The Night the World Didn't End

The following is a work of erotic fiction and includes scenes of sexual activity. It includes characters that are copyrighted by Lionsgate Television, Weiner Bros and American Movies Classics. This story is intended for the non-commercial enjoyment of fans and should be considered a parody. No copyright infringement is intended and no profit will be made from the distribution of this story.

*****

Joan Holloway sat alone in her West 12th Street apartment, a half filled glass of scotch in her hand. It had not been the thirty-one year old redhead's first drink of the evening and she was certain it wouldn't be her last. Only a small lamp to her left illuminated the room, the semi-darkness around her made even more encroaching by the absence of either the radio or television. On those rare Saturday nights when she was home alone, one of those was usually on to help her ignore that fact.

The airways of both, however, had been filled with nothing but stories of the Russian nuclear missiles in Cuba and the possible American response to them. Most of the scenarios outlined by the on-air experts ended with an outbreak of war between the United States and the Soviet Union. While New York was beyond even the most optimistic range estimate of the Cuban missiles, the commentators were quick to remind their listeners that Russia had other more powerful missiles, as well as bombers, that could easily reach New York.

Cuba, however, and even more so, Russia, seemed far away at the moment and concerns more intimate dominated Joan's thoughts. For the last few years, she had been the Office Manager at Sterling and Cooper, one of the smaller advertising firms in the city. Responsible mainly for the secretarial pool, she had managed to carve out a nice little niche for herself. One that had provided her with both a position of power, at least as much as any woman was likely to have in today's business world, and a sense of satisfaction in her job. A situation that had changed as of late.

Looking back as she stared into the darkness, Joan decided she could trace the beginnings of her loss of prestige to the hiring of Peggy Olsen as the new secretary for Don Draper, the agency's creative director, some two years before. Joan saw Peggy, fresh from Miss Deaver's Secretarial School, as just another one of those bridge and tunnel girls, making the early morning subway ride into Manhattan every day, trying to raise their station in life. She had given the twenty-two year old her standard speech, included in which was the advice that if she really wanted to get ahead, then she had to be prepared to be more than just a secretary to the men in the office. It was after all, a man's world. That reality might not be fair, but as President Kennedy had said, little in life was.

In the beginning, Peggy had seemed to take her advice to heart, improving her appearance and even paying a visit to a doctor Joan recommended. The doctor, Joan knew, didn't have a problem writing prescriptions for birth control, even if the young woman seeking it was unmarried. In the fast moving world of the 1960s, such a precaution was an absolute necessity for a modern girl. Joan doubted any of the men in the office would be interested in the new girl, but who knew what might happen after a few drinks, and most of them started drinking well before noon.

It wasn't until months later that Joan learned she had seriously underestimated the younger woman. How had Peggy managed to parlay a few small copy ad suggestions, and in her opinion, that was all they had been, into a position as a junior copywriter? When Freddy Rumsen, the copywriter who had been instrumental in getting her that promotion, had been fired following a disastrous sales pitch, how had she practically walked over his grave to take over both his job and his office?

One of the reasons Joan had such power at the firm was the fact she had once had an affair with Roger Sterling, one of the senior partners. Joan filled a void in his life, mostly physical, that his wife no longer cared to. But two heart attacks had led Roger to vow to stop living life as if he was a twenty-two year old sailor on perpetual show leave, and the affair came to a sudden half.

Another source of her loss of authority, Joan knew, was due to Jane Siegel, the secretary who had replaced Peggy after her promotion. She and Joan had clashed almost immediately, their confrontation coming to a head the night Jane had gone along with some of the men in the office during a late night excursion up to Mr. Cooper's office to see some painting. The intrusion offended Joan's sense of propriety. There was nothing Joan could do about the men, but upon learning about the late night hijinks, she had immediately told Jane to clean out her desk and not to bother reporting to work the next day..

When Joan had come in the next morning, she was shocked to find Jane sitting at the desk as if nothing had happened. When she asked the girl what part of their conversation the day before she didn't understand, the only response she got was that Mr. Sterling would explain it to her.

It didn't take long to learn that not only had Roger Sterling unfired her, but also soon abandoned his vow and began an affair with the much younger woman. An affair that suddenly exploded into the open when Sterling announced his intention to divorce his wife and marry her.

By that time, Joan herself had become engaged to Dr. Greg Harris and had her own future set, or so she thought. She'd known from the beginning that Greg was sometimes capable of ugly possessive moments, but she never expected what had occurred on a recent night when he had forced himself on her, right in Don Draper's office, when she had been working late and he had come by to pick her up. Additionally, Greg had also lately become upset by the knowledge that she was more sexually experienced than he had originally imagined. One night when she had taken control of their lovemaking, he had immediately lost interest in it. Their engagement was still on, but she wasn't totally sure she wanted it to be. Even tonight, with the world possibly ending, he hadn't called her and she wasn't inclined to call him. So here she sat, drink in hand, looking back at her life and forward to an uncertain future.

The sharp ring of the telephone startled Joan, almost causing her to jump out of her chair. She stared at the phone for two more rings, and then hesitantly picked it up.

"Hello?" she said, wondering if Greg had finally decided to call and check up on her.

"Joan?" a decidedly non-masculine voice asked.

"Yes," Joan replied, still a little hesitant.

"Joan, it's me, Carol," the caller identified herself.

"Carol, oh God," Joan said in surprise. "I didn't recognize your voice."

If Joan had to make a short list of the last people she expected to hear from on a night like this, Carol McCardy, who had both been her college roommate and had shared this apartment for a time, would've been near the very top of it. Their friendship had begun to fray, although neither realized it at the time, on the night Roger Sterling had his first heart attack.

Carol had been fired from her job that afternoon and Joan had suggested that the two of them go out and pick up a few guys to take her mind off her problems. Then, as Joan was making a final check of her appearance in the mirror, Carol confessed that she loved her. She went so far as to say that she had loved her for years, ever since college, and had even followed her to New York to be with her. That she had waited all these years in the hope that one day, Joan would look at her and think of her in the same way as she would a boy.

Joan had stared at her friend for a few seconds, then calmly suggested that she'd had a long, hard day and that they should just go out and forget about it. Taken aback for a moment that her secret love was acting as if she hadn't heard a single word of what she'd said, Carol nevertheless had followed Joan's lead, and turned back the clock a few minutes and agreed to go out. Later, they brought two men back to the apartment and she once more cloaked herself in respectable heterosexuality.

Even though both of them never spoke of the incident again, it seemed to always to be there after that, and eventually Carol moved out. The last Joan had heard, her former roommate was sharing an apartment in Greenwich Village with another woman. While she was never totally sure, Joan was fairly certain that the relationship between Carol and her new roommate involved more than simply sharing the rent and utilities.

"Carol, is something wrong?" Joan asked, thinking that might be the reason for the unexpected call.

"I just wanted to make sure you were okay," Carol said. "You know, with everything that is going on and all."

"That's very nice of you," Joan replied. "To care, I mean."

"Joan, you know I've always cared about you," Carol said, the intensity of her words carrying more weight than they might otherwise imply.

"I appreciate that," Joan answered. "And are you and your roommate, I'm afraid I forget her name, all right?"

"Sonya moved out about four months ago," Carol said. "Things really just didn't work out."

"I'm sorry to hear that," Joan replied, surprising herself that she actually was. Whatever else Carol was, she had been her friend longer than anyone else she knew.

"Thank you," Carol said. "I was just sitting here all alone and began to think of you. I didn't even think you would be home but I thought I'd try. I'm sure you have company, so I don't want to hold you. Like I said, I just wanted to make sure you were okay."

"It's just me here," Joan said, "unless you want to count Mr. Jack Daniels."

"Oh," Carol said, surprised; the Joan she remembered wasn't the type to sit at home and drink alone.

"Carol?" Joan said a few long moments later, during which the line seemed like it had gone dead.

"Yes, I'm still here," she said.

"Carol, would you like to come over," Joan said, "just so neither of us is sitting in the dark alone," she quickly added.

"Are you sure it would be okay?" Carol asked.

"Yes, I think it would be quite okay," Joan said, suddenly grateful for the opportunity for some company.

"Okay, let me just clean up a little and I'll be right over as soon as I can get a cab."

"Good, I'll see you then," Joan said before hanging up the phone.

-=-=-=-

Getting up from the chair, Joan put on a few lights, changing the atmosphere of the apartment. She also put away the scotch bottle, draining the last of her glass before she did. Even though she had mentioned to Carol that she'd been drinking, it wouldn't do for her to see the full extent of it.

A quick trip to the bathroom to take care of personal needs and to clean up a little followed, then an equally quick change of clothes and Joan was ready for visitors. A simple blouse and Capri pants were much more suitable for an evening at home than the form fitting dress she had worn home from the office.

While all these preparations had been going on, Joan found herself wondering why she had impulsively asked Carol to come over. Was it that she was simply lonely and wanted anyone's company, or was there something more there? She had never really resolved, at least in her own mind, the issue of Carol turning out to be that kind of girl. Up until that night, she had never met a lesbian, much less one who professed to be in love with her.

Oh, there had been a few girls back in college that there had been rumors about, but none of them like her roommate. Carol was pretty, fun to be with, and popular with the boys. Not in the way Joan had been, but more than enough for no one to ever doubt that she wasn't a hundred percent into guys.

Since Carol's admission, Joan had told herself that it really hadn't bothered her. She had dealt with it in the same way she dealt with most unpleasant things in her life - she simply pretended that it had never happened. Then, after a while, she discovered that she was going out of the way to avoid situations where she might be in a state of undress around Carol.

It had been an unconscious reaction, she knew, because Carol had never given her any reason to act differently. That realization, however, also began to cause Joan to wonder whenever she now noticed another woman staring at her. Previously, she had always taken those looks as admiration or even envy. Now she found herself considering if any of them were looking at her in the same way as a man might, and that thought made her feel a little funny when she considered it.

Another consideration that had crept into her thoughts during those last months before Carol had moved out was that if anyone else knew about her roommate, would they by inference conclude that she shared the same interests? The idea of guilt by association eventually had become so strong that she had wondered if asking Carol to move out might not be a bad idea. Thankfully, before she could ask that question, Carol had announced her intention to do so on her own. With her financial situation far different from when they had first moved into the apartment, Joan had no need to find a new roommate to share the rent.

-=-=-=-

Traffic must've been very light, Joan thought, because it was less than an half hour later that the doorbell rang and she opened the door to see her former roommate standing there. Putting on her best 'glad to see you' smile, she invited Carol inside, offering to take her coat as she did.

The blonde was wearing a simple blue dress beneath an equally simple cloth coat, the kind you would wear out to a casual dinner. As she hung up the coat, Joan remembered that blue was Carol's favorite color. In fact, she had been wearing another blue dress the night she had made her confession.

"You made great time," Joan said as the two of them walked into the living room, "the streets must've been deserted."

She had only meant it as a figure of speech, but Carol quickly confirmed that it had taken on a frightening reality.

"I don't think I saw two dozen people all the way up here," she said. "Unless you count the people packed into just about every bar I passed. That and the lines of people outside the churches waiting to make a confession. That scared me more than anything else. It's like they thought tomorrow would be too late."

Neither woman was Catholic, but both knew the importance of confession to those who were.

"Would you like a drink or something?" Joan said, quickly changing the subject.

"No, I'm fine," Carol said, "but have one yourself if you want, don't let me stop you."

"Maybe later," Joan said, thinking that another drink might not be a good thing right now, as she was feeling a bit tipsy from her earlier libations.

The two spent a few minutes catching up, and as they did, Joan realized that she was really glad her former roommate had decided to call to check up on her. Of all her friends, Carol had always been the only one who never judged her. It made her feel good just to have her sitting across from her now.

"I heard you got engaged," Carol said.

"Yes, his name's Greg," Joan replied. "Dr. Greg Harris."

"A doctor," Carol said in congratulations. "Good for you. I always knew you'd win the brass ring in the end."

"Every girl's dream," Joan smiled, then realized it wasn't every girls, at least not Carol's.

Carol didn't seem to take offense, since she listened attentively as Joan rattled off her standard litany of the virtues of Dr. Greg Harris. Her tone and expression barely reflected the fact that there was little of it that she still believed.

"He sounds wonderful," Carol said when her friend was done. "I'm so happy for you."

"He'd be here if he could," Joan said in conclusion, in case Carol had been wondering as to why he wasn't, "but all the doctors are on call in case something happens."

Carol nodded her head in understanding, accepting the lie at face value.

"And how are things at Sterling Cooper?" Carol asked.

Joan started with the most important news, that the company was being sold to a British concern. Carol said that wasn't what she meant. She wanted to know how things at the advertising agency were going for Joan.

Automatically, Joan started to give the same kind of sugarcoated answer she had given when asked about her fiancé, but then paused. The one thing she had always been with Joan was honest. Well, at least about most things. She took a breath and then told her about her loss of status at the firm.

"Oh, that's terrible," Carol said when she had finished. "I do remember Peggy Olsen, but I don't remember ever meeting this Jane Siegel."

"I can understand her and Roger," Joan added, "He did always think with the wrong head."

Joan was one of the few people in the office who knew the full circumstances behind Roger Sterling's heart attack. That it had come after a somewhat strenuous sexual liaison with one of two twenty year old twins that he and Draper had picked up at the casting call for Cartwright double sided aluminum.

"But what I can't understand," she continued, "is why Peggy keeps getting all the breaks she gets. What kind of hold does she have on Don Draper that he keeps going to bat for her?"

"Could she actually be that talented?" Carol asked.

The look on Joan's face said she thought that unlikely.

"Do you think she and Mr. Draper have something going on between them?" she then asked with some hesitation.

It was no secret to Carol that part of Joan's advancement at Sterling Cooper had been due to her own sexual dalliances with some of the men there. She had started with Paul Kinsey, one of the copywriters, and worked her way up to Roger Sterling, a partner who inherited his position from his father, who helped found the firm.

As soon as she'd said it, Carol worried that Joan might think she was passing a belated judgment on her prior indiscretions, but Joan didn't make the comparison, possibly due to the amount of alcohol she'd had to drink. Joan said that she knew Draper fooled around, but to her knowledge, and she prided herself on knowing everything that went on at Sterling Cooper, he had never been involved with anyone who actually worked there. Besides, she hardly thought Peggy was his type. He was, after all, married to a former model who still looked like she stepped out of some fashion magazine.

"Sometimes it's not what a girl looks like as much as what she's willing to do," Carol commented.

Joan gave her a what do you mean look.

"Remember Marlene Depaul," Carol clarified.

A light of understanding filled Joan's eyes. Marlene Depaul had been a French exchange student at the college that Joan and Carol had gone to. With plain looks and an androgynous build that often caused her to be mistaken for a boy, the nineteen year old had inexplicably been immensely popular among the most desirable portion of the school's male population. Joan and her friends just couldn't understand the attraction. It wasn't as if they weren't willing to put out, at least for the select few that met their standards.

They finally discovered Marlene's secret when one of her "dates" spilled the beans while drunk at a frat party. It seemed that unlike most of her more attractive American counterparts, the French girl was quite willing to perform fellatio on her dates, something that most women back in the 1950's viewed as a vile and disgusting act, one only performed by prostitutes and the lowest class of women.

That attitude still prevailed for most women who came of age during that period, even the married ones. Although it was becoming more acceptable for some of the younger ladies of today who didn't necessarily need to have a ring on their finger to have a man in their bed. Joan herself had made the transition soon after learning Marlene's secret, reasoning that in those pre-birth control pill days, it was a good way to keep your boyfriend happy and the stork at bay.