Heck should have been happy. Access to this room alone might have been worth five years of a healthy young bachelor's life. But he wasn't happy at all. Yesterday the ace salesman of a big electronics outfit. An ace salesman, who loved selling, perfectly, splendidly, magnificently adjusted. Today, the owner of a huge—and illegally functioning or soon to be illegally functioning—company. Well, the so-called owner. The owner in name only.
Because he hadn't made one decision....
"Excuse me," a voice said timidly. "I was told I might find Hector Finch here. Is Hector—" The voice trailed off. It was Patty's voice and now Patty saw Heck, sitting apparently unconcernedly, among all the uniformed and ununiformed and partially uniformed beauties.
"Heck!" she cried. "You come out of there! You come with me this minute." But then she looked at his face, saw the worry, the indecision, the confusion. "Heck," she said, her voice softening. "Heck, you poor guy. You look so befuddled. You come on with me, Heck."
Mechanically, he went. Laara ran procurement. The madam-like woman ran selling. Patty ran Heck. He was one hell of an executive.
They ran smack into their first serious trouble three days after the company began to function.
In those three days, Heck almost succeeded in turning his own head. His job apparently consisted of signing a few routine interoffice memorandums, making a daily tour of inspection, spending as much time as he wanted with the sales force, arbitrating disputes between some of the more tempestuous beauties either of the sales force or the secretarial staff, and trying to convince Patty, who had come that first day because she had seen an ad Laara had placed in the papers in Heck's name, that everything was going to be all right. He never did actually get right down to it and tell Patty the truth, but he didn't have to. On the second day, Laara told her. And, coming from Laara, not Heck, Patty believed every word.
And they were making money, as the expression goes, hand over fist. The first day, four hundred thousand in net profits. The second day, six hundred and fifty thousand. The third day, just short of a million. In three years at this rate, Heck thought, he'd be a billionaire. So why worry about little details like how the procurement force got merchandise to sell or how the sales force did the selling?