Kajira of Gor Read Free

enough
    to be one, but I was not one.
    I heard the camera clicking. “Excellent,” said the man.
    “Now look at us, over your left shoulder.”
    I had had the yellowish, metallic object assayed. It had indeed been gold. I had
    sold it to a bullion dealer. It would be melted down. I had received eighteen
    hundred dollars for
     
    “Now, face us, crouching slightly, your hands at your hair,” said the man.
    “Good.”
    These men, perhaps, wanted to train me as a model. Yet I suspected this was not
    their true purpose. I was not particular as to what might be their true purpose,
    incidentally. They obviously possessed the means to pay me well.
    “Now smile, Tiffany,” said the man. “Good. Now crouch down in the sand, your
    hands on your knees. Good. Now put your left knee in the sand. Have your hands
    on your hips.
    Put your shoulders back. Good. Smile. Good.”
    “Good,” said one of the other men too. I could see they were pleased with me.
    This pleased Vie, too. I now felt more confident that they might hire me. For
    whatever object they wanted me I could sense that my beauty was not irrelevant
    to it. This pleased me, as I am vain of my beauty. Why should a girl not use her
    beauty to serve her ends, and to get ahead?
    “Now face the camera directly, with your, left hand on your thigh and your right
    hand on your knee,” said the man, “and assume an expression of wounded feelings.
    Good.”
    “She is good,” said one of the other men.
    “Yes,” agreed another.
    “Now assume an expression of apprehension,” said the first man.
    “Good,” said the second man.
    I normally worked at the perfume and notions counter in a large department store
    on Long Island. It was there that I had been discovered, so to speak. I had
    become aware, suddenly, that I was the object of the attention of the man who
    was now directing this photography session. “It is incredible,” he had said, as
    though to himself. He seemed unable to take his eyes from me. I was used to men
    looking at me, of course, usually pretending not to, usually furtively. I had
    been chosen to work at that counter because I was pretty, much like pretty girls
    often being selected to sell lingerie.
    Such employee placements are often a portion of a store’s merchandising
    strategies. But this man was not looking at me in the same way that I was
    accustomed to being looked at He was not looking at me furtively, pretending to
    be interested in something else, or even frankly, like some men of Earth, rare
    men, who look honestly upon a female, seeing her as what she is, a female.
    Rather he was looking at me as though he could scarcely believe what he was
    seeing, as though I might be someone else, someone he perhaps knew from
    somewhere, someone be would not have expected to have found in such a place. He
    approached the counter. He regarded me, intently.
    I think I had never been so closely regarded. I was uneasy.
    “May I help you?” I asked.
    He said something to me in a language I did not understand. I regarded him,
    puzzled.
    “May I help you?” I asked.
    “This is incredibly fortunate,” he said, softly.
    “Sir?” I asked.
    “You bear a striking resemblance to someone else,” he said. “It is remarkable.”
    I did not speak. I had thought he might have begun by asking if he did not know
    me from somewhere. That stratagem, the pretext of a possible earlier
    acquaintance, hackneyed and familiar though it might be, still affords a
    societal acceptable approach to a female. If she is unreceptive, he may, of
    course, courteously withdraw. It was merely a case of mistaken identity.
    “It was almost as though it was she,” he said.
    I did not encourage him. I did not, for example, ask who this other person might
    be.
    “I do not think I know you,” I said.
    “No,” he smiled. “I would not think that you would.”
    “I am also sure that I am not this other person,” I said.
    “No,” he said. “I can see now, clearly, that you are