Free Contrary Pleasure by John D. MacDonald

of ancient statues, of sun-warmed
marble. She stretched the long, young muscles and, poised there, turned her
head, and he had stopped, looking at her, so that she looked directly into his
eyes six feet away. Her eyes were dulled with tiredness, and her mouth was
yawn-stretched. Then her eyes changed and she stood utterly still, as he did.
It seemed like a very long time. She turned hastily away, tucking her shirt
into her slacks, her cheeks darkening, looking down then. He moved on along the
aisle, seeing nothing else, feeling as though he had been blinded by her. Her
face was very young. The weariness told him that she was new, that her body had
not yet conditioned itself to the demands of the working day.
    Back in his office he kept thinking about her. There was an excitement in
it, and he told himself that there was no harm in learning more about her. It
became a game, because he could not ask any direct questions. The next day at
closing time he stood by the bulletin board near the time clock for her
production floor. He pretended to be reading the notices on the board. The
noise of the equipment began to diminish at five. It faded rapidly. Within a
minute there was nothing left but an almost stunning silence, a single whirring
that died away. Then, as though to replace the production sounds, the babble of
the girls increased in volume. There was a tinny banging of locker doors, and
shrill laughter, and heels clamped hard against the floor, and snapping of
compacts and purses. They filed behind him, snatching cards, inserting them in
the clock, the soft bell of the clock ringing constantly.
    They talked as they walked behind him, and he sensed that some of them,
glancing at him, talked more quietly, and some of them raised their voices to a
higher pitch. “… I don’t see what the hell he’s got to kick about if I ask you
to come along… You never tasted such glop and she calls it Chinese cooking for
the love of… and told me I ought to stay off my feet… so he says to her look I
can get a job anytime I feel like it and she says then why… then they marked
them down again and I figured it was the last markdown so I… don’t be so damned
late like last time, you hear…”
    And out of the corner of his eye he saw her coming along alone, and he
was very aware of her as she passed behind him and he turned his head just
enough the other way so that he saw her hand take her time card. Second row,
third slot down. He turned further and watched her put the card in the out
rack, the same slot, and go through the doorway.
    They were all gone and he heard the last of the fading voices. He took
the card out of the slot. His fingers trembled and he turned it toward the
light. Bonita Doyle. She was probably called Bonny. Bonny Doyle. He liked it.
It seemed to suit her.
    The next morning he invented a weak reason for looking at the files in
the personnel office. Unobserved, he took out her big yellow card and studied
it. The picture of her in the upper left-hand corner was poor. She was twenty
years old, and five feet six—she had looked taller—and one hundred and ten
pounds, and her physical condition was perfect, and she got a high mark in
manual dexterity, and her intelligence was good enough so that she was marked
for on-job training beyond the requirements of the job she was hired for, and
she had two years of high school, and before this job she had been a waitress
for Blue Ribbon Restaurants, Inc. for ten months, and she had been born at
Frenchman’s Lake, a small town he vaguely remembered as being up in the hills,
up in the resort section of the Adirondacks, and in case of accident please
notify LaRue Doyle, 14 Orange Avenue, Bakers-field,
California. Relationship—Bro. He turned the card over and saw that her local
address was 60 Lefferts Avenue. And she had been with
them ten days.
    After he was back in his office, he made up sour little histories. She
had a boy friend about twenty-three years old, a vet, who