. Sunday, at the Newcomers’ Coffee, at St. Anselm’s Church.”
“You’re right about Sunday,” Marta said. “You want something. And I think I know what.”
“You’d be right.” Leaning forward, elbows on knees, Fletch put his face in his hands. “Nothing so wicked has happened to me since Sue Ann Murchison’s parents came home early from the first Star Trek movie and caught us on the couch.”
“I saw you on Sunday. You ran in the Sardinal Race.”
“I didn’t get any understanding then, either. They threw me out. It was a real cold night. There’s a danger in brittleness, you know. If I hadn’t kept my hips absolutely straight as I went down their front walk…”
“You hound-dogged the girls all through the race.”
“… why, I wouldn’t be here today.”
“Why?”
“If you excuse me, I think I’ll go for a run now.”
“Sit down.”
“I’ve got to do something!”
“You’ve got to answer me, is what you’ve got to do. I asked you: Why did you follow us all through the Sardinal Race Sunday?”
Fletch sat back down in his hard chair. “Because I’m a dirty old man.”
“I asked you: Why?”
“Because I used to be a dirty young man.”
“You are a young man,” Marta insisted. “A transparently healthy young man.”
“Bursting.”
“You are good-looking. In fact, I expect some women would consider you exciting to look at.”
“Some women consider cabbage exciting to look at.”
“A hundred and fifty dollars.” Marta riffled the stack of bills on her desk with her fingers. “You can get anything you want, probably more than you want, without walking a full city block.”
“Mind if I go try it right now?”
“Sit down, please. I was suspicious the minute I saw you. A hundred and fifty dollars is a lot of money. And that’s just for starters.”
“You know how to cool the client, huh?”
“The minute you walked in here, I knew no one like you was laying down two hundred dollars or more just to get a sexual thrill.”
“I was enjoying it. I was headin’ for ecstasy, when you opened that door.”
“Then I remembered where I saw you before. I’ll ask you one more time: Why did you stay right behind us through the entire Sardinal Race Sunday?”
“All right,” Fletch said. “I confess. I’m a student of advertising. Publicity, actually. I was studying your technique.” He held his hands out to indicate wriggling hips. “Your technique really worked. I mean, you really got mileage out of your publicity.”
Marta’s smile was droll. “Really…”
“Didn’t I see a big spread on the Ben Franklyn Friend Service on the sports pages of one of the newspapers, yesterday? Two pictures, at least. Was it the Chronicle-Gazette?”
The woman’s smile became more genuine. “The News-Tribune”
“Yeah. That’s right. All for the price of a dozen T-shirts. That’s real mileage.”
Marta said, “You’re a spy.”
Fletch widened his eyes at her. “I’m a spy?” He dropped his voice to a near whisper. “You mean, from Red China?”
“You’re studying us all right.” Marta nodded. “Is that it? That’s why you followed us Sunday. That’s why you came here this morning. You’re studying our operation.”
“Oh, you mean an industrial spy,” Fletch said more loudly. “From Japan.”
“After you learn what we do here, you intend to open one of your own exercise-to-sexual-ecstasy pavilions.”
“You phrase things so well,” Fletch said. “Truly, you have a natural talent for advertising and publicity.”
“Isn’t that true?” “Moi?” Fletch asked. “Look at me. At my age, where could I get the money to open one of these gymnasiums-of-delight?”
“I don’t know, but you’re here.”
“I don’t even know how much one of these exercise machines costs, but, I’m sure, plenty. All these mirrors. Lights. Bathrooms. Ground elk’s horn.”
“Someone could be backing you.”
“Heck, lady, at my age I couldn’t get financial backing from a milkman.”
Marta shuddered. “Don’t call me lady.’ ”
“So, then: Why are you here, Fletcher Jaffe?”
Fletch looked at his toes. “I thought by now you would have figured that out,” he said, not knowing what his next line of defense was, but hoping for one.
“You want a job.” Marta looked pleased with herself.
“You got it,” Fletch said quickly.
“I had to be circumspect.” Marta straightened her back.
“I understand.”
“In this business,” Marta said, “one has to be careful.”
“Of course.” Fletch gulped. “Naturally. Me, too.”
“Talking around, testing each other out, before we lay our cards on the table.”
“You’re good at it,” Fletch said.
“That’s why you’ve been making this strange approach to us. Solicitation is such a dirty word. You wanted to see if we’d make the offer to you.”
“Right,” Fletch said through his Adam’s apple.
“You thoroughly expected your one hundred and fifty dollars back this morning.” She picked it off the desk and handed it to him. “Here it is.”
He took it.
She sat back in her swivel chair, and turned sideways to the desk. “At the moment we only have two suites operating for women, three days a week, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, when our male traffic is apt to be down. Don’t worry. You’ll make more money those three days than you could at any other profession, except maybe neurosurgery. The women have a separate entrance, of course, but we’re talking the same thing. The principle here is that sex is far more ecstatic after hard exercise. You know, exercise as foreplay.” Listening to her, trying to swallow his Adam’s apple, staring at her, Fletch thought Marta remarkably like Frank Jaffe sitting in his swivel chair behind his desk, trying to get across a few principles of journalism. “When it comes right down to it, of course you know, we don’t expect you to use your own personal, shall I say, intimate equipment.” She chuckled. “Except your fingers, of course. Unlike women, men can’t bear that much traffic. Men can’t phony it. Our clients understand that. We have machines, vibrators, mechanical dildos which I find quite satisfactory. We even have a vibrating dildo machine on a wide, leather belt you can strap on yourself, if you’re not absolutely repulsed by the woman. Of course, we expect you to solicit an extra charge, for that service.” There was a rap on the door. Marta called, “Come in, darling!”
Cindy opened the door and stood just inside it. She was dressed in loafers, white knee socks, a short kilt, and a light blue, buttoned down, preppy dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up. Without expression, she watched Marta’s face.
“Say hello, again, to your new colleague, darling.” Marta stood up. “Fletcher Jaffe will be joining the staff of the Ben Franklyn Friend Service. I want you to take him to lunch, Cindy, and give him the benefits of your wisdom and experience.”
Now Cindy was watching Fletch without expression.
Fletch’s throat was dry.
“He made a real smart approach to us,” Marta said. “He knew he couldn’t come here and just ask for a job, without making himself awfully vulnerable. He gave me a hard time,” she chuckled. “Is he a cop? I asked myself. A spy? The cops wouldn’t send anyone that young. And no one his age could run a place like this. Sexual dysfunction? Not from what I saw watching you two through the mirror.”
“You’re some detective,” Fletch croaked.
He stood on wobbling knees.
Marta came around the desk and put her hand on the back of his neck. “He’s exactly what we need, to build up the female side of this business. Isn’t he, Cindy?”
“Sure.” Cindy was still watching him. “I guess.”
“He’s just perfect. I’ve been looking for you, boy.” She squeezed the back of his neck. “Exactly what we need. Welcome aboard. You can start work anytime.”
“Thanks.”
“Tell him everything, Cindy. Show him the ropes.”
Fletch said to Cindy, “Mind if I take a shower before I get dressed?”
“I’d appreciate it.”
“Have a nice lunch, kids. Today you’re lunching on the Ben Franklyn Friend Service. But, remember, high protein, both of you, and watch the starch and fats.” Back behind her desk, Marta beamed at Fletch. “And, remember, Fletch. My door is always open.”