Regiment of Women Read Free Page A

with if you were a working boy.
    â€œKid,” said Charlie, as Cornell reached the cubicle they shared, “Ida’s gonna chew your rump.”
    Charlie as usual was ill-shaven, and there were grease stains on the front of his dress.
    Screw her , Cornell mouthed silently, with reference to Ida Hind, senior editor and his immediate superior.
    â€œMaybe you ought to,” Charlie cried. “You can use all the help you can get.” Charlie’s wig was a fright; he was balding under it. His beefy face wore no makeup. His stomach extended farther than his falsies, and the latter were out of balance, the left one having strayed almost into his armpit.
    â€œI was at my doctor’s,” Cornell cried indignantly.
    â€œI told her that you probably were.” Charlie’s fat cheeks bulged in humor. “Why you pay that quack to ream you is beyond me. Ida would do it for nothing.”
    Cornell put his purse in the lower desk drawer. To gain room for it he had first to push clatteringly back the collection of cosmetic bottles, jars, and tubes there. He saw a spare pair of pantyhose, new in cellophane, which he had forgotten he owned. He sat down and gasped at the sight of the overflowing In-box.
    Charlie kept it up. “She’s got the hots for you, son. Old Ida is the house stud. Her office door has been closed for an hour. She’s probably putting the blocks to that little first novelist who came in from the Midwest. He was unaware that a paragraph in his contract obliges him to lay for his editor. Prone on the desktop, his creamy white hams being violated by her brutal claws searching for the mossy crevice of delight.”
    â€œCome on, Charlie. I’ve got to get to work.”
    â€œI’m quoting from his book,” Charlie protested. “I did the first reading, you know.” Some of the unsolicited manuscripts were given to the secretaries to read. Cornell generally tried to evade that chore; you got no extra pay for it, and the books were usually hopeless. Not that he thought that much about the books that Huff House published, which lately had been running heavily to memoirs from retired stateswomen, with an exposé or two thrown in of professional wrestling, roller derbies, and the like. Cornell’s own taste was for romantic novels, but you hardly ever came across one any more.
    â€œRecommended it unreservedly,” Charlie went on, “as a sensitive, passionate account of a young man’s deflowering.”
    Cornell ignored him and began to type from a letter that had been dictated by Ida the afternoon before. He had never finished his Speedwriting course, and improvised a good deal, then often forgot what certain ad hoc abbreviations signified. The missive at hand was addressed to a has-been named Wallace Walton Walsh, whose first novel had been a super-seller about twenty years before, but whose subsequent volumes had grown ever less successful throughout the years since. The message which Cornell now tried to unlock from his runic scribble was Ida’s rejection of WWW’s latest manuscript—diplomatically couched, naturally, but in essence an unequivocal No.
    Cornell felt sorry for the poor old hack, who, as was well known, had served his term as Ida’s paramour.
    D EAR W INSOME W ALLIE ,
    Well, love, what can I say about FRIENDS OR FIENDS? Here and there are unmistakable reminders of the old [what was that word, mgc ?], but frankly, Wall, most of it you have done before and, if you’ll pardon my saying so, better. Remember the characters from UPSHOT[the original blockbuster]—Clara and Harvey and Simone, such rich, rounded ctrzn [ characterization , of course!].
    Now before you start hollering, my darling Three W’s, let me assure you I realize you are trying something new, to break out of the [oh, pee! look at this:] stjkt f tdtnl tknk n açv nu mgs, and I admire you for making that effort, Wall, believe me, when you have