Chapter 26

It was mid-July when Kim and Brad returned to Los Angeles. Their new house wasn’t yet ready, so they went to Kim’s apartment. On Monday morning they put in an appearance at the plant for the first time in weeks.

Brad and Kim went to their adjoining offices. Kim had no sooner put her things down on her desk when Jenny Clark walked in. “Welcome back, bitch!” she snapped.

“Huh?” Kim exclaimed. Then with a wry grin she added, “That’s Kelly’s pet name for me, but what’s your problem?”

“Look, bitch, I thought you were supposed to be making a movie and staying out of trouble and out of our hair... ?”

“And... ?”

“You couldn’t just leave it like that, could you? Kimberly Kane Kramer? Of course not.” Jenny paused and then continued, “Here we are, busting our tails trying to get back-ordered shipments out the door, and what does she do... ?”

“What did I do?”

“Get your hardhat and come with me,” was Jenny’s reply. Jenny was already wearing hers.

As they were going down the ladder to the factory floor Jenny said, “I want you to pay particular attention to the women here.”

The first thing that Kim noted was the sheer number of people. Although male workers still outnumbered the women by about two to one, there appeared to be more female workers than there had been total employees just a few months earlier.

When Kim mentioned that to Jenny, the girl said, “Yeah ... And thanks for that, too. Now we have to eat in shifts for Heaven’s sake.”

They made a complete tour of the plant, now doubled in area from its former size. As Jenny had asked, Kim paid particular attention to the women. Without exception, they all seemed to be happy. Very happy, in fact. How odd, she thought.

Completing their tour, Jenny led the way into the cafeteria. The two got coffee and Jenny led the way to an isolated table where they could talk privately. Finally seated, she asked, “Well, what did you see?”

“I saw a lot of happy-looking women,” Kim replied, still puzzled.

“How about bras?”

“Huh?”

“Bras,” Jenny repeated. “You know ... Those things that some women use to hold their tits up?”

Kim just slowly shook her head, completely bewildered.

“There are very few,” Jenny reported, “and fewer every day. The only ones still wearing them are the most well-endowed women, and even they’ll be shedding them in a few weeks.”

“Huh?” Kim could never remember feeling as stupid as she felt that morning.

“Look, Kramer, do you realize what you’ve done? Less than six short months ago, this was a nice sleepy little company. Everybody knew everybody else. No one had to kill himself. Of course, the company was slowly — or not so slowly — going down the drain, but what the hell ... California has a good unemployment insurance program.

“But is Miss Fix-It satisfied? Hell, no! She has to stand the whole damned place on its collective ear. But now you really had to go and do it...”

“Do what?” Kim almost screamed. “Jenny Clark, I haven’t understood a single thing you’ve said all morning ... And I still don’t!”

“Come with me,” Jenny said with no further elaboration.

Again they went out to the factory floor, but then moved into the brand-new addition that Kim had never seen before. There in a corner of the new facility, she saw workers fabricating a unit she had never seen before, either.

“Recognize it?” Jenny asked.

“No ... Yes!” Kim exclaimed. “Is that the exercise machine I designed?”

“Well what do you know?” Jenny replied sarcastically. “She can actually recognize one of her own designs.”

They stopped at the end of the assembly area and Kim took a just-assembled unit to be able to examine it more closely.

“Why don’t you try it? It really is pretty good,” Jenny said, her voice now losing its former harshness.

The first thing that Kim noted was that the assembled unit folded up. Her original design had not. She commented on the fact to Jenny.

“That was June and Matt Turkel,” Jenny reported.

“Who’s Matt Turkel?” Kim asked. “That’s a new name to me.”

“Matt runs the shipping room,” Jenny replied. “At least the portion of it that’s handling these units. He played with the design so it wouldn’t occupy so damned much space. Now he can get four times as many in a truckload.”

Meanwhile, Kim had opened out the unit and got into the saddle. She quickly found that her design was amazingly effective. Although she couldn’t tell for sure, her objective had been to design it to work for women with a wide variety of builds. She knew that she was strong — something she had only recently even been willing to admit to herself — but she found that she was really getting a workout and she could feel the muscles that supported her breasts being worked appropriately.

“It seems pretty good to me,” Kim said as she got off the unit, folded it, and returned it to its place at the end of the line.

“Hah!” was Jenny’s only comment. Then she led the way over to the shipping room.

“You mean to say we’re actually shipping this thing?” Kim asked, astonished.

Jenny didn’t reply. Instead she introduced Kim to Matt Turkel. “Are we shipping this thing, the lady asked. Just a few. Like three trailer-loads a day.”

Matt just shook his head and held up his hand with all five fingers spread.

“Five loads a day?” Jenny reacted. Clearly the number surprised her, too. Then to Kim she said, “UPS backs an empty trailer up to our shipping dock, we load it with palletized units. The trailer is hauled off to the UPS sorting center and off they go.” To Matt she said, “That’s what? About 1,500 units a day now?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Matt replied, “but we’re still falling behind on the orders. That damned backlog keeps growing no matter how many of the damned things we ship.”

“That’s enough for here, Kim,” Jenny said. “Let’s go back to the office ... No! Let’s stop by the Beauty Queens first.”

When they opened the door they found one of the units in the corner where formerly the cots had been. Jane Chalmers was on it, stripped down to just a thong. When she saw them the girl grinned and stopped her exercise.

“What do you think, boss?” she asked Jenny. “Can you believe it? For the very first time in my entire life, I’m becoming proud of my tits.” She grinned and added, “And they’re utterly perfect, too. They look and feel so natural because they are. And they shake just enough to make things interesting. It’s so much better than those implants, too.”

“Okay,” Kim said shaking her head, “I give up. What in hell has been going on?”

“Well...” Jenny began, stretching out the word, “part of the problem is Miss Fix-It on the machine. We got your design work and June Henderson and I made the production drawings and wrote the machine-tool software. We were going to make a couple to see if they worked.

“Was that good enough for little Janey, here?” Jenny asked rhetorically. “Hell, no! She had to start spreading the word in chatrooms. Not only that, but the dumb broad has to use our real e-mail address, too.”

“How much is it, by the way?” Kim asked.

“We’re selling it for $199.95, plus shipping and handling,” Jenny replied.

“Our cost?”

“Nearly 40 bucks.”

“Do you mean to tell me that we’re grossing $160 a unit?” Kim asked, astonished.

“Not really,” Jenny replied. “There are $30 in royalties that have to be added.”

“Who gets the royalty?”

“You get $20 and the school gets $10,” Jenny replied. “Which reminds me ... What’s the legal name of the school, anyway?”

“It’s The American School for Girls,” Kim replied, “in Langenhagen, Germany.”

“Okay,” Jenny commented, “now we can get their first check out to them. And it’s going to be a beaut.”

Then she grinned and added, “By the way, you missed a Board meeting. We’re setting up a subsidiary, Female Fitness, Inc. And guess what?”