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.
