Door To Door

Virginia tried hard to keep her mind somewhere close to sanity, but it kept bouncing in and out of reality, as if leaping away with each stroke of her husband's hot tongue. She grasped at the pillow beneath her head, and her beautiful, soft mouth formed a single word in the darkness of their bedroom.

"Ohhhhh!"

Leon moved his hungry searching mouth to her breasts. He covered one large nipple with his lips, then slowly moved his tongue around it. He sucked the whole thing into his mouth and then forced his jaws together.

"Oh ... Ahh," Virginia moaned, liking the sensation.

"Ahhh, AAHHH," she moaned as he moved his hot mouth to her other breast and sucked.

Her nipples hardened immediately. She felt as though they were on fire. From somewhere deep inside her a flame flickered ... started ... slowly ... and tried to break out of her body through her nipples. She cried out and moved her head from side to side and his hungry hot mouth kept its relentless sucking and tonguing of her breasts ...

The next morning her mind actually did return to reality. Her husband, her house, her new job. Oh, why was life so complicated? Why couldn't it always be like that wondrous moment of luxurious tit-sucking? Why?

On calm reflection, when she could collect her scattered, chaotic thoughts enough to concentrate, Virginia realized that she had done a very foolish thing. Now she was in a terrified panic, and she didn't know what she would do.

It had been an exhilarating revelation to her that she could overcome her natural shyness enough to knock on doors, present her sales pitch for products, and actually sell them to other housewives. They were biodegradable and didn't contribute to further pollution of the environment: that was the main thrust of all the advertising brochures; and of course, her sponsor, during the course of his sales meetings, was spellbinding on the subject of ecology and how products would help to solve all the environmental ills that faced the inhabitants of the United States, indeed of the whole Spaceship Planet Earth. Virginia found it all so exciting, especially since it made it possible for her to help out financially.

Leon was trying his best to establish his own business. His service station, leased from an oil company, was in a good location, the nearest competitor more than a mile away. It was just off the freeway near a large housing development and a proposed shopping mall, so the potential was excellent; however, fees for business licenses, the cost of stock, utility hookups, and advertising, as well as many other expenses, had eaten up their meager savings.

Leon believed in the American dream of free enterprise, being your own boss, owning your own business and becoming independent. But it doesn't always work that way. It takes money, lots of it, as well as good credit and experience to start your own business, and the neophyte is liable to make costly errors, so even though Leon was working long hours, he was barely breaking even, his take home pay so piddling that two months ago he had been ready to call it quits. About that time Virginia had spotted the ad which described the possible financial gain in selling Eko- Klean products on a part-time basis. The ad was aimed at housewives, and she eagerly showed it to her husband, exclaiming that this was the exact answer to their financial problems. She would hustle around selling Eko- Klean until they were over their financial hurdle and Leon's service station was on a paying basis.

Leon didn't share her optimism. "Look, honey, this is another one of those pyramid affairs, and you don't really start making any money until you're a sponsor or an area supervisor."

Virginia didn't understand it at all, so Leon patiently drew out a chart for her showing how the representatives, who were paid only a small commission on their sales, were the base of the pyramid; the sponsors, in the next echelon above, were paid not only for their own sales but received an override commission on the sales of each representative under them, and above, in the next tier of the pyramid, an area supervisor was being paid an override commission on the sponsors and their representatives. The regional superintendents in the next echelon were making a commission on all those other people below him, and above that ...

"Then I'll become a sponsor!" Virginia declared.

"Great!" Leon told her. "But just remember that the product is probably overpriced! It has to be in order to pay all those commissions!"

She still didn't understand it all clearly, but she went ahead and called Mr. Hartman about it. He came to their home and talked in glowing terms about how much money Virginia could make, especially stressing how the percentage of commission escalated the more a person sold.

"And, of course, you'll want to be signing up your friends to work under you, so that you can become a sponsor yourself," Mr. Hartman had told them unctuously.

Leon had listened patiently, asked a few questions concerning the pyramid sales arrangement, which Hartman had dismissed offhandedly with a remark that it wasn't any different from other forms of marketing; the mark-up was the same, but the sales commissions were distributed differently. Leon was dubious, of course, but Virginia was eager, completely sold on the whole proposition. In the end, she signed up to be a sales representative under Arthur Hartman's sponsorship.

She attended all the training sessions, after which she eagerly began to knock on the doors in their neighborhood. It was slow going at first, then she began to sell and her enthusiasm grew by leaps and bounds. Her first disappointment came when she received her first commission check. It seemed terribly small, considering how much she had worked and the volume of merchandise she had sold.

Leon tried to be sympathetic. He had known what would happen; but he avoided the old saw of I told you so! Instead he suggested, "After you've sold them, sell them again on becoming a representative under your sponsorship. That's where the money is!"

"But I'd have to sign up fifteen people!" Virginia wailed. "I've been working almost every day for a month, and only two people have said they'd do it - and look at this check! I only made twenty-eight dollars!"

"And don't forget that you've bought almost five dollars' worth of that stuff for your own use!" Leon reminded her gently.

"Which means ... that I really only made about twenty-three dollars?"

"That's right, darling."

This is usually the point where people begin to quit. The attrition rate is quite high among people who occupy the lowest tier of the pyramid. That's why recruitment of new representatives goes on relentlessly. They are the roots upon which the rest of the pyramid grows rich; without these little people scurrying about selling the product in their neighborhoods, the giant overburden of the pyramid above them would collapse.

To Virginia's credit, she wasn't a quitter. Having determined that she was going to help Leon achieve his goal of operating a going business of his own, she went right back out, ranging farther and farther in her doorbell-ringing sales campaign. She attacked her job almost as though she were an evangelistic priestess of a cult, the cult of cleanliness whose savior was Eko-Klean.

The credo is beamed every day into forty million television sets and, like it or not, has become a standard for middle-class Americans, who almost religiously use this or that brand of detergent, shampoo, bath soap, cleansing spray; this or that brand of dishwasher, clothes washer, or vacuum cleaner to further ensure the standards of antiseptic and sterile cleanliness laid down for them by the advertising media.

So it wasn't so strange, then, that Virginia Brooks was at such a loss when her washing machine broke down. God! What a rotten thing to have to happen to me - especially right now, when we're so broke! Leon gets his clothes so dirty at the service station, with all that oil and grease, and I have to keep up on all the dirty things in the house ... the bed sheets, towels and the underwear ...!

Leon suggested that she take the necessary things out to a laundromat until he could find the time to take a look at the machinery inside the washer. "One thing I know for sure is that we can't afford to have it fixed, or buy another one!"

Virginia used the laundromat a couple of times but it was time- consuming. Desperately, she figured that at least she should be able to pay for the repairs from her earnings. The repairman came and pronounced it unrepairable, as spare parts for that model were no longer available. "What you ought to do is come on down to the store and take a look at our new models. We're having a sale that'll save you almost fifty dollars if you buy this week!" Of course, he charged her the full price for his service call.

That was the beginning of her foolishness; she did go down to the appliance store, looked at the gleaming new machines on display, and ended up buying one. She paid for it with money she had collected from her customers, money she knew was not hers, but which she felt certain she would be able to replace before having to make her sales report to Arthur Hartman.

And, that was why she was so terrified. Arthur had come around once already, and she had been able to put him off by explaining that she hadn't made all of her collections as yet, that she'd have it all ready for him the following week.

Hartman had been perturbed. "You know, of course, that I can't fill this order for you," he'd told her, waving the order blank, "until I've collected from you for the last one!"

Virginia's heart skipped a beat. She suddenly felt boxed-in. If I can't deliver my orders, I can't collect! And she knew that even on the total of her orders, her commission wouldn't cover the amount she owed Mr. Hartman now. God! What can I do?

She begged him to relent, just this one time, and let her have the merchandise.

Hartman thought about it. His eyes roamed over her, seeing her obvious agitation. Somehow she had mismanaged the company's money. She hasn't admitted it yet, but that's what's going to come out! His deep-set black eyes picked out the full voluptuousness of her proudly upthrust breasts outlined under her housedress, and the swelling curve of her hips that blended into the soft taper of her white thighs, a goodly expanse of which he could see from where he sat opposite her. She had a rather pretty face, too, with wide-set deep blue eyes, a little snub of a nose, and full sensual lips; her teeth were fine, small, white and even, and he couldn't help deciding that she was one hell of a beautiful woman.

Right then, he decided to go along with her imploring request that he extend her credit for another week. Hell! It could be well worth it! His eyes swept over her again, and he knew it would be. In his mind's eye he saw her stripped naked before him, while below his interest was evidenced by the crawling lift of his testicles and the swift pulsating rise to alert erection of his penis. But, I'll wait, damn it! This time next week, she'll have to come up with the money ... or else ...

"Okay, I'll let you have the stuff!" he agreed.

"Oh, how can I ever thank you enough?"

She didn't catch his covert, lewd smile, as he told her, "Save that for next week - and remember that both orders have to be paid for then!"

The week had been hectic for her. She had scurried about madly selling Eko-Klean, and as she added up figures, using all of her commission, she was still one hundred and ninety-eight dollars short.

A frantic call to her parents in Colorado Springs had resulted in a loving but firm refusal. Her folks just didn't have the money to lend her. She knew that it would be out of the question to ask the same thing of Leon's parents, especially without her husband's knowledge, for she had led Leon to believe that she had bought the new washing machine from her commissions. She hadn't exactly lied to him, but she had bent the truth just a little.

Now things were all coming to a roistering boil. Her week was up. She was short almost two hundred dollars ... and Arthur Hartman was due to show up at any time.

Her mind was absolute chaos. She had no idea what she was going to tell Mr. Hartman. She toyed with the idea of leaving the house and not returning until late ... not answering the door at all. ... But, maybe if I just told him the truth he'd let me make it up a little at a time ... God! Things are so mixed up and I'm in a terrible fix!