Are You Ready For This?

Here are some of the log-line cut-in scenes for the movie "The Neon Stained Glass Murders."

Read along to the music...

I stopped my black Rolls Royce Wraith on one side of a high crest, backed by all three of the

main types of physical barrier - tall trees, thick shrubbery and viney wall. And waited in the

evening dusk, like the good (pretend) pre-booked late night test-drive Rolls dealership agent

that I was (not). This was likely to be just a probing run from the trial guy. I’d read all the prebriefing

files - or at least thought I had done - and moved the car seat back smoothly using

its quiet electric mechanism and sat in utter darkness; a Night Owl Pro Nexgen IR Illuminator

Night Vision on an internal, in-cabin, movable titanium micro-hydraulic mounting system in

front of my face, the G22 in my lap.

Hours passed. It was well into the darkness of early night now. I’d played around with the

massage function in the seat enough times. I’d stepped out of the car and then back in again

a few times. My back was feeling pretty okay.

...It wasn’t just one trial probing guy, there were four in full private security team operational

gear, in one vehicle, already inside the gated community proper and pulled up against an

exposed section of the perimeter wall of the target’s actual estate.

I had all the listed actual private security guard patrols; these were none of them.

All evening I had been thinking about the words of two guys: Edward Snowden and Thomas

Sheridan - Snowden’s main point was chiefly that you could not have a system open to ‘the

good guys’ but closed to ‘the bad guys; it was either fully closed and totally secure or it was

not secure, period.

*

...You can set the Wraith’s exhaust sound to a ‘sport mode’ and the thing sounds pretty

intimidating. I made sure I came down the drive in ‘sport exhaust sound’ mode and then I

switched it off right outside when I drifted it in and kept it at a slow crawling pause at the

porch area.

The front doors opened and a figure stepped out, dressed in a bright red silk Chinese-style

gown and wearing what looked like those black Tai Chi slippers. She had very short-cropped

but otherwise thick and rich hair with some kind of colored dye streak in there in several

parts. No makeup, no lipstick.

I lowered the large side glass window. “Rolls Royce has emergency interior palette-matching

British lipstick and mascara. For just such situations. No problem. Derbyshire Orris butterbased

lipstick, in colors matching the leather trim…”

I let the car slowly start to slip past her. “Best in-cabin light show in the world.”

“In the glove compartment,” I said. “How are you with ‘mandarin orange?’”

“Never have tried it…”

She was a slightly taller than average, rather svelte, wondrous magical sugary confection of

symmetrical good looks and bodily warmth in real life, up close.

*

I watched her in the lift as we rode up. This was no ‘still waters on the surface’ type of

personality - this was a highly energetic, dynamic, ambitious, borderline manic personality,

almost. Clearly remembering what I had said at the very first, she had insouciantly and

quickly availed herself of the mandarin orange lipstick inside from the Rolls’ glove

compartment even just ten minutes from leaving the explosion behind us in the wake of the

black Wraith.

There was a large print on a wall of Charlie Chaplin from the film ‘Circus.’ At first glance it

looked like your typical urban, rather common, iconic and popular wall-sized black and white

photo-print.

But when I touched a switch the lighting changed and the photograph showed a man

dressed in midnight blue, not black, and the ‘white’ photographic key-tones in the image

were Belgian cream.

She looked up at the high vaulted ceiling. “Wow. Colossal.”

Her gaze lowered to the book on the table stand. The cover read in prominent old fashioned

Copperplate scripting: Bobbi Fischer’s Seduction Chess - have the game wrapped in 3

moves.

She picked up the tome and turned it over in her hands and read out the title audibly but

hesitatingly: “Bobbi Fischer’s Seduction Che-ess?

“...Have the game wrapped in 3 moves.” She read the full subtitle out aloud.

There was a knock at the door. It must have been Naj with the Louboutin shoes.

*

She touched inside the box to feel the gleaming dark blue leather shoes, first the outsides of

them, then the insteps, all the way to the toes, and then finger-tapping the nail-lacquered

soles. Somehow the smell of new leather exuded all the way from the tissue paper covering

in the box right up to nose level, in the biting cold air of the living room.

She put down the box onto the floor with the Louboutins back in them, slipped off her black

tai chi pumps and disrobed in her bare feet, standing there in the cold room atmosphere

wearing just bra and panties. You could feel the heat from her body. And then she smoothly

reversed the gown with its dark blue lining side out and put the thing back on, tying it around

her waist with its mandarin orange sash. And squatted down to get the high heel shoes out

of the boxes and try them on one at a time holding onto the side table with one hand to

steady herself. She was an Eight in the Louboutins.

“Naj is going to go back to his place now and make us all midnight supper, aren’t you Naj?

“Truffle linguine…I was going to do truffles and linguine...” His voice was barely a whisper.

“That sounds good. And a good strong olive oil too, eh. I want the truffles to be able to go

right into our bloodstream and come out through the pores of our skin. You know what I

mean. I want to be able to smell it.”

“I don’t drink you know, I just thought you’d better know that!” She said. “Before you take off

into your 3-step seduction plan, or whatever, what is it…”

I signalled with both hands to Naj: “Go, go. Hurry, dude. In an hour we’re going to be

starving!”

“Oh you don’t need to drink the stuff I make to get rattled.” I shot back at her. “The way I

make it the fumes alone will almost kill you. And the way I make it in any case it’s generally

only for certain types of brave men, so you don’t have to drink it although there are some

women who are equal to the challenge - you know: risky adventurer explorer-types - rocket

men, rocket women; people who like to get things up, go where no one has gone before.”

“We’re not having sex.”

“Oh we are having sex.”

She looked around, seemingly more at ease stepping away from the sex chatter. “Where is

that gas fireplace of yours? It’s freezing in here. And who are you, by the way...”

“Over there.” I pointed expansively, way out across the floor right to the other side of the

large, high vaulted ceiling, living room. “Be careful how you go,” I said as she began walking

over to the gas fireplace. “Attitude determines altitude, and if you tilt up too fast, you’ll fall.”

“I won’t fall.”

She slowed down, realizing properly that what I had said had some basis in the actual fact of

walking in Louboutin high heels. Not that she didn’t already know and ought to have

considered in all of the circumstances. ‘All of the circumstances’ meaning the adrenaline and

the prior sex banter and the elevated tilting of her hips now with the meaningfully raised, high

stiletto heels. And the rhythmic insinuating effect on her ass muscles as she walked.

“You cannot… ...be serious.”

Ha ha. I laughed to myself. Too late. And she was the musician. Should have read Kitab al-

Musiqa by al-Farabi, the Ninth and Tenth Century Persian-Arabic scientist and philosopher -

on the cosmic qualities of music, and its influences.