The American Princess - Best Love Story Ever (31 page)

On Friday, she again drew the evening time
slot. The National Tennis Center stadium court was packed to its
8,000-seat capacity, and demand for tickets was five times that.
Never before had so many people wanted to attend a tennis
match.

Everyone in the stadium knew what he was
supposed to be focusing on, because Betty-Jo was wearing a
sheer-white aerobics top with pink, expanding circles that
corkscrewed out from the tips of her breasts. She also sported a
short white skirt and white nylons, which were held in place by a
white garter belt, that stood out in contrast to her pink panties.
A pink hair ribbon, lipstick, and choker completed her tennis
ensemble.

The decision to wear a garter belt had been
difficult. "What do you think Brad?" she'd asked.

"Might as well be hung for a Tawny lion as a
Tawny lamb," he'd replied.

So here I am, she thought. Dressed for show,
but afraid to go.

When Betty-Jo moved onto the court, the roar
that greeted her was deafening. Wolf whistles and catcalls mixed
with the delighted chorus. She returned the endorsement with a
curtsey and a wave, which brought another roar of approval from the
enchanted, and in the case of most males, aroused crowd.

Betty-Jo was up against Valerie Chezkovitch.
Unfortunately, the Russian looked like an ugly duckling that had
been juxtaposed with a swan.

When the match got underway, the television
cameramen realized they had a few problems to sort out. They
couldn't decide whether to focus their close-ups on Fun and More
Fun, or on Betty-Jo's butt. They jumped back and fourth between the
two, like children torn between an ice cream cone and a chocolate
bar. And they forgot to follow the ball, preferring instead to
focus on Betty-Jo. But that didn't matter because their male
viewers also could have cared less about what the ball was doing.
They were delighted to stay with the cameramen and watch
Bouncer.

At one point in the match, Valerie disputed a
line call. When the chair umpire ruled in Valerie's favor, Betty-Jo
applauded the decision, but the Russian mistook Betty-Jo's support
for condemnation, when the Betty-Jo partisan crowd roundly booed
her. Enraged, Valerie marched up to the net, and had a hissy
fit.

"You think 'cause you dress like slut, and
people like theese, you can be peeg? I not forget. You pay for
theese, sveet cheeks!"

Before a stunned Betty-Jo could get a handle
on Valerie's problem, the Russian turned and stomped away.

Betty-Jo was sympathetic to Valerie's plight,
because the Russian should have been in the match. But Valerie,
flustered by the overwhelming crowd support for her 'peeg,'
opponent, lost in straight sets.

Following the match, a scrum of reporters
swarmed around Betty-Jo. The crucial question was what would she be
wearing for her semi-final match the next evening.

"I'm uncertain what I'll wear. The press has
been good to me. So why don't you tell me what you'd like to
see?"

The men in the scrum lost it. Near
pandemonium broke out before she could get them calmed down. "The
consensus seems to be for a black aerobics top."

"Tight," somebody yelled.

"Tight it is. And you want a black tennis
skirt, garter belt, and nylons. Now what color panties, pink or
white?" A serious debate on panty color, was followed by a brief
scuffle.

"Hold it boys! We'll flip," Betty-Jo said.
Pink won the toss. "There's only one problem. I don't have a black
top or black tennis shoes, and I'm not sure I'll have time to shop
for them."

"Not to worry," said Tony Vaccaro, the head
of the abc camera crew, "I'll get them for you."

"Thanks, Tony. I'll pay you."

"Whatever. Give me your measurements."

She grinned at him. "Do you promise to be
discreet?"

"Trust me," Vaccaro replied.

"The top should be large."

"What's your bra size?"

She hesitated for a moment. This seems to be
getting a bit personal, she thought. Soon that boy will be wanting
to count Hermans. "Thirty-six double D."

"Yep, that sounds like a large. So I'll buy
you a medium."

The following morning, her tennis attire, or
lack thereof, was front page news, and the talk shows considered
only two topics—was her dress appropriate for tennis, and should
she wear white or pink panties at her next match.

* * *

At WTA Tour headquarters, Betty-Jo had
created a major dilemma for Reginald Harrison, Executive Director
of the women's professional Tour. For two days, he had refused to
become involved in the controversy she had created, but the
pressure for him to make a ruling on the suitability of her tennis
attire, had become unbearable. The board was convened, and a vote
taken. The tally was four to three in favor of banning
inappropriate tennis wear at WTA Tour events, and B-J's tennis wear
was deemed to be inappropriate. Three of the women on the board
voted in favor of the ban, as did Harrison himself. But Harrison
felt like an ass—he believed that what Betty-Jo was doing was the
best thing to happen to women's tennis in years.

Moisture Conducts Electricity

As promised, Tony Vaccaro arrived at The
Prince, the following morning, with a sheer black aerobics top and
black tennis shoes.

"Tony, grab yourself a coffee, while I change
into my new tennis outfit. Since you did the legwork, I'll model it
for you."

On her way to the bedroom, Brad pulled her
aside. "Do I get to participate in this?" he asked.

She picked up on the irritation in his voice
and smiled. "Of course you do, as long as you behave yourself, and
don't try to handle the model."

She was enjoying the moment. Perhaps a bit
too much, because Brad gave his head an irritated shake, and said,
"As soon as I can get that clown, Vaccaro, out of here, you are in
serious trouble."

In a few minutes, she was back in the living
room. She gave a quick twirl to show off her panties and garter
belt, bounced up and down, and then stretched nonchalantly.

"So Tony, what do you think?" she asked, but
she already knew the answer. She'd studied herself in the mirror,
and knew that her outfit was indecent. The top was so
tissue-paper-thin that even though it was black, Fun and More Fun,
with their dark aureoles and hardened tips, were clearly revealed.
I might as well be wearing nothing, she thought. Nobody will even
notice the French-designer stockings I'm so pleased with. "Tell
me," she teased, "did you select this translucent fantasy all by
yourself, or did some dirty-old-man help you out?"

Tony's eyes never left her chest. "Bouncer,
I'm sorry. Honestly, I had no idea it would be this revealing."

"You're sweet, Tony." She gave him a
too-friendly kiss. "I love it, but there is some overexposure. I
suspect you know where a cover-up will be necessary."

Tony licked his lips. "I've figured that
out."

When Tony left, Betty-Jo made a dash for the
safety of a locked washroom door. She didn't make it. "I'm sorry,
I'm sorry. I'll do anything you want," she said. But the sincerity
was lacking. For one thing, she couldn't stop laughing.

"Yuck it up while you can, Tawny Cat," Brad
growled, "because you're about to pay for flaunting yourself to
infuriate your lover."

I really wasn't very ladylike, she thought.
"You misunderstood. I was only trying to be polite." She tried,
without success, to stifle a giggle.

"Sure. You were being polite, while your
friend Tony was arriving in his pants."

She grinned at Brad. "Do you think so?"

"But you'll repent soon enough when you're
being flogged with a cat-of-ten-tails."

"Why not nine tails?"

"Why do you think?"

"Because nine tails are too good for me?"

"You've been spending too much time with
me—you're becoming too insightful."

He tied her wrists to the headboard of the
bed. Then, moments later, he undid her garter belt, removed her
panties, and tied her feet to the posts at the foot of the bed.

"Why do I suspect that something indecent is
about to happen to me?"

"Indecent is what happens to you when you've
been a trouble maker. But this time, Tawny Cat, you've outdone
yourself. If I were you, I'd worry about something awful coming
your way. I don't remember who said 'The horror! The horror!' Maybe
Jack the Ripper. But whoever it was, he must have had your
predicament in mind when he said it."

She was feeling more confident despite Brad's
threats. It was never a good sign when he called her Betty-Jo, but
he'd been calling her Tawny Cat.

He admired her, while he did up her garter
belt, and then gave it a snap. "That weasel Tony has selected a
very revealing and arousing top for you. You've never looked more
ravishing."

"Then why don't you ravish me now, and flog
me another time?"

"Ravishing is much too good for you, and even
flogging isn't punishment enough." He looked glum. "Sadly, what's
about to happen to you is a despicable shame."

"What do you mean 'what's about to happen to
me?'" She was becoming apprehensive again.

"Tawny Cat, with you it's all a joke. Your
attitude is, just for the fun of it, I'm going to give Brad his
Christmas goose four months early."

"I'm sorry. I really am. It won't happen
again."

"You're right about that." He approached her
with a strange looking rectangular metal box, that had an electric
cord, and wires with pennies attached to it.

"What's that?" She struggled against her
bonds.

He flashed her his grin. "Trust me, you don't
want to know."

"I suspect you're right, but why do I feel I
should."

"Woman's intuition, perhaps. This, my
Princess, is the transformer for an electric train—normally it
would be used to power an electric train engine, but today it's
going to be used to power you."

"You mean I'll soon be thrilling to a surge
of electricity?"

"I'm not sure 'thrilling' is the operative
word. Repenting to a surge of electricity is more like it."

"Dare I ask what you're planning to do with
those pennies?"

"They go in here." He took the pennies, and
slipped them into her pussy. "Whatever you do, don't get wet.
Moisture conducts electricity."

She bit at her lower lip. "I can't help
it!"

"Then, Wayward Cat, I can't bear to
watch."

A Man
for Felicity

Two years after she received her arts degree,
Felicity had an MBA from Princeton. Accounting had pulled down her
grade-point average, but she had still graduated in the top quarter
of her class.

Following the stock-market meltdown in
October of '87, she had been fortunate to find a position on Wall
Street. Most firms were laying people off. But at the prestigious
investment bank of Bourbon and Fry, the retail sales manager had
liked her looks, and had offered her a position with a guaranteed
draw of $40,000 for a year. Felicity accepted his offer. She knew
that it was possible to make a comfortable living in retail sales.
The average Bourbon and Fry salesman made over $175,000 a year, and
top producers netted in excess of a million dollars.

Over the previous ten years, many women had
gone into retail sales, and most had been successful. That was
because female brokers were less pushy than their male
counterparts. They tended to be financial planners, rather than
gunslingers. Also, there was that magic combination of money, and
the potential for sex, that the male clientele loved dearly. Full
service female brokers—those who handled their clients as well as
their client's investments—had a leg or two up in the bastion of
power, money, and sex that was retail sales.

For seven years, Felicity had struggled, but
she never quite made the grade. While the average broker—or
financial planner, as they preferred to be called—made $175,000 a
year, a number of brokers made so much more that those on the
bottom rungs of the ladder made considerably less.

Felicity was limping along earning $50,000 a
year, a subsistence wage for a quasi-professional in New York. The
need to generate commissions led to mistakes in her client's
accounts; two of her clients were suing her, and the Securities and
Exchange Commission was investigating her. And then there was the
humiliation of having to submit to persistent fondling from her
boss. Her life was a shambles, and she couldn't see it improving.
At such a low ebb, Felicity would never have guessed that she would
soon be showing the enemy her garter belt, and more.

The grounds for one of the suits against
Felicity was over-trading, or churning, and the grounds for the
other was unsuitable investments. The churning charges arose from
trades she had made for a client in 1994. She was investing in
junior growth stocks when the market came unglued, after Federal
Reserve Board chairman, Alan Greenspan, jacked up interest rates in
February that year. It was Felicity's first experience with a
rolling stock-market correction, and for the better part of the
year, she was hopping into strong stocks near their peak, and then
bailing out of them just before they began to recover.

Felicity lost her clients a great deal of
money, and she would have been facing many more lawsuits, were it
not for the good rapport she had with most of them. Her male
clients adopted the attitude that it served them right for allowing
a woman to handle their finances, and besides, they weren't anxious
to reveal the magnitude of their losses, or the charms of Felicity
Ready, to their wives.

The unsuitable investments lawsuit had merit.
Felicity's client, Elizabeth Winslow, was a sixty-five year old
widow. She had entrusted her life savings of $500,000 to Felicity,
and Felicity had put half of it into speculative junior growth
stocks—investments that were outside the written guidelines of the
client agreement. In a favorable stock market environment, Felicity
would have been a heroine, but thanks to the 1994 mini-bear market,
$80,000 of widow Winslow's nest egg was gone, and her son was
incensed.