Kept Women Can’t Quit

“Can you tell me what you wished to discuss with Mr. Calhoun, Mr. Lam?” she asked, her wide blue eyes looking at me with naive innocence.

“An interesting problem in post-public relations,” I said.

“Post-public relations?”

“That’s right.”

“Can you explain what you mean by that?”

“Certainly,” I said. “I can explain it in a very few words — to Mr. Calhoun.”

I gave her a smile.

She got up from behind the desk and walked around it so that I could see how her dress fitted in the back. It fitted. She vanished through a door marked J. D. CALHOUN — PRIVATE, and within a few minutes emerged to say, “You may go in, Mr. Lam. You have no appointment but Mr. Calhoun will endeavor to shuffle his other appointments so he can see you. He has just returned from luncheon and he has several appointments; however, he’ll see you.”

“Thank you,” I said, and walked in.

Calhoun sat behind his desk, leaning slightly forward, an attitude of dynamic energy about him. His lips were carefully held in a straight line. The small mustache had been trimmed so that it emphasized the look of determination which was as synthetic as the expression of innocence on the face of his secretary.

He was broad-shouldered, somewhere in the thirties, with dark hair, dark eyebrows and piercing gray eyes.

“Mr. Lam!” he exclaimed, getting up and extending his arm as though he was shooting his hand at a mark.

I put my hand in his and arched the knuckles so that his squeeze didn’t make me wince. I could tell he was a chronic hand squeezer. It showed his dynamic personality.

“How are you, Mr. Lam? Sit down. My secretary said you wanted to discuss a problem in post-public relations.”

“That’s right.”

“What is it?”

I said, “You public relations men do a lot of thinking. You dream up some terrific ideas. The ideas are used and then forgotten. That’s a waste of good material. In many instances there are opportunities to get good publicity out of things which might be termed the aftermath.”

“Such as what?” he asked.

“Oh, generally,” I said, waving my hand around the office and looking at the photographs on the wall, “any of your ideas. Now, here’s something interesting. This is quite a photograph.”

Calhoun yawned and said, “You may think so, but in this business, bathing beauties and models are a dime a dozen. We use cheesecake in our business.”

“Just why do you use cheesecake?” I asked.

He said, “Look, I’m too busy to give you lessons in the public relations business. Generally, if we’re selling something that has no eye appeal we try to attract the reader’s interest in terms of cheesecake.

“That’s why you see new models of automobiles photographed alongside girls in bathing suits or good-looking models with tight-fitting skirts and nylons. We have them by the dozen. That particular photograph you’re looking at shows the contestants who were vying to win the thousand-dollar cash prize and the title of Miss American Hardware. That was publicity for the hardware convention at New Orleans a few months ago. I handled all their publicity.”

“They’re good-looking babes,” I said.

“Yeah,” he repeated in a bored voice, “they’re good-looking babes — so what?”

“Who won?”

“Contestant Number Six,” he said.

“Now, there’s something that would be interesting,” I said. “That’s what I mean by post-public relations. I’ll bet Contestant Number Six would interest the American public. She was a girl working as a waitress someplace or—”

“She was a bookkeeper in an importing house,” he interrupted.

“All right,” I said, “she was a bookkeeper. She had great beauty but no one recognized it. She was doing humdrum daily tasks, and then she heard of a contest for the queen of the National Hardware Association. Timidly she typed out an application. She found out it would be necessary to appear in a bathing suit. She hesitated for a while, and then decided to go ahead with it. She—”

“You said she timidly typed out an application?” he interrupted.

“That’s right.”

“Not that babe,” he told me. “As I remember it, she was the one who suspected one of the other girls had padding in her bathing suit and suggested that the judging should be done in such a manner that the judges would be satisfied no artificial aids to beauty were being used... My secretary can tell you a lot more about her. I don’t remember too much of the details. It was just another contest, and, frankly, we get damn good and tired of them.”

“I know,” I said, “but think of the follow-up — that’s what I’m coming to. She won. The elation, the—”

“The cash,” he said dryly.

“All right, the cash. And all the notoriety, the publicity, the chance to go to Hollywood. I suppose you provided for some sort of a screen test?”