This card also meant he was expected to buy something. Something big and expensive. And he didn't want or need something big and expensive.
He wished they'd leave him alone.
Perry clapped his hand to his mouth as though someone might have heard the thought.
What was wrong with him anyway? He wasn't a recluse. He wanted to indulge and enjoy the polished luxury of his world. He wanted to be conventional. He was young and handsome and tall and dark. He had a good job. He had a pleasant and comfortable legal arrangement with a girl in the next block.
But truly, what he had was all he wanted.
He glanced at the card on the table. He could always say no. It wouldn't be easy, but he could say no.
Perry thumbed through the Pulitzer prize winning work for 2087 which had been delivered yesterday as part of his book club subscription. He had seen it already, of course, in a dozen magazines and a hundred copies of his facsimile newspaper. It was the advertising copy for Cor-T-Zan foundation garments. But he didn't need a corset and the spartan simplicity of the fragile, lovely words bored him.
He switched on television. A phrenetic band was hammering out the new top jingle on the Hit Parade:
Tootsie gum, tootsie gum
Ooh yum-yum, it's touched with rum;