THE FOURTH WATCH (52 page)

That day Helena went to the library
and started paging through books written by successful people that
had made millions in sales. She was confident that she could be
effective in the sales business. What the hell, she'd been selling
her ass pretty effectively! She knew that she cleaned up nice, and
had lied and charmed her way out of many a tight spot over the
years. She read everything she could find about the advertising
business, and the fashion and fragrance and jewelry industries. She
flipped through countless publications and studied all nature of ad
campaigns. She took out all the books they would let her take. Then
she went to a book store and bought a 'how to' book on writing
resumes, and set to work drafting her own. On Saturday she went
back to the library with her hand scribbled outline, and using a
public word processor and a model resume, crafted a fictitious
masterpiece. She knew that the people reading it would be familiar
with all of the local universities, and have connections that they
could use to check on her; so she gave herself an associate's
degree in creative writing from a junior college in Sacramento,
California. She made herself out to be a contributing journalist on
the schools newspaper and a DJ on its radio station. Nothing fancy,
but it gave her the
feel
of someone that early on wanted a career in
media. She gave herself a job right out of school, working on a
weekly paper in a small town just north of the city as a
copywriter, covering town meetings and sporting events and local
elections. A year later she moved herself to San Diego, where she
took a job selling advertising for a company that owned several
small publications in the area. On paper she went back to school
nights, and after three and a half years of dedicated study, got a
Bachelors Degree in Marketing. She enjoyed the job, and did it
well, but longed for a shot at the big markets. She knew they could
read it all between the lines of her resume. After another two
years with the San Diego Company, she was taking a shot at the big
time and moved to New York. That was six weeks ago and she was
looking for a job. She had crafted her history with great care. She
wanted to look like a go-getter, ambitious and motivated, self-made
and willing to take chances, but with a background humble enough
that they wouldn't be likely to spend much time checking it out.
Her salary requirements were modest by New York standards. In the
forty-thousand per year range (more than what she was making in
film part time). She had thought about that number carefully. It
needed to be high enough to show she had confidence and experience,
but low enough, considering her unimpressive pedigree, to make her
appear to be worth taking a risk on. In the end she was pleased
with her resume. She read it over carefully, and then drafted a
brief, professional cover letter to go with it. She printed out
three copies of each, and an envelope addressed as indicated in the
ad, finishing just before the library closed for the day. She
didn't have a floppy disc to save her work to so she took a deep
breath and dumped it. In the gathering dusk she stopped at a deli
and got herself a half-sandwich and a cup of soup and ate it at a
small table in front of a big window looking out on the street. She
had been completely clean for more than a week. She went home to
hold her breath and wait for the Sunday Times, hoping the job would
still be posted there.

In the morning she was up early. She climbed
down the stairs from the cheap apartment she rented in a bad
neighborhood south of Yankee Stadium, and crossed the street to the
convenience store on the corner. She bought the Times, and a big
cup of coffee, and dashed back to her apartment. She tore through
the paper to the classifieds and ran her finger down along the copy
- and there it was! She checked the address against the one on her
envelope, and it was the same. On Monday she mailed it first thing
and began the wait.

She tossed and turned at night as
her mind raced with doubt.
She had asked
for too much money for the experience she had said that she had.
She had not asked for enough for any self-respecting would-be
executive. They were never going to call her because she sounded
like a hick.
She hoped they would never
call her because the whole resume was a lie and they would catch
her at the interview.
She'd wake up
wanting to scream!

Her 'agent', or studio pimp as she
thought of him, called her with another movie. The working title
was
Sea of Love
,
and it was about a boat load of beautiful strangers stranded on an
island after a storm drove their boat ashore. It sounded
suspiciously like the old
Gilligan's
Island
TV shows. She could just picture
herself blowing Thursten Howell III while the Professor banged her
from behind. It was going to start filming in a couple of weeks.
She told him she'd do it, hoping she would never have
to.

She went running in the mornings and watched TV
in the afternoons, and flirted with the good looking guy that lived
on the first floor - and waited. After a week she knew they had
tossed her resume in the trash and that she would never hear from
them. Then she got a call from her friend Dave from the studio, and
felt a surge of hope - and fear.

She had put a few phony names down
as references on her resume, assigning them each a role from her
imaginary past, as friends or co-workers, the types of people a
potential employer would be unlikely to call. Dave was a real
person playing the role of the supervisor in San Diego. In reality
he was an actor and friend from the adult film business, who had a
brother that lived in San Diego. The idea was to have the brother
get the call at the San Diego exchange and tell the caller that
Dave wasn't at home and get a message. Then the brother would call
Dave and Dave would call back. It had worked. Dave told her that a
Mr. Everett Leonard from
New You!
magazine had called him, stating that they had a
resume from a Ms. Ellen Carlais, and wanted to know what kind of
employee she had been. Dave had bull-shitted him effectively, he
thought. He said the guy sounded like he was going to call her. Two
days later he did. Helena, now Ellen, was excited. She was
delighted that it was a man she would be interviewing with. She
knew the effect she had on men, and knew it couldn't hurt, as long
as he wasn't gay. She went to the library again and went through
copies of
New You!.
She liked it. She bought a new outfit that was professional,
but belted at the waist to accent her curves, and she had her hair
cut to frame her face, not hide it, like it was for her films. She
bought new shoes that had a modest heel that she thought would pump
up her legs and ass, and give her some extra height, without being
obvious. She bought a matching bag that was not quite a briefcase
but not a purse either. She tried on different blouses until she
found the perfect one that made you aware of her breasts without
flaunting them. On the day of her interview she was so nervous she
thought she would pass out, but confident in her
appearance.

And she knocked them out.

She interviewed with two men and
one woman. The men tried to look at her face and stole peeks at her
breasts, and the woman smirked at her snidely, so she knew she had
her outfit just right. She was polite, assertive and displayed a
knowledge of business in general and gave off the
feel
that she knew just
what today's women wanted. The men knew that they would buy
anything she tried to sell them, and that others would do the same.
Even the woman seemed to like her in the end. They took her to
lunch and offered her the job on the spot - thirty-five thousand
and a commission schedule. She told them she'd let them know, not
wanting to appear too anxious, and said she had another interview
that afternoon that she felt honor bound to attend. She shook hands
firmly and thanked them for their time, before coolly swishing out
the door. Once outside she broke into a cold sweat, hoping she
hadn't blown it. When she got home there was a message from Mr.
Leonard on her machine, asking that she call him before making any
final employment decision. She counted down the hours until she
could call back, giving the impression of having just returned from
a long second interview. When she did, Mr. Leonard increased
the
New You!
offer to thirty-eight thousand, sweetened the commission
schedule a little and reminded her of the excellent benefits the
company offered, including health insurance, profit sharing and
retirement. She accepted and started the job a week later. She told
only Dave and swore him to secrecy. She said she just wanted to
vanish from the porn business, and never look back. He promised to
keep her secret and wished her well.

*****

ELLEN WAS A QUICK
study and took to the work like she was born to
it. She was professional around the office and fended off all
romantic overtures, knowing that getting involved with her
co-workers could only lead to trouble. Within a year she moved into
a nice apartment, bought a slightly used German sports car that
looked new and was making money for the company - and for herself.
When the Boston job came up she was the natural choice for
Advertising Manager in the company's new office. And that's how she
met Edward Whorley.

'Teddy' was the head of advertising
for 'The Loading Dock', a powerhouse retail company that was
growing rapidly up and down the East Coast. The attraction for the
magazine was that Loading Dock was hiring women into high-powered
positions. A standard advertising sales ploy was to approach a
company to which you were giving some positive ink with an ad
campaign proposal. Ellen's pitch was simple: women were notorious
shoppers so why not use a woman's magazine to get them thinking
that Loading Dock was a place friendly to them. They would be
captivated by the diversity of the product base, excited by the
moderate prices, and naturally supportive of the company's image,
promoted by
'New You!
, as a pioneer in the employment of professional women. Teddy
liked it - and she could tell, he liked her. He asked her to put
together a campaign proposal and call him so they could get
together again and review her ideas. Within a week she had it done
and called him to make an appointment to show him her work. She met
with him, and his Father, at the Loading Dock headquarters in
Natick, and even the old man seemed impressed. They agreed to a six
month trial buy and Teddy invited her out to dinner to celebrate.
Once at the restaurant he proved awkward and clumsy in conversation
and table manners, but she liked him and carried the conversation
easily, and they had a nice time. The next day he called her to
tell her how much he enjoyed the evening and stammered his way
through an invitation to the theater that weekend. She accepted,
and the romance was on.

He was overweight and shy, immature in the ways
of women but captivated by her beauty and astonished that she
seemed to like him. She was easy to talk to, never in a rush to get
away from him, always interested in what he had to say and he fell
for her hard. She was excited to have a man of means who seemed to
like her for her company and friendship. He never made improper
advances to her and treated her like a lady, opening doors and
helping her into her jacket. In fact it was left to her to get him
into bed, and once she did, the deal was closed. Nine months after
they met he asked her to marry him.

His father looked like he was going to be a big
problem, openly hostile to her, wondering aloud what her motivation
might be in taking up with his gullible son. But to her amazement
Teddy, who always seemed timid around the old man, hit back against
him, calling him a hypocrite, telling him to stick his business.
When Ellen stayed with Teddy, even after it looked like he was
going to lose his place in the family business, it was Red that
backed off. Still he never really warmed up to her. She was worried
that he would one day check into her background, find out it was
all lies, find out who she really had been, and throw it all in
Teddy's face. She had told them that she grew up out west in state
sponsored homes after her parents were killed in a car accident,
until she was old enough to get out on her own. She had no brothers
or sisters (which was true enough) and had made her own way her
whole life. She could tell that Red admired the story, but wasn't
sure if he believed it. In the end she accepted Teddy's proposal
and Red, if grudgingly, seemed to accept her.

*****

THE FIRST TWO
years of her marriage were the happiest years of her life.
The Whorley's were fantastically rich! Red wanted them to live in
the big house, which had plenty of room - just until they could
build something suitable of their own he told them. Ellen thought
maybe Red wanted to keep an eye on her. She befriended Teddy's
sister Carolyn and, a little later, Red's new wife Samantha. She
began to relax. She was hoping that they could move to another city
as Loading Dock continued to expand, and Teddy took on more
responsibility. There was no need for her to work, so she quit her
job and hung out with the wives at the club and got involved with
charity work. With Teddy, she vacationed around the world, flew on
the private jet, dined in all the best places and met important and
interesting people. They talked about having children. It was all
so wonderful, her past was fading away as if it had all just been a
bad dream.