Chapter Four
The driver of the van dropped Clarity and Lanai in front of the Herbaline building during the evening, around eight o'clock. The company entrance hall was nearly empty. A security guard, Ivy dressed in security guard gear, showed both of them to the sign up sheet at reception.
"You also work as security here?" Asked Clarity.
"Yes, the evening usually, part time only though, all prospective employees are in their room already, welcome to Herbaline."
They took an elevator and reached the second floor. Ivy took them along a corridor showing a persian carpet design, and stopped in one of the rooms, labeled, floritician decor.
"This is your room, our floritician used to live here, she was our specialist on flowers, which is a line of products complementary to our herbal range of products. Flowers came after our first herbal cleanser product, Glutafoam, with glutamic acid, to give skin a nice, matte finish. You can go to the emotician terrace on the second floor tomorrow, Coley will be there to speak with you and tell you what she told you she would tell you."
"She didn't tell you?"
"She did, but it's confidential," said Ivy, "anything pertaining to arousal is confidential here."
Clarity nodded, thinking arousal was very confidential indeed at Herbaline. Lanai nodded as well, somewhat intrigued. They opened the door and found two beds and a light, take out dinner, which included roast beef and salad. They ate dinner and went to bed, wondering what Manglove would tell them the next day. The following day, Ivy brought them a good breakfast around eight thirty in the morning.
"You can show up at nine thirty to speak with Coley," said Ivy, "she is working already."
After eating their breakfast, they walked to the company terrace on the second floor, a nice area filled with a large desk, some furniture, a few odd items, and flowerpots laid out side by side on the balcony. A nice breeze was flowing, and the sun was up, bathing the terrace with its morning warmth. Clarity walked towards Manglove, followed by Lanai. The terrace door panels closed behind them, showing the four-leaf shamrock logo of Herbaline meeting its two halves, surrounded by a circle that looked like a halo. The emotician was sitting on her desk, busy looking at some of the results which came out of the various surveys filed by those prospective employees who wanted to be part of Herbaline.
"You found your way back here," said Manglove.
"Yes, I thought I would come back, I was wondering if you had the results of my monitoring, you said the results would be in."
Manglove inquired about Clarity's friend, and Clarity explained that Lanai was a good friend who worked as a librarian. The emotician ignored Clarity and began paying attention to Lanai.
"Oh, very good, you like books, what about booklets?"
"I like booklets," said Lanai. Manglove asked the librarian from Hawaii whether she would be willing to do an arousal test like Clarity. Lanai nodded, unsure of what it meant. The emotician pointed to a chair a few feet from her desk, and told Lanai to undress. Lanai took off her pants and panties, then her shirt and bra. Looking at the naked body of the librarian, Manglove returned to her seat and grabbed several pages which had the report on Clarity.
The arousal of Clarity was resolutely healthy, she was able to validate arousal very well, the only thing which was perplexing Manglove is that Clarity had hit ninety seven out of one hundred in arousal, when the mean or average level, even for people doing the arousal test, was fifty three.
"You're very healthy, you know," said Manglove, "never seen ninety seven with anyone taking the test here, I've hit eighty four and I have a pretty healthy sex drive."
"Yeah, thank you, I like my body, it's very nice. Now, can you explain what happened with this tingling, there came to be too much tingling under my skin at one point, and I'm not sure how it came to be."
"Do you feel anything now?"
"I don't, I feel pretty normal, but I like to know when my tingling arises."
"It arises when you're aroused," said Manglove. Clarity tapped on the emotician's desk, slightly annoyed by the roundabout answer.
"All right, if you don't want to share that, that's fine. What do you do here, Coley, what are you working on? There are rumors that there is a confidential project under way at Herbaline."
"If I tell you, you'll have to work here for a while, both of you."
Clarity noticed a small Herbaline snowglobe that Manglove grabbed, which began to show green clover snow flakes. A semisphere, thought Clarity. The rumor spread by Susan on the herbal company came to her mind.
"I'd like to call my own company first," said the teleoperator, "otherwise they might miss me at work."
"You'll make plenty of money here. You can't call anyone, though, there are no phones in this terrace," said Manglove, "you'll have to call from your phone." She pointed to a sign across the room, which looked like a traffic sign, which depicted a large cell phone and a red bar across it.
"This is a wi-fi-free area," said Manglove, "it's a conversation area." She pointed to another sign facing the first, showing the familiar silhouettes of a man shown at the entrance of public bathrooms. Two of these simple shapes were depicted talking to each other, with one caption saying hi, and extending one arm, and the other, from the other silhouette, showing a more elaborate caption which said 'hello, I'm more talkative than you'.
Clarity walked slowly along the emotician's table, and reached a piece of wooden furniture, which had a Graham Bell original phone from the twenties on top. She could tell that communication was important at Herbaline, and that was confirmed when Clarity saw a booklet on Manglove's desk, labeled 'Communication booklet for two or more people'. Clarity lifted the rudimentary ear piece. The old phone device did not work, but something, namely the old phone being there, told Clarity that there was another phone in the room, one that worked. She opened several drawers of the chest and in the third, she found a cell phone that she'd seen a few times at a cell phone memorabilia online exhibit, the Nokia 3310, a phone from the year two thousand, with a green color cover matching the color of the company.
"This is a phone," said Clarity. She tapped on the crystal screen of the device. Manglove lifted her eyebrows.
"If you know how to use it, you can use it," said Manglove. Clarity turned on the phone. The device was working, the battery was working properly.
Listening to the conversation between Clarity and Manglove, Lanai stood there naked and her clitoris rose to attention, feeling a sudden sense of apprehension and arousal at the same time. Her clitoris had never responded like this before, to an immediate, but not overwhelming sense of danger. The sensation was not unpleasant, simply different from her normal sensation of arousal.
Clarity grabbed the Nokia cell phone and dialed the number of Stevenson garden products. Flake answered the phone and she asked to speak with Brock.
"Hello, Brock, hi, it's Clarity, yeah, everything is going all right, just calling to let you know that I won't be coming back to work at Stevenson for a while, two or three months I think. No, I'm not going to work for another company, what makes you think that, just learning some stuff. Can you fill a leave of absence for me?"
Brock began explaining that she would have to fill a leave of absence request and give it to him or Heather, but Clarity was not in a mood for paperwork. She asked to speak with Stevenson counsel Lareya Marquez, who was more understanding.
"Sure, no problem," said Lareya, "I'll tell Mr. Stevenson, I'll send a leave of absence document to your email at work."
Lanai raised her hand, looking at Manglove.
"Can I do the same, I work at the library in Malibu, I need my job again in a few months." Manglove nodded, pointing Lanai to a weight scale.
Lanai stepped on the weight scale, thinking that the head of the library, Mrs. Marples would not be pleased with her leaving her job. Fortunately, Lanai was finished putting all the information together on the Egypt and Maya culture exhibit, and everything was now available on the Malibu library web
page. Manglove got up from her chair and walked towards the librarian. She ran her hands between the breasts of Lanai and noticed the librarian's nipples becoming quite hard. She lowered her hand and brushed the lower lips of Clarity's friend, including the shaft of her clitoris and the tip of it, which was slightly more protruding than Clarity's clitoris. Lanai was open-jawed, a warm tingling sensation reached her head.
"You can call after her," said Manglove, pointing to Clarity.
Lanai stepped off the weight scale and grabbed her panties, wishing the doctor's exam had gone on a few more minutes.
"All right, very good, I can tell you what I do now," said Manglove, unfolding a two foot long by one foot sheet in front of her.
Clarity lowered her head and looked closely at the piece of fine paper, it was titled chart of emotions. It was a graph filled with words describing emotions in eight different areas. The chart showed a list of emotions positioned according to various attributes, positive versus negative emotion, arousal, or assertion emotion versus calm, or passive, emotion, high and low sense of control, and preventing, hindering, or impeding emotion, versus conducive or contributive emotion. The teleoperator counted over one hundred emotions listed. She was particularly curious about the emotion of arousal, which was placed in the aroused, positive emotion, preventive, or hindering area. Feeling orgasm, a separate emotion in the chart, was roughly in the same good emotion area, but in a different quadrant, the contributive or conducive one.
"Arousal is a hindering emotion?" Asked Lanai.
"It can be, depending on how you react to it," said Manglove.
Clarity said nothing, simply observing Manglove looking at the chart.
"As emotician here at Herbaline, I'm a specialist of emotion, I understand basic and sophisticated emotion," added Manglove. "I'd like both of you to help me with this chart, we need to complete it, and you can help me do that, I think, once you understand our basic sales method."
Ivy knocked on the door and came in, noticing Lanai dressed in her underwear, bra in hand.
"Hi, you're getting your first check?" Lanai nodded, her nipples still showing a very healthy arousal. Manglove's assistant took a good look at the nipples, walking in front of the Hawaiian girl, catching a view of her Brazilian shave.
"Mr. Stive would like to talk to you, Ms. Manglove," said Ivy. A phone call beep on Skype confirmed what Ivy was saying and interrupted their conversation. Stive wanted to talk to Manglove about one of the employees working at Herbaline, a person known as employee clr, who wasn't able to be at the pool of the Beverly Hills hotel the previous day, the woman known as Ambi. Manglove excused herself and left the emotician room, stepping into the video-conference area to pick up the call on Skype, sending Ivy for several documents that Clarity and Lanai had to sign to begin their work at Herbaline.
While Manglove took the conference call and spoke with Stive, Clarity lunged on the emotician's computer, finding a chart of emotion icon on the desktop. She double-clicked on it, and a file opened, listing all employees of Herbaline. One of the rows stood out in red, it listed the name of Ambi Mivel, and one of the attributes her record displayed sounded somewhat strange to Clarity, it said employee showed signs of consistent language refusal, abbreviated as 'CLR', not engaged in sales work, not pleased with Herbaline sales course, will be assigned to the sales refusal correction room for a few weeks. Ambi Mivel was known as 'Employee CLR' at Herbaline, a company which studied way too much the way its employees acted and revealed their personality.